New Post on New Blog!

We have *almost* fully moved over to our new blog! So exciting!

Right now, if you type www.theishumquads.com into the search bar, it takes you to our new blog.

But if you type “theishumquads.com” without the “www,” it still brings you here. I’m not sure how to fix that. I’ve tried changing the DNS Record, but I’m a bit stuck. If you know how to fix that, please let me know!

Otherwise, head over to the new blog! www.theishumquads.com

Thanks for being patient with us during our move! 🙂

We Are MOVING!!!

We are moving!! Yes, you read that correctly. We are pulling up our roots…and moving to a new blogging platform.

What did you think I meant? 🙂

We have been here on WordPress for almost a year and a half, ever since the moment the ultrasonographer looked at me and said, “I see three, maybe four babies.” But it’s time for us to move on.

We are moving over to Blogger.

Now why would we go and do that?

Well, the short answer is simply that it is SO much easier for me to work with.

The long answer:

1. It’s easier to upload photos and manipulate them within the post over on Blogger. When we started blogging, our posts were word heavy. Mostly because there were no babies to take pictures of yet. Now our posts are very photo heavy and putting together a post over here eats up my time.
2. I can customize my background and header over there for free. On WordPress, I’m limited to one of their preset themes unless I upgrade to a paid blog.
3. I can customize the side bars, add pictures, slideshows, videos, reading lists, etc. Again, on WordPress, I have to upgrade to a paid blog to do that.

Blogger just seems like the best option for us at this point in terms of a free blog.

So what does this mean for you? Not much actually.

If all goes according to plan, I will magically move our web address over to the new blog at some point in the next few days.  www.theishumquads.com will still take you right to us. You don’t have to do anything different. Please be aware though that our site may be completely down for a couple of days while we are moving.

This blog will still be live for awhile, but it will revert back to its original web address: www.theishumquads.wordpress.com.  All of our past posts have already been moved to the new blog, so everything is in the same place.

The only other thing that you should know about is that I haven’t figured out a way to port all of our subscribers by email over to the new blog. And honestly, I don’t have time in the foreseeable future to type them in one by one (there are quite a few of you!) If you want to keep receiving our blog by email, I would so greatly appreciate it if you would re-subscribe over on the new site. The spot to do that is at the top of the left hand side bar. Super quick and easy, and it will save me tons of time! If you want to do that now, please click here to go to our new blog.

Oh! And while you are over there, please leave a comment and let me know what you think of the new blog! It took me a couple of weeks to figure out how to put it together. And if you have any suggestions, leave those too!

Thanks everyone!

Back in October…

I have wanted to post these photos since OCTOBER! I’m very impressed with myself for sitting on them this long!

One of my super good friends, Elizabeth Dahl, is a birth and child photographer in Minneapolis. We met in college choir and immediately hit it off! One of my first memories of hanging out with her involved sitting on the curb in front of Hy-Vee for a couple of hours drinking chocolate milk. There was also the time that she dragged me into a Victoria’s Secret (scandalous to me at the time!) to look around. Lol! Everyone needs a crazy fun friend and Liz is that for me!

Becca and Liz-Sep 2006

Then one day, she met this guy, fell in love, and moved way up to the frigid north. Sad day for me.

But, in October, she came back to Kansas City to visit! While she was here, she very graciously helped me put together the Christmas gifts that we gave to both sets of grandparents. She took some photos of the grandkids on both sides (Marissa + our kids and Aly + our kids) so that we could blow them up on canvases.

She also took a few extra just to be nice.

I loved what she was able to capture!

 

Awesome Family Photo!

 

Cousin Marissa and the Babies

 

Cousin Aly and the Babies

 

Love this one of the girl cousins on Sean's side!

 

My boys!

 

Aw, so sweet! Daddy comforting Elijah.

 

Mommy and her Girls

 

I like how Liz caught the sunset with this one!

 

The little boys! Caleb in blue and Elijah in brown

 

One of my absolute favorites! So much curiosity here!

 

Caleb, Abby, Ellie, and Elijah

 

If you want to see a couple more photos from this day, click here to go to Liz’s website where she blogged about us!

