"Babies Home! Cutie, Cutie!"

It was a week ago today we brought Daniel and Michael home from the NICU at UVRMC, after their 4.5 week stay. That will forever be a precious day in my memory. The older kids were playing with cousins and grandparents all day so Jonny and I had the quiet house to ourselves. Oh, and a few baby boys. Crazy! It kinda felt like the days we brought all our other babies home from the hospital. (Especially since it was a Friday or Saturday for all three, and they were about the same size and gestational age as the twins.) We settled in and set up shop here in our living room with bassinets, bouncer seats, swings, a changing station on the ottoman, etc. It is babyland! (Reminds me a lot of what Emily's house looked like when her triplets were new.) We may be crowded, but we love it. So so so glad to have these boys home where they belong. 

My mom and dad brought the kids home in the evening. Julia came in first and rushed to the bassinets to swoon over the babies. Gabe beamed from ear to ear. But Evy's greeting was my favorite. As soon as she saw them she exclaimed, "Babies home! Cutie, Cutie!" (Only she pronounced it "Cootie, Cootie!") 

Thus began our lives with five kids in our home. That still blows my mind. (But hopefully it doesn't literally do that. We have low expectations for sleep and sanity. So we can only be pleasantly surprised when we get a good amount of either of those!) As far as the nights go, right now Jonny and I are each taking a a half-night shift with the boys in the living room. Jonny heads to bed between 8 and 9 pm and I stay out with the babies until he takes over at 2am. They've been waking up to eat at night every 3-5 hours. It can be tricky to to feed both babies at once by oneself in the middle of the night, but it gets done. 

And now for show and tell...

Here is our big corner of Nursery B at the NICU. It was pretty nice, actually. When we curtained it off I felt like we had our own deluxe suite. 

Daniel

It was finally time to actually leave! Lots of pictures and goodbyes and thankyous. 

And then there were five

Julia had been dying to feed one of them from a bottle. They are awesome eaters and are big boys. Daniel weighs just over 8 pounds and Michael just over 7. For now they take turns nursing every other feeding. Hopefully before too long we will get this tandem nursing thing down and the feeding process can be simplified to one step rather than three. (Nurse one, bottle one, pump. Big thanks to my mom who has been helping out during the day.) I think that'll be a lot easier to do once Michael is untethered from all his cords. And that should really be pretty soon. He is on the lowest level of oxygen possible and should be on room air within a week or so, I believe. 

Michael

Daniel

These lucky boys are loved by many cousins, aunts, uncles, and Grandparents...

To name a few: 

the Pecks 

Nana Jan

Grandma Myra

Aunt Emma and Bear

Aunt Rudi

I was really hoping we'd be home by Labor Day. And here we are picnicking in the backyard, not the NICU family lounge like I thought might happen. I love being home. 

And I LOVE my babies.