Welcome to our family!

Roman Kent and Maren ???? were born last night.  Maren came first at 10:07 and Roman followed at 10:17.  Both are very healthy, 8s and 9s on their APGARs.  Roman was 6lbs 2oz and Maren was 5lbs 7 oz.  They each have a good amount of hair, but Roman wins there.  He’s kind of got a bit of a mullet actually!  I would say that Roman looks more like Julie and Maren more like me, at first glance.  And Roman even has 2 webbed toes like his big brother Peyton – the same 2 toes in fact.  I had thought that was an anomoly with Peyton, but maybe Julie and I have some  funny little gene thing there I guess.  It’s pretty amazing and overwhelming to see 2 little babies laying there together that you have to take care of.  Already we’ve experienced some of the awkward juggling to get babies back and forth to Julie for feeding and stuff.  It was one of the highlights of my life to see these 2 come into the world.  Truly an amazing experience.  You can check out their pics on our flickr section to the left.

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Final Pre-Delivery Twins Update

Well, the delivery date has changed.  The doctor called this morning and asked if we can reschedule to TONIGHT!  I guess there are a bunch of inductions scheduled for tomorrow morning at the hospital and so the dr. wants us to come in early.  Whoa.  So most likely they will be born today, on Aunt Jenny’s birthday!  We go in at 6:00 tonight.  That’s crazy.  I’m at work right now and was planning on working until 2 or so, then going home and getting some things done before having a long night’s rest before the babies would come tomorrow.  But I guess those plans are changing!  I’ll now be leaving here shortly.  Thanks to Aunt Meg and Jill for helping us tonight and over the next couple days with babysitting, etc.  We’ll DEFINITELY need it!

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Backing In

OK, I have to vent.

I HATE it when I’m behind someone in a parking lot or parking garage and they decide they’re going to back in to a parking space. I understand why backing in is better. It makes for a SAFER departure, so you’re not backing out into traffic winding through the parking lot (although in the middle of the day, I personally think it’s safer to back out because your reverse lights are on so others can see you, whereas pulling out forwards your headlights won’t be on). It makes for a QUICKER departure as you flee the scene of the crime. I understand all that. Backing into your parking space CAN be good. But NOT if you’re holding up the rest of the cars behind you, who first have to stop when they realize you’re not actually pulling into a parking space on the left and soon to be out of the road, but in reality turning sideways to prepare for your rear entry. Then we have to wait while you slowly back your car into the space, often times requiring a couple of readjustments along the way because you didn’t align yourself right the first time. This is especially the case with I-Need-A-Giant-Truck-To-Compensate-For-Other-Inadequacies-Guy, who despite his best efforts and multiple realignments STILL ends up taking up 2 parking spots. Meanwhile, those of us behind you wait, fuming while 2 or 3 more cars pull up behind us, all waiting to get past. So back in WHEN you’re not being followed and you’re not going to hold up the rest of the parking lot. Otherwise, save it for your driveway.

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Twins Update Again

OK, a second one for the day. Julie just got back from the doctor. He wanted to check her out after last night’s events. He said she’s definitely getting close to a 5 and doesn’t want her walking around at a 5. If her water breaks or she starts into labor he said it would go very fast – probably TOO fast. So he scheduled her to be induced on Thursday, 2 days from now, if she hasn’t gone into labor on her own by then. We went to Davis Hospital last night. Julie’s doctor can go there, but he told Julie this morning that he definitely would prefer that she go to Ogden Regional. That’s where all his other patients are, so if there were multiple deliveries happening at the same time he probably would not make it to Davis for us. Plus, they have one of the top rated NICUs in the country. Not that he thinks we’ll need it, but just to be safe. It’s a couple minutes longer drive than Davis, but not much.  So we’ll be at Ogden Regional thursday morning, if not sooner.

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Twins Update

Julie was having a lot of contractions last night when I got home from work. So she settled into the recliner and began counting and timing. They were coming pretty regularly and she was having constant lower back pain so after about 3 hours, she called her mom and dad to tell them she thought it was time. They were coming up to stay with our kids while we went to the hospital. I ran around and got everything ready to go and while we waited for her parents to come, everything started to slow down. We decided to go in anyway, thinking they may start up again at any time. They didn’t. At least not with any real frequency again. So after monitoring Julie for a couple of hours, they just sent us home. Oh, that’s hard to get your hopes up, get excited, and then just go home to wait some more. But both babies were doing great. Julie was dilated to a 4+ and 70% effaced. So it’s getting closer…

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Twins Update

Closer and closer…

Julie went to the doctor on Wednesday and was dilated to a 3+. That evening for a bit she was having some good contractions it seemed, but then everything settled down. That’s good because we don’t want to get them here TOO fast. The Dr. said that if the babies had been born that day there would be a 20% chance they would have to be in the NICU, but that one more week drops that down to about 1%. Julie’s doing pretty good. She sees the end in sight and has been pretty positive and upbeat. I think that’s also helped by the fact that Julie’s mom has come up to help once a week for the last 3 weeks. Plus Megan and Katie have come up a couple times to help recently too. All of that help has been awesome for Julie and we are so thankful for that.

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The Great Mouse Caper

The mudroom

The covered gap

The mouse hole and glue board

Mouse caught!

Be thankful you are not me.

This morning, I woke up as usual, bright and early at 5:00 am and got dressed to go to the gym. I recently finished the mudroom in our house and when I reached in the cubby to pull my shoes out, a little furry thing brushed my arm as it raced out. Apparently I’d spooked a mouse out of it’s nice, warm, sweatsock smelling new home. He raced to the left and under the door into the closet in the mudroom.