This was such a huge gift that Liz gave us! Only a really great friend is willing to try to take a picture of five infants at the same time just because she likes you. I asked for two pictures and she took so many more. Aw, thanks Liz! She’s a keeper!

Three Days of Christmas

Our First Christmas Together!

We are still recovering from our long Christmas weekend. Whoa. It was wonderful to get to see our family, but the kids especially were worn out by the time it was over.

 

THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS

We started the weekend off with a visit from the babies’ Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Winn. The babies seemed to really enjoy the visit, and Ellie discovered that Great-Grandma wears necklaces that are really fun to chew on. 🙂

With Great-Grandparents Winn: Ellie, Caleb, Abby, and Eli

They brought a gift with them that was big enough to pile all of the babies on top of. Abby didn’t seem to get into the Christmas spirit as quickly as the others, but eventually, they all took turns tearing (really more like chewing) on the wrapping paper. They brought us one of those Super XL Play Yards. Or as I affectionately refer to it, “The Baby Cage. “ We’ve already started using it to corral the kids. Awesome gift because these little people are all over the place now!

 

What is this big box?Opening their first Christmas gift

Friday evening, my parents, brother Mike and his wife and daughter, and my two youngest brothers, Josh and Chris, came over for dinner. We decided to have a New Mexican Christmas dinner as a nod to our childhood. It’s so hard to find good Mexican food here in the Midwest, so we like to make it ourselves to make sure it is good. 🙂

New Mexican Christmas Dinner

I made Chicken Fajitas with homemade salsa and homemade guacamole.

I baked some bischochitos as well. They are the traditional New Mexican Christmas cookie. Made with brandy or white wine, rolled thin, and dipped TWICE in sugar and cinnamon. Yummy!

Bischochitos

My Mom wrote down my grandma’s posole recipe while she was in Mesilla, New Mexico visiting last week. Cooked correctly, it takes a while to get that perfect flavor of pork, hominy, and red chili, but it is so worth it. Mom made her red chili sauce from scratch just like grandma used to do. She also brought a big pot of chile con queso (not rotel, mind you. I’m taking about the real stuff!)

Sarah brought Little Smokeys and Taquitos. Little Smokeys? That’s not technically Mexican, but every Christmas Eve, we had a potluck at my grandparents’ house and someone always brought Little Smokeys. It’s just not Christmas without them. The only food item that got a complaint were the Taquitos. Mike told Sarah that they weren’t quite right because she didn’t cut them in half for him like when we were growing up.

But, other than Mike’s small complaint, everyone thoroughly enjoyed skipping the Traditional Christmas Dinner, and going with the New Mexican version. Can you tell it was one of my favorite parts of the entire weekend??

Uncle Josh, Uncle Christopher, Grandpa, Cita, Daddy, Aunt Sarah, and Uncle Mike

There is even talk about making it a tradition from here on out. I’m totally on board with that!

The kids thought that the wrapping paper was the best part of the evening. Then they got to the toys and realized that Grandpa and Cita brought all toys that make noise. The kids LOVE the fact that they light up, move, and play music. (Sean and I are still coming to terms with the extra layer of noise in our house now.)

First Christmas!

Two of my siblings couldn’t make it back from Christmas, but we were lucky enough to get to Skype with my brother, Mark, from New Mexico (he moved back to the area that we grew up in). We wish that he could have made it here, but Skype is a good compromise!

 

THE SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMAS

Saturday afternoon, Sean’s parents, and sister Ruby and her husband and daughter came over for a traditional Christmas dinner. Ham, sweet potatoes, cheesy corn, rolls, and pumpkin pie. Another delicious meal! Which reminds me, I still need to get that cheesy corn recipe from Ruby. It was beyond amazing!

That was followed up by some Wii Bowling before we dug into pie and then into presents.

 

Pa, Cousin Marissa, Ma, and Daddy Playing the WiiCousin Marissa, Uncle Todd, and Aunt Ruby recovering from Christmas Dinner

Cereal, Crawling, and Christmas is Coming

One week until Christmas!

I thought this year would be pretty low key with being on lockdown, but somehow, four babies have made for it being anything but that!

The kids are definitely keeping us crazy busy!

