We’re alive!

It’s been a rough week, but we’re hanging in there…

Miraculously, Linus never got sick! Thank goodness. I don’t think I could have handled another ER visit, and another set of breathing treatments. Ugh.

I took Oliver and Miles to the pediatrician for a follow up, and Oliver is doing much better, but Miles is still wheezing. Poor peanut. At least they’re in good moods.

Mardi Gras is next week! Hooray! So exciting. Tonight I’m going to my first parade of the year, after the boys go to bed. It’s an all-women’s parade called Muses. It’s really fun. And my friend Alicia, the quad mom, rides in it, so hopefully I’ll get lots of goodies. Woo!

Saturday, I’m going to take the boys to their first parade. That will be fun. Must decorate the choo choo wagon, I think. And figure out what they’re going to wear. V important, that.

Well, THAT was fun.

Another day, another trip to the ER with Miles. Fun times. Let me just say that he’s fine and home and sleeping now. 🙂

This morning, he woke up sounding wheezy, but acting very normal. No fever, was playful, just like always. So I brought him (and of course Linus and Oliver) to daycare. At around noon, daycare called and said he was wheezing badly, hadn’t eaten all day, and couldn’t nap. It’s very unlike Miles not to eat, so I immediately called the ped for an appointment and headed to pick Miles up.

Went home, and gave him a breathing treatment. He seemed to perk up after that and ate a bit, even though he was still wheezy. We headed to the ped, and he was very cranky in the car – he just couldn’t fall asleep. After looking at him for a bit, his doctor told me to bring him to the ER. She said his chest felt very tight, and he was pulling a lot when trying to breathe.

So over to the ER we headed, and thank goodness, we were seen immediately by the triage nurse. Within a few minutes, we had a bed in the ER (the same one as the last time we were there, as it happens). George arrived, and Miles was given another breathing treatment by the super-awesome hospital nebulizer (only took about 5 minutes vs 20 minutes at home) and as before, perked up a lot. He got a shot and some prednisone and a chest x-ray, and as is usual in the ER, we waited around a lot. Miles was able to nap on the bed for most of the time.

Finally, we found out he does not have RSV or the flu or pneumonia. Probably just a virus that caused his lungs to get really tight. Reactive Airway Disease, I think they called it. And we were discharged with some prescriptions. Yay for trying to get home from the hospital during Mardi Gras time. Ugh. As much as I love Mardi Gras, it’s a royal pain in the rear to try to get around the city on parade nights. But we made it, and I was able to get to Target to get his prescriptions filled.

And I have to say I am eternally grateful to George’s parents for picking up Oliver and Linus from daycare and bringing them to their house for the weekend. Man, this having one baby thing is EASY! Heh. Now let’s all just cross our fingers that Linus and Oliver don’t get whatever Miles had.

Eeeep!

I’ve been feverishly refreshing my Google Reader for the last few days for this…looky!

My friend Amy, a very talented photographer, took some pictures of the boys and Emily on Sunday in the French Quarter. Aside from an Oliver-related mishap in the beginning, the shoot was really fun and I thought went really well. Amy is awesome! Yay Amy! I love them so far! Ack!

Last weekend

I know, I’m behind on posting. Sorry. Sue me. I have just been so worn out lately due to lack of sleep. Anyhoo. Fun weekend. Emily and Jenny flew in, so I took the boys to the airport to pick them up, and then we went to Baton Rouge.

Man, Emily is soooo cute. She is something else! She talks-talks-talks-talks, but only about 1 in 10 “words” is actually, you know, a real word. So cute.

Saturday night, Mom had family over. Lots of family. Which means lots of people to hand a baby off to. Woo!

Sunday, we had pictures taken of the boys in the French Quarter. I can’t wait to get them back! Emily was in some of them. They’re going to be so cute! Ack!

Now, instead of words, I will post some pictures…

And finally, a video of Linus demonstrating his “barfing fake-out”. I am so proud. 😀

Happy 14 Months!

My sweet boys were 14 months old yesterday! Monthly pictures are getting harder and harder, though. My friend Teresa came over last night to help out with the boys since George had to work late, and she and I managed to get a cute picture of them.

14 months old!

My sweet boys! They’re doing so much now.

Linus:
– is sooooo close to walking. I keep saying that. Sigh.
– had an ear infection this month in spite of his tubes. Sigh again.
– is being somewhat unusually clingy to me. I don’t really mind.

Oliver:
– loves to say “Uh-oh!” which is painfully cute, and while I shouldn’t encourage him dropping things and saying “uh-oh!” it’s just too cute. So I do. I encourage it.
– also loves to say “cat”. Sometimes to the cat, sometimes not. But I’m pretty sure he knows that what a cat is.
– is a picky eater. my most picky. seems to be getting better, though.
– seems to be terrified of unfamiliar men right now. both Kristina’s husband and my uncle made him scream, just by being near him. It really was hilarious (and nothing personal, Mike and Uncle Bob!)

