4 Months

The babies are 4 months old now. Things are going much smoother than I could have ever imagined with 7 children. I credit the Aunties for that. Kathy and Leslie are amazing, they are such great help, they keep things moving so smoothly. I don't even want to think about how things would be without them. Alex is an amazing hands-on Daddy too, he is involved with every aspect of their care. The quads are a full time job in and of themselves, let alone add a 1 year old and two 9 year old boys! Taking care of 7 children is tough sometimes, no not tough, just time consuming. It really takes all our time to devote to our children. But once we do that and say no to all other outside stuff, it's really not that bad. Probably the toughest part of our day is bath time. We bathe 5 babies in about 30 minutes, put the one year old to bed and get ready for the night time feeding. The babies are usually hungry and cranky and crying all at the same time. That can be a trying time. But then you pick one up and they look you in the eye and flash a big ol' smile, and that honestly makes it all worth it.
Alesandra laughing, how precious is that? Allee talking...

and talking some more. The girl likes to talk. If she is awake then she wants to talk and be talked to.

My gorgeous Aiden smiling. What a round face he has. But notice those sparkly eyes when he smiles. This was Mr Stoic himself, but now look at him. Is there anything better than a smiling baby?

Aiden talking. He's still pretty stingy with his smiles and coos, so I was very lucky to capture him in pictures.

Bella talking. She also has to be in the mood, but seems to be smiling and interacting alot more these past few days. She just loves to be talked to.

And I sorta caught a smile. What a happy baby she is. Check out that dimple. Actually all the babies have dimples on both sides of their precious little cheeks (that comes from Daddy!).

And this is all I could get out of Ashton at this photo session. Usually he is the talkative one, but not at this time.

All the babies seem to like sitting in the bumbo seats for short periods of time, but they want someone to sit with them and talk to them. That is their favorite thing right now, being talked to and talking. The smiles and coos are just so precious.

They changed their schedule again. And I do say 'they' because they do it. They have been stretching out when they want to eat, like we've had to be waking them up to eat and then they don't finish their entire bottle. Then Saturday they slept in! They didn't eat until 8am! I couldn't believe it. Then they ate every 4 hours after that. So all weekend they ate at 8am, noon, 4pm then night bottle at 8:30pm. I like this new schedule, it seems to give me so much more time. Except now the babies are more awake and want our attention, but that is the fun part.

Oh Christmas Tree...2009

I hadn't gotten around to putting up the Christmas tree yet, so the Aunties did it a week ago. Then I hadn't gotten around to decorating the tree, so the boys did it this weekend. They dug all the bins of ornaments up in the basement, carried them upstairs, got them all out and even put the bins away when they were done. Can you believe that? Two 9 year olds and a 5 year old decorated our tree so beautifully. Below is Angelo on the left and Adrien on the ladder on the right putting ornaments on our tree.
Below you can see what Lex was doing while the other 3 boys were decorating. He just loves to play on the computer.

This is Jeremiah putting ornaments on the bottom portion of the tree.

And this is all 3 very proud boys. I am proud of them too, they did an awesome job. I love my beautifully decorated Christmas tree. And the best part is that I didn't have to do any of it - LOL!

Little Dresses

Anastasia

Auntie Kathy with the girls

Alesandra

Arabella (and her pirate smile)

A ll 5 of my babies:

Anastasia, then left to right Ashton, Allee, Aiden, Bella

This is the first time sitting in bumbo seats. They seemed to really like it, I got alot of smiles from them. But of course not while I had the camera out.

The babies are on the same schedule, we haven't changed anything yet. They get a bottle at 6:30 and 10am and 1:30 and 4:30pm, they pretty much just sleep in between feedings, but they do have more awake times now. They now get some some play time in bumbo seats. It's so cute seeing them all lined up sitting in bumbos. They like to watch the lights on the Christmas Tree. They like your (or any ones) attention because they like to be talked to. And they will smile and talk back to you, especially Allee. That girl is going to be a charmer. Their smiles and coos are THE most precious thing in the world. I find myself working very hard and doing anything just to get a smile. And they are still pretty stingy with them, they have to be in the mood, especially Aiden.

We start their night routine at 7:30pm with baths. Alex and I take all 4 upstairs to our bathroom. I line them all up in front of the fireplace. I undress one, Alex bathes them, I undress another, dry and dress the first one while he bathes the second and so on until all 5 are done (including Anastasia). Then Anastasia goes to bed (cause its 8 by this time). Sometimes Lex and Adre help with the undressing and dressing process too. We take them all back downstairs on the infant lounger to feed. Kathy feeds the boys and Alex feeds the girls. The night feeding takes a loong time, they also spend alot of time burping. They go back upstairs to their cribs between 9 and 10pm, as each gets done they go to sleep.

