Deck Dynasty

I keep meaning to post, I truly do, but I find that the days are voraciously consumed by the voracious consumption habits of the wonder twins. Before I know it, it's night time and I have nothing to show for it but sleeping babies with full tummies, a nap, and a home-cooked dinner if I'm really knocking it out of the ballpark.  

We are spending a lot of time on the new deck:

Please pardon the house it is attached to

She's a beauty.  Cedar and pressure-treated (the cedar is all the parts you can see) with big, beautiful wide steps and a cedar screen to hide our neighbours' siding.  When we sit on the deck or lie on the deck, the giant tree in our neighbour's yard makes it feel like you're at the cottage, and the wide expanse of the cedar dropping off at the edge makes it feel like a giant dock (the deck is about 280 square feet).  We love it out there.  What was born out of a sleepless night of fevered, pregnancy-induced nesting home-improvement inspiration turns out to be one of the best things we've ever done - and that's even given the fact that we spent a good chunk of change on a deck during the rainiest summer in recent memory.  

The screen will be a home to some vertical gardening, and maybe a cedar bench next summer that I will build in the spring.  Or maybe the bench will go on the other side.  I'm definitely going to get our electrician to provide power out there next summer and then I'm going to string some globe string lights out there, to mimic every patio in Williamsburg.  From the concrete pad, we've got a lovely stage and eventually, we'll hang a sheet and get a projector and do late night movie nights for the neighbourhood kidlets.  Already, it kills me when the Big Yam climbs on the chairs along the side and conspires with our neighbour kids.  It's so cute.  Talking to your friends through a fence is part of that romanticised Norman Rockwell upbringing that I so want to deliver to my progeny.    

Anyway, by the time the day is done, there hasn't been time for the following three things I'm trying to fit into my schedule: exercise/stretching, working on my quilt, and blogging.  I'm getting some time in for reading, we watch some TV (currently, The Sopranos) or a movie, we've been taking the Big Yam for a daily dip in the pool/splash in the pad/run in the wading pool, and we've been hosting a slew of visitors.  I shouldn't feel guilty but I do have some low-level anxiety when I see the pile of fabric begging to be cut into pieces and feel my atrophying muscles.

Today is the first day we've had the Big Yam home with us.  The Dotytron took him to the Science Centre.  I'm cautiously optimistic.  I figure one morning outing that provides us with a solid 2 hour afternoon nap brings us to the time we would have picked him up from daycare anyway.

This weekend was lovely.  On Friday night our neighbours took the Big Yam for Friday Night movie night - so cute - behold:

Saturday morning Momma D came over and watched the wonder twins so we could take the Big Yam on an epic bike ride around the Leslie Spit (aka Tommy Thompson Park).  It feels so good to be back on the ye olde steed again!  I've missed my bike, so!  Then we had Dr. Rei and Hanbo over for a dinner of oysters, lobster, corn, potato salad, salad, and Hanbo's famous chocolate cake on the deck.  It was so nice.  The Big Yam was pretty well behaved, but he's been doing this thing that breaks our hearts. We've had so many people over lately that at a certain point, he gets bored of the dinner conversation and goes back into the house.  He'll be okay for a time but then he'll come to the screen door and say, "Baba? I want something" and when we ask him what he wants, he shrugs his shoulders.  If we keep pressing him, he'll walk back towards the living room doing his sad shoulder shrugs.  It KILLS US.  He doesn't want to say what he wants (us to spend time with him) because he's afraid we're going to say no!  TELL ME THAT DOESN'T SLAY YOU!  He's getting confused between asking for TV (where we almost always say no) and asking for us to just spend time with him.  The sad shoulder shrugs are so sweet/heartbreaking.

One of my favorite moments from the past few weeks was early when we had brought the twerps home.  The Big Yam loves a good toot joke.  Any time someone toots, he grins this wide grin, looks at you, and asks, "Who TOOTED?!" and then we all laugh.  A few days after we brought the babies home, the Big Yam was put in time out for being a maniac of some form or another.  He was sitting on the stairs in time out, I was on the couch, and from the kitchen, we heard a big toot (the tooter shall remain anonymous to protect the innocent).  The Big Yam looked over at me, and I caught his eye, but he didn't dare say anything because he was in time out, so we just shared a significant, knowing look and it still makes me laugh to this day.