I’m glad it was me because if this had happened to Julie, the twins would have been born on the spot. Being the cool, calm, collected man that I am, I knew that if I opened the door and tried to get the mouse with a shoe, he would probably be much quicker than me and get away some other place. I also knew that if I left at all he might get out and end up who knew where. It was only 5:00 am so I was the only one up. Julie was in the recliner in our room and it’s a monumental task for her to get out of it so I didn’t want to call her to come help. Somehow I needed to secure the mouse while I could get traps. What to do, what to do… Lucky for me I’d watched plenty of MacGyver growing up. I looked around and there just happened to be some wrapping paper in the mudroom. Also some tape. Hey it’s Christmas! MacGyver got lucky sometimes too! The gap was too tall to be covered by the tape alone. So I grabbed the wrapping paper and tore off a piece long enough to cover the bottom of the door. Then taped all around the wrapping paper to seal the gap completely. Then I went to see if we had mouse traps. No luck, so I went to the Wal-Mart down the street and got a nice flat glue board.

When I got back and walked in the mud room door I heard the wrapping paper rustling a bit. He was trying to get out. I knew that paper wouldn’t hold up long against mouse teeth so I had to hurry. I taped the glue board to the floor right in front of the wrapping paper and then got a knife and cut a little perfect sized mouse hole in the bottom of the paper so there was now a way out. Then I waited. He didn’t come. Too smart for that I’m sure. So I turned the downstairs lights off, but turned on the bathroom light so some light would spill over into the mudroom and through the mouse hole, letting him know there was a way out. That did the trick. 5 minutes later I had our mouse! So that’s my excuse for missing my workout today!

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Twins Update

OK, so a bunch of posts today…Julie went to the doctor again today and everything is tracking well. Both babies are head down, which means it should be smooth sailing. Unless there’s some monumental movement over the next few weeks (which, to be honest, I can’t imagine there’s ANY room for) the girl will be born first. The girl is extended along Julie’s left side and the boy is kind of folded in half, with his bum at the top of Julie’s belly and his feet down by his head, with both their heads right next to each other. The doctor is impressed with how great Julie’s doing and that she hasn’t had to go to the hospital or have anything out-of-the-ordinary done to take care of her. Julie really IS miserable though and talks about how hard things are right now. She can’t wait to be done. We’re hoping to have them the week before or after Christmas and the doctor said the way things are going right now, he thinks it will just happen on its own. She was dilated to probably a 2, he said. But he said that if it doesn’t he is fine to induce her after 36 weeks (which would be December 20th) if she wants him to. I don’t know if she’ll really want him to then or not. I’m pretty sure though, that if she makes it to the 27th, she’ll definitely have him induce her then. She can barely walk and even sleeping is very difficult for her. The babies are both doing fine. The girl is over 5 lbs now. I think Julie and I would both feel OK with having the babies as long as the girl is over 6 lbs. We’ll see what happens next week.

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Does this kid need a camera for Christmas or what?

Soren is a budding photographer.  He is always stealing our camera, wandering off, and taking pictures with it.  Thank goodness for digital cameras!!!  Otherwise he’d be in big trouble for wasting tons of film.  Every time we download pictures there are always at least 20 – 30 that we’ve never seen before.  Lots of them are actually pretty good.  He likes to experiment and the last round was a self-portrait session I guess.  He’s obviously having lots of fun.  So I thought I’d share the results with you all…

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Parent trash talk!

My kid’s easier than yours! My kid is so easy, she makes the ABC’s look like university research. My kid is so good, it would take 2 of me to be more relaxed. That’s right, yo!

I’m talking about Eden. Man, I swear she is the best baby/toddler ever. We were certainly blessed with her when we were as we went through some difficult things and having this hard pregnancy. She slept through the night basically from the start. She sucked her thumb like it was candy – when she was a baby and it was nice for her to have a “binky” of sorts. But then she quit completely overnight all on her own when she was 8 months old and we were kind of starting to want her to quit. She has always been able to play very well on her own, which made this pregnancy so much easier for Julie. She’s always so happy and easy going. She’s always been so easy to put to bed — just go in her room, lay her down in her crib, put a blanket on her and she just lays there with this cute angelic expression when you leave and she goes right to sleep.

Well, last night was another example. We’ve rearranged bedrooms to make room for the twins. Even though the twins probably won’t sleep in their cribs for the first couple of months, but in our room, we still wanted to get kids rearranged now. So Soren moved in with Peyton and Eden gets to move in to Logan’s room on the bottom bunk. One of the reasons we wanted to do this a while before the twins move into the nursery was so that Eden didn’t feel like she was getting kicked out of her room by the twins. So anyway, last night was the first night in her new “big girl” bed. So we went in, I laid her down on her new bed, and put a blanket on her. The look on her face said she was a little concerned and she even said “no” a couple times. So I sang her a little song, then walked out. She cried for about 5 seconds and I thought “well, maybe it’s not going to work tonight”. But then she stopped. I was expecting her to get out of the bed and walk out since the bedroom door was wide open and the hall lights were on. But she didn’t. A couple minutes later there was one more little cry of about 5 seconds and then that was it. I went in and took these pictures about 10 minutes later. She didn’t wake up until 7:00 am, about her usual time. So easy! I hope the twins will be half as easy to take care of as she has been, because we’ve certainly been spoiled with her.

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