Caleb is such a sweetie, but he hasn’t done much in terms of moving from point A to point B yet. Why go to all that work when eventually someone will just make the move for him?? He rolls a lot though and gets up on his knees a bit. I imagine he is not too far behind the others. His favorite thing is giggling. He loves being tickled and sometimes he will just lie on the floor and laugh at his own private jokes. Hmm…reminds me a lot of his father.

We wish a little of his happiness would rub off on the kid that was born four minutes later.

Now that Abby has figured out how to crawl, she thinks she is a cat. If she wants to be picked up and one of us are sitting on the couch, she crawls over and rubs up against our legs…or head butts us. Whatever strikes her fancy, I guess. She also likes to lick our knees when we are down on the floor. I really don’t know what to do with that….

Happily though, she FINALLY decided to give up her oxygen. It was a surreal feeling packing up all of her monitors and supplies to go back to the medical company. For all intents and purposes, we have had a mobile NICU unit set up here, and suddenly, we were done. Nine long months of fighting to get them stable and breathing without support and **BAM** we’re finished. Not complaining, of course. It’s just such a strange thing to watch the gear that has accompanied us everywhere walk out the front door and then look down and realize that my daughter is officially unattached to it.

Elijah is doing what I like to call “The Injured Soldier Crawl.” He throws one arm out and then drags the other three limbs behind it. It’s kind of hilarious by itself, but the physical and occupational therapists are now zeroing in on him to develop core strength. That boy hates therapy like non-other. His therapists were telling me yesterday that most kids can be coaxed into doing their exercises after awhile, but not Eli. He is a total wet noodle, and does his best to stay that way. I think his unequivocal refusal to do anything is definitely challenging to his therapists. Other than that, he is the most laid-back, genuinely happy baby I’ve ever met.

I’m sure his sisters would be thrilled, though, if he would stop kicking them in the face. Yep, I’m already having to separate my kids.

 

Our runt. Ellie is a crazy little thing! She suddenly decided to start crawling a few days ago without any warning. When I left for the grocery store, she was just spinning around in circles. By the time I got back, she was crawling all over the place. There really was no lead up to it. She just decided she was going to start crawling and got down to business!

Always our high maintenance child, she is currently driving us both up the wall with her constant crying in the evening. She isn’t hungry, wet, dirty, cold, or in pain. She just wants to be held for hours on end. Even if Sean is playing on the floor with the kids, if he isn’t playing specifically with her, she screams about it. We try not to let her dictate how our evening goes since we have to get other things done too (like eat dinner), or play with our other kids, but we are kind of suckers. She gets held a lot. She’s a hoot though because when she is playing or laughing, she makes sounds like she is a lion. When she’s happy, she’s thrilled to be alive! And when she’s sad, we aren’t thrilled to be alive. Go figure.

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I have to stop for a minute and ask, “Did you like the previous four photos?” We love them! They were taken by the same photographer, Debra, from Abundant Moments Photography who did the babies Newborn shoot. We are super lucky to have won that gift certificate! Woot! We now have a large print of our family and a large print of them all curled up together naked on our dining room wall (Don’t worry. The nakedness is tasteful. Everybody can still eat. 🙂 )

We still have another shoot or two in the next few months before we are done. We are talking about doing one either here at the house in their environment (once they can sit up by themselves) and/or a first birthday shoot. If you want to see her other work or are curious about her, you can go here.

 

These photos are treasures at our house!

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Sean’s parents’ brought over the babies’ first Christmas tree last weekend, so we set about decorating it. In a bid to keep pine needles out of their mouths, the tree is sitting on our kitchen table on the other side of the gate. But for this photo, I asked Sean to move it into their play area. Sean’s mom also brought over Christmas pajamas, so we dressed them up and took their first Christmas photo.

A Christmas Elf, Santa Claus, A Reindeer, and The Kid who Thinks if She Stays up Long Enough She Will Catch Santa Coming Down the Chimney

(we haven’t had the heart yet to tell Ellie that we don’t have a fireplace or chimney in our living room).

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One last treat for those of you who like to see videos of our kids. We have officially started rice cereal! We are taking it very slowly to give their digestive systems time to adjust, so we are sticking with just the cereal right now. Curious how that’s going? I’ll let the video speak for itself.

