Please for the love of all things holy....use the damn potty :)

April 17, 2018

Ok, I am going to be very honest here. You know that point in toddler hood where your child is supposed to use this thing called the potty? Well, my child has completely missed that memo.

Thank goodness I have one twin that is potty trained because if I just had Mason I would feel like I have failed as a parent. Are you ready for it?  MASON IS STILL IN DIAPERS! He is FOUR years old! I know kids who are just turning two that are going to the bathroom on the potty. I am starting to get that anxiety of going out in public and people finding out.

 If your a parent you know that feeling; everyone is standing around watching their kids run around and then one person brings it up and you have one mom who is like, "Oh ya, my perfect little Jimmy Joe was peeing on the potty at 9 months, wiping himself and then strapping his own diaper on." Then you have the next mom who has to one up the first mom. I am not a bragger, in fact, I want to be the mom that just lays all the bad crap out on the table. I want to meet a mom at the play ground that sees my kid in a diaper and then says, "Oh your kid too?  Refuses the potty? Ya, I have one just like him."

 I need to know there are other moms out there. Please!! Please let me know I am not the only parent whose child refuses to go on the potty. I wish I could say he has gone a few times, but I would be lying. He has gone pee pee on the potty once.

I joke and say that my child is going to go to the prom in a diaper and we all laugh, but honestly, I am covering up a fear that is starting to really fester deep down. I am reading articles from professionals who advise not to push. They mention that you don't see adults wearing diapers or soiling in the streets so just give him time. Well, how much time does this kid need? The kid can pretty much make himself his own lunch and I feel like every time I ask him to go to the bathroom his is flicking me off in his head.

They say not to nag and there is no way to force him so I just let him be and pray that I wake up to the glorious sounds of my child's stream hitting the little plastic spinner in our baby urinal that is suctioned to the glass shower :).

So, I want to ask all my mommy and daddy friends. Please tell me something that you have faced raising your kids to make me feel better....Please :)

Stay tuned!

Long overdue update!

Hello! It has been a couple years since my last post and lets just say the boys are 4 years old, in PreK and crazy as ever. Since moving to Florida back in 2015 we have been living the life. We take a lot of trips to Disney World, Busch Gardens and love watching all the wild life in our back yard.

At around 22 months my husband noticed the boys were not talking as well as they should have been. I, honestly, thought he was over reacting and was told that boys talk later than girls. Luckily, we found a state program that evaluated the boys and indeed they were developmentally delayed and was told they could start school full time as soon as they turned 3 years old. I was so excited for them, but sad that my time at home with them was ending. Actually, I take that back. I was ready for them to start. I wasn't really sad. I think I was sad at the idea, but we were all ready for something new. I hate to admit that I was ready for them to go to school, but the truth is I knew they were getting bored.  Also, anyone with small children know how hard it is to go run errands when you have little ones let alone two of them the same age. It was almost impossible to do anything during the day alone with them.

The boys started school and I was ready to take on the world. I had my new routine in place. Get up, get the kids dressed, fed, dropped off at school and go to the gym. The gym was over around 10 am, I would drive home, shower, straighten up the house and was able to relax for a couple hours before the boys were to be picked up. I loved it...for about 6 months. I had so many people tell me to enjoy this time, relax etc...but, i was feeling guilty. My husband was working and in my head I was goofing off. We are a one income military family and let me tell you, it is not easy living on one income.

So, I decided after a year to myself that I needed a new routine. I noticed that my brain was going to mush. My vocabulary was dwindling and as good as it was going to the gym and getting in shape I needed my brain to get in shape too. To me, I needed something more than just cleaning my house and running errands.

I started volunteering at the boys school as an aide and really enjoyed it. The first day I came home and couldn't get the smile off my face. I felt I had a purpose. I was doing good in the world, making a difference. After a few days, I was asked if I was interested in a full time position in the guidance department and was pretty much hired right away. I LOVE IT! I finally have a job that I look forward to and can have lunch with my boys. I am not going to lie having the summers off and all the fancy holidays is a great perk as well! 

We have one year left here in Florida and I am not ready to go. I have great friends a great job and we are finally where we need to be. Stay tuned!

When you can't make the choice...

Hi everyone!

It has been a very long time since I have blogged and I have missed it terribly. I have been pondering lately on what I should write about and it finally hit me the other day.  I am at the point with the boys where if I didn't struggle with fertility treatments we would probably be getting ready to have another child.
As I was standing in the kitchen the other night I watched the boys wrestle and I could not believe how big they are getting. It hit me that we are no longer in the baby stage. We are talking, getting ready to potty train, drinking from big boy cups, carrying our plates to the table, learning to walk without the stroller and so forth.  We are growing up! I always wonder what it would be like to have a little girl or what my boys would be like as big brothers.

