Easter

Mark 16:1-6
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. 

Easter is a fun holiday but let's never forget the real reason. HE HAS RISEN!

I keep trying to say this is the twins' first Easter. It's not. Last year was their first. Last year at Easter the twins were just a few weeks old. They were both in incubators fighting for their lives. Leila was so sick. We really couldn't think of anything else but those babies and were just trying to get through each day minute by minute. I guess that's why I keep trying to say this is their first.

I'm not sure if we'll do the whole Easter Bunny thing or not but we did go get a picture with him this year for the fun of it. The best picture we could get is below. This pic was taken right before Leila started screaming her lungs out at him :)

Today, the first Easter we could celebrate as a family of four, was a good day. The babies received their first Easter baskets with lots of goodies including some candy to try. My parents were able to come out and have Easter dinner with us. 

Logan went to the store with me Saturday night. He kept his ears on the whole time :)

I kept trying to get a pic of Leila with her goodies but
she was too focused on getting into it...

My bunnies :)

She LOVED her sucker!

Playing with Mama

Holding herself up! Yay!

My big girl!

Can you hear me now?

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge HIM and HE shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

Sometimes it's really hard to understand why things happen in our lives. We don't have the answers. We don't know what the future holds. The not knowing is hard for me. One thing I do know however is how thankful I am that I still have both my babies. I can still hold my babies and play with them. I can tell them I love them a hundred times a day. We still have struggles ahead but we can deal with that. Some people aren't that fortunate. We don't always know the why but we have to have faith and trust in the ONE who does have the answers.

Please keep those who still have babies fighting in the NICU, whatever situation they are in, in your prayers. There are so many fighting not only prematurity but also rare diseases and such. Seeing their stories every day makes me so thankful that even though we had to go through what we did and even though we still have some fighting to do, I still have my babies to hold.

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Because of the twins prematurity we had to go have their hearing checked again. Apparently, almost everything they had to have done in the NICU can affect their hearing. All I could think of was that cell phone commercial..."Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?"

I mean, how in the world do you check a baby's hearing? If you're wondering like I was, there are two different ways. I'm not sure how they did it in the NICU because I wasn't there for it but today the audiologist used two different machines. The first was a machine that had ear buds attached to it. She put the ear buds in the baby's ears one at a time to measure how the inner ear reacted to sounds. The second machine looked a lot like the first but measured how the eardrum reacted to the sounds. It was pretty simple but she had to run the tests several times. The babies had to be completely still to get good results. Do you know how hard that task is?!?

Good news. BOTH babies passed their hearing tests with flying colors! Yay babies! Thankfully that's not something we have to worry about.


Leila is continuing to make progress in her therapy. Her therapists seem excited about how fast she is progressing. My girl is rockin' it!

We are thankful for every ounce of progress and every good result!

Thank you for your continued prayers and love.


As always, here's some pics.

Look at that belly!!!

Daddy/ daughter time.

Feeding myself!

Daddy/ son time.

Somehow he got his arm out by himself while I was
getting their food ready...

My big girl in big girl clothes today to go to the doctor.

These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things

Nothing really new has happened in the past couple days. I just thought it would be fun to post a few pics and tell you about some of the twins favorite things. 

~Leila~

Food
She loves any and all fruit and sweets. This girl is definitely my child! She LOVES anything sweet! She's pretty picky about vegetables. She HATES peas and will choke and gag on them. She will however eat anything if it comes off my plate...

Toys:
monkey rattle, her Oball, BeeBall, IPhone

Leila and her Oball

Least Favorite Item of Clothing: 
Headbands. She screams every time I put one on her. She will however let me put bows in her hair.

Favorite Thing to Do
Sit in her Mommy's lap. She's my little sidekick. Always. Her other favorite is playtime at night before her night time bottle before bed. She loves for us to tickle her.

Random: 
After her nightly bath she gets really wound up. She makes a motorboat sound. We can't get her to do it any other time besides right after her bath...

                                            This is how wound up she gets at night....


~Logan~

Food
He likes just about anything. He has even tried lemon and didn't even make a face. Last night Brian and were eating cookies. He made his way over to us, grabbed a cookie off the plate, and had a big bite in his mouth quicker than we could move to stop him.

Toys
Anything other than toys. He will play with boxes, papers, or anything else other than toys. He gets bored really quickly.