In case we don’t talk before then, we wish you a Very Merry Christmas!

-Becca

Guess who FINALLY gave up her oxygen?

That’s one happy baby (which makes for two very happy parents)!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I love the look on Sean’s face in this picture! He can’t take a picture with his eyes open to save his life. Just to give you an idea, we took this picture NINE times to catch him with his eyes open. Eventually, we made him close his eyes and open them on the count of 3. Hence, the slightly crazed look on his face. Of course, the babies did great right from the beginning. 🙂

We spent the day with Sean’s family over here for dinner since we aren’t taking the babies out right now. Everyone brought a ton of food. In fact, I’m pretty sure there were twice as many dishes as there were people here! It was delicious and a wonderful way to spend the day! Other than tiring out, the kids did really well with the increased noise and number of people around. We considered it a success.

I want to keep this post brief, but wanted to throw out a quick update on the babies. They had their 9 month checkup this week. Everything is looking good and we now have the go ahead on baby food once the kids can sit up and seem to need the extra calories. The thing that blew us away though was how big they are getting! Look at their weights now!

Caleb:  15 lbs. 15 oz.

Abigail: 14 lbs. 3 oz.

Elijah: 16 lbs. 1 oz.

Elizabeth: 14 lbs. 1oz.

I think the boys in particular are glad that they were weighed. I couldn’t figure out why for the last week or so they have been waking up in the morning with leaky diapers. Turns out they were bigger than I thought! They’ve been sleeping more comfortably since we brought out the size 3’s. 🙂

We are thankful for each of you and the way that you have loved on our family over the past year! We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving as well!

Halloween Costume Photos

How sad is it that the stomach flu and being stuck in my room away from the babies is actually what provides me time to blog? I miss blogging, and I’m definitely a fan of a little break to recharge for my mom role, but this isn’t fun at all. Many thanks to Sean for staying home today to take care of our babies (and all of his coworkers/bosses for being so understanding and accommodating), to my own Mom who happily risked being exposed to help feed the babies, and to Cheryl for taking my call to walk me through proper precautions to protect the babies from myself.

This is the first day when I haven’t held my babies or fed them at all…I’m kind of at a loss. So weird. Hopefully tomorrow is back to normal. We definitely would appreciate prayers for protection for our babies though. They don’t have much of an immune system, so prayers sound like the best defense against the flu at this point.

You know how moms say that once the babies are born, you forget a lot of the pregnancy discomforts. Since I’ve spent the day puking and lying in bed…I can’t believe I didn’t remember every nuance of morning sickness and bed rest! Holy cow! I’m SO glad that part of my life is over. Of course, laying here has also served as a reminder of how our fellow believers lifted our little family up in prayer day after day. Again, you guys are the best!

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Today is National Premature Awareness day. We have come so incredibly far! In a few short days, the babies will be 9 months old. Born at 2lbs 5oz, 2lbs 5oz, 2lbs 3oz, and 1lb 14oz, they are all now in the 13-15 pound range! We will be starting baby cereal in the next few weeks and we are teetering on the edge of having crawlers. We definitely have reached the scooting stage! Prematurity actually happens a lot more often than I ever realized. While having quads is rare, prematurity really isn’t. Just a couple of decades ago, our kids would have either not lived or would be suffering from much worse prematurity effects than they are now. I have to give a nod to March of Dimes which puts so much time and energy into researching prematurity, its effects, and how to prevent it. If you would like more information about prematurity, please go here: http://www.marchofdimes.com/mission/prematurity.html

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Now that we are a week out from Thanksgiving, I’ll go ahead and post their Halloween pictures. I wanted to do something with four parts to it rather than individual costume ideas. So I chose to do The Four Seasons! I started making the costumes about a month in advance (keep in mind when I say “I made them” what I mean is that I safety pinned and hot glued stuff to some of their sleepers/jumpers).

Caleb was Winter, Ellie was Spring, Abby was Summer, and Elijah was Fall. 

Caleb in his Santa sleeper that I found at a consignment sale for $2.00! 

Abby in her going to the beach outfit for Summer. The pink onesie is supposed to be a “swimsuit” since I couldn’t find a real one (and I refused to buy one that she would outgrow by next summer). 

