Naples Zoo and some other stuff

Well, the girls went to their first zoo yesterday. My father and I took them to the Naples Zoo in Florida. It went -- OK. Since my Dad is a veteran, he got in for free that day and I got in for a $11.95 as a veteran's dependent (though I'm NOT, since I'm 26!). The girls were free. That was a plus, since pretty much all the animals were asleep and the girls couldn't see them since they weren't moving. (Or maybe they saw, but weren't interested!)

It was also 94 degrees and BRIGHT and SUNNY. I managed to avoid them getting sunburned, but neglected myself and got a little burned. I also managed to leave their sippy cups in the car, so we gave them each a can of lemonade and they spilled a bit at first, but when it got a little less full they were able to drink well from those.

The girls LOVED the fish and turtles in a pond that you walked over -- of course that was all free since it was at the entrance to the zoo! They also liked the zebras, which moved, and a swinging monkey. The only other animal that they could see was the bears, which started to wake up and move before the bear show. Other than that? Nada.

Here is the ONE good picture we got of the girls peering at the massive fish and turtles just below the pond surface:

Lily is on the left. There is also some video, but not the kind I can put on here. Here are a few other pictures just because...

Lily kissing Evie. Evie didn't complain too much!

Sunny Florida...and Happy Father's Day

Since the girls and I are in Florida, we are going to post a bunch of pictures and videos on here for Daddy back home in New York. The girls are enjoying their kitchen, little red car and the swimming pool. Oh, and the black ottoman box that they can get into...

First up: The Box. Two shots, one of them both sitting and one of them both standing.

And this is the little red car. We have to avoid letting them buy a red car when they are of driving age, otherwise we'll have little speed demons on our hands!

This is Lily, laughing so hard her eyes were closed (I swear...it wasn't my crappy camera skills.)

And this is the both of them with little duckies that my father got from the pool place as a little free gift for Father's Day.

AND lastly, a video.

This is the girls in the pool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Q9OolGF1Q

Just follow the link, my computer is being stupid...

More to come!!!

Before-party stomping...

Here is Lily, mostly, before the party. Trying out her new sandals...

Lily and Eve's second birthday party

The party was yesterday and it went well. We had hoped for better weather, but the rain held off until everyone was leaving, so even though it was window, overcast and a bit chilly outside the kids were still able to go out and play for the most part. And they had a great time, running around in the yard and later on, drawing on the driveway with chalk.

Of course Lily and Eve most enjoyed walking as far away from everyone and the house as they were able, so someone had to basically trail them the whole time. Evie especially. They liked their cakes (each had a cake, instead of one big sheet cake) and they loved all their presents. Here is a slideshow of a few pictures:

http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y159/gwenneth2032/Second%20Birthday/?albumview=slideshow

It'll take you to Photobucket. Everytime I tried to embed a slideshow, it bombed on me...

Another blog...

I've taken the leap.

A new blog.

About my book-writing.

Visit http://battleofthebook.blogspot.com/ if you're interested.

Musical Short

Lily figured out her Dad's harmonica. She didn't do it for very long spurts, but I caught her this one time with the video camera. So here you go, Lily's first harmonica performance:

And so she isn't left out, a cute picture of Evie I uploaded today. There are a bunch more pictures where it came from, but my headache is making it hard to deal with the computer screen. For those who don't know, I've been working on a book *after spending many years coming up with the idea* and that has meant a lot of computer time. So my migraine today is colossal.

That's the package their Easter present from my parents came in...

Something for Sunday

I felt like posting something, so here...something happy in the wake of Evie's ER drama. It's funny, but my current obsession with the television show "ER" really did pay off Friday, since I was well aware of everything that was being said and done! It was nice not to be in the dark about things.

First up, Lily being weird...
Lily after we "washed" her hair with a rag. She had all kinds of oatmeal mess in that hair. I had to strip her down, there was so much on her!

Evie peering through a DVD case she got for Christmas.

Evie giving Maddie a kiss at Christmas.

Enjoy!

Evie's ER visit

Friday at about 4 a.m., Evie woke us up whining. It wasn't unusual, but she had a temp of 101, so we gave her Tylenol and brought her into our bed to sleep. At around 8:15, she woke up and was babbling. And she started having a seizure. At first I thought she was just messing around, trying to get out of the bed. But when I looked at her, her eyes were angled up and to the right and she was drooling and twitching rythmically. So I knew it was a seizure.

