Airplane Nursery

Nursery Planning is so much fun!

The inspiration/theme came from a toy I bought for Noah a couple of weeks ago.  It’s a toy airplane.

Some the theme is going to be airplanes.

The colors are going to be red, blues, mainly navy, and whites. Maybe this bedding... but thinking I will piece some things together with PBK Harper navy sheets.

I just love the air plane mobiles!

 

The room we are making the nursery is on the small size. We live in a 4 bedroom house but the 4^th bedroom is downstairs. We want to all be all the same floor. This room was used as our office. About a month ago we moved the office in to the 4^th bedroom “guestroom,” this works out pretty well because that room was easily big enough to be both.

The new nursery still has a closet full on bins with random stuff in that we need to clear out and organize. We started to do this and now the room is full of clutter.

The main problem with this room is it is on the small side, but it is our only choice. So that plan is to clear out everything this coming weekend, steam clean the carpet, and start furniture planning.  I took all the measurements of the room when I first found out I was pregnant and knew if it was twins again that room who be challenging. I can’t remember exactly but I think the room is a 10X11 and the lay out of the window that comes off the wall with a marble edge and the opening of the entry door, and closet door really cut down on available space.

I took a few interior design classes in college and they were a real life safer when picking out furniture and the room layout of P an N’s nursery.

P and N’s cribs were purchased based on their size alone. My crib purchase will be based on size only again this time. P and N’s cribs are on the small size of a regular size crib. If I have found a smaller crib it’s only by an inch or two. So to get some perspective we are going to pull P and N’s cribs in the room and see what room we have left. I would ideally like two regular cribs, a double dresser similar to the other in P and N’s room that can be used as a changing table as well, and some type of book shelving.   

I think we are going to have to go with mini cribs. Just so that space is more functional.

I am eager to get in there and plan! 

MFM appointment

I have not been so great about blogging about this pregnancy. I am trying to get better about this! It seems like the whole thing is going by so fast!

Last Wednesday was my first appointment with the MFM doctor.  I was really nervous about this first appointment because it is always way more in depth than a regular OB appointment. I was also nervous because this was the first appointment where they would look for signs of TTTS.

Well everything panned out normal with the appointment. They are measuring exactly the same and are weighting in at 5 ounces each.  They are boys.

My cervix is doing great measuring over 4 cm? (can’t remember what the appropriate units for this measurement is right now).  I will be visiting the MFM every 2 weeks to check the twins’ growth and my cervical length.

The only troublesome information I found out was my placenta is on the front wall. Since I had a c-section with P and N this is not such a great thing. Chances are the placenta can be on the scar and the placenta can start to attach outside of the uterus… like to the bladder and other organs. If this happens during the c-section it will not detach, causing blood lost, and an emergency Hysterectomy. Okay so that really freaks me out so let’s hope this doesn't happen.

Other than that the appointment was great. 

5 on Friday

Linking up with 5 on Friday for the first time! I wanted to many times and just never have.

1. BOYS. BOYS.BOYS! This has been constantly on mind! Names, clothing, nursery. Really the Nursery. AHHH so exciting.

2. Moving. We are thinking about moving. Like sooner than later. Like for real thinking about moving. Like we met with a loaner office fell in love with a house type of talking about moving. The whole idea has me in a whirl wind and I don’t know if I can take one more major life change at the moment. If it doesn’t work out then it wasn’t meant to me. The full wrap around porch is to die for. I could grow old on that porch.

3.  Walking. Noah is finally back to walking! Even though he still drops down to crawling, he is doing much more walking then a week ago. I have a trick I pulled… and well it worked to motivate him. Everyone I have told what I did said I was mean. So I won’t talk about it here.

4. Preschool. Presley wants to be the teacher’s pet.  This is so funny to me and my husband said… “well we know she didn’t get that from me!” Yes Presley got that from her mama. When I was younger ... preschool to 5th grade I was always the teacher’s pet, then I grew out of it. Anyways the teacher said P is glued to her leg and always wants to be with her.

5. Christmas outfits. I picked out and ordered Presley’s dress and  am currently looking for the perfect bow. I’m in the process of piecing together Noah’s outfit. I know exactly what I want him to wear… it is a vision in my head. So I have to get the pieces from several different places! They are going to be so cute together. I can’t wait for pictures…and hope they actually cooperate this time!

The Gender

Have you ever look back on an event or time period of your life… and realized if your life was a movie that that past event would be a huge foreshadowing of what your life will one day be?

(I have had this happened to me several times.)

 If you could go back in time you would tell yourself to pay attention at that moment, because this is going to be important in your life one day!

I was only 12 or 13 years old at the time. But I have thought about this family and have talked about them many times since my short summer encounters with them.

