life at hotel presby

I am here!!

I checked in a bit later than planned yesterday, because I ended up needing to take sweet Will to the doctor.  Poor guy has a double ear infection!  He's never had a ear infection before, and he decided to go big and start with both ears at the same time.  Ugh.  I'm just glad that we now know what's going on, and he's on an antibiotic which should knock this infection out.  Needless to say, leaving him was much harder while he is sick, but he just came up to see me, and he seems to be getting better already!  We are so lucky that my mom is able to keep him while I'm here.  Not only is he completely comfortable and happy, but I get to see him every day!

I'm all settled in and starting to get into a routine here at the hospital. {Most surprising part of the routine so far...dinner is served at 5:45!  Am I weird for thinking that this is crazy early?  Good thing I brought a giant bag of snacks for the evenings...}  Ok, on to more important things...  The girls are monitored 3 times a day, and I'll get to have an ultrasound every Wednesday morning to check their growth, positioning, progress, etc.  {I'm already excited that tomorrow is Wednesday!}  The daily monitoring sessions are a bit tricky, because the goal is to find both girls' heartbeats, and then to get both to stay on the monitors for 20 straight minutes.  And these girls like to move!  The monitors are little discs that we strap to my belly once they're positioned correctly.  {Plus there's a third monitor for contractions that has to be put somewhere.}  Sometimes we even use rolled up washcloths to push down one side of the monitor in order to get a better reading.  What does this look like, you may ask?  Like this...

And this is on a GOOD session, when they are cooperating!  :)  Last night, we ended up having to monitor them individually, and the sweet nurse had to sit on my bed and hold the monitor on each one because they were so wiggly.  I'm getting to know my nurses well, and they are all SUPER nice.  Every single person I've met has been awesome.  So while the monitors are on, I get to watch this screen to see their heartrates, and everything also prints on the strip of paper on the right.  

We're watching for decelerations, when the rate drops suddenly.  My doctor said that all 26 week babies have these decelerations, so we're really just watching for repetitive ones that might indicate distress.  I'm sure that when I'm on my hundredth session, this will get a little mundane, but on day 2, it's pretty interesting!   

I'm already feeling spoiled with all the sweet visits, texts, emails, and calls.  You guys are the best!  And the newest addition to my room are these gorgeous flowers from some fabulous friends:

This is a little bit blurry, but here's a picture from my playdate with Will this afternoon.  SO glad to see him smiling and starting to feel better. 

Since I seem to have a bit more computer time than I'm used to, maybe I'll be better at keeping the blog updated while I'm here!  Although, let's be honest...hopefully there won't be anything super exciting going on for about 6 weeks....so I'm not sure that my updates will be very entertaining.  But in this situation, that will be a very good thing!  

Happy Tuesday to all!  

TOMORROW!

Tomorrow is hospital check in day!  Eek!  I truly meant to take a 26 week belly picture today, but poor Will has been sick all day, so my last day at home was almost 100% couch/chair time with him.  I am really hoping he feels better tomorrow, because leaving a sick boy will be even harder than leaving my normal crazy, happy, energetic boy. 

We got to see the girls on Friday, and they are still looking great.  Their cords are ridiculously tangled, and even look almost braided and knotted together, but luckily the babies are still getting good blood flow and growing perfectly despite the knots.  God is good! 

Thanks so much to everyone for all the prayers, emails, texts, calls, etc...they are working!  :)  

ABC!

Best discovery ever for Will?  The "repeat" button on his new boombox!  This means we get to hear the alphabet song over and over...and over.  You might think that this could get annoying, except that sweet Will sings and dances along with it....and I love it!  :)  My favorite part is when he yells, "here we go!!" right before it starts.  Love this guy!

merry merry christmas!

Will was pretty excited about Christmas this year.  He had been wearing this Santa bucket around as a hat for a couple of weeks!

We had several Christmas celebrations, as we usually do, and Will thoroughly enjoyed each one!  We went to Matt's dad's house on Christmas Eve, but somehow I didn't end up taking any pictures.  We enjoyed a great meal and opened lots of presents.  Will's favorite thing from this evening was his new Spongebob boom box, which came with a Little People CD of kids' songs.  The first song on disc 1 is the alphabet song, which is Will's favorite, so he is constantly walking up to the boombox and asking for "numba one!!"

I have LOTS of pictures from Christmas day, and since I print the blog as our yearly scrapbook, I'm including a bunch of them.  Enjoy!!

First things first....Will enjoyed his second visit from Santa!!  He had been very skeptical all week about the scary guy in the red suit coming into his house, but I think that he was sold on the idea when he saw the presents on Christmas morning.

checking out his new tee ball/baseball set with daddy 

and some basketball!

