3 week photos

Here are a few pictures that were taken a few weeks ago. Lindsay Light is finishing up photography school and was nice enough to do this shoot for free. They came out so nice! You can see the rest here

April 26th

The day the twins were born, my grandmother left for a trip to California for over a month. Luckily she was able to stop at the hospital and meet them on her way to the airport. She came back yesterday so today we went to visit with her while she stayed at my parents house. I was able to get my 4th 4 generation photo of the twins, me, my father, and his mother.

I also got some nice photos of Madison Elena with her great grandmother Maria Elena (who is known as Elena). I feel so lucky to have these photos, but it's also a sad reminder that Jackson Leo won't get to meet his great grandfather Francis Leo (who was known as Leo). I hope that all of our grandparents that have passed on are proud of what we have created.

Lots of other new photos here.

Kitty and binkies

The girl kitty (yes, that her name) was watching over Madison as she snoozed on my bed this morning.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of some of the million binkies that we have now. These were left over on my bed where we had all been napping this morning. These are things that our home has been missing in the past. How lucky am I that now that are a part of our lives?

Visitors

I have been meaning to post some pictures of visitors we have had.
Our friends Shauna and Danika and her son Spencer (2 years old) came to meet the twins. Spencer was of course more interested in the twins toys. Jackson was a cranky pants as usual.








Then Rachael and her 2 year old daughter Nichole came over. Rachael met the twins in the hospital but Nichole was meeting them for the first time. She was so cute and so excited to see them and hold them and feed them and help me put the tops on the bottles. Jackson again was a cranky pants while Nichole was "holding" him and she said, in the cutest voice, "I don't want to hold him anymore"

April 23rd

Another beautiful day here today. It was well into the 80's. We ran some errands this morning which was followed by a photo shoot in the front yard. After a nice meal of gourmet formula we went for another nice walk and even met some neighbors.

Our first walk as a family

We finally had a nice day here in New England. We got to use the stroller for the first time and we walked for about an hour. We actually had a conversation too that didn't involve the words "spit up" or "diaper" or "when did they last eat?"
Thank you Rachael, Kristin, Brenda, and Susan for our wonderful stroller!!!

4 Generations

My Mother's "Mother" (see story below) came to visit with my "Aunt" Sylvia and "Uncle" Mark. I was so excited for them to meet the twins. We had a very nice day together and the weather was stunning outside! Chris's Mother lives only a few streets away from my mother's house where we were so she came by for a bit too. We got to sit outside on the deck and I was actually too hot to stay in the sun! Here are some pictures including my maternal 4 generation photo.





*My Mother's Father died when she was 2 and her Mother died when she was 8. After that she went to live with her first cousin (picture to the right) who was old enough to be her mother and even had a daughter who was two years older than my mother. Her cousin is the only "grandmother" I've known on that side and her cousin's kids are like my aunts and uncle even though they aren't her siblings.

3.5 week photos

Here are the photos that Cassi took. They are on a website that you need to log into. www.collages.net
the username is Goodwin password 15001 you need to enter your email address but it's just so she can see who is viewing the site.

Faces

OK, Rae, I stole your idea and took it to the next level.

1 Month (sniff, sniff)

How are they already a month old? It's gone so fast but it also seems like they've always been with us. And yes, I know their whole life is going to go fast. I've already cried many times thinking of that.

I took these pictures today on their one month birthday.

You can see the rest of the photo shoot here

Maeve and Owen

Maeve and Owen and their mom Sarah came to meet M&J today. I babysat for Maeve and Owen part-time for a year or so a few years back. Owen was 2 1/2 and Maeve was 5. Today Owen is 5 1/2 and brought his violin and played a song for me and Maeve is 8 and she wrote a song for the piano! Kids grow up so fast!
I started watching them shortly after I started trying to conceive and Sarah soon became my cheerleader. She was extremely supportive and caring and it always meant a lot to me. She was almost in tears meeting my two today. It was very sweet.
Taking care of Maeve and Owen was a lot of fun and most of the time was spent taking walks to downtown Salem and to the wharf and to a public garden where I would take tons of pictures of them. It was actually these pictures that got me interested in photography. Here are a few of my favorites...ok there's more than a few! And Maeve even took a fun one...wow my hair was long!!

