Friday Phone Dump

Marc showing off his climbing abilities.

This book is pretty hilarious.  While it was meant for adults only, we have read it to Emmery multiple times.  She now reads it on her own.  Well, not "reads" it, but acts like she's reading it.  Basically she just repeats, "go the F--- to sleep" as she flips through the pages.  Pretty comical.  

She really loves using her headphones and listening to her music.  Something she definitely gets from daddy.

I know this isn't the best picture but I'm glad I was able to get it.  He is a climber, like Em, but he takes risks.  Doesn't really care about falling.  And when he does fall, he rarely cries.  That's the laminator on the table.

We went to a nearby lake for a walk.  Sadly, with the drought, all the water areas were pretty much dried up.  This little lilly pond was pretty though.

One of our "activities" this week.  I haven't pushed the whole school thing because she's had a bit of a negative response to it.  So I just offer certain things and if she's interested we'll do them, if not, we don't.  She enjoyed this though.  She had to categorize whether it was an apple or a leaf.  Easy, but she loves to use the glue stick.

Marc was dying for a chance to check out the headphones.  I think Emmery was sleeping so he finally got his hands on them.

We went to a play date at my friend Kerry's house.  She has two kids, her son Conor is Em's age and her son Carson is 6 months.  That's Carson next to Marc!!!!!

Marc loves his birthday gift from Gramma and Papa!  John Francis!

Of course the moment Emmery sees him she wants to change his diaper....

Okay so... we all know that I don't/can't cook.  I found a slow-cooker recipe for chicken chili and I tried it on Thursday.  The kids LOVED it.  The picture above is PROOF and the picture below is PROOF!!!  But I have to say that it was very bland and just okay.  When Mikey got home he doctored it up (for us adults) and it was much better.  But seriously, Emmery was drinking it out of her bowl.  I got skilz. 

We went to the playground today and met up with some friends.  Marc is the oldest baby in this picture.  I swear.

Emmery decided it was time for a nap.

Today I walked out of my bedroom to find this.  I guess they have already discovered the thrill of wrestling each other.  I believe Marc's got her pinned.  I have a feeling this is going to be a more common picture....

He's ONE!

Well next Saturday is October 1st, and that means that our baby boy will turn one.  It has been such a busy year!  We have really enjoyed being parents of two.  Of course it's not the easiest job in the world, but I think Mikey would agree with me that it is definitely the most rewarding.  Seeing our two children interact with each other and with us is pretty much as good as it gets.
Marc had a rough start, once we got him home he was a typical newborn.  He was up at night a lot.  We didn't know if he was gassy or hungry, colicky?  And actually he's still not a great sleeper.  Now, at a year, he is up at least once a night.  I think we got pretty spoiled with Emmery, and most babies have trouble sleeping in the first year or so.  As much as it sucks getting up in the middle of the night, I do my best to remind myself that it won't always be this way, and I'll be wishing for just ONE more middle-of-the-night cuddle with my baby.  
I remember in the hospital, Mikey was holding him on his chest, and all the sudden Marc just lifts his head up like he'd been doing it for months.  Mikey's eyes popped open and he goes, "is that normal?"  I was like no.  Once he was home he was holding his head up pretty often, before he was even one month old I believe.

At six months, Marc was rolling over, sitting up on his own, he had two bottom teeth, and he was constantly smiling and laughing.

What he wasn't doing.......eating solids.

We started trying cereal at 6 months or so, and he was NOT having it!  He always got this same look on his face and would spit it right back out.  We continued to offer and he continued to hate it for what seemed like forever.  Now he's eating anything and everything, including any teeny tiny scrap of whatever he can find on the floor.  I don't think I have ever known the inside of a mouth like I know Marc's.  I have to dig around in there at least 3 times a day.  I have found pieces of plastic, crumbs, hair balls (gag), bugs (double-gag!) and many many unknown objects.  Every day I wonder to myself, "how much longer is this phase going to last??"  And on any given day you can hear me say, "what the #%* is in your mouth child?!"

By 8 months he was crawling and pulling up, and he said his first word, "uh-oh."  It's so funny because this was Emmery's first word too.  We have a book that is called "What Does Baby Say?"  and one of the pages says... "What does the busy baby say.... uh-oh!"  It's so fitting that both of our kids' first word was uh-oh.  We have some BUSY children.

