a Mother's Day poem

I was showered with love and wonderful homemade cards for Mother's Day, a few have requested I post the poem my husband wrote, so I felt this was the best place to do it.  His words were and will continue to be such a blessing to me; hopefully they give you a glimpse into our world from his point of view.

From the time you were young you heeded the call,
"Come follow me and give me your all."
Obediently you came ready to Go,
Excited to be spent, ready to grow.

India on your mind you studied and read
Mild confusion when you heard, "Stay" instead
Just as before you were obedient to His voice
Submission to your Father your only choice.

Then came your first and second eclipsed by the Army
Your husband came back wounded, whom you loved abundantly.
The twins what a roller coaster, them you almost lost
you were ready to give them to Him, no matter what the cost.

And then your girl who has been a blessing
He knew what to give you even if you weren't asking
And now I salute you and praise the Almighty
For heeding the call to be a missionary to your family.

Sunday best

It's hard to believe these guys are 16 months old.  Here they are looking absolutely handsome.

 Eli has discovered accessories; belts, scarves, sunglasses, you name it, he is excited to wear it.

 Evan is our climber!  He is capable but cautious, here he is preparing for his career as a performing cowboy.

 Eli

 Evan

These days Eli jabbers away with nonsense words, but will talk to you for ten minutes or more, Evan is working towards real words like ball, Papa, eye, bye, and a couple others (Eli on the left, Evan on the right).

the big ONE (12 months)

Reflecting on the past year has been so overwhelming, I haven't been able to put words to it until now.  Evan and Eli are constant visual reminders of God's grace and miraculous power.  They endured so much before even entering the world, and then fought their way right out of the NICU into our home at the end of last October. Just as much as the little guys (and the older ones too) are reminders of God's grace and power, they are reminders to me of how much I need His grace and power.

The comments I receive from people are generally the same, "You've got your hands full!" "Double trouble, huh?", "Are they twins?", "All boys?", and the all-inclusive, "Wow."  Because the comments are usually the same, so are my responses, "They are wonderful!", "It's great!", "I wouldn't trade 'em for anything.", and some others.   People often look at me and they feel overwhelmed.

 However, there are some extra-ordinary comments.  The best of the year came from a little girl when we were at the park; she saw the twins, and asked, "Woh...are they connected?"  And another from an older lady at a grocery store (when I was there with all four boys), as we approached her, "What a gorgeous family! Really!"

 But, there's also the worst, which I didn't hear until just a week ago when I was telling a lady I had twin, one-year-old, boys, she said, "What a nightmare!"  In case you were wondering, you should never say this out loud, even if you are thinking it.  For us, it is quite the opposite: it is extremely entertaining, and sometimes just like a dream.

For all of you who have been on this journey with us, thank you for your consistent prayers for each person in our family, we have all been in need of His faithful grace, and we have no doubt the prayers of the saints on our behalf have been a means of keeping us sane and even joyful. 

11 months

 Here is Eli.  These days he smiles and laughs all the time.  His new favorite thing to do is raise both hands in the air and wait for you to say, "Yay!!"  He occasionally fights with Evan if there's a really cool toy involved.  He is completely mobile, even shuffling along the couch sometimes.

 These pictures were taken on OU's first game day of the season.  Kevin wouldn't have them dressed any other way to start off the season.

 Here is Evan.  See that spot just to the right of his mouth that looks dirty, it's a bruise.  These are the days of scrapes, bumps, and bruises.  Seems one of them gets hurt at least once a day.  Thankfully, I have two other boys that prepared me well for this stage, so I can say "uh-oh" instead of crying every time they get hurt!

If you are contemplating what to get your little one for Christmas, forget all the high-tech toys and get a box of tupperware.  All of our kids have seriously enjoyed playing with the tupperware cabinet, and it keeps them out of all the other ones.

This post is a little late, which means in just a couple weeks I'll be posting about their birthday!  

