Home Sweet Home!!

We are finally home!!! It has been such a long week and it feels great to be back with Caleb in our home again! Last night was pretty good considering what he had done just a few days ago, but at about 4 am Cooper decided he was done with the IV and proceeded to rip it out himself. That caused quite a bit of drama for a while, but we eventually got him settled in. The lack of IV meant there was no chance of morphine without sticking him again, so we got to home today!!!! It is so good to be home! ( Have I mentioned that already?) Everyone is in bed, so we are just praying tonight is an ok night. This is a picture of Cooper at a famous Las Vegas magician show . Everyone talked about it all day, but I really wasnt that impressed. I don't think Cooper was either.



I couldn't have gotten through this week without Gran and Granddad bringing Caleb up to see me. It was so comforting knowing Caleb was well taken care of for the week.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers!!!

Day 4 . . . And Counting!

So here we are on Day 4 and let me tell you having an infant in the hospital is pretty miserable. Don't get me wrong, my little Super Cooper has done amazing. There is just so much that you can do with him especially when he feels like POO.

Day 2

When last I left you guys we were cozying up in the PICU for our first night in the hospital. That night and the entire next day were a breeze. So much so that I had basically starting packing our bags for the trip home on Wednesday! Boy was I wrong! He basically slept through Tuesday and Tuesday evening, but come Wednesday he was awake and kicking. You really can't blame him for his foul mood because he had just had his entire skull reconstructed and his head looked like a pumpkin sitting on top of his shoulders.

Day 3 - SO BIG!

The Doctor told us going in to this surgery that the two worst things about it were the wait and the baby's post surgical physical appearance. He was right about both. The days and weeks leading up to the surgery were filled with doubt as to whether we were doing the right thing and a nervous feeling about numerous "What if's". I quickly told Jennifer that we weren't going to play the "What if" game because we would drive ourselves crazy. I was a little nervous about our decision until I talked to Granddad. He told me that there really wasn't a decision because if we had opted not to have the surgery, Cooper would spend the rest of his life staring across the table at what he should have looked like i.e. his identical twin brother Caleb.

Before

Back to our hospital stay . . . Wednesday was a b*^ch and Wednesday night didn't get much better. Aunt April brought us Freebirds so the night started off real well. Our downfall on Wednesday was that we tried to start weening him off of the Tylenol w/ Codeine he was getting and just use regular Tylenol. After he vomited up his second round of regular Tylenol you could really tell we had made a poor decision. Wednesday night was spent watching the clock until midnight when he could get another dose of the good stuff. We thought we were out of the woods at that point, but about 3:30 he woke up inconsolable so we had to move to the REALLY GOOD STUFF, morphine. That decision sealed the deal on our stay at the hospital tonight.

AFTER!

The Doctor's told us that they will not let Cooper go home until he is eating (CHECK), pooping (CHECK), the swelling in his face has resided (CHECK) and he is able to be comfortable with just Tylenol or Motrin (KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED).

Day 5!

The good news out of all of this is that Mr. Cooper now has a much rounder dome. Dr. T said that the surgery had fixed all of he conditions that would keep his next helmet from working and three months from now we would have a perfectly round headed baby!

Webbers Comes to Visit - CAREFUL!

Thank you everyone for all of your thoughts, prayers and visits! A special thanks goes out to Gran for taking care of Caleb during all of this. It was really comforting knowing that he was in good hands! Gran may need a couple of days rest to recover from 5 straight days of "Webby Woo Woo" but I know she has had fun and he has too!

Pooper Pie's New Dome

You will all be very glad to know that Cooper made it through his procedure today with flying colors. There were very little, if any, complications and he is now resting very peacefully with his new round dome. I thought all day about the best way to blog about today's events and as of 8:28 on Monday evening I have decided to give an hour by hour account of our adventures today.

