McCarter Twins

Christmas 2008

2008-12-23T22:30:00.000-08:00

Amongst our own household there is serious misunderstanding about the Advent. The problem surfaced the other day when Jeremy stated that Santa Clause would be holding baby Jesus in the Christmas parade, and continued when we learned that baby Jesus’ parents were Merry and Pippin, and he came so that he could turn into bread. Also the real Santa Clause lives in Ventura. Parenting is hard.

Here are some stories that don’t make us look as bad:

Molly, in her pursuit to begin every word with the letter H, can say Hmismas. Others include: Hammy (friend Tammy), Hama (Grandma), Heemup Heemup (Clean up) and HimHuit (Swimsuit.) Molly accomplishes what she sees fit with nonchalant determination. She assumes that she also is 4 and will enjoy the benefits whether we provide them or not. Yet she waddles over with her torso twisting, arm- waving walk to snuggle the way only a squishy 1 and a half-year-old can. I was warned I would be wrapped around her finger. While I am not trying very hard to avoid that, she does make it easy.

Ian looked forward all year to being four, because we flippantly told him he could have gum when he was four. The first words out of his mouth on his birthday after we said Happy Birthday to him in bed were “Can I have gum?” We are never sure which of our comments will make an impact. Our requests to get in the car, for instance, do not. At all. On the other hand when Megan off -handedly said that most 4 year olds don’t suck their thumbs because it can make their teeth crooked, he quit cold turkey. Only once, crying at his inability to self-soothe, did he mention that he didn’t want to have crazy teeth. Poor boy.

Jeremy in his passion for art and music drew an anatomically correct picture of daddy to share with his preschool teachers. I expected an intervention from CPS, so being a man of honor I planned to discreetly recycle it immediately. Instead it has garnered much praise from the critics so it is hung with great pride on the refrigerator with all of your Christmas cards. Jeremy also let us know that dragon’s don’t celebrate Christmas because they would scare Baby Jesus.

Megan says funny stuff too but not in the same way. It turns out we are having our 4^th child in May. Turns out is what you say when you want to imply that you were not fully responsible or aware of something. But it turns out that we are both. Being pregnant is cute the first time, annoying the second, and funny the 3^rd The things that come out of tired, pregnant women’s mouths can be quite funny; Unfortunately unrepeatable. This all amounts to us having 4 kids 4 and under, which seems stupid; But in a joyful kind of way. While we always wanted 4, we were never quite ready to live up to the reality of a new infant. Family planning is funny. We are still working on the planning part.

The ways that I am growing and changing are neither funny nor interesting. But I will say this. This year more than before, we love Christmas. I am sad for it’s ending before it even begins. I love pine trees in my living room, bare trees in our back yard, excuses to eat Christmas treats. I love putting together toys in pajamas, reading user’s manuals and explaining them to family members who don’t. I like the idea of things that I don’t even really like, like eggnog and rum-balls. I love kids books designed to make me cry, that actually do. Even my distrust of colorful sweaters can be suspended. And if I am a bit confused about Christmas, I am so happily. It is not the ‘true meaning’ of Christmas that confuses us. We just feel guilty that we forget what the party was for. Sometimes that happens at a good party. Just the same I am more grateful for the gift than the party. Whether he comes in a manger or in Santa’s lap, drink up and thank God for the best gift.

Family Photos

2008-09-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

It never hurts to have a Brooks Photography student living in your home. Here are the latest from our good friend and garage-dweller, Jen Turner.

Megan and Molly (1 1/2 years)
Ian, Brad and Jeremy playing airplane (boys 3 1/2 years)

Entries from the "Memorable Parenting Moments" Log

2008-03-02T22:48:00.000-08:00

Ian 3yrs. 2mos.
Brad putting Ian to bed at night, talking about all the people who love him and all the things they are happy about. Ian says, “I’m so happy to have an Ian named Jeremy.”

Ian 3yrs 2mos
Ian singing to Molly, who is sitting on the patio, “If you’re happy and you know it sit on your bottom.” Followed by, “Good job, Molly you’re sitting on your bottom.”

