We are finally starting to fall into a routine again around here which incorporates the feeding and nap times of all our kids. This has been quite an accomplishment. Wendy has been instrumental in this feat and we are sad (and a little scared) that she will be leaving us on Thursday. Jack and Addy are pretty regular eaters now though, and we can actually sort of plan activities around them.

Some of these activities have included walks, window shopping at the mall, going to parks, grocery shopping, and even a zoo day. Rachel is feeling a thousand times better then she was a couple of weeks ago and is pretty much back up on her feet as active as ever.

Evelyn is the best big sister ever. Her new favorite activity is spreading out blankets for the babies. She is meticulous about this and will spend several minutes getting it just right. She will then insist that we put one of the new babies on the blanket and will even help us wrap them up. She is also good at making sure that they are always wearing hats, and she enjoys bouncing them in their bouncers. Sometimes she likes sitting on them too. That's a little scary.

Last night I had some alone time with my three babies while Rachel and Wendy went out for a Girl's Night with Rachel's friend and her mom. It was fun having them all, but sort of hard to give everyone the attention they needed. Rachel and Wendy had fun though, and by the time they got home everyone was finally asleep (including me).

Well, here are some pictures of our week:

Here is our sweet Evelyn. She LOVES to put things on her head. Walking around the house like this, running into things and giggling the whole time, will keep her occupied for quite a while.

Here's a whole bunch of pictures of Adalie.

And here's one of Jackson. We'll make it up to him next week and post more pictures of him.

Evelyn also loves being treated like the babies. In the top picture I have swaddled her in a blanket. She loved this! Also, she really likes curling up in the baby bouncers, even though it looks really uncomfortable.

Well, tomorrow it will be one week since we came home from the hospital. It has been quite the week.

The day we got home, Evelyn decided to come down with a fever of nearly 104 degrees, a runny nose, and a horrible hacking cough. This effectively transformed her into a whining, walking, cesspool of doom for our little twins. The doctor said to "quarantine her away from any contact with the babies." Yeah right. You bring two new little people home to a very curious 19 month old and expect to keep them separated? I spent the better part of my afternoon with Evelyn after locking ourselves in her bedroom. It was very sad. The next day I was able to take our sick little bug to the doctor who found that she has an ear infection and a viral cough. We got medicine for the ears; the cough would go away on its own.

Thankfully, Evelyn is doing much better now and is very cute with the babies. So far she has adapted well to the big sister role, and is getting good at cuddling, playing with, and swaddling the babies. She is also very good at taking dirty diapers to the garbage for us. She has her moments of jealous frustration (mostly while Rachel is feeding the babies), but is mostly good about sharing her time with Jack and Addy. She is even learning their names. This parenting thing is very fun.

As for the babies- well- they are babies. They eat. They sleep. They poop. They cry. That's about it. But they are very cute as they perform these basic functions. Adalie, it turns out, is quite the cuddler, and loves to just sit in your arms and appraise the new world she was born into. Jackson, on the other hand, is very active. He is always moving around and is not afraid to share his opinion. And we both think he is very handsome. It is interesting that when they were at the hospital these traits seem to have been reversed. I guess it goes to show that you shouldn't ascribe characteristics to a person too soon. Who knows, maybe they'll surprise us again as time wears on and they demonstrate their true colors under different circumstances. Actually, I am sure they will. I guess that is part of the fun of watching your kids grow up.

Rachel is also doing well. She is a great mother and is doing a good job of balancing her attention between three needy children. She hasn't been getting much sleep but remains in good spirits and is already looking for fun excursions we could go on outside of the immediate vicinity of our home. Her mom is here still and is also helping out a lot around the house, which is nice because school has suddenly become very busy for me (a large part of this is trying to play catch-up for the time I missed).

So, we have had several requests for pictures, and I realize that most of you guys reading this are just going to scroll down to the photos anyway. I aim to please. Enjoy:

Here are their "going home" outfits.

We didn't quite realize how small they were until we tried to put them in their car seats. Even on the smallest setting the straps were to big. We had to put a good 2 inches of foam under the car seat cover to make them fit.


