TINY FINGERS TO LITTLE FINGERS

I have been loving watching the little girls grow out of the premie stage and into their newborn stage. We are not certain of their exact weight, but we did put them on the WII fit board with us to weigh them and it looks as though they are 8 pounds plus each. I do not know how long they are except they are long.. However, I look at them and though I would rather have had a normal pregnancy and went to term, I can't imagine having both of those 8 pound babies in me.. YIKES!

Ruby's eyes are progressing and the spots on her retinas have almost disappeared which is FANTASTIC news all around. I Just can't believe how fast these little bundles of joy (most of the time) are growing... Check out their little tiny fingers when they were first born and now 3 months (on the 19th of June) later how much bigger they are...







Ruby now...

FIRST TIME POOL TIME

The water is warm enough, the air is warm enough and we are going to love having a pool this summer. We purchased some swim diapers for the girls (though somehow did not purchase bathing suits yet) and decided we would try them out in the pool and see if they like it. Well, they really did not like it that much.. If we cuddled them close to us they were OK with it, but you could tell they were not loving it. They are quite young still so we will give them more time. We will probably wait until they love their bath time to get them in the pool. How old were your children when you started putting them in water, and how old were they when they started liking the water???

Most of you who read the blog live too far away, but for those of you who do not... The pool is open and an open invitation still stands!!

The girls practicing laying out getting sun



Daddy and Ruby



Family shot (and yes I can't believe I am posting a photo of me in a bathing suit so early post twins)

NURSERY and HOUSE CLOSING

We officially closed on our new house and our old house on June 1st! We have been in the house for a couple of weeks since the 18th of May (Its his grandmothers house we purchased and with the twins coming home they let us move in early) and the house is coming along room by room.
The first room to be finished, (mostly before we even moved in) was the nursery. We are still missing two shelves to put up our anamalz toys. Check them out if you have never seen them before, they are really cute!
So here are a couple of photos of the girls room, I will post photos of the before and after of the rest of the house as we finish it.
This is the room before the changes, it is actually one of the more "normal" least "grannie" rooms in the house before we changed things!








Its amazing how much I love these little girls.. They are starting to get more personality, and though they are not quite 2 weeks with an adjusted age, they are growing like crazy and are both over 7 pounds now. Considering they started at 2-9 and 3-5 at their lowest, they have come a long way in such a short time!

Charlotte already knows how to fold her hands to pray :)

DUE DATE AND NEW PHOTOS

It is hard to believe that today is the girls original due date. I look at them every day and can't believe how much they are growing and how healthy they are. We have been truly blessed to have them home this past week and half and are excited to be able to watch them grow up. I keep looking at their cute little faces, trying to find little differences so that we might be able to tell them apart. Last week Ruby Jane scratched her face and it gave us the difference for a few days. Right now Ruby still has the hospital bracelet on her ankle and we will be getting their ears pierced as soon as they are old enough so that we might tell them apart. Ruby - with Rubies Charlotte - with little diamonds. I know some people might have their own opinions on piercing babies ears early (actually I do too in a way) but we are terrified of mixing them up. As you will notice in the photos they are getting more and more alike. There have been days (like yesterday when they were dressed the same for Church) where we had to check to see who had the bracelet on.
They are such great little girls. They are on a four hour feeding schedule, though sometimes it can be 3 and the other morning we had a 6 hour solid sleep... I nurse them basically only once through the night.. Normally its feed them around 11PM and then at 3ish and 7 ish.. It works really well and I do find I get a decent amount of sleep. I take the first shift where I get up if they are crying too much or to change the diapers while my husband sleeps with ear plugs. After their middle of the night feeding, I put the ear plugs in and I try to get a solid 3 plus hours. My husband is wonderful with the girls and changes most of the dirty diapers. We are planning on doing cloth diapers and we have some great ones purchased but they are still too big for the girls and we did not want the expense of purchasing new ones for a month or so. With that said it is insane the amount of diapers we are going through. Last week alone we spent about 50+ dollars on diapers! Thankfully we are not having to purchase formula as well for two. The cloth diapers are going to be a lot more work, but it will be worth it (I HOPE).