Jeremy 3yrs. 2mos.
Following a surprising report at preschool, I asked Jeremy about sitting down during group time, and not jumping up. When asked how the teacher felt when he jumped around, he said, “It made her kind of bumpy. No, not bumpy. It made her kind of grumpy.”

Ian 3 yrs. 2mos
Brad tapping his foot to music. Ian says, “Hey what’s your foot doin’ down there at the end of your leg, Daddy?”

I&J 3yrs 2mos.
Ian and Jeremy both love doing crafts. Often we’ll pull out craft supplies at 9AM when Molly goes down for a nap. Ian loves naming the colors he’s using, and coloring as much surface area as he possibly can. Jeremy loves to quietly use an entire roll of tape to tape the crayons to the Crayola box; an unconventionally creative guy.

Jeremy
Often Brad or I will call our boys by the wrong name, “Jeremy, I mean, Ian.” Sometimes if we catch the mistake quickly we’ll say, “J…Ian” to which Jeremy corrects, “His name is NOT J-Ian.”

Ian – age 3yrs. – Complimenting Grandma Alice
“I like you Grandma Alice… you have cute socks.”

Jeremy Potty Training
Jeremy singing quietly to himself in the bathroom, “I am peeping my Lord, Kum Bah Yah. Oh, Lord. Kum Bah Yah.”

Jeremy on Christmas Eve
We kept the kids in the Christmas Eve service with us this year, and heard a man cough in the row ahead of him. Into the quiet sanctuary Jeremy clearly admonished, “Cover your mouth!” and had the entire row ahead of us doubled over in laughter.

2008-01-29T20:32:00.000-08:00

Here is a test of my mobile blogging capabilities. The entries will be worse but potentially more frequent.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

Christmas 2007

2007-12-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

Jeremy 3yrs. Ian 3yrs. Molly 9mos.

Molly 9mos.

Jeremy 3yrs. Ian 3yrs.

Happy Halloween

2007-11-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

Flight Crew and Ground Crew

Just Like Daddy

Happy Ground Crew

Pumpkin Patch

2007-10-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

Ian left, Jeremy right

Cousin Daniel and Molly

Jeremy

Ian

There is a huge benefit to having a Brooks Photography student living in our home. Jen came with us to the pumpkin patch this week to take pictures for a school project; a brochure on Ian and Jeremy. This will come in handy if we ever decide to sell them. Molly didn't miss out on the action, either!

Cute story of the week: This morning Jeremy was trying to snuggle into Brad but couldn't get comfortable on Brad's collarbone. Jeremy said, "I can't find a parking spot." He nuzzled around some more and happily exclaimed, "I found a parking spot for me!"

I also watched in amazement as Jeremy placed two suction cups on his chest in the bathtub, saying "thump thump, thump thump" then he took them off and said, "Molly, here's some milk for you." Thanks, Jeremy.

Keeping Busy

2007-07-20T21:16:00.001-07:00

This morning Brad had to sneak out to the garage to pay bills alone. I got boys dressed, properly disposed of a wayward poop that did NOT go in the hard-to-miss potty located in our kitchen, and got Molly down for her first nap of the day. Washed scrambled egg dregs down the drain, and wiped jelly off of two southernmost chairs at the table. Molly cried to be petted to sleep and as she conked out I sighed with relief and thought, "Oh, how nice that the boys are playing quietly in the living room." They had located the dry pasta wagon wheels and were practicing crunching and spitting them over the edge of the couch.

At least they were playing quietly.

We're really into potty training right now. If you come over, you might catch Jeremy fully clothed, crouched beside Ian and peering into the potty saying, "Nice and calm, Ian, Nice and calm. Good job, Ian." I also recommend that you wear shoes.

Quick Photo Update

2007-05-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

Tummy Time Times Three

The Palm Tree Hairdo... last seen in the family in 1975... now proudly worn by 2-month-old Molly Leanne!

Molly Home Again

2007-04-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

"Viral Something" is the official diagnosis for our little Molly. She came off the IV Wednesday night and began eating well, and generally feeling better. No new scary things grew in her blood samples overnight, either. So they let her come home from the hospital today. We'll keep a close eye on her, and continue to thank God for answering the onslaught of prayers He received this week on her behalf.

