We are still here...

and this little guy has been up to a lot....

we will be back soon to share the happenings...(after we get a little sleep) :)

Ava & Isabella are 2 Months!!!

The girls are 2 months old. Yep, we missed getting a picture the 1st month (Isabella was in the midst of getting discharged from the hospital and we were distracted that day) but we are back in the groove. :) We are finding that it is hard to get them both "chill". One will be calm and the other not-so-much. :) This was Isabella not loving the photo shoot. Ava was chill and so you will see many more pictures of her. :)

Isabella on left, Ava on right

Isabella was crying so hard that it got Ava going too! We are finding this to be true with twins.

A chilled out Ava.

Another pic of Ava.:)

Happy 2nd Birthday Isaac!!

Our little guy turned 2 on July 30th!!! Wow, the last 2 years have flown by! What has Isaac been up to lately:

HE....

is incredibly social and LOVES to wave and say HI to everyone.

is a jumper and finds whatever he can to jump from...he will make-up games and jump over cracks in the cement, logs at the beach, rocks at the park, lines in a parking lot, etc...

has never met a stair he doesn't love....seriously this little guy loves his stairs and will go up and down them all day if he could. He recently started going down them without having to hold on!

is in an independent stage...which is both neat to see and also the most challenging stage he has been in.

LOVES balls and has a great arm.

is all about giving kisses to his sisters.

has a ton of energy that goes all day.

can go without a nap but when he does go down he can sleep for hours.

has been in a summer pre-school program and has loved it.

is learning new words everyday and still uses his sign language.

has 2 favorite stuffed animals that he sleeps with at night...a dog named Bo and then a turtle that is named Moe (creative, huh?)

has recently given up his pacifer although when he sees his sister's he sometimes wants his again.

sleeps every night from about 8PM-7AM.

is a good eater and has been spoiled lately with lots of treats from his Grandparents. :) He loves it!

We love it when he runs to us when we pick him up at pre-school and gives us the biggest hugs.

Mommy & Daddy are some of the favorite words we hear coming out of his mouth. :)

We are soooo blessed by him and are so proud he is our son!!!

Here are some pictures from the birthday celebrations:

Here are Isaac and Uncle Jon sharing a birthday treat to celebrate both their birthdays. We went out to a special dinner at the Norfolk Yacht Club and we had a yummy and fun time.

This is Isaac on his birthday. We decided to wait until after his nap to start his birthday celebration. He has just gotten up and had no idea what fun was ahead....

Here he is opening his gift.

Had to show this picture to share the full glory of the beautiful wrapping job! :) Yes, people those are blankets. :)

He loves his new trike!

Daddy & Isaac went outside to check it out.

Our birthday boy.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese's with Grandma & Grandpa Shafer and had a great time! Here is Isaac with his birthday cake. I love this look on his face...he does this when he is really excited about something. He is saying "whoa"....so sweet!

8th Anniversary fun

Our 8th anniversary was July 27th....can it already be 8 years!!?? Needless to say there has been a lot going on the last couple of months and so we decided that we would do a romantic anniversary date in the near future but have a family date for our 1st anniversary being a family of 5! :) Uncle Jon and Grandpa Norm also joined us in the family fun and we had a wonderful evening! We went to a really cool place in VA Beach called Chick's Oyster Bar...I am not one for oysters but they had a lot of yummy food and it was a great atmosphere....we love living near the water!

Who knows when we will finally get a good family pic! :)

The twin chicks & big bro in front of the Chick's sign. :)

The girls

Ava & Isabella are doing great! They have been doing all the baby stuff...eating, pooping, sleeping and then doing it all again about every 4 hours!! :) We were blessed to have Grandma & Grandpa Shafer come stay with us for the last 2 weeks and they blessed us with lots of help with the feedings and taking Isaac to & from his pre-school (we will have to do a post about Isaac's 1st pre-school experience...he is doing awesome). They also had a great zoo day with Isaac and I will have to get some pics from them to post. Here are some recent pictures of the girls. They are so cute together and I love how they seem to interact already together.

Isabella on left and Ava on right

Get those yawns out girls

Ava telling Isabella a secret....

Isabella chatting back. :)

Currently...

We have been spending our evenings doing this...

