finally

I know, I know. Get two babies, and neglect your blog. How rude.

Life has changed for sure. Mike took a one-week paternity leave while we worked to regain a sense of order and sanity in our lives. Yea right, not until the twins go to college, but it was fun for both of us to be home with Owen and Eliot nonetheless.

Both babies are doing great. Owen continues to eat and sleep well. He is now over ten pounds of adorableness.

Eliot had her second swallow study on Tuesday and PASSED with an A+. We meet with her G.I. doctor tomorrow to talk about getting her back on bottles and off of her feeding tube. No one knew how long it would take Eliot to learn how to swallow correctly with her paralyzed vocal chord - "could take a couple of weeks, could take a couple of years." But once she got home and saw Owen showing off his bottle abilities, she got it together in a hurry. A little competition never hurt anyone.

It's sort of weird to wake up now and not go to Northside. There was a rhythm there that I had gotten used to: down a few days, up a few days, give some advice to someone, get some advice from someone else. I'll never forget the quintessential saying that people always repeated when times were tough. "God only gives you what you can handle." Every time I heard it, I would think - what a load of crap. I can't handle any of this. But looking back on our NICU experience, I think Mike and I did okay. Undoubtedly, we are better people because it.

This past weekend, the six of us went for a walk - Mike, Owen, Eliot, Jackson (big dog), China (little dog) and me. We had been looking forward to taking the twins for a ride in their stroller since we got pregnant last June. I was walking the dogs behind Mike and the babies, and thinking about the last few months - how hard I had prayed for the day when we could finally start our life as a family. All that hoping, wishing, anticipating - and finally, it's here.