Alexs photos

Alright, here are Alex's before and after photos from his helmet! Zoo pictures will be up later today/tomorrow.

12/07

10/08

All about Alex... well almost

So we are still waiting for the official pictures of Alex's head, so Mommy took some of him... they aren't the best of the progress... but you people are so demanding. They do not do him justice!

Also we got to go to St. Agnes today and visit our favorite NICU nurses, Miss Celeste and Miss Kelly. We also got our hair cut afterwards. Nate was awesome and sat perfectly still and watched Dora while the nice lady was cutting his hair... Alex on the other hand wanted nothing to do with it. Oh well... we all survived!

Big weekend coming up and we are kicking it off tomorrow when Grandma and Grandpap come to play with us. YAY!!!! There will be tons of pictures of the zoo posted later next week as well other pictures taken from this weekend... until then.. ENJOY!

Our favorite NICU nurses holding us!


Alex take 1


Alex take 2

Ding Dong the helmets gone!!!!!

YAY!!! Alex got his helmet off today. Pictures will be posted once Mommy gets the emailed from the fabulous ladies at Cranial Technologies!!!

He hasn't realized it's gone yet... tomorrow should be a rude awakening!!!!!

Today's the day!!!!

We are T-7 and 1/2 hours till the helmet is gone for ever!!!! Nate was so excited he woke up at 5am this morning!! We have such a busy day today though. We get to go to play group while Mommy sits has her play group with the adults (she calls it a class.... I bet we have more fun then the adults) then we are driving down to Nana's and Grandad's house and grabbing lunch before Mommy and Alex run out to the helmet place for the last time, then back to N/G till dinner. Alex will post his before and after pictures tomorrow when we get a chance... probably after our visit to the NICU to see our favorite nurses.

BREAKFAST TIME!!!!!!!

YAY!

Alex is T - 2 weeks (and 30 minutes) till his helmet comes off for good... YAY!!!

Nothing new with us, just doing lots of playing. Nate is doing LOTS of walking and we are both enjoying this beauituful weather. Mommy has the windows open and we love hearing the birds.

Alex had a follow up eye appointment yesterday and Dr. W. say his eyes are now "dead on" and she is thrilled with how he is doing. YAY... in two weeks he will be a new man!!!!!

There is talk that we may go to the farm or a park this weekend... we will definitely post pictures.

BIG NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On thursday we went to Alex's helmet appointment and we have some big news to report. On October 8th at 3pm the helmet is coming off for good!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!! Alex will have had it on for about 10 months by the time he gets it off.... that's over half of his life. Needless to say Mommy and Daddy are very excited. Mommy can't wait to cuddle Alex without the helmet whenever she wants to.

Grandma and Great Aunt Helen came to visit us yesterday. They took tons of pictures so once Mommy gets them she will post a couple. We had a lot of fun!

Today we are going to watch the Virginia Tech Hokies play Georgia Tech on TV... GO HOKIES!!!! However we kind of have to root for GTech too because Uncle Stephen is a senior there. But Daddy, Aunt Courtney, Uncle Todd, and most of Mommy's friends went there, so Mommy is an honorary Hokie.. especially since her colleges didn't have football teams.

Hopefully all goes well and we will still have our surgery on Wed. We have a doctors appointment on Tues. so we will keep you updated.

Big Update

So first and foremost. Our highlight this week was going back to the NICU where we spent 4 months hanging out. We visited our favorite nurses, Miss Celeste and Miss Kelly. We got there and neither of our nurses were in the NICU, Miss Kelly was getting lunch and Miss Celeste was helping another baby on a different floor. So we hung out with some of our other favorite nurses and waited. Finally Miss Kelly made it back and we got to climb all over her and play with her badge. We were there for about 40 minutes and no sign of Miss Celeste and we were getting hungry and tired. So we decided to head out and come back another day to visit with Miss Celeste. We were leaving and got to the elevator just as the doors were closing.. so we had to wait for it to come back. We were there a good couple minutes waiting.. but wouldn't you know it... Miss Celeste stepped off the elevator. So back into the NICU we went to spend a few minutes with all the nurses again. We had so much fun and Mommy took a few pictures of us.