Caleb and Abby chilling in their costumes. 

Elijah in his pile of leaves. He was also referred to as Leaf Man. Lol! I hot glued fake leaves all over a sleeper to make this. He was a really good sport! 

I love the last photo that let you see his face, but this is the best one to show what his outfit was really like! 

Ellie in her Spring dress. I safety pinned fake flowers on it and on a head band so that she could be a little flower fairy…or something. 🙂 

So those were the first round of Halloween outfits. My SIL, Sarah, texted me a couple of weeks before Halloween with a GREAT idea! She is amazing at crocheting and offered to whip out four extra sock monkey outfits for our kids so that we could do a “Barrel of Monkeys” photo with all of the cousins! How cute is that? Not only did she make hats and leggings, she did it in each of their colors! THEN she helped me put the first round of costumes on everyone, strip, and put the second round of costumes on everyone. Obviously, I have a great SIL! AND she brought her camera and took some great photos of everyone!

Here is the first photo. The extra baby on the far right is Cousin Aly. It’s understandable that she was distracted with all of the extra noise. 🙂 

Caleb 

Abby 

Elijah 

Ellie 

This is such a great photo of all of the cousins! Go ahead and put a caption on it! Clearly my kids are trying to figure out where the extra baby came from! 

And a couple of snapshots because they are just too cute!

Sean and I were eating dinner a couple of weeks ago and we looked over and saw the boys like this. We didn’t pose them. They were just hanging out like that watching us eat. 

And then this photo of me and Abby. I got down on the floor to play around on Pinterest (I DO NOT have enough craft time anymore!) and Abby wiggled up next to me to watch what I was doing. She even got in the same position as me! Too funny! Again, it wasn’t posed. 

And this precious photo of Ellie and her daddy. These kids absolutely LOVE being cradled in daddy’s arms!  

–Posted by Becca

Rolling, Wiggling, and Giggling!

Hello blog world!

Apparently life only gets busier! I’ve been meaning to post for…oh….three weeks now. So updates and SO many pictures!

Caleb is rolling around on the floor these days, picking up toys, and traveling around on the floor to visit with all of his siblings. He gets a little bummed out sometimes if he doesn’t get a response from them. Such a precious little boy! When the others cry, he immediately tries to find out which of his sisters or brother is in trouble to see what’s going on. He gets the most concerned expression on his face and will stop playing or eating until everything is okay again. He is doing very well developmentally! He isn’t quite sitting up by himself yet, but with a little assistance, he does manage to balance himself using his arms and stay upright for a few seconds. He eats like a champ, and doesn’t spit up nearly as much as he used to. Thank goodness! He used to go by the nickname, Caleb the Erupter! Of course, now that he likes to take his pants off (see photo), he needs to be careful or he will end up with a new nickname!

Abby is our special baby right now (They are all special, but Abby is our ‘specially challenging one). We have really been struggling with her over the last few weeks with her eating. She has never been a very good eater, but recently she has been regressing. We literally force feed her these days while she tries to hit, kick, and knock the bottle out of our hands. We have begun using the “Abby Straight Jacket” (swaddle her from the neck down) in order to limit her movement. This is especially frustrating to us since we need her to grow so that she can get off of oxygen. That’s right. Our 7 ½ month old baby is STILL on oxygen support overnight and during naps. Now that her eating is getting worse, we are desperate to keep her weight moving in the right direction. We did admit her to Children’s Mercy for tests this week including an Upper GI and an Endoscopy. Neither showed anything wrong with her anatomy or tissue. Now we are waiting for biopsy results to come back in case there was something that couldn’t be seen with the x-ray or scope. It’s possible we just have a finicky eater, but we felt it prudent to be proactive. Other than her eating and breathing issues, Abby is an absolute star when it comes to development. Not only has she been rolling front to back the longest, she is also our happiest baby! She has no problem laying on the floor and chewing on her toys by herself, but if you catch her eye, she has the BIGGEST smile ready for you! She isn’t afraid of strangers at all and loves to share her sun-shiny personality with them. She is an obvious favorite with nurses!