Because of her history of external hydrocephalus, my first thought was it could be related to that so we called 911. We have a rescue squad literally two minutes away. She stopped seizing when we got her downstairs, so about a minute and a half possibly two minutes later. But she wouldn't look at anything, just stared off into space, and was sobbing uncontrollably. The ambulance came and I went with her to Columbia Memorial Hospital. They took blood, hooked up monitors and took her temp, which at that time was 102.7. So they gave her suppository Tylenol and waited. A few hours later, she was starting to look at me, but not really interacting or anything. The temp was still high, 101, so they had me give her oral motrin. After that, she began to perk up. They took front and lateral chest x-rays, looking for infection to cause the temp, took a cath urine (since she wouldn't pee for us despite drinking two cups of cranberry juice and water). All came back negative, but in the end, she had an ear infection.

The ER doctor diagnosed the seizure as febrile, which means it occured because her temperature spiked very quickly. It doesn't mean it got so high, but rather how FAST it got so high. These aren't THAT uncommon, one in 20 children will have febrile seizures, and they can run in families. I've been told that there have been some in Eric's family. We've been giving Evie round the clock Tylenol and Motrin, we'll be taking her to the ER for a re-check and she's on Amoxycillin for her ear infection.

So right now, all is well, but it was a long Friday morning and early afternoon. I ended up with a migraine from hell since I had nothing to eat, and only a teeny carton of milk to drink from Thursday night until 3 p.m. on Friday. Needless to say, it took until TODAY, Saturday, to squash that monster.

Evie's acting totally normal, for the most part, today. She's eating and drinking, so that's good. The rescue squad guy from the ambulance recognized us at the gas station later yesterday and checked in to see how she was doing. Nice to live in a small village sometimes. And the nurses at the ER wanted to meet Lily when I told them Evie was a twin, since they thought she was so good and cute. *She really was well-behaved, even after she perked up and was awake.*

That was our crappy Friday...thank God it wasn't anything worse and appears to be over.

I do love our new pediatricians though. I called the office when we got home and told them what happened and he got on the phone and talked to me about it, told me what to do if she had another and that he was on call all weekend if it happened again to call him. He also said we'd do an EEG in a few weeks/months just to be absolutely sure it was nothing else that caused it. And then he called back a few hours later to make sure things had calmed down and we were all right. Great!

Suggestions anybody?

I'm looking for kid-friendly vacation ideas. Somewhere in the northeast U.S. We don't want to go far, but we don't know what the kids might be able to enjoy or at least not be a problem at so I'm asking other moms/dads what they think! The girls will be two in May. We wouldn't go anywhere immediately, so we have time to figure it out. I was thinking of going to Pennsylvania, my grandparents used to take us when we were younger to Amish country. But I don't know what there is to DO there other than...uh...look around? We can't afford a big trip or any big amusement parks either.

Is it too early for a zoo of some sort? Is the beach a good/bad idea? Would it be inappropriate to take toddlers to a battlefield park, i.e. Gettysburg? What do you think? If anyone is still reading this, that is!!!

Thanks in advance!

UH...sorry?

Okay, so a "long time" since my last post would be a bit of an understatement. Ages ago might be more apt...sorry about that. Been a bit busy, a bit lazy, a bit uninterested in blogging. I won't promise that the next post will come sooner either!

The girls are doing fine. Still not really "talking" per se, but they are trying to imitate and they seem to understand a lot more words than before. We 've been hanging out with my mother for a while now, but she's going home tomorrow so we'll be back to just us. I'm assuming the girls are still around 25 pounds, but I have no idea how much they really weigh. They are wearing 2T/24 months clothes pretty consistantly now and a lot of the 18-month stuff is getting too small. They'll be 2 at the end of May, so that's not so bad!

They're pretty good at coloring, stacking, looking at books and everything now. They eat almost anything we give them. And they are doing great with their spoons and forks.

And now some pictures, since that's what everyone wants!

First up, Evie:

And then, Lily:

Here is Evie eating a half a grilled cheese sandwich. We don't do this often, since they take WAY too big bites:

Here is Lily eating her sandwich. They love grilled cheese:

And since I'm feeling generous, here is a video of the girls being...the girls:

We'll Miss You

Our family lost a very special someone on Monday.

My grandfather -- Lily and Eve's great-grandfather -- passed away at a hospital on Long Island. He was 87 years old. When I think of Grandpa, the very first thing that comes to mind is how he'd have us cousins lining up every Christmas for that photo session at the kitchen table. Year after year, we'd all stand in our spots. (Or in the early years, sit on the table...) I also think of the videos. The big old camera set up on the stairs. Each person opening their present and showing it to the camera. I recall being rather ... impatient as a child. But those were good times and we'll always have the memories -- and the photos and videos -- to remember them by.

