Our girls

Today has been just wonderful! We had our follow up ultrasound and the girls looked 100% perfect. We are so thankful. At our 17 week ultrasound they saw what they called echogenic bowel (bright spot in the colon) on Zoe and we went through some genetic testing and other things to rule out any possible complications that sometimes come along with this condition. Everything came back clear and today at the ultrasound the spot in the bowel was GONE! It was likely from her just swallowing some blood and it showing up at just the same time they were looking last time. I am just so thankful for these healthy little girls!!!!

We got some amazing shots of their little faces. They are both weighing exactly the same at 1.2 lbs. However, the doctor said their measurements are different. Meaning, legs, arms and all that are not identical. I am so curious to see how these little ones come out looking. So fun if we have a blonde and a brunette, or one with fair skin and freckles and one with Lance's olive skin!! Ahhh....I just cannot wait to see them!

When we were looking at Nora (baby A) her little face looked SO fat and squished up and she had a tiny little button nose. Then we went to Zoe and she looked like she had a long thin face with a more distinct nose, and chin. The tech said, "Oh look, a face like mom and a face like Dad!" I think I was the fat face, but I'll take it! :) I know you can't really tell from the ultrasounds but from what I could see these little girls look different!

I told Lance even if they are completely different sizes and looks, it won't change the fact that they will be matching until they force me to stop dressing them alike. Jane will match them too don't you worry! ;)

Zoe on top & Nora on bottom! :)  

A little bit of life lately

Here is a snapshot of a little bit of our life lately. It's been a fun Christmas season so far, and we have had fun getting together with friends. I have been feeling like a puffy mama lately. My hands and feel are getting swollen and it's hard to wear my shoes and wedding ring. You can't really tell just by looking, but when you type as much as I do in any given day you definitely notice little sausage fingers! Small price to pay, but not so fun. :) Other than that and the occasional headache...well lets me honest, migraine, the pregnancy is progressing well! Loving the fact that we are officially a "girl family" more and more everyday!! Here are a few pics of some things we have been up to lately.

Our small group Christmas party....I didn't get any pics of the amazingly cute decorations, but it was awesome. The party later turned into a sock bun tutorial party...how did we do!? :) 

Max & Levi went to see Santa. I wasn't there for this but couldn't help but post. Beyond precious!

 



The belly keeps growing and growing and growing....if you are tempted to say, "You don't look that big for twins at 18 weeks" take a look at 12 weeks! Oh my! The way a body can transform in 6 short weeks is crazy. :) I have to add that around the time of that 12 week picture I was walking around all week saying, "Oh my goodness Lance...I had no idea my stomach would get big so fast!!"

 

I'm just sitting at my computer laughing at the potential for "largeness" in the coming weeks and months. What is 18-24 and then 24-30 gonna look like!? I guess time will tell!! 

 

Here is our nursery bedding....I thought I was going to coordinate and not be "matchy-matchy" but I changed my mind and we are going with identical lavender and white bedding! I LOVE it!!

That's about all as of lately. Not sure why the pictures all posted kind of weird. Happy Monday. I saw 32 kids today and am looking forward to my couch, a movie and a giant glass of water...whew!!

Prayer

I have been trying to gather my thoughts on this horrible shooting in CT all weekend. It is just really so hard to grasp. How can this happen? How could a person do something so horrible? What in someones life leads them in this awful, scary directions causing a complete loss of emotion or empathy for others.

I was thinking today about how I believe that every human being has some level of goodness in their soul. How could they not? We have been created in the image of God. We come into the world perfect, and although we are instantly subject to the evil nature of this world, we have goodness within us. All of us do.

So many times when you hear these stories of awful, brutal tragedies, the end result is the offender ending his or her own life. Is it because they are afraid if they get caught they are going to go to jail? I doubt it. I think it is because they are deeply troubled and conflicted withing themselves. The literal battle between good and evil, is tormenting them. In these cases evil wins. Satan claims another person.

