Daniel is Amazing!

Our whole sick baby saga started about two and a half weeks ago when Daniel started complaining on a Wednesday.  He got hot and fussy, but he still ate and he took his nap.  When he got up, he was apparently all better and Max was the one who was feverish and fussy.

Having had the illness cycle through Daniel to Max to me to Joe, but skip Caroline, we thought we were home free.  But it seems at some point along the way one of our compromised immune systems brought back a SECOND cold (or the first one just mutated in its own evil little way) that has made its way through Caroline and Daniel.

Caroline woke up this morning with a snotty nose but a cheery personality - she seems to be getting over the worst of it (thank GOODNESS - she's the one who deals with a stuffy nose by screaming herself awake in the middle of the night and then punishing you the rest of the night by refusing to go to sleep).  Max had a little caked on goop around his upper lip when he woke up, but is not acting sick at all.

Daniel woke up like a mummy.  Both of his eyes and both of his nostrils were caked with rock hard snot boogers.  I had to peel them away just so he could look at me, bleary-eyed, and whimper good morning.  I washed his face and fed him, though, and he seemed fine.

The grandparents came over to visit with everyone in the afternoon and he was still doing just fine and dandy.  We even had everyone in a good enough mood to pose for some pictures:

(The Ebbets Field Flannels people are having a fan contest asking for pictures of customers in their apparel - this is our entry.)

Within about a half an hour of this picture, Daniel started seriously fussing.  And then he started shaking.  It was a little scary.  His hands and face were cold and he was shaking a lot.  I changed his diaper and gave him some ibuprofen, then bundled him up and took him to his room.  He napped a little, but woke up burning hot.  A quick check of the thermometer showed 101, then 103.  We stripped the swaddle off of him and took him away from the other babies to rest.  He nursed a bottle of formula on and off for the next hour, hanging out with Grandpa in the back.  By the time he came out front, his fever was back down to 101, and by the time of the final bottle at 9:00 he'd been a normal temperature for over an hour. And he was playing and acting silly as if nothing had ever happened.

Well, maybe not entirely back to normal, but definitely an amazing turnaround in just a four hour period.

Throughout the day, though, the baby activity highlight was seeing all the bizarre positions the babies chose to sleep in:

Caroline - the only real "back sleeper" in the bunch

Daniel - in the perfect couch sleeping pose

Max - in a pose only Max can master

And master it he does - twice in one day!

The babies enjoyed visiting with Cousin Jacinda and her daughter Mariam.  Caroline looks forward to seeing the baby Jacinda's carrying wearing all her lightly worn hand-me-downs soon!

Can you tell who's who?

On the multiples' listserve today, a mother of one week old identical twins posted asking for advice on keeping her twins' identities straight as they were starting to look more and more alike.  Among the responses were painting toe nails, putting different color thread bracelets on them, assigning them different clothing colors (check!), and making sure they had assigned cribs.  I suggested that she double check them all over to see if there were any identifying markers she'd overlooked - since we didn't find the little bump on Daniel's ear until they were about a week old.

Some other folks posted about how often they still got their identical twins mixed up, despite best efforts to keep them straight.  One woman said they'd gotten pretty good at marking one baby's clothes and blankets with diaper pins, but that sometimes they'd forget and it was entirely possible that they'd mixed them up at some point early on and were raising Kate as Alice and Alice as Kate now.  Another referenced a study that said that identicals are, on average, switched at least three times in infancy.  These stories astounded me, since Max and Daniel still seem to look and act SO different, even though they are resembling each other more and more each day.  Maybe it helped that Max was so much smaller when he was born, so we got all those months to get their faces really set in our minds before they caught up with each other.

But it did lead me to wonder how much more difficult it would be to tell them apart without the telltale ear and clothing colors.  Then I noticed two pictures in which the boys had struck similar poses recently.  So I cropped out any identifying markers and I'll leave it up to you...

Can you tell who is who???

1)

2)

Emerging Personalities

Our living room is crammed full of baby things.  There are three bouncy chairs, two exersaucers, a jump-eroo, a "baby jail" activity area, two activity mats that they've outgrown but we still keep around "just in case", a changing table layered with diapers, bibs, burp cloths, ointments, wipes, and changes of clothes, and a WIDE assortment of stuffed animals, toys, and blankets.

And yet, when the Salvateenies got fussy this evening, where did 2/3 of them want to play?  On the floor!  Max rolled around, finding his toys spread around the room and playing with them a bit.  But mostly he rolled onto his tummy and pushed up, looking over at Daniel, still standing in the exersaucer, or over at Caroline, lying on her back on the floor.  Caroline, for her part, would occasionally roll onto her belly, whine a bit, and then flop back.  She mostly scoots around - looking for things to read, apparently.  She fished an old Fine Arts Museum magazine out from beneath the tv stand and promptly opened it up, rolled onto her tummy and stared (sadly, by the time I got the camera, she'd flopped back and lost interest).  Then she went for a paper bag from the pharmacy.  She emptied it of its eye droppers and big box of infant ibuprofen (unopened) and grabbed for the squeezy bottle of saline nose drops, rolling the bottle around and around in her hands as she held it above her head and squinted at the label.

