Madi Home......ummm, a few days ago

So it turns out having two babies home is a little tiny bit harder then having one baby home. As such, sleep has come before blogging much of the week. Seeing how it's the weekend and Lizy won't sleep anyway I thought it high time to update everyone on the latest and greatest.

As I mentioned Madison is home! She broke out last Monday and has been doing great. It does seem we gave the nick name Cranky Pants to the wrong baby. Wow this child has some good lungs on her. Seems there is a three hour span each night she would rather keep us up than sleep, so up we stay. Despite her night crankiness we love having her home with us and she is so much fun. She loves her swing and especially loves the TV, so far baseball is her favorite, golf seems too boring. She is almost six pounds, 5 lbs 14 oz Wednesday at the Pedi's appointment. *editors note, the babies gain about 1 oz per day so as of this writing Madi is most likely over 6lbs. Below are some pics of the trip home.

Mommy needs the pic of the last temperature taking.

Elizabeth is still doing awesome. It is now confirmed she really is our calmest baby, despite the yelling I am hearing over the monitor right this second. Its really more of whimper compared to the sounds we are sure to hear later from her little sis. And man can this girl eat! She will eat whatever you give her and look up as if to say whats next. She is our biggest, weighing 6 lbs 2 oz on Wednesday. She sleeps a lot but has her moments where she is active. Okay funny thing just happened. I always make fun of Amy-Jo when she lays in bed before me because she will lay diagonal across the bed leaving no room for me, I call her a diagonaler. Well it turns out Lizy is a diagonaler too. I just went in to check on them and she was laying diagonal across the bed kicking Madi as she moved, too funny.

Finally our Logan. He has had a tough time learning to eat from a bottle. I went to visit him on Tuesday (with only 2 hours of sleep after Madi's first night home) and boy did we have a battle. I wrestled him for 45 minutes to finish and boy was I ready for a nap. I called Amy-Jo pretty upset as it seemed like it could be awhile before Logan would make it home, and even when he did were we in for a treat. The docs were thinking it was reflux, and as the feed went on it would hurt more and more causing him to kick and scream. I went back on Wednesday and tried it again, with similar results. But about half way through the feed I noticed after he burped he did pretty good for a few minutes but would soon revert back to kicking and screaming. The nurse on duty that day suggested that instead of being reflux maybe he was getting a lot of air and caused him to be very gasy during the feed. She and the Occupational Therapist talked and decided to start him on Dr. Browns bottle system which helps reduce air intake. I bought them Wednesday and took it to him on Thursday, and WOW what a difference. He finished in 10 minutes, with no crying. He finished every bottle they gave him that day, and the next and the next. He is now on 8 bottles a day and is scheduled to come home Monday or Tuesday. Unbelievable what a difference a bottle can make. He actually may be our easiest baby to feed now. We are so excited at the idea of having all 3 babies home with us. We can always sleep when we're old anyway.

Big week coming up. I am off work starting Wednesday and AJ's mom is coming back to stay with us for a month. Could not be more excited. I know crazy my mother in-law is coming to stay for a month and I am excited. I actually really like my mother in-law so even if we weren't desperate for help this wouldn't be a bad thing. After which my mother is planning on staying for several weeks which would put us through May with someone here to help.

Sisters Reunited

First Doctor Visit

Easter Morning with their gifts from the Easter Bunny

Family Pics

Elizabeth's hospital photos, lets just say she was not happy about them and did not want to open her eyes.

Logan, Elizabeth, and Madison reunited

So Mr. CP is a ham in front of the camera, Madison was not very happy which I do not blame her as it was her feed time.

Mommy, Logan, Elizabeth, and Madison

Elizabeth, Logan, and Madison (L to R)



Our first family photo after a long day.

Lizy on the left and Madi on the right

Just the boys

Okay, so I am a little sentimental. This is the last time Elizabeth was going to have her temperature taken at the hospital. For me it was hard, they are already growing up so quickly!

Let's Rock n' Roll...

Elizabeth napping with Mommy

Elizabeth is doing great at home and has her own protector, that's right we had nothing to worry about with Blue. For those of you that don't know Blue is our dog or our hairy little child. Whenever she makes a noise he runs in, seriously runs fast, to check it all out. The first night Elizabeth was home Blue got less sleep than Mommy and Daddy did, he stared at her all night and you could tell just by looking at him in the morning. It is safe to say our children will be very protected as he has always protected Mommy.

