Bill and Agata's wedding.

We headed up to San Pedro on Saturday for our good friends Bill and Agata's wedding. We've known them both for many years and I use to live with them in Long Beach. We saw many old friends and caught up with everyone and had a great time. Agata had asked me to make the grooms cake for Bill. I worked on it Thursday and Friday and was happy with the outcome however have realised there will be no more baking for a while as the babies are way to high maintenance right now to do both at the same time. Most of the day was spent with Kai in one arm and Daila clinging on to my leg all day like a little monkey! It was a great night and we all danced and Kai and Daila got to see sparklers for the first time. They loved them!

Mommy's birthday and a visit from a friend.

Last week was pretty crazy and it seemed like every day we had something major going on. Tuesday we went to Pam and Stevens to celebrate Gigi and my birthday. Wednesday we went to Kai's post-op doctors appointment. It was with the surgeon who operated and he said Kai is doing great! He also gave the okay for Kai and Daila to resume their normal all day wrestling playtime, so we don't have to keep them separated anymore. Funny too because Kai is already starting to settle the score. Then Thursday my fried Sarah came for a visit. We were friends back when I lived in Colorado. She now lives in San Fransisco and we see each other every so often. She loved spending time with the babies and Kai LOVED hanging out with her. I think I got to witness his first crush...:) He's becoming quite the little flirt! Then Friday I spent all day working on a grooms cake for a friends wedding, then Billy surprised me with a date night he had planned to celebrate my birthday. He found an amazing hidden little restaurant down in the valley not far from our house. We had a great time and made our rounds to a few places, saw some live music at Cooks Corner a famous biker bar that is in the same valley, and then to a place to play pool. It was a perfect night, felt like the old days for a little bit!

Someone is spying on us.

Kai and I were sitting on the couch and we looked down to see Daila spying on us in her mirror. She had been having a conversation with herself, but got quiet for a few seconds which is when I looked up. It made me kind of sad because I hoped she wasn't feeling left out! Of course I had to immediately put her on my lap too.

All cutie pies please stand up!

Standing is the new cool thing to do in our house now. Both babies do it day and night and they're both starting to inch their away around things. While this is all great and impressive, Billy and I wouldn't mind if they slowed it down just a little bit...:)

This is what happens to Daila now when she gets caught climbing on Kai's back. We decided to start the discipline sooner than later... Just kidding. She's just trying to get a really good look at the door stoppers...:)

First Playdate!

Kai and Daila got to play together today with Iris and Luke, our friends Carla and Doug's 8 month old twins. Carla and I worked at Quiksilver. Here's our crazy story of becoming friends and then finding out we were both having twins...

So I had been working at Quiksilver for a whole 3 days when I found out we were pregnant. Not the best timing to say the least...:) Well, about a month after I started Carla started. I still hadn't told anyone I was pregnant. As soon as I met Carla I knew I liked her and could tell that we could be "outside of work" friends. And I was right! She is an amazing woman and I was glad to get to know her. Well, about 6 weeks after that I was starting to show and I was now in the second trimester so I decided it was time to announce the big news. Even though Carla and I were becoming friends I hadn't even told her yet. Well, as soon as she heard my news she pulled me off to the side and whispered "I'm pregnant too! And with twins too!" We could hardly believe it ourselves! I was about 4 weeks ahead of her in my pregnancy and she wasn't quite ready to announce hers yet.

It was so amazing having a pregnancy buddy at work, especially since neither of us had been there for really any time at all when we found out. It was almost like we were living parallel lives. Then to top it all off we found out we were both having boy/girl twins too. Sadly she had a much more complicated pregnancy so she was out on bed rest for much of her 2nd and 3rd trimester. We attended each others baby showers and then we even delivered 3 days apart! She ended up delivering at 32 weeks and I delivered at 35 weeks. So Kai and Daila are 3 days older than Luke and Iris. So that's our crazy story. You almost wouldn't believe it unless you were there, but it's true!

It was so fun to watch the babies check each other out. They are all just starting to move around and figure out different toys. There was a lot of smiling though and inquisitive looks...:) It was Luke and Iris's first time being outside in the grass so we got to share a milestone with them. They got to share one with us too as Daila cut her first tooth while they were there. She had heard Luke had cut 2 just a couple days before. Oh no, hopefully she's not that competitive!!

Back to business as usual.

Kai is doing great and doesn't seem to be in too much pain. We've been giving him a little Tylenol with codeine but that's it. He's been as active as ever and Daila is happy to have her playmate back!

Our cute little puppy dog.

Since Kai came home from the hospital we've had to shuffle up the sleeping arrangement so Daila wouldn't climb on top of Kai while he sleeps. So she has been sleeping in her crib in their room, and Kai has been in the pack and play in our room. It has actually worked out pretty good and they both have adjusted easier than we thought they would. However during this time Daila has learned that to get our attention in the morning she will sit on her knees holding onto the crib railing and literally bark like a puppy dog! We have no idea where she learned this, but we're not complaining because it beats crying, which so far we've lucked out on and neither of them have done for attention. So these are some photos from yesterday of her sitting at the sliding glass door "barking" at daddy who was sitting on the patio...:)

Deanscrews biggest hurdle yet.

So if you haven't heard by now, Kai Boy had a Congenital Heart Condition that we knew eventually would need to be dealt with. It is a PDA which is a valve that is to have closed at birth. Sometimes they take longer to close so we waited it out. Well Kai's never closed and after going to 3 different Cardiologist it turns out he had a very large PDA as appose to a small to moderate that was originally diagnosed. This means his heart was working twice as hard to pump blood through his body. Also it meant his metabolism was twice as fast and he was having a hard time gaining weight. At the last cardio appt. they also detected a Coarctation of the Aorta, meaning an obstruction causing the blood flow to his legs to be hindered.

So Thursday July 9th was the big day. We went to the hospital on the 8th for pre-op blood work and spoke to a very uneducated nurses practitioner who freaked us out by saying Kai would be put on a bypass machine during the Coarctation procedure. It turns out she had no idea what she was talking about. Why is it that people can't just simply say "I don't know" when asked something they have no business talking about? It is beyond me. Anyways- not only did that freak us out the day before his surgery, but Daila also started up with the bloody diapers again while we were at the hospital. Maybe it was her nervousness for what Kai was about to endure, but sure enough while Kai and daddy were in the chest x-ray room I took Daila to change her diaper and it was blood again (this happened about 6 weeks ago) so for the last 2 hours of the day before Kai's surgery we spent trying to get a hold of our pediatrician re: Daila's issue, but also trying to process all of this new information about Kai (that turned out to not be true) so needless to say, we were stressed. We can officially say that so far July 8th was our least favorite day of parenting so far! We eventually spoke to the pediatrician and he at least made us feel comfortable in the fact that Daila would be okay. That was really important because we didn't plan to bring her with us to the hospital during Kai's surgery because we didn't want to expose her to any random germs that we didn't need to.

So we headed to the hospital at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday a.m., Kai's surgery was the first one of the day. We held it together pretty good, and Kai was his usual charming self with the dimples that makes your heart melt. This was the hardest part, because he was all happy and playful and had no idea what was about to happen. Handing him over to the nurse to get prepped for surgery was by far the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I really hope we don't have to do anything like that again or anytime soon at least. Billy and I were pretty much in a fog after that, we went down to the cafeteria and had eggs and french toast, something I actually can barely remember the details of. Then we went to the room we were told to wait in and sat there to wait it out. Of course nothing is complete without some harassment by someone trying to over-flex their authority... Billy was reprimanded by an "almighty" security guard for putting his feet on a chair to try and stretch out and get comfortable enough to wait for the news. Mind you it's 7:30 a.m. and we were the only people in the waiting room. Never fails. So finally the surgeon came out to tell us Kai's surgery went extremely well in the fact they closed the PDA and the Coarctation was not severe enough to ever effect him, so they didn't have to manipulate the Aorta. He did though explain that the PDA was so large that instead of using the standard 1 clip to close it off, they used 2 and a silk suture to close it.

We made our way up to the ICU where we had previously been told Kai would spend the rest of his time. When we first saw him he was sleeping. Everyone told us to be prepared for this moment because they said you usually fall apart seeing your baby hooked up to all of the machines. Well, maybe this was the only redeeming aspect to all of the different injuries and surgeries Billy and I have had combined, but we were just so happy to see him we didn't even care about the machines. Heck, I was glad to know there was something hooked up to everything letting us know he was A-OK! So we spent the next several hours comforting Kai as he woke and worked himself through the miserable process of coming out of anesthetic. This was sad to watch because he was so disoriented and his voice was hoarse from the breathing tube. So when he did cry it was extra pitiful.

