Howdy! It has been awhile since I've posted an update. Life has been very routine with no huge excitement lately. That's AMAZING after all the "excitement" of Joshua's pregnancy! But for my blog fans out there (I love you, Mom and Dad), here's the update you requested.
JOSHUA: 19 months old now, he is just your typical toddler, always exploring and playing. He loves reading, playing with trucks, and building towers with his Mega Blocks. This normalcy is beyond our wildest dreams after his rough start. Sometimes, when we meet new people here in Mississippi, they don't get how scary it was with Joshua in the beginning. They just see a completely normal toddler. If I start to tell his story, their eyes gloss over, or I get a polite response but can tell they're thinking, "uh huh, ya right." That can be annoying sometimes since the first six months of 2012, with our precarious pregnancy and long NICU stay, consisted of the biggest upheaval and testimony of faith in our lives. Now it's as if it's a figment of our imagination. Actually, that's a good thing. We escaped without any scars, and there's no need to dwell on the difficulty of the past when the present and future are shining so bright.
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If you can see it, the bottom line right above Joshua's ear is where he measured at 12 months.
I don't know if Joshua is just glowing from escaping survival mode unscathed, or what, but he is quite possibly the happiest child I've ever seen. Sure he fusses if he's hungry or tired or if he's startled by a loud noise (he's a little sensitive) or if his big brother is too rough with him (but he sure can hold his own now, mastering the Heisman stiff-arm and even going on the offensive at times). For the most part, though, he's all smiles and giggles. We no longer need to use his adjusted age (based on his due date) to follow his growth or development since he has caught up to his actual age. He just had his 18 month well baby appointment, and he weighs 24.5 lbs, which is in the 23rd percentile for his actual age. His height is in the 48th percentile, and his head circumference is in the 86th percentile. No surprise that he's caught up so well since he eats anything and everything and almost as much as his daddy.
Here's a quick video of how proud Joshua is of his growth.
Look how tall Joshua is!
JEREMIAH: 3.5 years old, he's growing up so quickly. He is enjoying homeschool preschool. It's not really homeschooling, just playing, lots of reading, writing/coloring, and art projects or whatever we feel like doing, but I call it that just because it seems like I'm the only person I know who doesn't send my 3 year old to formal preschool. We just have fun at home. He started AWANA Cubbies at church this year, and he absolutely loves it. The latest excitement has been our daily bike rides/walks to watch the big diggers, dump trucks, bulldozers, rollers, etc working in our neighborhood. It's nonstop entertainment for both boys, and they love it when the dump trucks honk and wave.
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I LOVE Boys!
About a month ago, Jeremiah convinced us to take the training wheels off his bike. Here's a video. What you can't see in the video is the huge pregnant lady pushing a stroller with one hand and running alongside him with a camera in the other hand, practically jumping with excitement. We were pretty proud of him.
Jeremiah riding with no training wheels! 3.5 years old.
BABY A AND BABY B: Two days ago, we hit the 29 week milestone. This pregnancy is cruising by pretty smoothly, so I have no complaints. We had a bit of a scare last week when I was having a lot of contractions in a regular pattern, but it turned out to be nothing serious. My uterus is stretched about the same size as a full term singleton pregnancy (6 lbs worth of babies plus lots of amniotic fluid and a huge shared placenta), so it's kind of acting like it's full term. I just overdid it that day and didn't stay on top of my nutrition or fluid intake. It took a few days for the contractions to die down, but we're fine now. It was a wake up call for us to take things down a notch to be a little more sloth-like.
Here's the comparison between 29 weeks with Joshua, about 2 lbs, one week before delivery (and I was sticking my gut out as far as I could to try to look more pregnant!) vs. 29 weeks with two 3+ lb babies.
The twins seem to be pretty active, and I'm putting my money on future soccer players, given the way they can kick. It feels like an octopus lives in my belly! I have continued to get ultrasounds to monitor for growth every three weeks, and they have always been very close in size to each other. Since they share a placenta, one of the risks is discordant growth, where one twin gets more nutrients than the other and grows at a faster rate, but that hasn't been the case with us. At our last ultrasound, at 26 weeks, they weighed an estimated 2 lbs 2 oz and 2 lbs 4 oz, almost the same size as Joshua at birth (30 weeks). They were both head down, which is great news for trying to avoid a C-Section (if the first one is breech, I would most likely need a C-section). Hopefully they'll stay in that position. So far, so good! I'm feeling all of those third trimester annoyances of a normal pregnancy (and then some since it's double the pleasure, double the fun), but I'm not complaining since I missed out on all that with Joshua. We couldn't be more pleased with how this pregnancy is going!
