Today we got up early to go to the airport, because I am taking a much needed 3 day vacation to visit my cousin and blogger-twin, Lynn. Lynn is going through chemotherapy for germ call cancer (Lynn, correct me if I’m wrong) and I insisted (or more like “brainwashed”) her to create a blog. It has been really interesting for me to read about all the tests, “markers”, scans, opinions, 2nd opinions, treatments, hair styles and blood related things that she has been through! I am a big fan of her blog and we nag each other when one of us hasn’t written an entry for awhile. She and her husband have a really great sense of humor and she is a brave woman and a true inspiration. Ok, so enough gushing about her! We had to get the boys up early and feed them, pack them up in the car and go. We were running a little late but because I wasn’t checking anything in and we didn’t have to park, it was ok. This was the first time I got to the airport and they were already fully boarded and paging me! I, in the meantime, was buying a pair of noise cancelling headphones while scarfing down a Burger King breakfast croissandwich. I think the cashier lady was weirded out as I pulled out my croissandwich and started wolfing it down as she was ringing up the order. Hey lady, I’m in a rush. Then I had to check in my carry on because there was no more room in the overhead bins. I had the breastpump in the bag, so I had to open everything up and move stuff into my backpack so that it wouldn’t go through baggage. The flight was non-eventful, and this was the first time I flew to Burbank. I usually fly to LAX. It was awesome! I love the small airports, especially when it’s closer to your destination. I went to the car rental place and had to wait a super long time because the car needed to be washed and filled with gas. I finally got out of there and headed up north. It was only about 18 miles to Lynn’s house which I was kind of surprised. I always picture her house really far out, but it’s not that bad. I got there and we spent the afternoon talking story and we went to Trader Joe’s to pick up some stuff for my mom. It was a really nice feeling to just go places without having to work around nap schedules and stuff like that. We went to a “grease pit” place for lunch and made a scene as we were paying for the bill. Hawaii people like to pay for the check, kind of like the scene in “So I Married an Axe Murderer”. Lynn won! I’ll get her at dinner!!!! We also had to go to the hospital because there was a mixup with her blood type (who knows what happened) and so they had to do another blood draw. We were surprised that the guy just let us walk into the blood bank, and left us standing there with all the samples and whatever. Kind of weird. But her type checked out as usual - Apos. I think they just mistakenly put the wrong label on or something, which is scary to think about. Anyways, after that, we came home and waited around for Rob. We then went to dinner at a BBQ place nearby. I have never heard of “tri tip” beef before, but when I tasted theirs, I wish I got that. It was super tender and yummy. After eating that, my steak tasted very dry and I couldn’t finish it. I was going to go to the bathroom, but I saw Rob break out his wallet so I had to hold my bladder as I tried to get mine out too. The guy came at the wrong time and Rob immediately handed him his credit card and I tried to tell the guy that I was going to pay for it. He told me whoever hands him the card first wins. I was so mad! These people!!!! So again, I was beaten by the Pagaragans. After dinner we just hung out and talked some more about the movies that we like then went to bed. We were all so tired!

To read Lynn’s account of the day, click here.

Michael and Jimmy, the guitar gods!

So we left Shaun’s house at 4:15am to the airport. We went to Phoenix for the day to visit a friend and to take care of some business, I won’t bother you with the boring details. When we were near the airport, I realized that I forgot my pumping supplies! So, the first stop we did was to the Good Samaritan hospital, where the nice lactation nurses helped me out. They gave me the pump parts (single pump only), and let me use their pumps! I was shocked that they had the Symphony breast pumps throughout the hospital! While I was pumping, I watched “Napoleon Dynamite”. I think that movie is funnier the 2nd time you watch it. After we were done with that, we visited with my old guitar teacher, Jimmy. He was in a band called Sacred Rite when I was taking lessons. He is a great guy and it was non-stop talking the whole time and Michael even jammed with him a little. The only complaint I have is that his room was filled with smoke, and the smell stayed with us all day. Gotta quit, Jimmy! :) We got back late, but Shaun and Scott survived babysitting the boys all day. The only problems they had was due to our forgetfulness, like they had to go to the store to get more diapers because we forgot the big pile on the kitchen. We also forgot the formula can, bottle brush, bibs, burp cloths, and then I was supposed to leave my car keys but ended up taking it with us to Phoenix. God, we’re awful!

