where we've been...

mostly here.....


and not in the relaxed, therapy appointment kinds of way. In the ER way. Twice, in one week.


visit one:
Sunday morning. Oliver had a stomach bug (third in six weeks, for those of us keeping track). He had a seizure the morning after it started, and it scared the hell out of me. We were at CHOP for two days, but in the end it was decided to be a febrile seizure - meaning very common (who knew?) and no need to see a neurologist (unless it happens again...).
Big boy was crazy brave, and CHOP was amazing. They put an IV in his arm (see blue cast thing to protect it, below), and I was reading him "Fox in Socks"** as they put the needle in; reader, the expression on his face never changed. Brilliant.

yep, paci came back. priorities, people!

feeling brave

visit two:
Friday. Violet was bitten in the face by my mom's dog. So horrifying and heart-breaking. SHE'S FINE, but it was an awful experience. I can assume (as I was in the other room....awesome) that Saydah was asleep and Violet gave her a big mama-hug, as she loves to do and startled her.
One of my (many) dreads in the world of autism has always been taking Violet to the ER- every time Ben and I have brought Oliver in (and I'm pretty sure this trip #6 for him) we say to each other, "Can you imagine if this was Violet?" and shudder.
She did beautifully, though, surprising us yet again with her resilience and fearlessness. Girlfriend is bleeding profusely from the chin, and calmly reiterating to any nurse, doctor and maintenance worker that no one is allowed to look at her ears. Irrigate the wounds? No prob.

post-irrigation, pre-stitches.

so, so tired.

at home, 3am with mama. feeling fortunate.





And, as much as I don't want my baby girl to have a scar on her chin, it's in the shape of a 'V', which has a coolness about it. Maybe a little bit magical?

** I recommend never choosing a Seuss book to read to your child in the ER, particularly 'Fox in Socks'. I might as well have been reading Japanese.

broken bones and beautiful babes

sweet boy in his splint, before they put the cast on

Yep. Oliver broke his arm. Can you even believe it? I am 38 years OLD and have never broken anything, and my boy is barely three and broke both his radius and ulna bones in his arm (read: his WHOLE forearm!!)

so brave!

exhausted.



such a bad break...



sweet boy on day two in the ER. So proud of my beautiful boy.

It was spectacularly awful. Thank GOD both Ben and I were at the playground. Ollie was on this (very stupid, way-too-high-off-the-ground) balance beam with Ben at his side. The next thing I know, Oliver is howling and Ben is mouthing to me "We've got to GO!". Honestly, I assumed, he had peed his pants (er, Ollie, not Ben).

Reader, his arm was folded in half. The WRONG way.

What followed was a mish-mash of Abbott and Costello-like parent-panic. What hospital to go to? What to do with Violet? Who to call? One horrible, obviously delusional moment of me trying to put poor Ollie in his car seat with his poor VERY broken arm. We ended up calling 911.

I have not shaken like that since my dad died- and I mean my body never stopped moving. I hope this doesn't sound melodramatic, but there are so many moments when you don't know how things will turn out. When you've lost someone (or two someones) in moments of chaos, you realize that you need to be aware of everything. When your three-year-old has to be given anesthesia, you know that babies don't always wake up after that, and that as much as this is routine for all of the doctors in the ER, it's not routine for you and your frightened boy.

Anyhow, he did beautifully. Unfortunately, the next day he started vomiting non-stop and got a high fever. It seemed like he was dehydrated almost immediately. Our pediatrician told us to get back to the ER quickly. We're still not sure what the deal was- a flu? A reaction from the anti-nausea medicine? Regardless, our boy was (AGAIN!) amazingly brave and strong and we got him healthy again.

A very, very long two days for all of us. We are now embracing our normalcy, while it lasts.

On a happier note, daddy has become photographer extraordinaire!!! Here are some highlights:

reading together

and....pose!



seriously- how did we get so lucky?



beauty

surrounded by her favorite things

viking girl!

hiking with daddy!







pirate boy!!! very serious. (note the boots, the ribbon belt and the gold club sword!)