The summer I turned 13, my mom’s friend from college had just moved back to Virginia from South Carolina. She was in between jobs. She worked as a nanny for a family. This family had 4 children. Two sets of twins. The first set was a set of boy/girl twins. The second set was a set of boy twins. I was always amazed by this.

We would often meet my mom’s friend at the park and play with the twins. The play time at the park only furthered my amazement. This family was once a guest on a talk show that was doing an episode on families with multiple multiplies (it was a little less common then). This also added to my amazement.

While I only had a few encounters with them over that one summer my mom’s friend was their nanny, I have thought about and talked about them many times over the years.

In my first couple years of teaching, before getting married, before having kids, during the multiple birth chapter in my child development class I always talked about this family.

I never thought I would one day be this family.

When I found out I was pregnant with the first set I thought of this family. When I found out the first set was a boy and a girl I thought about this family. When I thought about getting pregnant again and the possibly of having twins again I thought about this family. When thinking about getting pregnant, I thought because of the amazement I had for this family that I would have twins again and they would be boys.

Yesterday when I would out the gender of my second of twins was two boys, I immediately thought of this family.

I was amazed by this family for years.

And now here I am and it’s about to be MY family.

Amazed.

Ultrasound pictures from yesterday below!

MFM

Tomorrow is my first ultrasound and appointment with the MFM doctor. I am getting really nervous. I remember this from beginning pregnant last time.  The day before/night before I would start to get really nervous about going to the appointment/getting an ultrasound.  This is because as far as I know right now, I have two beautiful perfectly healthy babies in utero with nothing to worry about. All of this can change tomorrow!Tomorrow is the first time they will measure the twins and look for signs of size difference TTTS. This fact is pretty stressful. I also may be able to find out the gender tomorrow. I haven’t really thought about that much because I am so stressed about everything else. Wish me luck! 

16 month old schedule

My twins have been scheduled from the very beginning. I love having and keeping them on a schedule! We have just finished the transition period of moving from one to two naps. It took a little time to take away the morning nap… but the last couple of weeks have been going  smoothly and this is what our typical day schedule looks like.

7:30am – wake up

7:45am – breakfast

8:15am- 11:45am – play time

11:45 - 12:15 – lunch

12:15pm – 3:15pm – 1 long, 3 hour-ish afternoon nap

3:30pm – snack

5:30/6pm – Dinner

7pm – Bath

7:30pm– bed 

Diapers!

Yesterday was the first day I HAD to go to the store to buy diapers. Because we were about to run out… my twins are 16 months old. I start couponing and stockpiling my diapers when I was 20 weeks pregnant with P and N. Stock piling has been awesome and a true life saver to affording my twins. But stock piling is tricky. When I say we were about to run out of diapers… we were about to run out of their size. P and N are in a size 3. We have plenty of size 4s, but I tried them on each of them… and they are way too big. So I used all my size 3 stock pile. I got down to the bottom of my pile because I kept thinking they fit in a 4 by the time we run out. I am going to start stockpiling about another two months of 3s because that's about how much longer I think they will be in them.

                Nice thing is if I overbuy I can save them for the second set! I have a few boxes of size 2s left over from the first set because I accidentally purchased too many… Like I said stockpiling is a huge money saver for twins… but buying the right amount is the tricky/hard part!

                Of course even though I HAD to buy diapers yesterday there was no way I was going to pay retail for them.

                So I started by raiding the Sunday newspaper and searching for coupons. I found the best deal to be CVS, Huggies. The Sunday paper had $2 off coupons and I found some printable $2 coupons as well. On top of that I logged on to my CVS account and saw the coupons the store coupon machine had waiting for me… one was a $10 off a $50 baby purchase. The CVS Huggies deal is if you spend $30 you earn $10 in extra bucks cash.

The diapers are $9.49 a pack. So I planned to purchased 5 packs at $9.49 and a Johnson and Johnson baby wash for $2.99 to reach my $50. I also found 5 - $2 huggies coupons (through the newspaper and printing from different online sites/computers) and $2 J&J baby wash coupon.  My total before coupons and tax… $50.44 - $10 cvs coupon - $10 in huggies coupons - $2 baby wash coupon = $28.44 out of pocket before tax and earn $10 and extra bucks to use on a 6^th pack of diapers.

So I would get 6 packs of diapers and baby wash for $28.44. Each pack has 36 diapers. 36x6 = 216 diapers for 13 cents a diaper plus a baby wash!

THIS WAS MY PLAN FOR YESTERDAY. I still plan to do this transition this week.  

