Nov.-Dec. Catchup

Thanksgiving fun in the leaves at Grammy and Papa's.

Chore time after Thanksgiving at Grandma and Papa's.

This last month since Thanksgiving has basically been one illness after another. This seems to be our new way of life this winter. Luckily though nothing has been something we couldn't overcome and we just consider it more stimulation for their immune system. We had a wonderful thanksgiving with each of our families, promptly followed by two long illnesses. We were so thankful just to be able to celebrate this holiday with our families this year. It seems like last Thanksgiving, when we were homebound, wasn't that long ago. We have had several big milestone achievements lately. Since Thanksgiving we have given up bottles!! Yeah! This was a long time coming and was a huge step at our house. The girls don't use pacifiers so the bottles were their relaxation to go to sleep at night while we rocked them. We had a rough couple of days, but overall it went better than I thought. I think it was harder on mommy than it was on them.

We wore our first pigtails. It was fun to finally have enough hair to get up on each side. Too bad the girls only leave them in for 10 sec. And if one actually leaves them in the other one will promptly remove them! Thanks girls! It looks so cute so I will continue to try and persevere. Any hints on how to get them to leave bands and bows in their hair?

The girls had their first slumber party with my best friend's daughter, Natalie. She is only three weeks apart from them on their adjusted age so they are perfect little playmates. Natalie did so great when she came to play and spend the night. The girls really had a lot of fun and wore each other out. They slept in the latest they have ever slept that next morning. Maybe we need Natalie to come sleepover more often!

Renna has started loving to dress up in hats, aprons, scarves, glasses, etc...it is so cute.

We have one drawer in the kitchen that they are allowed to play in. We keep some aprons and kitchen stuff that they like to play with while I cook. One evening I was cooking dinner and this is the fight that was going on! They love sitting in the drawer and Renna couldn't wait for Reagan to get out to have her turn. A little sisterly fighting!!

Renna has also become a climber and loves getting up on the chairs and trying to get onto the table. Reagan doesn't seem interested in climbing yet, and she doesn't need to because Renna throws everything down for her to play with. Both girls love playing with their babies and trying to feed them and swaddle them. It is so cute.

Renna loves walking around with two babies. My guess is because this scenario is totally normal to her. Don't all mommies have two babies at once?

Reagan is going to be my little reader and writer. She loves reading books and studying things. She is my serious girl but also loves to cuddle and snuggle with her mommy. Since she has been so sick she has really been attached to me and I love every minute. The girls have most recently been battling Strep throat. My poor Reagan has been the sickest with two days of 106 fever!! That is enough to make any momma a nervous wreck, after two visits to the doctor we were assured she likely has strep with a concurrent viral illness. So we are staying in this week to hopefully recover and get well before Christmas.

Renna has started loving Ozzy. She loves to ride him, she is getting in some cowgirl practice for the horses this summer! Poor Ozzy, he is so sweet and never gets up, just lets her sit and ride.
Renna doing more Cowgirl training. This child won't keep a bow or hairband in her hair but will wear the cowgirl hat for hours! She also likes wearing my boots which results in many falls.
Adam made me post these pics because he is so proud of his little ladies eating ribs! While I was starting to clean up dinner he decided to let them chew on the bones...yummy!!
Reagan loved the Ribs and the Baked Beans as you can see.
We passed another big milestone, we moved to our forward facing carseats tonight!! They have still been using their little baby carseats because we were waiting on our little Pickle (Reagan) to reach 20lbs. She weighed 19 lbs. 15oz. at the dr. this week so that was close enough for us. We took them to look at Christmas lights tonight to see what they would think. The enjoyed it for a little bit but got tired. I think they were a little freaked out at first to be facing forward. I can't get over how big they look in these seats. I guess they are really not my tiny babies anymore!

