"How far apart are they?"

"Excuse me?"

"How far apart are your girls? They look pretty close in age."

"Um, they're twins. They are the same age" I replied, puzzled how anyone would think otherwise when looking at two infants.

"Oh. Well that one (pointing at Bri) looks longer in the stroller. I thought she was older and you had this one (pointing at Livvy) soon after having the other one (pointing at Bri)"

Okay, stop right here. My girls look different. I know that. But they don't look that different! They are only 8.5 months old! They aren't walking or running around. One isn't significantly taller or shorter than the other. They weigh within a pound of each other. Why on earth would someone think that they weren't twins?!

Honestly, I knew that this day would come since they are fraternal twins and they do look pretty different. But I was expecting them to make it to at least 3 or 4 years old before I would have to defend their twinhood! They were even dressed the same. I mean come on now people! Seriously! How many moms with same sex daughters of different ages dress them in the exact same outfit? A few do, I'm sure. But I highly doubt it's the majority!

MoM's - have your twins been called out yet as not being twins? Do you have a certain thing that you say when people ask? I mean, I'm used to being asked if they are twins, and I usually have a bit of a script for how I respond to that. But I've got nothing for the opposite question. I guess the technical correct answer to her direct question of "How far apart are they?" would be "One minute". . .is that the response I should use when asked again?

And switching the topic totally to. . .baby monitors! Big change I know. But, ours broke, or is defective, or something. It's an expensive baby monitor too! It's a color video monitor unit complete with sound, as well as a separate portable sound only unit.

We have a 1 1/2 story home, and our bedroom is upstairs while the nursery is downstairs. We wanted to make sure we could have our eyes and ears on the girls in the nursery from our bedroom upstairs. So we got the super expenisve baby monitor. The problem? The sound. The picture is great. We can flip it on and off by pushing one button, and can see a real time picture (usually of Livvy) sleeping (or thrashing) in her crib. Ahhh. But the sound is awful! Full of interference. Like to the point that you can't turn it up because there is no possible way you'd be able to sleep through the crazy increases in static. Then about a month ago, the hand unit died. It just quit picking up any sound at all after we charged it. Weird.

So we contacted the company (Summer Infant) last week and they are having us send it in, and they will send us out a replacement. BUT, it takes 7-10 business days to get it back. So, we have an easy week and a half to two weeks with no baby monitor. That's not okay. So, we were looking to see if there was a relatively inexpensive monitor unit that we could buy that would be good for the two weeks until we get our rockstar unit back. Any suggestions? For the time being we are going to pick up the cheapest one they have at Target and give it a whirl. Hopefully it doesn't suck! Which one do you guys use? Do you love it? Hate it?

Okay, that's all for now! Happy Monday!

Megan

Our first ER visit. . .

Yup, you heard right! Last Wednesday, at the ripe old age of 8 months, we had the joy of experiencing our first visit to the Children's Hospital emergency room. What would cause such an endevour you may ask? What a great question!

All was well during the day. We got up as usual, ate as usual, went to the zoo with our triplet friends, ate again, and mommy and daddy were just getting ready to go to our weekly ballroom dancing lesson when Bri threw up. She only threw up once, and it was a lot, but she was still in a great mood. . .bouncing up and down. . .chanting Da-da, and smiling. Aunt Denise was to watch the girls while we were dancing and she came over and was still totally fine with watching the girls even though Brianna had just thrown up. She still seemed to be her normal self. And babies can randomly throw up for no reason, right?

Sure.

Once.

We didn't even get out of the driveway and Aunt Denise called us. Bri had thrown up again, and it was more than she had thrown up the first time, and now she just didn't look good.

We turned off the car and went back inside.

Bri looked pathetic. White as a ghost. And just lying there. In between throwing up anyway, which ended up happening about every 2 minutes. After about 10 minutes Brianna just slumped over and quit really responding to me. She couldn't hold up her head, and would only open her eyes in response to painful stimuli. I was scared.

I called my mom. She didn't know what to do.
What?! My MOM didn't know what to do?!
Nope, she had never had babies sick like that SO young. She told us to call the nurses line for our pediatrician's office. Already did that. Waiting for a call back.

We had the doctor from across the street come over and take a peek at Bri. He has a little one too and understood how stressed we were at this point. Her vitals were okay, but he was concerned about how lethargic she was. He suggested that we take her in to the ER be checked out.

Okay, we can do that. But guess what??? Now Olivia is throwing up too! We have TWO puking infants sitting on the living room floor. We are using anything we can find to catch it and/or sop it up (gross I know - be glad you didn't have to be there!) we went through at least 10 blankets and a roll of paper towels. Wow.

So we decide we should go in, and sooner rather than later. We hop in the car and hightail it to Childrens ER. They got us in within 5 minutes of being there. Awesome. They did all the vitals and stats and everything seemed okay - no fevers, no diarrhea, nothing to indicate an illness other than the near constant vomiting. UGH. The nurse kept a close eye on Bri who was cuddled into my chest. She didn't like how lethargic and non-responsive she was being. I didn't either. But I was SO glad we were in an ER where they could actually watch them and monitor them.

We were moved to an actual exam room and I immediately claimed the rocker in the corner and just sat and rocked Bri. There's something innate that makes me think that rocking will make things better. I just sat there and rocked and stared at her. I was so scared. She still wasn't responding to me unless I grabbed her or pinched her. Liv was on the other side of the room, still puking. Sigh. What is wrong with my babies I thought? What did I do?! Did they get into something? How could I have prevented this?

