Get Lost

Ada contemplating cruising a few steps..



Ada ditched her diaper box car for a snazzy white laundry basket, which she took for a spin around her room tonight while waiting for Margot to get her bath.



Here she is, parked at the bathroom door waiting her turn.



Ada let Margot drive her basket while she got her bath.. Margot picked up a couple of friends for a joy ride.



I made cranberry walnut zucchini spice bread with the zucchini I got at Aldi, since the babies didn't seem to be eating it fast enough. It smells amazing.

Stephen made a potato gun today. A few months ago, his school had a fund raising auction and one of the items that they auctioned off was "Build(ing) a Potato Gun with Mr. Shingler". So tomorrow is the big day. He will head to the student's home after school and after being joined by 10 other 6th grade boys, they will fire potatos to their heart's content. Tonight we strapped the girls into our new Ergo Baby Carriers (courtesy of some very generous Mother's Day gifts) and hiked over to the local Super Dollar to buy some hair spray to fuel the madness tomorrow.

And now LOST is on.. so.. bye.

Nine

We are nine months old. Mommy doesn't have to puree our food anymore.. we feed ourselves.



We don't sit in bouncy seats anymore either.. they are too confining.



We like to be on the move.



How else could we collect Oliver's toys ?



His toys are more fun than ours sometimes.



We spend most of our play time during the day exploring the kitchen and playing with our animal magnets and singing barn thing.. and Oliver's bowls. Yesterday we found Mommy's Glad Ware shelf.



For some reason when we have been playing for awhile together on our own and we suddenly see Mommy we race over to her at top speed.. crying... and try to climb up her legs. Ada get's particularly upset. Not sure what that's about.



Yesterday, while Mommy was trying to sleep away a migraine, Ada pulled up on the bottom step all by herself. Luckily Daddy was camera ready.



(melt)



Margot curly top.

At nine months the girls are both sitting up on their own (as in going from crawling to a sitting position), both are crawling (army crawling), they feed themselves 3 meals a day plus a snack or two, they each weigh 17lbs and change and are 28 inches long. We recently lowered their cribs so they wouldn't topple out the top when they pull up. They can say "Mama" and "Dada" and of course such favorites as "babababababa..gagagagagagaga..nanananana" and Ada's personal trademark "Nnnngeee". They will repeat "Mama" and "Dada" at random times when asked but don't seem to truly connect any of their verbalizations to anything concrete. When Margot is agitated or upset (for instance when Ada crawls over here and uses her hair as a handle) Margot will scream "Mamamamamamamama!!!!". I like to pretend she is calling for me to rescue her, but in reality I am not sure why she has chosen this distress call. Both girls are proficient with their sippy cups and have excellent appetites. They will eat just about anything you put in front of them, from avocado to zucchini, hamburger to cheddar cheese. We have yet to have them make a face and refuse a food. I know those days could be coming but we are thankful for their joyful appetites right now.

More and more each day, they are the light of my life and I can't believe they have already been in the room down the hall for 9 months. When I take them upstairs for nap time, I hug them close to my chest and cling to the moment. I kiss the back of their heads and breathe in the warm scent of their hair. I snuggle them under their blankets and wish I could climb in and cuddle with them in their cribs. I want more :)

Mother's Day

I spent my afternoon today cuddling my oldest in the sunshine.

This morning I was awakened  by the sound of babies eating their breakfast. Soon I made my way downstairs and found that Stephen had made me a beautiful breakfast of his patented "pancake petals" with fresh strawberries (courtesy of Dad). The beautiful peonies are from Dad and Mom and the orchid was my Mother's Day present from Stephen, Ada, Margot and Oliver. 

We settled in to eat breakfast together but soon there were little bugs crawling towards the table and loudly protesting at being left out of the celebration.. so we put them in their seats and gave them their first taste of pancakes.

The girls are fully dressed for Church.. I am still in my PJs. 



As you can see.... the pancakes went over pretty well.. they ate FOUR!

Ada was particularly excited to celebrate my special day.. or maybe it was the pancakes. 

Here we are, the lady Shinglers all dressed up. 

Those are little bows in their "hair".

Kisses all around. 

This weekend has been fantastic. We spent all day yesterday at Mom and Dad's house visiting. Gram and Aunt B came over for lunch and Page stopped by after work (I forgot the camera). We sat on the deck and ate Mom's fabulous food and enjoyed the weather and watched the babies play and be adorable..what a relaxing way to spend a Saturday. 

