I'm back! It's definitely been a while, so I've got a lot to catch up on... I'll have to do a high level overview of the last few months of our life. It's been crazy and busy. So this will probably be more pictures than anything, because I have pictures going back several months that I haven't done anything with. (And trust me... I take several pictures a day. My husband can attest to that.) We will never be short on pictures of the kids as they are growing up! But that is my intention.
We have been enjoying the "warm"-ish weather lately. Pretty much warm enough to get the kids outside to play. Some days have been absolutely gorgeous and then we get a few icky ones in between. But, we will get there... eventually. Really looking forward to summer!
The kids have been able to get out with all of their outside toys though, which has been fun for them. That is definitely a benefit for those living in a climate that is warm year round when you have little ones. Finding things to keep them entertained and busy inside all winter can be a challenge. Especially when you have two 3 year olds on your hands!

Cruisin' around in their Benz

It looks like I've got some catchin' up to do... back to St. Patty's day. Andrew was actually traveling that week, he was in CA for work and extended through the weekend to visit his sister. So my munchkins and I spent St. Pattys day together.

We went out to dinner -

(These pictures make me laugh.)

Twinnies & Best Buddies

Then we played outside and rode bikes up and down our street...

They love their little trikes

One of the nights daddy was gone, I let the kids make pizzas

(We try to do the messy activities when daddy's not home)

I gave each of them pre-made dough/pizza crust, and let them spread the sauce around and sprinkle cheese all over it.

And... their finished product - not bad! I just had to spread the cheese out a little more evenly before popping it in the oven because they would just make a big pile of cheese in one central area. ;)

They actually each made one - but they pretty much looked the same, I promise. ;)

They're good little pizza chefs, and it's a fun activity for them.

Spending a weekend afternoon at Mimi & Pop's -

Playing with sidewalk chalk in the driveway with Mimi...

My mom gets just as excited (if not more) about this kinda stuff as they do.

And... since she is a very talented artist/illustrator, it makes me look bad when my kids ask me to draw them something and this is what they have to compare it to:

SpongeBob!

Drew cruisin around. He actually navigates these things pretty well!

Drew & Andrew, giggling at something at the dinner table

We met my sister and Matt for pizza one night

This was actually outside of the restaurant... Drew was climbing on this bench thing and I snapped a picture and ran it through an editing program and loved the whole look and feel of it:

My little Love...

Em & Daddy

That's going to have to be it for now. I'll try to get back on and post some more later.

Help us in our Fight Against Cancer!!

So... it's that time of year, and we are at it again! We support the American Cancer Society by participating in and fundraising for the American Cancer Society's Walk & Roll every year. Andrew, myself, Emma and Drew will be participating in the Walk & Roll event once again, but this year they may get to do it with their tricycles instead of in a stroller!! (I'm sure they'll be excited about that) Although it may take us a little bit longer to get to the finish line if we're waiting for them on the trikes, but worth the wait!
Cancer really sucks, and it's something that has touched our family and I'm sure many of yours. It's not fun... it's scary and you just have to hope for the best outcome. So we are out to Kick it's BUTT! We really have come so far in cancer research and development, and you can clearly see that in the treatment options that are offered today, which would have never been an option ten years ago. However, there's much further to go. So please, check out our fundraising page (In the link below)  and consider making a donation towards our goal or joining our team!
All donations are tax deductible and no donation is too small!!!

Click HERE to visit the Kalivas family page and make a safe and secure donation.

Click HERE to check out my blog from last year

The post above has the prior years photos... unfortunately, no photos from last year because we did it in the POURING RAIN~ no one was worried about capturing shots! Hopefully this year we will have better luck with the weather.

But, we would really really appreciate any help we can get with this effort.... It means so much to us.