Yesterday when I went to the CVS by my house they had only one pack of huggies size 3 diapers. I was a little mad at this as I was about to walk out and drive to another CVS…last minute I decided to ask if they had any diapers in the back. Unknowingly, I asked the manager. He said no but I have Pampers. I said thank you but Pampers aren’t part of the extra bucks deal. To which he said that’s no problem I can make them the deal. Well in my mind I am thinking that’s nice but I don’t have all the coupons for Pampers to work out to be the same good deal. As he shows me the Pampers I say you only have two packs of size 3  Pampers so that doesn’t work either. He said buy the two Pampers I will give you the $10 extra bucks, order you some Huggies ,and you can back get your Huggies and use the $10 extra bucks.

I said, DEAL! I quickly checked my coupons and I luckily had 2 Pampers coupons for $1.50 that I have been holding to forever since they don’t expire until 2015 (they were inside of tampon packages).

 The Pampers were on sale for $8.99. So I got two packs 8.99x2 = $17.98 (before tax) - $3 in coupons = $14.98, plus $10 extra bucks to use on the Huggie deal hopefully later this week. Treating the $10 extra bucks as cash this makes the diapers only 8 cent a diaper. I don’t double dip on my extra buck calculations… I will use on the huggies deals so it will keep that deal at 13 cents a diaper.

As I was checking out I said, thank you, I was just going to go to another CVS. He said we don’t want you to do that. If there is ever something like this again just tell us and we can make it right.

So while this was pure luck… the point is ASK, you never know what they will do for you to make it right and keep your business.

The second point is even if you have to go to the store today to buy diapers take a little time to check out the weekly sales and get a great deal! 

Being pregnant the second time...

Being pregnant the second time is so much different than being pregnant the first time. With my first pregnancy the fact that I was pregnant was constantly on my mind. I thought nonstop about what they would be, what they would look like, names, when they would be born, what I needed, how would I do it, etc. etc.

I barely think of any of these things.

1.       Because I am so freaking busying between being pregnant, a mom of twins, and working.

2.       Because I know most of the things really don’t matter and I will figure them out when they do they matter.

3.       I know it doesn’t matter what I think about most of those things because I can’t change them anyway.

I have no idea or thought if these twins are girls or boys.  And I don’t care either way. I already have one of each and they are both awesome in different ways. I have no idea what I am going to name them and can’t even think of any names I like for a girl or a boy and somehow I have to come up with 2 each at some point.

I do think about how I can do it, but that is mainly because of other people and their negative comments. It is easy to roll my eyes at these comments because it is so familiar to the comments I got with my first set of twins… and boy were they wrong about them! P and N are so easy!

Last night was back to school night at my high school. This is when the parents follow their child’s schedule around and go to each of their classes to meet the teacher. (I am home sick today because the 13 hour day did me in).

In one class I only had one parent show up. It is kind of odd for this to happen, but I think it happened for a reason.

The parent was a dad. He was a well-dressed, handsome dad, and he didn't seem that old.  He told me who his son was, and I begin with my “back to school agenda,” showing him the classroom kitchen, and talking about the topics we would learn. He stopped me and asked, “can I ask you a question, are you pregnant with twins, do you already have twins.”

Then he went on to say that his son had told them about me. But his son never told me this. His son is a twin and they have another set of twins just 22 months younger than the first set!

He spent the rest of the time talking to me about how cool and exciting it was going to be to have two sets!

It was very nice to hear. He also told me that they have a 5^th! So it didn't scare them from having more!

It was such a nice and surprising conversation. 

The gender

On September 25th we have out first appointment with the MFM doctor. At this time they should be able to tell us the gender! We are not doing a gender reveal this time. We are just going to find out and tell everyone. The gender reveal we had last time was a lot of fun and it was really neat finding out with our friends and family. However it was a lot of work and money to do it. So we have decided to skip it this time.

Also apparently, someone is telling everyone that I already wrote on Facebook that I was having two boys. I have no idea where or how this rumor started. My mom first told me this a couple of weeks ago when a group of my friends (who I do not hang out with that often since I'm now a mom) was at the pool. Anyways one of them said something to my mom about me having two boys and my mom said,  "what...she doesn't know what she is having yet."

Yesterday at a friend's bridal shower she told some of the older women there... "yeah she's pregnant with twins boys." Which I immediately stopped her and said I don't know what I'm having yet. 

Whoever started this obviously doesn't have a clue how this how pregnancy thing works... Since I'm only 14 weeks. How the heck would I already know ? ;)

Should know in about 10 days!!