I wondered if Daniel felt like he was missing out on all the fun on the carpet, but he merrily watched his brother and sister at play, giggling away at their exploits as if they were putting on a little show just for him.  Perhaps he has a future as a director (though his first fortune cookie fortune did portend that he would become a community organizer, which could also work with his cheery demeanor).

And, come to think of it, Max did enough drooling while propped up on his elbows that he might have a future as a lawn watering device!

I was enjoying playing with them and watching them play with each other so much, these are the only pictures I got:

Caroline taking a break from her article on Pablo Picasso

 It's a shame I didn't get a picture of Max at the computer.  I'd been watching 127 Hours on the computer, on and off (as the babies provided a good distraction from the more gruesome scenes).  When it was over, I set my computer on the carpet and switched over to Facebook.  As everyone started to melt down around 8:00, I set Max up to sit and watch Caroline on the carpet.  Then I went into the kitchen to quickly pour out some bottles and put them in the warmers.  When I came back, Max had pivoted and was sitting bolt upright in front of the computer.  He then reached forward and tapped around on the keyboard, switching from the web browser to the DVD player and re-starting the movie (which was on the credits and had music that he enjoyed).  When I picked Max up to change, Caroline was about five feet away from the computer, lying on her back.  She scooted her way over to it, rolled over on her tummy, and switched back to the browser to check out Facebook!

"No, Mommy, I'm not changing your Facebook status! "

"I was just checking to see if Daddy was online so we could chat!"

I think we need to get these guys set up with Skype soon!  Who wants to chat with them?

34 Weeks...or is it 35? Wait! 36?!?!?!?

We have been remiss in our weekly Myrtle pictures.  These were taken on May 20th and 22nd, which were in the middle of their 36th week (having celebrated their 35-week birthday on Wednesday, May 18th).  In fact, we're so out of it, we posted them as week 33 pictures on Facebook -- even though we already HAD Week 33 pictures posted!

Oh well...blame it on Max and his croup.

The little things

Today I was at the bargaining table (for what seems like the eleven billionth time this year).  I use my old laptop for school/union stuff outside the house, and I loaded it with a bunch of baby pictures back in late January.  I may have added a few since then, but not many.  They are my screen saver.

So as I listened to the District lay out the reasons why they thought we were being unreasonable...again...I got to stare at pictures of the Salvateenies when they really were teenies.  It made getting through the meeting a little easier.

It also made me realize something.  People always talk about the amnesia that mothers get about the pain of childbirth (I wouldn't know - C-section? Total breeze...), or that new parents get about how hard the early days with newborns are.  But who knew it set in so quickly?

Do you know that when he was brand new, I used to worry that Max's nose was too big?  It's true! I mean, look at the SIZE of that nose:

But now, of course, he has totally grown into it.

Do you remember that Caroline used to be BALD?

I mean, she actually had a lot of hair in that picture - it FELL OUT after that, and she got even balder!

But look at her now:

TONS of hair!  It even curls over her ears!

Now, we know that when people tell us how adorable the Salvateenies are, they are telling the truth.  We know they're not just being polite - the babies are legitimately cute.  But people have been telling us that since they were born.  And let's face it, when they were two weeks old, they looked like aliens:

Well, maybe not aliens, but at least like really old men:

I'm not quite sure when they started looking normal - I don't really remember there being a change.  Maybe it was around Halloween:

And I remember the things they used to do that amazed us.  When they lay on their backs and could reach up to hold the toys on the exercise mat:

But even that's amazing - see how low the octopus in the middle is hanging?  And it was once TOO HIGH for Daniel to grab.  Then he could reach it, so we raised it, and then he could reach THAT.  But I don't remember him getting BIGGER.

I realized this all tonight, as I was trying to soothe Max to sleep.  Sure, there are the big milestones:  teeth, rolling over, eating food, talking.  But what about the fact that Max can now hold his own pacifier and pull it out of his mouth when he doesn't want it and then PUT IT BACK IN when he's done talking? By himself!  Caroline has been trying to sit up forever, but now as she sits in her bouncy chair and starts her ab routine, she pumps her little legs so hard, I worry she's going to bounce herself clean out of the chair.  And Daniel, the first to master the yelp that means "Mommy - she's TOUCHING me!" which he employs anytime he and Caroline are lying together on the floor and she so much as grazes him with her foot.

