We were someplace around Barstow...

...on the edge of the desert when the formula began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit poopy, maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge pacifiers, all swooping and screeching and diving around the crib, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the rail down to Las Vegas.

The diaper bag looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of cheerios, seventy five boxes of Animal Crackers, five sheets of high powered Fruit Rollups, a salt shaker half full of Pixie Stix, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored Skittles, M&M's, Nerds, Runts....and also a quart of apple juice, a quart of Kool-Aid, a case of formula, a pint of raw GoGurt and two dozen apple slices. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious snack collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the GoGurt. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a baby in the depths of a GoGurt binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

The greatest picture I have ever taken

I'll probably get in trouble for posting this picture, but I couldn't resist. Kayla's hair has been going all Super Saiyen on us lately, so I decided to try and document it, then lucked out and got a great "crazy eye" pose from her as well.

Who Am I?

Daddy's sleeping, and Mommy's trying to sleep. I just want to play! So let's play a guessing game.

Can you tell who I am?

Mommy covered my hair with the hat for this picture, because sometimes people can tell us apart by our hair. One of us has more hair that's a little darker than the other. Mommy also put me in a sleeper that's too big for me, because sometimes people can tell us apart by the way our clothes fit. One of us is about a pound bigger than the other.

Mommy says it's easy to tell who's who when we're together, but not as easy when we're not side by side. She can almost always tell us apart in pictures, but in person she keeps calling me by my sister's name! I'd tell her who I was if I could talk. Daddy does a better job of telling me apart from my sister.

So can you tell who I am?




















I'm Megan Rae!

And Your Momma Dresses You Funny...

I've been accused (thanks mom) of playing dress up with the girls, like dolls. Now she's not serious and she knows I don't have the patience to change from outfit to outfit with them just for the purpose of seeing them look cuter than cute. (I admit, I'm biased) However, I AM guilty of putting them in complete outfits and staging them for pictures once in a while when I change their clothes. I definitely don't have a future in the fashion industry.

Unfortunately, the downside of them being small at this point, is that most of their clothes are way too big. They're in "Newborn" size still, but even some of those are still too big on them.

And sometimes, a 3/6 month piece of clothing finds its way into the drawer and Mommy doesn't realize it until it's half way on Kayla.

Then Mommy decides to put it on anyway, just to see how big it is! Kayla isn't having any of it, though!

Maybe if her foot reached further than the knee of the outfit, it wouldn't be so bad...



Then there's the cute little sleeper that I thought would look cute on Kayla.
Uh, Mommy? I think they're on backwards....

Pants can be particularly challenging.

Mike declared these pink pants their "MC Hammer Pants", complete with dancing Megan through the air Hammer-Style, to emphasize the image. If only I had a video!


Loki just looks like he's begging me not to make his twins look funny -- or at least not to make him the next to wear the big puffy pants!

Hmm, I wonder if I can find some dog-clothes that would coordinate with the girls' clothes...

One month down

Couple of pics of girls in KU outfits to lead off. See, they're not always in pink and purple.





Sleep schedules continue to be nonexistent. After a couple of promising nights last week where babies slept for several hours straight at a time overnight, babies have apparently decided that we live in Japan again. Poor Jenn has probably not slept more than 4 hours between the hours of 11pm and 5am the past week. The general schedule lately has been for Jenn to get a nap from around 7 to 10 while I watch them sleep peacefully, then tag team and she replaces pacifiers about 500 times, then gets an hour or so while I get ready for work at ~6am.

The good news is that we've discovered the magic of swings. Babies probably will never suffer from sea-sickness, cause they're pretty much living in these swings now. Plug-in powered ones at that, no cranking or even battery changing. Jenn picked one up the other day at some second-hand store, and it worked well enough that we've got a new one to go with it. It's not a 100% cure-all, but it's pretty close.

Jenn has had the girls at the pediatricians a couple times for diaper rash (which is finally getting better), and both girls are around 2 lbs above their birth weight. They're starting to eat more as well; Kayla has put down 5 and 6 oz of formula in a sitting a couple of times, and Megan's average feeding is probably pushing 4oz now. You don't really notice the growth in Megan, since she's still trailing Kayla in size/weight, but with Kayla, every once in a while when you pick her up, you definitely feel her getting heavier.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Depending on where you look, the girls’ names have different meanings. Kayla means pure. It is also the feminine form of Michael (derived from Michaela, which we discussed and elected NOT to use as her name). Megan means pearl. But we didn’t pick the names based on meaning.

