HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISA!!!!!

Lisa is ....well....a year older today!!!!! She celebrated a birthday with two gorgeous young babies today. What more could you ask for?

Sorry for the non-blog yesterday. You should skip ahead of you're only looking for baby news. The next section will be about our personal life.

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We learned some potentially devastating news yesterday. Our 10 year old dog Madison has been acting pretty strange lately. In the last 48 hours, she has had some episodes that I couldn't explain so after calling the vet at midnight last night we decided it would be best to hop in the car and go down to the emergency clinic to have her checked out. Everything checked out pretty good. She didn't act like she was in pain and the doctor didn't feel anything abnormal. We had some blood work done and it came back pretty good. She had some elevated levels but nothing that would raise any red flags for the vets.

So when I called the vet first thing this morning to talk about the results, she said that after eliminating other things with the blood work that we can start thinking about cancer. Yeah....cancer..... I hate even saying the word.

There is much more detail to the story but for the sake of "holy crap, it's 1am" I'll just leave it at that. She is currently on Pepcid AC to treat what is hopefully some very strange upper GI issues. If the continues acting like she has, we'll have to take her in to have some x-rays and even ultrasounds to look for a tumor.

I don't know what else to say. No tears were shed today because it's just too early to worry about that. We are trying to focus on the other positives in our life and cross that bridge when we come to it.
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So that's why there was no blog last night. It was a very late night (kinda like this one now) and just crashed when me and the dog got back from the vet.

Back to the girls....

They are doing great. We were warned their Bili levels could jump back up, which is the measurement for jaundice, and early this morning their screening showed that it continued to go down so no threat of returning to the phototherapy.

We did the Kangaroo care the last two afternoons with mixed results. It's a little intimidating because they are so tiny and fragile. We constantly watch their monitors to check their temperature and their breathing and ....well, it hasn't been perfect.

Today Alyssa had an episode where she stopped breathing for a few moments. The monitors started alarming and I looked down at her face and she seemed fine. I started rubbing her back and talking to her and she immediately came out of it and started breathing again. The whole thing lasted less than 20 seconds but it was enough to give me quite the scare.

Our night time nurse tonight assured us that's normal for babies that age. It is definitely something they watch for and make note of but nobody seemed too concerned over it.

As I mentioned earlier, it was Lisa's birthday today. We had set our goal at April 11th a long time ago because it would have been 32 weeks for the babies and Lisa's b-day. We were 6 days short, not too shabby.

Lisa seems very understanding but I feel terrible that I wasn't able to get her lots of presents...okay not even one present. I haven't had time to shop!!!! It's hard to admit that I didn't get her anything for her birthday. Hopefully in the next couple of days I can find some time to sneak away and make it up to her.....somehow. Thank goodness I have an understanding wife.

We were able to go to our favorite restaurant, the Moose's Tooth!!!! If you haven't been to Anchorage and experienced the chicken ranch pizza at Moose's Tooth, then you haven't lived. It is our favorite meal!! A great way to celebrate a birthday. Ben and Lisa met us and we had LOTS of laughs. It was a lot of fun. Thanks guys!

Okay, finally some pics.

We walked in yesterday morning and found the girls like this.

Me and the birthday girl looking over our baby girls in their isolette.

Lisa reading the girls a night time story.

Alyssa on the left and Kaitlyn on the right. Katy is showing us her thinking man's pose. That is her index finger, not her middle finger if you can't tell.