How We Do What We Do Everyday.

You get asked a lot of questions when you have twins. 

One of the most common as of late has been "How do you do all of these things you like to do, and take care of 2 babies?"

Well friends, here is a detailed answer and look into our everyday life of how we manage mundane tasks while keeping 2 little boys healthy and happy.

1.  "How do you take the boys around on errands?"

-If I need to go to a store or somewhere big enough where I will be there for while, I take our double stroller.  The boys love going anywhere so they're pretty content just hanging out in the stroller, flashing smiles at everyone.  If I need to take them both into somewhere that is not so double-stroller-friendly (Baja Burrito for example), I simply put one of them in a carrier/wrap/sling, and carry the other on one of my arms, which then leaves me with one free arm.   Like so...

It works nicely.  And I feel a little like superwoman.

And now that they can sit up just fine on their own, grocery shopping with both boys is much easier also. I put one of them in the cart-seat, and one of them in a carrier or sling!

2.  "How do you find time to keep up with this blog, your food blog, reading and whatever else your hobbies are?"

-It really helps that my boys go to bed around 630-7 every night.  Jeremy and I usually don't go to bed until 11 or so, which gives us plenty of time to ourselves each night.  This is when I can be found on the computer, in the kitchen cooking/baking, playing wii, reading, or scrapbooking.  

3.  "How are you able to cook at home as much as you do?"

-Time management is big here.  If you know anything about my cooking style, I don't really like pre-made meals or throw-everything-from-a-can-in-a-pot-and-bake-it type of cooking.  I like to start from raw ingredients.  This is usually more delicious and nutritious, however, it is definitely more time consuming.  You have to find time to chop all the fruit and veggies.  You have to find time to make/cook the pasta.  You have to find time to knead the bread dough and let the yeast rise.  Meal planning is also big.  Last minute throw together meals work out occasionally, but I usually have better luck if I know what I'm going to make on which day.  This also lets me plan ahead to have dinner ready before 9 pm.  Throughout the day, whenever babies nap or are self-entertaining, I take the opportunity to go chop some veggies that I will use for dinner that night.  Sometimes, I'll prepare everything the night before, and all I have to do the day of is actually cook it.  It's also nice having a husband that knows a thing or two about food, because he will occasionally cook or help out with the cooking when things are really busy.  And for those days when babies are not self-entertaining and refuse to do anything except be held...

Sometimes you have to cook one-handed and/or with a baby or 2 on your hip.  

4.  "How do you have time to work out and stay healthy?"

-Make it a priority.  Since we have adapted our way of eating, our diet has become very important to us, as has exercise.  Running outside is my preferred method of exercise.  However, since I'm working 4 12-hour shifts a week from now until April, I feel like the days that I am home need to be spent with my boys only.  I don't like to leave them to go on a run.  So, I opt for other methods of working out.  If it's nice enough outside, I do take the boys for a run in our double jogging stroller.

Otherwise, I  workout either while the boys nap, after they go to bed, or while they are awake and happy playing with each other. Sometimes they will sit there and watch me workout, and laugh.

5.  "How do you get them to nap/wake/sleep at the same time?"

-I don't feel like we've really done much to make this happen.  The boys just sort of do it on their own, and pretty much always have.  They usually get tired around the same times, and nap together during the day (they can get a little off here and there, but not drastically).  They don't wake each other up during naps, so sometimes one will wake before the other.  As far as bedtime, we do the same routine each night, and they both take to it well, and go to sleep (usually) without a fuss.  They sleep straight through the night, and usually wake up around the same time together in the morning.  We just got lucky here I guess.

6.  "How do you have time to wash and prepare cloth diapers for your twins?"

-I actually just posted about this a few days ago:  Cloth Diapers.  Washing really isn't that much work.  We throw wet cloths into the bag, we spray out the poops in the toilet.  When we have a full bag (about every other day), throw them in the wash, dry them overnight, and stuff them later that night or the next morning during downtime (or one or two as needed if there is no time to stuff all at once).  

7.  "How do you get ready in the mornings and get to places on time?"

-Babies wake up.  They come into bed with us.  We snuggle.  We get up and start getting ready in our room.  Babies watch the ceiling fan, play with each other, or fall back asleep on our bed.  All while we are showering and getting ready.  Then, we change, feed, and go!

And that's how we do things 'round here.  If you would have asked me these questions while I was pregnant, I would have no answers.  I had to figure it out.  Sometimes, you just have to do what you have to do.  I figure out more and more things that work for us every day, and I'm still learning.