Then the Hawkins side of the family came over, and the tree was filled up with presents again! 

Will & Aunt RyRy, checking out one of the gifts she got him

it was a puzzle, and he LOVES it

lots of fun presents to open!

Then we decided to take some pictures in front of the tree, but Will had already swiped some melts out of his stocking, so he was way too distracted to look at the camera.  You will notice that in most of the pictures from the rest of the day, he is holding some sort of snack food...

 

Time for real clothes!

Mimi and Duke came to join us for brunch!!

Will got in some bball practice while we cooked brunch.

And of course, some snacks...

After brunch, Will enjoyed a much needed nap while we all played with our new toys.  After naptime, we headed over to my parents house for our next celebration.  Such a fun day!

We started by reading the Christmas story

{a very abbreviated version for Will}

Will was ready to get down and open presents!

What's this?!

a new car!

he didn't get out of this for most of the afternoon!

Matt was excited too!

Will also had fun playing with this little Santa in a rocker that was on my parents' fireplace.  When you make a loud noise, Santa starts rocking and singing.  Never-ending fun for a toddler!

Clap!

 checking out his new coloring/sticker book

 and a new Thomas the Train toy from Aunt Christa and Uncle Steve!

I also have to include this video, which shows Will seeing his new trampoline from Nana assembled for the first time.  We put it together after he went to bed on Christmas night, so he was excited to see it the next day, and he knew exactly what to do!

 What a wonderful Christmas!  We are so blessed to have such a wonderful family. 

21 weeks!

Time for a baby update!  :)  We went to the doctor on Friday for my 21 week check, and so far, so good.  Although there is definitely entanglement {a nice way of saying a big knot} in their cords, both babies are growing perfectly and looking great, and the blood flow in both cords is good.  Whew!  It's certainly a day-by-day journey, and we feel very blessed to have made it this far.  

Here's a view of the babies from the outside at 21 weeks:

And from the inside!

{Baby A on the left side and Baby B on the right}

Also this weekend, Matt took me out for an early birthday celebration.  We went to dinner and then out to see A Christmas Carol at the Dallas Theater Center, which has become my birthday tradition over the past few years.  It was fabulous, and after the play we picked up some hot chocolate and drove around to look at Christmas lights.  Unfortunately, that's about when we got the call that Will had come down with his first stomach bug.  :(  So the rest of the night was NOT FUN, and we're still praying that we can all avoid catching the bug!  The good news is that Will has made a full recovery, and is back to his happy self today.

such fun!

How fun is this?  We had family pictures taken a few weeks ago with the Hawkins side of the family, and our photographer made us two AWESOME videos to share.  I LOVE them!  I was going to wait until we sent out Christmas cards to post these, since our pictures are all in here....but I hate waiting.  And this is one thing that I don't HAVE to wait for...so enjoy!!

This one is a little digital Christmas card from Will:

And this one is just a fun video of lots of our family pictures, plus some videos she sneakily took while we were shooting.  :)

These just make me smile!

life lately

So unfortunately we had a run in with the Grinch this week.  That's right.  The GRINCH.  We set up our {extra big} Christmas tree last weekend.  Here it is...minus the bow on top, because I hadn't made it yet:

And then on Monday, Will and I got home from a morning out to find this:

Uh...Oh...  Maybe this is partly my fault. I was the one who reeeeeally wanted the bigger tree when we found it for such a great price.  So we went ahead and used our tree stand from last year, which maybe was meant for about a 6 foot tree instead of 8.  Anyway, about 5 minutes after I took this picture and about 5 minutes before I was going to come address the leaning issue, it came CRASHING down.  :(  Ornaments shattered, water spilled, huge tree on the floor.  But with a new tree stand and a few new ornaments, the Christmas spirit won out after all.  Although we got THISCLOSE to throwing the whole tree out on the curb, it's back up!

{sorry...cameraphone took a prettier picture of the lights than the camera, but it's sorta blurry}

And after a few lovely days with a straight tree....today it's leaning a bit again, but we anchored it to the window {don't ask} and we'll address it this weekend.  We WILL keep this sucker up until Christmas!

Other fun stuff going on around here....Will did some painting this afternoon:

And then he totally cracked me up by putting Ernie under his shirt and telling me, "Ernie belly!"  Maybe because we've been talking about the babies in my belly?!  So funny!  I snapped a few pics on my phone:

And finally, we got a fun surprise in the mail!!  Nana got Will a subscription to National Geographic for Kids, and the first two magazines arrived today!  Will had a great time looking at all the pictures of animals and nature.  Thanks, Nana!!