Grandparent Good-Byes

Well, in the span of five short days, Hurricane Castellano has come and gone.

Braelyn and Gwendolyn will miss their Nana and Poppa until they see them again.

Unfortunately, the girls had to say their final good-byes to them earlier today.

But the good piece of news is that even with two grandparents gone, there's still Grandma McKee there to spoil the girls!

Excuses, Excuses

Wow... Has it REALLY been a week since our last post?

Um, we have no idea how that happened! Our apologizes... BAD BLOGGERS!!!

Somewhere in the midst of preparing for Thanksgiving, we forgot about blogging. At least our last photo was of the girls in their Thanksgiving headdresses... So we hope it helped keep you all in the proper holiday mindset during our absence.

Speaking of Turkey Day, we had a fabulous holiday indeed!!! Grandma McKee invited everyone over to her house. Uncle Kyle fried up our Thomas for us all as Braelyn and Gwendolyn celebrated not only with their McKee relatives but also their Castellano Grandparents, Uncle Rich, Auntie Shannon, and cousin Ava (collectively known as "Hurricane Castellano" around these parts). Yep, it was a lot of people gathered around the table but everyone really enjoyed themselves.

Better yet, since Dad had to work the Plaza Lighting Ceremony that night, he hauled Mom as well as the Aunts and Uncles with him. So, the girls got some extra TLC with Nana and Poppa and Grandma McKee watched her other set of granddaughters. It all resulted in the rest of the adults enjoying the this iconic Kansas City tradition. As you'll see in a little bit, we think the "grownups" had a good time even if we can't properly describe it!

And ever since "Hurricane Castellano" touched down, its been a whirlwind of activity surrounding Thanksgiving Day. So again, we apologize for the neglect. However, in the spirit of the season, we come bearing gifts. Unfortunately, our version of thanks doesn't involved the same feast indulged by the Wampanoag Indians and Pilgrims. (You do know there was a bunch of lobster consumed that first Thanksgiving, right? Yeah, well none of that fancy stuff can be found anywhere near this blog entry, much to mom's chagrin.) Still, we hope you enjoy it all the same.

Below is a sampling of photos documenting the twins' Thanksgiving Week activities... Our first together without a trip to Children's Mercy Hospital on the docket (Yes, this year's Thanksgiving dinner blew away the one Mom and Dad ate in the hospital cafeteria last year on many levels). Enjoy because we certainly did!!!

Grandma McKee shares a Thanksgiving smile with Gwendolyn and Braelyn

What do you get when you mix the girls' mother and aunts with a balloon artist at the Plaza Lighting Ceremony? We can't even begin to describe it...

Poppa and Ava are ready for the Turkey to be served

Nana seems to be corralled in "The Community" by a trio of Castellano granddaughters

Uncle Rich hangs with the twins

Dad and his Mini-Me (a.k.a. Braelyn McKee)

Mom helps Gwendolyn open an early Christmas gift even if she isn't in the spirit of the season

Time to pose for Nana & Poppa's holiday card picture... Everyone say cheese!

Since we won't see them again before Christmas, we had a "Castellano Christmas" and Poppa loved the new shirt from his favorite Kansas City eatery.

Nana gets some help from The Gwenner opening her early Christmas gift

One Little, Two Little…

First, thanks SOOOOO much to our Indian Chief, Mrs. Tracy for helping the girls make their cool headgear. We can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving time!!! (And the girls are already sad that they won’t be able to have their typical five-day stay at Mrs. Tracy’s next week.)

On a side note, Dad wanted to take a quick moment to recognize his lovely wife. Late last month, in honor of National Spina Bifida Awareness Month, Mom took on quite a project. She spoke with all the principals in her district and got them to agree that if their teachers gave a pledge to Spina Bifida Kansas City, they could wear jeans to work for one day. In addition, Mom tracked down some enticing prizes to raffle off for those making contributions.

I am pleased and overwhelmed to announce that today we are dropping off in the mail to SBKC nearly $1,000 in donations. The most touching part to us is that we’ve been told these funds will support those families that have a child with spina bifida but might not have the outstanding resources available to them that we’ve been blessed with. As a result, these families receive grants through SBKC so they can purchase supplemental equipment for their little ones.

Anyway, we are so overwhelming proud of Heather for not only taking on this project but doing so with such zeal. And to those of you in the school district or outside that pledged monies to the cause, you have no idea how far reaching your generosity will go!

Happy Friday everyone!!!

