Split Family Weekend

Whelp, Ayden and I are home by ourselves this weekend and Tony and Rylee made the trip to Washington to spend with the in-laws.  It's a little lot strange to only have one baby here.

I mentioned in my last post that Ayden had a viral fever earlier in the week.  His fever broke Wednesday night, but he was still a very cranky toddler for most of Thursday.  When I took him to the pediatrician Wednesday for the fever, she noted that his eyes looked a little red and they were watery, but it wasn't a concern.  I just assumed it was from lack of sleep.  The poor kid was exhausted!  Yesterday I noticed him rubbing his eyes quite a bit, but silly me, I still thought it was because he was tired.  Not only hadn't he been sleeping very good at night, he also wasn't getting very long naps.  He was just miserable.

By last night, his his eyes weren't just red around the lids, but his left eye had gotten pretty bloodshot and I suspected he might have pink eye.  I texted a picture to my sister and she agreed.  Crap.  Tony and I decided that if he woke up this morning and it was still bloodshot, that I needed to get him into the doctor before we headed out of town.

Excuse the messy face!  It was dinner time.  lol

I called the advice nurse first this morning, just on the off chance that she would maybe think I didn't need to bring him in.  Once she heard we were headed out of town and we'd be around other kids over the weekend, she thought we should definitely be seen today.  So off to the doctor we went, hi ho hi ho hi ho.

The ped concurred that he has pink eye, but there was no way of knowing for sure if it is bacterial or viral.  Considering he just got over his viral fever, there's a strong possibility that this is from the same virus.  If it was bacterial, she thought with a few doses of eye drops, that we would be fine and there'd be low risk of transferring it to anyone else.  Besides that, it's just pink eye.  While contagious and inconvenient, it's not like it's some serious disease that we'd be sharing.  However, with it possibly being viral, there's nothing we could do that would prevent sharing the virus.  While the rest of the family was willing to take the chance of getting pink eye by itself, nobody wants the risk of spending a few days in bed sick with a high fever.

We decided Tony and Rylee should still make the trip as planned, because for some miraculous reason Rylee (knock on wood) managed to steer clear of catching Ayden's virus. Tony took a partial day off work today for the road trip, and they were both gone by 2:30. My eyes have felt pretty itchy all day today, but I don't know if that's from looking at Ayden's red eye and being sympathetic, or if it means I'm also getting pink eye.  We'll see.

Ayden got to sit at the big table tonight with me for dinner.

I think it will be good for all of us to have some one on one time this weekend, but it is so weird!!!!  It almost feels lonely not having Rylee around and listening to them fight over toys. I miss her sweet hugs that she frequently shares throughout the day.  I'm curious how she and Tony will do tonight.  I'm not going to lie, I'm looking forward to (hopefully) being able to sleep all night without having to co-sleep with her the last few hours.  While I absolutely adore those cuddles and I know someday I will miss them, I am soooooo excited at the prospect of sleeping in my own bed All. Night. Long.  Please, please, please Ayden.

This is the first time Ayden and Rylee will be separated for more than a few hours.  It will be interesting to see how they react to not seeing each other for a few days, especially for Ayden.  I think it'll be easier for Rylee because she's not at home in her normal routine and she is surrounded by cousins and other family to distract her.  I won't be surprised if Ayden goes looking for Rylee in the morning, trying to open her bedroom door.  They each do that sometimes if one of them wakes up before the other in the morning or at nap time.  They always want to go wake up the one still sleeping.

I'm looking forward to my one on one time this weekend, but I'm also a little sad being away from Rylee.  It will be fun to see how they respond to seeing each other again come Sunday, when Tony and Rylee arrive back home.  I could be wrong, but I'm expecting a sweet reunion.

A Bullet Point Post

I've pretty much been sucking at this whole blogging thing lately.  There's so much I'd like to write about and I think about it almost daily, but then nap time hits and it turns out to be a crappy nap day or I fall asleep myself.  I'll admit that even today I almost gave in and laid down on the couch for my own nap.  I couldn't keep my eyes open!  But then I got up for a drink of water and it snapped me out of it.  So here I am....

