23 and 2

Here we are at 23 months and 2 months...

Isabelle:

• Barely ever nods yes anymore...it only lasted two weeks or so.
• We can rarely get her to eat. Seriously...why won't the child eat?
• She rarely sleeps through the night anymore. We suspect she has nightmares.
• She adores her sisters. 
• She loves her cousin Levi and loves dancing with him. She struggles with sharing with him though.
• She hates clothes and shoes and getting dressed. The only shoes she'll wear is her squeaker shoes.
• I will not listen to me...ever. This isn't just limited to me either.  
• She still repeats everything. She still will not answer a question, but just repeats the last word back to you.

Ella:

• Smiles really well.
• Tolerate laing in the swing/bouncer/bed better than Emery, but still not very well. She does better when the fan is on.
• She's our night owl. Likes to stay up late and sleep in.
• She's starting to stand in our laps.
• When crying, she gradually gets mad.
• She watches the mobile on the swing really well. I'm quite impressed. Isabelle only found it when she was too big to lay in it.
• She weighs about 10 pounds 13 ounces. 

Emery:

• Laughs without sound in her sleep sometimes.
• Smiles with a big wide open mouth.
• Grabs on to things...like my shirt or necklace and holds on with a death grip.
• She finally is not ill.
• Loves watching the fan but rarely sits for longer than a couple of moments on her own.
• Gets mad immediately when crying.
• Takes her reflux and thrush medicine well.
• The chiropractor thinks her head shape is improving. Especially the spots where they used forceps to pull her out of my rib.
• She weighs about 8 1/2 pounds.

Natalie:

• Thanks to the chiropractor, my lower back is finally better from the spinal. I'm still having lots of neck and upper back issues. Apparently the upper back pain is more because all of my ribs are out and need some work to get them all aligned permanently again. (Is there any surprise that all my ribs are out?) 
• I still have a lot of pain in my belly where it swelled (below my belly button and above my incision). The babies kick it a lot.
• Not handling this motherhood thing so well. I'm struggling with not feeling trapped or depressed or overwhelmed to the 10th degree...
• I see the Lord's hand in my life daily. He has blessed us so much that I could never express enough gratitude or for one second doubt his love for us. The eternal picture is what is getting us through right now!
• I love my girls sooo much! Who wouldn't love them?

Our Printed Images

Remember our maternity session pictures and our newborn session pictures? I could not be more thrilled to have them printed and hanging in Isabelle's room. 

Emery Update

The poor girl can't seem to catch a break. We went to the doctor again this week for a follow up exam after her RSV/hospitalization and her sonogram of her stomach. I'll start with the positive: She's finally on the growth charts and gaining a good amount of weight! Yay!!! She's up to 8 pounds, 7 ounces. On the other side of things...it turns out she has reflux. It's a mild case and I'm really hoping that we won't be on medicine very long. The doctor was pleased with her recovery from RSV. She still coughs a couple times a day and she is still stuffy a lot of the time...especially at night, but the RSV is gone. Yay for that and for the miracle of no one else catching it!!! While we were at the doctor though we found out she has thrush. Apparently you get thrush when your immune system is weak. Big surprise there.... The doctor also wants her to have a sonogram and an x-ray of her skull and brain. She has a protruding bump in the back of her head. Everyone is hoping it is just an anomaly and as she grows and the plates of the skull move and harden it will work itself out, but we want to make sure. I'm a little nervous for that since it will require being penned down and she doesn't like that. Plus I am a little anxious about the results. We go to the hospital on Tuesday morning for those tests...

To top all of this off, on Thursday the weather was so beautiful that we took all three girls outside in the backyard to get a picture. That didn't work out so well. Emery was only out there for 15 minutes...tops. After being inside for a couple of moments though we noticed that her eyes were watering (even more than usual) and swollen and she was coughing and even more stuffy. I guess she inherited horrible allergies from her father. So I guess we won't be spending all of the spring out back...

Here's Emery's health summary for the past 7.5 weeks:

1. NICU for 48 hours for breathing and spitting up excessively.
2. Congestion and cold-like symptoms started as soon as we came home from the hospital.
3. Double clogged tear ducts that became infected.
4. Jaundice.
5. RSV and 36 hours in the hospital after a ride in the ambulance.
6. Sonogram of her stomach that resulted in being diagnosed with Reflux.
7. Poor weight gain.
8. Thrush.
9. Allergies.
10. Skull x-ray and sonogram of the brain...coming next week.

Ugh...

Beautiful Weather+Beautiful Babies=Beautiful Pictures

Even though we had snow on Wednesday, any sign of it has long been erased...and now we have gorgeous weather. It was so pretty today that I actually took the girls outside for a couple moments in the stroller. Other than to go from house to car to destination and back again, the girls haven't been outside. Even then, they and the car seat have always been covered. I am tickled pink that I got good pictures of both girls together...FINALLY!! 

 And my favorite:

Christmas Post

Wow my posts are quite the mixture of back-blogging and recent happenings... 

Our Christmas is kind of a blur in my memory. Curt had a 2 4 hour stomach bug, I was still recovering from a cold and oh yeah...miserably pregnant and Isabelle... Well Isabelle loved Christmas. Even with how miserable Curt and I both were, Christmas was still so much more fun than ever before. Being the parents may actually be better than being the kid. At least we think so. 