I guess it's true - they grow up too fast, and you forget it all too easily.

Thank god I've taken over a thousand pictures to remember it all by!

New foods and feeling icky

No Myrtle pictures again this week - but there's a good reason why.  As the Salvateenies turned 34 weeks old on Wednesday, Joe called me at work to say he was worried because Daniel felt really hot.  He was making sure to keep him hydrated and monitoring the situation, but wanted me to be aware for when I got home.  The babies' uncle came over between Joe leaving for work and me getting home, and when he got them up from their nap, he called, concerned that Max was warm.  "Are you sure it's not Daniel?"  Nope, he double checked and Daniel felt fine, it was Max who was warm.

By the time I got home, Max still felt a little warm, but he was also hungry, so we brought out that day's experiment - yogurt and blackberry puree.  Super yummy and a truly gorgeous color.  But not something we'll do again!  We were lucky to escape without blackberry all over the carpet and everything else.  Luckily, we were able to contain it to just their faces and bibs:

Daniel likes it so much he's trying to lick it off his chin (and, yes, his tongue does look a little bit like it wants to split in the middle....and, yes, I am a little creeped out by that)

But he's not, he just thinks it's yummy

I should've known from this picture that Max wasn't feeling well - how could you not smile when you were covered in that much blackberry goodness?

Caroline was definitely enjoying herself!

After a successful clean up from their dinner, my brother went out to fetch some food for us.  I checked Max's forehead and he was burning up, so I tucked an instant read thermometer under his armpit.  It was pretty high, so I dug out the fancy temporal scanner thermometer my mom got us way back when the concern was keeping their body temp UP.  It took a while to get the hang of it, but the read out kept showing temperatures between 102 and 103.  

So I called the advice nurse.  I love the advice nurse.  And I love that when your issue is a sick baby, you get bumped a little bit to the top of the waiting list if there's a line.  I was told to try to make sure Max stayed hydrated, keep him in cool, loose-fitting clothes, and monitor his temperature and any other symptoms.  Then they set up a phone appointment for 2pm on Thursday to check in on him.  At 9, he at about 7 oz of his 9oz bottle, but it was a battle to get him through it.  He fell asleep and I put him in his crib, but he woke up a little later and really would not rest unless I had him sitting straight up on my lap.  Which meant no sleep for Mommy.  

I called the advice nurse again, and she ran through the same basic monitoring steps.  No sooner had I hung up the phone than he threw up all over me.  LUCKILY , he was facing me and all the yogurt, formula, and blackberry seeds ended up on my shirt and his swaddle and not all over the couch!  Almost as soon as I'd peeled the swaddle off him and the shirt off of me, he started to throw up again.  I aimed him at the plastic mat on the floor, since that's easy to clean and disinfect.  And another call to the advice nurse.  She said the priority now, with the fever and vomit, was to keep him hydrated.  I tried a bottle with Pedialyte, but he refused it.  

Having gotten about 25 minutes of sleep, I decided it was not feasible for me to go into school on Thursday, so I tried to remember all the page numbers for my classes' assignments and cobbled together a lesson plan and arranged for a sub.  Then I called back to the advice nurse, who decided we should exchange our afternoon phone appointment for a morning clinic visit.  The upside was that Max would get to visit the same pretty doctor he'd flirted with when he made a visit to the clinic in April.  I almost suspected he'd cooked the whole thing up just to see her again!

At the clinic, Max was looking pretty pathetic.  His lips and boy parts were all dried out, showing he was dehydrated.  He'd refused his bottle again that morning.  The doctor checked him all over and his temp was high (103.6), but his breathing was OK and his ears were a little red, but that goes along with all the screaming (she'd had to dig a ton of wax out of his ears to even check them, anyway).  We waited around for a while to get a urine sample to make sure he didn't have a UTI - by the way, in case you were wondering, you can't ask an 8-month old to pee in a cup, so they tape a little plastic bag over his penis and it collects whatever comes out - after force-feeding him some formula, he finally peed enough that we could run the test, and it was clean, so we stopped by the pharmacy for some baby Ibuprofen and a medicine-dropper and headed home.

Max was still refusing his bottle, and when I used the dropper to give him anything (formula or Pedialyte), he just spit it back out.  His temperature was climbing, and now he was coughing.  Back to the trusty advice nurse, who consulted with the on-call doctor and said to bring him into the ER right away.