Eli is such a cuddle bug! He is teething right now and quite a bit fussier than he usually is, but calms right down if he can just have a few minutes to cuddle. He has the most outrageous laugh out of the group! He easily smiles, but laughs are a little harder to come by. If we manage to get one of his scream/laughs out of him, Sean and I practically die! It’s hilarious! Video of Elijah laughing. He just started rolling back to tummy this week and we seriously can’t pin this boy down. Yesterday when I went to pick up Abby and Sean from the hospital, our helper, Cheryl, built a barricade with couch pillows because he kept rolling away. Today while we were feeding the girls, Elijah started rolling and by the time we got to him, he was in our dining room.  It’s amazing how fast these kids go from not doing something developmentally to us not being able to catch them!

Ellie has made vast improvements over the last 3 or 4 weeks. She developed an open wound and staph infection in her hemangioma about 5 or 6 weeks ago. The NICU follow-up doctor told us that she had never seen that happen before. Apparently, it just grew far too fast and became infected. We took her to the dermatologist and started doing wound dressings every night along with another oral medication to help control the growth. After about four days of treating it, Ellie was an entirely different baby! When we first brought her home, she cried so much, I thought I was going to go crazy. We thought it might be sensory related, but now we are thinking that her hemangioma may have played a part in it. Thankfully, the staph infection is gone and the hemangioma itself has shrunk considerably in size. Now she happily plays on the floor next to her siblings and is in a good mood most of the time! Her favorite place to be is in the corner of the mat on her tummy so that she can watch everything that is happening in the room. The tone in her legs has definitely improved, and she has serious abs of steel. She can easily hold herself up on her arms for 45 minutes at a time (see photo below of her and Grandmacita). Her smiles are precious because we have had so few of them up until now. It’s so nice to have a daughter who actually seems to enjoy life!

So there you have it! 7 ½ months old and they are all rolling around and playing. (I uploaded a video of the babies following a rattle if you care to see it.) This week, Sean and I plan on getting gates up to block off our living room and lower their cribs so that they don’t launch themselves out. Yikes! I thought my life was crazy up to now. I’m really dreading when they start crawling! Who needs a workout when you are chasing FOUR crawling babies?!

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We are officially under lockdown for this year’s RSV and flu season.  We had fun taking the kids to grandparents’ houses a few times this summer, but from now until May, our kids won’t leave the house unless we have a doctor’s appointment (or we lose power again, but let’s all pray that doesn’t happen!) We are very serious about our lockdown because it could very well mean the difference between a hospital stay for everybody or getting to spend the cold weather safely at home. Most everyone knows that we have tried to keep our babies away from extra people since they came home, but now that’s crucial. Other than a few select people who come to help me during the day and our families, we can’t let anyone in the house. We have had a few people stop by without making prior arrangements with us. Although we know friends always have good intentions, we ask that you please respect what we are trying to do to stay on schedule, make it to our appointments, and protect our kids by not coming by the house unannounced. Come May, things will get easier for us, but for now, we are going to be doing our best impersonations of hermits. 🙂 Thanks for understanding!!

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And for your enjoyment, a slew of photos in no particular order!

 

7 Month Photo! (clockwise from bottom left corner) Caleb, Abby, Ellie, and Eli

First Picnic: We completely rearranged our house over Labor Day Weekend. Our living room no longer looks like a nursery! All of the kids are now sleeping in their own cribs upstairs. On Labor Day, we had our two families over for a backyard picnic. We threw a big blanket our on the grass and put all of the attending babies out there to enjoy the sun. This photo is of our four kids plus their cousin Aly. Our girls weren’t too thrilled with the great outdoors. Their other cousin, Marissa, was running around playing and unfortunately we didn’t catch her in the photo.  (clockwise from lower left corner): Elijah, Abby, Caleb, Ellie, and Aly

At the end of September, my grandpa, Paul Taylor from New Mexico (I grew up down there for those of you who didn’t know that) and my Aunt Mary Helen flew up to meet their new relatives. I was SO excited when I heard that my 91-year-old grandpa was willing to get on a plane to come visit us! Caleb, Ellie, Abby, and Eli 

Four Generations! Ellie, Mommy, Caleb, Great-Grandpa, Elijah, Grandmacita, and Abby

We took a bunch of great photos, but I LOVE this photo of Abby smiling at her Great-Grandpa. 

