Our Year in Review

So now that we have started 2009, I thought it might be appropriate to do one of those "Year End Review" pieces that you see on Entertainment Tonight and SportsCenter. You know, those ones where they show you the highlights and memorable moments from the year that is about to end? Well, as usual these days, we are a bit late on doing everything... So while it's still relevant, lets review our family's 2008.

Back on New Year's Day 2008, we rang in the new year with our friends at our place. We invited Keith & Amy, Kent & Sally and Scott & Josie over and had a nice little get-together with them. I took my usual week's worth of vacation between Christmas and New Year's and spent it with Jeni at home together. Then, only a few days into the new year, we got the news we had been waiting and hoping so much for, for more than a year. Jeni got a positive pregnancy test! We could barely restrain our excitement, but we kept it a secret.

About 2 weeks later, I went on my last recruiting trip with Macy's. All of the Macy's recruiters met at our San Francisco division for 2 days of meetings. Jeni flew out on Thursday evening and met me. And, Jeni's parents, Jim and Carol met us in San Fran for some great family time.

We even made a trip up to the Napa Valley to sample some wine. Unluckily for Jeni she couldn't enjoy it as much as she liked... We had to be very sly about hiding the fact that Jeni wasn't drinking from the other folks who went with us (friends and co-workers from Macy's). I spent most of the day sampling both my share and Jeni's share (on the sly) of wine.

A few days after we returned home, we had our first trip into her doctor's office for a confirmation and check-up. That's when things got interesting...


As we got into the room with the ultrasound tech, Jeni lay down on the table and I held her hand, praying that things were going o.k. It was only 6 weeks into the pregnancy and she and I were obviously the only ones who knew anything to that point because so many things can go wrong. The ultrasound tech started with the exam...


That's when we saw this...

So, I remember hearing the tech say something like "Well, look at that." Jeni quickly blurted out "IS THAT 2?" And I said, "HUH?" Jeni said something else like "Oh my God, that's two of them." I don't remember much more of the conversations... You could say I was in a bit of shock.
We did get to see the flicker of two tiny heartbeats... Very cool stuff.

Obviously we were thoroughly thrilled that everything else looked great, but still in total shock... We were having twins. We probably said that to ourselves about 100 times that day... Sometimes laughing afterwards... Sometimes chuckling in disbelief... We were having TWINS.

As we attempted to prepare ourselves mentally that our life was definitely going to change a lot in 2008, we didn't realize exactly how much for more than the reason that we were about to become parents. Things got really interesting in February.

It was the first week of February and I went into work as usual on what seemed to be a normal Tuesday. However, things changed quickly when my boss told me that everyone (and I mean the entire company) had been called into a meeting on the 21st floor. We knew then that something big was about to be announced. Rumors started to fly instantly that Terry Lundgren, the President of Macy's Inc. was in our building... Holy cow. It was really big. The predominant opinion was that our division was about to get a lot bigger with a lot more responsibility... Everyone assumed that because of its struggles, Macy's North (formerly Marshall Fields) was going to be absorbed by us. Exciting for us! However, that wasn't the news...

As our CEO began to speak you could tell something bad was about to happen. He then announced that effective by Fall of that year, all business functions currently happening in our offices at Macy's Midwest would be assumed by Macy's South in Atlanta. It was so weird how the sounds in that room were a combination of gasps, sobs, and the air being sucked out all at the same time. Everyone was in disbelief. They dismissed us and we all retreated back to our offices...

Now was the thing I dreaded most. I had to call Jeni and tell her the news. It was about to break in the media in an hour so I had to call her before anyone else did. While no one died or anything of that nature, the phonecall felt that bad. We had just had the happiest news of our lives together, and now everything is thrown for a loop as I may soon be unemployed! Quite a punch in the stomach... Obviously Jeni and everyone in my family had tons of questions about what would happen next... Unfortunately no one really knew, but everyone assumed the worst that we would all be looking for new jobs.

Jeni's pregnancy progressed a few weeks and we decided it was time to tell the grandparents. We decided that a simple phone call wouldn't do, so we decided to send a greeting to everyone from the womb. Here's the photo that we emailed out announcing that Jeni was expecting.

Needless to say everyone was very excited. My mother responded over the phone with a series of screams and "Oh my God!". Another fun memorable moment.

March flew by with little excitement. We spent a full day of Jeni's Spring Break registering at Babies R Us for the tons of stuff we would need.


April arrived and the days were numbered at Macy's as my last day was to be May 2. To celebrate our "graduation" to new careers, the HR Team at Macy's decided to have a 'Prom'. Basically just another excuse for us to get together, have a good time, and dress nice... Here's our 'Prom' picture. As you can see, Jeni was 'showing' quite a bit already.







