Boy oh Boy!

I wanted to post a nice message saying that everyone's much better now, but that's just not in the cards. Last Saturday morning I was feeling really sick so I stayed home while Matt took the boys to his parents. It turns out that I got Bryan's stomach flu - yuk! About three hours later, in walks Matt with the boys. I found out that Jonathan also caught Bryan's flu and was throwing up everywhere and Bryan was now into the second stage of that fun bug - let's just say somewhere between #1 and #2, but much closer to #1. You get the picture? The boys had destroyed the outfits that they were wearing and we didn't have any stored over at their Grandparent's, so Jean was kind enough to give them an early Christmas gift of one of their outfits. Poor Matt had to take care of all three of us until it got to be too much. I took Bryan since he was the lesser of two evils and prayed that he would be patient with me. Luckily he was pretty good and we all survived the night.
Sunday Matt got a break and I took the boys over to Jean and Mark's. Jonathan wasn't quite done spitting up, so he got to open another gift(Could this be the beginning of his manipulation?).
Before all the sickness started on Saturday, I got a few cute pics of the boys. Here's Bryan looking pretty darn cute.
Here's Jonathan right AFTER a great big grin - I hate my camera!
Here's the boys on Sunday. They got to sit on a gift while I got to open all their wonderful presents (Courtesy of our friends the Scheuer's, Bork's and Boyer's). This picture is also an example of their excellent drooling skills, as shown on their U. of K. shirts that they wore in honor of Uncle Tony.
Jonathan and Grandpap were pooped, so they took a nice long nap.

To give you an update now that it's Wednesday, (sorry for the delay in this posting!) the boys are doing great, although Jonathan still likes to spit up. Yes, Matt did catch the bug too. It just wouldn't be fair if he didn't! He had it with a fever all day yesterday and recovered overnight. I just found out that both Jean and A.J. got sick yesterday too. I feel terrible!! Hopefully everyone's done with it now and we can have a healthy holiday season. We're now in the process of decontaminating everything and trying to catch up on all the stuff we wanted to do over the weekend. I'm sure a few family members won't mind if their gifts arrive a few days late, right??? Gee wiz. I'm ready for a vacation!

Can you believe it!? (caution: gross topic)

Can you believe it? Now Bryan is sick! On Wednesday night, Matt had to drive up north for a work presentation and I had both boys by myself. Luckily, they were really cooperative and both in good moods. During their 2am feeding, Bryan didn't eat that much and he was a little fussy, so I let him fall asleep on me. At the 5am feeding, he only ate 1/2 ounce then he threw up what seemed like about 3ozs. Yuk! Not a big deal, I changed him again and got them both bundled up for daycare. We headed downstairs and I had them sitting in their car seats and watching me while I washed the bottles. They were both smiling and cooing then Bryan just started to "toss his cookies". The problem there was that it wasn't your normal run of the mill off-white puke; it was yellow and scared the crap out of me. Of course the pediatrician wasn't open for another half hour, so I cleaned him up, finished the bottles and carted them both off to daycare knowing that I'd have to bring Bryan back home until I got the all clear from the Dr. While we were at Daycare, Bryan puked again - same color. Dude! This is getting old and I'm getting even more worried. We make a quick stop to the grocery store for some Pedialyte, formula, tylenol and immune system booster tabs for me(which are really gross by the way). I finally got a hold of the Dr's office while enroute to home from the store. They offered either a call from the Dr at noon or a visit in a half hour. I hear the confirmation in the back seat that a visit to the Dr is needed asap. Three times in less than a hour - four if you count the formula one. Apparently, this throw up thing is going around and Bryan was lucky enough to catch it. He was puking bile. He was puke free thanks to the Pedialite until about 3:30 yesterday then he was back to square one. Matt took him last night and he was a fussy little guy all night, but finally got to sleep around 3:30am. We took him into Day care today. They are giving him 2oz of formula every hour and he's doing great. The funny thing about it all is that he's been almost all smiles the whole time. I love that little bugger!

Bryan and Jonathan visit Santa!

On Saturday, December 8th, Matt, me, Grandma Jean, and the twins all went to Springhill Mall to visit Santa (affectionately nicknamed "Ho-Ho"). Jean had a spot in line already reserved for us, so we didn't have to wait more than about 10 minutes - thanks Grandma! Below, I'm holding Bryan and Jean's holding Jonathan. They were SO good that whole day! Jonathan loved the santa suit (provided by Jean - she always finds the cutest outfits!) and he sucked on the white fur anytime he got a chance. You'll notice that I've given up on make up. I miss not looking like rudolph laying in the snow. Yuk! After their visit with Santa, we all went shopping. No joke, EVERYONE in the mall either pointed and said "look, twins!" or they came up to us to look at or touch the boys. The most common questions were "Boy and Girl? or two Boys?", "Are they identical?", "How old are they?", and my favorite "How do you do it"?. Then there were the comments and stories about how they know any people with twins and how cute they looked in their outfits. It was a lot of fun, but it was getting annoying after the first 15 or so people. When they came up to talk, they would almost always touch them which would make me cringe inside. How could you know if they were sick or not? Needless to say, they had baths that night! I'm such a germ-phobe. We eventually met up with Sandy Scheuer and we ran into Terry _?___ while on our shopping spree. I think that's Jonathan.
Here's Bryan telling Matt all that he wants for Christmas. We told them that good little boys get everything that they want, so that was a long conversation!
It was a long day and everyone slept great. We can't wait till next year's visit!

