Ava's Surgery

Ava is right now asleep in her big girl hspital bed. She had her surgery to remove her tonsils and adnoids yesterday afternoon. She slept most of yesterday and woke up around 7. She was groggy for about an hour. They told us that if she wants to eat, she can. So, we ordered the "clear liquid" tray from the menu and we started her with some jell-o. She finished it and asked for more. So she then ate a container of water ice. All the while, she was drinking her juice.

Overnight, she only woke up a few times. We asked who she wanted to sleep herer with her last night and she said "Mommy," so I went home and got abck around 8.

This morning, she is doing extremely well. She needs to drink 9 oz. of fluid before 6PM to be discharged. Right now, she probably already drank about 6. She also took a walk with us down to the cafeteria for some breakfast. She had a few pieces of fruit and pancake before getting tired.

Lisa and I think she has mutant powers similar to Wolverine as she seems to heal and recover abnormally fast. I'm anticipating us being out of here before 6, but we have to see the ENT first.

Here is a shot of her and her bear in their hospital pajamas.

Some Pictures

Olivia sporting her beach best!

Ava in her movie star sunglasses!

The girls dressed and ready for great adventure! Looking like real tourists!

Lila and her bed mate Jake! I went into tell the girls to go to sleep and this is what I found!

All the kids on the deck at the beach house!

Mike and his ladies on the ferris wheel at great adventure!

Feet don't fail me now!

This morning was our March of Dimes walk. Our team - Team Preemie- raised over $4500 for the March of Dimes!! Thank you so much to everyone who donated to us! You walked with us! It was really cool this year because we got to walk halfway up the Ben Franklin Bridge. To keep with tradition we were the absolute last people in the walk! When I say we I mean the five of us, Danya and Sean and the boys and Bridget and Jesse and the girls. So you see we are quite a sight pushing all those kids up the bridge. It was very cool and we saw some of the nurses from the NICU who took care of the girls. And my OBs were there! Very funny running into them on the top of the bridge! We had a lot of fun and raised money and awareness for a great cause! Right now the girls are passed out on the floor in the tv room and when I am done typing I am going to join them! We stopped on the way home from the walk and bought a blow up kid pool with a whale slide. the girls played outside in the water for hours! Until the aforementioned passing out!

Since our general mantra in life is "go big or go home", we came home from 3 days at the shore last night to do the walk this morning. We had some great beach time yesterday and went to the Cape May Zoo the day before. And last weekend we made our first trip to Great Adventure. These girls love to go! We just keep on truckin! I'll get some pics up soon! Ava's surgery is Tuesday. Stay tuned for updates from CHOP!!

Big Girls

We decided (well, I did) that it was time to move the girls into toddler beds instead of their cribs. The fact that they were able to skillfully scale their way into their cribs and then drop down onto the mattress was enough for me to believe that they were ready to move up. I converted their cribs into toddler beds on Sunday and told Lisa that I didn't think they needed the crib rails. Well at about 9:30 we were on the couch and heard -Whoomph-"WAAAAA". Olivia apparently rolled her way right onto the floor.

So, after Lisa told me she was right, we put the crib rails on their beds. They basically have feet that slide under the mattress and are a mesh netting to keep them inside. In the middle of the night, we heard little quieter -whoomph- "waa". By the time Lisa got down to their room, Olivia was asleep. Lisa got me out of bed to come see Olivia who had rolled into the crib rail. The rail came out from under the bed and was sitting so that the mesh net was horizontal and Livi was sound asleep on top. Apparently falling into a mesh net was not as upsetting as the floor, so she just settled back in and went to sleep.

So far, they have yet to get out even when we put them to bed and they (Lila) complain. They seem to know that they need to stay in the bed. So now that we got the first roll out of bed out of the way, everything seems to be going smoothly.

Help out my friend!

This is an email I got from my friend Michelle. She is doing the Breast Cancer race to raise money for Susan G. Komen foundation. Mike and I have done this in the past but this year we are doing the March of Dimes walk. They are very close to each other this year. Two charity fundraisers in 2 weeks was a bit much for us so we had to pick just one. But I would love to still support this cause because I do beleive in it. If you want to help Michelle you can follow the links on the bottom of this post and donate. If you can help that would be great!! Thanks!

2009 Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure

Dear Friends and Family,

I recently accepted the challenge to raise funds to support the Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure® to help empower their vision of a world without breast cancer.

Did you know that one in eight women will be stricken with breast cancer in her lifetime? The more funds we raise, the more the Philadelphia Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure has to fund vital breast cancer education, screening and treatment programs in our own community. A portion of the local proceeds is also combined with monies from all the Komen Races for the Cure around the world to support the national search for a cure through Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Learn more about the mission of the Komen Philadelphia Affiliate at http://www.komenphiladelphia.org/.

Please join me in the fight by pledging support to me or contributing generously to the Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure®. Your tax-deductible contribution will support innovative outreach and awareness programs for medically underserved communities in the Delaware Valley, as well as the national research grant program.

It is faster and easier than ever to support this great cause - you can make a donation online by simply clicking on the link to my personal page at the bottom of this message. Whatever you can give will help!

I truly appreciate your support. Thank you so much for your time and support in the fight against breast cancer! Every step counts!

Sincerely,

Michelle Kodrich


Use the link below to visit my personal page to pledge your support and watch my fundraising progress!

Click here to visit my personal page.
If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address:
http://rfcphl.convio.net/site/TR/Race/General?px=1431527&pg=personal&fr_id=1030&et=pewNmKO4OFJexPEL_ZNxdA..&s_tafId=26542

Click here to view the team page for Alice's Angels
If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address:
http://rfcphl.convio.net/site/TR/Race/General?team_id=26490&pg=team&fr_id=1030&et=ZKB-HMVSfCDoIcofaW2k4g..&s_tafId=26542

Happy Easter 2009!

