More about me and our family.

My husband & I met at work back in 2000.  We started dating in 2001 and got married in May of 2004.  We finally decided that we would start our family in 2005 (I wasn't getting any younger and that clock was ticking VERY loud) and we had our daughter, aka the girlchick, in late 2006.  We love our daughter very much, she is the source of a lot of happiness for both me and my husband, but also a source of great frustration since she is just as stubborn as we are if not more so.  But she is our world and we wouldn't change a thing about her. 

It took us some time to decide if we wanted to have more kids.  We are both only children (I say I'm an only child since I grew up that way, I have a 1/2 brother that is almost 11 years younger than I am and we grew up separately, so for all intents and purposes I am an only child, I don't share and I'm very selfish), and we’re very happy to have just one.  We grew up that way and we turned out just fine!  We went back and forth each switching sides several times before actually making a decision.  The deciding factor for me was when my mom passed away.  It was a very, very tough time for me since she and I were extremely close.  I had to go through it all by myself, I felt very alone and felt like I had no one that I could relate to.  I didn't want my daughter to go through that same process when we passed away.  Just dealing with the logistics of it was exhausting - to have a funeral service, to not have one, to have her cremated or to bury her.  It was all up to me to decide what to do.  I wanted help making all these decisions and to know it was what she would have wanted.  Plus dealing with mad relatives who were upset and grieving but took their anger out on me.  It was hard to deal with by myself.

So we decided to try again.  I had to do a lot of convincing of my husband, I was older, our daughter was older and we were settled into a nice family routine.  Plus my husband was in one of the "not having any more kids" phases and was ready to take the big plunge and get "snipped".  I was finally able to talk him into trying for just one more.

So we did it.  It took a little longer than we expected and it wasn't as easy to get pregnant as it was the first time, but it finally happened the good old fashioned way.  We went to the doctor and they had a little trouble trying to find the heartbeat at first, they just chalked it up to being too early and that maybe the embryo had implanted a little higher in the uterus.  So we came back in 2 weeks and they found the heartbeat and everything was going along just as planned, well except for me being EXTREMELY sick. 

With me being such "advanced maternal age" they wanted to do some additional tests that I didn't get when I was pregnant with The Girlchick.  At 12 weeks they wanted to do a Down Syndrome test.  It was a little different than with our daughter and more accurate, they take blood and do an ultrasound to do a nuchal translucency screening test on the back of the neck.  Well when they went to do the ultrasound, I was really sick and was already having issues with my pants buttoning, so I jokingly told the tech to "just make sure there is only one in there", she just laughed like she heard that joke all day long.  She then put the wand on my stomach and two little circles popped up on the screen.  I just kinda looked at it in shock, and waited for her to say something since I wasn't really sure what I was looking at.  Then she said - "yep, there's still two in there", I then said "what????? You're sh^ting me! I can't believe this!  You're serious??????”  She said that she was and I just kept repeating the same thing over and over, and then said I can't believe this, my husband is late for the appointment and you are telling me that we are having twins.  It finally dawned on her that this was a fact that I didn't know before.  Apparently she thought I was messing with her and actually knew there were two in there and trying to play it off like there should be only one.  Then she said well we'll just wait for him to get here, we won't go any further until he gets here.  Right at that moment a knock came and he came into the room.  She waited for him to get settled and put the wand back on my stomach.  Two little circles came up on the screen and I asked him what he saw.  It took him a few minutes and me prompting him several times, but he finally said "wait.... what?  TWO???" and I confirmed that we were having twins, and then he said his famous words that neither of us will forget...... "That’s not in the budget". 

So we were having twins, then the shock came that this was not going to be a normal pregnancy.  They first diagnosed me with Mo/Mo twins – it’s when they share the same amniotic sac as well as the same chorionic sac (which is the outer membrane).  Luckily it turned out that there was a thin membrane separating them.  I ended up having a lot of extra doctor’s visits to monitor everything and in the end had 2 healthy boys that were carried to 37 weeks, which is considered to be full term for twins. 

It has been rather crazy since that day in April 2011.  Poor Girlchick just had her world completely rocked.  Not one baby, but two babies!  Although some say she knew all along – she had it in her head that there were going to be two babies – it’s what she wanted from the beginning, but she wanted sisters and not brothers.  I keep telling her that she will be very happy that she won’t have little sisters getting into her clothes and make up later, but she still insists that she would have rather had little sisters.  Overall she has adjusted pretty well.  None of the craziness that you would expect out of a five year old who now has to share mommy, daddy and grandma.  Although she is more willing to share mom and dad than she is Grandma.  Grandma is very special to The Girlchick and The Girlchick is very special to Grandma.  I hope it stays that way forever. 

Thing 1 and Thing 2, aka the boys, have had a pretty normal start except for getting sick.  With the combination of them being “early” at 37 weeks, and having to go to daycare, they have gotten pretty sick.  Their immune system just isn’t as hearty as it should be since it needed a little extra cook time.  They had to have tubes pretty early at 6 months, and we ended up having to take them out of daycare and switch them to in-home care.  It’s turned out for the best though.  They still get sick, just not as often or as bad.  They will eventually go back to daycare, but we decided that it was best to let them build their systems up a little before they went back.

That is the quick version of our story and gets you up to speed.  The Girlchick is 5 and excited to start kindergarten and the boys are 9 months old. 

Let the journey begin – thanks for joining me along for the ride.