Miles:
– eats anything and everything
– cracks himself up when he makes silly sounds with his tongue
– loves his toothbrush! (okay, tonight was the first time we tried it, and he loved it. that’s why it’s in the picture.)
– loves to splash in the bathtub (ditto to above comment.)
– v close to walking. i’m sure of it.

They’re all:
– “talking” on the phone (or the rattle, or the car, or whatever is handy) which just kills me. So cute.
– dancing
– getting into little spats, mostly over toys. oh joy!
– making each other laugh. makes up for the fights.
– wearing size 4 diapers, size 5 at night
– rolling balls and throwing them

This is such a fun time. I’m really loving it. And I know people say I shouldn’t wish for this, I can’t wait for them to start walking. I’m ready. Anytime now, boys! 🙂

And now for some outtakes from the photo shoots (yes, we had to try twice yesterday to get these pictures.)

It was just so hard to get this month’s picture. Some outtakes…hee hee!

From this morning’s attempt…
Linus and Oliver flanking a hissy-fit-throwing Oliver. He’s soooo dramatic!

Linus is camera-obsessed.

Then we tried it with me holding the boys. That didn’t quite work either. 🙂




Okay, I’ll stop now. 🙂

Zoo!

Yesterday, my friend Erin and I took the boys to the zoo to meet Ren and her daughter Alison and some friends who were in town for a wedding. It was lotsa fun!

Our friends brought the boys some Red Sox caps. They were so cute. Linus kept his on all day, Oliver took his off after a little while, and I think Miles may be a Yankees fan, because this picture was taken in the split second he actually left it on:

We walked around, Oliver proclaimed everything to be a “cat”, and then we found out that our friends the quads were also at the zoo. So we stopped at a little play area, and waited for them to catch up with us. Took some pictures there…

Miles was SO giddy to be on this toy.

They tried to climb the slide, but just ended up frustrated…

The quads arrived! There were little girls in pink EVERYWHERE. Seriously, it was like that scene from the Matrix when there were all those Agent Smiths. Or something like that. And less evil. You know.

Linus flirted with one of the quads…

…and she flirted right back…

Then we lined the wagons up for one big picture…

The boys have been doing SO MUCH lately. It’s so fun. Oliver’s saying “cat”, mostly to the cat, but at the zoo, to everything. (Did you know that an anteater is a cat? So is a monkey. And a zebra. And a bird. And a giraffe.) He was so excited to see the ducks and was quacking away at them. The weather was kind of yucky at the end, but it was fine. Those zoo passes are the best things ever!

A call for help

One of the great things about being a mom of multiples is the communities you become a part of with other moms in similar situations. In one of these communities I belong to, there is a mom of sweet twin girls, just five months old, that we’ve all gotten to know. These beautiful little girls, Sydney and Carynne, have sadly been diagnosed with a disease for which there is no cure, Werdnig-Hoffman disease. Sadly, these sweet babies have the most severe form of it.

So we have started a collection for this family, so that Mom can spend more time with her girls, for the all-too-brief time they have left. Medical bills will be high, and we want to help with that too. So please make a donation if you can. If all of my readers donated just $1, it would be a huge help. I know times are tough for us, but nothing is tougher than what this family is going through.

If you can’t do it today, I have a link on the right side of the blog that you can use as well.

Monday

Original subject line, yes? Thank you.

I think today they are going to narrow down the number of babies in the contest to 400. Yeah, I’m going to be asking you to vote for Oliver for a lonnnng time.  I looked at the rules today and man, they really drag this thing out. But that’s fine. This week it’ll be 400 babies, next week 300, then 200, then 100, then 50, then 25, then oh man it’s never going to end, but eventually (I think in two months) you’ll be voting between two babies. Oliver and Millie. Hee! Won’t this make a great story at their wedding?

Kristina and Mike are in town right now. We’ve spent basically the entire weekend eating. I do mean that literally. They flew in Saturday night, and we went to Port of Call for burgers and baked potatoes. Sunday morning was breakfast at Brennan’s. And then last night, we had dinner at a place called Luke. They’re flying back this afternoon, but not before I meet them for lunch at Acme Oyster House.

Tomorrow, I shall eat salads all day long. For real.

On another topic, isn’t it neat that in the six months that I’ve had this blog on wordpress, I’ve gotten over 100,000 hits? I think I might be as big as Google. Just saying.

The boys are enjoying their new playroom. It’s the most awesome playroom ever, just in case you were wondering.