Would it have been better to keep her at home and just give her Tylenol? Seems we could have had the same results without all the drama. But I guess that's why they don't say that foresight is 20/20.

We appreciate your walking through this one with us.

Love,
Megan & Brad

Molly - Maybe Meningitis?

2007-04-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

The quick update: Molly took an odd turn on Sunday night, and was admitted to the hospital on Monday to rule out bacterial and/or viral meningitis. Yesterday was a battery of procedures including 3 unsuccessful spinal taps and no firm diagnosis.

This morning (Tues) she woke up looking much better and today her bloodwork shows more leaning toward something viral rather than bacterial. We'll wait another day and if she improves, and no bacteria surfaces in the samples taken on Monday, we should be home on Thursday. Possibly?

Monday was hard. Today has been better. Tomorrow Great Aunt Debbie is coming up to be the twin parent, and Brad is going to fly. We hope to wake up to an even healthier Molly, and while we may never know what has hit our poor little nugget, we rest and hope in the hunch of the hospital pediatrician that it's a "viral something" that will pass soon.

We feel your love and prayers. Thank you! (Megan posting - sorry for the lack of creativity for all those who were expecting Brad!)

Vote For Chris Mundell

2007-04-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

My good friend Chris Mundell entered a competition to be the VP of Pizza. He is in the top 3. The winner is decided by votes and it is a very close race between him and one other. Winner takes $25,000 and a lot of Pizza.

Please do a good deed and find time to vote for his entry today. I won't even begin to say all the reasons he should win, but trust me he should.. And his entry rules.

He is the one in the middle, playing guitar.

Here is the link. Please tell a friend.

VP of Pizza Contest

Furball

2007-03-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

Average Post

2007-03-26T15:27:00.000-07:00

I am supposed to be asleep. I should know better than to write while supine, worse to publish when my BS detector is so compromised. Some things that I write look so good in the dark:

The cars out on Turnpike have all gone home and parked, and my family has fallen happily asleep at the other end of that dark hall I am looking down. I am here, on our couch in the glow of my laptop listening to the grandfather clock ring through numbers I should only hear during the day. It is quiet except for that and the squeaks of my daughter swinging next to me. I think I came out here because she wasn’t sleeping, and here I am awake writing about how she is asleep. I am sure it will make perfect sense in the morning.

She looks like the pope; all wrinkled, hunched and peaceful. She spends most of her time looking that way…Or pissed off that we are trying to disturb her perfect baby sleep. She is shrouded in mystery. She is my daughter. My only one. I have no idea who she is. They say I will be wrapped around her finger, and somehow I don’t doubt it. I am an easy target. But for now I sit around looking at her, thinking that she will reveal something about who she is going to be. Something more than: Molly Leanne, 9 lbs 1 oz, lots of black hair. I look expectantly as though she will look up and make eye contact and say “Hi daddy I love you.” But she just sits there looking like the pope, grunting and going cross-eyed smelling like a vitamin store*. I am in love with who she will be; In spite of, or especially because of the fact that I have no control over who that is. I know that in three weeks I will know so much more, in 3 months even more, and in 3 years even more. For tonight, nine nights old, she is all guess work.

*Author’s note: While all U2 fans know that it is true that “Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby’s head” Bono gave us little info on what the other end has a scent like. Compared to the scent of a toddler diaper, I am happy to call a newborn diaper "freedom."

Then There Were Five.

2007-03-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

Molly Leanne McCarter, Born 9:43 AM March 16, 9 Lbs, 1 ounce, 20 inches.

She weighs a pound and half more than Ian and Jeremy combined at birth. She is very happy,healthy and sleepy. (And hairy)

Pink's not so bad.

More on that later.

Molly & Megan & Brad in Operating room.

Mommy & Molly

This picture only proves how hard it is for a family of 5 to share a hospital bed. (with post-op mom.)