Jonathan's progress

Well, after a few days of lounging around the house, Jonathan is much better. He's even all smiles these past few days - which really warm's the worried-mom's heart. I've been playing phone-tag with the Pediatrician on the final results of the blood culture, but all the other results were all clear. So after all of that, he just had a bad cold that led to the fever. Bryan never caught what he had thanks to our constant watch on who has what pacifier and bottle. I have a feeling that we should be that way all the time for now on. We were better at that in the beginning, but we started to slack off. No more of that! Now it's constant washing of the hands (really dry/cracked hands) and baths for them every other night. Thanks for everyone's thoughts and concern.

Poor Kid :(

Jonathan had his first fever on Tuesday night. Matt had him that night and he was particularly fussy, so he handed him over to me and Matt took Bryan (Yes, they're still sleeping with us and yes, we know how dangerous this is). One kiss to the forehead let me know that something wasn't right, so I checked his temp. which was 103.4. Yikes for a new mom, but apparently that's considered mid-grade. After about an hour of soothing "shhh's" and rocking in the glider, I got him to calm down and I took his temp again which was 102. The next morning, I took him to the pediatrician and they suggested that we take additional steps to make sure that the fever isn't a result of something more serious. What was I going to say, NO? He didn't have any ear problems and his nose was relatively clear. So we headed straight to the hospital where he had his hernia surgery just three weeks ago.
His first test was an X-ray to make sure he doesn't have pneumonia. I swear, that device they had him in was pure torture. They kept on telling me that it looks worse than it really is, but Jonathan's tears told me otherwise. Picture a wooden board with a hole cut out for the legs and bum, then two clear plastic tall semi-circles are squeezed on either of his sides with his arms stretched above his head. He is stuck in this thing for about five minutes until they can get two x-rays. I was in too much shock to cry at this point.
We were whisked away to the next test - blood work. It's well known in the medical world (not to me) that baby's veins are very small. There was one nurse to hold him down and one to prick his arm about four times until they finally found a vein that would give them enough blood. There were many comments on how nicely developed his lungs were. Duh! After that, she gave him a heel prick and squeezed blood out for a blood culture. He still has a small bruise on his arm, but I suspect that it will go away in a few days. They gave us a few minutes to calm down, then we were whisked away again to the next test.
The next test was to find out if he has a urine infection. To do this and obtain a sterile sample, they needed to catheterize him - without anesthesia. For this, I cried. They brought us up to the pediatric floor and took Jonathan's vitals. I was given the option to let a student from Elgin Community College or a Dr. from the floor do the procedure. I'm an advocate of having Dr's learn hands-on (how else are they going to learn), but I'm not that trusting with my 3 month old baby. Well, after a minute of arguing between the devil on my left shoulder and the angel on my right shoulder, I decided to go ahead and let the student do it with the stipulation that I could say no at any moment of the procedure. I was most worried about this test because I knew ahead of time how painful that it would be for him. I had a catheter when I was in labor, but I had an epidural for the pain. Armed with the knowledge that he wouldn't remember any of it in the future, I gave him lots of kisses and a great big hug then layed him down. There were three Dr's in training and one teacher. She had a shaky hand for a couple of minutes, but she was super-concentrated on remaining sterile and ultimately did a great job. Jonathan was awesome! He cried for the initial insertion of the tube, but he calmed down after that.
That was the final test and I couldn't wait to get out of there! What a nightmare! All in all, the hospital staff was great and everyone was concerned and helpful, but I wouldn't mind it if I never step foot in there again. Preliminary results show that Jonathan is fighting something (his white blood count is elevated), but we don't know what. The x-ray came back clear and so did the initial results on the urine. I'm waiting to hear back from the Pediatrician for the remaining results tonight. I'm guessing it's just viral. Cross your fingers Bryan doesn't get it!

Karaoke Gone Wrong

If you have a DVR box and you're bored out of your mind, or just in one of those moods, you've probably found the karaoke selections On Demand. I happened to find this one day while on bed rest. There's tons of songs and recently, there are holiday songs. One night Matt and I decided it would be fun to sing some Christmas carols to the boys. Wow! I never knew the words to most of those well-played songs that I grew up listening to. I bet you didn't know that Frosty the Snowman is quite the depressing song once you get past the first verse. Oh...I also found out that I just might have the worst pitch known to mankind. Needless to say, we had a lot of laughs. You should try it some time!

Week of November 25th, 2007

This was a pretty uneventful week, but a very busy weekend. Matt talked me out of buying a Christmas tree, but he didn't talk me out of decorating the house with every last holiday decoration that I could find. Even as I type I remember that I still have holiday plates to unpack and trade-out with our current Fiestaware. Christmas time might be just a month-long event (and we won't be home for Christmas Day), but by-golly, I'm going to decorate the crap out of it!
This weekend was a particularly fussy weekend for the boys. They're slowly getting over their colds - we're in the dry boogey phase. They had quite a bit of gas and we're kicking up a storm, so we pulled out the jumpy-seats that Grandma Bryan bought them. We've found only one place downstairs where we can put one of the seats, which is in the doorway of the bathroom. The picture made it look like the perfect size for them, but you'll see by the picture below that it's not the case. Here's Bryan playing "Peek-a-boo". I think we'll have to wait a little while before we can use these. :) I'm thinking of getting a fluffy blanket to wrap around the rim, but I don't want to suffocate the poor little guys!