It was another weird sleeping night, I went to bed early last night and then got up at 3am to pump, and then just basically stayed up all night. I did more research on a website called “ToyTown Munich” which is an english speaking community living in and around Munich. It is shocking all the things that we US citizens take for granted. Stuff like Netflix doesn’t exist. Or if it does, it is really limited. Getting a phone line or cable or service takes 6 - 12 weeks. Munich is also pretty unfriendly towards children, that’s probably why Germany has a negative population growth! It is all very scary and made me really consider backing the truck up. But then I thought, I can’t let fear get in the way of doing something very worthwhile. And really, all this stuff is just inconveniences, minor things that can seem major but they’re not. We live in a “need it all and need it now” society, so it will be good to live with some frugality (is that even a word?). I will certainly appreciate the US a whole lot more. I also noticed that this is opening up new service opportunities - english speaking services to help ex-pats deal with the German way. So, you can see it as “opportunity” or as “this sucks”. I hope during the first months, I see it in a positive way. I’m sure there will be days of “oh my god, what have I gotten myself into”, but for the most part, I’m sure we’ll be fine. Just thinking about how I’m going to get two babies around using the U-Bahn is making my palms sweat.

Good luck!

I printed out all of Michael’s information for him, checked him in online. He doesn’t really need a whole lot of stuff, so he packed within 30 minutes and we went to the airport. It was raining like mad, which was unusual, but we made it on time and he was off. I was soooo tired when we got home, but wasn’t able to sleep since I was hungry. I made myself breakfast burritos (will I be able to find tortillas in Munich?) and then I had to get the boys up to go to the Special Care Nursery picnic. It wasn’t a picnic at all, but a madhouse of kids everywhere, lots of them multiples. I could barely get around with my stroller! I was disappointed because the pediatric nurses weren’t there, and that’s mainly who we bonded with at our stay in the hospital. I wanted to see our “first” nurse, Nicky, but she just left! I talked to the lactation nurses and they were very happy that I was still breastfeeding! But, all in all, it was a waste of my time, I should’ve stayed home and gotten some much needed sleep. I did get a couple of hours in the afternoon, which was really nice. We went on our walk to Safeway as usual. When it was time for them to go to bed, Rowan didn’t want to and he cried and cried. I finally got him up, fed him a little and that seemed to make him happy. He then had a big smile on his face and kicking his legs and just excited to be out of bed. He was so adorable, what a rascal! I think I will have to start giving them small bottles right before putting them down so that he’s not hungry when going to bed.

