We Are Still ALIVE!

It actually amazes me that we have hit the big milestone of the girl's first birthday! Looking back it went so quickly.. up all night, nursing around the clock, absolute sleep deprivation, walking around in a constant daze, changing a set of diapers every two hours. Some how God brought us through the bumps and set us up on a mountain top so we are finally able to look down at what we have accomplished!

Speaking of which Emily is walking now, Kate is standing and seriously contemplating "the walk", Miles is singing, talking in sentences and making us laugh constantly. Miles is also the guardian of his sisters as just the other day Kate decided to venture up the entire flight of stairs and as she turned around to go back down (face first) Miles grabbed onto her leg and held her until I arrived! Praise God that he watches over the meek.

We are planning a trip to Amarillo at the end of the week as Donovan goes overseas for 3 weeks. Although we will only be there for 10 days, it will be an amazing help to me to have the support of my family while he is away. I have to admit the flight tends to be the scary unknown and now with three mobile children it may just eat us alive. Brett is here and plans on flying with me to help and without help this obviously would not be taking place. So if anyone is up at 6 am east coast time say a little prayer for us....

Here are some recent pics of the kids.

Miles has the red cheeks.

I think Emi is watching birds?..

Kate looking good in her shades!!

Are the days getting longer?

I feel like either the days are getting longer or shorter, but I really can't decide which. Longer, for the simple fact that I am struggling to make it until 1pm so I can put the kids down for a nap. Shorter, maybe because I feel like I just had these 5 lb babies and now they are 20lbs... WHAT!?

Today I was playing with Miles in the backyard enjoying our very rare 70 degree weather. I said to him that maybe we should pick up Macy's "yuckies" out of the yard so he wouldn't step in them. Don't ask me why I have suddenly developed an aversion to using the real word for dog crap. Poop... there I said it. Anyway, to my surprise Miles actually knew what I was talking about because he ran to the fence and picked up the pooper scooper and brought it over. As he ran he shouted "pick up yuckies, pick up yuckies". Oh my goodness I couldn't stop laughing. What have I done to our child? Poor kid will be in school saying "teacher I have to make yucky" and she will probably look at him like he has lost his mind.

Besides the fact that my son obviously makes me laugh, life is getting more hectic as we speak. Miles doesn't really nap at all anymore so the best I can do is make him stay in his room for about an hour. He does a good job but he gets very loud which creates the girls upstairs to wake before they need to which equals seriously cranky babies. I can be a cranky mommy on days such as these.

On a positive note the three of them enjoy playing together now. For the most part there isn't as much crying as there is stealing of the toys but it comes with the territory I guess. I have recently purchased what I hope to be my final twin stroller for a while- I mean forever. Its a side by side which I swore I would never own but its nice. One of the only down falls is that the girls tuffle a lot more. If one sees something the other has she just lays into her sister and stakes claim to it.

We were strolling down the mall the other day when Kate decided she would like to play with the empty juice box that her sister was happily enjoying. So what does she do?- she swipes it. What does Emily do?- she takes it right back. Thus starting WW3. I mean come on kids get it together! I gave Kate a full juice box that was in my bag hoping this would relieve the tension but NO!! no, no, no, Emily wanted the full juice box. So we ended up where it all began. So picture my girls clawing each others faces, pulling hair and screaming at the top of their lungs while everyone stairs at me. Wow, I felt like a winner. I have a feeling this is just the beggining of a beautiful friendship/rivalry!

Well this should make up for the months and months I skipped out on the blogging world!
Enjoy, the way things are going it could be a while.

How to install a carseat or two!

Well the girls are 6 months now and lets just say I haven't had much free time to blog, but I will say this- they are all still alive! So at this point the kids are even cuter and funnier than the day before. It is so much fun getting to watch them all grow up and develop. We have really accomplished a lot in a mere two and a half years. We have three children we have now flown them all across states and planted them in the Texas dirt and lived to actually tell about it. Miles is rebelling against the potty. We had him going a few times a day before we left for our trip but now they are no longer friends. Potty has no place in Miles' life anymore, well unless its nap time or bed time then all of a sudden Miles wants to go potty!! He has figured out this will buy him time before the long awaited sleep and he knows we are desperate suckers who just want him to pee in the POTTY! Ti's the life of a two year old. Kate is rolling all over the place and getting to where she wants to be. Emily is sitting up nice and pretty...life is good.