Anyone have any other questions that I didn't answer?

Parenthood

Being a parent is a full-time job.  I don't think I need to expand on that statement to anyone who has been around anyone with children.  Unlike a day-to-day run-of-the-mill career, there are no "sick days".  There are no shift-trades, personal days or vacation days.  It is a 24/7 job without monetary payment.  It is at times very difficult, but always extremely rewarding and humbling.  Having children has taught me a lot of patience.  There have been many days where I have woken up (in the middle of the night, or the morning) and thought...I can't do this.  I'm too tired, I don't feel good, I'm not strong enough, etc.  But somehow, I always did it.  I pushed through whatever ailed me at the time and took care of my babies.  Once you have kids, you are no longer the center of your life.  The kiddos take over the focus.  It can be hard to accept that at first, but once that realization has been met, once the fact that every single day of life from here on out is lived for my husband and my babies and not for myself is accepted, life can really begin.  You begin to see so much beauty, and love and energy that wasn't there before.  Every new day is about love.  God's love for us, our love for each other and our love for our children.  It's crazy how these things change so drastically.


Over the past few weeks, our little family has been a little under the weather.  Foxx got it first.  Cool boy didn't even act he was sick.  Snot pouring out his nose and he's just laughing away in between coughs.  Judah caught it next, and is still getting over the crud.  Jeremy had it last week.  I thought I was going to get away without catching it.

WRONG.

It finally got to me.  Although I don't have it full force (yet), I am definitely feeling it.  I'm more tired, I can't breathe through my nose when I wake up in the morning,  I have a headache most of the day, and sinus pressure like crazy.

Even though I wake up feeling like absolute crap, once the boys wake up and need something, my sickness is pushed aside.  I don't even realize just how bad I actually feel until the end of the day when the boys are sleeping and all is quiet in the house.

I'm a mom.  I don't get a chance to be sick.  


So I'm  not going to.  I'm going to will my sickness away.

That is all.

Give us a vote?

A Movie, Colds, and Sleepers.

Sorry I have been gone for a while ya'll.  I had a stretch of 4 days in a row working (and when those are 12 hour shifts, that's a long 4 days), so I've been pretty much working, taking care of babies, working out with Jillian Micheals (she's kicking my butt, by the way), and sleeping, and therefore not leaving much time for the blogs.  But now I have 7 days straight off from work, which I'm super pumped about.

We were able to get away one night after the boys went to bed a few days ago and we went to see the movie The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  

I read the famous trilogy, and Jeremy and I watched the swedish versions of all 3 films, so we were interested to see how this one would turn out.  We were pretty impressed with the swedish films.  Good acting, true to the story, etc.  We like Daniel Craig, and thought he would work well as the supporting actor in the new movie, and he did.  Rooney Mara was chosen to play Lisbeth, and she played the role perfectly.  The movie was very good, and I'm excited for the final 2 to come out!

In other news, I'm the only one in our house who hasn't gotten sick recently.  Baby boys and Jeremy are all trying to get over a little cold.  Poor little guys have snot and phlegm pouring out of them.  Foxx doesn't even act like he's sick...he's as happy as can be...with a cough and snot all over his face and all.  Judah is just a little cranky, but not really all that bad.  Foxx's cold is almost completely gone now, and Judah's still working on it.  A Vix vaporizer, and the little blue suction bulb have been our best friends as of late.  

Also unrelated to anything else in this post, we are trying to see if the boys will sleep in sleepers now instead of swaddle blankets...they are getting sort of big for the swaddles and wiggle their way out of them every night anyway, so we thought it may be time to drop them.  They are doing ok, its just occasionally they will move so much in their sleep that one will be kicking the other, or they will roll over in their sleep and wake themselves up.  That's only happened a few times, and I think they are getting more used to it now.  Plus, sleepers are super cute.  

Going up and getting our boys out of bed, whether it be from a nap or in the morning after a good night's sleep is one of my favorite times of the day, because they will always greet you with a huge smile.  They've rested, they're happy to see you, and they're ready to play.  It makes getting up early sooo much better.  I mean, who wouldn't love to get up early and play with these little dudes?!

Give us a vote?

Back to Normal

All is back to normal in the Tucker house.