I know mental illness is real. I won't pretend to understand a thing about it because lots of people go to school for lots and lots of years to be the experts on this stuff. However, as an outsider I think we are all overlooking something very real right here in suburban America and that is that Satan is STILL prowling around like a roaring lion seeking to kill and destroy. All I could think of when I was thinking about the gunman who shot these kids was "evil". There is no other word I can think of to describe something like this. I thought to myself, "this person was truly evil". But evil comes from Satan. He feeds us lies big and small.

I hate guns. I would be happy to live in a world where no civilian is allowed to have a gun. But I'm not sure this is the biggest issue here. As Christians we know that evil exists and it is our job to pray against it for the sake of those that can't pray it against themselves. Children. As of today I am praying over the hearts of my two unborn children and my little girl in Africa. I am praying that God enter into the deepest parts of their souls and protect them from the evil one. I'm not a parent yet, but this has been eye opening for me to realize that is it my responsibility to pray that only God enter the hearts and minds of my children because there is a powerful force out there that would love nothing more than to steal and destroy the pure heart of a child. I want my kids to hear the word of God prayed over them so much that once they are older they will believe it and pray it over themselves.

We can increase gun laws, and raise awareness on mental illness, which is all so important. However, we also have the power of prayer on our side and we know that Satan has no power over the holy name of Jesus. Tonight I find myself wondering how much of a radical change we could make if every parent pleaded with God daily for the hearts of their children. If every church begged God to enter where Satan lurks. This was a reminder that this battle is not over. Spiritual warfare is still so real and with my little ones on the way I am feeling a HUGE sense of responsibility for the protection of their little pure souls.

Something I will be thinking about.

WEEKEND

Not much to post on today.
Babies are moving around like CRAZY!
So happy it is the weekend.
Looking forward to sleep.
House needs to be cleaned.
Groceries need to be bought.
Lots of Christmas parties to attend.
Baby GIRL bedding to be registered for.
Some adoption books need to be finished so I can start my next round of reading.
Considering memorizing another chapter or two from the bible. Still blessed every day by memorizing most of James. Suggestions?
Christmas gifts need to be purchased. I have ZERO people.
Friend who just lost her grandma needS a big hug.
Husband who is amazing every day needs one too!

LOOKING FORWARD TO MY WEEKEND!! HOPE YOUR IS GREAT TOO!!

The tale of two "winkies"

This weekend was our gender reveal party! I have been looking forward to this since the time we found out we were pregnant and looking forward to it even more once we found out we were having twins! But let me back up a bit and tell the whole story of the weeks and months leading up to this party.

When we found out we were pregnant we started having routine ultrasounds pretty soon since I was considered "high risk" for a while. Anyway, around 10 weeks I casually said, "I wish we could know the gender of the babies, too bad it's too soon". My doctor looked surprised and said "Really? Because I think we can actually see what one baby is." He then proceeded to say, "unless the cord is in just the right spot I think I see a winkie on Baby A". That's the word he used! :) 

Fast forward a couple weeks and I started seeing a regular OB. I was telling her how the specialist saw a "winkie" and she looked and looked and said, "I think he was right. I see a bright little spot right there that looks like it just may be a boy." I then asked her if it was baby A she was talking about and she said no it was baby B! She said it was too early to tell for sure but regardless there was a possible "winkie" spotting on both babies! I started imagining life with little boys. Only really looked at little boy clothes at the stores and gave my boy names some serious thought! :)

Fast forward another month or so and I had another ultrasound. I told her we weren't going to find out the gender until we were with our family. She then told me if I didn't want to see what the gender was I probably needed to look away because it was very clear! I assumed this meant boy on the particular baby she was talking about. I mean that would be what was easy to spot right?! So I didn't look and went home sure it was two boys and maybe just maybe a boy and a girl.

We had our anatomy scan on Friday and Bethany went with us to find out the gender and then keep it from us. When it was time to scan the "gender parts" she told us to look away. It then took her less than what seemed like 2 seconds to type it up on the screen to tell Betho what it was. Further, proving that it was of course boys in there! 

