Sleeping Babies

I just love looking at my babies when they are sleeping. I get this feeling of peace and calmness surrounding me. Sometimes I think this feeling is a piece of what heaven feels like.

Monkeying Around

This monkeying around is exhausting! Needless to say this picture was taken around, oh, NAP TIME!!!!
Mason saw the "big-wig" doctor today and he wants him to stop his antibiotic. In the NICU, he told me that there is a 50% chance of the hydronephrosis resolving itself and a 50% chance of needing surgery to correct it... the doctor thinks we are heading toward it resolving itself! No surgery!! Yah! Also, he takes a medicine to help with the kidney stones - they didn't see any kidney stones on the ultrasound --- he said the other "big-wig" doctor has to decide if we can stop that medicine, but he thinks it shouldn't be a problem. I will be calling and bugging that doctor tomorrow --- this means we won't have ANY medicines!!
Oh - by the way - no more acid reflux medicine... I decided they didn't need it. So, they spit up a little (sometimes alot)... we can handle that. I would rather them have a little spit up and be a little grouchy here and there then have medicines in their systems that might not be necessary.
How exciting! Maybe Walgreens and Super Value Pharmacy can forget our names for a little while!!

I think my favorite is the second one - Hagen looks so serious.

More Pictures

I took these this morning and thought they were adorable sooo, I thought I would share :-)

Progress

As you all know, Hagen and Mason faired pretty well in the NICU. Mason has small kidney issues that are resolving. Hagen had a grade 3 brain bleed. Before Hagen left the hospital, he had an MRI that showed "minimal damage".
I think the hardest part for me is not comparing. I have no other children, so to see one child progressing rather quickly and see the other child still working the same task is hard. Aunt Cheryl made a good point, if you only had one child you wouldn't noticed the difference. As you saw from the video, Mason is looking at us, cooing, and really getting good at neck control... see picture below. Hagen is working on looking at us. He darts his eyes around alot, which is good, he is curious. He is starting to look at us more. Corrected age for the boys is just under two months, so, he is right on target for his corrected age.
One fun thing is both boys are starting to realize each other's presence. Mason will just stare at Hagen. Hagen looks at him, too. Twice now, I have been burping Hagen and when he burps Mason will get this huge grin on his face and almost laugh. Hagen looks at Mason quite a bit. I just know both of them are starting to realize they know each other from somewhere :-)
Anyway, please pray for Hagen to continue to make progress and Mason to continue to make leaps and bounds. Mason had a kidney ultrasound last week and we should hear from the doctor how it went. Their regular pediatrician already called and told me it is looking better. The specialist will give a better description and tell us the next step - either surgery or continue to let him outgrow it.

Mason's first words!

Poll Results

Thank you to all of you who voted... I thought it was fun, hopefully you had fun speculating.

Baby 1 was..... Jeremy. 52% of you thought he looked like Hagen. 44% of you thought he looked like Mason. Neither got 4%.

Baby 2 was ...... my sister, Amy. I personally thought and still think Mason looks a lot like her. 17% of you said she looked like Hagen. 39% thought she looked like Mason. 43% was neither.

Baby 3 was ...... me (Leslie). 43% of you thought I looked like Hagen. 21% thought I looked like Mason. Both and Neither were 17%.

Baby 4 was.... my nephew, Little Lance. (I had to throw in a wild card... I couldn't find any pictures of Brad Pitt's baby, so I went with Little Lance.) 13% said Hagen or Mason, 8% said both and 65% said neither.

Thanks for playing along!

5 Months Old!

The boys are 5 months old - as of yesterday!
Yet again, we can't believe how much they are growing.

We are also starting a routine in our household. Every morning after "breakfast" I read to the boys. On the weekends, Jeremy helps. I love these pictures of Jeremy helping during storytime!

Ouch!

We went today for the boys' 4 month check-up. They did
great! But - they got 3 shots each!! Notice the bandages...

They are doing fabulous! Check out their growth:

Hagen: 2 month height, 18 3/4" .... 4 month, 23 3/4"

2 month weight, 7 lbs, 2 oz. .... 4 month, 13 lbs, 6 oz.

Mason: 2 month height, 18 1/2" .... 4 month, 23"

2 month weight, 5 lbs., 15 1/2 oz. .... 4 month, 12 lbs., 2 oz.

FootPrints

Have you cast your vote? Don't forget to do that!

I also wanted to show a few more things that really show the boys' growth! The NICU nurses were great about taking footprints of the boys. The pictures are Hagen and Mason's footprints. The smaller one was taken when they were about a week old. The bigger one was taken when they were 4 months old.

Let's Play Some Games!

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Above are some pictures of some really cute babies :-)
Look at them closely... you might know the person or you might not! I am trying something new - hopefully it works... you should see a poll on the right hand side. Make your guesses on who each baby looks like. I will reveil who the babies are one day ;-)

Home on the Range

I will probably eat my words later, but... the crying during feeding has toned down somewhat. BUT, we have now progressed to spitting up/throwing up large amounts of our feeds. Jeremy and I have decided to have one side of our couch cushions be the "spit up" side and one side be the "company" side. If you visit in the near future, please don't flip the cushions over :-) Let me also give you a mental picture of what I mean by large amounts of feeds - the 6 am feeding this morning consisted of Hagen needing a change in clothes and diaper, sheets needing changing, and my shirt and pajama pants being changed. When the boys want to spit up, we don't do a sissy throw up - we go for the all out to impress - spit it all up. Thankfully it is not happening at every feed. But it does make it fun when Jeremy is at home and we keep passing the kids back and forth... kinda like playing hot potato with your kids... who is going to get the explosion, is it going to happen? When is it going to happen?

Last night I put the boys in their Copy and Paste outfits... some of you saw this picture when I first put them in it. I am attaching the first picture, taken June 15th, and the picture I took last night of them! Can you believe how much they have grown!!!







This picture was hard to take, Hagen was total out, not paying attention one bit and Mason was wanting to be held... but I did get this picture out of him:

Isn't that sweet!!! I am having soo much fun making them smile and laugh!!