Isaac has been spoiled by Grandpa & Grandma Shafer and Uncle Jon...they came bearing gifts and he loved every one...Christmas in July! :)

We have been figuring out being a family of 5!

Birth Story Re-post

UPDATE: It was June 21st that we started this post but we just finished it and posted it last night...here it is where you can find it and not have to scroll down...

Not only have we used this blog as a way to keep our friends and family informed to what is happening in our life we have also treated it as a baby book. The coolest thing we have found out is that you can get your blog printed like a book and you can have a hardcopy of your memories...how cool! I wanted to write out Ava & Isabella's birth story so that we remember it. It was soooo different than Isaac's so here it goes....

Their birth story:

My Mom and I had laughed early in the week because I was in SERIOUS nesting mode and we were wondering if something was happening. My Mom also noticed my stomach had dropped a little. I had been feeling pretty good all week so I didn't think too much about it, but on Thursday night I had gone to the bathroom before bed and I just felt a little "funny." I wasn't having contractions but I went to bed and I didn't take my shot (it's a blood thinner for a potential blood clotting disorder). If you take it and you go into labor you can't use a pain medications (i.e epidural or spinal) for 24 hours.

I didn't sleep well that night...I was going to the bathroom every hour and then at 5:30 I woke up with back cramps that seemed to come and go about every 5 minutes. I had my 32 week appt. at 10:40 that morning but things just did not feel right so I called the hospital and they said to come in. I went in for a non-stress test and they didn't see any contractions on the print-out so then I felt a little silly. I just wanted to go to my normal Dr. appt. at this point but they decided to do a pre-term labor test and ultrasound on me. Well, that is when everything changed!!!!! They checked me out and discoved I barely had any of my cervix left and I was dilated to 2! They then said "you aren't going anywhere 'till you have these babies." At this point they talked to me about hoping to stop labor with medications and have me hold off till 34 weeks (better lung development). They then did an ultrasound to check out the girls' weights and they were both over 4 lbs. so they were very happy with that. I was then admitted to the hospital and once I got to my room I was having horrible back cramps again. They had done a "Pre-Term Labor Test" on me when they checked my cervix and shortly after I was admitted they came into my hospital room to tell me the results...I was going to have a baby that day...I asked how reliable those tests were and they said reliable enough that they usually believed them! :) I wasn't quite sure what to think about this overwhelming piece of news, but my mind was shortly taken over by the painful contractions and the fact that Marc was over a 1000 miles away and wasn't suppose to be in Virginia for almost another week.

Marc had just graduated from his Army course that morning and so was in his graduation ceremony when all this was happening! I had called him as soon it was over (and had sent him NUMEROUS texts) and told him to get on the first flight to Virginia!! Sometime during the afternoon the Dr. had come in and said the medications to slow the labor down were not working and the new goal was to get me to Sunday so that I could get 2 steroid shots to help the girls lung development (they had given me the 1st one as soon as I was admitted). I stayed at 3 cm dilated for a good portion of the day (I guess the girls were waiting for Marc to get there) but I was in some serious pain. Well, Marc got into town around midnight and I guess the girls were excited to see their Daddy because things seemed to speed up. I went from 3 cm to 6 cm in just a couple of hours and everyone knew I wasn't going to make it longer than a few more hours. I was starting to throw up (I know TMI) a lot after I got to 6 cm and they said I was probaly progressing pretty fast. No pain meds to this point and I was FEELING it!! We decided to do a c-section because Isabella was breech. They took me into surgery at 7:00 Sat. morning...almost 24 hours after I got there and once I got the spinal, there was some much needed relief! :)

Ava came out at 7:45 weighing 4 lb. 2 oz. and 17 3/4" long and Isabella came out butt first at 7:50 weighing 4 lb. 10 oz. and 18 1/4" long. The Doctors have been incredibly pleased with their sizes and their progress for being born early (although twins commonly come early...most twins are delivered between 32-37 weeks). All I know is that I ate a heavy protein diet and drank many "boost" drinks (never have to have another one of those) my whole pregnancy. I hope to think that whole protein kick helped them be good birth weights!! I have no idea why they came so early but we are thankful they are doing awesome! They are the sweetest little girls with guite a bit of spunk! :)

This picture is right before we left the hospital!

[Ava (L) + Isabella (R)]

Sisterly love!

(Ava-front; Isabella-rear)