Betho kept it to herself for the next 24 hours and made cookies with cake balls in them. Delish! She filled all the cookies with white cake with the exception of two which had the color of the gender in them. We had family and friends over and every person got a cake ball cookie. Then at the same time we all broke our cookies in half and waited to see what colors were yelled out. 

Well in about 5 seconds I hear PINK and start immediately looking to see who has blue! Then about 5 seconds after that I hear PINK again!!!!!  Ummmm.....my head was spinning! I was in complete and utter shock!! TWO GIRLS!! Have I mentioned that having twin girls has been my dream since I was a little girl! I really just could not believe it. I told Lance I couldn't believe we just broke open some cookies and our lives were changed forever! 

So, in the next few months we will be adding two little girls and then in the months following that we will be adding a third little girl when our Jane Jordan finally comes home! It still hasn't sunk in. Not sure when it will, but we are so thankful!!

We CANNOT wait to meet you sweet little Nora Beth & Zoe Rose! I don't think we will need to worry about Jane lacking love in this house of sweet SISTERS! I am very blessed! :) 

Someone is outnumbered, but very excited! :) 

 Two little cookies that changed everything....hehe!

Waiting out the traffic....

I work late on Tuesday night (at my old job from when we lived in town) and due to the hail and huge storm I am choosing to sit in my office until almost 8pm so I can wait out the crazy people on the hwy! I am kind of cringing to see if my new car is damaged from the hail. :(

Anyway, not much to post about so I guess I will just ramble on for a few minutes. I experienced my first run in with braxton hicks contractions today. Did you know with twins you can expect all symptoms to appear like 5-8 weeks early! hehe I woke up this morning to my stomach feeling so tight and then seriously took 3 hours getting ready for work because my instinct was telling me to just take it easy today. So I did! :) I called the doctor and they explained to me what it was and it made me feel much better.

I am officially feeling very pregnant. Like, puffy and just much larger in lots of places. And it is just very all of a sudden. I will be honest, as much as I have been on cloud 9 with this pregnancy I have struggled a bit with the creeping numbers on the scale. I really had to stop and force myself to put things into perspective today. I am having twins. There are TWO babies with all there accompanying parts in my belly and I am going to gain weight. Maybe a lot. Probably a lot. I think it is time I just embrace and make a plan to get rid of it post baby! I know this is SO ridiculous but I had it in my head I would go almost full term with these babies and only gain about 20 pounds. Yeah, not gonna happen! Not sure where I even got that!!

Friday is the big gender ultrasound! Have I mentioned I am excited!? I really am. I still cannot believe this is happening to me. That this is the current reality I am living out. It is just so very exciting and surreal. I think my guess is two boys but we will see. I'm not sold 100% on my all blue outfit for the party. But no combination could go wrong! 2 boys and Jane can maintain her position on her thrown, one of each and Jane gets a sister and two girls, well, everyone is still happy but good luck Lance! :) I really just do not care one bit. I just want to see healthy little babies on Friday when we go in. However, I have been at peace this whole pregnancy about the health of these babies because no matter what they are, healthy or not, they are the little people God created them to be and we are the people He chose to parent them! I pray for their health every day but I know they are already perfect! I feel so blessed!! 

Aside from pregnancy I am still learning how to be a school Speech Therapist and it's not easy people! I. do. so. much. paperwork. and I. see. SO. many. kids! I think by the time I leave to have these babies my caseload will be over 70! Talk about multi tasking...and have I mentioned that is not my strength in life? Yeah, its really not. But I love the little munchkins I work with and hope amidst all the legal junk and paperwork I am making a little bit of a difference! But it is a very big change from having one child walk into my office at a time and spend an uninterrupted hour with me or going into rooms at the nursing home and just chatting about feeding and swallowing goals with patients who have just had a stroke. But I continue to be blessed by my job and am very thankful for the part time opportunities I will have once I am a mommy to 3!