Anyway, on Saturday we ate with Dr. Rei and Hanbo and laughed and talked about Edward Snowdon and looked up Danzig videos and checked out Anthony Kiedis' moobs and their "moobility" (Dotytron's lingo) in the Under the Bridge video to see if he was working out.  You know, the usual stuff.

https://vine.co/v/hZQMQqnh5Fv Hanbo was like, "which one is the baby that always looks scared?" and the Dotytron was like, "I don't know what you're talking about," which is weird, because it's CLEARLY Professor Turtle.  To wit, check out this Vine that the Dotytron made, which captures Professor Turtle as he is, 90% of the time: https://vine.co/v/hZQMQqnh5Fv 

We've taken to calling L, Gantok, because he looks EXACTLY like this character, Gantok the Turtle from this picture book we love, called Pomelo Begins to Grow.  See for yourself:

Here is a photo of Q's Jean Chretien lip in full effect:

Sunday we met the roomie at our closest farmer's market and I ate a delicious jerk chicken sandwich and some gluten and dairy free sweet potato doughnuts.  We saw our neighbours there and so we went home and posse'd up and took the kids to the splash pad.  Then our friends S & P came over for dinner and we visited with them and had takeout from this gas station barbecue place, Leslieville Pumps, that makes the most amazing fried pickles, poutine, and pretty tasty smoked chicken, pulled pork, and pulled brisket sandwiches.  I also cheated and had some of the dessert that S & P brought.  I've been testing the dairy-free limits lately, with small amounts of dairy in baked goods.  I haven't eaten a chunk of cheese or chugged a glass of milk, but I figure 1 cup of sour cream in a cake or some butter in the crust of one serving of a tart is okay.  We've been watching the babies afterwards and they don't seem to be spitting up more.  We started testing them on a few bottles of my dairy-contaminated freezer milk yesterday and so far, it's been okay.  I don't think the spitting up that we've seen can be attributed to the dairy and not to putting them down after a big feed.  Still nervous about resuming eating dairy, but so far, so good.

The weather was so beautiful on the weekend and I was so elated from being back on my bike and going to the farmer's market and doing all these wonderful things in my 'hood that I totally got all PLUR and spent the whole weekend talking about how much I love my city and my 'hood.  To the Dotytron.  Who is already WELL AWARE of how much I love my city and my 'hood and I think was getting all weirded out.  Look, I get stir-crazy being cooped up inside the house, okay?

On Monday, our friends R & R came over and brought their sweet little babby, M, who has the longest eyelashes in the world.  They brought us lunch.  This is how they roll:

Yup, a delicious, seared salmon composed Nicoise salad. All beautifully plated on to their own platters. Those guys are crazy!  Not pictured: the delicious, lard-crust strawberry rhubarb tarlettes they made.  

This is all to say that we have the best friends and so far, a pretty darned good summer, even if I'm not getting a chance to run or work on my quilt.

Fin.

This Life

We've got a more manageable routine going on now that I'm not breastfeeding, bottle-feeding, and pumping every feed.  The wonder twins have slightly more moments of quiet wakefulness but generally they eat, then pass out.  Everyone keeps wondering how we (more me) is handling everything and I can honestly say that I don't find it all that taxing. 

The babies go down at night around 11:30pm and wake up again around 4am and then back down until around 7.  That give us a solid 6 hours of sleep a night, and with a nap a day while they're snoozing, I'm good to go.  The Dotytron is a bit of a delicate flower and would prefer uninterrupted sleep, but I think he's just being a whiner.  Usually I get out to do an outing/errand a day and the Dotytron (who is indulging his shut-in tendencies this summer) stays inside avoiding the sunlight and complaining that the house is too hot (it isn't).  

I would definitely be tuning a different harp if I was going it alone.  I don't know how that would happen.  Even now, giving a solo bottle feed can be madness.  Sometimes the twerps like to twin out and do weird things where they tandem cry and go into some weird, fugue, mind-meld state.  The Dotytron is a stellar, stellar dad.  He's devised his own system of burping them (I'll post a video sometime, it's hilarious), his own post-bath system, he chastises me all the time for not "knowing what they want" (which generally translates to me not giving firm enough bum pats to soothe), and does the majority of the diapers and half the feeds in addition to the odd house chore and dinner clean-up and Big Yam wrangling.  It's great.