Sorry for the little break in the blog, we went on our vacation to Texas. I’ll just sum up our trip in one uber entry and if you want to see pictures, they are here. I stayed up the night before getting everything ready and doing laundry. I had to make a list of stuff to do in the morning, like remember to bring the milk, pack the hammocks, etc. Everything went pretty smoothly and before we knew it, we were at the airport. We didn’t have to wait hardly at all, but we had too many bags. You are only allowed 2 bags per person, and we had 6. OK, before you think “My god, why do you have so many bags?”, let me explain. We had 2 bags for the hammocks, 1 bag for the boys stuff, 1 bag for our stuff, and 2 car seat bases. This is in addition to our 2 carry ons. I didn’t think they would count the car seat bases as a bag since it is light and small and hardly takes up space. But they did. It is totally not fair because our bags were really small and 2 of ours equals one of those big suitcases. Anyways, we got creative and taped the two bases together so it reduced it to 5 bags, and then we were able to stuff all the clothes from our bag in with the hammock bags. So, we avoided the ridiculous $80 charge for extra bags. Now onto the gate! At the security check, it was quite hectic because we had to take the babies out of their car seats, put everything on the xray thing, in addition to taking off all jackets, shoes and what not. What a hassle! When we were at the gate, we were nervous about not having extra seats for the babies, in which case we would have to carry them the whole trip. We didn’t buy extra seats for them, thinking it would be ok. And hey, need to take advantage of free flights for them! I asked the woman about putting us in places so that we have a free seat next to us, but she was so rude and not helpful at all. Saying that the flight would be full due to the long list of stand by’s. I inquired about the next flight leaving 2 hours later and she said that it was totally empty. So, we switched to that flight and hung out at the airport. Sure enough, we had like 3 rows to ourselves! The babies did extremely well, they cried a little at the beginning because they were hungry, so we fed them and they fell asleep for the whole flight. Thank goodness for the car seats! We then got our rental car and drove 3 hours to Trinity. The babies woke up while we went from the airport to the rental car, but once we started driving, they fell asleep again. They just did an amazing job coping with all the activity, we are so proud of them! The rest of the trip was fun, we got to see lots of relatives. Michael’s brother, Denver, and his family came up from California, Michael’s sister and her 2 boys came down from Oklahoma and Michael’s Aunt and Uncle from Castroville (Texas) came for a couple days too. We were amazed at how big our nephews are!!! It’s been 4 years since we’ve seen them last and 4 years is a lot. It was also nice to have night time babysitting, we went to see 3 movies in 3 nights - Wedding Crashers, War of the Worlds, and Bad News Bears. We liked them in that order.

On Monday, we went on a road trip to Austin and brought the boys with us. It has been 9 years since we were last here (since Michael graduated) so we visited lots of old friends. Timing was just perfect, driving was fine, the babies did amazingly well. Our first visit was with people I worked with at Medianet, Lori and Darryl. They still are the same and it’s nice to know that they all still hang out together! We then had a 2nd lunch with the people who helped convince us to move to Austin, Mikal and Chris. It was like we haven’t left and we had so much to talk about. We stayed there really long, and the people were kind of upset because they were closed and wanted to leave. After that, we went to UT and drove around, we didn’t really have time to get out and walk around. Things looked the same, yet different. We then went to visit one of Michael’s friends from UT, Eileen. She recently had a baby as well, and we exchanged emails here and there about our pregnancies and NICU experiences. Her daughter, Erin, is just adorable and it was really fun to watch her crawl around and throw stuff on the ground. We also met her husband, Andrew, and he was really nice too. We had Conan’s pizza and it was delicious! We planned to leave around 7, but we were having so much fun talking that we didn’t leave until 9pm! The boys did well all day and it was only at the last 30 minutes, that they started to really fuss. Elijah was upset because he wasn’t able to get good naps in, I don’t blame him!

The next day (Tuesday), we had another long drive back to Dallas. We left early since we met another friend from UT, April. We were going to meet her for an early dinner, but decided later to just meet at the airport. I was hoping there would be one of those airport restaurants, but the way they have it set up, we had to just sit on some chairs. We got caught up with everything and it was very interesting talking to April about her job as an Audiologist. She recently went on a volunteer trip to Honduras to help the people there. As for the flight, we lucked out again and was able to secure car seats for the boys. Because they are “lap babies”, they reserved us aisle seats. But what we really needed was window seats. So, we just planned to ask the person in our row with the window seat if we could switch. Well, the woman in my row was a real witch and said “No, I really like the window”. Luckily, Michael’s window person never showed up and in the row in front of him, the window person never showed too. Rowan didn’t sleep on this plane, I don’t know why. He hardly slept all day, but yet he was in really good spirits. He had non-stop smiles. Elijah on the other hand, had a hard time, not so much with the flight, but with travelling in general. He had enough! He treasures his naps! The guy sitting next to us was amazed at how well they did, acutally several people commented on how good they were.