By the time evening rolled around Kai was pretty exhausted. Auntie Pamela came up to visit and she brought Kai a cute little teddy bear to keep him company. Kai was asleep so she took us to dinner to try and get our mind off of things. It was a nice break, but of course I ended up calling the hospital halfway through to check Kai's status because I couldn't bear the thought of his pitiful little hoarse cry if he didn't have mom or dad there to comfort him. The nurse assured us he had been sleeping the whole time and not to worry. So we finished our dinner and went back and spent a few groggy moments with our little champ before he fell asleep for the night. The nurses had warned us that the following day would be the worst so we were prepared for anything.

Well, contrary to much speculation, we woke this morning to a happy, energetic little monkey who was too pre-occupied with trying to stand up in his crib to care that he had heart surgery just yesterday! It was amazing. We were also told he would probably instictually not use his left arm because the surgery was done through his left shoulder blade and his ribs had to be separated to access his heart, but sure enough he was using it to pull all of his weight up. So in other words he's doing extremely well. The docs did their rounds this morning and he was discharged without question.

We left the hospital and went to Sallies house where Daila had spent the last day. This was the first time Daila and Kai had been separated and you could tell they missed each other. They played and babbled like they were catching up on old times. The best moment was when we finally got home and Daila stole Kai's binky like she likes to do. Well, Kai cried for a second like usual, but this time he swiped hers from her mouth in retaliation! We waited for Daila to get all upset, but instead she broke out in a huge giggle and kept doing it as we all started laughing with her. It was like she wasn't even mad, she was just so excited that Kai had finally figured out her game. It was clearly the most uniting moment we've had with the four of us so far. We almost got tears thinking about this and how this was just the first of many roads we will travel together as a family.

4th of July fun!

We started out the 4th of July weekend with a visit from our good friend Jason Grace. He lives in San Francisco and is a tattoo artist. He comes through every so often because he gets many requests in So. Cal. for tattoos and we always try to get together while he's here. He was so excited to meet the babies as he had only seen them in photos. He took off on Friday and Billy and I had our first full blown "Domesticated" family day (I know, took us only 7 1/2 months right??!) Billy got hard to work on changing the break pads on my car, and I spent the whole day making cupcakes for Saturdays 4th of July BBQ at Pamela's, Billy's sisters house.

Saturday we went to Fullerton to Pamela and Stevens for their annual 4th of July Blowout. They live in the hills and have a great view of the Disneyland fireworks. Billy manned the BBQ because poor Steven had spent the prior 3 days in the hospital due to a bee sting of all things. We all had a great time and the babies were held by pretty much everyone. Everybody was sad to hear about Kai's upcoming heart surgery, but after spending a little time with him could tell that everything was going to be alright...:) Jen and Joe were there with the triplets and their 2 year old Hudson. It's always inspiring to hang out with them and see how even in a challenging situation like theirs (Jen had 4 boys under 1, Hudson was a week shy of turning 1 when the triplets were born) they still manage to all have fun and be just the cutest family! We stayed at Pamela and Stevens house that night and had a chance to take the babies for their first hot tub swim on Sunday. They loved it! They were so cut in their little swimsuits and it turned out to be a perfect 4th of July weekend...:)

Morning sunshine with Kai.

This morning Kai and I seized a moment while Daila was napping to go outside and enjoy a few minutes of sunshine. The babies love checking out the trees and the grass and have been spending lots of time lately studying the texture, grain, feel and smell of all these things. It's such a big world to them and it's so fun watching them discover every little thing.

A brief update on Kai regarding his heart situation. He was born with a PDA (Patend Ductus Arteriosis) meaning one of the valves that it suppose to close within 48 hrs. after birth didn't close. We hoped it would close on it's own by the time he was 6 months, but it hasn't. It turns out it's bigger than what was originally diagnosed, and he will need surgery to close it. We met with the surgeon yesterday and he is scheduled for Thursday the 9th at 7:30 am. He'll probably spend 2-3 days in the hospital. We're having it done at CHOC (Children's Hospital of Orange County). This is a relatively minimal invasive procedure and is one of the most routine pediatric surgeries. They are saying he will be feeling great in no time. He's had no real external side effects to this defect which is one of the reason he was misdiagnosed previously. His physical development and coordination is ahead of schedule, the only external indication has been slow weight gain. He eats like a champ but his metabolism is basically in overdrive due to his heart working harder to pump the blood through his body. So once this is done we'll see a pretty significant weight gain right away. Daila better watch out, Kai's gonna be remembering all those sneak attack tackles and hijacking his binky and be looking to settle the score!