The Frei'sThe Journey of Parents with Twins

Well it is almost officially official. I have put in my 2 week notice at my employer because I have decided to take a temporary swing in my profession. After much consideration, planning, testing and trialing, We have decided it was time to work for myself. Work from home. Be my own boss. My new profession is labeled “Stay at home Dad”. Its not a new idea, we had always kind of talked about it, but it wasn’t until we started looking at our baby books and our development books were we 100% sold on the idea. Once we started putting all the pieces together, the benefit of a stay at home parent outweighed that of the “extra cash” we would have if I continued to work. Our decisions we have made thus far for out little girls have never just been, what is “easier”, we keep choosing what we feel is “better” and we feel like this is what is best.

Now, I can’t say I am not scared. I am leaving an ever evolving profession in the IT Industry and wonder what its going to be like when I attempt to reenter the field in a few years. I really loved what I do, and I am currently doing what I have always said I wanted to do. It was with a great company only 7 miles from my house. We just started to get into many things which really excited me. But I love my girls and my family so much more and I couldn’t be more excited to start this new venture as a stay at home Dad. .

So June 18th 2010, I will become a stay at home Dad!!!

6 thru 9 weeks VIEW SLIDE SHOW (16)

No real news to share on the girls so I thought I would update everyone on how we are doing. Things are going well. I went back to work Tuesday this last week and Jackie has been home with the girls. Her mother has been coming over daily to help her out. These girls are a handful but are really well behaved. They really don’t cry at all, unless they are hungry. They are starting to sleep for about 2.5 – 3 hours at a time now so that is giving us just a little bit more rest. We are noticing they are staying awake after feedings now so we have put together their little play gym. So far they really just lay on the ground. They don’t play with the gym at all but that will come soon I am sure.

Here are a couple fun facts:

Samantha now weighs 7lbs and Alexis is now 5lbs 10oz

Samantha lost her pacifier the other day. After a few attempts of grabbing it with her mouth, she took her hand, grabbed it and placed it in her mouth.

Michael Jackson’s song “Come Together” quiets them down when they are fussy.

We noticed this last week that Samantha has kind of pointed elf like ears and Alexis is already showing a receding hair line.

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So they say that it’s good for twins to sleep together in the same crib because they are used to being together in the womb for 9 months.  Well, it seems like our twins have had enough sleeping next to each other.  Last night we fed the two of them until they were finally content and yet they still would not go to sleep.  We thought maybe they wanted the sound machine with the sound of the ocean on—didn’t work.  Maybe they wanted us to keep their lamp on—didn’t work.  Maybe they want to sleep in separate cribs—and within 2 minutes they were out cold.  Who knew?  All they wanted was a little space.

It’s funny, I started this post on the blog as the Week 1 update, however considering how little sleep we have gotten and all the other things we have needed to do, it is now the week 2 update. So far we are having fun with the girls. We have given them their first bath, done a little baby photo shoot(for the birth announcements we will soon find time to send out). I take them for little walks around the yard in anticipation for our first “real” walk with Jackie once the doctor officially takes her off of bed rest. There really isn’t a lot of excitement other than that. They eat, they sleep and they poop a lot. and when they aren’t doing that, we are talking with them and trying to bond with them. I think right now they are confused as to what is day time and what is night time because they sleep very well during the day, and not really at all at night. Hopefully we can figure that out soon as I got to head back to work in a couple more weeks here. No other real updates to talk about yet. Next doctors visit for the girls is tomorrow, we get to see how much weight we have gained. I wanted to thank everyone who has come over to help out, be it bringing us dinner(Bobbie), making us dinner(Mom), doing our grocery shopping(Ron) and coming over to give us a little break so we can sleep during the day(Mr. and Mrs. Tober), we appreciate it.

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Well we had our girls today. Everything went well.

The stats are:

Alexis Marie Frei:

4lbs 8oz.
17 inches long
12.5 inch head
Born at 1:06 pm 3/30/2010

Samantha Lee Frei:
5lbs 8oz.
18.5 inches long
12.75 inch head
Born at 1:08 pm 3/30/2010

