Naturally the twins have been learning all the Disney princess names. Lately they have really fallen in love with Tiana and Moana. I hear them pick up the dolls and say Ti-ana and Mo-ana. But I also often hear Dorothy said Ti-dorothy or Mo-dorothy. 
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Category Archives: Status
Nice Little Saturday
I don’t do much in the kitchen at La Casa de Kraft. We tried that experiment and all empirical data informs us that I should stay out of it, save a few particular items.
Pancake balls, better and more accurately known as ebleskivers, were one of those random things that define me—something weird to normal American standards, thus something I really like. They are filled pancakes—you can fill them with fruit, something savory, just about anything. After not making them for quite some time, I made some this morning for the girls: strawberry, blueberry, and brown sugar cinnamon.
Later on in the day, almost two years after the last “we just got to get out of the house” Saturday that resulted in the same, I took the older girls to the Texas Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry.
Nothing terribly notable about the day, just a nice little Saturday.
Twins in Motion
They find ways to entertain themselves.
Dominoes
Twins learning to pull up to standing can form a line of human dominoes.
Specialist Parade
Hopefully this will be a silly post in the end. The twins are now 10 months old—incredible how time has flown by. All in all, things have been pretty good.
They’re up to 16 or so pounds now. Still tiny and barely on the growth chart, but the lines are still headed up and to the right so they’re on par for their little fifth-percentile niche. Except for their head size. True to the Kraft family tradition, they have big heads.
Which apparently is a bad thing sometimes too.
Ana’s head size, relative to the rest of her and her growth, concerned the doctor so she had a cranial ultrasound the next day. Vanessa, because of our lovely twins, have had a lot of ultrasound imagery performed by techs that passed along images to the doctor for review. She knows the drill. The techs always say things like “We’re not supposed to say things like this, but everything looks great.”
For Ana’s appointment, the strict “The doctor reviews the images and will let your doctor know.” Then followed by the dreaded “I need to check with the radiologist to make sure I took all the images he needs.” which translates to “something isn’t normal”.
Long story made short, Ana’s doctor called us into the office today to tell us that she has excess fluid around her brain. The radiologist and him believe it to be benign and that it’ll self-resolve within a year or so, but he wants us to see a neurosurgeon for a second opinion.
Both girls are still missing some development milestones, so our next PT/OT evaluation is later this week.
We started this week with zero specialists. I’d really like to end this week the same.
Ride ‘Em!
I put the twins into a playpen together in the office while working and waiting for Vanessa to get back from a walk around the block with the other kids. I step out to grab some water and Vanessa walks into the office.
“No! Don’t do that!”
Asking Vanessa what was happening… “Ana was sitting on Dorothy’s back, pulling her hair.”
Entering Beast Mode at HEB
Beast Mode. And HEB needs more of those huge three-kid carts.
Quick Trip
Back at the house. Just a quick visit. RSV has a typical course where it peaks at 3-4 days, then hangs out for awhile afterwards. With premies, the schedule can be extended some and the team thinks we probably endured the majority of the spike at home. Trust me, we have the lack of sleep to prove that 🙂
They kept their vitals up off of oxygen, were low maintenance throughout the day, and we felt good about continuing supportive care at home. RSV in a little one is one of those things if you read too much on WebMD about it, you’d want to stay in the hospital until they seem perfect, or at least buy a few monitors and install a wall suction unit.
Thanks for all of the love and support. It means a lot to us.
For today’s pictures, once they were off oxygen and proved they could keep their vitals up, they let them unofficially move in together. It’s cute to see them squirm to get closer to each other, then fall asleep cuddled together. The bonus picture is of the view from Dorothy’s room, complete with the Tower. Different hospitals but we always seem to get rooms with a view of campus.
Dorothy & Ana
Ana is always the high one.
Not a great pic, but the tower is there.
Back To The Land Of Monitors
Starting on Christmas, Dorothy, and then Ana, started showing signs of a cold. Stuffy head, coughing, sneezing, and the like. The other girls had something, so we figured they must have passed it on. We took the older three into the doctor. They all had some virus and two of them had secondary infections from that. In asking about the twins, basically, unless they had a fever or wheezing, there wasn’t anything to really check out.
Fast-forward a week, the twins are still under the weather and starting to get worse. The cough changed. There was a little wheezing on occasion. They weren’t eating the same way as before. Even though we have an appointment on the books already for Tuesday, we squeezed them into the doctor’s office today.
The doctor wasn’t happy hearing them, and then was doubleplusunpleased seeing their sats. Oxygen saturation in your blood should be pretty high, 97%-100%, that ballpark. Both girls were in the 80% range. Along with a positive RSV test result, not only did this mean a return to the hospital for both girls, protocol dictated that they needed to be medically transported to be monitored in case levels dropped further.
An ambulance came to the clinic, slid both girls in a transport incubator, and headed off with V riding in the jump seat while I failed to maintain a 500-foot distance following in our van.
Instead of returning to their hospital of birth, we’re at Dell Children’s Hospital now—the same one Olivia stayed at during her major asthma attack and where Catalina had her tonsils removed. It’s literally in our neighborhood.
RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is one of those standard viruses that most people wouldn’t care about. For healthy folks, basically, it causes a cold that lasts a week. For vulnerable groups—such as infants in generals and premies moreso—it can be gnarly. Per the CDC, it is the most common cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia in kids under 1 years old in the U.S. Just yesterday, one of Austin’s TV stations reported on a spike in infant hospitalizations due to RSV.
We were initially taken to the ER to be “stabilized”. Protocol, again, dictated that we make a pitstop in the ER for everything to be checked out in an environment where if they made a sudden turn for the worse, everyone would be ready. Fate would have it that the resident physician that the girls had while in the NICU was working in the ER tonight and assigned to us, so we were able to catch up a bit.
Of course, this is the one day we dressed them alike. Their matching Christmas onesies are the warmest clothes they own which are also perfect to confuse the medical staffs treating both girls at the same time!
We’re in the unit now—regular hospital rooms, not the NICU—with each of the girls in their own room and settled. The plan is to monitor, wean them off of needing oxygen, and get them past the worst of it before back to home care.
Dorothy
Pretty fly ride
Dorothy
Ana
Merry Christmas!
Ana and Dorothy holding hands
The Oldies waiting for Santa
After opening presents on Christmas Eve.
The Mass-Attendees
Merry Christmas!
We opened a few presents on Christmas Eve and planned on all seven of us going on our first adventure as a whole family. Over night, Teresa started running a fever, so we sent O and MC with Grandma and Grandpa to Mass and kept everyone else back. We were borderline about taking the twins out as it was and with Teresa sick, no go.
Christmas was lovely with a nice breakfast, present opening, a nice lunch and playing outside on their new bikes (you’d think I would have a picture of their bikes…). Catalina seems to be catching whatever Teresa has. I hope it is bacterial and the amoxicillin that O is taking for an ear infection will serve double-duty on her.
After getting them all down, V, the twins, and I sang Christmas carols and prayed the Office of Readings since we all ended up missing church on Christmas.