• The reason I can't keep my eyes open - well, lack of sleep.  Ayden had a slight fever when he went to bed on Tuesday so we gave him some Tylenol.  However, he woke up at 11:30 with a 102.0 temp and it turned out to be a very long night.  The poor kid was miserable.  I got a grand total of 3 hours and 40 minutes of sleep (according to my awesome Fitbit!), and that sleep was by no means consecutive.  His temp got as high as 104.5 during the day, but it finally broke last night at 8:50.  It was so nice to have him wake up with enough energy to tell us all about being sick (I'm guessing at what he was saying because I really have no clue) and to eat a bowl of applesauce.  He hadn't eaten anything all day!  Then Miss Rylee woke up at 12:30, but rather than lay down with her, I just held her for a few minutes and put her back in her own crib.  I was too tired and it was way to early for me to spend the rest of the night co-sleeping with a restless toddler!  She wasn't happy, but she did go back to sleep by herself after a few minutes of crying.  Until 5:45, when they both decided we all needed to be up for the day.  Oh, and naps around here have been pretty crappy the last few days on top of it.  I'm just praying they stay asleep long enough for me to finish this post!

• We are headed to Washington this weekend for an early Thanksgiving celebration with the in-laws.  We'll be staying with Tony's brother and family, which means that we'll be sharing a room with Ayden and Rylee.  Yep, all of us in one room, so it will be another 2 nights of no sleep because we seem to have the worst sleeping toddlers ever.  Not really.  I'm just tired and cranky and it feels like it.  But seriously, they do NOT sleep well whenever we stay someplace away from home.  

• I love my new Fitbit.  It has really made me so much more aware of my activity level throughout the day.  The last few days excluded, it's really helped me to make a much more conscious effort to get moving.  Someone suggested in a blog comment a few posts back that I walk just on our own street now that it's dark outside.  I've taken that suggestion to heart.  We have a little oval roundabout that loops around to our house, so I've made that my personal track for walking at night.  I've even started jogging a bit.  Not a lot, but it's a start anyway.  Ayden and Rylee love to be outside, so we've taken a few walks to the mailbox and around our little neighborhood during the day. They get mad because they don't understand why it's not okay to play in other people's yards and pull their sprinkler systems and yard decorations out.  A few times I've ended up having to carry them back to the house because they refuse to walk toward home when it's time.

• Ultimately, we've enjoyed our time going outside.  Ayden and Rylee even have these awesome Tuffo rainsuits, so we can go out even on wet days.  Nothing better than playing in mud puddles!  The suits are great because they stay completely dry and I can let them play to their hearts content.

A trip to the park

Crap.  Ayden is awake and crying so this post is about to come to an end.  Story of my blogging life lately and the reason for a bullet point post.  I tend to only have enough time to think in bullet points!  One more-

• I plan to revisit the topic of using an egg donor in a few upcoming posts.  Not long after Ayden and Rylee were born, I asked my sister if she would write a guest post for me, sharing her story from the donor point of view.  She agreed to do it, but as you can imagine, she is also busy since she not only has four kids, but runs an in-home daycare! I reminded her a few times, but then gave up on the idea since it had been so long and I didn't want to end up being a nag.  Well, she was finally able to finish her story!  Stay tuned, because I will be sharing that with you all very soon.    

World Prematurity Day

Today I am reflecting on Rylee and Ayden's birth, and I can't help but be in awe of how far we have come.  We waited over 14 years for our two little miracles, and when the time came, they joined the world 7 weeks early.  My water broke at 32w3d, but with the help of magnesium and steroid shots, they weren't born for another 6 days.  They goal was actually to make it another 2 weeks, and we most likely would have reached that goal if I hadn't developed pre-eclampsia.

For being 33 weekers, they were actually very good sized babies!  Rylee was a whopping 4 lbs 10 oz and Ayden was 5 lbs 4 oz.  They spent 19 long days in the NICU learning how to keep their core body temperatures up and how to suck, swallow, breath so that they could eat.  While it was a very scary and difficult time for us, I know that what we experienced wasn't anywhere near the difficult road that many have in the NICU.  We only had 19 days in the NICU.  Some babies require months!  Some babies never make it home.

