Photo Shoot and Magazine Articles

Back in December, Kansas City Parent Magazine contacted me to see if I would write a few articles for them about what it’s like to have quadruplets. At this point, I’ve written three articles and had the pleasure of actually seeing them in print! When I was working on my English degree in college, I always thought it would be fun to be published someday. I worked as an editor on our campus literary journal and had a couple of pieces published through that, but hadn’t had anything beyond that printed. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to write about our kids for KC Parent magazine!

My third article will be in the July issue of the magazine. It’s a free publication that can be found in over 1000 metro stores. For this article, they wanted to add some photos of the babies so that people who are following the series can see what we look like. They sent out Antisdels Photography to do a photo shoot with the babies at the beginning of the month. Our photographers were awesome and so patient while working with four infants who were getting a little cranky by the time we finished the pictures.

With permission from KC Parent Magazine, they’ve allowed me to post one of the photos that will be in the magazine on our blog:

I LOVE how it came out! All of the colors are so playful! (And yes, they did photo shop Ellie’s birth mark out) Many thanks to Kia the photographer, Natalie her assistant, Cheryl and my mom for helping me juggle babies throughout the shoot, and my mother-in-law for her great taste in picking out the overalls that the babies are wearing!

I encourage y’all to check out the publication! They have fun articles and resources for parents in the metro area. The same group also publishes KC Baby and KC Going Places (you can get them in the same stores that have KC Parent). KC Going Places is another magazine that I enjoy! It has information about different places in the metro that you can explore with your kids. I’ll definitely be taking advantage of that when my kids get just a little older.

And if you want to read the articles online you can see them here:

February Issue: Pregnant with Quadruplets

April Issue: Birth of Quadruplets (this article was taken directly from our blog because there wasn’t time to write one after the babies were born to make the due date)

July Issue: Life with Quadruples at Home 

 –posted by Becca

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A Tale of Two Adventures

Such adventures at the Ishum house!

Adventure One:

The babies have now been home for a month and will be four months old tomorrow. It’s just flying past! Sean and I haven’t had a joint break out of the house together since they’ve come home though. I was hoping at some point in the near future to get to spend a little quality time with Sean, so I was delighted to get a text message from him last Tuesday about it!

The only odd part was that he sent it at 1:30am and it said, “I have a stabbing pain on the right side of my stomach. According to Google it could be my appendix.”

What?!

I sleep in the living room next to the babies’ cribs, so I immediately went upstairs to check on him. “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, what is your pain level?” “About an 8.” Great. Within a few minutes, I had called my mom to come over and help along with the overnight helpers who were already at our house and we were on our way to the emergency room. All of the way there, I was wondering if I was going to end up with four infants and an appendectomy patient to take care of. We hadn’t been back to Saint Luke’s Hospital in a few weeks, so really, it was high time to visit.

So on our first date out of the house alone, I was just hoping that he would spend $25 and take me out to a quick dinner then back home to the babies. Nothing fancy. Instead, he was a high-roller and spent $125 (co-pay), and gave me a 5 hour break from the babies at our “second home.” He forgot the food and drink, but at least he kept his appendix. What was the problem? Blood, urine, and CAT scan tests all came back fine, so the doctor said it could have been something he ate or a small kidney stone. Thank goodness that is all it was!

Now all six of us have been patients there this year. I bet our insurance company loves us!

Hopefully our next date is a little less exciting and preferably during waking hours! 🙂

Adventure Two:

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, we lost power at our house. The big storm that rolled through took out the power for over 60,000 people in the Kansas City metro area. We quickly learned how to change diapers and make formula by flashlight. When the power still hadn’t come back on a few hours later, I called my sister-in-law, Sarah (who works for the power company) to see if she had any idea of when they might restore power. She said that it could be quite a while, so Sean and I decided that we needed to move the babies because the house was heating up and the battery back-up on their monitors wouldn’t last much longer.

Sarah and Mike invited us over to their house to hang out until everything was fixed. Sarah checked the updates and told us that because one of the main lines went down, it could take 24-48 hours to bring everything back up. They headed over to our house to help and we commenced Project Relocation with the understanding that we might be staying with them for up to two days.

Holy cow! Babies have a TON of gear that has to go with them! Especially when you multiply it by 4!

We filled the trunk of Mike and Sarah’s car and the back of our minivan with baby paraphernalia. With four car seats in the body of the van, there isn’t enough room for anything else.

We ended up staying with them for about 26 hours. Sean and I had fun getting to spend time with one of our favorite couples, but the babies were definitely ready to go home by the time we were able to move everybody back. It was so kind of them to invite us over as Sarah is eight months pregnant with their first baby. They even let us use Alyvia’s crib and room while we were there!

All loaded up and ready to go! It’s a full mini-van! 

Ellie: “Are you sure about going on an overnight trip with us?” 

 

Cousin Aly’s room that our babies field tested. Good news, Mike and Sarah! It’s perfect! 

Ellie and Abby trying out Cousin Aly’s crib 

Eli and Caleb hanging out in the Pack ‘n Play. They managed to have their first fight here. Apparently our boys don’t really like to be touching each other. One would flail and hit the other who would flail and hit the first, etc. Lots of crying and carrying on… 

 

…so we fixed it like this! If they couldn’t reach out and touch each other, they got along MUCH better! 

 

 

Uncle Mike feeding Caleb 

 

Aunt Sarah feeding Elijah and Mommy feeding Abigail 

Daddy feeding Caleb 

Aunt Sarah and Mommy making dinner for the adults: Watermelon Lime drinks and homemade buffalo wings! So fun and super yummy! 

As nice as it was to get out of the house for a bit, now that we’ve done an overnight trip with the babies, we most definitely will not be traveling again anytime soon if we can possibly avoid it. It’s seriously like moving! Wow! On the upside, at least we know we can move them if necessary!

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This weekend we also had the babies’ great-grandparents in town. I love getting to take pictures like these for the babies’ scrapbooks…you know, when I get that far. J

Great-Grandpa Eugene and Great-Grandma Ruby 

And then I love this photo of four generations of Ishum boys!

Grandpa Mike holding Elijah, Sean, and Great-Grandpa Eugene holding Caleb 

 –posted by Becca

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