May arrived and I was officially unemployed for about 2 weeks. My last day was May 2nd but I was fortunate enough to find that Save-A-Lot was looking for a College Relations person at the same time. I arranged that my first day there would be May 19. Two weeks to relax, sleep in, and get a few chores around the house done... Little did I know...


On Friday, May 16 Jeni called me early on her way to work to say she "didn't feel right". She wasn't sure, but she thought she was having some contractions. Very early for that, I thought, but we need to be careful. She even called my cousin, Gretchen, who has 2 children of her own, to clarify exactly what contractions feel like... Just to be safe, she called her doctor who told her to go to the hospital to get checked. So began what was probably the scariest few days of our lives...

I got to the hospital and to Jeni's room where she was waiting in a hospital bed. The doctor came in a did an evaluation on her and then began the physical examination. Immediately I could tell by the doctor's face and the tone in her voice that something was not right. We were told that Jeni was indeed in preterm labor and she would be getting some drugs to stop the contactions. However, that was not all. The contractions had already started pushing things along and some of the babies' membranes were exposed. This was not only serious, it was threatening to the babies, especially since they were only 21 weeks along. Very few newborns are viable and can survive before 25 weeks...


Around the same time, our older boxer Cassius had started acting differently. He had had numerous health issues from his Cushings Disease to his torn ACL. However, between February and May Cassius seemed to age 6 years. He was sluggish and didn't want to eat. He was vomiting alot and on that Friday refused to even get up off his bed to go outside. With the amount of time I knew I'd be spending at the hospital, I couldn't chance something being seriously wrong with him. So, I loaded him in the car and took him to the vet. He was extremely dehydrated and malnurished from refusing to eat. He stayed the weekend so they could run tests and get him feeling better. Here's a picture of Cassius in mid-April when he started to go downhill...






Later that Saturday, our savior performed a miracle. Now, I'm not being religious or overly dramatic. However, I do refer to Jeni's new doctor, Dr. Michael Paul, as our savior. And he truly did perform a miracle. Jeni had to have what is known as a rescue cerclage. As we were informed later, many doctors would not have performed the procedure on Jeni as it was very risky and had a likelihood of failure. Failure would have most probably meant the loss of our girls. However, Dr. Paul performed the cerclage successfully. Jeni spent the rest of the weekend and most of the rest of May in the hospital. I spent the next few weeks making daily trips back and forth from home to the hospital and off to work... Oh yeah I did start my new job the Monday after Jeni's procedure...


Jeni was released to come home just in time for her first shower. It was thrown by my mom, and Gretchen. Here are some photos...

After his evaluation at the vet, we were told that Cassius would need to be seen by a specialist at Mizzou to diagnose exactly what was wrong with him. He continued to not to want to eat and was dropping weight rapidly. He had gone from weighing around 70 pounds in January down to under 50 pounds by mid-June. Since he's not really an old dog, at only 8 years old, we decided to do whatever we had to, to get him fixed up.

I took Cassius to the Vet school at Mizzou where they performed an CT scan on him. They discovered that Cassius had what is called a macroadenoma. Basically this is a tumor on the pituitary glad. A large tumor in fact. This tumor had grown and was now causing a lot of internal pressure on his brain and causing him lots of discomfort and thus he didn't want to eat. So immediately we had them begin treating him with radiation treatments. The only problem was that these treatments had to be done daily and could only be done at Mizzou. So every Sunday afternoon I drove Cassius up to Mizzou. Then on Friday afternoon, I went back to Mizzou and picked him up so that he could spend the weekend with us at home. At first he was quite pathetic as he was very tired and weak... But that quickly changed. He did however have to have a feeding tube inserted in his neck as he was still not eating on his own.


Here is Cassius with his feeding tube bandaged up.


On July 3, Cassius got to come home for good after completing his radiation treatments. He acted like a new dog! He was eating, playing, and running around the back yard again with Sugar. We even got the sprinkler out for him on a hot day.









July arrived and Jeni had been having some issues. We had been back and forth to the hospital several times because of small contractions starting and stopping. She was on the anti-contraction meds since she was released from the hospital back in May, but from time to time we'd have to make a trip just to be safe. Things were looking good by week 2 of July though.


We went in for a doctor visit and she was examined by one of Dr. Paul's partners. He proudly stated that he thought that she should be fine until week 36 and that they may have to consider taking her off the medications and removing the cerclage at that time... Someone must have forgotten to knock on some wood...


2 days later, Jeni's water broke.


So Jeni had hit 29 weeks and 6 days when her water broke on the morning of July 9. I was getting ready to leave for work and she started to sit up in bed and then told me to hold on. "Something's wrong, I think. I think my water just broke." Well, we furiously packed up our bags and headed up the highway to the hospital. The doctor came in and examined her and confirmed that her water had indeed broken. So they started her on some meds and waited. We waited and the doctors informed us that she could go a couple of weeks without going into labor and things would be fine. So I left the hospital that night as Jeni fell asleep.


