Easter in Escanaba Part 1

We traveled to Escanaba, Michigan which is in the Upper Penninsula.  The kids did great for their first 6 hour car ride. We stopped once at the Mackinac Bridge. We arrived at Uncle Ray's house around 10 pm and Will went to bed. Erin was ready to go and stayed up until midnight. She was having fun exploring everything.

 On Friday morning, we headed into town to visit my grandma. I haven't seen her in almost two years. She has closely followed the babies story. My mom is very good about printing out the blog and mailing it to grandma. She has the whole thing in a binder and reads it often.  My mom also prints off a lot of pictures for my grandma. She shares them with the staff at Bishop Noa. Everyone knows 'the twins' and were so excited to meet the miracle babies.

I couldn't wait for my grandma to meet the babies. My grandma is very special to me and I know that she was very worried about Will and Erin. I wanted her to see that they were more than okay, they were doing great! The kids had fun checking out Oma's (grandma in German- my grandma is from Germany and moved here after WWII when she met my grandpa. That story should be another blog entry. The great-grandkids call her Oma just like we called her mom Oma.)  She even read Will and Erin one of their favorite books, Brown Bear, Brown Bear. After that, we set down the hall for a walk. Will had fun riding on Oma's walker while Erin chose to be carried. Grandma had fun introducing Will and Erin to many of the people she lives with.  When we went to the dining room, the 

Odd enough, the lady in the wheelchair looked like my dad's mom.

babies got cookies (which I didn't mind eating for them) from the food workers. My cousin Jason stopped by to say hi too. After spending the more with Oma, we left so she and the babies could take a nap. It was the first of many great memories created that weekend.

Ready, Set, GO!

15 Month Update

Will and Erin are on the move! Crawling, creeping, and walking behind their walkers. We have caught Erin standing by herself (near furniture) too.  Will has gone from mostly Army crawling to crawling like a big boy, as I like to call it. With this, he is now able to go from crawling to the sitting position. Thank  you Grandma Melanie for teaching Will how to do this.  The kids love their toys and exploring.  Now that our house is on the market, we have had to clean out our living room.  This means that the exersaucers have been banished to the basement. The kids don't seem to mind because they just want to move. Will loves to throw things (balls, small toys and their water bottle rattle with golf tees in it) and then crawl after them. 


Erin still LOVES her books! She crawls to the bookshelf and pulls the books off and 'reads' them. When we are reading to Erin, Will has started to crawl over to the chair and wants to join us. He is learning how to turn the pages and what's under the lift-flaps.
A new trick is carrying toys in their mouths while crawling. Rattles, rubber duckies, shoes (have I mentioned that they like to chew on Erin's shoes with Velcro?) and anything that is small and light weight.They look like little dogs carrying their toys around. Speaking of dogs, Clark is still patient with the kids even though Erin LOVES to pull on his fur. Will doesn't pay much attention to Clark, but Erin is very interested in him. When Clark is laying on the couch, she will crawl over and try to 'pet' him. Sometimes Clark doesn't mind and other times he gets mad.
Both kids have their own walkers (toys to walk behind) at grandma's house. They love to use them in the house and on the driveway.  We took the walkers to Escanaba and Will and Erin walked the halls of Oma's assisted living home (pictures in another blog entry). 
Will has started waving and Erin quickly learned how to do the same thing. Yesterday, Erin gave me a kiss when I asked for one. :-)
The most exciting development is that Erin and Will have started to 'talk' to each other. They look at each other and babble or laugh. It seems like they are already creating their own language. We've caught the kids pushing, biting and hitting each other too. Let the fun begin. 
Erin likes to play with the knob on the stereo. She'll crawl over to it and start to spin the knob.  She looks at us (to see if we are watching) and gives us a naughty smile. We tell her "no-no" and she laughs. (I can see a glimpse into our future!) We move her from the stereo and she crawls back over to it and repeats the above behaviors. It is really hard to not laugh at her because she is really cute!! Now Will has started doing the same thing, except he does play with something else when we redirect him.

Not much has changed with feedings. Erin continues to get 7.5 oz fed via her tube every 3-4 hours while awake. Will gets fed when we feed Erin. He is eating more baby food and drinking less fluid. He does like to eat my pancakes, Grandma Pam's cheesy potatoes and graham crackers. They both love Cheerios, graham crackers and other cereals. Erin loves to eat carbs (crackers, bread, soft pretzels, potatoes, chips, cake), but still no fluids. Erin had a Swallow Study done at the end of March. We learned that when she swallows liquids she is silently aspirating (some of it is coming back up even though she doesn't cough or sputter).  When given 1/4 of yogurt it took her 3 swallows to actually swallow the yogurt. Her tongue doesn't know what to do with the food. The feeding therapist has advised us to not force any liquids including pureed baby foods. If  Erin wants something, we can let her try it, but when she's finished don't force her to eat more.  We always offer her some of Will's food and she loves sweet potatoes, YoBABY! Sweet potato and Apple Yogurt and carrots. Erin will start feeding therapy again in 9 weeks once I am on summer vacation.