How did we pick the names, you might ask? With great trial and tribulation! Wow, what a responsibility for a soon-to-be-parent, picking the name your child will live with for the rest of their lives. When we had the names – we both knew they were right. It was a challenge getting there, though!

Over the years, I built a list of potential names. Mike thought from the startthat we were having girls, so we started with the girl names. I gave him my list. Over three years in the making, that list – and there was only one name he liked. One name. We had four girl names to pick – and he only liked one! The quest was on to find more names. I made more lists. I tried giving him some of my favorites from the original list to him again, but he kept rejecting them. He suggested names, but nothing sounded right to me.

Discussions continued, suggestions continued – and eventually, we switched from the original name Mike picked off the first list to a similar but different name from the first list, KAYLA. Then Mike suggested a name that we agreed on for a few weeks. We eventually changed that one to a new one as well, MEGAN.

Middle names were MUCH easier to pick. We wanted to name the girls after our mothers, so we took both of their middle names – MADELYN and RAE, and gave them to our girls.

We had refused to assign them names to the girls before they were born, so they were “Baby A” and “Baby B” until the moment they were born. We had agreed on Kayla’s name first, so we decided the first baby born would be Kayla. It turns out that it was Baby A. During surgery when the girls were born, I remember whispering, “That’s Kayla” and “That’s Megan”, although I don’t know that anyone in particular was listening to me at the time, as it was quite hectic in the OR and Mike was following the babies across the room. It didn’t matter, we both knew who they were the moment they were born. Kayla Madelyn and Megan Rae -- and I can’t imagine them with any other names.

Bedtime Babies

As small as the little ladies are right now, they get lost in some of their clothes. All the sleepers we had were humorously large on them, so they've been wearing regular onsies to bed each night.

For Halloween, Granny Vogts gave Kayla and Megan each a small-sized sleeper that doesn't swallow them up whole. Megan is still a little overwhelmed in hers, but not comically so, except in the feet. It's okay though, she was way too tuckered out to notice!


They wore their sleepers tonight, and mommy couldn't resist taking pictures before tucking them into bed. (It's a shame she didn't brush Kayla's hair before the picture!
Bedtime bath makes
for spikey hair.)







And of course we can't forget our "oldest child", Loki, who beat them all to bed this evening!

First Night in a Big Girl Bed

Since Kayla and Megan are only three weeks and three days old, we can’t reasonably expect to sleep through the night. However, I’d expect to get a little bit of sleep at a time, somewhere from one to three hours at a stretch, while the girls sleep. I didn’t think that was asking too much of them at this age.

If they sleep in the pack-and-play in the living room and I sleep on the couch, it happens. But if we put them in the pack-and-play in the bedroom with us, it doesn’t happen. I don’t know what the difference is, but there obviously is a big one to the girls! They’re restless and won’t settle down. Everyone thought I was just getting up quicker with them being 8 feet closer to me, but that’s not the case. They behave differently! So I’ve resorted to sleeping on the couch if we both want a decent amount of sleep.

So last night, Mike hooked up the baby monitors and put them down in the nursery. The first night of having them sleep in a real crib, and not a pack-n-play. A Big Girl Bed. Well, big girl to us right now.

There’s still some logistics to work out with this arrangement though, as the monitor only works for a few hours before running down. We do have two receivers, so changing them out in the middle of the night worked for last night. If mommy wasn’t such a wuss she would trust that they’d wake up hearing them across the hall! But she just isn’t ready for that on the first night! (Speaking in third person allows me to be in denial about my wussiness.)

And then there’s the issue of lighting. With Megan’s diaper rash, we’re changing her in the bathroom and washing off her bottom instead of using wipes. I’ve mastered accomplishing this using only the bathroom nightlight. However, the nightlight in the nursery doesn’t light up in the crib itself. I found myself attempting to put Kayla’s pacifier somewhere between her ear and her left nostril, and wondering why she was still fussing. Or perhaps I was just too asleep and it wasn’t a lighting issue at all – time will tell!

All in all, the night went pretty well for a first night in the nursery. We’ll see if it can be repeated, improved upon, and perhaps be the ticket to letting mommy and daddy both get some sleep at night!

More evidence

That taking pictures of babies is tough business.



Jenn was trying to get a couple of pictures to send to me at work this week, and Loki decided that he needed to help.

So we made it through the first week of me being back at work. It was a little tough for Jenn, as the girls still tend to get a little fussy during the night, necessitating her staying up to all hours. Karen has been able to come over several mornings though, allowing Jenn to catch up on her sleep somewhat, and of course Ruth has been over to help about every day as well. And the girls are getting a little better about sleeping for 2-3 hours at a stretch overnights, the past several nights have been much easier. Aside from lack of sleep though, and a little case of diaper rash lately, the girls are doing great, and mom and dad are holding up. We may get this whole baby thing figured out yet.

Babies dressed up for Halloween, sort of, thanks to Aunt Karen.



Big adventures for babies today. Jenn and I took them up to BeautyFirst so she could show them off to several people she knows up there, and then we took them to the mall. We were primarily there to buy a new washer and dryer, which we did from Sears, scheduled to be delivered Monday. I also got my hair cut, and we bought a couple of outfits from some baby clothes store. Jenn had to change both their diapers at various times, we fed them while we were eating lunch, a nice little 3-4 hour trip all told. Again, perhaps we'll be able to figure out this baby thing yet. Mental note though: Next time bring a stroller.

Having twin girls in a public place is interesting to say the least. Everyone sort of does a double take at a minimum, you hear a lot of "Oh look twins" type comments as they walk past you, and a lot of people can't help themselves, and have to ask about them. Are they twins, how much did they weigh, how old are they, etc. Maybe it's just the carseats (bright pink) that make it obvious, but something tells me that this will only get worse as we go. When they get a little older and can interact with people, we may just have to assume we won't be able to get out of any store in less than an hour.

I sent this via email to many, but for anyone I may have forgot to tell, we also have a Youtube site setup for videos of the girls. All of these are a little dated (girls were three weeks old this past Thursday), I need to take some more, but videos of babies sleeping really isn't that compelling. Keep that site bookmarked though, as any video I do take will be uploaded.

Moments of Regret

There are never moments of regret.

There are moments where I don’t know how I’m going to do this with two babies and no sleep, even with the most supportive and involved husband in the world.

There are moments where I have to laugh to avoid crying when both babies need attention and I only have two hands.

There are moments when I look at one of them and my eyes tear up with joy at their very existence, and tears fall when I marvel that they’re our daughters.

There are moments when Megan is only happy in mommy’s arms, often in the middle of the night.

There are moments when Kayla makes me laugh out loud with her constant chattering, reminding me of myself.

There are moments when we wake Mike with screaming in the early hours of the morning because I can’t make either one happy long enough to tend to the other.

There are moments when I wonder what the future holds for us with twins.

There are moments when I think of the journey that got us here and think how it was all worth it.

There are absolutely never moments of regret. Not one.

A few new pictures

Aunt Kathy and Great Grandma Vogts came to visit. Aunt Kathy here with Megan I believe.



Grandma with Kayla, again I think (believe I can tell by the hair, but not 100%)



60+ years of dealing with children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren pays off.



James, Tricia, and Justin also stopped by.



James takes to babies like a duck to water these days.



Becker, not so much, but we got him with one regardless.



Loki watches over the girls as we try to get some "dress up" pictures.



Finally, a little snapshot demonstrating that taking pictures is, in fact, tough business.

Week 2

Couple of more recent photos to start things off. Don't ask me why there are three pacifiers in that first picture.

Things have been going pretty good. The only issue we've run into so far is the girls seem to have confused 11pm with 11am, and are usually awake and ready to rock right about the time we're both ready to hit the hay. Those of you with children are right now laughing that I find this unusual, and in fact I don't, as this was pretty much the same schedule they kept in-utero. We're trying to get them in the habit of eating a nice, big bottle right around this time, to hopefully knock them out for a few hours, so far with limited success. Jenn has been taking the brunt of the nights so far, and napping during the day when she can.

Other than that, however, one could not ask for better babies. They rarely cry unless a need is not being met, eat well, sleep a lot (during the day at least), and only reluctantly punish daddy for not changing a diaper quick enough. We had their two week checkup (a day early) today, doctor was very pleased with how they're getting along. Kayla weight in at around 7 lbs 6oz and Megan at 6 lbs 9 oz (guestimates, they wrote down the numbers for us but a baby on my chest prevents me from checking easily). Doc said that the goal he looks for is to have them back at their birth weight at two weeks, so they are well ahead of that. Barring any issues we don't have to take them back until their two month checkup.

The girls had their first "trip" to Grandma Bingham's last night as well. We went over for the evening, a task that sounds a lot easier than it is with two babies in carseats and a still-recovering wife. Granny and Grandpa Vogts were also down last Saturday, and both girls got their first sponge bath at home, of which I have video. When I get really ambitious (and have some time), I'll maybe see about YouTubeing it. Great Grandma Vogts and Aunt Kathy are supposed to be stopping by sometime tomorrow as well.

Not much else to report besides baby stuff. I'm still off this week, but head back to work next week. Just for fun, we'll end this post with a random picture of Loki.

Hi everyone!

Hello world! Daddy fell asleep at his computer while holding us, so we thought we'd take a minute to introduce ourselves. We're Kayla and Megan Vogts, born at 7:52 and 7:54am respectively on October 9, 2008. Kayla weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and was 17.5 inches long, and Megan was 5 lbs 12 oz, 17 inches long. That's Kayla on the left and Megan on the right, and if you can't tell the difference, that's OK, neither can mommy and daddy. They're keeping labels on our hats to tell us apart. We're both doing great, as is our mommy. We're officially one week old this morning, and believe us, it's been a heck of a week!

It was pretty nice in mommy's belly; to be honest, it was getting a little cramped. So it was a relief when the doctors brought us out, and we got to meet daddy for the first time!



Mommy and Daddy are nice, but some of the doctors and nurses were mean to us! They poured water all over us, and it made us cry!



But after that it got better, because we got to meet Granny Vogts, Grandma Bingham, and Aunt Karen! Grandpa Vogts was also there; he couldn't come hold us because he was sick, but we yelled extra loud so he could hear us.







We had lots of other visitors too! Cousin Nathan came by, Uncle James and Aunt Tricia, Uncle Jeff and Aunt Chris, several friends of mommy's, daddy's boss Penni, and probably several other ones we're forgetting about. Aunt Linda also came by, with Cousin Jordan and Jalen.







We spent most of the time in the hospital eating and sleeping, and being wrapped up like burritos.



But finally mommy got better enough that they let us all go home! We're embarrassed to admit that we slept pretty much the whole way home. Those carseats are comfy!



So far this week we've been to the pediatricians, who said that we were looking good, and that the slight risk of jaundice we had wasn't anything to worry about. Since there's two of us, we've decided to take it easy on mommy and daddy, and haven't been too fussy or demanding about anything, but don't worry: if they start going soft on us we'll get them back in line.

Daddy got a new camera right before we were born, and we heard him say that he's going to use this blog to post lots of pictures, and keep track of how we're doing/growing up. If I were you, I'd bookmark this site and check back lots. Hopefully daddy will figure out our routines soon and do a better job keeping our blog updated, so we don't have to take matters into our on hands.

Days away now

We have a c-section scheduled for October 9. So barring labor pains between now and then (which seems unlikely at this point), next Thursday will be the big day.

We passed Week 37 this past Thursday, Oct 9 will be Week 38 exactly. Both girls are still doing great; sonograms have been coming fast and furious lately so we've had plenty of opportunity to see them. We have pictures of faces around here somewhere, if I wasn't incredibly lazy I'd go find them and scan them in....eh, we'll have plenty of better pictures soon enough. To say that Jenn is ready to be done with being pregnant is an understatement the likes of which the written word has seldom witnessed. Pretty much everything is a struggle for her at this point: sitting, standing up, laying down, sleeping. Best estimate from the last sonogram though is that she's carrying about 12 pounds of baby, though, so it's no wonder. She continues to amaze our doctors.