We're going to experiment with taking the Big Yam out of daycare two days a week and hope to go up to three days a week come August.  I'll continue that in September (hopefully!).  Summer is easy - if the weather is nice, one of us takes him to the pool after daycare and all the kids are running around outside in the afternoon and after dinner.  The fall into winter is going to be tougher.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm hoping to enrol him in some kind of city program so that we have something to do every week on one of our days together.  I know a bunch of people on mat leave so with hanging out with them and errands, I'm hoping it'll be okay to be home with three kids.  We shall see.

Best big brother!

Our non-identical identical twins are starting to get more identical!

Our Cleveland friends came and stayed with us this weekend for 24 magical hours.  This is their first meeting with the wonder twins.

Making it rain with lucky money!

Recreating the womb

I'm not finding much time for reading, or emailing, or other leisure activities, but at least regular weeknight dinner-making is more of a thing:

Kalbi with rice mixed with sautéed vegetables and gochujang, julienned cucumber, and a fried egg

Cod fish tacos with cabbage slaw, and chili mayonnaise

Mussels with chorizo and white wine, bread, and the ever-present Ontario asparagus

Fin.

Tales from the NICU

[edit - draft post I didn't get around to finishing before the twerps were discharged]

Finally, a few moments to update my dusty, cobwebby corner of the interw3bs!  This whole NICU life is exhausting.  I would say it's probably more exhausting than having both babies and the Big Yam home.  Right now, I'm there 3 times a day and each time involves at least a minimum of 1.5-2 hours physically there and at least half an hour of transportation time and then the pre/post visit preparation - sterilizing bottles, packing the bag, labelling the breastmilk, trying to catch up on life, and spend quality time with the Big Yam.  It doesn't sound like much but it's more than an 8 hour day at the end of it, I'll tell you that much.

The wonder preemies loved the hypoallergenic formula and we started them on my dairy-free milk yesterday and so far they're responding well.  Minor spit ups that are within the range of normal.  I feel like last time they were on my milk for a few days before they started barfing up a storm, so I'm still being cautious with my optimism.  Yesterday was stressful - they started getting my milk at the 9am feed/visit and then I went and hung out with the Roomie until I went back for the 3pm feed/visit.  I wanted desperately to know if they spat up but I was also anxious about knowing the answer so even though I could have called the NICU to find out, I resisted because I wanted to delay getting the bad news.  It was like waiting for a response from an interview - I'm pretty sure I gave myself an ulcer.  As of today, it's so far so good.

As of Monday, they were also cut off from their medicated caffeine dose, which was helping them to avoid those apnea spells.  One of the conditions for discharge is 7 days caffeine and spell-free.  So the earliest they could come home would be on Canada Day.  But ANOTHER condition of discharge is that they have to be feeding tube free for 48 hours and in that time, gaining weight, or if they're breastfeeding, at least not losing weight (breastfeeding is a tonne of work for babies).  I breastfed them at each visit yesterday.  L, the goofy professor turtle is a champ - he took 10cc's each time and this morning did 15cc's.  Q, the placid mouse seems content to never, ever, ever take food orally.  He's lazy!  The nurses say that preemies don't get nipple confusion, and I'm so desperate to get them home I'd much rather have a bottle-feeding Q and work on the breastfeeding on my own time and in my own house.  Please send good feeding vibes to the babies so we can have them back!

There was a milestone graduation on the weekend - they got moved out of their incubators and into regular cots - which meant that now they could wear oversized hospital clothes:

LOL at my non-identical identical twins.

Also, I saw the paediatrician yesterday and the results of their follow-up brain ultrasounds were good.  Goofball Professor Turtle had some cysts in his brain that showed up on an ultrasound they did to check them out when they were having their apnea.  They see cysts in premature babies and usually they shrink on their own.  In the turtle's case, that happened.  One had disappeared and the other one was smaller.  The placid mouse also had cysts but they were so small they weren't of any concern to the radiologist or our paediatrician.  The turtle also had what might have been a small brain bleed (the radiologist wasn't sure) but that was also gone this ultrasound.  Hurray!  