This has been a crazy month!! We put our house on the market  April 5 and received an offer on Easter Sunday, April 8.  That offer ended up falling through, which meant that we continued to live in a state of order because we had a showing every day.  It was challenging to get two babies and myself out the door on time AND leaving the house spotless.  I did enjoy coming home to a clean house though.  We had an Open House that was attending by 12 people.  On Monday, April 16 we had another offer on our house.  We came to an agreement on Thurday, April 19.  Our house was on the market for 15 days!  Everything happened so fast that we hardly had time to think.  There is a limited selection of homes for sale in the small area we are looking to move to. 

1 Year Ago Today

What a difference a year makes! How many times have I said that in this blog?  Today has been an emotional day for both Mark and me.

One year ago, Dr. Knee gave Will 1 hour to bring down his vent settings because he was receiving 100% oxygen support when he was on NIPPV.  If he didn't bring down the settings, he would have to be reintubated and would have probably ended up with a trach.  He had been intubated (breathing tube down his throat) for 3 months. I sat by his bedside, wearing my gown and rubber gloves (because he was in isolation) and I put my hand on his tiny body. I prayed and prayed and prayed.  As I prayed, I watched Will's nurse Dea slowly turn down his vent settings. He was very slowly starting to breath without as much O2 support. As she turned down the settings, I prayed harder. My son was not going to have a trach.  I am thankful God answered my prayers and helped Will that day.  I saw God's hand at work with our son.  I was so proud of Will for proving Dr. Knee wrong! It was such an emotional time.

This day was also memorable because the baby in the room next to Will passed away. Her name was Kaydence and she was born at 23 weeks.  She lived for 9 months in the NICU.  We got to know her parents while we were there. On this day, I sat in Will's room and watched Kaydence's dad walk back and forth to the lounge as he called family members to tell them that Kaydence's heart was giving out. She didn't have much time left.  The doctor's had done everything they could do for her. I watched as Kaydence's grandparents, aunt and uncle arrived to say their final good-byes to her.  I sat next to Will's bed as I watched Kaydence's primary nurses come from home to be with her family during this time. I saw nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors cry because a special baby was going to be taken from us.  It was a surreal time to watch people experience the death of their only child.   Words don't even begin to describe this time.  It will be permanently etched in my mind. I hope that no one has to experience anything like it.  As Kaydence left us, I was with Will and Mark was with Erin.  We saw the 0 flash on the screen and we knew at that moment she was gone.  We held our children tighter and cried for all that was lost and for what could have been.  I cried because I knew that this could be Will.  He was still SO sick.  There was no guarantee that he would make it home with us.  Kaydence's passing was a reminder of that. I haven't seen them since that day, but they will forever be in my heart.  We have kept in touch through Facebook. Her parents are amazing people.

What a difference a year makes! We sold our house today!!! It was on the market for 15 days!! We have been working so hard to complete 9 years worth of projects in the 6 days before we listed our house.  Mark has done an amazing job getting everything done! I always knew he had it in him. We have 30 days to be out and we don't have a house yet! We have a few houses in mind, but nothing definite. We want to move near my school, but there aren't many houses for sale. Say a prayer that we find something soon. If not, we'll be living in my mom's basement. This would make my morning commute much shorter because the kids would already be at grandma's house. :-)

Favorite Pictures from March

Everyone was excited that Daddy was home!!

Daddy took Will for his first bike ride! Will fell asleep about 10 minutes into the ride.
Erin was napping so she didn't get to go this time.

Will climbed over his bouncy seat and carefully got himself down. There is such a difference between boys and girls. Erin has NEVER done this before!

Will and Erin spent the weekend with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Pam while we went to Crystal Mountain with our friends. Thank you for taking care of the babies while we had fun with our friends!

Will and Erin walked with Daddy to the coffee shop to get coffee and muffins on Sunday morning.

Grandma's Pictures from March



I actually took this picture before Will got in his carseat to go to grandma's house. It really was warm enough to wear this outfit in March!


My mom is very good about takings a lot of pictures of Will and Erin. We get pictures texted to us throughout the day too. She was nice enough to put all of her pictures onto a thumb drive so that I could have them. Thanks Mom!

Playing outside, but they wouldn't go on the grass.

Both kids love to watch the TV show Mickey's Playhouse. They only watch it for about 10 minutes, but it's pretty cute to see how excited them get when it comes on. I never thought that I would let me kids watch TV at such a young age. Oh well, some times it is a matter of surivial.

The boy loves to climb and Erin has never climbed over anything!

She loves her books!

It was so nice out that daddy rode his bike to grandma's house to pick up the kids. I stopped by and grabbed their stuff and they enjoyed a bike ride home. Again, who would have thought it would 80' in March?

Erin had a picnic while Will was sleeping. And then Will had a picnic while Erin slept.

Easter Egg Hunt



Erin was looking for the Golden Egg!

We took Will and Erin to their first Easter Egg Hunt. I didn't read that it was for ages 2-8, so the kids were a little young. But, they still had fun people watching and playing with the eggs. My mom came along with us and was our personal photographer. We are lucky to have her and her camera. Erin loved walking around and watching all of the kids. Will loved the sucker we let him play with. Everyone had fun and enjoyed the mild weather at the end of March.

'What's wrong Buddy?'

Grandma and Will

Erin isn't sure about the Easter Bunny.

Driving the fire truck.

Standing in the fire boots.