Sewing Projects

Here are the dresses I have completed so far.  Again, the plaid dress was a dress shirt of Brandon's.

 I am going to add straps to the black and white dress that cross in the back.

Still trying to get in the hang of this....

Sorry it has been awhile since our last post.  I am still trying to get the hang of posting regularly!

We had a good Valentines Day.  It has been bitter sweet for our family since 5 years ago on Valentines Day my Uncle Dennis passed away.  My Aunt Sue, his wife, had made a wreath for him so with her help and the help of my girls, we made a Valentines Day wreath for Rebecca.

The girls had Valentines Day parties as their school.  Here are some pictures...

I have started a new hobby - sewing!  I love to have my girls matching so instead of buying 3 of each things, I am going to try my hand at making them various things.  I made my first pillowcase dress for Joanna in about 3 hours.  Yes I said 3 hours.  I know it is only supposed to take an hour but I had to watch a tutorial for every step so hopefully in the future it can go a little faster.  Yesterday I made a dress for Katelyn and Kenlee.  I am trying to make dresses for them from Brandon's shirts off of this website - rather difficult for a beginner I think.  But I am determined since it is adorable.
http://www.dana-made-it.com/2008/07/tutorial-shirt-dress.html

Brandon got his hands on a couple huge boxes that he brought home for the girls.  The girls loved it and we were going to make them into a simple castle.  Well those of you who know my husband know that he does nothing simple...he went all out.  Let's just say he went to Menard's at 8pm to get things for the playhouse!  Of course I had to add some of my new hobby to it.

Yes, it is equipped with lights and carpet!!

Joanna has changed so much in the last few weeks.  She gained 13 oz. in 2 weeks which is more than their goal for her.  She is now 14 lbs. 13 oz.  She is able to sit up on her own, she has found her voice and likes to scream at us, and her hair has been growing out and getting really thick.  I can't believe she is almost 1.

A Week in Pictures

Katelyn had a very busy Saturday.  She was invited to go to Cooper Davenport's birthday party at CMOE.  For those of you who don't know who Cooper is, he is Katelyn's really good friend from Methodist Child Care.  She has not seen him since this summer but asks me all the time to go see her friends there.  It was great to see her with her old friends again!  There was a station in the museum where she was able to paint her face.  Of course she loved that.

I then took all of the girls, minus Joanna, to the Aces game.  They had a great time.  It was our girls night according to Katelyn.  By the way the Aces won against Southern Illinois.

Because Kenlee is doing so well at her potty training, we celebrated at "Daddy Town" aka Gatti Town.  The girls love this place.  There favorite is the Frog Ride.  Katelyn was finally tall enough to ride the bumper cars.

Last weekend I made everyone get outside for at least 30 min. because it was so nice.  The yard was way too muddy so we went to a playground at the girls school.  Daddy started jumping off of the swing.

 Joanna likes to stick her tongue out.

Then after playing it was nap time.

Joanna at 10 months with a pencil.  I believe Brandon will continue this tradition for another 2 months until her 1st Birthday.

Good Weekend...

Our prayers are being answered, Kenlee has finally decided to potty train!  She is telling US when she has to go potty.  She is not completely trained yet but she is very close.  Hopefully within the next week we will be 100%.

My friend Tabitha and I were able to enjoy an afternoon of eating and pedicures!  It was so nice to get to hang out with her.  A big THANKS to our family who watched our girls for us.

After rescheduling 3 times due to the snow, Kenlee got to go on her school field trip today.  She had a great time!  The slide was her favorite.

Snow Day!

The kids got yet another day out of school due to the snow. It has been snowing since about 8am this morning.  They get a little stir crazy inside so it was a good thing that daddy was home today.  He likes to take them out and play in the snow - they had a blast.  Joanna and I stayed inside - way to cold for us!  Enjoy the pictures.  As I was getting the girls dressed in their warm clothes, Brandon decided to put Joanna inside of his overalls.  What a dork!
After they finished playing, it was time to drink some hot chocolate and warm up.

Posts to come regularly......

I know many of you probably have given up on our blog but I do want to try and keep new posts coming as often as I can.  I just recently purchased a new laptop so now that I have one that works - I thought this should be a priority of mine.

Since the last post...

Kenlee loves school  She is our "funny" child.  Don't get me wrong, all of our kids make us laugh but Kenlee tries to make us laugh.  She has this new thing she does with her leg as she is walking.  She kind of kicks it up to the side and turns as she is doing this.  Her new favorite thing is to pray.  She wants to be the first one each night and then after everyone goes she wants to pray again.  She is such a joy to have.

Katelyn goes to school M - R from 8:30-12:10.  She has made many friends and is now asking me on her days off when she is going back to school.  She is into fashion, always has to have her hair up and a necklace on.  She loves to layer her clothes and enjoys playing dress up.

Alexis earned straight A's again this semester.  She recently signed up for 7th grade classes and seems pretty excited about what she signed up for.  She is involved in a small group with Bethel Temple and loves it.