Christmas Letter 2006

2006-12-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

I have never heard those sleigh bells jingle-ing or ring ting-tingle-ling. But I have heard a couple toddlers running down the hall with bells hanging on their ears - and I am pretty sure that it is better. I have noticed that our heater is running a little bit harder lately and that we are running a bit easier. I have noticed that our family is putting on the winter fat. Or maybe it is the baby growing in Megan that is doing that. As for mine I would like to believe it is ‘sympathy’ weight. Sympathy for uneaten Christmas cookies.

Here are a few things we learned this year:

1. Don’t attempt conversation with toddlers present.
2. A whole new language. For instance caterpillar = peeler pilauer.
3. Family planning is a waste of time.

News brief: We are currently exactly average. We have 2.5 kids. Megan is making our daughter and doing a nice job of it (due in March.) Brad upgraded to captain and is still based in Santa Barbara. The twins just turned two and can tell you so, but don’t know what it means. Ian likes putting oranges in gopher holes. Jeremy wants to hug busses. Neither is sure whom they are looking at when they look in a mirror. They are able to sit still for up to 20 seconds at a time. Not a day goes by that they do not say something to make us laugh out loud.

This year was full of reminders that we are guaranteed nothing and entitled to nothing. The fact that Jesus showed up in a feed trough and died in his 30s is just one more reminder. So from the comfort of our overstuffed winter bed, our bellies overstuffed with interestingly shaped colorful cookies, we can only be grateful. In the light of ever-present suffering, it is our only option. For our bed, our boys, electric Christmas lights, cookies, our girl on the way, winter weight, forced air gas heating, Christmas music to remind us that she bore to us a savior, and for each other, still happy. Of all the 1000 ways that things could be different by year 3 of our marriage I have nothing but gratitude. Pure gratitude.

Merry Christmas
Brad, Megan, Ian, Jeremy, and baby sister

Punk Punks

2006-10-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

Because I am a thoughtful and compassionate husband, I wanted to bring Megan to a water park this summer. We would have been the oldest people there who were not chaperoning a youth group. Perhaps, also, the whitest and flabbiest, except that we would have gone to a water park in New Braunfels Texas - we might have looked pretty good. Everyone thinks that they would go to Europe for the weekend if they had free airfare. But they wouldn’t. They would decide that the flying time would be a weekend, and would end up going to New Braunfels instead. It is the home of the Schlitterbahn, which is, as far as we can tell the best water park ever. It is also where Leigh Nash from Sixpence None the Richer worked on the “Coke float” when she was in high school. That truth singularly proves that anyone can be a rock star.

We didn’t go there though, because being, (or getting) pregnant at a water park is not advised. It could also be embarrassing and weird. Rather, we attended an event at which we were the youngest who were not being chaperoned. And so it was that we found ourselves last night in St Paul in the fall. Indeed our vacationing standards are different than they were. Vacation is not a destination anymore - it is an absence. We felt comfortable about being in the twin cities, but were really just happy eating meals without cutting anything into squares. When we sat in the plane, delayed for four hours, we were probably the happiest people on the plane. There were people bringing us snacks. It was really very relaxing.

Outside it was colder than Santa Barbara ever is, but inside we felt quite at home. Warmed by sweaters and stories, folk music and an old guy in a suit and red sneakers who talked 2000 adults into singing “you are my sunshine.” Megan and I saw Garrison Keillor on our second date and have listened to his live radio show many times. I will admit an impressed chill ran down our spines when he quietly stated, “We’ll go live in 10 seconds there is nothing to stop it” and seamlessly the music built as he welcomed America to the Prairie Home Companion live from the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul. I have heard the phrase so many times. It means something different when you are in the Fitzgerald Theater.

And so I know that it is fall, Minnesota sends a message to let us know. Maybe the time will change soon, maybe we will find a leaf or two in our drought resistant landscaping to rake into our compost piles, maybe we’ll decide to wear a sweater only because it seems like we should. We won’t be hauling the docks in off the lake, or installing snow tires but we will look for our shadows to grow in stature, the lighting to change on the mountains and soon the sun will begin to set over the ocean again. I know it is fall because, in spite of my efforts to cut back on sugar, we already polished off a bag of Baby Ruths. Megan says our baby needs them. Mostly I know it is fall because the twins broadcast it for us. Not a decorative gourd escapes the all-seeing eyes of Ian or Jeremy. Not a real, plastic, painted or cutout pumpkin eludes them. It is their job. Everywhere we turn, “punk punk, punk punk.” I love the fall. Here are the pictures.

Ian

Jeremy. Right after this we discovered he had a 102 fever. He hides it well!

Ian throwing hay.

Nice pose Jer.

Left over summer pics

2006-10-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple pics long over due from summer. We'll be posting the punk-punk extravaganza '06 soon (read "pictures from the pumpkin patch"). Stay tuned.

2006-10-18T20:38:00.001-07:00

Jet Puff 1. Jeremy left. Ian right.

2006-10-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

Jet Puff 2. J left. I right.

2006-10-18T20:33:00.000-07:00

Jet puff 3. Jeremy front. Ian back.

2006-10-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

Oh the wonder! Ian

2006-10-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

J-bear sleepin.

2006-10-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

Jeremy

Check it out 3 posts in one day!

2006-10-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

Or does this one make it 4? As usual read from the bottom up for most accurate chronology.

Why God is Funny

2006-10-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

Usually the funniest things happen when you are not allowed to laugh about them. I am not sure if the things are really more funny or if it is the guilt in laughing that makes it feel so good. I only know that I don’t laugh to tears about a mispronunciation of the “prophet Amos” except during a sermon.

Perhaps you can appreciate then, how incredibly alone I felt at Costco the other day when I experienced this: There at the end of my aisle next to the meats and cheeses was a karaoke professional. Let’s call him Dave. I am not joking. Neither was he. Hired by Costco to boost sales on the Kirkland home karaoke system, there stood Dave in his everyman jeans and white tennis shoes, looking like any mildly overweight American middle manager type on his day off. Except, that this was not his day off. He was standing in the concrete aisle with his Costco nametag on a lanyard singing Knights in White Satin, and he was really good. I could not look him in the eye. Neigh, I could hardly lift my head for fear of him knowing what troubled joy his predicament was causing me. I mean he was really good. All I could wonder was how did this happen? I wondered if this is one of those jobs that no one knows how to get. Like being a blimp pilot. No one has a friend who flies blimps. Airships were on my mind because of the recent crash of a Hood Dairy blimp in the northeast. I watched the coverage on CNN who could paint a tire blowout as a catastrophe of epic historical proportion, and they said that the disaster involved the blimp resting on the tree tops while the pilots tried to determine if they could simply repair the problem and fly away. I wouldn’t mind being in that air disaster myself. “I crashed the blimp again today” I would say as I loosened my tie and took off my blimp captain’s hat. Almost anything you could hit would involve bouncing or floating. All of that has little to do with Dave’s job except that both jobs are full of mystery to me. Was Dave a Costco greeter with a gift and nothing to loose? A hidden talent that was discovered at a company holiday party? Or is he a Karaoke consultant, hired to make it look easy to the bulk buying masses? Or worse was Dave the guy who meant it when he said “I’ll do anything to do what I love.” Be careful what you wish for. You might end up next to plastic Christmas tree in September singing Bob Seeger songs to people looking for the right salami pack.

All of this was going through my head, except a lot faster while I was looking at a shelving unit to store my own baggage in, and I kept looking up hoping for anyone to make eye contact with who could share all of these thoughts about Dave’s problem/job by sharing a quick laughing glance. But no one, and I really wanted to commune with someone about this, would look up. People were walking by him looking at the futon next him, discussing the price, a worker was assembling a display and everyone thought this was all perfectly normal. Knights in White Satin… loud enough to be heard throughout the store! I can not possibly be alone on this. I thought less of every person who passed without acknowledging the depth of the dark comedy unfolding at the end of the cheese aisle.