10 months

It is hard to believe that a just over a year ago, I was in Houston for fetal intervention surgery. Today, our little guys are ten months old, and healthy as can be. They are reminders of God's grace and miraculous power everyday.

Ronin put the cowboy hat on Eli, but Eli managed to give us his best John Wayne face all on his own. Eli is still "low crawling," but is pulling up when he feels like it. He prefers to use his brute strength to get places, he is determined to power through anything to get where he wants to go, even if it's your leg. He's got heart, and doesn't give up!
Evan is completely mobile now, he crawls, pulls up on anything with ease, and his favorite thing to do lately is pull everything out of this coffee table and climb inside. He is our little explorer, he ventures into the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom (if he can get there while it's open), and any place he sets his mind to.
They are moving through baby food pretty quickly and seem interested in solids; we finally had to buy a second booster seat because they sit with us at meal-time occasionally.
They are incredibly smart and are already completing alphabet puzzles! Well, tasting alphabet puzzles is more like it. They love playing with the big boys on the floor!
A couple days ago, Evan was pulling up on everything in the living room and Davis said to me, "Mom, I can't believe how fast they are growing up! It won't be long and they'll be walking."

9 months

Here are the beautiful boys at nine months, pictured above is Evan, who started scooting just a couple days ago! Evan is our cuddler, he loves to snuggle with his family. Davis loves holding this guy (and sometimes carrying him around the house). His new found scooting ability has brought him a lot of happiness. As they continue to grow, it appears they will also be looking just like their Dad!
Evan on the left, Eli on the right, they are all smiles! These days they almost always need something in their hands to be chewing on; though they don't have any teeth yet, they do enjoy eating! They love each other. Both manage to get around the living room floor pretty well by rolling and turning, it's pretty funny to watch them maneuver over and around each other.
Pictured above is Eli, and if you can't tell, he really enjoys food; he thinks puffs are the stuff! He has been sitting up on his own for a couple weeks now and thinks this independence thing is pretty awesome.

We had the opportunity to tell their story recently to some new friends, and found ourselves in awe again of our great God who is still in the business of miracles!

8 months

Because I know you are all concerned with how big they are getting. Here they are at eight months old (Evan on the left, Eli on the right). Also, their shirts say "smiley" and "happy" which aptly describes them these days.

7 months

This was taken on May 2, the day we got home from our Colorado trip, and also when the babies turned seven months old. The big boys sincerely love the little ones. In fact, I'm telling them constantly they can't be so close to their faces. This is a pretty typical scene at our house, hope you can feel the love.

first plane ride

We have some dear friends in Colorado, and because of Kevin's deployments to Iraq, they are like family to us. Since I've been pregnant, had surgery, and delivered twins, there has not been a lot of time to make a trip out to see them. Until recently. One of our friends got married and gave us the perfect reason to make the trip.

Here I am in the middle of Denver International Airport. We arrived a little too early (for our return flight), so I spent a significant amount of time strolling the concourses with the babies in hopes they would fall asleep. To no avail, but I think we saw every person in the airport, or a more accurate statement might be: every person in the airport saw us.
Evan did incredibly well, we were so blessed to have a row to ourselves (otherwise we would have had to sit on opposite aisles).
I love this stroller, it was easy to break down for the security checkpoints, a must when each adult is holding a baby. Evan is on the left and Eli is on the right. When we arrived to the OKC airport, Kevin had a startling discovery: Everyone is going to stare. By now, I am pretty accustomed to the staring and comments by strangers, but he was not. And he was right, everyone did stare, and it probably would have been worse if we had all four boys with us.
During baby-trade-offs we thought it would be fun to put one baby in the empty middle seat, they thought it was pretty fun too. All in all, it was a great trip. Eli did just as well as Evan, and considering the entire trip was quite a bit of traveling (whether by plane or car), they were super!

too quiet

Kevin was gone for work, so my wonderful mother-in-law took our older boys for a few days to help out. The first hour was so nice, so quiet, but then this morning I started feeling the need to scat around the house; bee-bopping around just so there was some noise.