5:30 a.m. - The alarm goes off and Jennifer and I hop (I probably hopped a little bit higher than Jenn) out of bed to get ready for the big day. Thank god that Gran decided to head up a day early because Caleb started to miss his brother a little early and was up a few times last night. Gran took the late shift so that Daddy was able to get a little rest! After frantically packing the car with the bags by the door we were off to the hospital @ 6:15 (ON TIME!)

7:00 a.m. - Arrive at the hospital and make it to our 1st waiting room. This waiting room was Daddy's least favorite as all it was really there to do was take my copay! $250 later we were off to the second waiting room for a little play time and a meeting with Dr. Jane the Anesthesiologist.

8:30 a.m. - COOPER IS PISSED because he hasn't had anything to eat or drink since 6 p.m. the night before. Dr. Jane, the god-send that she was, decides it is time for the "happy juice". I don't know what "happy juice" is, but after seeing the effects it had on Cooper, I wanted some myself.

9:00 a.m. - Dr. Jane takes Cooper back for his surgery. Mommy cries. And we are back to the 1st waiting room to start the waiting process.

10 a.m. - The nurse stops by and lets us know that they have started the procedure and everything is going according to plan. From then until 2 p.m. the nurses and doctors were really good about giving us periodic updates. We only had to call once to get an update. You will all by happy to know that all updates were fantastic and my lil man was a trooper through the whole thing.

Highlights from the wait:

• Dr. Bum - OK, Dr. Bum is supposedly very good at the whole brain/skull surgery thing. Bedside manner however is not his strong suit. We asked him when he came to give an update if we were doing the right thing and his response was, "I you hadn't your family portraits would look really funny in the future." Thanks for the insight Dr. Bum.




• The Hell Child - I know hospitals are not fun for kids his age, but this kid was off the freaking walls. The only thing that would calm him was the Disney Channel, so we got to watch about 3 hours of "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody" this afternoon.




• The Half Family Update - There was a public phone in the the waiting room and after about 4 hours of waiting it started to ring. I TOLD Jennifer to leave the darn thing alone but she insisted on answering the phone. The person on the other end of the phone asked for a member of the Half family. Jennifer responds with, "We are the only ones here". The problem with this response is that it was untrue. We were the only people in our section of the waiting room, but the other section was filled with the entire Half Family. Let's just say the 14 members of the Half Family were less than happy about missing their phone call. The waiting room nurse got an ear full because Jennifer wouldn't leave the phone be.

2 p.m. - Cooper is out of Surgery and Mommy and Daddy are holding him in recovery! He has a little turbin on his head and there are wires coming out of everywhere, but other than the aesthetics he is perfect!

4 p.m. - We check in to the ICU and our little Pooper Pie is resting peacefully with his new dome. I know my big boy is going to be fine and Mommy and Daddy are much less stressed out!

I will try and blog tomorrow and post more pics! Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers. Keep 'em coming!

Cooper Family!

We got a fun visit from Mema, Papa, and Grandma Lisa this week!! They were excited to see the new big boy haircuts and loved playing with the boys while I got to run errands!! Their favorite toy was my wedding dress that mema had preserved for me and brought in a huge box. Since Cooper and Caleb will never need it, I imagine it will take up space in the back of my closet forever.

11 Months!

It's hard to believe the boys will be a year old soon!!! The first 11 months have flown by!!! They say Uh-oh, bye-bye, mama, and dada! Every time the nurse would walk out of the room at the hospital Cooper would say Bye-Bye. She thought he was a genius. They love to dance when they hear music! Cooper shakes from side to side and Caleb bounces up and down!

Father's Day!

We had a busy day planned for Daddy's first Father's Day! Since 3 people thought Caleb was a girl and Cooper's head will be shaved for the surgery, we decided it was time for our first haircut!!! We went to a hair salon that is kids only. Apparently, the 1.3 centimeters they lost that took about 2 minutes total to cut off was worth 17.99. EACH. Anyway, our hair is super cute and we look like little boys!!!!