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Tomorrow at 10am we are scheduled to go to the hospital and have our twin girls Samantha Lee and Alexis Marie.  I can hardly believe that the time has finally come to meet those sweet little babies that I’ve been carrying for the past 37 weeks and 2 days.  7 weeks and 2 days ago, my doctor placed me on bed rest due to Edema (swelling of the body, mainly in the extremities and face).  Thank goodness she did because I began to see the swelling go down as I spent my days in my la-z-boy recliner with my feet up watching what became my regular routine of daytime shows.  Usually I’d catch the oldies but goodies real early in the morning like Saved By The Bell and Fresh Prince of Bel Air before Ellen came on at 10am.  From there I’d normally surf around until Jeopardy! or Family Feud came on.  It became really difficult to get around about 2-3 weeks ago but thankfully I had my Mom, my Dad, my sister Carolyn, my best friend Bobbi, and my father-in-law Ron to occasionally come visit me during the day whether it was to bring me lunch, help with the housework, or just keep me company so I wouldn’t be alone all day.  Of course Dan came home on his lunch break from time to time as well to bring me food and check on me as well but mostly tried to leave work sparingly because of all the time he took away from work to go to almost every doctor’s appointment I had.  He wanted to make sure that the babies and I were OK and always had questions for the doctor asking how he can help make me more comfortable, what signs of labor he should look for, and any other details I may not have thought of at the time.  Dan has been a blessing through this whole pregnancy.  I’d sit in my chair and ask him to get me water, chocolate milk, bake me a cake or cookies, whatever I wanted, then on top of that he would clean the house, do the dishes, take out the trash, feed the cats, clean the cats’ litter box, and still find the time to sit with me and cheer me up when I’m bored or feeling nervous about the birth of the girls.  But tomorrow, Tuesday, March 30, 2010, right around this time 10:15am Dan and I could be looking at two perfect little angels from heaven that will be here to join our family and enrich our lives forever.  We both can hardly wait…

Well, on Tuesday we received a phone call from the doctor. She wants to deliver the babies on Tuesday, March 30th at 10am. They will be delivered at 37 weeks and 2 day. Jackie’s blood pressure has been high and the doc thinks it will be best to have them before things start to get real dangerous for Jackie. We agree. On Thursday we had our appointment and Alexis appears to be attempting to come out first. She has placed her feet in front Samantha’s head, placing her in the number one position. What this means is our choice for a natural birth is simply out of the question pending a miracle. That aside, we are really looking forward to finally bringing the girls home. Their room is ready and so are we. We have both been looking forward to this day for a while now, it almost seemed like it would never come. So pending Jackie’s blood pressure making it into the danger zone the doc specified over the weekend, you can all expect an announcement sometime Tuesday afternoon. Stay tuned for the show. Rest assured we will have pictures.

Well the color is pink. I have to admit, it was a little bit of pink overload when we first found out we were having 2 girls. Jackie and I had immediately headed over to Baby’s R’ Us and I about had a breakdown. I didn’t know what I was going to do with all the pink. Well, I embraced the color and between Jackie and I we made a very pretty room for our girls. The theme was a garden. We liked this idea because it gave us the opportunity to use just about any color. The primary color is still pink though. Here are some pictures

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As most of you reading this may know, Jackie and I have a few little ones on the way. Twin girls by the name of Samantha Lee and Alexis Marie. Because of this significant life altering event, I thought it was time to change things up a little bit with my site. My personal website started off as a simple html web page on Geocities nearly a decade ago. Shortly Kage showed me how to code in HTML and I made version 2 under the site of DanFrei.com. Then came dynamic programming languages like PHP and I discovered Wordpress. This site started the beginning of what was ChiliFrei.NET which became version 3. Since Wordpress, I have gone through 3 changes in designs. Each one completely different from the rest. But none of those changes are as big of a change as what is happening now.

That’s right. This will no longer be my “personal blog” where I post things, rants, update. Social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter will be my avenues for those. For those of you who actually frequent my blog, you would have already realized I don’t update it that often anyways. But now this blog will be used for both Jackie and I to share the stories of our lives as we depart on our journey as parents of twins. The old ChiliFrei.net has been moved and will cease to be updated. If you require data from this site, you can find it under the links section on the sidebar –>

I have taken only a couple posts from my previous blog, the ones telling the stories of when we found out we were having a baby, when we found out they were twins and an update of after a doctors visit. We hope to post more fun and exciting information. I am actually going to try and get Jackie to post some things up here too.

Well today we heard their heart beat at the doctors and they read 160 and 170 BPM. Doc says they’re healthy babies. One of them even kicked the microphone. We are so excited. We still can’t believe how lucky we are that this is happening to us. God has given us not only one child but a second one as well.

Now that things have settled down a bit more we have started cleaning up and preparing for the little ones arrival. We started cleaning out the spare bedroom which will soon be the little kids room as well as started to organize and throw away crap which we don’t need. Trying to optimize our processes just a little. So far, being a dad is pretty fun. I get to take care of Jackie and get her everything she wants, which in turn helps out my little ones who don’t even know I exist yet. They will, once they get ears I will be talking with them.. Maybe while Jackie is sleeping.