Weekend fun with mom & dad (as told by Hayden & Ian)

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Laurie Blundell

Hayden: Hi this is Hayden…well, Ian is here too but he is too busy laughing at a rock right now to talk. We wanted to tell you all about our great weekend we had with mom and dad.

It started on Thursday when mom came home from work early and was able to play with us. Ian was fussy all day and driving dad crazy, and of course I, Hayden, was the angel all day.

Ian: Hold up… this is Ian, and he was not the angel all day like he wants you to believe. By the way… have you seen this rock?! Look at it! I can’t stop laughing!

Hayden: Whatever Ian… since you’re too busy laughing, I’ll keep telling the story. So for dinner on Thursday night mom wanted us to try some new bottles, I guess you can call them bottles, I don’t know what they were. We liked them though because we could hold onto it and pull it out of our mouths when we wanted and then put it back in when we were hungry again.

Ian & Hayden drinking from their Podee bottles

Ian: Hey don’t forget to tell them about that loud woooo and dance dad was doing during the day! That was crazy!

Hayden: Oh yeah… (chuckle). It was pretty crazy!

So, let’s see, where was I? After dinner we went outside and played in the grass in the backyard. We can’t wait for another year or two when we will be able to run all around the yard chasing Presley or kicking a ball, that will be so much fun. But for now, all we can do is sit in the grass with mom and dad. But that’s just as fun for us because we had never seen this grass stuff before. It’s kind of itchy and feels weird on our feet. Mom took some pictures of us so we can remember our first time in the grass.

Ian - 5 months old

Hayden - 5 months old

Hayden & Ian

Friday was a fun day too. We went and got a lot of pictures taken of our heads for our DOC Bands we are about to get. Mom and dad said they had to take our pictures so we can get a molding done of our heads so the bands will fit correctly and not wobble around or make our heads even more misshaped, we sure don’t want that. The nice lady put this stocking thing over our head to flatten our hair down, because you know Ian’s chia-pet hair is everywhere.

My hair is so short it wasn’t that bad but I still had to wear the stocking , just you wait though, one day I’ll have luscious locks just like my brothers! The stocking didn’t bother either of us, we were big boys and didn’t fuss or cry or anything. Mom and dad said we were champs! Of course mom took pictures – we can’t do anything without having a picture taken, she keeps telling us that one day we’ll be glad she took so many pictures – we’ll have to see about that.

Hayden gets his DSI images for the DOC Band

Ian gets his DSI images for the DOC Band

Ian: After our pictures the physical therapist had to look at them and make sure we got good ones before we were able to leave, so mom and dad had to keep us entertained for a little while. That’s always fun. Nobody entertains us quite like they do. And I think dad wanted to do his loud woo again but I think he was afraid to make too much noise.

Daddy was making some funny faces at us

Hayden getting some tummy time in

Ian's tummy time

Hayden: Friday was a busy day for us and we didn’t take a good nap so we were kind of fussy that afternoon. Mom tried to keep us entertained and put her glasses on us…we looked pretty funny.

Ian wearing mommy's glasses

Hayden wearing mommy's glasses

That night Gramma and Grandpa came over to give us our bath and put us to bed while mommy and daddy went out to eat. Like I said, we were pretty fussy that day so I’m sure Mom and Dad were thankful for a little break.

Saturday morning we woke up and mom and dad brought us into their room and let us lay on their bed for a while before we are breakfast. That was a treat because we don’t get to sleep in their room, they say we need to learn to sleep in our own beds in our own room. After our snuggle time and breakfast in bed we got dressed and went to our cousin, Jake’s soccer game. Then we went to eat with Grammy and Pappa before going to check out our Uncle Brad’s new gymnastics facility. That was fun! We got to watch him and our cousin, Brooklyn, jump on the trampoline and pappa even let us play on a mat with him.

Pappa and Hayden

Ian: Because we were on some really soft mats mommy let us practice our sitting up, we’re getting pretty good at it!

Hayden

Ian

Hayden & Ian

Hayden, Brooklyn & Ian

We were so worn out we slept the entire way home, I think mom even fell asleep too. We had such a fun and busy day that when mom put down to sleep we were out like a light.

This morning we ate our breakfast and then mom gave us some new food to try. We were eating rice cereal before but we got to try some squash today. At first we didn’t know what to think of this new food, it tasted weird and the texture was different. But after a few bites we ended up liking it and ate quite a bit. She said that we will get to try another new food next week, wonder what it will be this time?!

Hayden eating squash

Ian eating squash

Later after we had our morning nap we played on our playmat and Hayden found his feet. I found mine a few weeks ago and love to play with them but Hayden just found his and I think he has a new found love for them as well.

Our cousins Jake and Brooklyn came by to play with us for a little while before our nap on Sunday and we were so hyped up from all the fun with them we didn’t want to take a nap. Eventually we did fall asleep though.

So that was our fun weekend with mom and dad, we don’t want it to end… but tomorrow we’ll get to play with Gramma and then on Tuesday with Grammy.