Joanna had some dr appts in Cincinnatti in December.  The spots on her liver where gone!  They want us to get a scan done here locally in April and then come back up there one more time in September to get one last scan hopefully.  Ortho did some xrays of her arms, shoulders, knees, and ankles.  This was the first time any scans had been done to see what was under the skin.  Everything looked fine from what they could see.  They said she has made such great progress that they really don't want to cast anything on her right now.  They want her to keep growing and gaining strength and see us in September to see how much better movement she has with her limbs.  Joanna gets therapy once a week for an hour.  We have a great therapist who comes to our house - its very nice not having to take her out.  She is feeding well.  We now go to get weighed every other week!  Last week she weighed 13 lbs.  She has started eating some homemade baby food.  Her first food was avocados, then sweet potatoes, rice cereal, and bananas.  She loves the bananas.  She can only get food once a day and can only have about 1-2 tsp.  Reason is we don't want her getting full on the food and then not drinking the bottles.  And for those who were curious, YES she is still getting breast milk.  I still have a frozen milk supply.  I had to stop breastfeeding awhile back because she just wasn't doing well with it.  My hope is that I can get her to 12 months actual age.  

Christmas was actually good.  Our family adopted Lucianna, a little girl from Peru who shares a birthday with Joanna and Rebecca.  We chose to support her through World Vision in memory of Rebecca.  We went out to see Rebecca on Christmas.  My aunt made a wreath to put up by her grave so we took that out there.  Then of course we had to build her a snowman.  Her monument is ordered and should be placed before her birthday. There is still not a day that goes by that I don't miss her.  I think about her often as well as our experience in Cincinnati.  I miss all of our new friends up there so much.  I still keep in contact with quite a few people.  

Below are some pictures from Christmas. 

Catching Up

I’ve been thinking recently about why I haven’t blogged like I did when I was in Cincinnati. Other than the poor excuse of not having the time like I did when I was there, I have realized the more probable reason. The name of the blog alone tells the reason, The Twins. For months we blogged over and over about the twins. After Rebecca died, there were no longer twins to blog about. I tried, but every time felt a block when there was nothing to write about Rebecca and felt unable to write about anything else. Last night I decided while I was at work today I would update the blog.

Yesterday was Rebecca and Joanna’s 8 month birthday. I’m posting a couple of pictures  showing what 8 months have done for Joanna. She is still having trouble gaining weight. Jessica just called and told me she has lost 1 ounce this past week. The week before that she lost 2 ounces. The feeding clinic is trying many different techniques to help her increase her weight gain. Right now and for the last 2-3 weeks she has been without the feeding tube, hence the weight loss. She got to the point where she was pulling it out about every other day. Without it they decided to flavor her breastmilk with Nestle Strawberry milk syrup. She loves it but she was puking every time she ate. So, they decided to give her straight breast milk without even the Neo-sure powder. She has been doing that for about a week now but still not gaining. She is still growing in length and her head circumference but not adding weight. She is very alert. This weekend we put her in her bouncing seat that hangs on the door opening. She is trying to figure it out  and likes it in short sessions. She is cooing and talking all of the time and knows how to get what she wants. She is sleeping through the night for about 12 hours which also contributes to her weight loss. We went to Cincinnati about 3 weeks ago for a cardiology genetics visit. They did an echo and found that her PDA is still open but they can’t hear it anymore so they think it’s closing. They are wanting to rule out any sign of cardiac issues that affected Rebecca that could be genetic. They don’t see any sign of that at this point. We go back in 3 weeks for some more appointments and while we’re there Jessica and I will be getting echos done to make sure we don’t have enlarged hearts. They say an adult will show signs by the age of 30 if they have it. Once they rule it out for us, they will be satisfied Rebecca’s was secondary to her congenital valve defect and not genetic. Therefore, Joanna will be given an all clear. She has appointments with orthopedic doctors to follow up on her arms and legs. She has been receiving occupational therapy in our home weekly now since we have been home. She seems to be improving but her neck is still really tight when she tries to turn it to the left. Overall she is doing very well, we just need her to start putting on some pounds. 

The other girls are doing well also and are excited for Christmas. Katelyn has been going to pre-school 4 days a week in the morning and Kenlee just started going a couple weeks ago. She is only going Monday and Wednesday for a couple hours in the morning. This gives Jessica some time to get some things done. They do a great job of keeping the house a wreck for us, but they also keep us entertained so I guess it’s a good trade off (see below). Alexis is having a good school year earning straight A’s the first grading period. Last weekend she went to an overnight church camp which she had  a great time at. She’s also helping out a lot at church in the children’s ministry, which they are grateful for. 

Jessica continues to be an awesome asset around the house. She keeps everything going at the house from laundry to groceries. She don’t know how much she is appreciated, allowing me to work and follow endeavors. She has taken on some part time consulting work that she really enjoys doing. It’s just hard to find time for both of us to do everything we want or need to do. Our neighbors probably think we have the most  dysfunctional family because I will pull in and she will leave then vice versa. Somehow we are making it work but there aren’t any extra minutes in the day. Great things are happening in our lives and we are so blessed to have these opportunities. 

We finally ordered our monument for the cemetery week before last. We had looked at them a while back but finding the time to go without kids to look and decide on the design made us keep putting it off. Finally, we got tired of going to the cemetery and not having it there. Also, we wanted to make sure all bills were paid before spending the extra money on the one we really wanted. It’s a beautiful stone and it will hopefully be placed in the next month or two.