Eli and Evan are now sleeping like big boys in their cribs and are no longer swaddled at night or for naps. This has been quite an adjustment, one that Kevin should be grateful he did not have to endure.
However, it means I get to capture little moments like these. Eli's little bare-feet, his face in his hands, and his new favorite way to sleep: on his tummy.

After they eat at eleven o'clock, they are usually bombarded by Ronin. He is in their face, talking, laughing, giving them toys.
Not this time; it was quiet, Evan went right back to sleep. He threw his hands up once at the sound of the shutter on the camera, but turned his head and kept on with his after-nap snooze. Evan's hair is growing much faster than Eli's for some reason, and I just love it.
It is nice to have some lazy time with the babies, but I think I am ready to have our big boys back in the house making a ruckus.

cutest kids ever

So, I know I'm biased, but goodness, look at them in their five-month-wonderful-ness. I cannot believe it has been five months since this crazy journey began. I have to take deep breaths to contain the intense gratitude I feel nearly every time I look at them.

Evan is on the left, and Eli is on right

cowboys and cannibals

What do cowboys and cannibals have to do with each other you ask? Nothing really, except it seems that's what my boys are. I've included a picture where Eli is not trying to eat Evan's head, just so you know they do actually love each other.

Here they are, loving each other. Eli is showing off his chubbiness, and Evan his almost steady contentedness.
And then, my cowboys. I have full-length pictures of both of them, boots, buckles, and all, but I couldn't resist posting this one with Ronin's face and Davis's smile.
Gotta love the giant pacifier and Eli eating his brother's head.

yes, they're identical

These days, if the boys make it out of their room, they can share the bouncer seat because they are still so small. We made our first trip to the doctor and Eli (right) weighs 5lbs, and Evan (left) is 4lbs.7oz. (about the same as his discharge weight). The hospital sent us home with monitors for the boys; so their heart rate and respirations are constantly at our attention in the form of blinking green lights. If their heart rate goes above 220 or below 80, it will alarm to notify us. It seems each day the monitor goes off less and less and this is more and more of an encouragement to us.
I spend a lot of time in this chair, they eat every three hours, so imagine the normal routine you do for a newborn, only right when I lay the first one down, I turn around and do the whole routine again, then go to sleep for hopefully two hours and wake up to do it again. It has not been as stressful as I anticipated and I am very thankful. We continue to be in awe of the miracles God has performed in the lives of these babies!

two weeks old

Yesterday our little ones turned two weeks old. They are still growing, but still have some progress to make. Any baby in the NICU has to consistently do three things before they can leave:

1. Maintain healthy breathing

2. Maintain their own body temperature

3. Feed from a bottle at each feeding without tubing any of the milk (right now, both our boys take bottles, they just don't have enough energy to finish the feeding and so the remainder of the bottle is put in a syringe and pumped through a feeding tube)

Evan now weighs 4lbs.2oz. (which is only one ounce more than his birthweight, but he lost quite a bit in his travels from Children's and back), he is off oxygen, he is now in a crib instead of the incubator, and he is now showing significant signs of interest in feeding and takes almost half of his bottles.

Eli now weighs 4lbs.11oz., he came off his oxygen but they have put him back on because he's had some sleep apnea, he is also now in a crib, and he is taking some bottles. On Tuesday the nurse told me he contracted an infection, MRSA, there's no way of telling how he got it or who he got it from, but now anyone who enters his room must "gown and glove." It also means the boys are in separate rooms. This is a common infection in the NICU, so much so that every baby is checked for it weekly.

Please continue to pray, we have seen and felt the coverage of prayer from across the globe and cannot begin to express how grateful we are.

firsts...

Eli took a bottle for the first time and burped.