A few remaining tasks are slowly but surely being marked off the list. Pack-and-Plays have been purchased and setup. Carseats are installed and will be inspected Monday. We're going to be getting a new washer/dryer set very soon, as the current ones are old-ish, and not fully functional. I'm going to be ordering a new digital camera, as we've had our current one for probably 5 years now, and pictures taken with it are starting to show their age when posted online. My intention is to take a lot of pictures and video, and make liberal use of this blog and the Google server space.

Week 34, almost 35

Girls still both doing fine, but wow what a week. A brief timeline:

Wednesday: I catch the flu. Called in sick to work, Jenn and I basically spent most of the day in bed. By the evening I was feeling better, was able to eat some Jello and soup.
Thursday: I was scheduled to be out of work anyway as Jenn had two sonograms that day, in the morning with our OB and the afternoon with the specialist. Felt OK, maybe dragging a bit but was able to keep real food down, no big deal. We go to the sonograms, all is looking great. That night, Jenn throws up. Uh oh.
Friday morning: Jenn is throwing up again that morning. I drop off her laptop at her work for repair that morning, and when I call her for directions she's sounding like death warmed over. I go to work for about an hour and tell Penni I've got to head home the rest of the day to take care of Jenn. Stop at the store on the way home and get the usual "I'm sick" stuff; soup, 7Up, Gatorade, Jello, etc. I get home and try to get some liquids in Jenn, and she can't even keep Gatorade down. I head out again after a bit and get some Pedialite after doing a little internet research on how best to stop dehydration. After sleeping some Jenn's doing a little better, she's keeping down water and the Pedialite, and by the evening is able to handle some toast.
Friday night: Jenn has been having contractions all day, but around 7-8 they start getting more frequent, and, more troubling, more severe. She grins and bears it for a while, we hem and haw some trying to decide what to do, and eventually err on the side of caution and head to Wesley. We get checked into labor and delivery there, and by then Jenn's having contractions 3-5 minutes apart and is starting to think this might be the real deal. They check and indeed, she's 60% effaced and 1cm dialated. They call our OB and docs decide that she's dehydrated, so they're going to put some fluids in her to see if this helps, then check her cervix again and see if progress is being made. Nurses seem to think that this might be happening though, they're asking us if we like 9-13 as a birthday.
Friday around 12-1am: The torture begins. In the best of times getting an IV is something that Jenn mortally fears; being dehydrated, it's pretty much all she can do to keep it together. Several nurses try and fail. They call in an anesthesiologist nurse, she fails as well. Finally they call the anesthesiologist, and he gets it, though it was a bit of a struggle for him as well (and he was kind of a jerk about it too). Finally though, in go the fluids. At some point during all this though, another cervix exam is done, and there is no change, which basically means Jenn's not in labor. So along with the fluids Jenn also gets a little morphine to help her relax and help dull the contraction pain.
Saturday around 4am: Another doctor does another cervix check, still no change, definitely not labor. Jenn's gone through about 3 bags of fluid by now, turns out she was more than just "a little" dehydrated. We both try and sleep fitfully at various times during the night, we're basically just hanging out so they can monitor the girls and make sure everything is OK.
Saturday around 6am: We finally get the OK to get out of there. After all of that we go home, grab some McDonalds breakfast on the way home and start our weekend.

The good news is that getting all those fluids did wonders for Jenn, her contractions are nowhere near as severe as they have been, and we got ample confirmation that the girls are still doing great. The "bad" news, of course, is that she's still pregnant. Week 34 with twins is definitely taking it's toll on poor Jenn; getting out of bed/chairs is painful, babies and bladder keep her from sleeping well at night, it's hard for her to get comfortable, etc. Nothing you wouldn't expect from a twin pregnancy I suppose, and as far as the girls doing well, we basically could not have asked things to go any better so far, but still, not very fun for momma. How long it will be now no one can say, but presumably it will be within the next couple of weeks or so.

As for the rest of it...there really isn't all that much of the rest of it. We're just kind of in a holding pattern of course right now, so there's not really all that much to tell. Kevin sends word that his crew are in Chicago tonight, getting ready to head over to France tomorrow for the next 9 months. Parts of Wichita had 8+ inches of rain this past weekend, lots of houses were flooded. Jenn's birthday is Thursday, assuming we're not in labor, sounds like maybe Mom and Dad are coming down. Chiefs are galactically bad, and I'm sitting here rooting for the Cowboys of all teams because I have Romo on my fantasy team.