This was just hilarious! Aunt Mary Helen sat on the floor, and I started piling babies up for a photo. Somehow, Abby ended up on the bottom of the pile. Haha! She took it so well but eventually didn’t think that having her brothers sit on her was the best idea. We were all laughing so hard! Caleb (in yellow), Abby, Eli, and Ellie with Aunt Mary Helen

This is a precious photo also! Great-Grandpa suddenly decided that he wanted to play on the floor with Ellie. 91 years old and he got on the floor! He’s obviously still full of energy and fun!

How cute is this photo? I caught all three of them smiling! 🙂  Elijah, Daddy, and Caleb

Ever wondered how much formula a quad family goes through in a month? Yes, I do attract attention when I go to Walmart.

Don’t you just love jeans on babies? I do!  Ellie, Elijah, Abby, and Caleb 

Brothers!!  Caleb and Elijah 

Getting So Big!  Caleb, Abby, Elijah, and Ellie 

–Posted by Becca

First Adventures

I promised some stories about our adventures this week. Here they are! This is a long blog but mainly due to the wealth of pictures included. With so many “firsts” this week, we had a lot to document!

Last Friday we lost power in our house as a result of a storm. We lost it around 11:30am and by 3:00pm it was too hot to keep the babies home. Sean came home early from work to help me load the kids in the car and we used the power outage as an excuse to head to my parents’ house with the babies for the first time. Their new cousin, Alyvia (only 3 weeks old) came with my brother, Mike, and sister-in-law, Sarah, as well. With all 5 grandkids there, it was definitely time for some photos!!

Grandpa kissing Abby

Meet Your Cousin! : Uncle Mike, Cousin Aly, Caleb, and Daddy

All of the Girls…and Uncle Mike??  Aunt Sarah, Aly (in coral), Abby (in white), Mommy, and Ellie (in pink)

A Bunch of Babies!—Clockwise from lower left: Ellie, Caleb, Eli, Aly, and Abby

All of the Grandbabies and their parents- Clockwise: Aly (in coral), Aunt Sarah, Abby, Mommy, Ellie, Daddy, Caleb, Eli, and Uncle Mike

One with the Quadruncles! Uncle Chris (in yellow) and Uncle Josh (in orange) with their nieces and nephews

Grandmacita with her Granddaughters: Abby, Cita, Aly, and Ellie

Grandmacita and Grandpa with Abby (check out the look on her face!), Aly, Ellie, Eli, and Caleb 

After dinner, we loaded the kids back up and headed home….to our still dark, un-air-conditioned house. Surely, we thought, they will get the power back on soon. We started our 9pm feeding and about half way through, everything came back up. We were having flashbacks to the last outage that ended up being a weekend away from home, and although it worked out, it really wasn’t something that we wanted to repeat. We were more than relieved to suddenly be able to see each again.

The only problem was that the house didn’t seem to be getting any cooler.

We could hear the air conditioner trying to kick on, but nothing cold was coming out. And, every time it tried to start up, the lights flickered. We got the kids in bed, turned on all of the ceiling fans and made a mental note to call the HVAC guy the next day. Then we lost power again in our bedroom, both bathrooms, and to the refrigerator. We only lasted until about 1am on Saturday morning, and then had to move the babies to my parents’ house because the lack of air conditioning, combined with no electricity to run the fans, and no refrigerator to keep bottles cold wasn’t working for us.

And that’s where we were for an entire week. It took a little longer to get things back in order than what we had hoped.

So happily, we are back home as of last night! Even though we had a lot of fun hanging out with my family for a week and watching the babies  experience their First Extended Family Dinner (on my side),  First Family Campout , and First Slumber Party at the Grandparents, it is wonderful to be home. But now that we are home, the babies look HUGE in their cribs!

Here are a few more pictures of our adventures at my parents’ house: 

Double Trouble! What Happens at Grandma’s…Eli and Caleb

Uncle Josh holding Abby right after her bath (she was pretty mad at mommy and much happier once Uncle Josh got her) 

Ellie and her Thumb

We were also excited to get to take the babies to visit Sean’s parents as well! Last Saturday (the day after we lost power), we loaded everybody up and took them out to Ma and Pa’s house to watch the Cardinals game. It was our second visit over there, and the kids had a great time! 