Madison is scheduled to come home tomorrow afternoon, we cannot wait. I walked in today to see her gavage tube was out...YEAH! Now we just have Mr Logan to go. Logan is back on partial breast milk and is doing better. They also started him on Zantac a couple days ago and that has helped him tremendously.

Love - Amy-Jo

Lizy is Home!

Well the first of our trio is home safe and sound. The nursery is still half done (waiting on some furniture) but we are home. Looks like Madison might be headed home Monday or Tuesday as well. Logan starts back on breast milk tomorrow, after Amy-Jo has a 24 hour "cleanse" of all the dairy from her diet. Until further notice she is banned from all milk, cheese, and yogurt, not fun but hopefully this will help get Logan home soon.

I have come up with a new process for getting pictures on the blog which should be a million times faster. This will hopefully allow us to add more often. Okay its 2 AM time to feed then off to bed for a quick nap.

The race home

Okay so we are getting really behind on our updates. I am planning on doing my best to update the last couple weeks, and then promise to start posting smaller updates more often. It may only be one or two lines but at least we will keep current. And we will try to keep the pics coming as well. Their current weights are Madison 5lb 7.9oz, Elizabeth 5lb 8.9oz, and Logan 5lb 7.2oz. See the last post for the most recent photos and we promise to get more on here after this weekend.

Lots to discuss and I will go baby by baby, reverse birth order style.

Madison -
Madison was the first to take a bottle with any kind of regularity. We thought for sure she would be the first one home, (she won't, more on that later) but she kind of leveled off on us. She quickly went to taking 2 - 3 bottles per day but kind of stopped there for awhile. She LOVES to sleep. You have to wake her up for like 5 minutes before she finally accepts the fact you are not going to leave her alone. She is a lot like me in that way, to this day I hate morning (so does AJ but she would never admit it). Once she is awake she takes the bottle great, but they are not pushing her to take more...yet. She is up to 5 bottles per day so we are slowly gaining. For the most part she is very mild mannered, does not cry to often and when she does its not for very long. Our goal is to have her home in about a week.

Elizabeth -
Elizabeth is our big eater. Her and Logan were a week or so behind getting started with feedings but she has taken off! She will eat what ever you put in front of her and when its gone ask for more. She quickly went from 1 bottle to now 8 bottles! Yep that's right 8 bottles a day and for those in the know, that means she is getting closer to coming home. We think she will come home as early as Friday, maybe Saturday, but very soon. She is alert for almost every meal, she wakes up about 30 minutes before and just kind of looks at you with her big eyes asking for her bottle. She will start to fuss a little if you wait too long, and if you try to give her the paci she spits it out immediately and looks at you as if you are crazy for even trying to fool her. She wants nothing to do with it unless it has FOOD! Which obviously is great because this means she gets to come home. Of the three she is easy the calmest baby. You rarely see her cry or fuss, she is happy just sleeping and eating.

Logan -
Logan, what to say about our little man Logan. He has had a rough start with the feeding. He had some minor internal issues (minor in the fact they are not fatal, just very painful) that has really held him back. He was doing okay with the feeds, only okay because we have quickly learned that Logan is a little, umm, lets go with moody here. He likes to do things his way, when he wants, so the feedings were a bit of an adventure. The internal issues caused some pretty severe pain when having BM and he was quick to let us all know about it. He earned the nickname CP for Cranky Pants. We feel a little bad about it now since he was actually in some pain, but some of it is just Logan being Logan. We love him so much though, he is our fighter and we are lucky to have him here at all. So even if he cries for 3 days straight we still wouldn't trade him for the world (side note Logan this is not a challenge to see if you can cry for 3 days). Through all this they also took him off of breast milk, which has not been good. The special formula they have him on is pretty bad and he wants nothing to do with it. The faces he makes would make you die laughing, imagine making a 5 year old eat broccoli wrapped in green beans and multiply it by 10, that is how much he hates this formula. So he is eating exactly zero bottles per day, not good. The good news is they should be putting him back on breast milk tomorrow and hopefully he will start picking it up again. He has the will and the ability to do it we just need to feed him steak and not veggies and he will do great. Hopefully another one to two weeks for CP.

As for us we are hanging in there, busy is an understatement. We love our kids and wouldn't trade it for anything though. We are so happy they are doing great and look forward to having them all at home with us. And saying good bye to the hospital we have been to everyday since November, cannot wait for that day.

Bath time fun...

Okay, I promise an update is coming by Friday. For now here are some recent photos mostly of bath time...

Logan, Elizabeth, and Madison (L to R)

Mr. Logan

Miss Elizabeth

Miss Madison

Love to you all! - Amy-Jo