Fun on the Farm

First I must start by saying that November is Prematurity Awareness Month and today is actually Prematurity Awareness day. Early birth touches so many lives and not all of them end as happily as our story did. We need to continue to support the March of Dimes and the research that they fund to help little babies like my girls. The girls were born at 28 weeks gestation weighing on 2lbs. 10 oz. and 2lbs. 15oz. We were so blessed to be able to take home two healthy babies after two and a half months in the NICU. Please support further research to help save babies that are born too soon.

Now on to the current Life of the Laughlins. Things have been pretty crazy lately (I am pretty sure I always say that now). Anyways the girls have basically been sick with fevers, coughs, and upper respiratory infections now for almost two weeks. We even had to have one visit to the ER (more details below). We are hopefully on the mend now with antibiotics. We did get to go spend several days at my parents house while Adam was away on a hunting trip (those were the three days they were well). It was the girls' first time to spend more than two nights away from home and they did great. We had such a wonderful time playing with their cousins, Great-grandma (meme), and my parents. It was a bit of a vacation for me as well because it was fun to always have someone to help me with the girls during the day. This picture above is actually of the girls at our house before we were going down to the barn to feed the horses. I just thought they looked precious in their little hats! Here is a glimpse at the fun on the farm visiting with my parents...
Here is Meme and Reagan driving the golf cart. It is a great way to travel in the crazy wind and cold because it has a canopy thing on it. The girls loved it of course and loved driving with their Meme.
We spent alot of time riding trikes, bikes, fourwheelers etc in the barn out of the wind. The girls usually made a big protest when we had to go inside. This picture is special to me because it is my tricycle from when I was a little girl. I loved it so much and used to ride it everywhere. I cannot believe my mom still has it! I must admit it still works great and the girls were thrilled with it, of course they couldn't quite reach the pedals yet. Doesn't Renna look so grown up on it?
Renna riding in the golf cart delivering feed buckets.
The girls were obsessed with the feed buckets. They always each had to have one and loved digging through (and of course trying to eat) all of the feed.
I had to include this picture because Renna has discovered baby dolls. She fell in love with this one at Grandma's house and loved playing with it in this old toy highchair (another one of me and my sister's old toys). She now has latched on to some baby dolls at our house. It is so cute to see her want to be such a little mommy. Reagan is begining to love them too and likes trying to rock them.
Reagan riding the John Deere...her favorite ride!
Did I mention the girls pretty much got to do what they wanted while Grandma or Meme were around? Here they are digging through the kitchen cabinets. They were fascinated with the idea that there were no baby latches on the cabinets. It provided hours of entertainment! Aren't they cute in their little Carhartt jeans?
The girls got to go to church at Grandma and Papa's church for the first time. It was really fun to meet some of the people who prayed for them so much while they were in the hospital. It was also awesome to be at church with so many relatives to pass the girls around during church. It went so much smoother...if only we could be with them every Sunday.
Come here Goaties!! Time to eat!
More animals to feed. This is Renna walking with her cousin, Sara. Aren't they so precious together? What a sweet little cousin.
Papa was trying to teach Renna a little golfing. She actually got the hang of it...look out Tiger Woods!
This picture is before we were going out to do chores. It is so funny because the stocking caps totally crack me up, however if you know anything about my family they always think you need to have your head covered when you go out in the cold. So on Meme's pleas we always wore their stocking caps. Thanks for keeping their heads warm Meme (she actually bought us the cute little blue hats in the first picture too).
Papa built a little enclosed stool that the kids can stand on to help cook. Both girls fit nicely in there and they were overjoyed to get to help cook and watch everything...shockingly enough they didn't even push each other out.
I had to post this funny picture from home. They were fighting over the ever popular fairy car...the funny part is we have two of them. You can clearly see it in the background but in true twin fashion they always want the one the other sister is on. My sweet silly girls, at least they were trying to share a little I guess. You can see Reagan is also holding my phone. I am trying to teach them to text and drive early! Just kidding!!
Here is our visit to the Emergency Room last Friday night. My poor little Reagan Pickle had a 105 fever in this picture. Don't notice how gross I look, we were already showered and ready for bed. Needless to say when her fever got so high we knew we needed to take her in. It was very scary for me and daddy. She ended up having an bronchiolitis with a secondary upper respiratory infection but she needed some antibiotics STAT. We were so worried about her because the fever came up sooo fast and she was really out of it. They did chest x-rays and gave her an antibiotic injection and after several days of antibiotics she is feeling much better. Hopefully we don't have to make any more sudden trips back to the hospital. It was really weird being back at the same hospital where we basically lived for so many months when they were in the NICU. We need to thank Grammy and Papa for coming over so late to stay with Renna so we could both go to the hospital with her. We are so blessed to have them so close. They were life savers!