Update on boys and cell phone pics

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

It’s been a crazy week or two around here with the boys, trying to get their feeding and sleeping issues worked out. They are both on a new formula and reflux medication now. They are on Elecare which is an amino acid based formula that contains no milk. Unfortunately this is the cadillac of formulas and comes with a similar price tag. Your typical milk based formula like Enfamil/Similac is roughly $12-$14 a can which lasts on average 3.5 days. Elecare is anywhere from $30-$50 a can and will last the same, 3.5 days. I’ve found if you order this formula from a pharmacy you pay more, around $45 a can, you can order it from the manufacturer for $33 a can which is the best price I found…until I looked on ebay. If you look on ebay you an find it even cheaper. I know what your thinking, ebay? That’s what I though at first too. They are sealed cans that haven’t expired…they are legit. There are some cans/cases that are a “buy now” option and some you have to bid on. We actually one a bid last week that was 6 cans for $88, plus $15 shipping. So we got 6 cans for $103 which comes out to be $17 a can…not too bad! Since they are both on the same formula 1 can will lasts us roughly 1.5 days, so those 6 cans will get us through a little over a week. The downside to this formula, other than the price, is that you can’t go buy it at the store. So if you know you are getting low on formula you better order some, if you run out….you are outta luck! As far as if it is helping the boys, all I can say it, I think so. It’s hard to say. It takes a little while for all the milk proteins to get out of their system and I’ve heard of people saying it took their kiddo 3 to 4 weeks to really tell a difference. They have been on it for about a week and so far, there is a small difference. Ian has stopped having his blow out diapers with every feeding so that is definitely a good thing…he stopped that with the first bottle of Elecare. Hayden never got to the point that Ian was with his feeding issues but he was starting to show some of the same signs that Ian was at the beginning. So our pediatrician said to go ahead and switch Hayden to the same formula because he is probably just a few steps behind Ian. They were both showing signs of reflux, Hayden more so than Ian, so we started them on Zantac. Hayden was actually on Prevacid but was having some major insomnia so we switched him to the Zantac and it went away. They have both done great on the reflux meds and hopefully I will be able to say the formula has been life saving.

As far as sleeping goes. Like I mentioned in a previous post, Hayden can’t or doesn’t go back to sleep easily after being woken up. We have been like zombies the last week around here as neither of us are really getting any sleep. I know people say to sleep when the baby sleeps….with two they are hardly ever asleep at the same time, so sleeping during the day is OUT. The biggest issue has been after the 9:00 PM feeding. We feed them at 9:00 and then they pretty much stay awake and won’t go to sleep until around 12:00 AM. So we get to stay awake until 12:00 AM and then feed them again at 1:00 AM, so we are awake until about 2:30-3:00 AM. And because they stay awake so long they are usually dog tired at the 1 AM feeding and don’t want to eat much. We have been letting the just stay in the living room in their bouncy seats, or boppy pillows or wherever after the 5:00 PM feeding while we fix dinner, eat, etc and then we will give them a bath or get them ready for bed and then feed them at 9:00. They generally fall asleep around 7:00 and stay asleep until 9:00 for the next feeding. I think that has been the problem. So last night we put them in their room in their beds at 7:30 PM and then woke them up and treated it like it was a middle of the night feeding. The seemed to do better last night and then this morning after their 9:00 AM feeding they were awake and happy when before they would usually go right back to sleep. We’ll try it again tonight and see how it goes. Hopefully it will work again and we can all get some much needed sleep around here.

That’s pretty much what we’ve been dealing with the last few weeks. and of course, here are some random pictures I’ve taken with my cell phone over the last few weeks…

randomness at the Blundell household

Home Sweet Home

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Laurie Blundell

Home Sweet Home

It has been a long day but we are finally all home and together for the first time. Hayden is finally all better and was discharged from the NICU today. Ian had an appointment with the pediatrician this morning so we brought him back home where there were two grandmothers waiting to watch him while we went to the hospital to pick up Hayden and bring him home. As I said in the previous post, I will post Hayden’s NICU story, I promise…it may just take me a while to get to it in between feedings x2, diaper changes x2 and trying to get some sort of rest.

Mommy and her boys

The boys haven’t been together since they were born last Thursday so we were anxious to have them together again. And we were anxious to have both of our boys home and with us. It has been very hard and tiring for us having one baby at home and one still in the hospital. Getting up during the night with Ian and then going back and forth to the hospital during the day doesn’t leave you much time for rest. Then there’s the whole recovering from major abdominal surgery thing. It’s been 1 week since I had surgery and not much resting. Needless to say, we are glad Hayden is home and we can just focus on taking care of our boys now.

Our boys reunited

The boys finally got to be next to each other again and they were asleep. They have to get acquainted with one another again after being apart. We always joked while I was pregnant with them that Hayden (Baby A) was pushing Ian (Baby B) out of the way and was the bully because Ian was always curled up in a ball with little room. After seeing them respond to each other now our theory has changed. I think now, Hayden was just trying to get closer to his brother and by doing so, it pushed Ian out of the way. But that’s just a theory…we’ll never know for sure.

These are the moments I dreamed about during the entire pregnancy!

brothers

And this is one happy daddy!

Daddy and his boys