Just Arrived: Caleb, Abby, Ellie, and Eli

Abby wanted to help Daddy carry in his book

After the feeding, Ma and Abby were both tuckered out

Pa and Caleb cuddling after a feeding

Nap time! Clockwise from lower left: Eli, Caleb, Abby, and Ellie

When the game was over, we decided to have another new adventure…Sean’s parents took all of us out to dinner! Since the kids hadn’t taken much of an afternoon nap, we gambled and hoped that they would sleep through the outing. We were glad to know that in addition to Sean’s parents, Sean’s sister, Ruby, her husband Todd, and daughter Marissa, and Todd’s parents, Ann and Tom were going to be there as well. If all else failed, we had enough arms to go around. Ruby called ahead to the restaurant to let them know that six month old quads wanted to go out to dinner with their grandparents. They very kindly reserved the back part of the restaurant for us so that we could have space for all of the car seats.

Up until this point, we have been very careful not to take our kids out in public unless we are going to a doctors appointment. But, one of the quad moms that I’m friends with mentioned a few weeks ago, that going out to a restaurant with them is a relatively safe outing. Since no one actually knows us, most people will just observe from afar, and if they try to get close, we can ask them to step back and not touch without worrying about a friend’s feelings. Armed with that info, we finally decided to give it a try.

It was an AWESOME first dinner out! Both girls slept all of the way through it, Caleb was awake but quite content to observe the room from his car seat, and Elijah waited until the end to start getting cranky.

Not to mention, the place that Sean’s parents took us to was a fantastic Italian cafe that we had been wanting to try but hadn’t made it to yet (wonder why? Lol!) Jovito’s is family owned and everything tastes 100% homemade. In fact, for one of my babies’ showers, Ruby bought all of the handmade desserts from Jovito’s. I’ve tried several different types of Italian cookies along with their amazing cupcakes and all of them are amazing! My very favorite cookies in Kansas City are their lovely little Italian treats that have two pieces of a toffee type cookie sandwiched around a thin layer of chocolate. The perfect ratio of cookie to chocolate…and a total addiction! Ruby knew how much I loved those cookies at the shower, so the weekend after I ended up in the hospital waiting for babies to arrive, she showed up with two dozen cookies for me to enjoy. It was painful to pace myself; I could have scarfed them all down right then!

Unfortunately, the night we went, they were out of my favorite cookies (apparently I’m not the only person in KC to love them!) but we did try some other wonderful things. I had the Italian salad with house made ranch and Sean had the pasta trio. Served with fresh bread, and topped off with a warm brownie a la mode…yummy!

So, obviously, we thoroughly enjoyed the food aspect of our night out. The quad part of our night out was quite entertaining as well. When we were unloading all of the babies from the van, a guy who pulled up next to us in the parking lot, watched us carry them inside and finally asked, “are there anymore?” Haha! I told him that we just had four. 🙂 Once we got inside, people just stared at us. You could tell they were trying to figure out if all four belong to us or if maybe one or two belonged to Ruby and Todd. A few people finally walked over to ask us if they all went together.  We made quite the scene!

Jovito’s Italian Cafe

Checking out the babies (you can see the cork board behind everyone). Most of these people are related to the babies with one or two strangers included.

Eli and Ellie who is happily asleep!

I love this one! Caleb checking out Uncle Todd’s dad, Tom.

Abby dreaming about sweet things and Caleb (who was still keeping an eye on Tom)

First Restaurant Outing for the Quads–A Success!!!

 

The owner of Jovito’s actually called her husband to come to the restaurant and meet the quads. He came with his camera and we are now proudly displayed on the cork board by the cash register, right in the middle of it! If you happened to find yourself in Jovito’s (which is highly recommended), look for us on the board! We aren’t too hard to spot!

It isn’t too often that a restaurant welcomes infant multiples with such open arms. They were so accommodating and invited us to come back again soon. We were a bit apprehensive about taking them to a place of business like that, but we couldn’t have had a better first dinner out!

-Posted by Rebecca