So we finally decided to bite the bullet and buy two big car seats for the girls. We got them out of the boxes tonight and proceeded to shove and I mean shove them into the car. First we started with the configuration of Miles in the middle and the girls on the sides but then we realized Miles couldn't get in the car to even sit in between b/c the car seats were blocking the entrance so, we put Miles back on the side behind the drivers seat. Then of course we realized they all wouldn't fit together. So we took them all out again and returned Miles to the middle realizing that he will either have to crawl under the car seat to get to the middle or enter from the front (drivers seat) and crawl back. What a little situation we have... can we get a caravan please?? NO.. NEVER. We will make it work! Anyway it was humorous. To tell you the truth we don't even know if they will all fit when we have to turn the girls forward facing but we have decided to cross that bridge when we get there.
We also went and got the girls' 6 month pics done and attempted to get Miles in there as well but we completely failed. By chance he jumped onto a little car in the corner and she snapped a few on the move. They actually turned out very cute but wow.. we were exhausted from using our (high pitched) voices to get the kids to smile... not to mention my cheeks are pretty sore as well.

Funny Things

Funny things are always happening all around me. Its always entertaining. I remember thinking to myself before I had kids, will I ever be able to laugh in the moment of sheer chaos. Well I have the answer.........most definitey YES! Thank you God for giving me a sense of humor. God obviously has a sense of humor as well because I see him doing things to me everyday that I know He is up there laughing about. "Well, lets just see how Shawna will get out of this one...ha ha ha!" Miles diserves a full page of funny things he has come up with starting with:

1. assuming this very interesting postion when he goes #2 (to be polite), he just turns upside down with his rear in the air and well... goes. Its remarkable how he does this, I mean working against gravity and all. I have heard most kids squat behind the couch but not my Miles he's not shy.

2. The other thing he loves is repeating things I say. Luckily the one that stuck isn't that bad. "Awwwwwwww Maaaaaaaaan"! Do I really say that all the time?? Yes, I guess I do but now my son says it ALL the time. Misses a basket ball shot..."awwwwwwwww maaaaaaaan". Drops his spoon and even for no reason at all; its truly his phrase of choice.

I could go on and on but I am 1. out of energy and 2. Holding Emily which makes it hard to type!

So that was fun, I will have to do this again sometime.

Here are some new pics.

Wow....is it already the end of June?! Yikes, life is going fast. My girls are already 4 months now and Miles is speaking in phrases, not to mention climbing the walls (well at least the counters). We are blessed to share the news that God has done a miracle in our household... he has healed Emily's ears and she no longer has hearing loss in either ear!

What a BIG God we serve that cares about the sweetest things in life, like the ability to allow my baby's ears to open up so that she can hear the amazing world around her. I look forward to telling her one day about the journey she has been through and there was a time we thought she would never hear the wind through the trees or the sound that locust make in the summer when your sitting on your porch, or even us whispering in her ear "I love you"! Those things were so devastating to me at one time but that's when I began to pray for God not only to heal her for the purpose of a better life but to heal her so she could experience full hand the works that God has created for her to enjoy. There is a verse that I used to quote when we were trying to conceive Miles and it came to mind when I was praying for Emily's ears.."Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Mark 11:24

I, along with soooooo many people, BELIEVED that God was going to heal Emily in His time and surely He has. Thank you God that you are not a God in a box but you are omniscient. This is proof that God still does Miracles if people just allow Him to work in their lives. Another thing that God has given me was the strength of faith. I think so many people think faith comes from within but God gave me the faith that I needed to get through the circumstances. I wasn't in a place where I could grasp why or what God wanted to accomplish through it all so the only thing I could do was ask God to give me faith and stay steadfast that He would one day answer me. The hard thing for me through it all was not knowing how God would respond. Would he will Emily to live with her hearing loss to build character or to minister or would he choose to heal her? I just didn't know but I chose to prayer for complete healing. I think we have to be at peace with whatever God may choose so that he can have full reign to work in our lives. If I had never been at peace with the fact that Emily may have a hearing loss for the rest of her life I think I might have limited the extent to which God wanted to work in our lives.

I'm starting to feel as though I am rambling but I just had to give the glory to God because- ONE He deserves it and TWO because I can not hold back His glory and how He wants to touch others with the miracle He has done in Emi!

Thank you to those who lifted up my daughter to God and for spreading the word to churches and friends so they would also lift her up.

Kate in all her glory!

