and so they were named...

We finally settled on names for our precious new baby girls.  We named 'Baby A' Eva Grace, and 'Baby B' Zoë Elyse.  Both Eva and Zoë mean 'life', and Eva also represents Eve (the first woman) so we thought it would be perfect for our firstborn.  It took us a while, but we wanted to get to know them first, and feel these names fit them perfectly. 

Today, Eva and Zoë are 1 week and 1 day old.  They are both doing well, in the NICU.  Thank you for your continued support and prayers.

Best Christmas Gift Ever...

After three weeks in the hospital for preterm labor issues related to Baby B, we became the proud parents of TWO BABY GIRLS delivered via Cesarean on December 23rd. Baby A weighed in at 2 lbs 5 oz (14") and Baby B at 1 lb 12 oz (13.75"). Both babies are being cared for in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), and I am recovering well. At this time, we have no pictures or names to share.  Thank you for your support and prayers.

Duarte Family Reunion - Douglas, AZ

Just a few of Victor's family members...

After Thanksgiving, we headed south about four hours to attend a Duarte Family Reunion in Douglas.  I debated wearing high heels, but as you can see, I took the safe route instead and spent the night in ballet flats.  I wasn't sure I'd make it through the entire party, but I did pretty well.  We were at the party from 6 pm until about 11pm, then we even went over to Victor's cousin's for late night tamales.  A perfect night, my pregnant state considered...

Baby Shower

Me and my sisters-in-law, Cena & Kelli

I am so glad I had my baby shower as 'early' as I did, on November 21st, when I was barely 25 weeks pregnant.  It was a real success, and it was so nice to have so many friends and family help me celebrate and prepare for motherhood.  I want to thank everyone who was able to attend, and am also grateful for all the cute baby items I received.  Motherhood is closer each day, and I'm glad I have such a great group of women to support me throughout this journey.

Mommy Jewelry

I read somewhere that many husbands buy their wives a nice piece of jewelry, to commemorate the birth of their new children.  This can be seen as a token of his appreciation and admiration for his wife, after everything she's been through during labor and delivery.  We have been looking around for some simple jewelry I can wear to honor our new babies, once they arrive.  I like the charms used on necklaces (with initials, names, or birthstones) that are used to represent children, like some of the ones I've shown below.

Stella & Dot Initial Charms

Tiffany & Co. Note Alphabet Disc Charms

Red Envelope Birthstone Pendant Necklace

My Growing Belly

Taken November 23, 2009

At my last doctor's visit, my doctor informed me that my 24-week belly is now the same size of the belly of a woman carrying one baby at 8 months.  Shock!  Well, it's expected with two buns in the oven.  Strangers are already commenting about my size, in the guise of "you're due any day now, huh?"...When I went shopping for groceries, one of the clerks said "Oohh...be careful, we don't want any surprises!!" when he saw me walk in.  "Don't worry.  I'm not due until February," I replied.  I told him I am expecting twins, and then he understood.

Making Room for Babies

The babies aren't going to be here for several more months, and yet we have had to do so much already to make room for those sweet little angels. First things first, they need their own room. Since I had recently redecorated our home office, and we rarely use the guest room, we decided to convert the guest room into a nursery. Easier said than done.

We had to move the futon into the home office (where it barely fits); move my crafts/drafting table and drawers into our bedroom; get rid of a large entertainment stand with a TV, DVD player, game console and games (and ended up taking it to Victor's mom's house, for a playroom we plan to have there); and still have a full-size 'junk closet' to clear out. Oh, yeah, and to make room in the home office for the futon, we had to move a large bookshelf out (which we hope to find use for in the nursery).

Once the old guest room was cleared out, we were ready to start on creating a peaceful nursery for two. We chose a light sage green as the main color, complemented by a subtle creamy ivory. The colors are divided by a white chair rail running across all walls, about half-way up in height. We are re-purposing one of our bedroom dressers for the babies' room, since it's huge and already white. We bought new glass knobs to make it more appropriate, and will also use it as the changing table for the babies. The windows are covered in silk green striped drapes, which we hope to keep for a while since they don't scream 'baby room'. We don't yet have the cribs, but we plan to get them soon, and they will balance the room a bit since their finish is a dark espresso color. The plan is to have some white and some dark furniture in the room, so that it's not all too 'matchy'. The only disappointment we've faced so far is that the room barely looks big enough to accommodate one of those large cushy rocking chairs anymore. We are hoping we can still sneak one in after the cribs are in, depending on how we arrange the furniture; otherwise, we'll have to get more creative in our seating options.

In addition, we decided to replace most of our wall-to-wall carpeting with laminate flooring to reduce the allergens in our home, for both our benefit and the babies'. That project alone required us to move all the furniture around and dust and re-dust everything during and after the renovation. We ended up installing the new flooring in our great room and hallways, and have left carpeting in the bedrooms and home office. We are so happy we made the change, though. It looks great and we have gotten rid of so much dust already, which was our goal.