Later that evening, Jeni went into full labor...


She called me very early the next morning in tears, scared and begging me to come to the hospital right away. Naturally she was very frightened. She could tell things had changed and it was still very early for our girls. She had made it to 30 week, but that's still very early and they weren't projected to weigh more than 3 pounds...


The doctors came in a few hours later and announced that she would have a c-section as soon as they could get her in. They didn't want to take any chances with waiting. Oh boy...


Well, at 10:49 Olivia Kay was born and at 10:51 Sydney Ann arrived. And the rest, you could say is history...


For the sake of our regular readers, I won't go into detail of the rest of our year because most of it is documented here in earlier posts. However, I thought it would be interesting to post the progression of our girls in the last year...


Enjoy.

Just Born

Sydney

Olivia

3 Days Old

Sydney

Olivia

2 Weeks Old

Sydney

Olivia

One Month Old

Sydney

Olivia

6 Weeks Old

Sydney

Olivia

2 Months Old

Sydney

Olivia

MORE TO COME!

M

Merry Christmas Break....

or Winter Break if you want to be PC!

Sadly, time flies when you are having fun, and my 2 weeks off with the girls over the holidays are slowly drawing to a close. :(

Winter Break started off with a bang, as on Saturday night Matt and I had a date night where we went out to dinner with some friends and to a Christmas concert put on by our friend Bob Becherer and his friend Merry Keller (LOVE the spelling of her name by the way)! It was awesome to have a date night and I of course adored the Christmas music as well!

We had a fabulous First Christmas together as a family, and the girls were as always super cute! Everyone in our family has been super generous with the girls! We received tons of new toys to play with and a lot of clothes. SOme highlights include a super cool afghan in a circus theme that Grandma Pat has been working on FOREVER, complete with circus animals and a clown, muscial frogs, a cool stacking animals toy, a muscial table for when we are bigger, a farm mat, crawling balls, Laugh N Learn Puppies (that we adore, but when they start talking at 3 am they freak Mom out), and a talking story book. Of course there are tons more toys.

We've also had some firsts over the past week....

1). The girls have started Rice Cereal. Olivia does pretty well at it, but Sydney isn't quite sure what to do with it. I think it's stopping them up (as rice cereal has a tendency to do), SOOO tonight I ran to Target to get them some baby oatmeal to try tomorrow.

2). WHile both girls have been babbling for awhile now, Olivia has started screeching and it is HILARIOUS, I swear she does it just to hear the sound of her own voice. I can tell she's going to be a talker, which both Matt and I are, so it's going to be hard to figure out who she takes after with that!

3). Olivia has started rolling over from stomach to back on a pretty regular basis! Sydney will do it with some prompting, but not very frequently.

4). The newest addition to our home is a FABULOUS video camera that we've been using a ton since we received it for Christmas from my Dad and Stepmom...we love it and soon, our blog will be able to feature videos of the girls, which you all will love, I am sure!

5). We've had our assessments by the Missouri First Steps Program, and will be having our family meeting with them On January 6th at 4:15 to discuss their findings. I suspect that they will find (as they have already hinted at), that the girls are doing very well and will not need services. BOO.

6). WE've had a change in bottle schedule and have moved to 4 bottles a day and are pretty regularly sleeping through the night with very little crying (we had a slight digression when Mommy went back to work, so I suspect that next week will be rough). It also appears that we MAY be going through a growth spurt and are starting to eat more.

7). Olivia weighs 10lbs, 10.5 oz and Sydney weighs 10lbs, 9.5 oz! So that is awesome!

8). We've figured out that Sydney is about 3 weeks behind Olivia in development, so we're waiting patiently for her to catch up with her sister!

9). We spend a lot more time playing with the girls...we've busted out one of their extrasaucers, their new farm playmat, and several of their Christmas toys..they love them...its a lot of fun and I Really enjoy our 2 play times a day! :)

As Break draws towards a close, I have started panicing, getting ready for them to go to Georgine's house in a week and a half (our day care lady...2 houses away...who is awesome), I fear that they are going to become hysterical there and freak her out...as they can be very demanding, and I've also started to get the house back in order. I have to find places for all these baby toys, wash all their new clothes, do our laundry, and then of course put away all our fabulous Christmas decorations. NOrmally, I'd wait and do them the second weekend in January, but with the babies, I want to have things done and put away faster than I normally do so that I can spend time with them in the evenings and on the weekends while I am working!

We hope everyone is well...we miss all of our family and friends...as promised, since we've been BIG slackers, here are a TON of fabulous pictures from Christmas Break...so far! :)

Hanging under the Christmas Tree!

Christmas Eve.....

Sydney....

Olivia...

Christmas Morning.....

Olivia...

Sydney....

The cutest picture EVER!!!!!!!!!!!! (I know I've said this before, but seriously it is)...Christmas Day!