Emma Update ~

I'm back!
Aside from being extremely, insanely busy lately... I honestly have been avoiding my blog because it's been neglected and I have so much to catch up on that it just makes me not really want to.
So, let's see.... First things first - Emma Update.
Emma had to have a VCUG, which is a radiology test done at the hospital. They pumped her bladder full of a liquid that had dye in it and the machine that sits over her as she is strapped onto this table (AWFUL, by the way, I'll get back to that.) Allows them to watch the flow and direction that everything moves to and from the kidneys, bladder, etc... Unfortunately this test did confirm that she does have reflux in both kidneys, and a slight blockage in one. We were aware of these things but they weren't able to perform this test on her until now because they needed her kidneys to completely heal (or restore as much as possible) in order to handle the test. The reflux was what the doctors had presumed, in at least one side but the test did confirm in both. What this means is basically as fluid flows normally from the kidneys and into the bladder, hers then refluxes and for lack of a better explanation, backwashes back into her kidneys. That's a problem. This is actually fairly common in little girls, and they usually do just grow out of it as they get taller, there's much less of a chance of this occurring. Emma has been on antibiotics since September, which is preventing this from resulting in kidney infections which is how she was hospitalized. However, they did detect a little bit of a blockage in one of her kidneys, so that's our next step. Now her specialist has ordered a Mag3 Scan which is a somewhat similar nuclear radiology test, but instead of flushing the dye up into her bladder, they are going to put it in through an IV and watch it in the opposite direction. What this will do is monitor that rate at which her kidneys are draining. They suspect at this point that her kidneys may drain at a slower rate that usual (potentially because of the blockage.) That would not allow her to consume a large volume of liquid, because her body wouldn't be able to process it. Which does explain why Drew drinks ten times the amount of water/juice as she does, and always has. That however can be surgically corrected if necessary.
The tests are definitely NOT fun. It's heartbreaking, actually. She already knows what to expect as she's been through it all, so she is a wreck the second they even come near her. Then, to top it off, for the VCUG they had to strap her to a board (more or less), Velcro her head into this halo thing, tied her feet together, hands by her side.. I was able to have my head right next to hers and hold her hand, but she was terrified and screaming - and even though the test itself was not painful and nothing really touched her, she was just scared. And I can't say I blame her. This was the contraption:

Can't really say I'm looking forward to the next one.

These pictures are from that day actually... We had snow the night before.

It was the really neat consistency that sticks to everything and coats every branch of every tree.

Aside from that, Emma is doing really well... she's happy and 'healthy,' the antibiotics are keeping her well and we're close to getting to the final answers/decisions.

My Valentines

I love my Valentines - my big Valentine, and my little Valentines.

We baked and decorated heart cookies for Valentines Day.

Emma has gotten really good at cookie cutters.

So, in this picture above - one of the cookies is Drew's contribution. The rest were Emma's. Can you tell which one is his?! He is such a little boy. But he's my little boy, and I love him. As usual when we're baking, Emma is pretty serious with her cookie cutting and decorating and he's throwin' flour around the kitchen, playing with the dough... and then is over it and off playing with his trucks within a few minutes.

This picture makes me laugh... Emma is very into smiley faces lately, so every time she gets a hold of a pen or a crayon or whatever, the first thing she does is start to draw smiley faces. So while I was swapping a batch of cookies from the oven Emma made a smiley face out of the cookie dough: Do you see it in the heart cut out?

Decorating the cookies

And... Our finished product!

Presents for my little Valentines

And, beautiful roses from my Valentine!

My babes. Friday night family dinner date night.