So lately he has really started to communicate with us, which is so nice because it really does make things easier.  Just recently I'll ask him where Emmery is, or where Daddy is, and he'll point to them.  And he does the "more" sign in sign language.  When he's finished eating he'll put both hands out like, "all done!" since I don't know the sign for that I made it up.
He's so close to walking.  But he really has no desire to do so.  He'll stand, and then take like 3 or 4 steps towards me, and then fall into my arms.  He thinks it's hilarious.
So we're not having a party for his first birthday.  I'm thinking I'll make some cute little monkey cupcakes and let him (okay Emmery) blow out a candle and call it a day.

Phone Dump

Each week I'm going to try to do a "phone dump."  Basically download all the pictures and videos off of my phone.  I'm hoping it will kinda just give a good snapshot of our week.  We'll see how consistent I am with this one :-)

And some cute videos...

Marc

I noticed that one of my earlier blog posts tells the story of Emmery's birth.  With the craziness of two moves while being pregnant and having Marc, I never found time to write anything down.  That sucks because I wish I had better details of Marc coming into this world.  Those few days are now a blur to me, but I still want to get down as much as I can remember.
My pregnancy with Marc was the polar opposite of my pregnancy with Em.  The morning sickness was worse, I was SUPER uncomfortable starting at about 20 weeks, pretty much all the time.

Only 3 months pregnant here. And HUGE!

I don't know if it was because I was chasing a toddler around, or the way I was carrying him, or because he was a boy (probably not that last one :-) or just that we were so busy with the move and lots of changes in our lives.  But also my blood sugars were much higher from the beginning.  My doctor in Houston finally put me on insulin shots.
So we had an appointment on Thursday, September 30.  Seemed like a normal appointment, by now we were having ultrasounds every week and everything was going fine.  During the ultrasound my doctor says, "well, your amniotic fluid is low.  We're gonna have this baby today."  I'm like, "uh... what?  I'm not due until the 10th."  (I think we had set a date for a c-section on October 5th). And she went on to explain that the baby needed to be out now because my amniotic fluid was dangerously low.  Mikey and I were both in shock I think.  This was a regular appointment and I expected to go back to school and finish my day.  But you know, things just don't go the way you always expect them to.
Mikey and I started to discuss who would take care of Emmery. We didn't know anyone here in Houston!  Marc and Kathy were flying in that night, so we told the doctor and she decided to wait until the next day to deliver the baby.
So the next morning we headed to the hospital to greet our new bundle of joy.  We had decided not to know the sex of this baby, so there was still some excitement in the air, even though both of us were nervous because of the rushed nature of the whole situation.

Everything was so calm, getting ready for surgery, asking all the questions and getting all our insurance information.  Then the nurse informed me that "protocol" for GD babies was that they would be transported to the NICU for a minimum of 4 hours.  I had no idea about this, and I was up...set.  Little did I know it would be a lot longer than that before I saw my baby boy.  Or held him.
They wheeled me into the OR and got me all ready, then brought Mikey in.  The surgery didn't take long, and I remember that there was tremendous pressure, pushing, and pulling.  I was squeezing the nurse's hand so hard I really thought I broke some fingers.  Finally the baby was out and Mikey announced "it's a boy!"  Tears immediately filled my eyes, I really thought it was a boy but to hear those words was just magical.

They wrapped him up and brought him to me, I kissed his little face, got a quick picture of the three of us, and then they whisked him away.  I think Mikey went with him, I don't remember much until recovery.

So this is the hard part to write.  Partly because I don't remember the details, and partly because it was a scary time for us.  Having a baby in the NICU was never anything I would have expected, although I guess no one really does.
After delivery Marc wasn't getting enough oxygen so they finally did an x-ray.  He had a collapsed lung.  At the time he was just in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) but they moved him to NICU Level III, which is as bad as it gets.  To fix the collapsed lung, they had to insert a needle into his chest, which would allow the air that was trapped between his lung and chest wall to escape.  Once that happened, the lung would fill back naturally and the problem solved.  But this didn't mean he was out of the woods yet.  He still needed to get his breathing under control.  He was receiving oxygen from a machine for now, and they said it would be a few days before he would breathe on his own.
I think Mikey was able to take me up to the regular NICU to see him, before they did the procedure.  And then late that evening we got to go up again, this time to Level III.  When we saw him that night he had so many tubes and wires all over the place.  It was a pretty scary and overwhelming sight.  They explained what each one was for, and once you are more familiar with what is what it's a little less intimidating.