Living in a new area people are not aware of our past fertility struggles and I often get asked if we will be trying for more.  I usually don't bring up our past and continue with, "possibly, God willing," or something along those lines. When in reality Mike and I have never prevented after we got married. We have never conceived on our own without intense treatments. I can't guarantee we won't get multiples (my body will not be able to handle multiples again) and IVF is just way too expensive. So, with that being said, unless God has different plans for us it will be just the four of us.

Don't get me wrong, I am very happy with my little family. I just wanted to be the one to make that choice.  In a perfect world, the boys would be turning 3 and I would have thought that would have been a perfect age to start trying for another.  Instead, I will continue to pray about it and who knows maybe something in my body will click and it happens and if you know my story from the last 5 years, if that were to happen we better find an amazing Doctor who understands my diagnosis with Thrombophilia.

Thank you for reading!!

Shannon

We are in Florida!

Good morning! I just wanted to update everyone on the boys. We are 16 months old, we babble nonstop, we eat EVERYTHING, we LOVE the beach, we dance every time we hear music and we are quite the travelers.

We have been in Florida for three weeks now and will finally be moving into our house on Saturday. I have to say the boys have adapted the Florida lifestyle pretty well. I wasn't quite sure how they would like the sand and water, but they are like little fish. When we get to the beach they can barely contain themselves and when loose they are all over the beach. They run right into the water and begin splashing, chasing se
agulls and building sand castles.

Last night I sat down and got lost in my blog. It took me 45 min to read from the beginning up until now. I still can't believe we went through so much. I feel like it was another lifetime ago. I don't even feel like it was my life. When I read about Chase and Cayden I get sad, but I can't help but think about the two I have now. At the time the world was ending. I was never going to have children, I was never going to have my twins. The only way I make sense of everything is God gave me back Chase and Cayden in the form of Mason and Maddox. I am sure many of you will think I am a nut and probably think it is a rediculous thought, but I really feel it is true.

Here are my boys!

It's been two years since Chase and Cayden.

Wow, my last blog was in March! I apologize for not writing more often. I have been a little busy ;). Mason and Maddox are now 1 years old and does time fly. I still can't believe what we have today. I was reading my blog and it seems like another lifetime ago we went through fertility treatments, Chase and Cayden and the rough pregnancy we had with Mason and Maddox. The last few days I have been on high emotion. This is a hard time for us. As exciting as it is with the boys, I still always have my other little boys in mind.

To think two years ago on the 22nd I was almost six months along with Chase and Cayden. Finally! we had babies and two coming into this world. The shots in the stomach, constant monitoring and endless pregnancy tests later we had babies! Never in a million years would I have thought something bad would happen. In my mind we went through the rough patch. Going through the heartache of infertility was painful enough and how would God put us through anymore. We were home free. Then, it happened. I woke up to the most God awful back pain I could have ever imagined. Little did I know in less than 5 hours time my little boys would be born and pass away in the same hour.  Our family of four existed for 20 min. They were perfect. Ten fingers and toes. They were babies...very small babies. I was so angry! To get halfway and then it was taken away. How could there be a God who was that mean?

I remember going to a few follow up visits with our fertility specialist, our OB and our High Risk doctor. All saying the same thing. You are the 1%. We don't know why these things happen. Even going as far as telling me my body was not made to carry two babies and I could prob never carry two babies. I was told to take a year or so off. Collect my thoughts and come back when I was mentally ready. I never once thought of taking time off. I didn't even want to wait another month to try again. I new in my heart I was going to have babies. I didn't think I would ever have twins, but I was going to have a child. My fertility doctor even told me if we do the treatments again and get twins or more that we should reduce. So, not only am I risking it all over again, but now you want me to have to choose a baby to terminate. But, I knew in my heart, we would be fine and God pushed us in the direction of a very special doctor who told us that twins would not be a problem if we were to conceive again and he would monitor us very closely. He had the solution to our problem.

Fast forward a month of treatments and a very low dose of treatments it was. Our fertility doctor tried his best to not bombard my body with multiple eggs. We were going to get one good one. That was the goal. However, I must have been chosen for twins, because twins is what we got...again, and twin boys at that.

I guess the whole point to my rambling is to never give up. I was told by many to take time off...go on vacation...collect yourself....give it a year. I am so glad I didn't because these two little boys Mason and Maddox would not be here. I may not have had the opportunity to see my special doctor and we may have even suffer another horrible loss if we were not here in NYC. I have four precious little boys. Two that would have been two years old on Monday and two that just turned 1 last Thursday. I do believe Chase and Cayden's souls are in Mason and Maddox. I believe that because I don't hurt as much as I thought I would. Of course I miss them and always think of them, but I am at peace and so blessed to have all four boys in my heart.