The boys seem to want to drop another feeding all ready. They usually have to be woken for feedings and don't take much at the 4:30 feeding. But the girls are not ready. They are awake crying for each feeding and take the whole feeding at 4:30. So we are keeping them on this schedule for now. The poor boys will just have to wait until the girls are ready.

Hawaii

Alex and I stayed on the Big Island of Hawaii last week and had such a nice and relaxing time. We were on the Kona side, the 'dry side' and didn't make it over to the Hilo side to see the rainforest or the volcano, but had a wonderful time. It was very nice to have some 'us' time and recuperate from the hectic past few months.
This is the most beautiful site in Hawaii - The Sunset!

And another one over the coast. This is about all I took pictures of, I thought the sunsets were simply gorgeous. But without having my children with me, I didn't carry the camera around with me. So I really didn't get alot of pictures. Mostly I took video and I can't get the video to upload with my slow internet!

We went on a snorkel trip on a 2 story catamaran that was fantastic. It was a 45 minute boat ride down the Kona coast to K Bay. We spent about 3 hours there snorkeling the bay and apparently a huge manta ray swam up but we missed it. I don't know how you miss a huge manta ray swimming by, but we did! We saw it on the trip video on the way home. The boat had a high dive and 2 slides that we enjoyed too. Well, Alex enjoyed them anyway. However, the best part was the ride home. We were escorted by about 50-75 spinner dolphins. They surrounded our boat and swam with us the entire way back. That was amazing to see all those dolphins and they would jump up out of the water. Then off in a distance we saw a whale spout out water and wave his tail. When we docked the boat a sea turtle was swimming around us. What an amazing experience!

We also attended a luau. What fun!

And this was the neatest thing, I just loved the trees. They were like a bunch of little trees grown together. This one was slit enough to walk through.

Although this was a much needed vacation, it was so hard to leave the babies. Then once we were there I have to admit that it was a nice break. I slept! Sleep is all I really wanted to do. Then toward the end of the week I started missing them again. However, on the way home I started getting a little anxious at the thought of caring for 7 children again. It really IS alot of work. When you're in the routine and doing it everyday, it really doesn't seem bad. But then to get away from it, just thinking about it wears me out!

Pumping was a challenge to say the least. I was fortunate to have an outlet on the plane for the flight to Hawaii since it was a 9 hour flight. However, the only outlet was next to the bathrooms in the middle of the plane. I used the family restrooms at the airport, which are nice and big, but it's still a dirty bathroom! I brought a car adaptor so as a time saver I was able to pump while traveling from place to place. Not the most discrete tho. I also saved all the breastmilk and flew it home with us in a cooler. Did you know that United charges a $175 fee for packing dry ice?

I really missed the big boys while we were there. I wanted them to experience everything we did; I wished they could be on the beach and look up and see snow on the mountain peak too. We are planning a trip to Turks & Caicos in April and we will definitely be taking the boys with us there.

A great big huge THANK YOU to Aunties Kathy, Leslie and Jennifer for taking such good care of our children while we were gone!

4 in a Tub

The local newspaper is doing a Christmas special about the blessings of family, so they stopped by to get a picture of our big family. Unfortunately our big boys were still in school, but here is us with our 5 babies, Alesandra, Arabella, Anastasia, Ashton and Aiden.

Bath time. We usually bathe one at a time in an infant tub, but occasionally we will put them all in the sink at one time. That way Alex and I can each bathe 2 babies at a time and be done so much faster.

Lex comforting Bella.

I've posted 3 times this morning, so you can keep on readin' in you wanna.

Thanksgiving '09

Our Family
Alex with Ashton, Leslie, Kathy, Kimberly with Aiden
Angelo, Adrien with Allee, Jerimiah, Anastasia, Ben, Alex with Bella

Anastasia, Kathy, Adrien, Alex, Ben, Leslie, and Traci

Jerimiah, Kathy and Angelo

Anastasia, Alex, Kimberly, Adrien and Alex

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed time with family and friends!

3 1/2 month check up

Alesandra









Arabella











Aiden











Ashton



































The babies had their 3 1/2 month check up on Wednesday and everything is fine, no issues. They also had their Synergist shot (to help prevent RSV). I thought Alex was going to have a heart attract while in the waiting room. There were 2 school aged boys in there with us and one was coughing all over the place and the other kept trying to get to our babies. I keep a blanket over them at all times when we are out. He kept trying to see them and I kept telling him no. Well, I got to talking with my head turned and he snuck up and touched the blanket. I thought Alex was going to come off his seat, he raised his voice "HEY KID, don't touch my babies!" I think the hardest part about having preemies is trying to protect them from illness. Babies are such an attraction and well, 4 babies is like a circus. You just can't keep people away.