At the game…

Originally uploaded by marshalonis_dave

Suzanne and I, along with our friend Beth Anne, took Ben to the Nationals Game on Tuesday night for T-Shirt Tuesday. This wasn’t Ben’s first game. He came with Beth Anne and us to Opening day 2007.

I was a little nervous considering he is pretty quick now and is willing to run away if he sees something he wants to get into. We bought him a ticket to guarantee he didn’t have to sit on our laps the whole time and placed him in between us.

He loved it. He walked around with us and ate french fries. Later in the game him and I went to got ice cream. We left around 9:45PM. He still asks where Teddy is at and also stating that Teddy fell down during the President Race. Hopefully, Ben will be there when Teddy finally wins!!!

Suzanne had a crab cake sandwich and Home Run Ale while I had two hot dogs with Miller Lite. Beth Anne had her usual Fish Tacos and any $10.50 beer she could find… Beth Anne and I used to drink Stella right behind our normal section (222) but that seems to have given us wicked headaches in the past :)

New wagon from mom and dad

Originally uploaded by marshalonis_dave

One thing we have found out is that we need to institute a Box-and-1 concept most nights - Being one parent watches the twins (Zone) and the other parent watching Ben (Man to man). I usually, have the task of taking on Ben. This usually involves making sure Ben doesn’t either kill himself or us. Sometimes I wonder if Ben thinks his name is ‘No.’

Last night Ben wanted to go outside and play with his toys so I brought out a chair and just watched up. It’s amazing to see him pick up something and study it. Then he’ll either play with the toy or put it back down.

Another new routine Ben has getting into is going outside at night and looking at the moon. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been out for the past 4-5 days but we still religiously go out back & out front to look for it. It’s usually at 2:00 am when I’m letting the dog out when the moon is out. It is fun to answer Ben’s questions concerning why the moon sometimes is a circle and then sometimes it only shows half. After explaining why the moon only shows up at night, the moon starts to show up on our way to school in the morning. Sometimes you can’t catch a break….

On another note. We have been eating crock-pot creations. This is great b/c things usually don’t get crazy until all 5 of us are there… They all have been great - in particular a chicken recipe where you an use a fork to cut the chicken.

Ben turned two today! Hard to believe he is such a big boy now. We love you buddy!

Abby and Kate are! It is hard to believe it has already been a month since Abby and Kate joined our family. As you can see from the new pics, they get bigger every day. They are wonderful and happy babies and we feel very blessed to have them in our family!

We just got back from the MD and a weight check for Abby. She is 7 lbs, 13 oz now which means she put on a pound in the last week! I had them put Kate on the scale as well and she is now 8 lbs, 11 oz. So they have both put on 2 pounds in a month which is great growth. They put on more than the average baby but that is to be expected since they were on the small side when they were born so they are now catching up. They eat a ton though so I was not totally surprised to hear how big they are now. The ped also said they are probably in a growth spurt so some of this should level off over the next few weeks. I was glad to hear that because it feels like they eat ALL the time and it would be nice if they could space it out just a bit.

Other than that, things look great! The MD is really impressed with how good Abby looks now. Our next appt with the pulmonologist on Sept 18th and then we should be able to get rid of her monitor entirely!

Abby had her first appointment with the lung specialist on Thurs. They looked at her monitor and the MD said she dosn’t see anything to be concerned about during the last two weeks she was on the monitor! However, she said they usually like to see them stay on the monitor until at least 42 weeks (the girls just passed their original 40 week due date) because technically they can still have breathing issues up through that point due to immaturity. But she said we don’t have to have the monitor on all the time, just mainly when she is sleeping unattended. So at least we can reduce the usage!

Abby is still have some coughing/choking spells when she eats which may just be because she eats too fast or could be another immaturity thing (she had this problem in the hospital too) So we are going to do a swallow study to make sure she isn’t aspirating anything into her lungs. Luckily it is not an invasive test, they just watch her while she eats. If she is having that problem, we will just have to thicken her milk for awhile which is not a huge deal. But we’ll see how that plays out over the next few weeks.

Other than that, both girls are doing great! There are some new pics of everyone on the left side of the page (not sure why they are not showing up on the right at the moment) It’s hard to believe they are almost a month old already!

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Today, Ben’s day care had an open house. Besides two moon bounces there was an opportunity for a horsey ride.

We had the girls’ two week checkup yesterday. Everyone is looking good! Abby is currently 6 pounds even which is the 5th percentile for weight and 19 1/2 inches long (25-50th percentile). Kate is 7 pounds, 2 ounces (25th percentile) and 20 1/4 inches long (50th percentile). While Abby’s weight is still low, the MD is happy that she is growing on a steady basis and said it will probably take her a few months to catch up. The MD also thought her breathing looked much better yesterday and had a “more mature” pattern even since Friday. The pulmonologist appt for Abby is next week and we are hoping they will tell us we can reduce her monitor usage to just at night.

We have some new pics that we will try to post later today!

Abby has been home two days and everything is going very well. We took Abby to her pediatrician for a check-up and had a lot of our previous thougths concerning Abby confirmed. Her doctor, whom many people have recommended to us as a great pediatrician, believes that the cord flow and abdominal growth were definite signs of Abby being more premature that Kate. Another sign she mentioned was her fast shallow breathing. This is a sign that she is still immature in her breathing - she is being lazy. She agrees we should have her on a monitor and to see a pulmonologist in the next couple of weeks. The monitor stores all of her breathing and heart rate vitals and will be downloaded to the pulmonologist to see how she is doing. One thing we heard from friends is that use of caffeine to help stimulate breathing on a preemie - well, the doctor also recommended that Suzanne drink caffeine so that Abby got this!

While we have had Abby on the monitor we have not had any events. We had some false alarms b/c the nurses at the hospital moved her monitor leads. Once we saw this and repositioned them we were getting better data. In the past two overnights we have only had one false alarm each night with last night being while Suzanne was repositioning the little angel.

We have seemed to be able to have both girls on the same feeding schedule. While that gives up more time in between feedings, the feedings are a little more hectic. Luckily, Suzanne’s mother has been with us from the beginning which really helps us out.

That’s it for now…