Not another.....

EAR INFECTION... Audrey officially has her 7th ear infection in her right ear... She has officially bought herself an appointment with the ENT... We are seeing the Nurse Practioner on Friday... I figured the sooner we got in the faster that we can have the procedure... What a busy week in the doctor's office. Helmet assessment on Thursday and ENT on Friday. Well hopefully we will get everything done and over soon...

Parker on the other hand is happy and well. No signs of any infection for him and he is not wheezing for once. Things seem to be on an up swing for him... Lets keep our fingers crossed...

Physical Therapy update....

Well our friend Ms. Holly came to visit Park and Audi today.... They are growing in leaps and bounds during their physical therapy sessions... Audrey is tolerating her stretching techniques with Ms. Holly much easier this week... or maybe she has just realized that she is much stronger than we think and she can wiggle her self out of the many holds we are doing. Mr. Park is doing a bit better as well. Ms. Holly was impressed to see him sit on his own today... we still need to teach Parker that when he is on his belly that he needs to turn his head and not face plant his head into the floor.

So I am writing to update on Audi today. Her tortacolis is improving but now that she is upright on her arms and sitting, Ms. and I are noticing that she has a significant misshaping in her head. Her jaw and cheeks do not appear to be symmetrical. This makes her left cheek look larger than her right. Her ears are equal in distance from her shoulders but her right ear appears to be further forward than her left. So the question was what do we do about this issue.... I decided to call and make appointment to have her assessed for a molding helmet for her head... We will head to South Bend next Thursday (a week from tomorrow) to have her evaluated. Also because she continues to have slight tilt in her neck, we are trying a new neck collar on her... It is quite humurous to look at... It looks a bit like a life jacket (pictures will be posted soon).

The asymmetry of Audi's head may explain a lot of the difficulities we have been having with her. It hopefully explains the six ear infections in six months, the feeing difficulties and her tilted glare when trying to focus on an object to see.

Once again a will keep you updated when we know more about what is going on....

Catching up on Blog world....

So I was informed the other day by a dear blogging friend that I am quite behind on my blogging. Well the world of twins has been very challenging lately...
So here is the quick update on the Mayernik family....
On April 26th.... Fort Wayne reached a blasting hot 85 degrees... We went from winter to summer literally overnight. I opened my windows and the house seemed to steam up with humidity. The babies lived in diapers most of the day. It was so hot that I thought both babies were clammy and hot because of the weather... Come to find out, Parker was hot because of some sort of stomach virus... We were wrapping up our bedtime routine around 8 pm and and Parker puked squash and cereal across my living room floor. Joe picked him up and he continued to vomit... It was so sad.. I have never seen a little baby so sick... Joe handed him to me and I quickly placed him in the kitchen sink and washed him off. Grandma just happened to walk in the door at this time. Parker was very warm. I gave him a cool bath. The next thing I know he went unresponsive... I freaked... Yes he was a having a febrile seizure. I thought we were going to make it through the entire month of April without a hospitalization.
We rushed him to the emergency room and he was quickly admitted to the Lutheran PICU. Our hospital stay ended up five days long... Only because Parker did not want to hold any food down...
May was an exciting month. The babies turned 6 months old. Can you believe that they are growing so fast. First steps has been in the house working the with the babies physical development. This month with physical therapy they have both learned to roll from from belly to back and also to sit on their own.... Parker is becoming very interactive. He will talk your ear off if you give him the chance. Audrey - lets just say that she is my bashful princess with a red-headed temper... She has learned Peek-a-boo and to shake her head no if we say no-no to her... She also has started to army crawl this last week.
As for Joe his business is busier than ever. He is away from home a lot but when he is here, I appreciate him incredibly. I could survive without him.
May was also huge for me. As of May 29th... I have officially lost all 87 lbs that I gained with my pregnancy... I am not sure how as I continue to eat a hot fudge sunday every day and splurge on McDonalds at least twice a week. I guess that I might have to breast feed until my kids turn one... just so I can continue to eat the foods I enjoy.

I promise to keep you all updated on life as I have finally started to take some time to myself each day. I am finally getting out of my emotional bump in the road... i have to say that the meds are starting to work.

Twins, Twins and More Twins...

Well today was a normal Saturday morning in the Mayernik household... The alarm clock went off at 7 am and Joe popped out of bed.. He jumped in the shower and than woke me up to do my favorite chore.. PUMP... He then got bottles together and woke Parker up and gave him his meds and started his feeding.. Got him dressed and then did the same for Audrey... Have I shared with everyone how blessed I am to have such a wonderful husband... Every morning he gets up and wakes the babies and feeds them (and gets them dressed) all so that I can sleep in a little and pump... I am married to a GEM of a man...