Photos will follow shortly.

Symptoms continue...

All things considered, I haven't had to deal with many crazy symptoms yet. I have read so many books already warning me about all these dreaded symptoms such as crazy cravings, huge stretchmarks, varicose veins, leg cramps and blotches all over your body and face. It seems that none of the side effects I'm 'prepared for' appear, but instead I experience things that are rarely mentioned in books or websites.

One annoying side effect that has recently started (and is not getting any better) is lots of pain in my hands due to their swelling. I expected this on my feet, but didn't really think it would happen to my hands--and I never expected it would hurt! Well, the pain is constant and hurts the most where my fingers bend, so it is starting to make even the mundane daily tasks more challenging for me these days. Not to mention, I had to finally give in and take off my wedding rings thanks to this new change. I waited as long as I could to take them off, but when my doctor said "You'd might as well just take them off now, before they have to be cut off", that kind of sold me on it! I wear them around my neck on a necklace now, lest people start asking me about my marital status during this current state of mine.

Another effect of pregnancy is my obvious ever-growing belly has virtually swallowed my belly button by now! Yeah, yeah, yeah...I knew this would come, but I just never guessed I'd miss it so much. It's just so weird to feel my bump and see that the skin around and over my belly button is so different now. I'm wondering if my innie will become an outie before I give birth?? NOOOO!! Oh well, it's the price I have to pay, isn't it? Sure beats stretch marks...

Lastly, I learned that a lot of the first trimester symptoms disappear in the second trimester, only to show up again in the third trimester. Now, I don't know if it's because I'm having twins, but I feel this happening already, and am only at 23 weeks now. Even though I have been on daily medication for nausea, I have started to feel more queasy lately and even got sick one day this week already! Also, I have been very fatigued often, which was very common in the first trimester. I sleep in and am sleepy again before I've even been up for two hours. This disappoints me the most, as I'm still not finished with all the clutter-clearing and home projects I wanted to tackle during my anticipated 'energetic' second trimester. Well, at least I don't have a job to go to these days. I don't know how I could do it...

A Day at the Zoo

I thought it would be fun to get out and have some fun in a kid-friendly environment before my own arrive. The perfect opportunity arose when my friend invited me to join her and her toddler daughter to visit the Phoenix Zoo, for the special Boo at the Zoo event they hold each October. With our (nearly) five-year old niece in tow, I headed to the Zoo to join in on all the fun.


The moment we got there I felt anxiety. It was pure and utter chaos there, from the parking lot to the ticket line, and all throughout the zoo tour. I felt overwhelmed merely by watching moms and dads chase their small ones around. "I'm having two, I'm having two, I'm having two" was all I could think! Well, at least I know Daddy would never send Mommy and twins to the zoo on their own, so I could take comfort in that fact right away.

I did ok, though, all things considered. I kept cool in whatever shade I could find, kept hydrated with a big bottle of cold water, and kept my patience no matter how many times our niece strayed on ahead of us with so much excitement to see the next animal.

The only thing that went wrong was that I lost my balance taking a picture once when I crouched down to get the perfect view, and fell on my butt when I tried to get myself up! A nice man nearby noticed this and immediately offered his hand to me to help me up. I was so embarrassed, but now I know...I can't do everything I used to anymore!

Babymoon in Santa Barbara

Lately, there is a new trend for pregnant moms and dads. It is the concept of taking that one last 'hurrah' vacation before life changes with the birth of a new baby. This new trend is referred to as the 'Babymoon'.

Well, with two new babies on the way, you just knew we'd have to take a part in this one. We planned our escape to California, so we could drive there rather than deal with airports and flying. After some research, we settled on visiting Santa Barbara, also known as 'the American Riviera'. Ironically, we wanted to leave Phoenix to get away to cooler weather but the heat followed us, since the average temperatures were in the 80's--granted, still cooler than Phoenix but not cool enough when you're pregnant. I didn't get to use a lot of what I packed for the brisk weather we expected, but I was lucky enough to buy some new stuff out there to wear right away.

We stayed in Carpinteria, about 20 miles south of Santa Barbara, which is also very quaint and peaceful (just what we were looking for). It was so nice to get away and really not have an agenda. We visited some local sights (including the Mission of Santa Barbara, which was an architectural beauty) and enjoyed the local cuisine in and around Santa Barbara. Most days we were back in our hotel by 8pm, which was fine by me, since we did a lot of walking during the day. Besides, the World Series games were on, so Victor was happy to be back in the room watching them, and they turned out to be quite the sleep inducers for me! Overall, I am glad we took a trip when we did in my pregnancy, because any later would have been too much for me, as I got bigger.

