"It's only going to get harder..." Or is it?

When the girls first came home a strange thing happened, a surprisingly large number of people told me that things would only get worse. This never failed to shock me. I spent the first couple of months getting 4 hours or less sleep a day and people seemed positive things would only get harder. I never understood this. I usually would make some comment about how while I knew every stage of childhood has its own unique challenges, I felt quite certain that it would all be easier once we started getting sleep. At this point there were a number of people who suggested that even this wouldn't get any better. I'm not sure why.

I am writing this e-mail to say....in our case...you were wrong.

Please don't take this as me being snarky. I don't mean it that way! Quite the contrary, I'm really excited. Things are SOOOOOOO much easier then they were a year ago. And they are so incredibly fun. Oh sure, the girls can be a bit of a pill at times. I mean....look at this picture of Parker:

I mean, you can just tell she's a sneaky monkey from that look. (and she is!) And don't let the little angelic smiles from Emma Jane fool you. In some ways she is even sneakier. Parker looks at you and gives you that smile before she does something she's not supposed to, Emma Jane? She looks for you before doing it. To make sure she's in the clear (stinker). But...well...that's kids. That's why we're parents. We get to teach them through all that, and will be doing it for quite a long time.

But come on, look at that picture...don't you want to just pick them up and love them to pieces?

How can you not love:

this?!?

Sure it's work, but it is easier then when they first got home, and they are just so much fun to be around. Mary Jane worked yesterday and I got to spend the whole day with them. It was great. We do all sorts of stuff. We had a little pretend tea party (they have a little table and chairs and they sit in the chairs and bang the table...this is pretty much what a tea party is right now...and frankly that is my kind of tea party). Parker climbs up me and grabs my eyes and says "eyes." Emma Jane says "hi" to me every time I leave the room, and then walks after me. They are both doing a little walking right now, and they are so proud of themselves. When they do good at it they start patting their tummies and get all excited...which usually makes them trip and fall, to which we all clap.

We stacked boxes, we played chase, we ate solid food, took naps, and even watched a baby einstein video (that stuff is like crack for babies...wow...Parker could watch it all day). Life is good and we are thankful for it. The girls are the second best thing that has ever happened to me...the first, quite obviously, is Mary Jane. God has been merciful, and we give Him thanks.

This has turned into a long stream of conscious ramble. Sorry. I should wrap up and get back to homework. So let me summarize:

- God is good

- Life is easier then it was a year ago

- I love my babies

- I love my wife

- I love my God

amen

okay....that's it....oh...one more thing

...oh how far we've come

Shocking News!!!

Sorry...things have been so hectic I haven't had a chance to write this yet, but...


a moment of silence please








wait for it








wait










I said silence








As of tomorrow morning Mary Jane will not just be a board certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, she will be a PRACTICING Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. She starts the first of her TWO new jobs tomorrow.


Blessings Mary Jane...we love you :)

Christmas Part II

The second leg of our Christmas journey took us home to Chattanooga. There we got to see just about everybody. The girls were thrilled to see Nanna and Pop.

As well as their Grandad and Great Grandmother.... (and if you look really closely you will notice that my magical clavicle ball came to grandad's house as well

And we even got a chance to spend some time with Mary Jane's Great-Grandfather (that's the girls' great-Great-grandfather!!) He turned 100 and it was exciting to have FIVE generations all together (Pop, Granny, Nanna, Mary Jane, and the girls).

And of course there we saw everybody else as well...

..and there were presents......lots...

...and lots of presents.

I know what all of you are thinking. You're worried that with all this visiting and presents and there very cornucopia of adventures which await one when they travel to Chattanooga, that Mary Jane would not getting any brother sister bonding time with Mark. Well never fear....

...there was plenty of time for that too.

(you almost can't tell he's struggling to get away from her hug ;)

A peek into what makes Emma Jane tick

So this pretty much sums it up right here. This is Emma Jane.