So he had two tubes going into his mouth.  One was delivering oxygen and one was cleaning out all the phlegm and stuff that was in his lungs.  There were different sensors attached to his belly, and he also had a feeding tube in his umbilical artery.  They said this was the best way to get him the nutrients he needed.

This is basically the setup that each baby had in the nursery.  At the top are the things that were going into his feeding tube, meds, food, etc.  The bigger screen on the right shows his vitals.  The little green screen was where they programmed in how much of each thing was given to him.  The stuff all the way at the bottom is more medicine I think.  See how there are tubes coming out the top of each box?  That's a lot of stuff to keep track of for one little baby!  It was pretty amazing to watch the nurses, they definitely knew what they were doing.

Every day the on-call doctor would meet with us and explain what the next step was.  These doctors were great, they really knew how to talk to the parents and keep them calm.  I think it was day 2, the doctor basically said that Marc was going to be absolutely fine, he will have no long-term effects from any of this and will be totally healthy.  But it just takes time to heal.  She told us it takes most babies about two weeks before they are ready to go home.  Two weeks sounded like forever, but at least there was an end in sight!  We went up to visit him a couple of times on Day 2.  I think I slept a lot, and when I wasn't sleeping I was pumping.  They stored the milk for us in the NICU, so Mikey would run it up there for me and check in on Marc.  Mikey was so awesome through the whole ordeal.  He took such great care of me, I think he slept less than I did!

The next step in Marc's recovery was to take out the breathing tube.  This would hopefully make him a little more comfortable.  Mikey and I went up to visit him that morning.  Here he is before extubation.  Doesn't that just look so uncomfortable?

And after!

They still kept the other tube in there.  Every once in a while they had to clear out his lungs, and if they took it out they would just have to put it back in for that.  They wanted to make sure his lungs were nice and clear before they removed it.  

I think the doctor cleared me to go home that day.  What an awful feeling to leave that hospital without him.  I still remember driving away and just looking up at that building, feeling like I was leaving half of my heart behind.

I will say the one good thing about coming home without Marc was that I was able to recover quick.  I still woke up twice throughout the night to pump, but that's a whole lot easier than taking care of a newborn.  It was also great to have Marc and Kathy there.  They took care of everything for us, the cooking, the cleaning.  They kept Emmery entertained so that I could nap or just relax.

On day 5, we went back to the hospital to see Marc, and this was the BIG day we got to hold him!!!  They wanted to wait until they took out the tube in his belly.  

Such an amazing moment!

Of course Mommy gets to hold him first!  I didn't want to give him up!  But Daddy got his chance too...

My handsome boys!

On Day 6, we were able to begin feeding him bottles.  This took a while, I'm sure the last thing he wanted was something else stuck in his mouth.  One of the bigger obstacles for NICU babies is to get them to eat, either from the bottle or breast.  He'd been getting his nutrients from a tube in his belly, so that initial reflex to suck isn't as strong as it was at birth.  

It was a little frustrating because he would just push the nipple out of his mouth, or fall asleep.  The nurses were very helpful though, always giving us tips.

Much easier to sleep without all those tubes!

The next few days we just had to wait for him to take the bottle well, and then they said I could eventually try nursing him.  I was really worried that he wouldn't take to nursing since it had been so long.  The first few times we tried in the hospital it didn't go great, but he figured it out pretty quickly and has nursed like a pro!  Still does :-)

On day 8, I got a voicemail on my cell phone.  It was Dr. Savrick saying that Marc was ready to come home!!  I just smiled as tears poured down my face.  I'm pretty sure Kathy knew the moment she looked at me.  Mikey was at work so I called him and told him to call my phone and listen to the voicemail. 

So October 9th, one day before his due date, we brought our baby boy home.

I was so excited to put some clothes on him!  The onesie says Handsome Like Daddy.

NICU babies must be escorted out in the bassinet and with a nurse.   

She had to watch us strap him into his carseat too.  No pressure Mikey!

And finally home, nice and comfy, asleep in his "crib."  

He slept in the pack-n-play in our room since he didn't have his own room yet.  We were still in an apartment, and didn't move into our house until December.