The placid mouse has a bit of a droopy lip when he cries but his neurological scan was fine, so we just call him Jean Chretien and leave it at that.  So many things in such wee bodies!

Friday was a bit of a gonger.  We decided to take advantage of the fact that the Dotytron was off work to take the Big Yam to the zoo.  He was pumped, to put it lightly.  The whole time from the back seat of Eddie Van Halen he was bouncing in his chair and going, "The zoo! We're going to see lions! And chameleons! And seahorses!" and he basically rhymed off every animal in his 100 Animals book.  It was pretty cute.  He was so excited.  I feel like the Metro Toronto Zoo should give out t-shirts that say, "I Survived the Zoo Death March" because that's what it is.  Our zoo is freakin' huge!  And most of it is Africa!  It's vast expanses of sizzling concrete.  The Dotytron was living in 1982 and didn't know that the monorail was decommissioned like, a billion years ago.  It was broiling, but worth the $60 parking and admission (for two hours!), because the Big Yam had such a good time:

I packed us a signature Lagerfeld picnic lunch - Ontario strawberries, egg salad sandwiches, water.  Sign that I'm not on my A-game: I forgot the truly signature move - the Lagerfeld frozen towel in a ziploc bag.  

The NICU is a hilarious place - full of characters.  We have our one nurse, Pam, who is a fiesty black lady from the Barbados, who gets all juiced up from Chinese medicine before her shifts.  We have another nurse who is obsessed with space and doesn't believe the moon landing happened (she's been to NASA twice and thinks it's a fake).  LOL!  I asked her, "So you think it's a fake?" and she gave me this knowing look and said, "Why. Haven't. They. Been. Back."  Hahaha!  The 9pm shift is my favorite - the whole energy of the place winds down and it's just you and the babies and the nurses and everyone kind of relaxes and starts to cut loose.  There's another nurse who is obsessed with baseball, cats, and hedgehogs and is basically running a hedgehog sanctuary out of her home - she left the other week for some hedgehog convention in Baltimore.

I know we have it lucky - there are NICU babies who have it worse than we do.  As emotional as this process is, I am grateful for socialized medicine and the work of the nurses and staff who are looking after our babies.  The system is hurting though.  The nurses are generally assigned 4 babies per nurse and sometimes 5.  Since all the babies get fed on the same 3 hour schedule, I don't know how the heck they do it.  It used to be a 3:1 ratio.  Also, on nights when babies like ours are having alternating spells, the nurses are run ragged.  Pam definitely needed her Chinese medicine that night, resuscitating the twerps one after the other.  Also, when the NICU census is low, to save money, they start cutting shifts, which doesn't make sense in a hospital context.  You never know who is going to be walking through the doors of labour and delivery and what their baby is going to need.  It's terrible and I feel like we only care about the health care system when we need it and it's not something that we can afford to ignore.

Fin.

Unbelievable

We've been home with the boys since Saturday!  Overwhelming to say the least.  Everything escalated so quickly, near the end of their stay.  Last Tuesday was the end of my five-day dairy-elimination diet, so I started them on my breastmilk for real.  Prior to that, I had been pumping before a feed to empty my breasts and then trying them on the boob so they could practice latching.  They tolerated my breastmilk well so that meant even more time at the hospital - breastfeeding, then topping up with a bottle, and then pumping.  Last week was all me all the time, as the Dotytron went back to work for the last week of school.  It was a little stressful and trying - all the back and forth to the hospital and the length of my stays there meant that each visit took a minimum of 2 hours.  The progress from there was exponential - I showed up on Thursday and they had had their feeding tubes removed, because they'd done a full night of bottles:

And then all of a sudden our paediatrican was talking discharge.  The NICU needed the beds, I think and our guys were getting old and were ready to "graduate" as it were - they had hit 35 weeks, had gone 5 days off their medicated caffeine dose without having an apnea spell, and by the proposed discharge date of Saturday, June 29th, they would have been without the feeding tube for the requisite 48 hours.  The paediatrican was confident that they were ready (and, as I mentioned, they needed the beds).  I was told all of this on Friday and so Friday was a day spent running around like a headless chicken crossed with a headless horseman.  I had to get the car seats so they could get their car seat tests (premature babies are hooked up to a blood oxygen monitor and then put in their car seat for 90 minutes to make sure they don't desaturate).  Then I found out that our old car seat that Theo used was too big for the babies.  The straps at their lowest level was still about 3 inches above where the bigger wonder twin (Professor Turtle's) shoulders started, so I had to go out and by another new car seat on the fly.  Then it was mad housecleaning and making arrangements for the Big Yam Saturday morning.