From day one she has been the stubborn-alpha-determined one. Somehow people got the impression that was going to be Parker....but no we never thought she would be. Parker is the monkey. She is the one who likes to fling herself upside down. She is the one who will run across the street without looking first. Emma Jane will be the one who tells her to.
Here is Emma Jane in a nut shell. The girl will be lying there, pounding her feet on the ground (something she likes to do) while sucking quite contentedly on her pacifier when suddenly she will look to her right. And what will she see? Parker, right next to her, also sucking on a pacifier. Suddenly Emma Jane's pacifier is not quite as tasty as it was just a moment ago. So Emma Jane will begin to stare at Parker. After a while she will reach out towards Parker. Finding that she cannot reach her she will begin to butt-scoot her way over until she gets close to Parker. Then she will reach out, grab the pacifier. Emma Jane will then take the pacifier out of her mouth, put Parker's in her mouth, and hold her pacifier next to her mouth...you know...just in case. At about this moment Parker begins to notice she is no longer sucking on anything (it sometimes takes her a couple of minutes. She's a happy baby and spends the first few minutes without the pacifier being amazed that her tongue is suddenly hitting the roof of her mouth. Once this novelty wears off Parker remembers how much fun the pacifier was and begins to fuss. As Parker begins to fuss, Emma Jane gets worried. She's about to be found out. She'll get in trouble. So Emma Jane takes her free hand, reaches over, and puts it into Parker's mouth so that Parker can chew on that instead. Suddenly everybody is happy. Parker just wants something to chew on, and Emma Jane just wants all the pacifiers (binky hog).


As you can see Emma Jane is also getting really good at sitting up. She can do the whole tri-pod sit thing really well now. She can also show her support for the Auburn tigers by wearing my cap. Although, as you can see from the look on her face, she thinks the team has little chance of being great this year.

Now, I must admit that I am a little afraid I have painted Emma Jane in an overly negative light. She is brilliant and wonderful and shows determination, as well as problem solving skills. But none of these qualities have led to her main nickname. Parker is commonly called monkey. Emma Jane...cuddles. The girl loves to cuddle. She will often just raise her arms and stare at you and wait for you to pick her up, and then when you do she will put her head down on your chest.

She even likes to be all squished up to get really cuddly. Kind of like...

...this. This picture was taken last weekend. We were in Chattanooga, and cuddles (also known as whiny butt and variations there off) was refusing to nap. Yet she was exhausted. Finally dad picked her up and she immediately curled up and went to sleep. She had been doing this all the night before. We had driven through the night to get to Chattanooga, so dad was feeling pretty tired himself. This is how mom found them.


content after a nice nap

Mother's Day (a message from the girls)

There really are not words to describe how much we love and appreciate Mary Jane (mom). She takes care of our every need, she is there to love on us when we are fussy, and when we are happy. She is blessed with wisdom and knows how to take care of us even when we go out of our way to make it hard. We truly are the most blessed babies ever.
Thank you doesn't say it well enough...but
thank you.

Some quick cuteness with Emma Jane

As was noted in previous entries, we recently traveled to Chattanooga to visit family. I would do a huge post with lots of pictures and information, but frankly...I'm too tired.
So in the meantime, a quick little post featuring Emma Jane. As you may have surmised from an earlier post Emma Jane got sick during the trip. She had a cold and felt generally sluggish and irritable. Here she's resting with mom.

more soon

Smiles and Parker lover her sister (A post from Mary Jane)

The girls started smiling and cooing in the past two weeks. It is awesome. I love it. I have attempted several times to capture their smiles on film, but it isn't too easy. Emma Jane started doing all of this first (ironically when she stopped eating- she had better things to do than eat. The girl loves to smile.) but Parker now has a lot to say and makes noises all day long. Here is are the best pictures I have so far... although I WILL get better ones:

Parker also has started licking everything... including her sister...




Then she felt bad for making Emma Jane cry and made it up to her by falling asleep on her (P.S. I didn't position them like this... it was all on their own).

As far as an eating update... Emma Jane seems to be doing better these last couple of days. We have been to the pediatrician and nothing seems to be wrong with either one of them except for a lack of desire to eat. Parker is now taking her turn (again) and appears to never be hungry. It is so frustrating. I have the dietitian telling me not to force feed them, only feed them when they seem hungry, etc... and then the pediatrician (and myself) knowing how much they need to take eat in a day in order to gain some good weight. I have relaxed the feeding schedule as much as I can, but I have several forces working against me. One, there are two of them and they need to eat roughly at the same time or else they are going to snack and eat at all hours of the day. Two, they are still so small and I am sure everyone who has ever had a preemie knows all you want them to do is gain weight. And three, lots of times babies with reflux don't show as many signs of hunger and only eat until the initial hunger feeling is gone- that is textbook what Parker does. She eats exactly the same amount and then the fight begins to get the rest down... I am supposed to make eating a "fun and bonding time", but no matter what I try... the result is the same- a battle of the will between me and Parker. Sometimes I don't know if she won't eat because it hurts or won't eat because she doesn't want to. Its hard to stay frustrated at her though. Lots of times as soon as I take the bottle out of her mouth, she smiles. And she is very happy and cute and fun when she isn't eating! All this is to say, prayers for Parker (and Emma Jane) to eat are appreciated.

