Dotty got into Suzi's Makeup

It was bound to happen... but we never thought that it would happen before Dotty turned two.

You can't really tell in the photo but she got pink lipstick all over, her hands were covered, but she did a pretty good job on her face! She is SUCH a girl, she loves shoes, clothes, dolls.... and everything else girly.

The other day Suzi had gone shopping at Gymboree for some winter clothes for Dotty. During the short visit to the store Dorothy went totally crazy! She found some shoes (not her size) that she had to sit down in the middle of the store, take her shoes off and try to put the new shoes on(Suzi found a pair that fit her and let her wear them home) and to make a long story short while Dotty was undressing in the checkout line a lady asked Suzi if she could help hold things so Suzi could re-dress Dotty and Suz just rolled her eyes and said it would not help as she would just undress herself again so she could put the new clothes on.

I have a feeling I'm in trouble.

Peter's going to a plastic surgeon

It may sound weird that we're taking a 4 year old to a plastic surgeon, but he needs a face lift....

Actually,it's long overdue but after the neurosurgeon gave us the all clear we went to see the optometrist and they were impressed with Peter's improvement, except there is still a little swelling above his eye that causes me a little worry. His eye still has not returned to its appropriate level so we go early next month to see the plastic surgeon about raising his eye back up to the normal level.

Depending on what we find there will determine the next course of action on his road to a full recovery. All in all we are so blessed that he is doing so well. We love him and are grateful for the experience that this has given us.

Twins Update Week 23

So the proud papa syndrome is starting to pick up.... the sonograms are starting to show a lot of details so I decided to post all the scans this time - it's a lot but then you have more to look at!

We finally found out who is who.... Baby A is the Girl, and Baby B is the boy! 

The twins continue to do great, they are now both facing the same way head up in Suzi's belly. They are now about one and a half pounds each (1 lb and 5 oz and 1 lb and 7 oz  respectively) a little ahead of where their weight should be. The heart rates are about 140 bpm, and every other vital sign is right on track. 

While we were doing the sonogram the boy got too close to the girl so she kicked him in the bum and he moved back... just a shadow of things to come I'm sure! 

Suzi goes into the Doctor tomorrow for a tummy check, our next sonogram is on December 18th so we should get more info then. 

Three boys & two girls!

Three boys & two girls... no, the sonogram did not find 3 more babies, that will be the breakout of children when the twins are born. The Sonogram went really well, the Doctor said that we could not of done better if we tried! He was extremely fast and checked for things that we have no idea how he saw. (even cleft lips) All in all the babies are doing extremely well, they are 10 & 11 ounces now, and extremely active in Suzi's belly. The doctor said that because of the activity the babies would be giving Suzi trouble here soon.... I'm just anxious to see the alien belly with multiple bumps moving in different directions!

We're excited that everything is doing so well, and that we're going to get one boy & one girl. Now the question is, which one is which? is Baby A or Baby B the girl

Peter's Brain

Peter had his follow up appointment today with the neurosurgeon. We had another CT Scan done so they could review the progress he has made over the past couple of days. 

Peter is doing surprisingly well. He has a little blood left in his skull, but the fractures are healing very nicely. Peter does have a nice bruise on his brain... we're not sure if that will affect him at all. The neurosurgeon says that it is normal and will heal in time just like any other bruise. 

Here's a picture we took tonight of him while getting ready for bed:

As you can see he's 99% better. A little swelling in his eye still, and we hope that is causing the one worry we have left. 

It's hard to see but his left eye is a little lower than his right causing double vision and a couple other problems. We are going back to the Optometrist in early November for what we hope is the last follow up appointment. If his eye does not return to the normal position after the swelling is gone then we'll probably have to have a surgery to raise it back to it's normal position. 

Twins Update - Week 15

Back to the Doctor again today (yes, we've seen enough doctors in the last two weeks to choke a horse) and everything is great with the twins. The Doctor was able to find their heartbeats without problem (one was 170 and the other was 140 BPM). The stress and exhaustion of Peter's accident had no impact on the babies. Per the doctor 'they are parasites that take what they need... it's the [mother] that suffers'

We scheduled another sonogram on October 23 to measure and check both the babies, and yes, find out what the sex will be. 

Our next regular checkup will be October 30th. 

Peter's Optometrist Appointment

We got to finally take Peter back to Children's for a full optometrist appointment yesterday. The swelling has gone down enough in his right eye that they were able to do a full exam on him. 

The good news.... all the muscles etc seem to be in good condition and there does not seem to be any major injuries to the eye itself. 

The bad news.... his right eye is now lower than his left eye causing an in balance in his vision. The doctors said that they wanted to give him another month for the swelling to go down, and his skull fractures to heal more to see if the eye will return to it's normal position. If it doesn't they would want to do a re-constructive surgery to raise the eye back to where it needs to be. 

Peter is also a little near sighted, and has astigmatism on his right eye. 

Peter's Home

We finally were able to come home yesterday afternoon..... Wednesday morning we were told that they would send us home that day, so naturally I sent out emails to everyone that I worked with, and told them the good news. I packed up a bunch of the stuff we had at the hospital and made a trip home. 

When I went back to pick up Suzi and Peter the neurosurgeon came back in and said that since Peter had a runny nose they wanted to keep him there for another twelve hours for observation. Apparently something that is fairly common with head injuries is that the spinal fluid will leak out the nose or ears. Since the fluid can get out, bacteria can get in. If that happened Peter would develop Spinal Meningitis, a fairly serious and painful illness. 

But, with the blessings of the faith and a whole bunch of prayer we were not able to collect enough of it for them to test and they eventually said it must have been just a runny nose since it was not consistent at all. 

Peter is excited to be home, although he is restricted from doing most the stuff a four year old does, he has most of his freedoms back and does not have to stay in bed all day hooked up to machines. 

Pictures of Peter

Peter's Pictures

Peter's Accident

Below is some basic information about Peter's Accident... I put it in a time table format to help me remember what has happened when..... 

Saturday Morning

The day started off fairly normal as the family dropped me (Jeff) off at DFW Airport for a business trip to San Francisco, then they went to Suzi's sister house to play and visit. A little bit after arriving the kids were up in the play room above the garage. The thought at this time is that Peter was playing on the back a couch that was by the windows and leaned against the screen in the window and fell out. Luckily there was a ledge a couple feet below the window that we think he hit which slowed him down so he did not get the full impact of a 2 story fall.

After the fall Henry rushed out to tell Suzi what had happened - He was calm and collected and handled the situation perfectly. Suzi ran out the front door where she met Peter who was up and walking toward the front door.  

Suzi and her sister grabbed Peter and rushed him to Baylor Hospital of Plano which is fairly close to their house, Peter kept consciousness during this time as Suzi continued to bug him and ask him questions. He was really upset about the blood on his Superman pants. 

Saturday Afternoon

Once they arrived at the ER they immediately took him in and started their work. I'm a little fuzzy on this part, but I know they got him into a CT Scan there (#1) and then made a decision to put him on a helicopter to the Children's Hospital. One nurse took Suzi into a family room and told her to "make your calls" to notify Family of the situation. I was in the air and there was not much time so she called our Parents to let them know. Of course at that time information was very vague. 

My parents were in Oklahoma City and started home right away, Suzi's dad was in the hospital himself at the time.  

After a couple calls we had five brethren from the Church heading to the Children’s hospital to give Peter a blessing. Gordon (my brother) who left a party in Denton to go and help Suzi with his Wife Coren, Stephen Fluckiger (my Uncle from Sunnyvale), Evan (my brother in law) and his Father, and Bishop Mayberry from our ward. Peter got a great blessing (from what I heard) and they offered Suzi great support.

As I touched down in San Francisco I turned my phone on to check for messages... I had none. But my Dad called just a couple seconds later and asked "how’s Peter"? Which, was my introduction to the tragedy. Dad did not know much because everyone that had additional information either did not have a cell phone, or had to turn them off. 

I was tormented for a couple minutes as I had very little, but very serious information about Peter. Luckily American Airlines was able to immediately get me back on a flight to Dallas on the same plane I just got off of. I finally did get a hold of Suzi right before boarding the flight home and got a brief story. I then had to endure a 4 hour flight home to Dallas praying and pleading that all would be ok. 

While I was flying home they got Peter and Suzi down to Children’s Medical Center and did another CT Scan (#2) to check on his brain. They found he had two fractures, one above the eye and one below, he had bleeding in his head, but outside the brain. 

Saturday Evening

As I got off the plane my parents were just getting to the airport from Oklahoma, they picked me up and took me directly to the hospital. After pleading with the hospital staff to let me in (they were in the middle of a staff change and usually did not let people in during then) I finally got to see Suzi and Peter. Suzi was doing good, Peter on the other hand looked horrible. He had several tubes taped to his mouth and running down to his stomach and lungs (the ventilator) and the tape was covered in dried blood. He had an IV in each arm, 6 sensors taped to his chest, a sensor on his right hand thumb, and a couple other wires (some coming out of other holes in his body if you know what I mean). His right eye was swollen shut, his nose was caked with dried blood, his ears had blood in them (I thought it was from his ears, but it turned out that it was from his nose, it just dripped down there). The top of his nose was scraped and purple, and his forehead was really scraped up. It was terrifying seeing him like that. 