Today, aside from my special breakfast, I was treated to an afternoon of grilling chicken and veggies for fajitas, loads of peaceful conversation while the babies napped, and then another wonderful grilled meal of hamburgers at Ellen's and David's complete with homemade french fries! It just couldn't have been better.

All day, all I could think about was the day my babies arrived. I remembered the way my heart jumped and the tears flowed when I heard Ada cry for the first time..and how it jumped again when Margot made her entry into the world. I remembered that moment when I was being wheeled down the hall in the hospital towards the operating room, when the nurse stopped and to show Stephen the room where he could change into his set of scrubs. Such a brief moment, a moment in which I tried desperately to remember every detail from the look in Stephen's eyes to the way my arms trembled as I hugged him goodbye. He would change and then join me in the O.R., where I would already be numbed up and ready to go. This was the last moment of our lives together as a twosome. When he saw me again I would be a mother and he a father. It was gone in a flash. In what seemed like seconds we were tumbling head first down the rabbit hole that is parenthood. Savoring the days. 

Lately..

Lately we really like to play together on our "command station"....



Lately Ada would rather stand than anything else..



Lately we love listening to Daddy play us the guitar..



Lately we have been growing like little weeds..



Lately we just want to be big girls..

Ada came down with whatever Margot had on Wednesday so it's been a little touch and go around our house. She is now 2 days into the rash portion of this delightful virus so we are hoping that the next day or so bring full health to our home.

Mother's day is coming.. the flowers are in bloom all over the place. I saw the first peonies of the season today. My absolute favorite... they are like little bundles of buttercream frosting. Well.. that is the most interesting thing I have to say. Good night.

Remembrance

Remembering the day our babies arrived...

My heart is breaking. My friend has one beautiful baby boy in her arms and another in the arms of our heavenly Father. In times like these the statements about how "The Lord knows best" or "God is in control" only make me angry. I don't understand. I know that those words are true but my heart aches and I feel confused and saddened by a loss that I feel deep in my chest. I remember the terror I felt each and every time I visited the OB. Terrified that one of my babies would have been taken. I will not pretend to understand what my friend is going through right now. Such joy and such pain in the same moment. How do you pray in such a situation? What do you pray for? 

Romans 8:26 says: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words."

In the recent weeks I have found this verse particularly helpful to me in times when I had no idea how to verbalize the pain I felt in my heart. It is comforting to know that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when words can not be found. Comforting to know that He is at our side in all seasons of life. Still the pain is real. So we, as onlookers in this tragic situation, can only bury our heads in His chest and rejoice that we are human and that such decisions are not ours to make. 

Prayer Request

I received a call tonight that left me in tears. A new friend of mine, who is expecting twins, is having an emergency C-Section tonight. The doctor's were unable to find a heartbeat for one of the babies today. She is going into surgery in about 30 minutes. Please pray for this family. Please pray for a miracle, for peace for their hearts .. I don't even know how to pray myself. This is one of those nightmares that I fought my entire pregnancy with the girls. So if you are a pray-er and are one of my readers.. please pray hard. 

Big Girls

On Wednesday, the girls fed themselves with absolutely no help from Mom, for the very first time. No spoon feeding for these little ladies. At least not for dinner.. eating yogurt with your hands is a little tricky. 

They had Mac n' Cheese with steamed mixed veggies. 

Ada was particularly thrilled with this new skill. 

Margot also enjoyed being able to control what when and how much she was eating. 

On that subject.. Margot is still battling this whole fever monster. She woke up this morning with a whopping 104.5 temp. I almost burned my hand picking her up. Her temp finally broke after her extended afternoon nap, which Ada decided to skip... we are wiped out. She is being a real trooper but man.. having sick little ones is just exhausting. I spent two hours this morning holding a very uncomfortable feverish, trembling Margot who was so sad and pathetic she could do nothing but sit in my arms, clutching my neck and laying her head on my shoulder. Pitiful little creature. 

We are facing another week after being cooped up indoors all weekend.. well except for the hour or so we spent outside yesterday in the sunshine after Margot's fever broke. I can not deny that my spirits are a bit low, but we keep smiling and hoping that tomorrow will bring a fever free day for little M and that Ada will escape without catching this bug herself. 

Homemade pizza for dinner again. Mmmmm. Shingler out. 