The not-so-perfect days

Warning: A Mom's gotta vent.
I wrote this early on Saturday morning after a long, rough day on Friday, and I actually considered not posting it. I felt better after just venting... but then I thought, What's the point of having a blog if you are selective about which experiences you choose to record? It's all part of raising a family and going through the toddler stage (x 2) and at some point we will look back on it and remember the good and bad days. Everyone's got them.
So here it is -
Well, this weekend hasn't started off great.
I would say my least favorite thing about being a mom is having to discipline them. I hate it. I doubt anyone actually does? But at the same time, both Andrew and I are really aware of what will happen if we don't.. so we're on the same page, but it's still not fun at all. Something I have noticed with twins (or specific to ours at least) is that they are such little angels when they are alone, they're calm, they listen really well, they behave. It's when they get together that they decide they can be bad. Or, I should say, do things that they know they aren't supposed to.
When I say discipline, it's not really 'discipline' with toddlers, it's more of taking a hard stand, and sticking to your word. If something has to be taken away from them for misbehaving or not listening, whether it's a toy, an acitivity or doing something fun, the situation usually ends up being pretty crappy. Which translates into the mood for the remainder of the day, or part of the day at least. And that's really what I don't like I guess. I'm much happier when everyone else in my family is happy. So if Andrew is in a bad mood, or Emma and Drew are having an off day, it rubs off on me pretty quickly. Long story short, I just like the days better when we are all happy and in good moods!
Anyway, last night when I got home from work (in the middle of a snow storm might I add) the kids were in rare form. Ganging up on me, and I swear it seemed like they were finding anything they could to push my buttons. There was about a 2-3 hour gap between when I got home, and when Andrew got home and oh.my.gosh. Just a snapshot of about the first hour or two: They ran up to their room and literally took every tub or container of toys and dumped them upside down. You couldn't even see the floor of the room. This is not a new thing or a first time occurance, so they know that they aren't supposed to do that. If they were actually playing with the toys I would have no problem with it, but they just enjoy the act of dumping the toys out. I asked them no less than 10 times to clean up the toys, and they refused to.(By the way, Emma has this new thing where she has all the energy in the world to make messes like a little tornado ripping through this house, but the second you mention cleaning up, she does this thing where she just looks lathargic and her eyes get droopy and she tells me how sleepy she is and she must take a nap, instantly. She has another sneaky trick like that with avoiding dinner - I'll get there later so I don't get too off track.) So toys are everywhere, I get a call for work on my cell phone so I go into the other room to take it because the second I get on the phone they decide it's time to run after me yelling things at me. Every time, without fail. I get off the phone and go back in to start orchestrating the clean up session when I found that they had emptied a big plastic storage container of their spring & summer clothes from last season that Andrew had spent a ton of time doing last weekend. Every so often we have to filter through their clothes because they grow so fast, so it gets sorted and organized and we store it, for who knows what. Then, Emma decides she deserves fruit snacks for a treat or a prize (????) and she  must have spotted some on the counter, so she decided to get at them, she would just pull my purse off the kitchen counter which dumped all over the floor. Ugh.
Andrew got home and put his (blue) gatorade on the kitchen counter and, as we were talking in the family room Emma and Drew went into the kitchen, helped themselves to the full bottle of blue gatorade, opened it, and then must have had a struggle over the bottle and spilled it on the rug on the kitchen floor. Blue. Nice.
I was just thinking about getting a new rug for in there just the other day, but I didn't want it to happen this way.
They decided that they wanted goldfish crackers for dinner. Uhhh.... No. I explained, as I have several times, that golfish crackers are not dinner, but if they ate dinner and were still hungry, they could have some. (I'm not going to lie, I've probably had golfish crackers for dinner on multiple occasions, or worse, but we're not going to start that. One of my new years resolutions was to really focus (even more so than I have in the past) on their nutrition. Trying to form good eating habbits early.)
Well, that conversation didn't go well. They absolutely did NOT agree that goldfish crackers weren't a good choice for dinner and both of them threw the biggest temper tantrum ever. Lately Emma has been trying to manipulate situations in her favor. I'll usually make sure they've had enough to eat after meals by asking them if their tummies are full... or if they haven't eaten much in a while I'll ask them if they're hungry, because sometimes they get too distracted playing to take a break to eat. I usually have to remove them from whatever situation it is so that they concentrate on eating for long enough to eat a meal, or most of it. She was crying for the goldfish and I told her that she had to eat dinner first - she said "But I think my tummy is too full to eat dinner." and, somehow she thought I would then agree to giving her snacks instead.
Eventually they gave in and had dinner, and of course wanted goldfish after, so I stuck to my word, I gave them each a few goldfish and Emma decided to crush hers all over the place, into a million little messy crumbs instead of eat them.
I was exhausted, I had a headache, I was fed up... not usually the way I like to end my week. The toys that didn't get cleaned up got taken away. They (as in the toys) are in 'time out' in the guest bedroom, door locked. They didn't get to watch their night time TV show, they really didn't like that.
Earlier this week they were playing a little kid game on the computer, and they had the hang of it, they were doing good... Andrew and I were getting ready to work, and the next thing we knew there were pen scribbles ALL over the computer monitor. Really?
But before that it was actually pretty funny, I got into the shower - both kids were asleep. Got out of the shower and this is what I found:

She had gone into the guest bathroom, got their little potty and moved it into the computer so she could reach. Interesting choice...

Speaking of those little potties, and we have 3 of them to cover all basis, so that no matter which bathroom they are closest to, it doesn't matter. Well, Drew was doing really well and we were happy about that and he has now decided to un-potty train himself. How does that happen? How have we gotten back to square one?! By the way, potty training twins is really not an easy task.

It was bedtime, and they had to go to bed with no show, no book. We were stickin' to it.

So they're laying there in silence, and Drew comes out with "Aw mi god, Awkward...."  and dramatically covers his face with his hands. I could not help myself I had to laugh. And then I had to ask him where the heck he even got that from.

He also was doing something last night, I forget what it even was, and he said 'Look at me mom, I look like a gork (I'm assuming dork? Which again, no idea where he would have picked that up either because even on our worst days I don't call my kids dorks) I said 'Well, what's a gork? Where did you hear that?' he said 'Oh mom, it's just a dude thing.'