1st day of Preschool

Yesterday the twins started preschool. I took a personal day from work so that I could take them and pick them up. Mike and I dropped them off. When we walked into their classroom their eyes lit up with excitement. Noah said, “Hi, hi, hi, hi” to everyone and within a minute the teacher said, “we know who our social butterfly is.” Before we left Noah, had went up to classmates, girls, and had made friends, again saying “hi, hi, hi” and started to play with them. Presley went the opposite direction and was happily playing alone on the other side of the classroom. They were both so happy that Mike and I decided it was best to slide out quickly before they noticed we were leaving.

            When it came time to pick them up I brought my mom with me. Pick up time is at noon. We got to the school at like 11:42 (I thought I was early), the parking lot was slammed full. By the time we parked and got into the classroom it was 11:50 and every parent was already in the room. They were all swamped around the teacher asking questions. I do not thrive in those types of situations as I have never needed or wanted to fight for attention. So I spoke for a moment with the classroom aid, who said they did great but I think they are ready for a nap! I could tell that by the looks on their faces when we got there.

            When I got home I was upset with myself that I had not waited to talk the teacher. Because at that point I realized that I won’t be there again to talk to her. Something I didn’t think about it when I decided to flight.

            So I sent her an emailing asking how there day was and I was so happy to get this response from her.

Hi Heather!

I was so sorry I missed out on talking to you, too!  It was a little bit crazy at pick up time today - I'm sure it will settle down soon!  Yes, Noah and Presley both had great days today!  They settled in very shortly after you left and got right to playing with all of the toys.  You were right - Noah definitely preferred NOT to walk :).  Presley got tired around 11:15 and wanted to be cuddled after that (which I was more than happy to do!).  They both thoroughly enjoyed the songs we sang today, especially "Open Shut Them" and watched the teachers do the hand motions intently.  They also got around the gross motor play equipment quite well!  Presley went up the stairs on the outdoor equipment and once Noah saw her he came crawling along behind shortly!   We're going to try to encourage Noah to walk more and more while still allowing him to keep his own comfortable pace (as I assumed from your comment this morning that you are doing as well) so that he doesn't get left behind at all. Being a teacher yourself I'm sure you know that we have somewhat of an advantage in the classroom where there are 10 other kiddos who are already walking to give Noah encouragement without stressing him out :).

Thank you so much for the email and we can't wait to see the kiddos next week!

I am so proud of them and so happy they are getting this experience. I haven’t blogged much since this happened. But Noah as decided to quit walking. He can do it and has took steps and walked before. But he prefers crawling… especially in new places. I chatted with the teacher at this at drop off because I was concerned about playground time etc. Presley is running everywhere!

 Here are the few pictures I got. I got a few more that have other children in them but the school policy is these photos cannot be posted via social media. I like and respect this policy so here are the pictures I can post.

Mo/Di Twins - Doctor Update

We had a doctor's appointment and ultrasound on last Thursday... they saw a membrane so our twins are MO/DI identical. Which means there is less risk than if they were MO/MO twins. There is still a lot of risk associated with MO/DI twins, such as TTTS (Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome), the twins share a placenta and because of this they may get unequal amounts of nutrients (TTTS).

I will be monitored closely to watch for size differences and fluid differences. When there is a 20% difference then there is some TTTS going on which is very dangerous. The chances of TTTS go up incredibility towards the end of pregnancy. Because of this most knowledgeable doctors deliver by 36 weeks. So the twins are due March 15th, but will be here by Feb 15th at the latest.

TTTS can cause the placenta to fail and it can happen over night. This leads to a number of birth defects and even death. So it is very scary and serious.

Starting at 16 weeks I will see the MFM for extra close monitoring. I will also start the P17 shot at this time. I will take this once a week until the babies are born. This is a hormone that will hopefully prevent preterm labor. This is given to women who have had a preterm birth in the past and it has been shown to help prevent future preterm births.

HOWEVER, it has NOT shown to make a difference in twin mothers. Mine case is a prime example because the reason I had preterm birth with my first set of twin was because I got so big so fast -- I measured 41 weeks when my water broke. My doctors feel that I should try the P17 shot because while it may not help, it can't hurt.

I will also be getting the steroid for the twins' lungs as a precaution to the fact that they most likely will be premature.

I am afraid that all the hormones aren't going to have me feeling so great... and I also wonder how that will effect my thyroid hormones.

My doctor filled out papers for me to get a handicap parking pass. This is mainly for work since the teacher lot is so far from the school building and my classroom is another long walk once I entered the building. I am only 12 weeks now. But the walk is hard is now and will only get harder. I have to take breaks because I get so out of breathe. I am trying to last as long as I can working, before being put on bed rest and every little bit helps.

I am really afraid of how fast my FMLA time is going to run out. While it is a constant on my mind I try to push that to the back of my thoughts because I can only handle so much worry on my plate at time.