Well, we had a really nice easter! The bunny was very good to the girls! He brought them a new Tigger and Pooh playset and lots of Playdoh! They were so excited by those that they were not even interested in looking for eggs! We had to tell them there was candy in the eggs to get them to start hunting! After the girls had a good breakfast of milk and hershey's kisses, we headed to church. I packed graham crackers in our bag, even though we don't usually let them snack in church. It was my desperate attempt to level out their blood sugar when the chocolate wore off! It must have worked because they were very good! Then we had a nice brunch with Mike's family - 10 adults and 11 kids!! Sounds crazy but it was very fun and the kids were all really good! After we stuffed ourselves, we went to Burlington for dinner. Aunt Jenny, uncle Mike and Baby Ray were there. Great Pop, Uncle Ray, Aunt Paula, Aunt Gret and Uncle Tim stopped by too. Here are some pics from our day!

I hate being right

No seriously. I hate it when I am right all the time! What, you ask, is it this time? My poor little Ava! I have been saying forever that there is something wrong with the way she sleeps. We had an appt at CHOP this week to get the results of the sleep study. You didn't need a medical degree to read the look on the doctor's face. He said "it's pretty bad." If you have 2 episodes of apnea per hour, he recommends the surgery to remove both tonsils and adnoids. Ava had 16.7 episodes per hour! She had a total of 150 episodes over the course of the 9 hour study, complete with desats. She also had 42 arousals related to respiratory and 44 spontaneous awakenings. The good news is that there were no cardiac arythmias or involuntary limb movements. So all that points to this being completely related to the obstruction. That is actually great news since the surgery will fix that and we don't have to look into nuerological reasons for the apnea. Since she is so young, she needs to stay overnight at least one night, maybe two if she isn't drinking very well. Dehydration is a big issue with this type of surgery apparently. We are all scheduled for April 28. We'll know the time the day before but we are guessing it will be early. We are pros at this now since we took Ava for her surgery last year! The fact that she did so well with that is a great sign for this surgery. I just can't wait for her to be comfortable and have a decent nights sleep!!!! Of course, we need to repeat the sleep study after the fact to make sure that the obstuction was the problem, but the doc feels strongly that it is.

On a lighter note, the girls had an egg hunt today with my twins club. It was at our meeting site in Voorhees. It has a big park and playground out back and the weather was great. In fact, all the kids went in to the building to do a craft and my girls stayed outside on the playground!! But they did great getting the eggs and were super excited to open them to find candy! Lila was like a machine - she had it down to a science. Open egg-remove wrapper- eat- while chewing open next egg-repeat! I was pretty sure they would get sick but lucky for them they inherited my stomach for chocolate!! In the car on the way home, Lila was yelling "more chocolate." Then we were sitting on the front porch waiting for Mike to get home and I look over and Ava is quietly opening chocolates from her basket with her back to me!! Olivia was less inconspicuous and stood right in front of me eating!!

We dyed our eggs tonight too. I was wondering if they would get it. Boy did they get it! In fact, when all the white eggs were dyed, they started putting the already colored back into different colors!! They ended up switching eggs from color to color for about 20 minutes and were totally happy! Of course, they were just as colorful as the eggs!!!

Goodbye Spectrum...

...we hardly knew ye! Well, the girls hardly knew it,Mike and I have very fond memories of the old Spectrum. We took the girls to their last ever Phantoms regular season game last night. By now you must have figured out that Mike and I have a very unhealthy obsession with Philadelphia sports. Hockey in particular, but any sport will satisfy our craving for competition! We were looking forward to passing on this little hobby to the girls. Then the Phantoms got sold, right out from under us. Then they decided to tear the spectrum down. First the Vet, now the Spectrum! I guess we will be in the market for another minor league hockey team to follow! Actually, the Flyers "made us an offer we couldn't refuse"! We got season tix to the Flyers very discounted, and split the season with Jeff so even better price!! Anyway, the hockey goes on in our house; Vancouver is coming up! But that is another post!

In other news, the girls had thier first dentist appointments today. Everything went much better than anticipated! They walked right into the exam room and when the hygenist said "who wants to go first?"; Lila volunteered and jumped right into the chair! Since she then knew the skinny, after she was done she hung by the side of the hygenist and made sure her sisters got thier well deserved stickers!! She actually would remind the poor woman! They all did really well and no cavities. We go back in 6 months.

Ava has her CHOP ENT appt tomorrow. We will have the results of the sleep study and hopefully get the surgery scheduled. I'm pretty sure they will take the tonsils out too but I could get a pleasant surprise tomorrow. Apparently, the adnoids surgery is not too bad, recovery in 3 to5 days. Tonsils and adnoids is 2 week recovery. My friend Amy's twins both had the longer surgery and she said they were down and out for about 10 days. We'll see, as long as she gets relief I will be happy!

We had breakfast with the easter bunny this weekend. It was good, the girls didn't cry at him! I figured that was a good sign! We tried to hang around for the egg hunt but the wind was so bad that the girls were crying to go back to the car. So we walked all the way back to the car and Olivia started crying that she wanted to get eggies. So I walked Liv back to the egg hunt while Mike stayed in the car with the other two. Of course, the hunt starts before we get there; so I just kinda throw her in the mix and she comes away with about 7 eggs. Not too bad for a first time hunter!!!! We''l get more practice on thursday at my twin club egg hunt!