So at the end of the day, I was laughing. But what a rough one!

I will say however, for every rough day we encounter, we have several good ones in between. And thank god for those!

Our Brave Little Patient

Back in September when Emma was hospitalized with her kidneys , they inserted a stent to help drain a massive blockage that she had and hopefully to assist her kidney function moving forward. Problem is... it's only a temporary solution, they really shouldn't stay in for more than 6 months. So she had to go in for surgery to have the stent removed.

This Minnie Mouse balloon outside the gift shop was bigger than Emma. She wanted to go see it. This was before she went in for surgery. She was such a little trooper today.

This is an image of a kidney with a stent like Emma's - (The long blue thing with a loop at the end)

So from here, we have to wait 2-3 weeks to see how her kidneys function on their own, and then go in for a VCUG test. Normally, the direction fluid flows in the body is downward from the kidney into the bladder. They think Emma's may be reversed, and refluxing upward from the bladder into the kidney - which will cause the kidney problems that she has had. So the VCUG will confirm that. They use dye in her system, and a radiologist watches the direction of flow through out the kidneys, bladder, ureters, etc... She went through a series of tests when she was hospitalized the last time but her kidneys were not strong enough at the time to withstand this test. So that's our next step. Then, after that, in about 6 weeks we go in for an ultrasound. Based on the results of the tests, they will determine whether we need to start looking at long term solutions, potentially involving a small procedure, or she may very well have grown out of it. Apparently it is not uncommon for this to happen in little girls, because their anatomy is so small and the 'canals' are so small... that as they grow, so do their insides and it tends to resolve itself sometimes.

Her surgery was scheduled for really early this morning, which is a good thing... They don't call to give you the time of the surgery until the night before and we were really hoping for early, because she couldn't eat or drink anything past midnight. How do you tell that to a 3 yr old? My mom came with us to the hospital. Emma needed her mommy, and I needed mine! I was probably a whole lot more nervous than she was (maybe because she didn't really know where we were going) but her track record isn't great with procedures like this. She's a tough little cookie, and she typically will make it as hard on the doctors and nurses as absolutely possible (and Mom as well) Rightfully so, considering the poor thing has endured countless catheters, IV's, blood draws, ... BUT, I must say, today went very, very well, and really smooth.

When we got there we registered, checked in, and were taken back to the prep room where she got a nice little dose of versed to calm her down. The good thing about it, was that it was in a form she could drink. Now where was that the last time when they were stickin' her with needles while she was screaming and crying her eyes out in torture?! The next half hour was pretty funny... she was a loopy little girl, and was making us laugh.

She had all of her guys with her. Lamby has been through quite a bit over the course of the last year. The other guys we accumulated just today.

Me and my sweet baby girl before she went in.

The other thing... the last time she needed anesthesia they just stuck her with a needle while she was in the middle of a panic attack. This time they were able to use something similar to a gas mask (that smelled like bubble gum) to make her go to sleep first. Again...?? Where was this last time?!

On our way in the hospital this morning she was trying to convince me to go ANYwhere but the hospital, and she said 'I no want them to take my stent out... I love my stent'

Funny since she didn't even know she had that in her until last night when Andrew told her. He asked her if she was ready to get it taken out.

So she went into surgery and everything went great, and she woke up all smiles (which isn't typical with kids waking up from anesthesia.) But she had a popsicle, and I grabbed a m&m cookie from a bakery in the hospital while we were waiting.

And because she was such a good girl... She got a bravery award to take home! (actually, I'm pretty sure she would have been able to keep it even if she wasn't so good, but I'm proud of her.)

As you can see, she wrinkled it a little bit.

Before we went in for surgery, I promised her that we could do whatever she wanted after.. and I mentioned maybe going to lunch, and she definitely didn't forget about that. A few times in her loopy state of mind she thought the doctors/nurses that were coming in and out of the room were servers at a restaurant bringing her dinner (yeah, at 7 am.) Poor thing was hungry!

 So for lunch we went to Cheeseburger in Paradise.

Drinking their Strawberry Sprite!

Emma drew this guy on the kids menu all by herself - no help at all:

And, since most of this has been about our little patient today... I wanted to get my little man on here. He was a good brother.

Daddy gave mommy a MUCH needed break tonight and took care of bath time..

Here are my little Valentines in their Valentine jammies after their bath.

(Don't worry...I don't make my big Valentine wear cute little jammies... nor would he cooperate if I tried, I'm sure.)