Thanksgiving

We had our first Thanksgiving with the babies last week. We ran around to big feasts with both my family and Billy’s. The babies were exhausted after we finished up at my dad’s house, and they only had experienced ½ the day.

The day gave us a chance to think about everything and everyone for which we are most thankful.

I would say that this is a family picture, but we have an important family member missing-Winnie! We are thankful for the craziness she brings into our home every day.

Here is Papa with his babies. Maureen said she wanted a picture of him with them, and she suggested that Billy and I sit on either side of him with a baby, and he hold one in the middle. My dad, however, said, "I want one with just the babies. Give me one in the middle and one on either side. I can hold them ALL." He did just that!

We are incredibly thankful for Papa and the Tuesday and Thursday nights he spends with us, as well as the times a baby stays with him. He knows how to handle the babies and is an amazing grandpa. We'd be lost without him!

We are also thankful for Billy’s parents, who help us out immensely. Bill spends a couple of nights a week with us, and Mems usually takes a baby or two on the weekends. The trips are their only grandchildren so they are having fun spoiling them.

Sometimes I sit the girls in their bouncy seats and have them watch me cook. I explain everything that I'm doing like it's a cooking show. Yes, it's a little weird, but they seem to enjoy out. Maybe one of them will turn out to be a chef because of it. This particular night, Will wanted to be held, and I needed my hands for food prep. Now that I look at this picture, I realize that DFACS may be contacted since I have a HUGE knife in my hands with Will in the baby carrier. Whoops! I gotta do what I gotta do to get dinner on the table. Momma's got eat!

This is Abby's "big smile" picture. It was taken at Vivian's house a couple of weeks ago. Vivian said that it was taken around 6:15 and at 6:30, Abby turned into a crying machine. It's funny how they can just flip the switch like that. However, I have to say that I think Crabbers is no more. She has stopped having her 2 hours of non-stop crying in the evenings. I think it must just have been colic because that usually clears up around 4 months. Now, she's "Happy Abby," which is so much better.

Her other nickname is Koala baby because she likes to wrap herself around anyone that holds her. She and Teri were Koala sisters when Teri was in town for Thanksgiving.

We are thankful for all of the babies’ wonderful Aunts. My sisters all help us out in different ways. Vivian spends Sunday nights and/or takes a baby on the weekends. Alice also takes a baby on the weekends, but she spoils them rotten. We were kidding the other day that when the babies get old enough to talk, they will all fight about who gets to go to Aunt Alice’s for the weekend. She lets them eat whenever they cry, and once they move to solids, she’ll feed them a bunch of junk. She lets them stay up as late as they want, and she doesn’t even try to put them in the pack ‘n play. They go straight to her bed to snuggle all night. Liane has too much going on with her own crazy trio to be babysitting for me, but she gave us the gift of the babies, and I am so thankful for that.

Teri loves the babies like crazy. She is even willing to suffer through her terrible allergy to Winnie to be with them whenever she comes to town. We wish Teri would come back to us in Atlanta full-time (hint, hint, Teri!).

We have lots of additional family and friends that we are thankful for, but it’s too hard to name them all. Just know that we appreciate everything you all do, and we wouldn’t be able to do this without you.

We took Will to get some chest x-rays last week to rule out pneumonia, and a lady in the waiting room was asking about the babies (we had them all there). She asked if we had help, and I told her that I didn’t know what we would do without the help we had. She said, “You would be fine. God only gives you what you can handle, right?” I just smiled, but I was thinking, “We have WAY more than we can handle. If we didn’t have our family and friends, we would not be handling this situation well at all.” God gave us the trips because he knew that with our support system, we could handle it.

Update on the babies’ sickness: Marie and Abby seem to no longer have the congestion in their chests so we can wean them off the nebulizers. Will, however, still has some gunk in his chest, but his pneumonia test was negative. He has to have the nebulizer twice a day with a steroid added to it. He’s getting all ripped now. We are hoping he doesn’t develop a nasty case of ‘roid rage!

Marie is now officially teething! She has two little nubs coming through on the bottom. They are sharp, like Winnie’s little puppy teeth were. I have been afraid to nurse her since we noticed the teeth because Liane said that Carley once bit her boobie so hard it drew blood when she was first teething. Anyway, it’s going to be hilarious to see this tiny, little baby with teeth.

I’m way behind with my posts so I need to work on a few more. Thanks to Erin H. for e-mailing me suggestions for what to write about. Sometimes I run out of ideas so it’s good to hear some from the readers.