Baby Dedication

A few weeks ago we had the privilege of dedicating our precious twins to the Lord. They are truly a gift from God and we give them back to Him and pray that they will grow up to love Him with all of their hearts! We did it on Easter Sunday and my family came to our church to join us in dedicating them--it was a special day! My sister gave them each an adorable little outfit to wear for the special occasion. Here are a couple of pictures from that day. Hadyn looks very uncomfortable in the first picture but Everett is smiling away. Aren't his dimples adorable!!
This picture is during the actual baby dedication. Wow, would you look at that great posture!!:) Apparently Elmer said something funny when this picture was taken.

Tunnel Vision

I've been having to remind myself lately that we are in a tunnel and we will come out of it sooner or later and to just enjoy being in it. Having four kids age four and under presents new challenges every day. Yesterday Gage woke up in the morning and promptly proceeded to vomit and continued to do so throughout the day. Today he was better but still not himself. He kept telling me to put the baby on the floor or in the swing so I could hold him. He was so sad and I felt so bad that I couldn't just sit and hold him the whole day.

I feel like sometimes I read other moms blogs and think they have it all together and their families are perfect and wonderful. Well, just in case you were wondering--WE ARE NOT PERFECT AND I DO NOT HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER!! I love my kids and my husband more than anything else in the world, but there are days when I would kill to have an hour alone with no interruptions. Okay, so to be honest I could handle an entire day alone but an hour sounds a little more attainable. Baby steps. God is trying to teach me things in the midst of all this (you would think He would give me a break during this chaotic part of my life:), such as leaning on Him and especially about not complaining. When I start letting myself complain and whine about things not going the way I want them to or other not-so-fun circumstances (sickness...) that come along, I know it only makes things worse for myself and those around me like my family. So I am trying to be more positive and have a good attitude about everything that comes at me. After all my "job" is to be teaching and training my children to be lovers of God and to do all things without grumblings and complaining. So to all of you out there, I hope you have a complaining-free day and hope that if you ever hear me whining about something you will call me on it. Have a blessed day!!

Birth Story Part 3

So, as I said before we decided to do an emergency c-section. Do you remember that window of pain that I talked about, well I could feel some of the c-section through that window. Not exactly a pleasant experience. My husband was wonderful through it all and sat behind the curtain with me, held my hand and reassured me everything was going to be fine. And at 2:40, only 24 minutes after her brother, baby Hadyn was born! She was perfect, she weighed 5lbs. 15.5oz. and was 19in. long. Below is Daddy with his first little girl. (She's already got him wrapped around her little finger.:)A closer look at her chubby little face.
I was told by my family that she was not impressed by the nursery and she screamed almost the whole time she was in there.
Such a sad little face. This world is cruel when you're used to being snuggled up in a cocoon where nothing can hurt you.
Delivery didn't quite go as I had hoped it would, but all in all it was a good experience and we have two beautiful little miracles! We thank God for them everyday!

Birth Story Part 2

Around 2:30 in the afternoon the doctor came in and checked to see how far I was dilated and by 2:40 baby Everett was born!! I had a mirror to watch and with only 3 pushes he was out. It was amazing!! I pushed a long time with the other boys. He was a beautiful healthy baby boy. He weighed 5lbs. 8oz. and was 19 inches long. I got to see him for about 10 seconds and then they took him and soon gave him to Daddy, while they worked to try to get baby number 2 out. But sadly she wouldn't turn the right way so after ten minutes of the doctor sticking her arm up to her elbow inside of me and pushing around on the outside of my belly with the other hand to no avail, we decided to do an emergency c-section. I was praising the Lord for epidurals by this point! :) I will give more details of that in the next segment. Here is Everett with Aunt Kim and Grandma Slabaugh. Here he is very awake about 15 minutes after birth.
In the nursery after being all cleaned up and under the heat lamps.

I love this adorable picture of his feet.

Birth Story Part 1

The photo story of the twins' birth will come in several different segments. This is part 1: the labor. We arrived at the hospital around 8:15am on Wednesday, March 4th for a scheduled induction. It didn't take long for them to break my water, get me all hooked up and away we went. Okay so it took a little while before the drugs started to do what they were supposed to. It was about noon before I got the epidural because my contractions had to be every other minute before they would give it to me. Something I thought was interesting was that my contractions felt harder than what they were showing up on the monitor and they said that because my uterus was so stretched out with twins that it couldn't contract as far. Anyway, true to me and my body my epidural still had a window of pain in my right side, where I could still feel the contractions. But I was thankful the pain wasn't all over and I wasn't going to feel them coming out.:) So here I am all hooked up and smiling--must have been after the epidural or in between contractions. :)The babies were being monitored too. Everett on the inside and Hadyn on the outside.
Here I am again just waiting for things to get going.
I loved my nurse, I had her with both Reese and Gage too. She was so sweet and fun. In this picture you can kind of see how extremely large I was. Yes, my belly really does stick out that far, it isn't just the blanket.
And here is my wonderful husband just hanging out waiting to get all queasy and pale-faced.:) He almost lost it when they gave me the epidural and had to leave the room. I love him dearly but he can't handle it when I am in pain.

Never Say Never

So our pediatrician told us that strep almost never occurs in infants. Well the nurse called this morning to say that Everett's strep culture came back positive. He is already on amoxicillin for his ear infection so we didn't need to do anything different. I feel so bad for him, he is only five weeks old but I think he feels better and we are all on our way to health again!! Praise the Lord!!

Tonight we were at Karla's house and she helped the boys dye eggs. After Gage was done he came in to the living room to tell me hi and had blue around his mouth. I asked him if he ate the dye and he said, "no, I eat coffee." Apparently anything dark in a mug is coffee to him. :) It was very cute. I hope easter egg dye is non-toxic.

LOOOOOONG WEEK!!!!!

Today was finally a little bit more normal (normal as we can be around here). Here is our last week and a half: Reese had strep, Gage had double ear infection, I have strep, Tim probably has strep but did not want to go to the doctor, and the twins have both been a little stuffy but Everett has been worse and been coughing. We were all at the doctor on Tuesday and Reese and Gage were fine, Hadyn was fine and Everett just had a little sore throat and congestion. They wanted to do a blood test on him just to make sure everything was for sure okay. They had to do it twice because the first reading was not right and they stuck him four times in his tiny little heel and all in the exact same place. He was beside himself and so was Mommy. Anyway, sometime in the middle of the night he started running a fever and they said to call immediately so I called Wednesday morning and they sent me to the hospital to do a chest X-ray and more blood work. By the time I got off the phone with the nurse and called my mother-in-law to see if she could go with me, I was in tears. But God is good and everything went great, my little Everett is so brave and he didn't even cry when they drew his blood from his tiny little arm. We had the best lab technician we could ever have asked for. He made one huge grimace from behind his pacifier when she went in but that was it. He was doing better than Mommy. The chest X-ray came back fine as did all the blood work. When we got to the doctor, he did have an ear infection in the right ear. Just the day before his ear was fine. So the doctor thought the fever was probably due to the ear infection. I am glad we caught before he was in too much pain from it. The problem now is that the antibiotic gives him tummy ache. But I have two healthy babies and I am so thankful for them!! Things can only get better from here is what I keep telling myself.

I promise there will be more pictures soon!! Thank-you to everyone that has been praying for us, we have definitely felt them!! We love you all!!

Oops, I almost forgot the best part! The twins are growing like weeds. Everett is 7lbs 10oz and Hadyn is 8lbs 7 1/2oz!!