Those are not words you want to hear - bring your baby into the ER.  But I did.  Joe stayed home with Caroline and Daniel, which might've been harder than being the one to go to the hospital.  The staff at the ER was amazingly gentle with me and we hardly had to wait at all.  The triage nurse started by telling me that Max looked really good and that I probably had nothing to worry about, but since he wasn't drinking it was a good thing I'd brought him in.  He gave him some tylenol for the fever (back down to 103.7 at this point) and made a note for us to be seen in a room in case we had to stay for any amount of time.  A few minutes later we were taken back and seen by another nurse who chatted with Max about his own three children - all boys - and complimented him on being so brave.  When the doctor came in he checked his ears and throat and listened to his chest and declared it was croup.    Since he hadn't been coughing in the morning, the doctor at the clinic had not caught it.  He was given a shot and a prescription for tylenol suppositories and we got to stay in the room for almost half an hour before and after the shot, which gave us both some time to rest.

What I was most impressed with was the follow-up.  The next morning, we got a call from the hospital to make sure he was doing OK, then a call from our pediatrician's office, then another call from the clinic to schedule a follow-up appointment.  It seems the consensus is that Daniel probably had the same infection on Wednesday and was just better prepared to fight it off for whatever reason.  And there's no way the two of them could've had it and Caroline wasn't exposed, so we're keeping our fingers crossed she makes it through the weekend without getting sick.

Since then, we've been splitting baby duties - I take Max patrol, and whoever else is here (Joe on Thursday and Friday, my brother today and tomorrow) gets to deal with the "healthy" kids.  And when I'm alone, I make sure to wash and disinfect my hands and arms and change my shirt before going from Max to one of the other babies.  I think I went through 5 shirts on Friday!  And today I had to wash my face because Max decided to turn from my shoulder and lick me.  Nice kid, right?

But he is feeling better.  His fever broke Thursday night and hasn't come back.  He's lost his voice from the coughing, yelling, and crying, and he's still hacking and sleeping more and eating less than normal, but there are little moments of Max-ish-ness that let us know he's on the mend.  Like Friday night, as he slept in my arms, and had a dream sweet enough that it made him smile:

Asleep

Sweet Dreams!

Now if I can avoid getting sick, it will all have a happy ending!

Week 33, a Giants Win, and Mothers Day

OK, I'm going to say, up front, that I can't figure out the apostrophe on Mothers Day.  I'm pretty sure it's not "Mother's Day" - as in a day for just one mother.  But I don't feel like it's "Mothers' Day" either.  So I'm leaving it apostropheless.

Wednesday marked 33 weeks in the reign of the Salvateenies.  It had been a few weeks since we'd taken pictures with Myrtle, so it was time for her to reappear, but Daniel was being a bit camera shy.  It was HOT, even in our normally fog-bathed corner of the City, so the babies stripped down to their Onesies and prepared to be adored.

What Happens at Grandma's, Stays at Grandma's

Look how long I am!

And how short Myrtle is!

Saturday, the babies went to their third game, Rockies vs. Giants at 6pm.  This would be their first attempt at a night game.  Heading into the evening, they were 0-2 and had brought little of their Salvateenie Mojo to the home teams in their previous visits to major league ballparks.  But those were day games, so maybe things would be different.

We sat behind home plate (courtesy of our friends the Lapideses, who couldn't use their tickets that night), and luckily no foul balls came our way.  Auntie Lee Ann and I brought all the kiddos in and got them fed and settled, and Joe joined us in the third inning, having walked all the way from work to the ballpark.  When I got up a little while into the game to change a diaper, I came back to find Cousin Kathy hanging out and she immediately decided that holding Caroline was the best way to enjoy a few innings.  A short time after she left to rejoin her group, Chelsea and Hartley came to visit (so that Max would have someone to flirt with!).

The game was rolling along well, 2-0, and then Colorado tied it up.  Boo!  Luckily, Mike Fontenot was able to make a few nice plays in the top of the ninth to help Brian Wilson hold the Rockies there, and in the bottom of the ninth he hit a big sacrifice fly to score Aaron Rowand and win the game.  Not only was it a win for the home team, but it was also the babies' first walk-off hit!

Daniel was intent on the game early on

Max was a little confused

Caroline was enjoying it, once she got her hat on!

By the 7th inning stretch, Max was asleep

and so was Caroline

and Daniel

You couldn't tell from the other pictures, but everyone was wearing their jerseys!

Sunday was Mother's Day.  Joe and I were going to work at the ballpark, so the babies got to spend the day with Grandpa and Uncle Kelly.  

And as an extra bonus, Auntie Lee Ann brought Grandma and Grandpa Salvatore over to see them!  

Later in the day, we attempted to take some Mothers Day portraits with the babies.  I think the following shots may give us some idea what challenges we are facing as we continue to try to get group pictures:

I think it's scary how similar I look in these two pictures, considering their was an entire baby swap in between:

Since the individual pictures weren't working, we tried a "let's all pile on Mommy" approach:

Maybe it'd work better if we all lie on the floor! 

Hmm...maybe it works better if we just get Mommy out of the picture: