2012 Holidays

Back in Munich after celebrating Christmas 2012 at Oma and Opa's oasis in Heidelberg.  We ate like royalty and were spoiled like brats.  Seeing my parents show their love for my kids is one of my favorite things ever.  The way Elise leans away from my chest as I hold her and softly puts her arms around Oma while smiling so sweetly when it's time to say good night.....Paul walking towards Opa's voice whenever he hears it and slightly cocking his head and looking at him at an angle and a sly smile....Paul saying "mmmmmma" which I think is him trying to say Oma.....Opa presenting Lily's new bike from Christkind with such enthusiasm and energy (see video in attached link) that it makes me just stop and remember how much I love my Dad.....Oma thinking about my kids so much that it comes through in all the perfect gifts she finds for them, the new food she wants to make just to see if they would like it makes me stop and remember how lucky I was when I was a kid and not realizing enough at the time how good I had it.  

I'm more emotional than usual these days.  I'm super excited for my newly engaged sister that I get giddy at times thinking about how happy she is.  I'm so proud of how far we've come as a family, but bummed that "easy" things like getting out of the house as a family, turning off kids mode and turning on relationship mode with Nate, and not letting the small challenges of the day drain me so much....can be so hard. I'm nervous about Elise's first surgery in 2013.  I'm excited and scared of being mom to 1 year old twins and a very independent minded 3 year old.  My breastfeeding career is now over and it's bitter sweet..... a bit more on the sweeter side.

Here are pics from our festive December.  Prost.

December 2012

Two x One Year = Party Time

Wow, that was fast.  Somehow a year has whizzed by since Paul and Elise made their exciting entrance into the world.  That night and morning at the hospital is burned into my memory, with Elise making a relatively easy entrance and Paul deciding he just didn't want to come out yet so he had to get yanked feet first.  Only when he was about nine months old did our pediatrician ask if we knew that his collarbone had been broken.  Nope, but it must've happened on his way out.  And now we have two vocal, energetic, on-the-go one year olds.  That could be read as whiny and fussy, but also as happy and playful.  We get our doses of both, try to forget the former and remember the latter. 

We threw a party at our place for the big occasion on Friday and of course afterwards found out that we made a faux pas by celebrating before the actual birthday.  Oh well, it was a fun party and the babies got to enjoy their first cupcake.  In true non-identical twin form, Paul was interested in his cupcake right away while Elise turned up her nose, then Paul's interest quickly faded while Elise was re-energized and ate or crumbled away all of hers. 

We invited everyone we thought was a big help during the first year.  We really needed help and got lots of it, so between babysitters, friends, and Oma & Opa, hopefully everyone was feeling our gratitude.  Oma and Opa were also a huge help with the party itself, between helping with the baking and cooking and shopping and clean-up, they made it about ten times easier on us than otherwise. 

Even since the last blog post things are changing fast.  Paul is a full-time walker now, toddling wherever he wants to go and gaining confidence every day.  Elise is still crawling like she's in a race, but is also finally enjoying pushing the push walker around the apartment.  Actually, reminiscent of Lily she enjoys it until she runs into something, at which point she gets really upset.  Both of them are "talking" more, with Paul saying "dat" for pretty much everything while today I caught Elise talking calmly on her new toy phone, and when she saw me she tilted her head and gave a shy smile.

I'm sure their second year will be full of new challenges but lots of cool changes too, I can't even imagine what I'll be writing about a year from now.

On the full family front, my two months of work travel from Turkey to Mallorca to Darmstadt to Ulm to Helsinki to Stockholm to Dublin to Nuremberg  is complete, with one last day trip to Nuremberg this week (only an hour away on the fast (175 mph) train) before taking the last two weeks of the year as vacation.  Lily enjoyed St. Nikolaus visiting school and church, and she's telling more and more stories like how she learned how to drive a real car at school the other day.  And Nicole is looking forward to weaning and the additional bit of freedom that brings which I'm sure will mean more tennis and get togethers with friends new and old. 

Gratitude

I don't find it hard to be grateful for so much on a daily basis.  We do a gratitude prayer at dinner, I subscribe to a couple gratitude themed blogs, and I keep a journal.  Gosh, I'm starting to plan Paul and Elise's first Birthday party and the theme is gratitude; we've invited the people that have helped us get through year 1.  I guess I had hoped gratitude would help fuel my drive to do more things I like to do.  Whether it's picking up a book more often that I can learn something from, leaving the house more at night, calling friends and family back in the states more to connect, working out more like I used to once upon a time, or planning a date with my husband.  I'm too fried and exhausted or just not making the time to fit more into my days right now.  I know how to seize the heck out of a good moment but I'm not as good at letting the frustrating and draining moments of my days roll off my back.  They get to me and I wish I didn't depend on quiet evenings and sleep so much to help me bounce back.

Here are a couple moments from the weekend that gave me so much joy.  Paul is officially a walker and already showing soccer skills.  Elise prefers to crawl even though she is trying quite a bit to walk.  It's harder for her to get the hang of her much heavier right foot.

 
This one is primarily for Opa but thought others would enjoy too.

Rockin' the ABC's and Steps!

Wanted to share a couple fun videos from tonight.  This past Sunday, Paul and Elise both took a couple first tentative steps on the same day, what are the chances? It's not the taking of the steps as much as the look on their faces that makes me so incredibly full of joy.  It happened on 11/11 at 11 months old.  That will be easy for me to remember.  I guess they are pretty excited about their development because some dance moves recently popped up too.

Here they are lightly rockin' out to the ABC song.  Paul seems to show more interest right now practicing his walking abilities.  I caught him doing this tonight too.  Sorry you missed it in person Nate.  Celebrate with an extra Guinness tonight.

Bwahbwahbwah

Our house is loud, oh so loud, full of motion, and busy making a mess.  I spend my days on the floor;  chairs are for meals and guests now.  I am always covered in snot and dirt from being a human jungle gym or a shoulder to rest or cry on.  I wear the same sweatshirt every morning and night and only change if I really need to.  I shower every 3rd day and wear no make up, only lotion.  If I get most of my hair in a ponytail in the morning, I'm good to leave the house.  It sounds bad and so unattractive, I know.  Don't worry, I'm not going to extremes letting my armpit hair grow and growing dreadlocks.  I would just say I'm doing the minimum and I don't mind at all; I like it.  I don't feel ugly being this way; I've never been one to get dolled up and that's fine with me.

Here are some pics from the last couple weeks, random happenings in the Mather house.  I also posted one video of Elise's latest milestone.  Lily is busy speaking German noticeably more now - when she plays alone with her dolls, she only speaks German now.  Paul is busy giving high fives and making that silly sound where you move your finger back forth across your lips to make a funny sound - something like - bwahbwahbwah.  Elise is busy standing and clapping.  She also loves to cuddle, makes up for her before 6 am wake ups the last couple weeks!  Actually, I take that back, doesn't really make up for it.

Lily getting better at the blow dryer.

 Silly Lilly

 Push me Momma

 In and out of baskets.

 Check out Elise's position, cracks me up.  Feet first Elise.

Playing along the Isar

 Playing in drawers

 Elise is still our especially smiley one

 Just a pretty shot

 Paul loves to walk

 Poor attempt at self family portrait

 Silly Elise

 LET ME OUT

5 Cheers For Health

Paul is back.  Illness sure has been kicking some butt in our family.  It's a reoccurring theme in our house that is just annoying.  Paul had it the worst and the longest with a long lasting double ear infection to the point that I was starting to believe Paul's temperament was whiny and sensitive.  Happy to report that Paul is back....to normal whininess levels.  :)  The stars collided and good health returned to all of us just in time for an amazing Indian summer weekend in Munich.  Besides the amazing weather, enjoying back to back family meals without having to pick up an inconsolable baby has been a dream come true.  Here's to hoping this is the beginning of a real groove for the Mather family.

Here are some recent videos of Paul and Elise and a couple silly pics of our Quatschkopf Lily.

Elise's hardcore head banging


Lily introduced this game and it stuck

Really starting to interact and having some fun together.

Family Snapshot

We've settled back into the "normal" routine as fall has arrived with Lily back in preschool and work is in full swing.  I'm heading off for Belek, Turkey this week for a training conference, so the craziness will be all in Nicole's hands (with the help of our trusty babysitter/mother's helper, of course).  Work travel will keep me on the go for a couple of days per week most weeks through mid-November, then things should taper off a bit, so hopefully Nicole won't have pulled out all her hair by then.  I know I would if roles were reversed... spending all day with the twins and Lily has a way of wearing down all my mental defenses and making me wish for bedtime to arrive ASAP.  So before my oddessy begins, here's a snapshot of what everyone is doing these days.

Paul (twins are 10 months old today) is in the midst of a couple of fun developments.  First is pushing things to walk.  He loves pushing the walker around, sometimes with one of his sisters in it.  And if that isn't in sight he'll go for chairs.  His latest game is to take each chair from the dining room table and push it until it hits something that stops it. So our dining room/dance floor room sometimes has six chairs at random edges of the room.  His other trick is throwing.  Everything.  We enjoy games of catch with just about anything.  The only down side to this is with food... Elise is doing great with finger foods these days but Paul just takes things from his tray and tosses them.  Paul is also a vampire these days, as he's added two lateral incisors on top to go with his central incisors on the bottom.  They've just broken through, so we'll see if you'll actually be able to see them before the central ones come in too.

Elise continues to be our smiley girl.  She and Lily enjoy just sitting and laughing at each other, and she likes to follow Lily around the house.  She is a quick crawler and is still in the "I want to taste everything" phase, so this afternoon I had to fish random paper out of her mouth while trying to avoid getting chomped.  Elise also likes to hang out in our shower stall for some reason, but can't figure out how to get out, so whenever she's tired of being there she just squawks and holds up her arms.  She was also testing her legs this evening, standing on her own with no hands for a few seconds at a time.  Elise and Paul are also starting to interact a bit more and follow each other around the apartment to see what trouble they can get into.

Lily is enjoying being a preschooler, even if her stories about what happened at school that day tend to defy belief ("I jumped out of the window today", "so and so flew into a tree and gave me an apple").  The girl has quite an imagination, and she can really get wrapped up in playing with her Barbies or Playmobil and rehash the recent scenes of her life.  She also likes to join in our grown up conversations, making sure everyone knows what's on her mind.  And she's been accompanying Nicole to her weekly tennis sessions lately and taking a few swings at the end of time.  She's got a nice looking swing but the hand-eye coordination will take some time. 

Nicole has been enjoying getting back into tennis and heading out for dinner with friends after the kids are all down, and I've been enjoying the continued good weather to get out to run and bike.  Of course most of our time is dedicated to our respective work, and I definitely feel like I have the easier job these days.  There's always something to do until the kids are down for the night, but at least we usually have a couple hours of me or us time in the evening to decompress. 

Here are some pics from the last couple of weeks.

The push walker is getting a lot of action these days.

Lily prefers showers these days but once in a while will want to jump in and join her siblings for bath time.

Empty beer bottle case and trash can really can be that much fun apparently.

Checked out a cool Kids fest at the German Chancellory on the Reunification Holiday. Lily getting her daily jumping fix in.

Paul will push anything and anyone.

A perk of Lily in Kindergarten is that the babies can easily play with Lily's toys.

Paul's expression is priceless.

 It's so nice when the babies can entertain themselves on the floor while cooking.  So worth the mess.

September Happenings

Even though colds and ear infections are trying hard to bring us down, we've been pushing through and still finding our fun.  Aunt Lolo (Sonya) visiting and celebrating the start of Oktoberfest have been highlights.  

Here are some photos from the last couple of weeks.

Oktoberfest costume parade. 

 Lily's first Bday party for a Kindergarten friend.  One friendly looking Lion.

Sonya and Nicky at Oktoberfest 2012

A group shot at Oktoberfest.

Barbie time with Lolo

Got a great new push walker that Paul LOVES.  He reminds me so much of Lily in that it's a love/hate relationship...giddy when he's moving forward, crying the moment it stops.

More playtime with Lolo (aka Sonya)

What parent doesn't have this shot catching their baby ripping TP?  

Our snotty stinker

Definitely starting to interact more.  The "It's mine" game has begun.  In this game, the phone is up for grabs.  Elise won round 1.

 Elise isn't letting round 2 go to Paul easily.

Summer Trip Aug/Sep 2012

Back in Munich after being gone a couple of weeks.  The trip included a stop in Zurich to see a specialist about Elise, a wedding in France, and some good R&R at Oma and Opa's house in Heidelberg.  Our day to day routine begins again tomorrow with Lily starting back at Kindergarten and Nate's work travel schedule picking up again.

Here are just a few pics from our trip plus one video of Lily and Opa on the tennis court!

Sommer Urlaub Aug Sep 2012

Macrodactyly Update

Before I dive into a (long) update about what we've found out and our next steps, I need to say a big thank you to everyone who gave us contacts and support over the past few months.  We would not have been able to dig as deep to find experts world-wide without pretty much everyone we know reaching out to everyone they know.  We've ended up seeing and corresponding with some of the very few experts in the world for dealing with this disease.  So a big thanks to you all for all of the time and love you've put into this.

Since the previous blog on this subject, we feel a lot more informed on options and also with the fact that there is no perfect course of treatment for Elise, and really no "best" course, but a number of courses which are good options, each with their own pluses and minuses.  So whatever course we end up choosing, it will be the best for us.  As for Elise herself and her two big toes, they continue to get bigger but they're not holding her back.  And what we feared/assumed would be two significantly ingrown toenails have turned out to be just fine, not ingrown and relatively easily trimmable.  

In April we went to a specialty clinic in Aschau which is about an hour away from us.  Apparently they've seen macrodactyly there relatively frequently, but the doctor we saw there hadn't seen it or treated it herself.  Her only real recommendation was to sit back and wait and see how the toes developed and to hold off on surgery as long as it made sense.  We weren't very happy with her bedside manner and it did feel like there was a language barrier.  So we don't plan to go back.  

In May we were able to collect couple of e-mail opinions from two experts in the US:  Dr. King in Chicago and Dr. Kasser in Boston.  Both basically recommended ray resection of the second toe and then at some later point a procedure called epiphysiodesis on the big toe, which basically destroys the growth plates on the bones.  The second procedure would be timed to happen whenever her big toe is the length of Nicole's.  We ended up having a couple of quick phone conversations with Dr. King which were very informative and we were incredibly happy that he was actually willing to have a real conversation with us and answer all of our questions.  

When we traveled to the States in June we were able to get an appointment with Dr. King and spent about three hours in his office.  Ok, about an hour of that was spent waiting for X-rays to be taken and their results to be delivered.  From the X-rays we could see that the bones in the two affected toes were a bit larger than the other toes and than the corresponding toes on the other foot.  They were also significantly separated from each other by tissue.  There's definitely a lot of extra tissue around there.  Dr. King walked us through the options and drew us pictures of the procedures and we walked out of his office feeling much more knowledgable than when we walked in.  Before I forget, a couple of other random details.  Even with a ray resection and destroying the growth plates, the tissue in that part of her foot will probably continue to grow, but the rate of growth will probably slow since there's some kind of symbiotic effect, where if the bone isn't growing, the tissue won't grow as much.  Also, her toes continue to bend upwards significantly, and Dr. King mentioned that it should be relatively simple to "loosen" the tendons connected to her big toe to let it rest in a more normal position.  Oh, and one more thing, that even if she had zero toes she would be able to walk fine since you only really depend on three points on your foot:  the heel and pads at the base of your foot by the big and little toe.  

After getting back to Munich we got contact information for an expert in Hamburg, Dr. Habernicht.  Nicole spoke to him on the phone and we were happy to hear that he's treated macrodactyly often.  His recommendation for treatment was a bit different though, saying that he would want to use a single surgery to perform both a ray resection and epiphysiodesis, stopping the bone growth before the toe was adult-sized sometime next summer when Elise is 1.5.  His reasoning was that the tissue will continue to grow to some degree, and it shouldn't matter much if the big toe ends up a bit smaller on that foot than the other.  He wants to wait until next summer to do this (after she's walking).  Seems that opinion is divided on whether to do the ray resection before or after she walks, with Dr. King essentially saying it didn't matter much, she'd walk just fine either way and the recovery would be short enough and in a soft cast so it shouldn't disturb her getting around much.

It was also recommended to us to contact Dr. Weber who is based in Zurich.  He agreed with the ray resection but didn't want to destroy the growth plates in the big toe yet, preferring instead to remove a nerve in that toe which in his opinion should slow the rate of growth.  We need to follow up with him more and get other doctors' opinions about the nerve option, but that basically brings us to where we are today.  We have an appointment to meet with Dr. Weber next week in Zurich.

A few people have contacted us from around the world from the last blog, so part of our intent with this post is to give a lot of details and names of doctors since there's just not a ton of this information available online.  And if you've stumbled across this blog post with a child or even yourself in a similar situation, please comment!

School's Out For Summer

August in Munich is eerily quiet if you're a resident and bustling if you're a tourist.  Schools are closed and many shops close so Munichers can vacation elsewhere.  It really makes it obvious where tourists venture and how helpful it can be to have some insider tips to escape the crowds when it comes to eating and hidden gems.
Lily's school vacation starts tomorrow for a month and even though "serenity now" keeps entering my thoughts, there is a part of me looking forward to the change of pace and how life will unfold for us without the school routine.
School ending, our long bout of sicknesses ending (fingers crossed), immobility from the babies ending,even Olympics ending, life is suddenly feeling different. Now if you walk into our house, you'll see 2 babies crawling after me with Elise making a bee-line if she catches sight of Lily.  We have our jail set up but it is a lot of fun to watch the babies explore everything...that novelty will probably end by next post if not by tomorrow already.

Here are some moments from the last week.

Paul is now crawling, 2 weeks since Elise made the move.  Had to capture the moment, got a kick out of his sound effect when getting the rabbit he was crawling for.

Took Lily to her first Munich Theater performance of the Gruffalo Child and she loved it.  She wasn't too happy about them deviating from the story at certain parts but she put up with it.  Tough critic.

Got a cute video of the babies giggling tonight before bed.

On the Move, Not Quite In the Groove

The past couple of weeks have been full of ups and downs.  The weather has been hit or miss, with an annoying amount of rain and unseasonable cold, so we've been cooped up a bit more than normal.  And a nasty bug made its way through the house last week wiping out all of the non-babies for a couple of days and keeping Lily from her Kindergarten's trip to a "wildpark", basically like a zoo with some open areas where deer and a few other random wild animals wander around.  We'd been talking it up to her all week, so we were all pretty bummed when she didn't get to go.  At least we've all been enjoying the Olympics, even if Lily preferred to watch women's weight lifting instead of beach volleyball today.

Today was actually kind of comical, as Lily and I went to mass but about 30 seconds before we arrived we were hit by a downpour and by the time we got to the door I was completely soaked, with water dripping down my back.  Lily fared better with her ladybug umbrella, up just in time.  I guess God wasn't pleased that we were a couple of minutes late.

On the good side, Oma and Opa spent a few days with us this week, and everyone had a great time.  I was actually away on a business trip for most of the time, so I can only report secondhand that everyone had fun, but I can verify firsthand that we had some great BBQ ribs the last night they were in town.  

The one with the big accomplishment is Elise.  She's crawling!  She'd been on the edge for a few weeks, but Monday she finally put all the pieces together and started going.  She's still a bit tentative but she's been venturing a bit more each day.  The one thing that really gets her going?  Gigi.  For whatever reason, whenever Elise sees her she makes a beeline.  Gigi's not quite so excited and actually gave her a bit of a swat today.  I guess it's payback for all the times Elise has pulled Gigi's fur while "petting" over the past few months.  

Snapshot - Kid's Milestones - 7 months and 3 years

We were hanging out at home on the floor yesterday snapping some pics.  Looking at the first pic below made me realize that I should really jot down some notes on what the kids are up to these days because they've been busy and it's been cool, really cool.

Paul - Just last week you preferred to be hanging out on your back.  Now, you are sitting up alone and that's all you want to do.  Still no teeth, just enough daily drool to fill a kiddie pool.  Your first toy preference?  The  stuffed Tiger you're holding in this picture below.  You enjoy making dinosaur sounds and rocking a little when I sing.   You seem to like pulling your sister's hair now, not so cool.  You like to sleep on your stomach and suck your thumb for comfort as you doze off.  First thing that always takes my breath away looking at you are your eyes, your big blue eyes.  Something about them draws me in every time I look at them and my heart melts a little bit.

Elise - you are so wonderfully smiley.  I didn't know babies could smile so much until you arrived.  You don't want to sit up yet and prefer rather to scoot, roll, and rock.  You are impressively fast and can move far without being able to officially crawl yet but any moment you will be crawling. You have 2 teeth and cute curls by each of your ears.  Whether it's your eyes, head, or body, you are always on the move.  You love the door bouncer, spinning around giggling the whole time.  You don't like sitting but you like to do planks.  Go figure.

You two are on to a new eating routine, solids twice a day now to go with two long naps and four times on the boob, sleeping most of the way through the night with a bit of crying around 5 then drifting back off into la-la land for another couple of hours.  Dinner time is still a work in progress with the two of you being tired and not wanting to let the rest of us eat and chat as we want. 

Lily - It's been a big week for you.  You now sleep in a big girl bed and you're back to peeing and pooping in the potty.  It seems like this time might be it.  You wanting to carry the potty with you on the train to the park to show it off to strangers is my sign that the time has come.  You are hopping on one foot and trying out some new dance moves.  You are getting to know more letters and numbers by sight, more in English than German, but your German is growing really fast.  You are afraid of dogs these days and not so nice to our cats but you are overall very sweet to Paul and Elise and more and more helpful in between some oh so impressive voice-hoarsing meltdowns.