 

drummer boy




violet loves this animal mosaic at the playground




riding the goat at Rittenhouse Park!



dancing with Grandmom Joan

Ollie helping Omi wash Darby!

beautiful girl





starting to feel better with his new red cast!!



Road trip, ER trip and fingertip...

OK- huge post ahead, so beware! The Sheaffer foursome made our very first real trip together! Grampa and Popi had an *official as possible* commitment ceremony in Milwaukee, and we needed to be a part of it. We made the (worst possible EVER) decision to drive, with the (ridiculously optimistic) idea that the babies would sleep all night as we drove the (hellish, eternal) 14 hours there. To better summarize, let me make a timeline:


Road Trip from Hell:

Thursday:
5pm: Rental SUV is stuffed to the brim, babies are stuffed with grilled cheese and yogurt; off we go!

9pm: babies begin cycle of one falls asleep, the other screams and startles the other awake, and so on until about...

11pm: both asleep finally! Until- something wakes Violet up, and she sobs so hard she vomits. We are somewhere in dark, flat Ohio. Ben pulls over and takes her out, snuggling her vomit-covered body on the side of the road while I clean out the car seat. Yuck. All the ruckus wakes Oliver, who screams and shakes. I am feeling like we are back in the colic stage.

11:45: Back on the road. We start to watch a Baby Einstein DVD in the back to calm everyone down, but then I smell something awful. I ask Ben if it's possible that we're still in Amish country; he answers that he doubts it as we're in Ohio. I realize the smell is my beautiful doll-baby of a daughter, who has filled her diaper and then some. Sigh.
We stop for a road-side diaper change, and then, thankfully, both babies fall asleep. Whew!

2:30am: Ben feels his eyes closing so he pulls over to a rest stop. The four of us sleep there for an hour. Normally, I would be terrified of being murdered, or at least of strangers staring at us through the windows as we sleep, but I'm just grateful we can all sleep in the quiet.

3:30am: Ben rouses and we hit the road again. Babes are still asleep- wa-hoo!!

3:40am: a HUGE traffic standstill only miles from the rest stop. We turn the car off and sit here for TWO HOURS. It turns out to be at huge semi that drove off an overpass. What a nightmare- one of the (very few) benefits of driving at 3am should be NO traffic! Babes wake up at about 5am.

6am: back on the road.

6:30am: Ben pulls over on the wrong side of the road (i.e. not the shoulder) to vomit. O and V stare at daddy dry-heaving into the gravel as I scramble for towels and a new DVD to distract them....

10-ish: we arrive in Milwaukee!!!! Never happier to be there.

*everything in here I'll discuss later, since that's all the GOOD stuff! Let's continue the Timeline of Hell first:

Sunday:

1pm: on road- leaving earlier this time, since we know we can't count on the night sleep. The babies are asleep within moments of getting in car- they are exhausted from being TRUE party animals! This is the best part of the drive- they sleep for three hours straight, even with terrible Chicago traffic, and Ben and I get a chance to talk in quiet.

8pm: We've hit so much traffic that we decide to pull over at a hotel. We think we can take the babes for a swim, have dinner, maybe get some decent sleep and leave in the morning.

8:04pm: Getting Violet out of the backseat, I shut my hand in the car door. I scream words I wasn't even aware that I knew- it hurt THAT much. I basically caught the tip of my (so appropriately named) swear finger. I think I might vomit. Mostly I am worried because I do not have time for a broken finger- esp in the middle of South Bend, Indiana, where one can't even find Tylenol on a Sunday night. Hell.

10:30pm: I, my huge purple finger and Oliver are asleep in the pack n' play (yes, I am IN the p n' p), and Ben and Violet are asleep in the bed. Finally! I sleep fitfully because of my finger, and Ben because of the little monkey he's in bed with.

3:30am: Violet awakens, for no reason, and starts an intense conversation about cars, trucks and Cappy with Oliver, who immediately jumps out of the p n' p to chat. Ben and I laugh (I believe it's called delirium) and decide to just pack up and get on the road.

2pm: We drive and drive...babies sleep on and off (um, never at the same time though), we watch DVDs and change diapers and snack. Oliver seems really cranky....and at

2:30pm: Oliver yaks EVERYWHERE. Again and again and again. I want to get home!!! Somewhere in western Pennsylvania is a pair of horribly vomit-stained Baby Gap footie pajamas on the side of the road, just too gross to go back in the car.

5:30pm: After pulling over twice more for O to throw up, we get HOME. The car smells of every bodily fluid imaginable and is filled with french fries, crayons, dvds and the like, but we're HOME!!

postscript: Oliver kept NOTHING down after getting home, and we had to take him to the CHOP ER the next day. Poor baby! He was very brave, and it's an amazing facility. LUCKILY, they did not have to get liquids in by IV. They gave him a medicine to stop him from vomiting, and then we could get some juice in him. By the time we left, he was climbing on the Firetruck-shaped X-ray machine! Whew! And of course, no story about twins would be complete without Violet starting her stomach flu yesterday.....

the Sheaffer men!

babies dancing on the altar

high five, Uncle Adam!

Ollie, stealing the show!

Violet with Popi's niece, Ellie.

Oliver and Laurel- who will get the chair?

Ruby (Laurel's twin) and Ollie

O looking too dapper!!

laughing with mama!

Avery teaching Ollie about the truck

Oliver and Ben

And now, the good stuff! The babies LOVED being at Grampa and Popi's !! There was a HUGE yard, lots of flowers and trees, toys waiting for them to climb on, fountains and even a pond with fish!! I already love thinking about the memories my babies are going to make with their grandfathers. I have great memories myself of my grandparents' houses and land and towns, so I know this will be special.

The ceremony was beautiful, and both Grampa and Popi were very understanding when Oliver wanted to climb up on the altar with them mid-speech. I love, love Ben's family and really wish we saw them more often. The babies finally got to meet their twin cousins, Ruby and Laurel, who are adorable and sweet, like their big brother, Avery! We loved meeting some of Popi's family, too! The twins also loved spending quality time with Uncle Adam and Auntie Dana- who were, as always, amazing helps with letting mama and dada have a break! Seriously, could these babies be any luckier with these relatives?

we survived!

Well, knock on wood, we are all healthy again, after the WORST stomach bug ever! We are so grateful to be feeling good again, and that no one had to get treated for dehydration. The babies are back to normal, and funnier than ever. I think they are going through a big mental growth spurt- suddenly so smart and into learning anything they can absorb! I LOVE watching it and encouraging it. The best thing that happened this week was on the first day they felt a lot better. Oliver was crying about something- often when he stumbles, I try to give him a few seconds to work it out on his own and recover. I ask him if he's ok and offer him a hug if he'd like to come to me. Anyhow, on this day, he tripped a little, and started crying. He looked up at me, but before I could say anything, Violet was there, wrapping her arms around him and saying, "ok? ok?" (actually it was "k? k?"). I'm telling you, I felt like my heart would explode!!!! However, it was not what Ollie was hoping for and he shoved her off....Since then it's happened twice more, and the last time, he begrudgingly hugged her back. Unbelievably cute.

A few other things:

*Violet is amazingly skilled in animals all of a sudden! Naming them, making their sounds, and matching the sound up with the correct animal. One day, the TV was on and we heard "baa!baa!". She looked at me and said "sheep!" (really more like "sheeeeee"). She loves walking around with her little animals, playing with them, kissing them, and handing them up for me to kiss.

*Oliver is loving hats, or anything that goes on your head or face; sunglasses, headbands, etc. If he finds a hat, he brings it over to us and angles his head so we'll put it on, and says, "hat!". He'll wear it for hours....too cute.

*Oliver now loves corn dogs.

*Violet is learning her ABC's. She likes to "sing" the song along with me, and also will point out letters wherever she sees them. In a book, on a soup label; she points to them and sings the song.

*Violet's language skills are skyrocketing. She will repeat anything (and I mean, anything!) you say to her, and she remembers it! She can read two of her little books after memorizing the words. Oliver is a little more solely comprehensive. He still babbles a ton, but isn't into repeating things. However, if you ask him to go into the kitchen and get the book about Charlie Parker and give it to Grammy, he'll do it.


















Oliver, trying to engage in a little post-bath chat. Violet would rather read, thank you.