Some new milestones that happened while we were there, on Saturday, Elijah turned over from back to front on his own! Of course, it was their first plane trip, first road trip (4 3hr drives).

All in all, a great trip! Back to reality…

Rowan waiting for his first plane trip.

Awwwww…..

Ah, Sunday, time for me to take the lil’ fellas out for something fun. Just like last week, I decided that the ferry to Kingston would be my best option. The ferry is good because once I get there, I can be a walk on passenger with the kids and then we get the joy of travelling across the water and exploring a town. We can snicker at the poor folks sitting in their cars waiting to get on the ferry. Man, that is no fun! Last week we showed up too late and had to wait in downtown Edmunds for 50 minutes. Well we got to walk up a steep hill, visit a museum, look for gardening gloves for Kris (but the store was too lame to have them), and eat a slice of pizza. I was oogling the “all you can eat” Before we knew it, we had to hurry back to catch the 12:05. Meanwhile, mind you, sweltering people were sitting in their cars in a line a half mile long waiting to get on. Me and the kids would have hated that.

Alongside the ferry we had an escort of two paramilitary pontoon boats, each decorated with a soldier and two massive machine guns. It looked like something out of a movie, probably starring Bruce Willis or Kurt Russell.Rowan liked being carried in the “Baby-Bjorn,” but when we went to the front of the ferry the wind was sostrong that Rowan blinked repeatedly, took in some sharp breaths, and began to squirm and cry in surprise!we had to beat a hasty retreat!

This time, on our second visit to Kingston we looked for a steep hill to hike up. There was a road leading north that climbed 400 feet in a mile. The kids fell asleep but I was pretty sweaty at the top. We found the “Northwest Labor College” a comforting series of buildings with orderly signs indicating purpose. “DINING” said one. “CLASS ROOMS” another. I had to take pictures of the kids in front of each sign. A Labor College seems like a fun place to go, like, a vocational college. In my job it seems like I’m carrying around tiny nuggets of knowledge and trying to route and order a pile of spaghetti accordingly. All the systems drift toward chaos and it starts afresh every day. How many times have I set out to solve problem X, but problem Y, brand new and urgent supplants my solution time? It is pretty exhausting at the moment. Me and the boys sighed.

When they grew tired of the Labor College, I jogged back down the hill for some adventure in town. This consisted of wandering into a bar (”children are welcome when dining with their parents,” warned the sign) and ordering a pint of Pyramid ale. I also got a hamburger to go. I’d eaten here once with Robert after our climb of Mount Constance and the burgers were great. The waitresses kept coming by to play with the kids, and a gruff old fellow playing pool made hearty comments. Fortified by the cold beer, I pushed the little ones outside to feed the three of us on a green park lawn. Kris and I had a quaint picnic blanket, with a waterproof bottom and cute orange stakes. I duly staked my blanket out, feeling a little light-headed.

I got the kids out of their stroller and they seemed kind of confused laying on the blanket, I think the sun was kind of bright in their eyes. It wasn’t a sunny day, but you know how sometimes thin clouds are worse because the whole sky is uniformely white? So that bothered them. Propping them up to feed was tough. Finally with Rowan’s hand pushing on Elijah’s head we achieved equilibrium with bottles at the right angle for drinking. And so it went.
Finally they were fed and I could eat my steaming burger. It was not as good as I remembered, but still pretty good. Uh-oh, Rowan is unhappy despite feeding! I changed him and put the stroller into “nap mode.” This involves swaddling the subject in blankets, lowering the seat to recline position and putting the yellow blanket over the top. He muttered a bit then dropped off to sleep. I finished my burger then I heard some announcement about the ferry leaving. I quickly calculated available milk supply, approximate crankiness level, and likelyhood of additional marvels in Kingston. A quick diaper change of Elijah, and we moved with whatever haste small babies travelling with their father allowed to catch this ferry. They had a nice nap and I read a book. Back at the car they were so tired I didn’t want to wake them up. Such swea-peas they are!