Mother's Day

Well tomorrow will be my first Mother's Day with the twins. As I reflect on all of the moments I have been blessed by them. I can't help but think of all the trials I have overcome and that are YET to come. I laugh at some of the things that have happened to me since I became a mom and cry at the moments that have passed me by.
The sad thing is I haven't even had a moment to reflect since becoming the mom of three until I recently went into the restroom by myself for the first time in two months! Now for those who know what I am talking about, laugh it up and for those who think it was disgusting for me to share this moment.... get over it :) I'm just kidding! There really are a lot of not so glorious things about mom-hood. Donovan and I share to each other how we have NEVER had a job this hard in our lives. He jokingly says "its pretty sad when I come home from work and its actually more work !" He doesn't know how I do it.... I don't now how I do it!! The grace of God succeeds my human ability and I give Him ALL the glory when it comes to my patience. I have seen more patience come from my life than I ever imagined possible. God is building some CHARACTER in us right now.
Having twins is something indescribable and so I won't even try to explain the work involved, but I will say it has caused for some seriously tense moments and some really funny moments all together. Every time all three of my children start crying together I just start laughing... I mean what can you do. I don't want to make four so I go the opposite way. I have been saying this all week long but I have really earned my stripes this year for Mother's Day. (as humble as that sounds) I want to say to all the moms out there no matter how many kids you have, praise God for you. Our children will never know how much we have done until one day... their kids torture them in the same way... HA, that sounds horrible but TRUE.
Just for a few laughs I will share some of our lowest points.
There was always the first week we brought the twins home and I ate chili for dinner and the girls kept us up all night crying with gas... that was the night Donovan offered to take them to the Fire Station. Then there was the time when I was changing Emily's diaper and she passed gas and poop when flying into my face AND hair. Or there was the time Donovan was changing a diaper (this was when we didn't think girls could pee on you) and Kate let him have it (on his side of the bed). Now it doesn't sound as funny but had you been there to see his germ-a-phobic face.. and he had to sleep in it that night. Not to mention just the other day when he was changing Emi's blowout he starting freaking out because it was up her back.. on her leg... foot... somehow got on her arm... sofa.... Donovan's hand (that was the freak out point). Wow how poop travels. Really most of our funniest moments revolve around changing some sick diapers! Oh well what else can you have in life if you can't laugh at the lowest points .. right!??
Needless to say one day our kids will be grown and I will miss not having my hands busy 24/7 ... or will I? No, I'm sure I will and I will look back and laugh at all those priceless moments that have helped me earn my mommy badge!
And........this goes without saying I love my husband. I thank him for making me a mommy. He not only has my back but weathers the storms with me everyday.... and every night. I love you!One day we will be able to talk to each other again and maybe, just maybe be able to hold hands.
Here's to you babe!

My precious life

So here we are 2 months down the road and my girls and son are blossoming.. much like spring (how quaint). I think things are getting easier in some areas and maybe harder in others. They are somewhat easier to feed and take places but are very alert and don't sleep as much so I feel the need to spend quality time with them (which consist of lost of smiling and babbling on my part). It's funny, I thought I had grown out of that stage. They are precious though.. all of them, even sometimes my husband.
God is really giving us a sense of peace about Emi. I know its b/c we have our prayer warriors all over it. I truly believe it is improving by the day. She is responding so much more to noises than ever before and I BELIEVE in miracles from God when He wills them. Kate is my little smiley girl. She is so full of JOY. Miles is doing much better at loving instead of "fighting" on his sisters. Sometimes I feel like I don't have one moment to myself.. oh wait I don't but when I look at my kids I know it is all worth it. One day I will find myself again but I don't know what I will do with her (me?). We will have to do lunch or something. So people told me raising kids is hard.. full time and what not but you just will never fully understand until that baby makes its way here that you will pretty much be laying down your life and your personal needs for about 18 years. What joy and yet what WORK it involves. I think I will pause a moment to give myself a pat on the back.
OK... I really miss you all out there who are so far away. Thanks to my loyal bloggers- you know who you are, who check for updates everyday. I will try not to let you down.
Here are some pics from last night.







Tuesday at their pediatrician apt.
Emi weighed in at 9 lbs 14 oz and 22" and Kate was 9 lbs 9 oz and 21.25" Way to go Kate..she wasn't going to be left behind by chuncky monkey. I hope Emi doesn't get a complex from that comment :) Miles is a stout.. oh wait he says he prefers not to reveal his weight or height at this time (check back in a month when he turns the big 2)
PS Kate is on the left and Emi on the right