The Hazard Chronicles

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.