In other news, I realize Jason never posted that we are officially done with the eye doctor!!!!!! The girls eyes look normal and we only go back for a routine check in 6 months. The good news is when we go back for that, they don't have to use the barbaric looking torture devices to look in their eyes.

Those are all the updates I think. I am going to go sleep for a few more hours. Happy reading...

Happy Birthday Samuel

Samuel Eduardo Machado is our godson. His parents (Marcos and Hannah) are Emma Jane's godparents. Today is Samuel's birthday. Now godparents worth having would probably have called today, but us? Nope. In our defense we were a little distracted by Marcos and Hannah's goddaughter who was being a pain in the...um...neck. Anybody want a colicky baby? How about a colicky baby who won't eat? Cause we got one. I won't say which baby we're talking about...just that her name rhymes with Hemma Blane.
In all seriousness, Emma Jane has had a rough day. Yesterday wasn't great for her, but today she just decided that she wanted to cry instead of eat. Luckily Mary Jane got to come home early from work because when she got here dad was pretty near tears. He was convinced the girl was deathly ill because she wouldn't eat and usually Emma Jane is all about the food. Okay...I'm exaggerating a little, I didn't think she was deathly ill, but I did learn something else about myself. Turns out I can ignore the crying and cuddle and coo and not let it phase me, but if they seem like they are in pain it just breaks the lump of coal I have hidden away in a Tupperware container where my heart should be.
All this is a way of saying...Marcos, Hannah sorry we didn't call today. It's 10:50 your time now and we figure it's too late. But know we were thinking about you and were meaning to. Tell Samuel we said Happy Birthday.

We love you guys.





When the Machados were in town a couple of weeks ago I told Samuel he could pick out his future wife. Here we see Samuel resorting to the sniff test. Who ever has the smelliest feet is out.

And we have a winner!

If you are curious to know Samuel's thoughts on this and, well all things Samuel you should check out his blog.

Listening In

"Psst. Hey Parker"

"Whadaya want?"

"Look at this!

"Hmmm. It looks like a tongue"

"It is a tongue...moron. But I can stick it out. I've been working all day on that. Getting pretty good at it. But anyway...that's not what I wanted to talk about. Have you been keeping an eye on the 'rents?"

"Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on them. They've got me a little worried. Did you see the other day...last Friday it was. Dad was going to go into work for a meeting because he had taken a part day on Thursday in order to take us to the doctor. Then he got the bright idea of bringing his afternoon meeting over to the house so that mom can take a nap while he met and kept an eye on the kids, and you know what ma did when he asked her if she would like this idea? She broke down into tears of joy. Yep...getting worried about her."

"Oh that's nothing. Sure...mom's crazy tired, but dad...he might just be plain crazy. You should watch him during those couple hours we give him to sleep. He's been getting up and walking around in his sleep every night. He goes into our room to look for us when we're out in the living room with mom. He walks around the house patting his chest like he's burping one of us. And the other day he walked out with a bottle of Chloroseptic cradled in his arms like it was one of us. I'm telling you...the guy has gone loco!"

"Chloroseptic?!? Well if that's the sort of silly games he's going to play with the sleep time we're giving him, than I really wonder if we're giving him too much time. Tell you what, tonight let's split up the shifts. If you scream for the first 4 hours, I'll get the next six."

ug...parents...but what are you going to do...their so cute you just have to love them, flaws and all.

A moment's rest

Contrary to how past blog posts may have made it sound, the girls aren't up and screaming all the time. Everyone sleeps eventually. And with the sleep comes the cuteness.

and when the little beautifuls rest then sometimes....sometimes...their mommy does too.