Rice Cereal....

Sydney...

Olivia...

Playtime....dress up...our fabulous coats from Aunt Gretchen and Uncle Jason!

Olivia....




Sydney....

Hope all is well and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

Love,

M, J, S, & O! And Cassius and Sugar!

My week as Mr. Mom

So with Jeni going back to work last Thursday, Grandma Pat came and watched the girls for 2 days. Then, starting on Monday, I took a weeks worth of vacation to stay home with my girls.

Several people have asked me if I can handle being at home with the girls by myself... Granted my time with them alone hasn't been longer than a few hours at a time, but seriously, don't I come off as capable?

So Monday was a false start, as we were hit with winter weather. A quick-moving artic blast came through and gave us a nice little coating of freezing rain on everything prompting the local schools to call off classes, which meant Jeni got to stay home another day. No biggie. Seemed like a 3-day weekend for everyone...

Today, however, was the big day alone. I started my day at my usual time around 6:00 and got up and fed Olivia. On the current schedule, Jeni gets up around 5:00, does her motherly duties involving a pump, and then changes and feeds Sydney. Don't ask me why Sydney does everything first (feeds, bath time, etc) its just the schedule that that hospital started so we haven't changed it... Anyway...

So I got up around 6:00 and Jeni had just put Sydney in the swing to get her back to sleep. I warmed Olivia's food and sat down to feed her. Meanwhile, Jeni ran around the house getting everything ready to go to work. Olivia finished her bottle in about 30 minutes, which is a pretty decent pace compared to her usual. So, I was finished with her right about the time Jeni was walking out the door. Unfortunately, she didn't leave quite early enough as the weather was again bad and had provided a nice little dusting of snow everywhere... Just enough to screw up rush hour traffic... ended up taking her over an hour to get to work. Sorry, honey.

So after Jeni left, I got Sydney up and put her back in her swaddle and in her crib. Then did the same for Olivia. This has become their routine. Following their morning bottle, the girls go back to bed for a while. They nap at this time until their next feeding which usually occurs around 5 hours after their first bottle... We've tried doing it a little earlier than 5 hours, but the girls just aren't hungry...

So I set the timer on the microwave so that I wouldn't doze off and neglect my duties... Around 9:15 the timer went off and I got up to make bottles. I made enough bottles to last me through their 6:00pm feeds. The girls are finally up to taking nearly 4 ounces at every feeding. Some get a tiny bit more (their first and last bottles) and some less (their 10am one). Then I had to mix and give Sydney her reflux meds. These are given to the girls via syringes (without the needle) everyday before their 10:00 bottles.

Sydney wasn't too interested in eating, so we simply sat on the couch and watched some TV. Finaly she showed some interest and ended up taking her bottle in under 30 minutes... Fast for her!

Next I gave Olivia her meds and then started her feed. Olivia took her bottle quickly as well and took it all in under 30 minutes with no complaints.

The girls relaxed in their bouncers while I washed bottles. I had bottles from the previous evening to clean as well as breast milk bottles that needed to be washed.

After that it was lunch time for me... and finally some time to relax and do something fun. So, I put in a PS2 football game and continued my season of domination against the computer intelligence... I didn't get through an entire game, though, before it was time to warm Sydney's food for the next feeding.

Again, to my surprise, Sydney took all of her bottle in less than 25 minutes! And, even stranger, Olivia did as well! I'm a rock star!

The girls then went down for a nap in their cribs. I finished my game and Jeni arrived home from work. We conversed and she did more mom-chores while I washed more bottle and made more bottles for the girls for later in the evening and for tomorrow morning.

At around 6:30, the speech therapist from First Steps arrived to do an assessment on the girls' eating habits. This is a service provided since the girls were born so early to make sure they are progressing correctly and on-time. Before the therapist arrive, I was concerned that the girls had eaten so well for me... They have many issues when it comes to eating and I figured with how well they had done for me throughout the day, it was going to be like the situation where you take your car to the mechanic for that weird noise it's making... only it won't make it when the mechanic drives it...

However, lucky us, our girls performed on que and pitched quite a fit when Jeni and I tried to give them their 6:00 bottles. They squirmed, cried, and pretty much did exactly what frustrates us most about their eating. The therapist took lots of notes and made a few recommendations. However, she did commend us that we are doing just about every trick in our power to get the girls to eat...

The rest of the evening was uneventful as we watched 'The Biggest Loser' Finale before bath time and the girls final bottle. Again they reverted back to their difficult-eating-selves for this bottle...

Well, it was a long day, but I never realized how quickly the day goes by at home... 10:00am until 2:30 flew by like the wind... Too bad it never does that at work!

Maybe I'll get some time tomorrow to post some pictures... HA! Who am I kidding... Like I'll have that kind of time...

Anyway, take care, all.

M