Update: Why We Love\Hate the NICU

After a great prognosis Thursday night, Moses started having breathing incidents and low blood sugar levels. He went from nursing, to supplemental bottle feedings, to a feeding tube. Friday morning we were still hopeful that Shadrach could join us over on the "the good side" but he too began to struggle to control his sugars. The reality is, they are still premature. Premature babies just aren't ready to monitor every little thing on their own, including breathing and saving energy between feedings!

So we are back into that familiar routine (established with Jericho) of visits to the NICU. It is a place full of the most wonderful nurses but also very sick babies, much sicker than our own. Even as we gripe about the inconvenience, we're reminded how blessed we are.

 

Last night, after dashing home to put coat #2 of poly on Jericho's yet unfinished room, I found Laura in the NICU holding both the boys. A super sweet thing about twins is that there is one cute baby for each parent. Kangaroo care!

Introducing...

THEY'RE HERE!

 

 

Moses Phillip and Shadrach Thomas
5 lbs. 6 oz. and 5 lbs. 2 oz.
10:18 and 10:26 PM
February 28, 2013
 



Babies on the way! Round of 16 announced!

Due to the imminent arrival of the twins, we are announcing the round of 16 winners!

Stay tuned for birth pictures and the final announcements.

We are beginning Petosin as I am typing!

Round of 16 (Left Side)

Elijah
Abraham
Abiathar
Bartholomew
Ezekial
Jeremiah
Abijah
Shadrach

Round of 16 (Right Side)

Isaiah
Francis
Moses
Phillip
Otto
Apollo
Levi
Thomas

And the winners are...

Round of 32 (left side)

Mordechai

Elijah

Xavier

Abraham

Abiathar

Jonah

Bartholomew

Sebastian

Jethro

Ezekial

Jeremiah

Oliver

Abijah

Ethan

Shadrach

Simon

 

Round of 32 (right side)

Isaiah

Elliot

Jeremiah

Francis

Moses

Eli

Phillip

Aaron

Lucas

Otto

Jefferson

Apollo

Levi

Hezekiah

Obadiah

Thomas

A Double Trouble Baby Name Bracket!

34 weeks!
 Photography by Sarah Mock

In anticipation of the birth of our baby boys, we've created a name bracket for you to test how well you know Laura and I. Fill it out and then check back for updates on each round of this friendly competition. Kudos to those special few who manage to guess even one of the two chosen names. On each side of the bracket, one of the names is for real!

Fill out your baby name bracket here!

Extremely tentative schedule:
Round of 32- Wednesday, Feb. 27
Round of 16- Friday, March 1

An Upcycled Wooden Play Kitchen for Jericho!

 

Happy Birthday Jericho!

As our daughter turned two last week, we were able to give her a really awesome present. Inspired a while ago from a Pinterest posting, Laura suggested we find a small cabinet at Goodwill or Resource York to turn into a play kitchen. But as it turns out, the perfect start to this project was already in our house: a section from the upper cabinets over the fridge in the old upstairs bedroom (in the process of becoming Jericho's new room). Follow along in the transformation!

 

1) An old cabinet

 

 

 

                    2) With one door turned vertical and new shelving added

 

3) A "backplash" and the "stovetop" added

 

 

 

4) Trimmed out                                     



 

 

5) Painting in progress

 

 

6) Final details including sink and burners

 

Cheese!

 

 

With just a few exceptions,

 everything in this project was recycled or we already owned.

 

Hardware from the cabinets was reused, the backsplash was made with plywood and 2x4s rescued from a demo project in the basement, the trim came from the old kitchen on the first floor and leftovers in the garage from the 1970s basement finishing job. All of the paint we already owned, used in our real kitchen. The shelf was made of the bottom of a cabinet drawer and the wheels were mounted on recycled 2x4s. The stove insulation was a leftover scrap from our kitchen remodel and finally, the wire baskets inside the stove and on the side came from our restored 1950s MacDougall built-ins. We bought: 4 wheels, epoxy, two wooden knobs and two flat wooden cut-outs, and a dog bowl.