Almost 1 month checkup

M&J did very well at their checkup today. Two weeks ago M was 5lbs 3oz and today she is 6lbs 3oz!! Two weeks ago J was 5lbs 1oz and today he is 5lbs 14oz.
Dr. Connolly said they are perfect :-) (but I didn't need her to tell me that)

Just a reminder link to photos

40 weeks

Today is my official due date. Not that I would have gone this long with twins...they would have been delivered on March 30th if I hadn't gone on my own on March 17th...but April 11th is still a special date to me.
So here is my last weekly "pregnant" photo. Me with my 3 week and 4 day old twins in my arms rather than inside my belly. OK, this is more emotional than I expected. Darn hormones...

Easter 2007

Today was a great day. The twins got to meet their Papa's cousins in the morning and some more of my family in the afternoon.
We dressed them up in their preemie outfits which weren't even close to small enough for them. I don't think they liked it at first but they got used to it.
Here are a few of my favorite shots from the day.
You can see the rest here

I just read back a few posts and I wanted to update that my PPD only lasted about 4 days. I think I took 3 doses of the medicine. I am completely fine now and have been for a while now. I just forgot to mention it.

Also

Lindsey Light is the photographer that did my belly shots a few days before the twins were born. She came yesterday to take pictures of M & J. She sent along a few of her favorites for now.

Still up

I was going to go to bed before M & J's last feeding but here it is 3 hours after and I'm still up. I took some pictures of Jackson who was posing in the pack n play. Just wanted to share.

April 7, 2007

Today the three of us and my mother drove into Boston to meet some more people. For those of you reading who don't know me I'll give a little background. My father's good friend Fred owns a sports marketing and event management company. Every year John Hancock employs his company Tracs to set up and run an athlete village for the elite runners of the Boston Marathon. Since Tracs is a very small company they recruit volunteers. I first volunteered in 1998 and met an incredible group of people. Normally I move into the village a week or so before the marathon and live there until a couple of days after. This year I obviously have my hands full and don't really feel like spending two weeks away from my beautiful children. Since I started volunteering I got Chris's mother and sister involved too. My cousin also volunteers and my aunts and uncles have volunteered in the past as well.

Since this tuesday all of the athletes from all over the world will be arriving at the village, i had to get the twins in to meet everyone before that. We have had issues in the past of strange illnesses being brought in by the athletes or their agents.

So, while we were there they got to meet everyone for about a half hour before they all had to go back into a meeting. Chris's mother and sister and my friend Adele (picture to the right) ended up blowing off the meeting and holding M&J while they slept. I met Adele 4 years ago when she was an intern for Tracs. We hit it off right away and even though I haven't seen or talked to her in almost two years (she moved to Chile for a year and a half), it was like no time had passed. We kept up to date on eachother thanks to blogger (what a world we live in). If you want you can read about her adventures in Chile here . Now that she is back in the area living with a man she dragged back from Chile, we have to hang out more!

I also realized I had no pictures of M&J with Chris's mother!!! so we snapped a few today. This one has my mother (Grandma) on the left and Chris's mother (Nana) on the right. Now, do they really look like they are old enough to be grandparents?? They are the same age and I guess I'll spare them and not tell. Oh, and that is my mother's natural hair color...she has no grey hair!

So, my father has a workstation set up at the athlete village office. I had to take a picture of it cause it's just too cute (click on it to see it bigger).
Oh, and today they had an orientation meeting where they watch a training video of what goes on during the week. My dad came up with the idea to make a fake video that looked like it was going to be about the marathon but then have it be a bunch of pictures of the twins. So I made one up quick the other night and he was able to sneak it in to play for everyone before the real video. Apparently everyone got a good laugh out of it.