Miss Celeste with her hands full


Miss Celeste holding Nate and a very tan Miss Kelly holding Alex



We have been to a bunch of doctors this week. So we will do a brief recap.

Tuesday we went back to High Risk Follow Up at the hospital so they could see how far we have come since our NICU days. We got to play with things while the doctor, her assistant and 3 med students looked on. We got to play with blocks, cups, crayons (Which we immediately tried to eat... and they were immediately taken away). We showed them our awesome crawling skills and found things they were covering with cloth. Nate almost took out a med student. He slipped by the 6 adults in the room and pulled on a cord and a small fan came flying off a shelf and just barely missed a med student. Nate is developing like a normal 12 month old baby... which is what old we should have been if we hadn't decided to arrive early. Alex is a little bit behind.. but no one seems worried... because its normal for twins to develop differently.

Wed. Alex got his 3rd new helmet. We don't know how long he will have to wear it... it looks just like his other 2 helmets.

We just got back from seeing Dr. Voit who is our surgeon. We had surgery in January to repair our hyperspasia and cordees. Alex's cordee is all better but he still has a hole under his man parts and that is apparently where most of his pee-pee comes out from... neat trick... but not good.. and Nate's cordee needs just a little fine tuning to make it straighter. So we both are going back in for surgery on our man parts on Wed. Sept 17. We really have no idea what that means because we weren't really paying attention we were flirting with the Dr's Assistant... she was funny.

We are exhausted.. so its time for our nap. Mommy is taking us on errand runs when we get up and then Grandma and Grandpap are coming in for the weekend. YAY!!!!!!!

Fun Day!

Yesterday was such a fun day. We did our usual morning routine, wake up, eat, play, eat, sleep. We woke up, got baths, and drove down to N/G's house. We always have fun there. Mommy took Alex to his helmet appointment, while N/G watched Nate. Alex got his photos taken for measurements for his new helmet. In case you haven't heard M/D decided to give Alex a 3rd helmet, with no guarentees it will do anything, but they have hopes since an O/T is going to come visit us soon that she will get Alex to eat and he will fatten up.

Later yesterday evening Miss. Maureen came over, she just had her birthday on Monday (Happy Belated Birthday Miss Maureen!) and she played with us, and had dinner with us, and we tried to eat her dessert (brownies and ice cream) but she was too fast for us. Even though we were dead tired we still ran around and played. Then Mommy packed up the car and before she could hit the beltway we were passed out in our car seats.

There is talk of going to the grocery store today with Mommy... which is always fun. We will post pictures of our play date with Miss Maureen when she emails them to our Mommy!

Weekend Update

So we spent the weekend with Daddy while Mommy was in NoVa for Miss Katie's bridal shower. We went for walks, to the grocery store and we played, we also picked G/G up in Baltimore from their cruise.

Miss Cheryl came this morning for P/T. She likes how Alex is doing better on his knees and he is getting the hang of crawling on all fours, but she really want to see him relax his legs and also sit up by himself. So she worked with Alex on a big rubber ball. She also is going to send her friend the O/T out to visit us and help us with our eating, since we have decided to be difficult about it.

Alex is also getting a 3rd helmet, M/D want to give it a go and see if it will improve his head a little bit more.

Nate is getting into trouble as usual.

That's all for now. We are exhausted... time for a nap!

Happy Mother's Day

We know you are all probably like "What?!?!? Mother's Day was last month" We know that, but first thing in the morning it's really fun to confuse Mommy. So we know Mother's Day was last month and we sent Mommy a dozen pink roses (very sweet of us we know!) then yesterday we sent Mommy 2 dozen red roses. We signed our favorite Mommy up for 3 months of roses!! How fabulous are we?? So every second Wed. (May, June and July) Mommy is going to get flowers. She only has one more shipment coming, but the next time... like what happened yesterday. Mommy wont be home to receive the flowers. We were at Nana's and Grandad's all day and didn't get home till almost 10pm, Daddy had brought in the box of flowers (We always go ProFlowers, they are the best) but didn't set them up, so this morning Mommy was no quite awake and Daddy pointed out the box. Mommy was so confused.. she opened them and there was a card that said "Happy Mother's Day".. now she was even more confused. Daddy had to explain she was getting 3 months of roses. We aren't saying what kind of flowers are going to appear next month because Mommy doesn't know.