After fighting soreness, loss of appetite and constipation following surgery, Judah is finally back to himself again.  It was a rough week and a half there, trying to get him that way!  His incision is healing up just fine, he no longer seems to be in pain, and is now pooping and eating like he did prior to surgery.  Poor guy was so miserable.  If he wasn't sleeping, he was awake and crying.  We had to give him suppositories, Karo syrup (natural laxative) and prune juice to get him to poop.  It was awful.  But then he finally pooped and has been doing so regularly since then, thank goodness.  It was also hard to get him to eat.  He just refused.  We tried to get him to take some pedialyte because I was scared he was going to end up back in the hospital with dehydration if he was eating anything, but he slowly got back to normal with that also.  Now he is his happy little self again, always greeting us with a smile when we look at him and it's wonderful.

And Foxx.  Oh little Foxx.  He had no reason to be constipated because he didn't have surgery, but I guess he wanted to feel for his brother and did not want to be outdone with all the attention Judah was getting, so Foxx too was constipated pretty badly.  His was much easier to resolve, though.  One laxative, a red-faced straining baby, a large ball of poop (sorry, TMI), = a happy Foxx again.  Foxx was awesome during Judah's surgery and the week following.  He was soooo good.  He never fought sleep at nap times or bed time, he was super happy all the time, and often entertained himself.  THIS IS NOT HIS NORMAL ATTITUDE.  Usually, he is the attention-seeking, loud, fight-sleep-all-the-time kid.  But nope. He manned up and was perfect while Judah was sick.  It's like he knew something was going on and that we needed more attention to be devoted to Judah.  How sweet of you little Foxx!

Love my little guys : )

Judah's Surgery; All done!

*Cue big, deep breath and sigh of relief.

Judah's surgery is over and done with.  Little guy did so well during it, he impressed everybody.  As I initially had hoped, none of our worries became truth.  He did well during the surgery, and recovered from anesthesia with no issues.  Yay!

We were pretty sure it was going to be an awful day.  Judah's surgery was scheduled for 10am.  We were suppose to be at the hospital at 8am.  He was not allowed to eat/drink anything after 6am.  We were sure he would be starving and screaming for milk the whole time, so we decided instead of waking him up before 6 to get in a last feeding, we would just let him sleep as long as possible before we had to leave.  We woke him up a little before 7, and left our house very soon afterwards.  Much to our surprise, he did amazingly well for not being able to eat.  He was just a happy little Judah, flashing smiles and laughs at all the nurses and doctors.  Our holding room nurse took him around the halls, showing him off to other nurses because she thought he was so cute.  Right before they took him to surgery the whole team came out to get him to take him back.  Normally, they take the kids back while they are in a crib.  Well, the anesthesiologist thought that Judah was so cute, he just wanted to carry him back.  And so he did.

We were told that the procedure would take 2-3 hours.  They were going to go in, remove the obstruction from the ureter, place a stent and a little drainage tube.  They also said that if the kidney looked absolutely awful and looked like there would be no chance of it developing normally, that they would just go ahead and remove it while they were in there.  They told us that they would call us every hour during the surgery to let us know how it was going.

We watched our little guy get carried down the hall to the operating room, and then we left to go get some breakfast.  After we ate, we went back upstairs to the surgery waiting room, and got our first phone call update from the surgical nurse.  She said everything was going fine!

So while we were sitting in the waiting room, we saw many doctors come out and update the family once the surgery on their child was finished (they also told us that this is what would happen with us).  Well nearing the 2 1/2 hour make of Judah's surgery, the receptionist called us up to the front and said that the doctor would like to talk to us in the consult room.

The consult room?  Why wouldn't he come out here and talk to us like all these other doctors have done so far?  Does that mean something went wrong and they don't want to tell us in front of other people?

Without saying a word to each other, Jeremy and I both knew that we were thinking about all of these things.  We sat in the consult room, with worried looks and shaky hands for what felt like forever.  (I'm sure it was really only like 10 or 15 minutes).

After a little while, the doctor came in with a big smile and awesome news.  They did not end up removing the kidney.  He said Judah did great, the surgery went well and our little man was in the post-anesthesia room, being monitored as he wakes up.  We thanked him, left the room and were soon called to be able to go back and see Judah.

The above picture is what he looked like when we first saw him.  I was glad to see no oxygen on his face, and he was wiggling and stretching, but didn't seem to be in pain.  When we started talking to him, he opened his little eyes and looked at us for a few seconds, before falling back asleep.

We stayed with him in the PACU until we were moved to a room.  We stayed overnight for monitoring.  All his vitals remained stable, he was pretty comfortable and his incision looked good.  We were able to go home the next day. 