After that, we went to pick up Daddy's gift. He had been eyeing an A&M hat for some time and we finally found it at a local golf shop.

Then we took Daddy to his favorite place- Wings n More!!! We are too little for wings, but we had a grilled cheese and fruit cup! It was yummy!!!

Aloha Protiviti!

Jennifer and I had a very special evening planned this Friday because we got to go to Protiviti's Annual Summer Party. The theme for this year's party was a Hawaiin Luau complete with Blue Hawaiin drinks, Hula Dancers, Fire Eaters and an authentic Hawaiin Band. The party was held along the water at the new park in Downtown Houston, Discovery Green. Let me just say that this party was awesome. Houston gets a really bad rap because it is basically just this giant piece of concrete and for the most part it is true. However, Discovery Green is definitely a step in the right direction. The venue for our party was right along the waterway and there was an awesome view of the Houston Skyline. The neatest party about this whole thing was that the boys A-Maw planned the party. I know she would pass some of the accolades on to others, but for the purposes of http://www.seelyfam.com/, she planned the whole thing!

Getting to the party last night was a four step process. I had to call in a number of favors to get this done, but everything seemed to work out just fine.

Step 1 - Gran drove in from Lufkin to stay with the boys. I know she doesn't mind getting to hang out with the boys at all, but we are alway eternally grateful for all Gran does for us. Without her we wouldn't ever be able to go to any of these types of events.

Step 2 - One of my friends who works in The Woodlands and lives downtown stopped by the house to pick us up and drop us off @ Lil Woodrows in Midtown. Special thanks to Annu for being so flexible and helping us out!

Step 3 - The boy's girlfriend's mom, Emily, stopped by the house after we left to help Gran with bath and bedtime! Bathing and getting two infants to bed at the same time is a huge pain in the @$$, so Emily stopped by to help. She is very experienced in this task!

Step 4 - Kyle and Stacy Peterson were attending the party and live just down the street from us. They are expecting their second child so Stacy was the designated driver for the night.

As you can see, the logistics for last night had a lot of moving parts. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to everyone who helped us last night. Without such wonderful family and friends, Jennifer and I would go freakin' stir crazy stuck in the house.

One More Headsicle!

Wednesday afternoon marked the end of an era for the Seely household. That era is the "Era of the Helmet"! Caleb visited Mr. Bob on Wednesday afternoon and got the go ahead to quit wearing his helmet! When we first got the boys fitted for their helmets I really thought it was kinda cute to see these little people in their VERY EXPENSIVE helmets. Well the newness has worn off and after months of looks, questions and explanations we get to deal with the looks, questions and explanations that comes with having twins and not twins with helmets!

A visit from Grayson

A good friend of ours from Lufkin just moved into our neighborhood and we couldn't be more excited. Grayson is the son of Karen and Fernando and is only a few months younger than the boys. There are many plans in the works for Cooper, Caleb and Grayson to become life long friends.

Cooper visits the Big City!

This morning we left bright and early to head to the medical center for Cooper's CAT scan. The first question the nurse asked was "Can Cooper remain perfectly still for 3-5 minutes?" Matt and I just looked at each other. "Um, No. He can not."

She thought it would be best to try anyway just to see. He was ok when we laid him down, but when they taped his head down and wrapped him in a metal blanket, he kinda freaked out. We decided to move forward with the anesthesia.

While the Dr.'s office made sure to call and remind us to bring money, they failed to mention that Cooper was not allowed to eat 6 hours prior. They wanted us to come back in a couple of hours with a starved Cooper who had not taken a nap yet. For some reason, he would not fall asleep this morning. That sounded like the worst idea ever. Smart Daddy decided to try another plan and convinced them to turn out all of the lights in the waiting area and rock him to sleep. When he had been asleep for a while, we walked through the hospital with the nurse going ahead of us turning off all of the lights. We laid him down, he opened his eyes and looked at us and went right back to sucking his thumb as he went to sleep. After the CAT scan, we found out the appointment with the surgeon to get the results had been moved to 2 in the afternoon so we had a lot of time to kill. We were off with a sleeping poopers and in search of food.