Well, it’s my first Mother’s day and I don’t get to see my little cutie pies! I woke up at 7am again, I think it’s next to impossible to get up later than that because it’s so bright already. I had to pump right away since I was really full and I pumped 450mls!!!! Just to give you an idea of how much that is, most women with singletons pump about 100ml’s normally. I did the web checkin for my flight and noticed that they had first class upgrades available. It didn’t take me long to decide to do it. Mother’s day gift to myself. Haha! I know I’ll regret it when I get my credit card bill. Anyways, my parents stayed at the hotel last night so they came to the house to pick me up and take me to the airport and pick up some stuff along the way. I was concerned about the milk that I had stored and how I would transport it. I did pump quite a bit! What we did was have a regular cooler with ice and have all the milk in there until I had to leave. We then transferred it to the mini cooler that I had that fit into my suitcase. Before I left, I HAD to have Kozo sushi (10 ebi cucumber rolls and a spam musubi!). I didn’t eat it all at once of course, I ate 5 in the airport and 5 right before I landed in Seattle. We didn’t have that much time to do much of anything, so before I knew it, I was at the airport already. The security guy grabbed my sushi bag and inspected it and said “You get the spam musubi and sushi, looks good!” The flight home was great, 1st class is awesome. They never let you go without drinks or whatever. The food was much better and you get 3 courses! But the best part is the big cushy seat with the leg rest! I took the shuttle home and I was the last to get dropped off. I was a little frustrated because I could feel that I needed to pump really soon! I got home relatively quickly and it was good to see Michael again. I didn’t get to see the boys because they were already in bed. I can’t wait for the morning!

I ended up staying up all night getting packed. I had so much laundry to do and I also wanted to make sure I didn’t forget anything. I managed to pack everything in a backpack and a carry on. I usually would be able to fit everything in 1 bag but because I have to bring my video camera with me, it takes up a lot of room. The shuttle came at around 5am. I decided to do it that way because it’s so much more trouble to wake the boys up, drive down to the airport and then bring them back. I didn’t want to disturb them. The ride was ok except for the fact that the driver mixed up an address and so it took 15 minutes longer than necessary. I still got there with plenty of time to spare. I gave up my seat because the woman who was sitting next to me got split up with her husband. Since he had an aisle seat, it didn’t matter to me that we switched. As long as he didn’t have a center. The flight was uneventful… I combination watched “Big Daddy” and took some cat naps in between. I did manage to pump on the plane. You should’ve seen me, sitting in the bathroom for 20+ minutes. I’m sure I got a few stares. I even pumped twice. Since I didn’t know how long it would be before I could pump, I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t become engorged. The food was horrible though. I took one bite and threw the rest away. My dad picked me up along with Scott’s friend, Scott. We called him Dr. Scott to distinguish them apart. We went home and ate my dad’s famous Kalua Pig. Oh, so good! Then my mom had to run some errands, so I went with her. After that, we all went to the hotel. We dropped some stuff off and then I went running more errands with my mom. It seemed like I was in the car forever. Especially since there was rush hour traffic. That evening, I ate dinner with my mom and dad at a Korean BBQ place, everyone else ate dinner at the hotel. I decided to go home and sleep since I didn’t want to share living quarters. I like having my own space. Plus, it’s not a trip home if I’m not going to be in my home! I drove back to Kailua and visited my friend, Denise, who just had another baby 6 weeks ago. Poor Denise, she has a very “high need” baby who likes to be held a certain way and cries whenever she is not held that way. That means she can’t hardly do anything else! I stayed for about a hour and a half. I wish I could’ve stayed longer, but I had to pump. I did get to hold Kira, she is so cute and has so much hair!!! The rest of the night was uneventful. Pumping and checking email!