I also distinctly recall a swimming tube ... on Grandpa's head. At Tupper Lake. For those of you who don't remember, or never met or saw him ... this would be the tube in question. On his head. And if memory serves me, there were other funny head-pieces that he sported over the years. I only have the picture of the one. Looks like he ought to be steering a boat down a canal in Venice or something, doesn't it?

Before he was a grandfather, or a great-grandfather, Grandpa was a soldier. My father and brother followed in his footsteps and served in the armed forces as well. My brother is currently in the Marines. The three of them got together last year before my brother shipped out to Iraq and chatted about many things, but the one that will always stick out in my mind was ... them chatting about an old firearm.

We are going to miss Grandpa, especially around Christmas. But I am immensely glad that he got the chance to meet Lily and Eve and that we captured the moments on camera. Here he is with one of the girls, and Grandma with the other. And yes, I'm admitting it, I have no idea who they are holding...

We know he's in a great place now and someday we'll all meet again. For now, we'll have to content ourselves with memories, photographs and stories.

Ice storm and Ice cream

They're calling it the worst ice storm the Capital Region has seen in 21 years, and I would have to agree with that assessment. We got pretty lucky, I guess, since they projected up to 1 1/4 inches of ice for our region and I think we came out with at most one inch. Albany got blasted with closer to two inches. Here are a few pictures the day after the storm:

First, I have to do my artsy ice coating pictures. The first, a leaf and the surrounding grass. Each blade of grass was encased in ice and you could pick up the leaves like mini-ice sculptures.

I thought the dog leash encased in ice was another neat picture...

This is our driveway, covered in downed pine tree branches. More came down to the right and blocked half the road in front of our neighbors' house. A tree also fell across the street in the park and landed on a power line and there was a downed line right across from our house.

These branches snapped off our neighbors' tree and if the fence hadn't been there, might have landed on Eric's car. We were pretty lucky that they didn't actually hit it, you can see how close they got though...

In the backyard, five or six branches came off another pine tree and landed on the back of the garage and the pool. Thankfully, the pool isn't in use nor will it ever be in use, so it isn't really damage we are unhappy about. We're going to eventually take it down anyway.

And now, for the "ice cream" partof the post. I put up the video of the girls eating their ice cream. Here is the happy aftermath: First up is Lily and second is Eve.

We did it!

I'm a little short on time, but I wanted to post this video I took tonight.

The girls finally figured it out -- how to feed themselves with a spoon. Okay, okay, so it was only ice cream and when we give them a spoon and "real food" they just give up on the spoon and eat with their fingers. But this was too cute to pass up!

Enjoy!

A few pics and an update

First, the update. Evie's neurology appointment was fine. She actually only went from 50 to 50 1/4 cm in the 6 weeks since the last appointment, and is still on "her" curve -- albeit way over the normal curves. We go back in 3 months for another check. The appointment would have been fine, if we didn't have to wait 45 minutes. I had both girls, by myself, and they played like angels for the first like 35 minutes. Evie would take her two balls to the nearest other patient and hand one to them. Then take it back and hand them the other. And keep doing it. And doing it. And yeh, doing it again. One old man was having a great time. Lily sat at the little table and chairs nearly the whole time and played with the same toy, over and over again. Then, they got tired. And cranky. And by the time we were called in, Evie was rolling around on the ground yelling and Lily was climbing everything in sight -- the chair, the stool, the other chair, crawling under the desk. It was nuts.

Ok, enough of that. Some pictures!!!

I don't exactly remember what the heck had them laughing so hard, but I THINK it was the cats when we first got them and the girls weren't used to seeing them running around.

NOW, they are quite used to them and Blue will sleep anywhere. Lily didn't seem to mind. She just pet her a little and the cat was in kitty heaven. I'm glad the girls know not to grab and smack the cats.

AND Evie. What can you say about her? She climbed into that toy basket all by herself and was just happily watching Pooh entirely too close to the television. I don't know HOW that could be remotely comfortable with all those hard toys in there, but she was content.

New trick...

I was making the girls grilled cheese, and apparently Evie knew it was time to eat.

She pushed a box over to her highchair and proceeded to climb into it. I went in to put them in their chairs and saw her sitting there, not buckled in, and asked Eric if he had put her in. Nope. She'd done it all herself. Evie was obviously happy with herself, sitting there swinging her legs and looking at me. I put the tray on and then Lily, using the same box, decided I wasn't quick enough and SHE climbed into HER chair too. LOVELY. At least they like them, right?

New words/actions

"Buh" means "bye" -- at least to Evie.