So it has been a busy week and half since they have been home, but we are doing great. They really are such sweet beautiful girls and their big sister Jazzy just adores them.
We are busy getting the new house organized (yes we moved last Monday to a new bigger house with a POOL) and its amazing how much we can accomplish when the girls sleep 16-18 hours a day!
I will post photos of the new house with the before and after rooms.. but for now here are some photos of our little baby girls!

Ruby and Charlotte


Ruby and Charlotte


Charlotte and Ruby


Charlotte and Ruby


Our little Ruby Jane



I think we are going to have to start making sure that when we take pictures they are always on the same side... Like Ruby is always on the right! If we don't, we are never going to be able to tell them apart. As you can see they are starting to look more and more alike.

The Girls are Finally HOME

I probably should be napping right now because the girls are sleeping, but I just had to write about the exciting news. I am sure most of you know already, but our sweet little twin girls came home yesterday. It was a long 8 weeks but we all made it and now they are home with us. It was so exciting to leave the NICU with the girls instead of having to say goodnight to them there every night. It was a little sad in some ways to say goodbye to the amazing staff who took such great care of our girls. I almost wanted to ask which one of them was going to come home with us.
We left with plenty of papers and instructions and best wishes...
The girls have a very clean bill of health.. The only things we need to give them outside of the regular care is Iron twice a day and Vitamin D once a day.. Ruby has a check up next week to get her left eye checked again and hopefully the spots will have gotten smaller, or disappeared this time.

It was quite an adventurous day for the girls coming home.
Most of you also know we are moving to a new house on Monday and really did not think the girls would be home to be in this home so the nursery was not set up here and was going to be done on Friday at the new house. SO we do not have the cribs here at this house. Thankfully they are little and we can improvise! BOXES! Before anyone calls social services everything is just fine. My siblings and I actually slept in a box (not deep boxes or anything) and it certainly is a lot easier than setting up the cribs here for 5 days and then taking them down.. The house is a disaster but thankfully they will not know that!

They are wonderful little bundles of joy, and though I certainly did not get a full nights rest.. We are SO happy to have them home with us. We were sitting watching the LOST finale with the girls and just smiling that we could hold them and be close to them. I have so missed them these 8 weeks.

SO WELCOME HOME RUBY JANE AND CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH
Mommy and Daddy are so happy and excited to have you home!


Leaving the NICU



Their First Walk



Their Cute Boxed Beds (Note the writing on the boxes!!)

MOTHER'S DAY CUTENESS

I knew today would be hard for me going up to the hospital to see the girls instead of going into their room to their little smiles..
I was right! I cried as soon as I saw them, and cried even harder after I saw the little cards in their little beds.
The NICU nurses are so wonderful and these little cards are just adorable. They are perfect!
Look at the cute little foot prints, and YES those are the twins real footprints!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all the mothers out there!

FUNNY CLEAN CHRISTIAN JOKE

I just had to post this joke.. It actually is quite funny!

Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.


Finally fed up, God said, 'THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job.'

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.


They moused.

They faxed.


They e-mailed.


They e-mailed with attachments.


They downloaded.


They did spreadsheets!


They wrote reports.

They created labels and cards.


They created charts and graphs.


They did some genealogy reports .

They did every job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell.

Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.

Jesus just sighed.


Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers.

Satan started searching frantically, screaming:


'It's gone! It's all GONE! 'I lost everything when the power went out!'

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work.


Satan observed this and became irate.

'Wait!' he screamed. 'That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?'

God just shrugged and said,




'JESUS SAVES...!'

New Hair Cut

So I was getting really really bored with my hair. Its so heavy and plain and though I've got shorter before, it has been a LONG time since I have done anything drastic with my hair...
So I did... BANGS
I wanted to do some funky colour and such, but because I've just had babies they do not recommend it until 6 months due to different hormones and my hair could end up a totally different colour!

I could not help but put a Photo booth shot as well...

FIRST FAMILY PHOTO

They are getting so big..
They are on a bit of tough love with their tubes out, meaning if they don't take the breast or the bottle they do not get the rest down their tubes. They do not want them to get lazy...
Still no "go home" date... but they are progressing and gaining weight the way they want them to.
They are such sweet little miracles and we love them!