Admittedly, this corner is the only one that looks this fancy. I have a lot of stuff to get rid of before I can make the rest of the room this fun. Thanks to Lisa for helping me put up the magnetic board, and thanks to Grandee for giving the boys those neato bookcases for Christmas.

And from a week ago, my favorite picture from our trip to the zoo. We were trying to get all five of the babies who went (four year old Alison also went, but she was too cool to be in this picture.)

I just love the crawling legs in the bottom right corner of the picture. That would be Chloe and Miles, trying to run away together. And see Oliver and Millie conspiring together on the left? Hmmm…

ARGHHH!!!

Okay, SOMEONE or SOMETHING was conspiring against me to get to work this morning. GRRR!

First, while dropping the boys off at daycare, their teacher tells me that the traffic going across the river (where my office is) is horrible, backed up many many miles. So I decide to take the ferry across instead.

The road leading to the ferry is closed. Every time I try to turn onto it, I’m met with a large “ROAD CLOSED” sign. Grrr. Finally, I get in line for the ferry, pay my dollar, and ride across the river.

Then, I drive through a gajillion traffic lights to get to work. I swear, they time the lights so that you go through one, and the next one, a block away, immediately turns red.

I get to my office building. The entrance to the garage, where I park, is closed. WTF? Grrrr. I park in the side lot. Where I’m not supposed to park. Whatever. I go to the side of the building, swipe my card, and the door remains locked. ARGH! So I have to go around the building to get in.

Okay, fine. While typing it out, it doesn’t seem as irritating as it was in reality. It was very irritating, I promise.

ETA: One more annoying thing happened since I typed this post. My mom called, questioning some charges that showed up on her debit card. They were undoubtedly charges made by me, but what the hell? I didn’t steal my mom’s debit card! Turns out our bank is stupid and linked my new debit card to her account. ARGH WHY ARE PEOPLE SO STUPID???

Today had better end up better than this. I have a meeting at 1 at the Marriott for a work thing. And then tonight is my triplet mom’s group get together with wine and snacks. I do not want to miss wine and snaaaaacks!!!

First haircut!

So my mom and Larry and I took the boys for their first haircut this weekend. It’s debatable whether they actually really really needed it, but their hair was getting scraggly, so why not? The boys, surprisingly, didn’t cry or anything. We took them to a children’s salon in Baton Rouge and so Oliver got to sit in a fire truck, and Linus and Miles sat in Lightning McQueen. The buttons on the steering wheels combined with tvs at every station meant they were transfixed and barely noticed they were getting a haircut. Whew!

And so now for some befores and afters…

Oliver before:

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Oliver after:
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Miles before:

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Miles after:
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Linus before:
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Linus after:
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I know, not a dramatic difference, but it’s definitely neater. Thank goodness they don’t look like big boys just yet. Still babyish.

 

Weekend plans

TGI-friggin-F! It’s been a sort of rough week. Mostly the last few days. Tuesday was great, I had dinner with Alicia and Stephanie, you know my quad and triplet mom friends. It was so fun, and they were so sweet to treat me for their birthday. Now I absolutely mustn’t forget theirs. I’m so terrible with birthdays, I even got a birthday calendar that hangs in my bathroom so I have to look at it every day. I think that this will help me. And it probably would, if I actually wrote anyone’s birthdays on it. I’m too paranoid to. I think I’m going to write it on the wrong day, and it’s such a pretty calendar that I don’t want to mess it up with scratch-outs or white out.

But by golly, I will write theirs on it. One’s in August, and one’s in October. I can remember the day of the month because it’s close to mine.

Anyway, then Oliver woke up with a fever yesterday, so I brought him to work with me. He napped for a while and I was able to be somewhat productive. His fever was gone today, so all three went to daycare. I got a call on my lunchbreak that their legs seemed swollen. How strange, so I went to check them out. They weren’t swollen, but they were cranky as all heck, so I ran to my house to get some Motrin. I think they’re getting their molars. Or that’s my theory. If they’re not, then I might run away when they do get them.

Tomorrow we’re going to Baton Rouge for their first haircut! Should be exciting. Or hellish. One of the two. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures. And then they’re going to spend the night with their Granny and Grandpa while George and I get some much needed sleep and some work done on the playroom. My cousin Lisa is coming over on Sunday to help with that project.

It had better be warmer on Monday (it was 33 degrees this morning. In Louisiana, that may as well be -50.) because daycare is closed and I don’t want to be cooped up in the house all day. Hopefully we’ll be able to think of something fun to do.

And then next weekend, Kristina and Mike are coming for a visit. Hooray!

Here’s a few cute pictures from the other day of the boys wearing the sweaters that my friend Laurie gave them. Aw!