Not much else to report. I am excited for the holidays and for opportunities to get dressed up and eat peppermint bark! ;) I have a Christmas party with my college friends this weekend and I am pumped. We are all just as close as we were in college and are all kind of in different stages of life ranging from single and dating, to engaged, to married with no kids to being pregnant and having kids. It is so refreshing spending time with these girls and I look so forward to little things like this!!

Stay tunes for the big reveal.....counting down the hours to get another look at my precious little ones!!

Off to fight the (hopefully died down) traffic! :)

Here is the latest "bump" pic. I think this is at 16 weeks on the dot. And yes I know, my outfit is awesome! ;)

Jane

This has been a  hard couple of days! I honestly did NOT see this coming at all. We got our update for Jane yesterday and we are #9. Meaning that if we weren't pregnant we could be seeing a picture of our baby girl before the new year.

I think it just brought up a range of emotions that I didn't think I would even be going through. We never in a million years thought things would pick up and move so quickly again. Plus, our road to pregnancy/having a family has been an emotional rollercoaster.

I wasn't positive I would even have a desire to get pregnant after getting Jane home, but I also wasn't positive I wouldn't and the decisions we have been faced with over the past couple years have been hard! Dealing with endometriosis, and then infertility and then being faced with how we were going to heal this disease (that is typically only curable by pregnancy or prolonged use of artificial hormones) has just overall been a bit rough! Being given timelines to get pregnant by and then passing them by month after month was stressful.

Lots of prayer has gone into all of this and I have felt peace every step of the way....but being pregnant doesn't reduce our desire for Jane to be home....and wrapping my mind around the fact that she was just within our reach and now is back out there in the "unknown timeline" land is sad! Like, really really sad. Obviously God decided to allow us to get pregnant and oh my goodness, I am so glad he did. But for some reason the reality of our precious other child that isn't resting safely in my belly with the other two is just killing me!

I have pretty much come to a place of peace with the idea of three little ones running around our home instead of just one. I'm actually excited that my neat little clean house will soon be the home to more baby things than we can count and I have even accepted, although I know I can't fully understand yet, that I will be tired most all the time. I am honestly excited about every ounce of it. I am excited about my sole focus for a while being my babies. If you know me well, you know that although I enjoy my career, all I have ever wanted to do is be a mom. Period. I can't wait to finally have the job I have dreamed about forever.

But I am having a hard time with the fact that Jane Jordan isn't coming home soon. She is still coming home, but not that soon. I was also a little confused about the rules within our agency about adoption after biological babies are born. I was under the impression that you just had to wait 6 months and you could be matched with any baby. However, I was not understanding correctly and the rule is actually that your biological children and adopted children must be at least 6 months apart in age. Meaning that once our bio babies are 4 months old we could accept a referral for a 10 month old, or once they are 6 months old we could accept a referral for a 12 month old and so on. It's not that big of a deal, but just a different mindset in a way. A mindset that likely places us being matched with a slightly older child. Which is ok too. Just something new to wrap my mind around (however, I have come to enjoy God stretching me so I can look back and smile on the end result).

As I type all this I think what is going on is that I am just adjusting to a new reality. A new look of starting our family. A slightly altered picture of getting Jane home and bringing biological children into our family. Nothing about any of this is bad. I mean, if Jane can walk when she gets here that would make my life a lot easier since I will have two that don't! Well, maybe, maybe not I guess...hehe!

God has already written this story. We had the elders at church anoint us with oil several months ago and pray for healing over my body and I was healed. We also prayed for years and years about adoption and have never wavered on this aspect of bringing children into our home. God has flooded this adoption with more blessings that I can count. The story is written and I hope that as I live out this next crazy chapter in my life I can bring glory to God through this story. I hope people look at our family and think, "If Lance & Kayla can do it so can we!" And I hope this is just the beginning of it all. I hope we can continue to be a warm home to children who need a mommy and daddy. I pray that my life is nothing but a platform for God to work and that I can love on as many babies as he allows me to have, regardless of where they come from! :)

*Lets hope Lance didn't make it to the end of this post hehe! :)