...And the Hazard parade went marching through the hospital on the way out to the car


When we got home we found that our friends who live upstairs had decorated our porch for us.


We took this picture to compare the length of their forearms. Jackson is a lanky one.


Whoever said that babies like to take baths didn't know Jackson

This was really cute. After falling asleep, their hads just sort of found each other. This is not a posed picture. I get the feeling that this is the beginning of a long friendship.

We think that they look like Veggie-Tales carachters. They are actually about the same size, but Jackson stretches out as far as he can when we wrap him and Addy sort of scrunches into a round little ball and cuddles into the blanket.

It is fun to be a parent. Here we are reading good night stories as a family.

An Early Apology to Eva, Jack and Addy

Something happened yesterday that I thought would not be possible with boy/girl twins...

I was ready to feed our babies and I asked Logan to get Jackson for me. He walked over and got ready to pick up Adalie. I told him it was the other baby, but he was adament that the baby he wanted to pick up was Jackson. We both looked into the crib and talked for about ten minutes and could not decide who was who. I finally talked myself into the idea that Logan was right and the baby was indeed Jackson. Much to both of our surprize we checked the diaper and had quite the shock and embaressment when our 'Jackson' turned out to be a girl!

I know that parents can often confuse themselves and mix up their children's names. I was prepared for that because I knew it would happen (I have already called Adalie Eva a few times). This mix up just comes with being a parent of more than one child. I did not, however, know that I would ever mix up my children while looking them directly in the face and trying to figure out who was who.

Jackson and Adalie look completely different when both of them are awake and their faces are expressive, but when they are asleep looks can be decieving. I didn't realize they looked so alike until this incident. One very easy distinguising mark is that Adalie has an olive skin tone and Jack has very fair skin. This was not helpful for this mix up because both of them have a little bit of jaundice and were about the same shade of yellow.

I will post a side by side sleeping picture as soon and you can see for yourself.

Update

It's been a few days now for us to get used to the idea that we are actually a family of 5, although that number still seems huge to me and I don't think it will fully kick in until after we are home for a while. It has been nice to sort of ease into the super-parent lifestyle with all the help of the fantastic hospital staff. I don't know what we are going to do when we are on our own!

So, here is an update of what has happened:

• Soon after Jackson was delivered, he was brought to the NICU for respiratory problems. There, he was hooked up to all sorts of IVs and monitoring equipment. Luckily, his stay there lasted only about 16 hours and he came back to us the next morning. They told us that all was well.

• Our babies are really little and they look like monkey skeletons- CUTE monkey skeletons.

• Rachel and the babies have finally figured out the breastfeeding thing.

• They have both lost a lot of weight. It is normal for newborns to lose some, but these guys are going overboard. Jackson has lost 9% of his birth weight, and Adalie has lost just over 10%. Adalie is also a little bit jaundiced.

• Both Jackson and Adalie have been getting pretty cold. This is normal for early-term babies because they can't regulate their own body temperature yet. It will be fine in about a week-and-a-half, but for now we keep them triple wrapped with little beanie hats on.

• We were supposed to leave the hospital this morning, but because of these last few things (jaundice, low weight, and temperature regulation) they want to keep the babies here for at least 2 more days. Rachel will be officially discharged from the hospital tomorrow, although we can keep our cozy little room for as long as the babies are here.

Reading back on these updates, it sounds like we have had a sort of negative experience. That is definitely not the case. It has been a wonderful couple of days getting to know these two precious babies. They are in our room during most of the day and is is amazing to just watch them sleep, or eat, and think about how lucky I am to be their father. It is also amazing to watch Rachel care for them and think about how lucky I am to be her husband.

Here are some more pictures:

We got Evelyn a new doll so she could have a new baby too. She has been a great little girl through this whole thing. We really have to thank all of our friends who have been watching her, as well as Wendy (Rachel's Mom) for taking her home for naps and at nights. For the time being she loves the new babies and likes to point out their body parts. I think she'll be a fantastic big sister.