The doctor came in and talked to us. They decided to do some blood work on Bri. It came back okay, but they wanted to give them fluids while we were still there. Okay. Fine by me.

They came in a little later and gave the girls some Zofran. It was dissolvable, but Bri immediately threw hers back up. Poor peanut! We continued to rock, and Bri continued to lay slumped into my chest.

Then about 20 minutes later, out of nowhere, Bri opened her eyes and sat straight up. I thought maybe she was going to throw up again. But then she started babbling. That soon turned into "talking" to her sister. Then she started smiling. The nurses came back in and did an oral pedialyte fluid challenge with the girls. They had to be able to keep down the pedialyte for 30 minutes before they would allow us to leave. By this time the girls are lying on the hospital bed, 10:30 at night (2.5 hours PAST bedtime), talking and playing, having a grand old time. WHAT THE HECK?! It was as though nothing had ever happened. 3 hours of feeling awful,and scaring mommy to death, and the girls were 100% back to normal.

The ER doc came back in and talked to us. They were glad we brought them in and reassured us that that was the right thing to do. They are still very little and can dehydrate very quickly. She thought this throwing up episode was 1 of two things - either 1) a virus, in which case we should expect diarrhea and a fever at some point, or 2) something in the food I gave them. They had had each of the foods I had given them that day at least 4 times, so I had no explaination to what could have caused it if it was the food. I remembered that it was a new 4 pack of Yobaby blueberry yogurt though, so we suspect that it was the culprit. It probably was left out too long during stocking or something. As you can imagine, I promptly tossed the rest of it when I got home!

I am happy to report that we are healthy and back to normal, and have been now for several days. No one else ever got sick, so we are pretty darn sure it was the food. Our friend Jeff came over and professionally cleaned our carpets on Thursday afternoon - talk about a Godsend! Our livingroom floor smelled like souring blueberry yogurt - ICK!

Why do our kids scare us so?! Seriously! I am hoping for a much less eventful Wednesday tomorrow. Have you guys had your first ER trip already with your kiddos? Were you as scared as I was? Geez!

And I realize I am a touch behind in my blogging, and I have a couple of other things to blog about, but I wanted to post this so it was out there, even though I didn't have a chance to attach any pictures to it at this point. Hope you all are well!

Megan

Our first family reunion! and other musings. . .

You notice my exclamation point? Well, that's how we greeted everyone when we walked in the door to the girls first family reunion on Sunday (Si's side). . .except it was "WWWWAAAAAHHHHHH"!!! From Olivia, directed towards her great grandpa. The whole room stopped what they were doing to see what was going on. Great first impression! We were super cute though, so luckily few people cared=)

The girls are into the "stranger danger" stage now and are afraid of new people. I took them to the mall a couple of weeks ago in just the stroller, not the car seats attached into the stroller (facing me), and they SCREAMED bloody murder when we walked into our first store, Victoria's Secret. They cried for 20 minutes. I just kept shopping, thinking that maybe they would stop... eventually. Yeah, I was that mom. And yeah, it was not fun.

Speaking of that mall experience. . .the girls and I go shopping every Wednesday with Miss Sheila and baby Adam. If we can't use our current stroller, we are going to have to find something new. We are thinking about this one. (Non tech savvy people, click on the word "one" and it will link you to the stroller I am talking about)

It's got some super cool features, most notably that the seats can be changed to face whichever direction we want that day. Both girls can face me, both girls can face out, the girls can face each other, or the girls can face away from each other. How cool is that?! We don't really have any desire to buy another new stroller, but we are thinking that we want to try and save the Graco that matches the car seats so we can sell the whole thing as a set when we are done with them, and the pink safari jogging stroller we have (that I love) is great. . .but it doesn't fit through standard doorways! That obviously can't be our primary stroller then can it? I need to be able to go to the mall and fit between the clothes in the isles as well as down the isles at the supermarket without blocking other peoples carts! So, we are looking at this one. There is a different brand spanking new stroller that is purple that I LOVE, but I can't justify the $650 price tag. SO, this is what I can get. I really think we are going to like the versatility with this stroller. I know a lot of twin moms are big on the side by side strollers, but you know what? At this point I'm a tandem girl, all the way. It may be heavier and longer, but it better accomadates my needs at this point =).

In other news, Olivia had these two little bumps on the inside of her gums and she had a scratch on her ear that we were thinking needed to be looked at by the pediatrician, so we made an appointment to go in today. Sure enough, Livvy has a little skin infection by her ear. Antibiotic ointment 3 x a day and we will be good to go. As for the little bumps, they are mucus seals (like a pimple kind of on the inside of your mouth). They should go away on their own. Gross, but glad it's an easy fix!
While we were there we weighed the girls and we just keep getting bigger!
Miss Olivia - Baby A - 19lbs 15 oz
Miss Brianna - Baby B - 21 lbs 2 oz (holy buckets Batman!)

Also, news in the tooth department. Bri has gotten her second tooth, also on the bottom. For those of you keeping track, that's Brianna - 2, Olivia - 0.
Olivia is obviously just way too busy rolling all over the place to grow teeth! You put her down and she rolls one way, then turns around and rolls the other. Except in her crib. In her crib she rolls onto her tummy, then screams bloody murder until someone comes to save her! Bri can roll as well, but chooses not to at this point. Instead she would rather lay on her back and grab her toes. Crazy how different two babies can be!

One thing they can both do equally as well however, say Da-Da! Si is so proud. Olivia can say ma-ma, but has only said it a couple of times. It's a work in progress. Every time I say Ma-Ma to the girls they laugh at me. Not the response I was expecting!

That's all for now! Have a great rest of your week!!

Megan