PNP (Pediatric Nurse Practitioner)

This is one of those things that should be shouted from the moutaintops. Heralds should go through the city singing songs, painters should be painting pictures, and poets should be writing sonnets, and yet this little dabbler in prose finds himself unable to give this quite the punch it deserves.
It is official, Mary Jane has passed her boards!!! She is now a board certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner!!!
Some of you looonnngg time readers will remember that Mary Jane graduated with her Masters in Nursing back in the beginning of August. Doing this is kind of like graduating from law school. You have the degree but you can’t do anything with it until you have passed the big test (in the case of law, the bar exam, in this case “boards”). When Mary Jane graduated she had an elaborate plan to take care of the boards. She, in her methodic way was going to set up a strict study plan and nock that test out the first day they would allow her to take it. And because Mary Jane is the sort of person who does this she would have studied every conceivable question and then found a handful of questions that were not conceivable and studied them as well. However, life took a turn (which is really the only reason you ended up reading this blog) and suddenly Mary Jane found herself putting the boards off to the latest possible date that she could. And her strict study regimen? Out the window. There was no time to study and if there were a few minutes to study…well it’s kind of hard to focus when your daughters are in the NICU (trust me). So studying really didn’t happen much. Mary Jane was very freaked out going into the test, but once again the world was shown the great deal of intellegince God blessed my wife with, because she passed!
What really made me happy was how excited the NICU nurses got about it. I think everything that needs to be said about how wonderful my wife is might be illustrated by how people respond to her. Everyone loves her. As soon as the test was over (it was a computer test and they told her immediately she passed) Mary Jane called the hospital room to tell me she passed (I was holding Emma Jane at the time). The moment the room phone rang all the nurses in our area of the unit came running into the room to find out whether she passed. When I nodded that she had (still talking to Mary Jane) they sprang to action. Denise started by putting up a sign and then writing with a dry erase Marker on the room doors while Jen started cutting up disposable isolation gowns to make streamers. Other nurses grabbed gloves and blew them up like balloons, while still others grabbed baby bottles, filled them with candy and hung them up around the room.The PNP was done in surgical tape

Eventually real streamers were found and things got even "streamier"

All in all it was a good day.

Congratulations Mary Jane! We are all proud of you.

Grrrrrrrr

Dear Ben Ernst,

Thanks for all the help, support, and prayers you and your family given us during all this. I wanted to take a brief moment to talk to you about your chosen field. Now I know you have no desire to do pediatrics, but if by chance you suddenly have a change of heart, and decide that you want to spend you life starring into the eyes of babies, if by chance you go a step further and decide to be a fellow over at Children's then here are some advice:
Let's say you get assigned a preemie to do an eye exam on. Let us even go so far as to say you are assigned twins. While we're on the subject let's go one step further and say these twins had already had eye exams twice before, and while they were unpleasant they took about 2 minutes and left no real marks on the baby. If all this were then case then please do not

a) march into a room while the mother is nursing and make her stop in order to do immediately do the eye exam

b) also in the list of do nots....if the the average exam takes 2 minutes and you find yourself running over ten minutes and realize you have no idea what you are doing...stop

c) when the mother asks how their eyes look don't be rude

d) and most importantly, if the baby you're working with starts off by looking like this

don't leave her looking like this:

Just a couple of thoughts to help you in your future endeavours.

With love,

the broges

100th Post!!!

So here we are. Believe it or not this is the 100th post since we started this blog. When we started this blog I never would have believed we would have kept in running long enough to hit 100 posts, but then I never would have guessed life would have taken the turns it has either.
Well, anyway you look at it here we all are at the 100th post. So we thought we would spend this post inundating you with such an obnoxious number of pictures you will probably throw us.
Well...enjoy. We certainly have.Parker, looking and feeling a little crabby. She had been holding onto her work again.

But still...she loves her "mummy"

Emma Jane got the jackolantern clothes

Later we decided to stuff her clothes so she looked even more pumkin like. Oh, the horrible things parents do to their children for the sake of "cuteness."
Of course that was hardly the worst of it. You still haven't seen their official "costumes"

What were they?

Well...look.

We decided that for Halloween they should be what they are: 2 peas in a pod

In case you couldn't tell. Parker is on the right (note monkey) and Emma Jane is on the left (note leg of owl). Actually some these pictures are from last weekend. We put them in their costumes then because we really weren't sure whether they would fit today. We managed to get them in today, but just barely. Those stinkers are getting big!

No matter what they may tell us alter in life...they like each other

"Hey...I'm napping here. I don't care how cute you look, leave me alone or I'll give you something to wave your arms about"

So the girls might even get famous from this outfit. The BJC newspaper (yes the hospital is big enough to have a hospital based newspaper) swung by to take a picture for the next issue.

You sick of this yet? Well, just one more photo to sit through.

The annual Reformation Day family photo