Week in Review

Here are some pictures from our trip to Denton for a wedding this past weekend in which Kenny was the Best Man for his best friend Terrell. A HUGE thank you to Uncle Stevie for watching the boys while we went to the wedding and to my parents for watching them Friday night. But first here are some random shots of the boys.

They love to be naked if you can't tell!

Painting on the back porch

Mainly they painted each other

I'll call this one "Let's go pee pee in the grass Enew"

On Saturday we went to lunch with some of my mom's extended family, here she is with her cousin and her aunt

It was a beautiful day for an outdoor wedding!

Not sure who this woolly guy is with Granny ;-)

I was so proud of Kenny for giving such a great toast!

Then of course we had to hit up Pappasitos before coming home on Sunday morning

This next series of pictures is from this morning and we'll call them The Great Cheerio Revolt of 2009. This morning started out rough when both boys awoke at a quarter till 5 am screaming bloody murder and unable to be consoled. They ended up in our bed since it was so late and pretty much none of us got any sleep after that. A little while after Kenny left, I noticed the boys were no longer in the bed with me but since our door was locked and I could hear if they were to turn on the water or anything, I decided to just let them play since they were playing so nice and quietly.

Little did I know they were cooperating nicely as partners in crime. Next thing I know there are cheerios bouncing into the bedroom and landing on our rug. I stood up only to discover that the boys had emptied out an entire box of cheerios and decorated every inch of the bathroom with them.

There were mushy wet cheerios in the tub, cheerios crushed on the floor where they stomped on them, cheerios in our luggage, and cheerios mashed into all the floor mats. These photos just don't do justice to the size of the mess I was dealing with, and worst of all not a single one of our three dogs was here to help with clean up. I have a feeling the boys won't be wanting cheerios anytime soon, after a visit with "mr sad spoon" we began the cleanup process. It was taking them forever to pick the mess up themselves so finally I put them in a corner by a large pile of cheerios and made them eat every last one while I swept and wiped up the rest. There is still a fine layer of cheerio powder covering the bathroom.

And since they were still laughing about the whole thing after we finished cleaning, for good measure I made them do a lay down time out on the bath mats for a good thirty minutes while I took a shower and dried my hair. I felt like such a mean mama but I wanted them to remember.

Thank goodness preschool starts tomorrow so I won't actually lose my mind!!

Wedding Weekend

We are in North Texas for the wedding of Kenny's best friend. We came up Friday without the kids for the rehearsal, Kenny is the best man. And then tomorrow the boys are coming up with my parents.

I miss the kids but it's always nice to get a night off!

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Here is a great article from the New York Times about PTSD in NICU parents. I know first hand how true it is.

About 5 months after the boys were born I was really in a dark place. You would have thought the joy that both my kids survived and came home to us would have been enough to erase the trauma that we went through and I'm sure that most people can't understand how this could be either. But this was one of the most difficult times in my life and in our marriage as Kenny too was dealing with the trauma he experienced.

I held it together so well through the NICU stay and once we got home it just all came pouring down on me and I was so very exhausted but unable to sleep. Everywhere I looked it seemed that nothing but bad things were happening. We continued to get so much bad news about long term prognosis that I wasn't able to enjoy the babies as much as I should have because I was constantly on the look out for problems.

My kids were doing fine but I was so used to being in crisis mode that I kept waiting for the rug to be jerked out from under my feet. I couldn't relax or rest, I was expecting the heart monitors to go off or to find one of the babies had stopped breathing. I would lie in bed and have a panic attack wondering if I'd remembered to administer a medication or turn the oxygen and monitors back on after a bath. And everytime I knew someone who was pregnant I constantly worried that something bad was going to happen to their pregnancy.

While I was never "officially" diagnosed with PTSD I feel like it is a better descriptor for what I experienced than PPD. I was never sad or depressed really, I was just a complete nervous wreck, anxious all the time, my heart was constantly racing and I felt like I could never catch my breath.

Nothing can prepare a parent for an experience like this and I don't think the hospital or my doctors were really knowledgeable enough about the parent's ordeal to guide us through the process.

Although we are forever impacted by this experience, God is good and I've felt so much restoration in my life over the last two years. I hope that other parents will be able to get the help they need before it destroys lives and marriages.

Psalm 31: 21-22

Praise be to the LORD, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.
In my alarm I said, "I am cut off from your sight!" Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.

A Big Boy Day

Wednesday was a big day around here, we took the fronts off the boys cribs, turning them into toddler beds aka Big Boy Beds. I was hoping to make it to age three before doing this but since they've been getting out and then our friend Blake broke his arm this week falling out of his crib, we decided it was time. To make the change more special I found some cute new big boy bedding with cars and trucks on it to replace the sweet baby bedding. The first night went really well to my surprise with Andrew being the only one to get up and it was just once. Adam slept much later than normal, 8am and Andrew slept until 9am! The next night Kenny was out of town for work and Adam was challenging me, getting out 6 times before I finally sat in there until they were settled. Last night was perfect and no one escaped!

We also got new big boy buzzed haircuts, I can't believe how old they look!

This is Andrew's new night time brace to help stretch out his heel cord, it's incredibly painful and he wakes up crying about half way through the night and we have to take it off. Poor baby! He calls it his "beddy-bye boot"

Helping Daddy install a new doorknob lock

Time for bed! They were so proud!