After we ate, we decided to check out the choir that was rocking out the first floor of the hospital. We only caught the end of the show, but we were desperate for entertainment. At this point, we had been going and going for 4 hours.

After the choir, we headed over to Texas Children's Hospital in search of some sort of baby friendly play room. They did have a room, but the toys left much to be desired.

We let Cooper crawl around for a while, and headed over to Dr. T's office to determine if Cooper needed surgery or not. While we were waiting, we met a little boy that I had actually heard about during all of my appointments. He had the surgery a week ago and was there for his first post-op. It was really difficult to see, but talking to the mom made me feel a tiny bit better.

Mr. T walked in and we could tell immediately that surgery was needed. He showed us the 3D scan, and it was obvious even to us. One side of his scull has visible lines indicating the sutures, and one side was solid bone. He sat down with us and made us look at pictures of other children of similar age before and after their surgery. He then showed us pics of babies immediately after the surgery and the progression in the following days. Next to waiting for the surgery to be over, the visual recovery is the most difficult. Their eyes swell shut and their head has lots of swelling as well. He compared their behavior to reverting back to newborn tendencies. Lots of crying, up all night, and cuddling.

After meeting with him, he sent in a photographer to take pictures of every angle of his head. It should be interesting to see the difference post surgery. We meet with the other surgeon participating in the operation on Thursday and then with the anesthesiologist right after. The surgery is scheduled for the 24th of this month. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers!!!

A Weekend with K-Maw and The Gang!

We were very pleased to find out about a week ago that the K-Maw was headed south to Texas to visit the greater Lufkin area. While it might not necessarily be that easy to travel with two infants, K-Maw doesn't make it down all that often so we headed to Lufkin for the weekend.

The crazy thing about 11 month olds is that the second you think you have them figured out, they change something. The boys have been so good in the car lately that we really didn't even think to long or hard about what we would need to do in order to make the drive go smoothly. Well, both Cooper and Caleb decided they didn't want to be in the car after only 30 minutes down the road. Our thoughts are that now that they are mobile they would just rather be crawling than stuck in some stupid car seat. Jennifer unfortunately had to crawl in between the car seats in the back and keep them entertained. There isn't much room and it isn't comfortable to sit back there. The things Mommies do for their babies! We actually discussed the merits of a minivan while Jennifer was stuck in the back seat. Needless to say the trip finally ended and everyone, including Mommy, was glad to see the city limits of Lufkin.

Friday night was all sorts of fun because Jennifer and I got to go out to eat with Big Phil, Ronna, A-Maw, the Root and K-Maw. The Outback has never tasted so good!

Saturday was spent hopping from pool to pool. Mema bought the neatest pool complete with a whale slide and the boys absolutely loved it. The boys spent over an hour splashing around in Mema's pool. After the pool, the boys ate like they haven't been fed in weeks. All that exercise in the pool must have burnt quite a few calories.

After a quick nap back at Gran's house, we were off to K-Maw's for a dip in the big boy pool. Let's just say that the boy's had SO MUCH FUN! Mommy had bought them some race car pool floats and once they realized it was OK that Daddy wasn't holding them, they really enjoyed being pushed around.

The weekend in Lufkin was a huge success. The boys didn't sleep that well and we spent the entire weekend running ourselves ragged trying to see everyone, but there were a lot of good times had with lifelong friends!

All the toys in the world...

and they want to play with boxes and laundry. Whenever they get bored with all the stuff that moves, whistles, beeps, sings, and spins I just pull out the trusty ole box of diapers and a basket of folded laundry. They want nothing to do with unfolded laundry. I suppose the fun is undoing the hours of work.