All the great eateries we visited are described in my Food & Wine Diary, at http://www.hdfoodie.blogspot.com/. Also, pictures of this trip will follow soon.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Happy Birthday, Victor! xoxo

September 25, 2009

Registering is neither easy, nor fun...but it's done now!

Getting ready for the babies is exciting, except that registering for all their baby gear was not as fun as we had hoped it would be. There are so many choices and decisions to make and, as we are finding out, it wasn't easy as we thought to find the perfect items for twins. We have finally managed to get our registry lists put together though, after extensive research on the internet and kind advice from in-store salespeople.
The most challenging decisions have been the ones dealing with selecting the stroller, playpen, and whether to register for one or two sets of their daily items -- such as onesies, bibs, etc. Another frustrating detail is that many items are only available online at certain retailers, so we actually ended up creating two registries to maximize the selections available in stores.
So, we are happy to announce that the first big step in preparing for our babies is behind us. We can now focus on getting their nursery ready...

You can find our registries online at: BuyBuyBaby and Babies R Us.

Baby A and Baby B

Here is the proof, in case you were wondering if we were pulling your leg or joking (as many do, when we share the news)! Have I mentioned that we don't want to know the sex of the babies? We both think it will be a lot more fun to be surprised when they are born. So, in this case especially it was really nice to find out that the way the doctors keep track of both babies during my checkups is by calling them 'Baby A' and 'Baby B' -- and they will be tracked like that throughout my entire pregnancy, so they will be able to monitor each baby's growth and progress separately.

The pictures above were really fun. It was really the first time I could see them so clearly, instead of just looking at two little fuzzballs on the screen. I was shocked to see them positioned with their feet towards each other, but my doctor says they will do a whole lot more moving around before I deliver them. Although both of them wriggled around a lot during the ultrasound, Baby B was especially active--kicking and stretching its arms. So cute!

I hope you enjoyed your first glimpse at my little bundles of joy. I am bracing myself for a lot of kicking in the future. These days I just feel a few flutters here and there, so I can imagine how active they'll both be as they grow bigger in my tummy.

The First Trimester

Here I am, at 12 weeks on August 23, 2009. Thankfully, this is not a maternity dress. I still managed to squeeze into regular clothes, as long it's a dress...

Let me brief you on what my first trimester was like, by enlightening you on my symptoms.

Weeks 1 - 8: Extreme fatigue, sore breasts, heightened sense of smell

Weeks 9 - 12: Fatigue continued, soreness continued, sense of smell even stronger, and all these joined by extreme nausea and vomiting

I couldn't wait to get 'out of the woods', as some say, so I was patiently coping with these symptoms and gaining optimism with every prenatal doctor's visit I had. "Usually, women start to feel a lot better as they enter the second trimester," I was reassured often. Having said that, there was also the caveat, "Well, you are carrying twins, so many symptoms will be heightened in your case." Gee, thanks, Doc.

To put things in perspective, let me share some of my misery with you. The week of August 10th must have been the worst week ever. I was between 9 and 10 weeks, and could not keep any food or liquids down. Everything I ate or drank, from crackers to apple juice, inevitably came right back up within minutes. I was miserable. It was Friday afternoon by the time I decided to call my doctor for advice. I didn't want to call too soon because, again, this is what I thought was 'normal'. My doctor was not in, so I was transferred to one of the on-call doctors. I was prescribed medication for my nausea, which was called in for me and I took the first dose that night. The nausea continued...despite the medicine...but, again, it was probably too soon to take effect.

The next morning, I took another dose of medicine and waited over an hour before trying to eat, but as soon as my breakfast went down, it came right back up! At this point, I felt helpless and thought the best thing to do was go to the Emergency Room, because the on-call doctor had warned me that I could become dehydrated if my vomiting continued. My husband, Victor, took me in immediately, and sure enough I was dehydrated and put on an IV to replenish my fluids. They also gave me more medication (stronger, this time) to stop my nausea and vomiting. This one seemed to work!

Well, six weeks later and I'm still on the same medication. Without it, I can't seem to shake off the terrible nauseous feeling I get even when I am on an empty stomach. My doctor reassures me saying it might all disappear around the 16th or 17th week. Well, I'm already on week 16, so let's just wait and see...

Welcome to our blog!

Recently, we learned we are expecting twins and now that reality has sunk in, I thought it would be nice to start a new blog to share what we're going through these days, with our worlds about to change very soon.

This blog will document my pregnancy as well as fun random thoughts about motherhood (and fatherhood) and also give you the opportunity to leave comments as you like.

I hope you enjoy this new blog, dedicated especially to our friends and family that live out of town and don't get to catch up with us as frequently, in person.

Enjoy!