Saturday morning we signed all the paperwork, endured the most fraught 10 minute car ride of our lives and then this happened:

Home, home, home!

It hasn't been without its stresses.  The Big Yam has a cold and had a fever Monday night.  He's been so sweet with the babies and all he wants to do is touch them and hold them and be nice to them, and we've had to be jerks and tell him not to touch themvand give him grief about washing his hands and coughing into his sleeve and he doesn't understand.  We had my mum take him yesterday, today, and into tomorrow and we're both consumed with guilt about it - we feel badly for him.  He's basically had his life turned upside down for the past three weeks and now we're sending him away right when he feels the crummiest and wants us to comfort and cuddle him.  It's making us feel like the worst parents ever.  Three under three ain't no joke, sons.  

Look at that picture of him being the cutest with his babies brother (and also coating them in germs)!  So G-D cute.  When the babies cry in their pack and play in the living room, he goes over and pats their heads and says, "It's okay, it's okay" and it's the sweetest effing thing you've ever seen in your life.  Makes me want to cry just thinking about it.  

We have to be ultra-vigilant with the wonder preemies.  They put the fear into us before we got discharged, on account of RSV - respiratory syncytial virus.  It's one of the things that make up the common cold, and almost everyone will have it by the time they're two, but it's the leading cause of hospitalization in premature babies and if they get it, their underdeveloped lungs means they are more prone to bronchial issues, pneumonia, and even death.  WORST.  So we're being super-strict about people washing their hands before touching the babies and limiting visitors, etc.  Guess how long we have to be wary for?  THIS ENTIRE COLD/FLU SEASON.  Hahaha, of COURSE it's for months and months.  Ahh, the wonder twins, making things easy since 2013.  They can get this booster in September that helps their immune system but it wears off.  They'll also be seen by this neonatal follow clinic to check for any developmental issues until they're 2.

So glad they're home, but these feeds are epic.  First I try them on the breast, then we top them up with the bottle, and then I pump.  Each feed is taking about 1.5 hours and that's with the Dotytron helping me, and we do this eight times a day.  The weekend was tough - when the Big Yam is at daycare,I find  it's really manageable - the wonder twins sleep so much that other than feeding, it's pretty hands off, unless I feel like wanting the best feeling in the world ever and decide to grab one of them to take a nap on me.  I'm fine to get by on 5 hours of sleep with a 1 hour nap during the day.    The Dotyron is a little more sensitive to sleep interruptions but he's been stellar.  Equal partnerships for the win!  

Our support network has been great.  Dr. Rei and Hanbo came over on Friday night and watched the Big Yam, which involved an epic dance party session to the Thomas theme song for a million hours.  SMcKay and Lolly came on Saturday to lend a helping hand.  Momma D and Ehmdo came by.  My mum has been fantastic - dropping off food, taking the Big Yam, and giving bottles to the babies and generally being ultra-cute with them.  I don't know how we could do it without them, and that's with the Dotytron being off for the summer.  

We are so, so, so happy to be home.  22 days in the NICU went by slow and fast at the same time.  The care we got for the boys from that place was outstanding and next level and I am sad to leave our NICU family of nurses and care providers.  The wonder twins are so happy to be together.  When we put them in the pack and play together they roll towards each other and hold hands - up until being born they'd been together for almost 8 months and I think they're glad to be close together again.  

Now we're settling into a rhythm, eating home cooked food again, and resting and revelling in our family of five.  We still get caught off guard...it's hard to believe we're the parents of three boys.  Sometimes I still can't believe that I have twin boys...our non-identical identical twin boys.  So much love!

Fin.