Thank you Chase and Cayden for making me the person I am today. Thank you for giving me Mason and Maddox. I love you all so much! Godspeed my little men.

Mommy <3

We are surviving :)

Hey everyone! 

I am finally sitting down to blog, of course with one baby on my chest...lol. 

Things have been going really well.  Mason has been home a little over a month and Maddox has been home for 2 weeks! I can't even believe how fast it is going. In the beginning getting them to sleep at night was a doozy, but as of the last few nights they are doing pretty good. We are starting to get a good routine down. At night we do the three "B's". Bath, bottle, bed!  Luckily, the boys love being in the bath, but can definitely tell when they are being taken out. They hate leaving the tub and Maddox will let you know he is being tortured by this death screams, lol. The boy has some set of lungs on him. After our bath we get changed into our jammies and we drink our bottle and usually Mason is passed out before he even finishes and he is down for good. Maddox is my little night owl and takes a bit more time to go down. He is usually talking and laughing and mommy and daddy can't help but soak in the giggles before bed.  So, as of the last few nights, the babies are in bed between 9-10pm and will sleep til about 2am.  This is not too bad as long as we get a few solid hours of sleep in. It is amazing how good you feel after 3 solid hours of uninterrupted sleep, lol.  Then the bottle, burp, change and mommy pumping begins. We are all usually back to sleep by 2:50am and we sleep til about 6-6:30am.  I can deal with this!  

The babies at this age are nice because they pretty much sleep all day and wake when they are hungry or need a changing. I am able to get all my chores done and keep up with my shows. However, Mike returns back to work on Monday and hopefully wont mind waking at 2am to do a quick feeding with me ;)

Pumping is still going strong and with both boys being home we have been able to work on breast feeding as well. So, depending on our schedule and such I will breast feed throughout the day followed by pumping or some days we just do bottles and I pump..it just really depends on how things are flowing,but it is nice to know that if a baby is fussy I can just put him to the boob and he is satisfied or I can warm some bottles up and we can both feed. Works out pretty good!  

This week has been bombarded with appointments and I am happy to say they are gaining weight nicely and are about 8 pounds 6 oz.!  

Sorry if my blog was a little scattered, but I am rushing to get all the facts and info in before Mason wakes up on my chest...lol. 

Thank you all for following!

Shannon

He comes home tomorrow!!!

Ok, I finally have a moment to update my blog :)

So, Mason has been home for 3 weeks and I have to say he fits in pretty good around here. The puggles at first were terrified of him, but now everytime we do tummy time they run over for kisses and cuddles with Mason.  Well, Maki wants to love him so much it kind of freaks me out. She crawls over to him and tries to roll on top of him and kiss him. Hey...love is love, right? Chloe goes right over to him and sniffs him and gives him one kiss to the head and she is gone. she is very gentle with him which is funny, because if you know chloe she kisses with a running start..lol. 

Mason is pretty easy going. He likes to sleep a lot and as long as I feed him every 3-4 hours he is pretty content. We are working on our night time routine, bc he tends to like to stay up and talk which is nice and all, but mommy is tired!  Last night was a good routine. We took a bath and he LOVES his bath time. He never cries and just enjoys the warm water. After a bath we get a baby massage with lotion, gets dressed and once we start to see eyes rolling we go to bed. He slept from 10pm-2am  woke  up  to eat, i pumped and he was back to sleep from 2:45am-5:30am. Mike gets the 5:00-5:30am shift and after his 5:30 am feeding he goes back to bed until usually 7:30 or so.  So, if we can just get Maddox on the same schedule once he is home I would say it's a good start.  

Pumping is going really good. I was so nervous I wasn't going to produce enough but so far the boys are getting strictly breast milk. We go back and forth from breast feeding to bottle feeding, but mostly bottle feeding. It is just easier in the sense that I know how much they are getting and not feeding them every hour bc I am guessing how much they get from the breast. Also, Mason is picky and sometimes he will breast feed and the rest of the time he just wants the bottle and that is it! He will let you know really quick which it is :)  At this point I am pumping 50-60oz a day and they eat between 3-4 oz each every 3-4 hours so I am doing good or just pumping enough :)

I am so happy to  have Maddox home tomorrow. It just doesn't feel right without him and i can't wait to get him to start doing tummy time, chillin in his swing, bouncy seat and just some 24/7 time with mom and dad.  I know he is getting the care he needs in the NICU, but at this point he really needs the stimulation and bonding time with us so we are ready for him to come home. However, I am nervous for two babies. The past 3 weeks we have just had Mason and it has been pretty easy going for the most part. I am sure two will be a bit chaotic at first, but we will be all together! I can't wait to see them side by side, in the same crib, and just hanging out together. 

Here are a few pics :)