Big Girls Making Us Get All Misty

Wow, what a week of milestones thus far.

At Gwendolyn’s latest physical therapy session this past Monday, the following transpired:

No, not the discovery of a horribly dust-filled couch! (As the Wizard of Oz says, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!") Instead, Gwendolyn braced herself against that living room monstrosity and stood on her own for the first time.

WOW... That girl continues to crash through threshold after threshold.

Speaking of evolving stages, there’s one transpiring for the girls in the family van also.

As our model Braelyn shows you (in her typical incoherent morning stare), gone are the infant car seats. Somehow, the girls are now weighing so much that they have big-girl seats to sit in. Actually, they look way more comfortable than the drab ones Mom and Dad have to use, but we digress!

When will this growing up come to an end… Before we know it, Dad will be escorting them down the aisle and giving them away!!!

Well, we’re going to sign off now before one of them starts riding a bike or something!!!

;)

Say Meow Window Shoppers

The best part about running Saturday errands with Mom & Dad? The window shopping of course... Check out how chic we look in these hats!

Opposites Attract

Just a quick observation for this mid-week blog entry… As you can see in the photo above, Braelyn has begun to act out the theory of “sharing” even though she’s still too young to fully grasp the ramifications of her actions. We’ve already discussed her over-zealous affection for her sister and how it often renders Gwendolyn in a flustered, knocked over state. Still, it does our hearts proud as parents when the girls act out the ideologies of sharing and compassion.

As for Gwendolyn, she honestly has the kindest spirit of anyone we’ve come to know this side of her late Papa McKee. During the times that Braelyn isn’t as open to sharing and is more focused on taking whatever toy is currently occupying her sister, Gwendolyn rarely puts up a fuss. Instead, she quickly moves on to the next toy only to have the cycle be repeated again by Braelyn. However, Gwen just rarely fusses at her sister... Or anyone else for that matter. In fact, she is often embarrassed to even share a smile with someone and typically only gets upset when she hears her sister or someone else in distress.

We’re only a year into things but as each of their personalities continue to mature, they seem to be turning more and more into polar opposites of one another. Braelyn's over-the-top and always on the go while Gwendolyn's more than happy to hang lose far away from the spotlight and occupy herself. That's why Mom and Dad are fairly positive, even at this early stage, that about the only common ground the twins will ever share is a birthday… And we wouldn’t have it any other way!

Enjoying Some Extra Rest

Unfortunately the cooler nights have brought along with them a cold to the girls. It started with Braelyn about a month ago and has since been transferred over to Gwendolyn. Luckily, we think its stay at the Castellano house is nearly complete. Share and share alike we guess.

We did leave a message for the Pulmonologist in case he feels as though the past 10 days of increased stuffiness will affect the results of Gwen’s current month-long, at-home sleep monitoring study. We haven’t heard back yet but we think this week is supposed to be the final scheduled one of the study so we should know soon if there’s any recourse based on her cold.

As for how Gwen’s been sleeping thus far… From a highly non-medical perspective, she seems to be having positive sleep patterns. Thus far, about 2-4 times a night she beeps off but when we go into reset her apnea monitor, she’s already breathing at a regular rate. So yes, she’s still having spells and anytime someone stops breathing for more than 12 seconds at a time, its concerning. That being said, whether it’s her on her own or as a result of the noise from the monitor's beep rousing her, she continues to self correct and begin breathing normal again. The period she’s had congestion from this cold aside, Gwendolyn also seems to have less frequent spells during the course of the night. We theorize that as she matures, she grows stronger and stronger.

When we first had her on a pulse-oxi meter (a less sensitive version of the current apnea monitor) at home following her spring bout in the hospital, she’d often beep off +5 times a night. However, as the time has passed, the frequency has diminished. For instance, one of the first nights Gwen was on her apnea monitor for this study, she slept through without an occurrence. Last night, as she’s finally begun to shake the cold, she just had one occurrence. During the course of her cold, Gwen honestly had closer to four spells a night than two. So who knows what it all means. In the end, that’s just the hopeful observations of her parents not that of a trained medical profession so we’ll just have to wait and see.

As for the topic of sleep, Braelyn has been a big fan of Daylight Savings Time (or as we call it Brae-light Savings Time). Unfortunately, photos like this one of her taking an afternoon cat nap are few and far between because she just hates to miss out on ANYTHING... So, an extra hour of sleep in the morning is a definite plus for her.