Least Favorite Item of Clothing
Socks. He will not keep them on his feet. Always pulls them off.

Favorite Thing to Do
Pull up on everything. His favorite place is under the kitchen table. He fits perfectly under it.

Random
Logan loves theme songs, especially Smallville and Big Bang Theory. Whenever he hears one of these he stops whatever he's doing to look at the t.v. He gets really excited and even fist pumps. We have no clue where he got that. It's one of those things he just completely started doing on his own. Check out this video and you'll see what I mean :)

Ready for a nap...

Ready for the doctor.

"Helping" with laundry again.

Mom had fun with my hair while I was asleep...

Update from Eye Specialist

Leila is coming along in her therapy. Each week we go they seem excited by her progress. We work really hard at therapy and at home to ensure she has the best chance possible.

Last Thursday we went back to the eye specialist. When Leila gets tired her eyes still wander a bit. By our last conversation I was expecting glasses. Instead, he wants to do surgery to strengthen the eye muscles.  If at all possible we would like to avoid our little girl going through another surgery. Yesterday, I spoke to her therapists to see if there was anything we could do therapy wise to work on strengthening the eye muscles without surgery. The therapists told me they do not like this surgery and why. They feel it is unnecessary and have seen cases where the surgery does more harm than good.  They said there are things to do besides surgery. Now, Brian and I need prayers. We have another hard decision to make. We pray there will be enough improvement by the time we see the eye doctor again that he won't want to do surgery anymore.

I think we need a padded house for Logan! He is everywhere and into everything. He has no fear and tries to climb up on and just let go of things. The poor guy falls A LOT! He has his first tooth pushing through. He's been a pretty cranky little thing the last couple of days. Hopefully it comes on through quickly :)

If you haven't seen these yet, here are a few of the twins 12 month pics.

and some random ones...

Long Time No Posts...

We are going to try to get back into the habit of updating the blog. We know it's a been a while. As you can imagine it's hard to get a chance to sit down these days.

The last we posted was after Leila's surgery was scheduled. Honestly, Brian and I were having a really hard time with it. We prayed for months about the fluid on her brain. When you pray earnestly about something for months and then you don't get the answer you want it's hard not to question God.  We wanted to know why He wasn't healing our little girl when we both really felt like the situation was going to go the other way. 

It's incredibly hard to watch your baby go in for surgery after surgery and to know this one needed to be done but having it done also meant the possibility of revisions (more surgeries) that could happen at any point all throughout her life. 

Anyway, Leila had her shunt placed on October 10th and praise the Lord we are at the point where we will only have to check in with her neurosurgeon once a year (unless we have concerns that something is wrong). She has done very well with it. 

This winter we have definitely not been out of the house much at all. All of the twin's doctors warned us multiple times of the danger of them getting sick so we have done our best to keep them healthy. So far we've only had to fight off a couple colds all winter long. We want really bad to get back into church. Hopefully once flu and RSV season over we can do that. 

Now for a little update on what they've been doing lately...

Logan has been doing an army crawl for a while now. Just yesterday he started crawling the right way :). He's getting pretty quick and follows me around the house like a little puppy dog. He pulls up on anything he possibly can. He's into everything. He's so smart. He even knows how to use the tv remote. He babbles all the time. He's Mr. Independent and thinks if you can do something, so can he. He's definitely my wild child.

Leila is very smart and definitely knows how to get what she wants. She's the princess. She also babbles all the time.  She's behind on her motor skills so about a month ago we saw a developmental doctor at Vandy. This doctor diagnosed her with CP but said she sees a lot of potential. Leila tries so hard and wants to be doing things right beside her brother. We've started therapy seeing PT and OT every week and I work with her at home every day as well. Her therapists have high hopes for her (so do we!) and are impressed by how quickly she is progressing. I'm so proud of her. She works so hard. We know she's going to great things :).

A major milestone was celebrating their FIRST BIRTHDAY!!! So many people to thank in helping us get to this day! Thank you to the angels who came by helicopter the day they were born to help save their little lives. Thank you to the doctors and nurses and all our family and the few friends who have  helped us through it all from day one to the present! We love you and are thankful for you all!

my pretty boy

"helping" mommy with laundry

Testing out daddy's guitar

brother/ sister love

having fun playing together

Happy Birthday Leila and Logan! (party to come in June)

the aftermath :)