Today symbolizes a day of hope, fear, love, loss, and miracles for some of the world's smallest heroes.  I'm so incredibly thankful that we were some of the lucky ones and came home with healthy babies.  Thank you, Jesus.  Now our babies are just 5 weeks shy of their second birthday.

Microblog Monday: Fitbit Craze

I've joined the Fitbit bandwagon.  I'm so excited for my new toy and am hoping it will help me toward making a conscious effort to being more active.  If your not familiar with what a Fitbit is, it's basically a device that tracks your steps, daily mileage, calories burned, etc.  You can also link up with others in daily or weekly challenges to see who can log the most steps.  I haven't gotten there yet though.

I'm starting off by just seeing how many steps I do take on average.  So far I've learned that if we get outside the house and do something, it's no problem to reach 10,000 steps per day. However, if we spend a lazy day at home, I fall far short of the 10,000 step goal.  During the summer months, we went to the park or played outside here at home almost daily.  Having our twice weekly Community Playgroup will help on rainy days.  I'm just going to have to concentrate on being more active on those days we are stuck inside as well.


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Our October Festivities

This is a very belated post, but I just wasn't able to sit down at the computer before now.  Sleepless nights and short naps have been a frequent thing around here lately, but I am happy to report that last night, I was actually able to sleep in my very own bed for the ENTIRE night!  Woo Hoo!  Both Ayden and Rylee were asleep by 7:15 last night and slept in till 6:00 this morning.  It was glorious!

We had our very first trip to the pumpkin patch this year!  We had a lot of fun, but we also decided that we won't be doing something like that without taking naps first for a very long time.  Rylee did great, but Ayden ended up being very difficult and having a hard time.  It might have just been that day, or it might have just been all the stimulation of something new, but boy oh boy, he was hard to handle at times.  He turns into a little big bear when he gets too tired or too hungry, and I think we pushed it too long before feeding him and we were definitely past their nap time by the time we left.  We got there around 10:00 in the morning and stayed till about 1:00.  Ayden had a great time, but pretty much threw a grand ol' temper tantrum whenever we "made" him do something he didn't want to, like when we made him stop playing in the mud puddle when the tractor arrived for our hay ride.  Or when we made him follow the path through the corn maze.  Or when we wouldn't let him destroy some of the decorations.  Rylee just went with the flow of everything.

"It's not too heavy, Mom."

Inspecting the straw of hay.

Corn maze

Cute little Rylee Bug

He wanted to take the fake pumpkin decorations with us.

Their favorite part of the entire day!

Family selfie

"This pumpkin looks good.  I think I'll eat it!"

Ayden loved pulling the cart for our pumpkins.

Feeding the goats.

Carving our pumpkins went about as well as I expected.  They were interested for a very short time span.  They enjoyed digging the seeds out for about a minute, and they loved "drawing" on the pumpkins before we carved them.

Look at her big ol' milk belly!  For such a petite little thing, she's got a great baby belly.  Too bad those bellies don't look as cute on adults!  lol

Such a great helper

Trying to eat the pumpkin again.

Taking her turn to draw on the pumpkin.

Ayden's turn!  Rylee had to supervise.

Pretend you don't see all the toys/blankets scattered in the living room!

Ayden and Rylee had their very first Halloween party at the Community Playgroup we go to twice a week.  They really don't understand the whole dress up thing yet, but they were the cutest Batman and Robin I've ever seen!  I took several pictures, and I'd love to post the group photo of all the kids, but I don't think I should out of respect for the other parents and their kids.  Here's a few pics from the party though!

Working on a craft project together.

Little musicians.

I couldn't get a good picture of them together!  This was the best I could do.

Halloween was a lot of fun this year, and I imagine it will only get better as Ayden and Rylee get older and come to understand what all the fuss is about.  Despite the pumpkin patch being a challenge for Ayden at times, Tony and I both had an incredible time sharing in that new experience and having that family time together.  I love my little family!

Here's a few more pictures to wrap up the October cuteness we had going on at our house:

Ayden carried this little pumpkin around the house for an entire evening one night!  It was SO ADORABLE!

Cutest little Halloween dress ever!  Of course Rylee makes it even cuter!