Today she started waving and saying "buh" "buh" and it was very cute! It's pretty consistent too, she did it a number of times. Not always in response to the first FIVE times you say "bye bye", but eventually, she usually does say it and wave. She also learned a new, not-so-nice trick today -- climbing onto a kitchen chair and then climbing onto the kitchen table! She did it again and again, no matter how many times you pulled her off. She can also climb on the end of the recliner, and will if you are sitting in it. Oh, and Evie loves to make a loud, drawn out "oooohhh" sound now too. I almost think she was trying to say "more" the other day, but not sure about that. We're still working on "mama" and "dada" too. No go there.

As for Lily, well, she MIGHT now understand what you want when you say, "Give me a kiss." She sometimes leans her head in toward your face. She doesn't actually kiss or anything, but it's a start. She's great at climbing into recliners too. At home, she'll climb on the recliner and then nosedive across the arm onto the couch and climb across that too. At Grandma and Grandpa's, she climbs on the fireplace hearth and then into the rocking chair recliner and then stands on that to turn the light switch on and off. She isn't doing the "buh" "buh" thing, but she is making all sorts of other noises.

They are both making a lot more noise than they used to so I guess the next step is to get the noises to become words and real sounds!

On another note, we'll be going to the new pediatrician Friday. Finally... and Evie has another neurology appointment on the 19th. We'll hope that is just another in and out appointment. She's gone up .5 cm in weeks. And Lily has gone up the same...sooo....yeh.

Halloween

Here are a few pictures of the girls in their Halloween costumes. We aren't going OUT this Halloween, but my mother brought these from Florida so we put them on and the girls ran around in them. I don't have time to post much else, so hopefully this will hold you all over for a bit.

Sunday Scenes

Here is a few moments of our life. I hope you enjoy them.

First, the girls dancing to Pooh singalong tape.



Next, Evie has something she wasn't supposed to have...



And lastly. Lily saying "dog" and some other...stuff.

Rebel Lily

The last few nights Lily has decided that sleep is for the dogs and Evie and she has no interest in sleeping in her crib. She sits there, feet stuck through the crib bars and hands playing with them, crying. Just tears falling all over, cry cry cry. She has a little runny nose and is teething, but this has never been a problem before. She was perfectly willing to sleep on me in MY bed this morning, but that's it, no where else. Her bed is taboo or something. I've tried giving her something to drink, a bite to eat, Tylenol for her teeth, Orajel, anything and everything. But she just won't go to sleep. She does it at nap times and at bedtime. She won't sleep for more than a few hours at a time at night, when she used to sleep a good 10 hours. Evie will wake if Lily gets loud enough and THAT is torture!

I'm hoping it's just a little sickness. Evie is on medicine for her cough and runny nose, and I think Lily might have caught whatever her sister has. Lily isn't coughing, but has the runny nose and a lowgrade fever which I've been trying to keep down with medicine and lots of fluids. Maybe this no-sleep thing is just a consequence of her not feeling great. But judging by the girl that crawled and walked all over the baby shower we went to today, I'm not sure she's all that sick...

Hoping to get more sleep tonight, though I promised the readers of my "Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" fanfiction another chapter soon...and I haven't even started it! So much for the update a night trend I had going. Ah well. I wrote 67,000 in two weeks. Spending only about 3-4 hours a day on it. (I say only, but I guess that's quite a bit for many people...)

We may be all right.

I finally got a call back from the pediatrician.

After fretting ALLLLLL damn weekend, not sure what the heck his partner had said on Friday and not getting a call back from him. Worrying over what turns out NOT TO BE THE CASE.

He said he looked at the CT report and the fluid is around the outside, (outside being KEY) and he said that means it should go away on its own. We still have to go see a neurologist for more information and closer monitoring. And we are changing pediatricians since I can't believe they couldn't take one minute out of their day on Friday to make this clear for us. We were beside ourselves all weekend.

We can still use prayers and thoughts, since it still has to GO away on its own, not get worse. Thank you to all of you who kept Evie in your thoughts over the weekend. We appreciate it!

I'm nearly positive we have more CT scans, maybe even an MRI in the future, depending on what the neuro says when we see him or her (I'm hoping for a her for once...) Best case, we go in and they look at the first scan and say, keep an eye of out "this, this or this" and if you don't see anything like that, we'll see you in 6 months. Perhaps measure ourselves in the meantime, whatever, I'm a pro at measuring from NICU.

I think that's all for now. By the end of the week we should have the girls' medical records in hand to deliver to our new pediatricians, who were the ones who my brother and I saw as children. Let's hope they show a little more regard for our feelings and more care for the children.