Home!

I am in absolute HEAVEN!!!  It is the most amazing and wonderful thing to have our boys home! As much as I loved the wonderful time we had at the NICU, learning how to take care of them while they were growing, it is so nice to be at home together!  We made it through our first day and night at home, and I'm finally getting a chance to get this blog up.  Sorry for the delay!  =)

We did really well during the rooming in at the hospital.  We stayed in a small little room, just across the hall from the NICU.  After weighing and measuring the boys a final time in the NICU (Jack made it to 6 lbs 0.3 oz!!! Two 6 pound babies going home!), we went across the hall and settled in for our first official night of parenting...on our own!  After each feeding, we'd call the nurse and let her know how much they ate and about their diapers, but other than that, they left us alone!

We did really well...it proved to me even more how good of a team Justin and I are.  Which is a great thing, because with two babies, you definitely need a strong teammate!

Daddy and his boys watching the Cowboys game

I love my husband! He is such a great man and a great daddy!!

The boys in their separate bassinets.  These took up a huge part of the room!

Will

Jack

It was so amazing to have two babies that were not connected to any kinds of cords or monitors!  We made it through the night, and in the morning, the nurse, nurse practitioner, and doctor came in to do a final evaluation. They said the boys looked great, and they released us to head on home!  We were so happy to hear those words!  

So we dressed them up in their "Daddy's little sluggers" outfits.  Silly mommy didn't realize that these were 0-3 month outfits, not newborn, so they were a little bit big, but our boys wanted to wear them in honor of our Texas Rangers going to the World Series!  The closest we could get on short notice to a Rangers onesie!

Jack making his little 'O' mouth while he was waiting to get in his car seat

Thankfully, my mom was there to take pictures and videos of this wonderful day (the video will come on a later blog once I finish editing it!), and she snapped all of the great pictures we have.  We put the boys into their car seats for the very first time.  I'm glad I'd read the instruction book, because no one was there to help us!  I thought they would be, but they just left us on our own!

Our little family

We headed down the elevators, hardly believing that this was really happening and they were letting us take our boys with us!

I squished in between their car seats in the back of my little Hyundai Santa Fe (definitely not made for a third person when there are two car seats installed), but I was determined to be able to watch them all the way home!

We arrived home, and met my mom there looking very confused.  She told us that she and my dad had put up a huge sign on the front of our house early that morning to surprise us, but when we got there, there was no sign!  She was just about in tears!  I felt so bad for her! =(

But, we found the sign in our backyard!!  Somehow, a gust of wind had ripped it off and blown it OVER our roof!  Crazy!  So we came back and took a picture, and then she put it back up in a way that it wouldn't blow off again.  Isn't it adorable?!  What a wonderful surprise, Mom and Dad, and we even got a funny story out of it! Thank you so much!!

The boys hanging out in their car seats while we get everything from the hospital put away.

Once we felt situated, we got the boys out of their car seats and put them in the pack and play my wonderful friend and twin mommy Shannon let us borrow.  We are not letting the boys sleep together at night, per the hospital's orders, but during the day when we're awake and watching them, they can lay in the same bed.

Oops-sorry about the sideways picture.  Will is on top.

My dad stopped by after work and fed Jack.  Jack was wide awake for a while afterwards, just staring at my dad as he talked to him!  Too cute!

My dad also brought Betsy back from their house, and it was so much fun to see her reaction to the boys, and to all of the baby stuff all of a sudden in the house.  She kept sniffing everything, and then came up to me, smelled Will's head, and licked him on the top of the head! She loves them!!  She is so gentle with them, and seems really concerned and protective of them already!

She isn't quite sure where she is supposed to sit when we both are holding babies, but so far, she likes to sit up on the chair or the bed and stare into the down into the pack and play at the boys!  I think Betsy and the boys are going to be best buddies!

After the 5pm feeding, we couldn't believe it, but the boys stayed WIDE awake for almost two hours!  I didn't think they were supposed to be able to do that yet, and we regretted it later when they were super tired at their next feeding.  But they were so adorable!!  We put them in their bouncy seats for the first time.  They seemed to kind of like it, but weren't to sure about where they were!

Will

Jack

They look so small!

I am just so happy having my boys home.  It is the moments like this that make me realize that my dream of being a mommy has finally come true!!

More to come from the Steiner house soon!