Alright lets get a real update going. So Alex had his helmet appointment, the technicians really aren't sure that a 3rd helmet will do much, but he has probably only one more adjustment left so on July 9th he should be getting his second helmet off. M/D don't know yet if they will do a 3rd helmet or not.

We didn't sleep yesterday, we usually take a morning nap shortly after waking up, but we knew we were going to N/G's house so we were really excited and didn't take a nap, but Mommy thought it would be ok because we would sleep the hour it takes to get to their house... but we didn't... ok well maybe for about 20-30 minutes, but we usually sleep for 2 hours! Then Alex slept a bit on his way back for his helmet appointment but Nate didn't sleep a wink... even though Grandad was running around with him and trying to waste his energy. Mommy went out with Miss Katie to look at her wedding dress and pick up dinner, and Nana went out to a girls night with some of her friends, so Grandad said he would watch us for a few hours. Since we hadn't napped all day Mommy told Grandad that we would probably pass out and be asleep the whole time... WRONG!!!!! Nate took a brief nap, but Alex didn't sleep at all. When Mommy and Miss Katie got back with dinner they sat in baby jail with us and we attacked them and tried to get their food, we eventually slowed down, and Mommy packed up our things and we headed home, Alex was asleep by the time we dropped Miss Katie off at her house and Nate was asleep by the time we hit the Dulles Toll Road. We woke up only to get a diaper change and a bottle when we got home and we actually slept in this morning. Alex woke up at 6:30 and Nate woke up at 7:30. Mommy is hoping for a day of naps to make up for yesterday... we will see.

Grandma and Grandpap are coming, so we may not sleep again today. They just retired and are going on a cruise. They leave tomorrow so they are stopping here for the day before they head off for 10 days.

Alright... Play time!!!!!

Who turned up the heat?

So we have been cooped up inside for a few days now, no walks, or running errands. We couldn't figure out why, but today we found out. It is hot as heck outside! Mommy had to run to the high school where she coaches guard to pick up some flags for the summer practice, lets just say we were happy about being outside, the car wasn't terrible once the air finally kicked on, but boy was it hot walking to and from the car.

P/T went fine yesterday, Ms Sheryl and Ms Lori came and played with us. We had soooo much fun. We both kept climbing over both of them. However whenever Ms Sheryl comes she always makes us work. Alex did a real crawl for the very first time, he was on his hands and knees and went forward a little bit before reverting back to his combat style crawl. He also stood up on his own for like 5 seconds. Nate is getting better about standing on his own, but only does it once a day for about 10 seconds. However today he tried to stand up by himself, however he was hold a toy in his mouth with both hands so he didn't get the extra support that he needed. Oh well he will figure it out. Ms. Sheryl says that Alex is doing fabulously! He is only slightly behind where he should be developmentally, where as when she first started to visit us Alex was really far behind. Nate is right where he should be, possibly even a little ahead of what an 11 month old is doing. Everyone says he is going to be walking on his own very soon. Maybe by next month when he really should be 12 months.... M/D can't believe we are going to be 15 months on the 4th of July and on August 8th we will have been home a full year. Talk about craziness.

We have a big day planned for tomorrow. Mommy is driving us down to Nana and Grandad's house for the day. Alex has a helmet appointment and is going to get pictures taken of how his head is shaping up. Daddy is going to be there too, which he is never there, but because Alex may get a 3rd helmet they have lots of questions to ask. Nate is going to be running around N/G's house while Alex and M/D are at the helmet doctors place. Then afterwards we are going to hang out with Miss Katie for a little bit. YAY what fun! Oh and looking through Mommy's pictures I found some of a few weeks ago at Great Aunt Helen's and Great Uncle Bill's. And also pictures of us playing in N/G's pool. Enjoy!

Us in the baby pool



Alex splashing


Nate doing what Nate does best.... Eating things


Daddy and Nate in the big pool

Alex

Nate's favorite new face

Us with M/D