Since we've been home, he hasn't been quite as happy.  He's been sleeping a lot, only on me, as he refuses to be laid down anywhere else.  Tylenol seems to be working for his pain, but you can tell he's still a little sore and just doesn't feel good.  He's not eating great and he's got some congestion which makes it hard for him to breathe, but he's not showing any signs of infection or dehydration, which is good.  

It's really sad to see our little guy this pitiful, but It will hopefully be over with in the next few days and he'll be back to himself again.

Judah's Surgery; Tomorrow

Judah's kidney surgery is tomorrow morning at 10:00.

I'm worried and I'm scared.  Probably unnecessarily so, but I am, nonetheless.

I'm worried about how he'll react to anesthesia.  I'm worried about worst-case scenarios.  I'm worried about infection risks.  I'm worried that he will feel alone and scared when we can't be with him immediately before, during and immediately after surgery.  I'm worried about him being in pain afterwards.  

The success rate for this surgery is very high and it's not really a huge deal like say, open heart surgery or brain surgery or anything like that.  I'm thankful for that.  I'm not as worried about the actual surgery as I am anesthesia.  A lot of medical errors happen during surgery and immediately post-operatively.  In children, most medical errors are because of miscalculated medication doses.  I try not to think about this too much. Sometimes I can't decide if being a nurse helps me or hinders me in times like these.

From my personal nursing experience, I have seen both patients that have recovered really well from surgery, and also those who have not.  It's good in the sense that I have first hand experience with the many safety measures that have been put into practice to prevent these things from happening.  But it's also frustrating knowing that errors still do happen.  I know how easy it can be to mess up a medication dose if you are distracted, or overly tired or just not paying close enough attention.  I know what the consequences of those medications errors can result in.  I also know that even if there were no medication errors made, some people just don't react well to general anesthesia.  

I hope this is not the case for our little Judah.

I'm trying not to over think it, over analyze it, or just think too much about it in general.

    

I know that God already has planned for what the outcome will be, and I need to accept that.  Whether it be a good or bad outcome.  

I'm ready for tomorrow (and the next few days) to be over and done with.  

If you can remember, say a little prayer for us tomorrow, for peace.

Thanks.

Judah's Kidney Surgery

First of all, if you're confused and wondering what's wrong with Judah's kidney, read this and this.

We had a renal ultrasound today to see if Judah's hydronephrosis had been resolved.  

Sadly, it has not.  In fact, it has gotten a little bit worse.

Below is a picture of a normal vs. hydronephrotic kidney.

This is obviously not a picture of Judah's kidneys, but it represents what hydronephrosis looks like.  We could see his normal and bad kidney's on the ultrasound, and there was  a very clear difference between the 2.  The bad kidney was extremely large and you could not distinguish any of the little cortexes and medullas like you could in his good kidney.  As soon as the tech put the probe over on his left side and a picture of the bad kidney popped up on the screen, Jeremy and I immediately looked at each other with the same disappointed/scared/sad expression on our faces.  

We knew it hadn't gotten any better, and we knew that that meant surgery for our little guy.

After the ultrasound, we went up to the urology clinic to meet with our urologist to discuss the results.  

He told us what we already knew.  Judah's kidney was still dilated severely, and he did in fact need surgery.  Since Judah's bad kidney still does have some function, they are not going to remove it.  They are going to remove the obstruction that is causing the urine to stay backed up into the kidney (the obstruction is most likely a little kink in his ureter.)  Once the obstruction is removed, our urologist is hopeful that the kidney will then be able to continue to grow and develop in an appropriate way, since there will be no obstruction to hinder that development any longer.  The kidney's function will then be reassessed later in Judah's life (not sure when, but the doc made it seem at least a few years away).  If the kidney still has little to no function at that point, then he will have the kidney removed.  

All that being said, we are not worried about the actual surgery.  It's a kidney.  It's not that big of deal surgery, and he has a second one that is perfect that will compensate just fine.

We are worried about anesthesia.  This is not outpatient surgery.  Judah will be put completely under anesthesia, and this means that he will be on a ventilator to breathe for him.  Some adults don't react well to general anesthesia, and they have fully developed bodies.  We're worried how Judah's little body (and especially lungs) will react to it.  We have lots of reassurance from our doctor, but it's still the main concern that we have.

Judah's surgery is on Monday (the 12th) at noon, and he will most likely have to stay at the hospital for 2 or 3 days.