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!

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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

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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!

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A Little of This, A Little of That

Exhausted seems to be the overwhelming feeling these days. I know I’m running on fumes when I start to feel nauseous. I’m not sick, just so tired that I feel sick. Blah. Sean and I pretty much live from caffeine dose to caffeine dose (iced coffee, sweet tea, diet Dr. Pepper) these days. I have this theory that our moms purposely withheld information from us about morning sickness, pregnancy pains, and post delivery exhaustion in an effort to increase the population and get grandbabies. Hmm…and I have every intention of doing the same thing to my daughters. 🙂

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I can’t wait for when the babies start talking. I LOVE the cute things that kids say and how literally they take everything. Until then, I have Sean to provide the humor. Here is an example of conversations that happen at our house:

Me: Caleb, you smell. You need a bath.
Sean: Maybe your mom can stay an extra 20 minutes tomorrow and help you give the kids baths.
Me: Wow, you really have no idea how long it takes to give all of them baths, do you?
Sean: It takes longer than 20 minutes??

Hehe! Sean always keeps me laughing, no matter how tired I get!

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The babies’ personalities are continuing to develop. It is pretty amazing to me how different they all are being this small. In fact, Sean and I even gave each of the babies one of the seven dwarves’ names.

Caleb is Happy. Always okay with whatever we throw his way whether it is sleeping, eating, lying awake in his crib, or looking up at his jungle gym. He is so cute when we wake him up to feed him! Most people do that squinty-eyed, blinky thing to try to wake up. Caleb’s eyes shoot wide open and he stares around him like he can’t quite place where he is. Hehe!

Abby is Sleepy. Definitely our baby who sleeps this most. She’s also the quietest and most content to wait her turn to eat or have her diaper changed. She has had us worried since we brought her home because she tires out while eating and won’t finish her bottles. At the suggestion of one of our nurse friends who comes to help me, we switched her to a higher flow nipple on her bottle. It’s done wonders! She is able to get through a bottle without falling asleep now. That is a huge sigh of relief to us. She is also completely mesmerized by her daddy. All he has to do is walk into the room and start talking and you can tell that she cues right into his voice. Earlier today, he started reading Cinderella to her when she was a little upset and she calmed down to listen to him talking to her. Such a daddy’s girl! She also surprised us with her first smile on Thursday! Her first smile went to Grandmacita (my mom), but we’ve been able to get a couple out of her for ourselves since then.

Elijah is Doc. How did he end up with that dwarf? Mostly because all that was left for us to choose from by the time we gave him a name were Doc, Bashful, Sneezy, and Doopy. The last three didn’t fit him, so Doc it is. Elijah is a little bit more high-strung than Caleb, but still the most laid back when it comes to medical procedures…and that boy has certainly had his fair share. Really, as long as everyone respects his personal space, he is pretty content. The little cutie gave me his first smile on Thursday morning as well. We haven’t really been able to get much more out of him since then, but I’m pretty sure it was a real smile and not just a baby twitch. I think Eli is the most bored of all of the babies at this point. I’m excited to be getting some crib toys in the mail from Kami, one of my fellow quad mamas, this week. I think all of the babies, but especially Eli will enjoy them when they get here.

Ellie is Grumpy. She looks like such a little cherub in the pictures, but if she wore panties, they would constantly be in a wad. She’s generally only happy if she is asleep or eating. My favorite nickname for her is The Little Tomato. It is amazing how fast that little girl can scrunch up her face and turn red when she’s upset. A couple of days ago, she was squawking about something in spite of Sean trying to feed her. Finally, he picked her up, held her directly in front of his face and said, “Those two extra minutes in the womb did wonders for your personality!” Ellie makes us laugh the most because there is just no middle ground with her. She’s either completely happy or completely upset. Hey, we have to take the laughs where we can get them in our situation!

Which leaves me with the big question: Will they follow the stereotypical birth order types? Since they were only one minute apart (except for Ellie who got stuck and took two whole minutes to make her appearance), will it even apply?

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Around Christmas time, Abundant Moments was having a gift certificate drawing that people could enter. Low and behold, I actually won! I never win anything! We won a newborn photography package where they take photos 4-5 times during the first year of the baby’s life. The only problem I had with the package was that we had four newborns. They were kind enough to work with us and include all of the babies in the package. Yay!

A couple of weeks ago, Debra came out with her assistant to take the first round of photos. Debra gave me written permission to post a few of my favorite photos to our blog. How cute are these little people??

 

The Babies: Caleb, Elijah, Ellie, and Abby 

The Girls: Ellie and Abby 

The Boys: Caleb and Elijah 

The photo of all four babies was taken right after Elijah peed on Ellie, Abby, and photographer. And the only baby that is really asleep in these photos is Abby. Debra is a very good photographer to get quadruplets to hold still, act asleep, and put herself in the direct line of pee in order to get some cute photos of the babies. We are due for our second session in a couple of months when we get to do a family photo!

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And our last update, but certainly not least is that the Kansas City Star contacted us last week about writing a follow up article about our family. Jenee, who wrote the first article, came out to the house to meet the babies she wrote about back on January 1^st. She wrote another very kind, very well-written article about our family. If you would like to read her article, you can see it here.

Each baby has a memory box that we like to add special things to. Their micro-preemie knit hats, tiny blood pressure cuffs, articles written about them, and onesies with their names on them will all end up in their boxes. Hopefully, someday they will enjoy reading the blog about their first months of life and seeing the little things that we are saving for them.

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