We have the representative that Gwen's stander was ordered from coming back today. For some reason it still doesn’t seem to be fitting her correctly. However, as you can tell from the lead photo in this post, Gwen still had some quality time in the stander this weekend and Braelyn was even on hand to help out... As you can also tell, that play time in the stander came shortly after breakfast so please excuse their bed-heads.

Now that’s what sisterly love is all about!!!

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

Well, it’s been yet another crazy-busy week and thus far we haven’t really had much to update anyone on... So, in lieu of a lengthy post, here are a few shots of the girls getting clean and ready to take on the day.

Mostly Treats Here... We Promise

Okay, as promised, this entry has a TON of great "up"dated (as in "up"right) news about Gwendolyn. But, before we dive into that, here’s a quick nugget on yesterday’s spooky activities… Namely, overly tired twins that have colds and runny noses don’t make the best trick-or-treaters. Still, Mom and Dad took the opportunity to stuff Braelyn and Gwendolyn into their Halloween costumes and tote them over to Grandma McKee’s.

It’s funny in a way because one of the rites of passage that we as parents (or at least Dad in general) are dreading is when the girls are old enough to decide what they want to be for Halloween themselves. It isn’t because we want to control their choices but rather because it’ll be yet another reminder that they’ve gotten that much farther removed from being infants... Honestly, where does all the time go?

With what seed planted, we took a pair of grumpy kids and threw them into a furnace of a pumpkin costume each that was by all accounts a tad too large for them so we could parade them around and show them off. You know, because we apparently wanted to reinforce just how unpleasant of an experience it can be.

Ah, the joys of parenthood! ;)

Needless to say, calm demeanors didn’t quite make an appearance for the duration of our visit to Grandma’s but at least they aren’t in full tears in the family photo atop today’s blog. (And kudos to Mom for getting in the spirit and sporting a Halloween shirt and cat ears… Dad just kept on his Chiefs garb from earlier in the day). Maybe next year the girls can take a lesson from their McKee cousins and embrace the joy of the season in some better fitting costumes.

As for Gwen’s good news… In the following pictures you will see (in order) Gwen’s final fitting of her new braces, a close-up shot of her braces (as you can see, these aren't of the Forrest Gump variety), and her tooling around in her brand new stander (which ironically was delivered the very same week as her braces). A side note that Gwen LOVES her stander. In fact, it’s pretty obvious by where the pad meets up with her chest the stander photo that it was taken before the stander was even adjusted to fit her… It didn’t matter to Gwendolyn Marie because she was upright and loving it!!!

Our crazy medical themed week continued because not only did Gwendolyn get new braces and her stander but, she and Braelyn FINALLY had their one-year checkup. You might gather from Braelyn’s expression that the next photo that it was taken before her latest inoculation was administered. In fact, the appointment became a rather lengthy affair (shocking that twins, one of which has far from a run-of-the-mill medical record, would require well in excess of an hour for a checkup, hey?). So after the check-up was complete but before the shots were administered she had enough downtime to snarf up some puffs and flash her smile.

Speaking of which, for those of you keeping track at home, we’ve got the latest measurements on the girls. Braelyn tips the scales at 17 pounds, 8 ounces, is 28.25 inches long, and has a melon circumference of 45 centimeters. Her weight is now down to the second percentile but she’s bumped up to the 14th in length so for the time being there isn’t much alarm.

As for Gwendolyn, she came in at 18 pounds, 14 ounces, with a length of 27.25 inches and a head circumference of 46.5 centimeters. As we discussed after Gwen’s MRI, we found out that she has increased fluid in one of the ventricles in her head so that’s why its circumference is in the 81st-percentile. While concerning, it isn’t yet a crisis situation either. We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out with her next MRI in the Spring. Gwen is only in the fourth percentile for height and the 10th for weight… Basically she's an inch shorter than Braelyn but weighs over a pound more. That’s where we need to continue to monitor Gwen’s eating. The more table food she gets by mouth, the less formula she’ll need because of the extra calories she’d be ingesting.

And one last milestone that was like gold to Mom and Dad… Yesterday Gwen finally realized that when she’s hungry she can simply grab food with her hands and put it in her mouth all by herself.

It’s amazing that a child can go so long without doing it and then all the sudden out of the blue it’s like they’ve been feeding themselves the whole time. It was that way with Braelyn too. One day she just said, “Hey, I got this… Why don’t you just let me pop these puffs in my mouth and you can take that extra time to get my sister dressed and ready to leave?”

It’s just all in a day’s work for the Castellanos we guess!