Fever

Last night, Ada woke up around 2AM - screaming. I hurried to her crib and tried to find her pacifier thinking she just had a bad dream and needed soothing. As soon as I got near her I knew something was wrong. She was burning up. I have never felt her that hot. I snatched her up out of the crib and started searching in the dark drawers for our ear and rectal thermometers. She stopped crying right away, but as I held her in my arms she kept twitching. First I thought she was getting startled by something but once I had her in my room and had turned on a dim light and the twitching continued my heart started racing. I took her temp with the ear thermometer and it read 101.7. That was my cue to take her more accurate temperature rectally and with Stephen's help we stripped our twitching daughter down and tried to comfort her while the numbers on the digital thermometer rose to 103.2. Despite the panicked feeling in my heart I kept calm and we decided to call the pediatrician to see if we should be headed for the ER. I have never been more thankful for our pediatricians office (Oberlin Road Pediatrics) than I was last night. The answering service picked up right away and said they would have a nurse call us back in a moment. I sat nursing a twitching Ada in the dark while we waited for my phone to ring. Within minutes the call came and on the other end was a sweet male nurse from Wake Med who listened to my details and then calmly informed me that the twitching did not sound like a seizure and that her fever would have to be much higher to cause that. He said that twitching with a fever of this magnitude is pretty normal in little guys like this and advised me to treat the fever with Motrin and watch her to make sure it goes down. Apparently there is a bug going around that causes nothing more than a really high fever. He assured my southern heart that I had not woken anyone up and asked me to please call back if anything changed or I had any other questions. He said they worried about parents who didn't call in situations like this rather than those who did. He said taking her to the ER in this state would have been the worst thing to do, exposing her to loads of germs in her weakened state could have made her sicker. I thanked him profusely and dosed her with Motrin and rocked/nursed her back to sleep and made a futile attempt to get back to sleep myself.

Now for the "funny" part. When she woke up fussy again around 6:00, I fed her as much as she would eat and then Stephen took her downstairs to play and try to distract her a bit. Margot started whining so I got her up and fed her and that is when I realized... it wasn't Margot.. it was Ada! Margot was the sick baby and we had been consoling her as Ada all night. I had wondered why she was not acting like herself and assumed it was just the fever. Sigh. Our sweet babysitters put them in the wrong cribs last night and in our panic (and the dim light of the bathroom) we didn't even think to double check who whose temperature we were taking and just assumed it was Ada since she was in the crib on the left - aka - Ada's crib. The perils of raising two very identical looking little girls. 

Margot is still not feeling very well this morning, though her fever is down and the Motrin seems to be doing it's job. She is enjoying being cuddled and carried around all day.

Now on the lighter side - here are the girls and their buddy Ben earlier this week. The three of them had their overalls on and Erin and I couldn't resist recording the moment.

Thankful

I am sitting on the couch waiting for Stephen to get back from taking our babysitters home. Tonight we left the girls with non-family babysitters for the first time and went out on a date. These wonderfully sweet girls from Stephen's class actually asked Stephen if they could babysit for us tonight.. for free. Originally they wanted to watch the girls so we could go to the school play.. but then plans changed and they still wanted to come over just so we could go out for a few hours. We got to go out to eat at a nice restaurant downtown (courtesy of John's fun $$) and then sip coffee at our favorite coffee shop over a shared piece of carrot cake... and talk...and talk.. and talk.... How blessed we are. How thankful I am for the sweet and generous hearts of those precious girls who stood guard over our home and tenderly cared for our little treasures. 

Hair Bows

Hey, Mom ... what's this thing on my head?



Whoa! Ada has one too!



Hold real still Ada...



Got it!!



Hmmm..... tastes like yellow.

Happy Easter!!

Ada and Margot were so happy to rejoice with us this morning in celebration and remembrance of our Savior's resurrection. He conquered death so that we might live and that is certainly worth singing about - which both girls did all through worship before and after the message this morning... just as those folks standing nearby...

Ada looks like she might slip off the chair at any moment but Daddy was standing nearby so.. she was safe.

Oliver didn't understand what all the fuss was about but politely requested that we put his bed back in his chair so he could get on with his afternoon of napping.

Easter egg (a little monozygotic humor)

They are getting to be a real lap full

Smiling at Daddy..

Ada waving bye-bye :)

Hope everyone out there is having a wonderful Sunday enjoying time with your family and friends - there is nothing finer.