Here's Jackson- We know it is him because of the "B" on his hat. When we get home we might have to use a Sharpie on their foreheads to tell them apart!

Actually, there are enough subtleties that we can see who is who, but we have to really look. We have already mixed them up a few times here in the hospital. Sadly, one such mix-up made Jackson miss his breakfast- not a good thing when you want them to gain weight. In this picture Jackson is on the left and Addie is on the right (with the pointy ear).

Babies!

Ladies and Gentlemen- We are announcing to the world the birth of the two most beautiful twins ever born! Adalie Jane, weighing in at 5 pounds 6 ounces, was born at 9:16 this morning. She put up a good fight and made it very obvious that she would rather stay inside her nice warm cocoon. It took four doctors, all pushing, pulling and grunting, to persuade our 17 ½” little girl out into the world. Jackson Kelly, also weighing 5 pounds 6 ounces, followed close behind without much struggle at all. We figured he missed his sister. Although he was the same weight, he is an inch taller than Adalie.

Rachel is, of course, tired, but she is doing great and loves being a mother of 3. Adalie is also doing wonderful, and is already pooping up a storm. Jackson is doing well too, but not as well as he could. He was breathing really fast and after some tests they took him to NICU for monitoring. They assure us that all is fine and that, at worse, he might have a little infection that antibiotics will solve in a hurry. We aren’t worried at all since Rainbow Babies has the #2 NICU in the country. We do miss holding our little boy though. Hopefully he’ll be back in our arms tomorrow.

Rachel’s mom and the hospital staff have been great and we feel lucky to be in such good hands. Evelyn still doesn’t know what she is in for. We will introduce her to her new siblings tomorrow. Soon after the birth, Channel 3 News called and asked if they could interview Rachel for giving birth around 9:00 on 9-9-09. That was interesting. I guess they posted the clip online somewhere. We’ll let you know where if we find it. We have wonderful friends who have hooked us up with food and babysitting for pretty much as long as we need it. Thank you guys sooo much. We are very blessed to have such great help. Here is a quick photo, and I’m sure we’ll be posting more a little later this week.

This has been a week of preparation. We have been trying to get everything in order so that things can go smoothly from here on out. That means that we cleaned out the house and car real good (because who knows when we'll be able to do that again), we took out and sorted baby clothes, we figured out sleeping arrangements, and we outfitted the car seats. I think we are ready.

So, now that the work is done, we can just play without having anything to worry about. (That last sentence sounded like something my mom would have said). Yesterday we started the fun by going to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History- AKA the Dinosaur Museum. What an awesome place. It is one of the best dino museums I've been to (not that I have been to that many) and includes some cool educational exhibits for inquiring minds. But wait- there's more. It also features a planetarium, where we saw an "intro to astronomy" show, a stuffed animal (as in taxidermy) museum which Evelyn loved, several geological exhibits, a children's discovery center, and a small zoo. We will definately be back.

Rachel's mom got here yesterday afternoon also. She will be staying with us for nearly a month to help out with the new babies. Tomorrow and Tuesday we will do Labor Day stuff with her and see some of the Cleveland attractions. Then Wednesday is the big day.

Just a random note here: I have really liked having a set time and date for these babies. Besides making it much easier to plan school around, I think it has also made it more exciting. The count down makes it feel sort of like Christmas- you know, we can wake up and say "only 4 more days..."

Also, I need to mention Evelyn here. She is my wonderful, cute, amazing little girl. And her life is about to change as much as ours is, but she has no idea that it is coming. For her it's going to be like a lightening strike out of the blue that suddenly she is sharing all of her time, attention, and space with two little intruders. I have no doubt that she will be a great sister, and I'm looking forward to seeing her with the new babies. All we need to do now is convince her that the babies are actually little people, and not "Gogs" (dogs) like everything else that moves.

Here's out cute little girl. She loves putting underwear on her head and then walking around the house giggling. And yes, she is wearing a dress over her clothes. That was her idea too.


Here are some pictures at the museum. It was really nice that there was glass around most of the exhibits because we could just let Evelyn wander without really worrying about her getting into things.

And here are the girls.