Halloween and Homecoming

This post may be a little bit of picture overload. Our computer has been broken so I am a little behind on the postings of the crazy Life of the Laughlins. I will try to mostly do pictures with small explanations.

Here are my sweet Little Lambs. We went to the Storybook Forest with Grammy and Papa Ron the week of Halloween and somehow this is the only picture we managed to get of the girls by themselves! Don't they look so big?

Renna enjoying some time with her cousin and Papa Ron.

Reagan loved carrying the bag of candy. She didn't get to eat much candy but had a blast carrying it around.

For Halloween we went to our friends Moose and Amber's house. Since we don't live in a neighborhood they invited us to go trick or treating with them and their sweet baby Paisley. We had a blast and the girls actually enjoyed walking around carrying their little buckets. We did not get a picture of it but it was so cute. Here we are in our family costumes Little Bo Peep, her lost sheep, and my helpful Shepherd Boy!
The girls with their favorite new friend Paisley the Bee!
The group before we left to go Trick or Treating. Scary looking group aren't we? I am pretty sure we had more fun than the kids. Thanks so much for inviting us over.
We recently took the girls back to our Alma Mater for Homecoming Walk-around. This was very exciting for Adam and I because it was the girls first time to visit the town! We both went to school there, met, fell in love, and lived there for our first two years of marriage. Needless to say we hope they want to go there to college some day. We had a great time showing the girls all of the Greek house decks. They were troopers for such a long evening and stayed awake the whole time. They didn't get into bed until almost midnight but never complained a bit! We didn't get any pictures while we were at the celebration but we did take some before we left. This is Renna on the back deck ready to do some cheering. She looks so grown up here.
We tried a long time to get a good picture of the girls together, but obviously this is the best one so we had no luck. You can see Reagan was not into the photo session. She wanted to play outside instead.
The only picture of Reagan where she was halfway smiling. See any family resemblance?
Not a great family picture but the best we could get. After the photo session we were worried about how the trip would go but luckily my parents came along. We decided it is always easier to travel with grandparents to entertain the twins!

The girls with my parents. Thanks for all of your help with the girls Grandma and Papa Jim. We had a great time!

Pumpkin Patch Fun

Last weekend we took advantage of this beautiful fall weather and took the girls to visit a family farm with a pumpkin patch and many other fun activities. It was absolutely gorgeous weather and we all enjoyed every minute outside. The girls are walking almost everywhere now and jabbering all the time. Needless to say they had a lot of fun picking out pumpkins, petting animals, and playing with Grammy and Papa.
We just got the girls' 15mo. shots last week (a month behind since they have been so sick). But we are happy to report they are doing great and growing by leaps and bounds. Reagan Kate now weighs 18lbs. 9oz and is 29" tall. We can't believe our tiny girl is getting so big! Still not ready for a forward facing car seat but nothing is going to slow her down.
Renna Ann weighed 20lbs. 9oz. and is 30" tall. We always laugh because she is consistently two pounds heavier and one inch taller. At least we know they are still right on track. Renna loved this unique looking pumpkin.
Trying to pick out the perfect pumpkin.
The girls were in love with this little bench. They didn't even seem to notice we were actually waiting in line to ride the train. Don't they look precious on it?
Petting the sheep, one of the many farm animals.
They both liked the carousel, but Reagan couldn't get enough. I guess she already loves riding horses, just like her momma! Thanks for sharing all of the Fall fun with us Grammy and Papa!