 

Jericho's Room- Update!

A few photos from the latest work in Jericho's room. Progress due in large part to the help of Jeff, Pop, and my father!

Swinging a Hammer Into the New Year

 Transitioning a second story kitchen into a bedroom is harder than you might imagine. Here's a shot of the cabinets mostly demolished. The uppers have already been moved to the garage to make storage space (imagine the white area on the wall as the "backsplash"). In this picture you can see a number of potentially deadly DIY projects:

The rest of the demo work reveals missing baseboard and miserable water  damage to the flooring.

W. M. Rutter- apparently a now defunct WV lumber  company.
Difficult to obtain 1 1/2 x 5/16 red oak strip flooring.

My pathetic first attempts at soldering copper pipes in the wall between the room and a closet. You can see that the first try didn't work (water sprayed on  lathe).  On a second try, I forgot to empty the active water line down to the valve in the basement and nearly lost an eye when steam in the pipe built up and shot off the end cap like a bullet!

Plaster patching finished (I was forced to cap the waste water line and leave it protruding slightly from the wall). It connects to an air vent directly on the other side of this wall in the corner of the closet. Since we didn't want to remove the whole thing, which would have also involved roof work, we settled for a small oddity. It will likely be behind a bed or some other piece of furniture anyway!

You can see the electrical outlet now moved to the baseboard just to the right of the ladder.

Well, it's still a work in progress. I was able to reuse baseboard from the kitchen in this room, except for one stretch. I also found trim work I had saved to match the existing wood around the closet door. I would not have been able to match it otherwise, short of custom millwork (hah!). What remains? SERIOUS flooring work (2 inch x 5/16 straight edge is on order- I will have to rip each piece), then refinishing the entire floor and lots of painting. Stay tuned!

A Church Family Christmas

Our Christmas holiday was very full! This year we traveled to both halves of our families splitting our vacation time right down the middle. But of course, it all begins a few weeks earlier with the annual Christmas tree hunt:

We found this tree very quickly, a Blue Spruce with incredible coloring, very slim, and what I estimated to be the perfect height (just over 9 feet). I had forgotten a tape measure (contrary to my father's excellent tree selection training growing up) and had to judge off my own height. In the picture, we are standing on higher ground.

The tree fit wonderfully!

On further inspection, we found that our tree, with its "incredible coloring," had been sprayed with dye! I complained and was told that it was standard industry practice these days and that I was the only one who didn't like it. I don't know about you, but if I am going to buy a natural tree, I would prefer it to be natural! I actually tend to think that the Blue Spruces had a rough summer\fall and had a lot of yellow in their needles prompting Family Christmas Tree Farm of Red Lion, PA (among others) to spray them. 

Jericho looks cute while trying to electrocute herself.

Pop Pop!
We headed south to Harrisonburg as soon as we got free from work. Jericho Faye adores her Pop Pop, along with cousin Rachel May.

Snuggle time with Momma and baby brothers...

Cousins!

More cousins!
This is up at the extended Church family gathering in Woodstown, NJ.  Judah and Isaac are anticipating the birth of another sibling (each in their own way I believe), and Jericho looks forward to cousin #8, with #9 on the way too!

Laura and I approached the "gingerbread house" making competition full throttle, preparing in advance to build  this church using Jolly Ranchers to create stained glass. We ran into some structural difficulties, and the steeple got nixed (all Asa's fault), but were still pleased with the results!

The Big Reveal

Short of a cutesy blue\pink icing in the middle of the cupcake party, we trained Jericho to reveal the sex of our twins. Now how cute is that?

If you can't understand toddler talk, the proof is in the pudding below:

Looking from below Twin A, you can see thighs sticking out at 90 degrees and pronounced genitalia. The mass above\right of the thin line is Twin B.

Less clear, but you can once again see thighs with genitalia on Twin B.

Of course the tech could be wrong (but it sure looks like she is right on at least 1 count!)