Isabelle with her pile of presents (only the far left pile...not all three):

Isabelle has a new obsession with Grover, so she received a stuffed Grover. Obviously she loves him:

 Still loving on Grover:

 Opening her big present:

 Check out how her feet are through the stirrups instead of on:

 She is a dare devil and can already do tricks:

 Yep, I'm spoiled and I love it!

 As it turns out Heather and Andrew picked out to most loved present: bugs! Of course we knew she loves bugs, but we didn't anticipate how much she would love these little Hex bugs. Seriously kept her entertained for hours a day for weeks. Apparently her and my dad played bugs the whole time I was in the hospital...

Discovering the bug:

Curt and I received a video recorder from my parents, so we have lots of videos too. However, I've yet to download a single thing off of that memory card...

My Loves

 On Wednesday night, I put both babies down to change both their diapers. In an attempt to keep them from crying I was manually spinning the fan for them to look at. I couldn't help but take a picture of them staring at the fan and shadows. Check out how their legs are even the same...

When Isabelle found them laying on the bed, she had to be a part of the fun. She loves them so much...

She couldn't resist giving Emery kisses:

(Notice how Emery is trying to eat Ella's hand...she got upset later that Ella wouldn't stay still for her.)

She can't leave Ella out:

The four loves of my life:

Cleaning the Memory Card

I hate getting pictures off of the camera card. Maybe I'm just sick of it. However it's always nice when you find something cute. I have no clue who took these pictures, and I have no clue the context either, but they are soooo Isabelle.

Hanging on for Dear Life

Apparently Isabelle thinks Curt's driving is as scary as I do:

Rockstar

For Christmas, one of the presents Heidi got was a paper guitar. Isabelle found it and totally loved it. She was hilarious dancing to the music and she even tried to do some head banging. It was too super cute!

RSV

(Getting a decent picture of her when she is sick and has no color is impossible...)

Let's see...where to begin? So, I've mentioned that my babies have been sick. Well we had a definite turn for the worse last Friday night with Emery. She started projectile vomitting chunks of milk. The weekend proved that she just got worse and not better. On Sunday night she threw up and actually choked on her vomit. As in, I had to throw her over my shoulder and beat it out of her because she was turning purple. It was horrible and something I never want to experience again. On Monday morning I called the doctor first thing. At the doctor's office we got two breathing treatments. They didn't really help anything and after getting a second opinion, we were told we had to go to the hospital. The doctor called an ambulance for us because she didn't want any time to be lost because she was struggling and working so hard to breathe. It was pretty traumatic honestly to be told it is so bad, to have to ride in an ambulance and to not be able to call Curt since his phone broke the night before and I don't have his work number...dumb of me I know. 

After getting both babies (Isabelle was home with my mom.) into the ambulance and we headed to Cook Children's hospital. We were put in a room and immediately helped. Curt's mom took him to get our car and he arrived not too long after we got there...maybe 20 minutes or so later. Emery was given another breathing treatment while waiting for our turn to get a chest x-ray. She also had her nose deep suctioned out to help her breathe and to get a sample to be tested for RSV. The nurse and doctor were positive that's what she had since she had all the signs: trouble breathing, pulling of the chest with every breath, irregular breathing, thick mucus, modeled skin, lethargic and a deep cough. Emery had to get an IV for fluids since she was throwing up a decent amount. (She threw up because she would cough so hard...not because it was a symptom.) She did very well and didn't even cry. The tests did confirm that it was RSV and the x-ray let us know it wasn't in her chest...thank goodness. Even though it wasn't in her chest, the doctor told us that we would have to be admitted to the hospital...so admitted we were. The reason was mostly because of her chest pulling with every breath and babies that young who get RSV are at high risk for apnea. 

It took several hours of waiting until we were taken upstairs. That walk was very emotionally hard for me. I did not want to be there and I definitely did not want to stay there. Once we got to our room it just got harder. The crib for Emery looked more like a metal prison and it was so cold, both literally and figuratively. Every nurse that came in our room asked if Ella had RSV "yet." It was just breaking my heart. Tears were definitely shed...

We ended up being in the hospital for a total of 36 hours. Overall she did so well with all the nose sucking, blood being drawn, a diet of Pedialite, lack of being held, heart monitors etc. She did have some set backs with throwing up and stuff, but overall she started to get better and we went home Tuesday afternoon. 

Since coming home, she's continued to improve. It's been a while since throwing up and she's definitely had her appetite improve. She's getting color back in her face and we haven't sucked her nose at all today. She does however want to be held all the time...and so does Ella so it's been a rough rough day.  Especially since we've been trying to keep them away from each other...

Through it all, we've definitely seen a miracle. The nurses couldn't seem to emphasize to us enough how contagious RSV is. However, Ella hasn't shown any symptoms at all and neither has Isabelle, Curt or I. We couldn't be more thankful for this!

Newborn Pictures

A week and a half ago we had newborn pictures done of Ella and Emery. We wanted to do them earlier so they would be asleep as much as possible, but with all the sickness at our house we had to cancel several times. Unfortunately the girls weren't very cooperative so we don't have a ton of pictures, but we have several that I love of each girl. Here is a link to the photographer's blog so you can see a sample of the images. Plus you can get a really good picture of each of them and know what they look like. Click HERE.