I got to hold Evan for the first time (10.9.10)

Eli was awake and responsive to touch for Davis (and all of us).

Daddy got to hold Eli (pictured here) and Evan for the first time. (10.9.10)

Today was the first time for both the boys to be in clothes...they look super cute!

together...

Both the boys have a little bit of jaundice, that's why the pictures look blue, these were taken today after Evan and Eli were together again. This is Eli (with my hand on him):

This is Evan (with Davis's hand on him):

Some people have asked if they are identical, yes they are.

10.2.10 (part 2)

The perfect way to end the day would have been right then, at 5:15 a.m. We had no idea what was in store for the rest of the day.

By 8:30, Kevin's parents had made it back in town and to the hospital to see our precious boys, by 9, my dad was there too. By 2:30, we had the OU/TX game on, Kevin had taken a nap, and I was recovering in my room, while the twins were in the NICU.

Kevin brought our older boys up to the hospital so they could see their new brothers. My mom prepared them for some disappointment by telling them they wouldn't be able to hold the babies. Davis was sad, but he asked, "Mommy gets to hold them though, right?" My mom answered his question by telling him that even I couldn't hold the babies yet. He was really surprised, but felt better that he wasn't the only one.

Both Davis and Ronin laid with me in my bed for a few minutes, and checked out everything that was in my room while Kevin went back to look at the babies with his parents. The phone to the hospital room rang, it was the pediatrician, and he told me he was coming to my room to talk to me. I asked my mom to take the boys out, and tell Kevin to come in.

The doctor turned the volume on the TV completely off. Kevin and I both sat and stared at him, waiting for what had to be serious news.

Dr. Verma explained to us that Evan was experiencing pulmonary hypertension and he anticipated that our little baby would likely need to be placed on an ECMO machine. The only hospital that has one is Children's. He had already called for the helicopter to take Evan there. At the end of the conversation Kevin asked what the survivability rate was, and he said it was 50/50.

The news was incredibly sobering. Kevin had to leave immediately with the doctor and nurse to sign consent forms, so I was alone for what felt like forever. My mom walked in the room, with no words of her own, but held me as we wept together. She sat by my side and told me it would be okay.

"But okay could mean losing him," I said, "I feel like this entire journey with the twins has been about seeing the goodness of God and how powerful He is, what if He wants to use this to show people that we believe He is good and powerful and gracious even if He takes Evan away?"

We all felt the same: God is good and loving even if He takes our son, but we will cry out to Him for His healing power. And we did; we called, texted, and asked the Facebook world to cry out with us, on our behalf, and for our son.

Evan arrived at Children's hospital, and within an hour he was stable; the doctor there questioned the records from Mercy, but we all knew that there was only One Person who had done anything to stabilize our boy. Saturday night and part of Sunday Evan still seemed to be in a dangerous place, he was stable but not showing signs that he was "out of the woods" as Kevin would say.

On Monday night, my mom and I wheeled down to the NICU to see Eli (Kevin had spent most of his time at Children's with Evan) and I asked the nurse when I would finally be able to hold him. After looking at his charts, she said there was no reason I couldn't hold him now.

I cried. I had only put my hand through a hole in his incubator to touch him, and I was only able to do that late Sunday.

I waited while she got him ready, and once she handed him to me it was as if tears were not even possible because of the joy in my heart. My mom and I headed back to my room after twenty minutes and I had missed four calls from Kevin, I called him back and the doctor had said Evan officially made a turn for recovery, and it seemed almost in spite of the things they had done, and thought by the end of the week he should be able to go back to Mercy.

Evan continues to get better and better, and so does Eli. Today (Oct. 7, 2010), they are together again. The doctors say we probably have two to three weeks before they will be able to come home. Our older boys love their little brothers, today they sang to them and talked to them and put their hands on them.

I'm still waiting to hold Evan.

10.2.10 (part 1)

Apparently, October 2 was the perfect day to have twins.