Saturday Night

We went down to get another CT Scan (#3) about 10:30 which showed continuing improvement in the bleeding, but the Doctors would still not tell us the long term outlook, it was still just a 'wait and see' approach. The next several hours was Suzi trying to sleep in Peters room with a couple blankets right beneath a really cold A/C vent amid alarms going off every couple of minutes and Nurses and Doctors running in to Check on him. Since only one person was allowed to be in the ICU I got to try to sleep in the Family waiting room, which was also freezing cold. 

Peters breathing continued to get better, they still had to suction out liquid from his lungs every fifteen minutes or so... which Peter hated as they slid a tube down his throat while he was fully conscious so he could cough while they were doing the suction. Peter could not make any noise because of the tubes in his mouth, but his eyes were screaming so loud. And while he was trying to reach out to be held by Suzi and I his arms were tied down to the sides of the bed to prevent him from pulling out the ventilator tubes.

Sunday Morning

About 2:00 am the feeble attempts to sleep were interrupted as Peter started to wake up as the pain medication wore off the nurses and doctors came in to assess where he was out. A decision was then made to remove the ventilator tubes as soon as we could. About an hour later we got everything ready and they removed him from the ventilator. As they removed the tubes he started screaming… although it was really quiet due to the swelling in the throat (from the tubes) and talking was extremely difficult from the swelling. Peter’s focus then changed from the tubes to his right eye which still was swollen shut.

Sunday Afternoon

It’s all a blur at this point in time – but most of Sunday was just stabilizing Peter… he continued improvement. He still would not eat, and if the pain medicine wore off it he was completely miserable, when that happened he the doctors gave him some morphine which worked really well and allowed him to sleep pretty easy. We got the catheter removed from Peter and he started to use the restroom in a bed-pan / cup type thing.

Sunday Night

About 8:30pm we got another CT Scan (4^th). Continued progress & the head nurse felt good enough about the results to release Peter from ICU. (Being in desperate need of beds in the ICU probably helped as well) He was then moved to the Neurological ward at Dallas Children's Hospital, where he continued to improve rapidly.

Monday Morning

Peter continued to improve, the only major change is that his left eye is now completely swollen shut making him effectively blind which has been the scariest thing for Peter to date. The next step was to get Peter out of bed and to start walking and moving on his own again. The Physical Therapy nurses came to the room about 8:30 and were really pressing for Peter to sit-up on his own, however at this time his pain medication had worn off and he was in a horrible mood, he would not cooperate at all, and we eventually gave up after he threw up from throwing such a fit.  

Monday Afternoon / Evening

We took Peter to the Optometrist to check out his eyes…. They were not able to do a full exam due to the swelling but they were able to check the pressure, dilatation, and movement of both eyes and they were happy on the current state, although they had limited testing abilities.

The most significant improvement came when Henry came down after school, Peter perked up, started talking a lot with Henry, he sat up and ate and drank a lot (in comparison with the rest of the weekend) he even got out of bed and stood on his own to play with Henry.

 

I’m sure I’m missing some details (such as the neck brace, x-rays and their results etc) but we’ll go back and edit/add that later. 

Twins Update - Week 11

We went back for appointment # 2 today, it was run of the mill everything is progressing as expected. The babies are now about the size of a fig (no, not a fig newton) just over 1 1/2 inches long

The Dr had a hard time finding both babies heart beat's so he had us do another sonogram just in case. The sonogramist (who has twins of her own) was thrilled with the pictures as it appears that the babies are in a heart.
The babies heart beats are still around 160 BPM. The theory is that girls have higher heart beats..... so now we are trying to figure out girl's names.

Family/Friends responses to hearing we're having twins

We thought it would be fun to list out some of the comments we've recieved when telling people we're having twins....

• F***
  
• Twins... I can't wait to shoot them
  
• You Mormons know how to get all the deals... two for one babies!
  
• They're gonna be so cute.
  
• Oh my gosh, you are going to be absolutely huge
  
• Ditch those cloth diapers
  
• Better you than me
  
• Congratulations…. and condolences

Obviously not all of the reactions... but our favorite of the bunch!

TWINS

I'm not sure where, or how to begin... the shock is wearing off and the scary realtiy is starting to come into focus. IT'S TWINS! I'm sure the blog will be full of updates... as for now, this is a good start!

Here is a picture of BABY A

BABY B

And the two together