Alpaca Jazzy Day

On Saturday my husband and I took Jazzy to an Alpaca farm in Portage Vale outside of Sussex.

She was so excited to go see the Alpaca and was telling everyone that day where she was going.

She met Brenda and Mike at a craft show last year where they were selling products from their Alpaca wool. So, we decided since we were going to be in Sussex visiting my parents (and Adam getting fitted for some much needed new golf clubs - his bonus for finishing his Masters last year)

that we would stop to see the Alpaca.

I think they are adorable and cute, Adam thinks they are so ugly they are cute... Jazzy, well aside from being scared of one of them because he moved to fast to get the food, thought they were very 'cute'.. You decide for yourself!

DOUBLE FOOTBALL HOLD!

So I have been able to nurse the girls twice a day.  They are not strong enough yet to be nursed more often as it is a lot more work than they are used to and they get tired so fast.  They do however, take a bottle most of the other feedings which means they are getting stronger.  I love nursing them and it is a wonderful experience to see them grow and develop.

Ruby is actually much better at nursing.  Charlotte seems to be having trouble figuring out the whole breathing and sucking and swallowing thing together so she tires herself out really fast..

The other night we decided to try them both at the same time.. That was interesting, and nothing short of wonderful.  It was not easy to get them into position, thankfully I had help.  I do think it will be much easier when they are just a little bit bigger, and when they have their tubes and cords off of them.  

All in all, I am so delighted to be able to nurse them more and more.. 

GRANDPARENTS

My parents drive up 45 minutes to see the babies.  They have been coming up once a week, but like us in the beginning there was little they could do as the girls were in their incubators.  Now that they have been moved up to big girl beds and we are able to do more with them and their apneas are less, we feel comfortable with other family holding them.  I called mom and dad on Sunday afternoon to let them know they would be able to hold them.  I guess you could say they were a bit anxious to do so as they drove up that evening to see them, and to hold them.  

They loved every minute of it, as did I watching them!

Ruby is in the yellow and Charlotte is in the Pink

Big Baby Steps

So this week has been a very eventful week for our little twin girls. Today when I went up to visit them and bring back some clean matching blankets and outfits (they do provide them but if you want to bring in their own you take them home to wash them so they don't get mixed up with the Units things). I got to change them before their feedings, which I love doing anything, and to my surprise Jan, the nurse who was in charge of the twins today brought over their feed, but it was in a bottle. I was so excited and was able to feed Ruby while she fed Charlotte. She sucked it back much faster than I had expected, and so to prove to us just how big of girls they are on their one month birthday, they both took their whole feeding by bottle. They won't take all their feedings by bottle just yet because it tires them out so quickly, but they are making great progress. Tomorrow I get to try my hand at giving them each a bath, and they said sometime within the next week or so they are going to try to get them to latch onto me..
Its been an exciting week for the McKim twins and I am so happy our little girls are progressing, and sad Daddy has been sick and had to miss all these events!

Here are the girls together for one of the first times since being born!
Charlotte on the left and Ruby on the right... I will be so happy when they get their little tubes out, but for now, we are happy that is all they need to have!

BIG GIRL BEDS

Look at me.. Two posts in one day.

I went up today to visit the girls (my husband is still sick) and thankfully brought along my camera as today was a BIG day for the girls, they moved out of their incubators and into big girl beds.  Charlotte into a regular big girl bed, and Ruby (because she weighs less) is into a big girl water bed tent... Plus they get to wear clothes now, so some of the really little clothes people have brought and given to us will get used.  The girls are growing so long we were not sure if we would get to use the tiny clothes!

 It is SO wonderful to see them getting bigger and progressing.  It is also so much easier to interact with them and change them and kiss them.  This is exciting news for the girls and us.. 

Charlotte

Charlotte

Charlotte

Charlotte

Charlotte with the hats grammy McKim knit for them

Ruby Jane

Ruby Jane

Ruby Jane in her Tent

Still side by side, just not quite in the same type of home anymore!