We loaded the babes in the car and Joe headed to work.. I was off to the twins sale... That is right I went shopping and I am sure none of you are surprised one bit... I survived the sale and only spent three dollars...

This evening I got a call... My friend Laura had her girl twins on Wednesday morning... They were born at 33 weeks and they are both in the NICU. I ask all my friends to please pray for babies Cora and Lucy as they fight their long battles of being premie babies... Both babies are beautiful and they are being weaned from their CPAPs and other oxygen... Neither are taking a bottle yet. Please pray for my friend Laura and her recovery as she was able to deliver Cora the old fashioned way and then had Lucy via C-Section... Audrey and Parker are so excited to meet their new friends...

New to Blog World....

After much convincing from several bloggers, the Mayernik family is finally entering blog world. The last 24 hours has been a long exhausting journey. A journey from sunny Florida back to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Parker and Audrey had the longest journey of their short lifes this past week. We will update you tomorrow on their vacation as well as the updates on their little lifes.

Seizures....

We were due to go home today... Not much time to type... but for the update... Parker is back in the ICU with Seizures and the doctors' are trying to figure out what is going on with him...
A loading dose of phenylbarbitol has been started and they have kept him on ativan to sedate him. He has continued to have cluster seizures throughtout the day..

Our journey has only just begun....

Oh don't mind his little spots on his face... They are from the EEG performed... They have left little burns on his face and the he has an IV in his little head... but he seems content with it today...

MRI today and a swallow study for dessert.. hope to go home sooon...

Well an MRI was completed today to rule out brain damage... According to the pulmonologist... Park's little brain is perfect... He shoud. be ok. He is not seeing an residual in his breathing except that he does not move air very well. He feels this is a result of his RSV infection in December. Because sedation was used for the MRI, Parker is being kept one more night in the hospital. He has been projectile vomitting ever since his sedation so a swallow study was ordered... He is refluxing clear into his thoracic cavity... so now we have to thicken his bottles... As long as our little man holds dinner down tonight and his bottle tomorrow... We will be heading home before lunch tomorrow... Please continue with prayers....

Parker is Stable....

Parker is doing much better today... He is off oxygen and we are being transferred from the PICU to the regular Peds unit... He is interacting like his normal self... smiling and cooing... I feel like my baby is back. Dr. Chowdary said that he will be going home on an Apnea monitor so that we can avoid any apnea or low heart rate events in the future... I will keep you all updated on what is happening... We pray to go home tomorrow...

911 Emergency....

Please Pray... at 12:38 p.m. this afternoon, I found Parker blue and lifeless in bed. He was not breathing and I could not find his heartrate... I began crying... I didn't know what to do. I started CPR and called my mom... She told me to call 911... TRAA was here in a matter of minutes and we were rushed to the hospital. He is now stable and on a nasal canula. A Ct Scan showed not abnormalities. An MRI will be performed when he is stable to rule out brain damage... I will keep you updated...

Christmas in January...

Now that we are home, tucked in and enjoying our own space... Joe and I decided that the babies still needed to experience Christmas at home. We were hoping to start a family tradition this year and do something that we would do each year... We decided that we will start a tradition next year... and it will NOT be a repeat hospital stay.. Not more holidays in the hospital. It would only be our luck that we would end up in the hospital on Ground Hog's day or Valentine's day this year....

We had dinner as a family and then started to open gifts.. Only to find that the batteries died on the camera... If only something could go right in the Mayernik household. We pushed the pause button and Joe headed to Walgreens for batteries.. We did not want to miss the little bit of Christmas we had left with the babies...

Well after Joe returned from the drugstore.. both babies fell asleep.. We opened our gifts and also theirs'. Not like they would have opened them anyways... January 3rd definitely did not feel like Christmas.. To be completely honest, it felt awkward to open gifts...

What is important is that Christmas is about the birth of Christ our savior... We read a biblical version of the Christmas story with the babies before we put them to bed for the night. Every year we will make sure to remind each of our beautiful children what the true meaning of Christmas really is...

Are we really going home???

I can't believe it... After 9 days and a lot of coughing and low oxygen levels... Audrey is finally going home... Audi's O2 level stayed about 95% all night last night and we finally are heading home... We are so excited and can't wait to get out of the hospital... We will update you all when we get tucked in and home... Thanks for all your prayers and support...