We had scheduled the c-section for October 22, but God seems to be in the business of changing our plans quite frequently.

At 2:20 am on Saturday morning I woke up (like I always do when I have to roll over) and felt the urge to go the bathroom, I stood up and started the four steps it takes to get there and was already wet before I reached the toilet. Strange that all of the sudden I had no control over my bladder is what I was thinking. I went and laid back down, but this same thing happened again, and this time I knew something wasn't right.

I walked slowly into the living room to get to the computer, and Kevin was laying on the couch wide awake because he hadn't been able to sleep. I looked at him and asked what he was doing, he looked at me and asked the same question. I said, "Umm...I think maybe my water broke, or I'm leaking a lot of fluid."

"We need to go to hospital."

"Well, let me just call the hospital, maybe my water didn't break."

"Okay, go ahead and call."

I looked up the number, called the hospital, and after a short conversation with them I said, "They said I just need to come in." My husband is so patient with my stubbornness.

I called my mom to come be with the boys, and we arrived at the hospital by 3:45. The nurses took me to a room, put heart monitors on the babies, one for contractions, and checked my cervix. They assured me my water did break, and I was dilated to a one. They left to call my doctor; I called my mom to give her an update, and the nurse came back into room and said, "We're going to section you in thirty minutes, your doctor said 15, but I told him we don't even have an IV in yet."

Kevin began the first round of text messages and phone calls to let people know what was happening, while my mom tried to find someone else to come be with the boys so she could quickly come to the hospital.

It's amazing what a nursing staff can do in thirty minutes, because by 4:30 I was on the operating table being swabbed with iodine on my back and belly. Once I laid down the famous blue curtain was drawn up. On my right side about eight nurses stood ready to receive the boys, on the left were four more nurses for the surgery, behind me was my amazing anesthesiologist, holding my hand right beside me was Kevin on my side of the curtain, next to him, my doctor.

Dr. Mirabile told me I would feel tugging, pulling, and jumping. Jumping? Yes, jumping. And I did. Amidst everything I was feeling, I was waiting to hear something. I stared into the blue curtain, and scanned Kevin's eyes as he watched intently what was going on on the other side of the curtain. Finally, I heard it.

A baby's cry.

It was Eli. At 5:05 am, the doctor pulled him out to be a part of this world and just a minute later Evan was letting us know he was there too. For months now, Eli has been called "the little one," no longer, he weighed 4lbs.4oz. and was 17 inches long and Evan was 4lbs.2oz. 16 1/2 inches long. In a few moments they were bundled in blankets and nestled together in an incubator and wheeled out from the OR to the NICU.

Meanwhile, my mom had her own adventure in getting to the hospital. Kevin's parents were out of town, my dad was out of town, my brother's phone was dead, and eventually it was one of my best friends who came to relieve my mom so she could rush to the hospital. She made it to the fifth floor and was looking around at the exact moment the twins were being rolled down the hall to the NICU. We couldn't have planned it better.

shower the people you love

A couple weeks ago, I was showered with love by many friends and some family. We walked away with so many matching outfits and several things we really needed, like lots and lots of diapers.

my friend Jenny, who came all the way from Tulsa!

friends Courtni and Cynda since Kindergarden who made the whole thing happen

diaper cakes made by one of my "second moms," Janie

Thank you to all who made it, I really appreciate all of you!

@ 30 weeks

30 weeks seems like a milestone to me, and I guess it is because now I get to see the doctor twice a week instead of just once until the babies come.

They are weighing in at 3lbs.4oz. (Evan/Recipient baby) and 2lbs.12oz. (Eli/Donor baby). The main thing we're watching now is their hearts. The walls of Evan's heart are still thick and the blood flow in Eli's heart still needs improvement. The recovery that they have made so far is amazing! I have seen so many ultrasounds now even I can see a difference when I see their little hearts beat.