And what I really wished was that my friend Matt was at Costco today. Matt would have bounced with inexpressible wonder as he tried to figure out how best to capture the moment. It is things like this that make me happy in the face of the sorrow of losing Matt this week. Happy not only because it reminds me of Matt’s own dark gift of sarcastic criticism which made me laugh so many times. Not only because it causes me to share something with Matt in my mind which I know he would have appreciated. But mostly because it makes me think about where Matt is now. I know that he is in the all encompassing presence of the most creative being that is. Not just creative like he can make a monkey or an elephant, but like he made up the things that are funny about monkeys and probably thinks its weird that elephants can pull stuff to their mouth with this really long nose/arm/hand like thing. It has made me think a lot about Matt’s new residence. I think God is funny. I can’t really think what kind of jokes are funny to God. Like I am not really sure if the Amos thing was funny to God or not. But it seems like someone taught us to laugh at stuff. And someone created us funny and not funny, in his own image. I am pretty sure that Matt made God laugh and even more sure that it is reciprocal. That makes me happy, even while I miss Matt every time I notice him missing.

Here is a slide show of Matt and his family.

Cap'n

2006-10-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

My return to normal life has been far less dramatic this time through. Camp Skywest is as numbing as usual, and home life is as relieving, but this time I did not cry on my bacon. I collected my fourth stripe and my starred wings and commenced making authoritative but relaxed sounding P.A. announcements. The biggest difference is that I now sit where the passengers see me while boarding. Which means that I need to visually exude the same relaxed confidence for the one in five passengers who looks up with the examining look, who is trying to determine whether or not they ought to trust their lives into these hands. It would make a very interesting psychology study, to see which pilots people felt would be good pilots verses which pilots were actually good pilots.

More importantly I am back to full time parenting my poor sons who still apparently think I live on the other end of the telephone. Of course they also think that the remote control is a phone.

A guy who I used to fly with, who has 5 kids and is overly wise for a pilot said that if you got dropped into parenting at any point except where you do, you could not possibly handle it. True. You start with a few cells, no needs, and no skills, yet, you are a parent. Though the rest of your life will be influenced by and centered around the outcome of those cells, for now you only need to incubate. And for now our boys’ needs are simple. Simple enough for me to handle. For now.

This is the part that is so incredibly intimidating. When I am 60 something they could look at me with the same anticipation and need for my approval as they do now. It just won’t be so obvious. When I used to play music more, there was this kid who kept showing up at our shows. He would stand directly in front of me in the front row. He would not look at anyone else. He would watch me. He also played bass. He watched my hands, and I could feel the intensity of his watching. My hands would sweat because I knew he would spot all my mistakes. He did not blink. Eventually his band opened for our band, and he showed up with my exact make and color of bass, my exact amp. Obviously it was creepy, but that’s not really my point. I could only keep thinking, “I am not that good”.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but I am not sure it translates when it is genetic. Ian and Jeremy had little choice but to inherit the bad with the good from dear old dad. Similarly they may have little choice but to learn from the actions of my life. But here is my growing audience. Ian and Jeremy with front row seats to my average little show. My hands are sweating.

Excuses of Bad Bloggers

2006-10-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

I didn’t mean to go three months without writing. I didn’t mean to, yet that is what happened isn’t it? Let me explain. In July, Megan had 3 part time jobs, then my dad said we could move into his other house on July 5th. Then Skywest said I could go be a captain if I started class on July 10th. Then Megan sent me a text message while I was in Salt Lake with a picture of a positive pregnancy test. Then I got home and unpacked some boxes. Then I was ready to put up a couple posts but then our good friend Matt died from the brain cancer he had been fighting for the last 2 plus years. Then, I’ll be honest, I could not write a thing that seemed right. I only wanted to write about what was happening with Matt, yet I wasn’t really good enough to say anything that wasn’t trite or dark or some other thing I didn’t want to subject anyone to. So it has gone that I have so many things to write about that I don’t have time to write. So what follows is a string of things that I meant to post, or meant to write better, or meant to put in a better order at a more appropriate time or something, but instead will just be spurted out now rather than never. Forgive, or at least understand, the confusion.

Props Are For Boats

2006-06-06T22:44:00.000-07:00

Clearly I have not been writing about the boys recently. It is not for lack of material. Or desire. It would just be much easier if I could observe and write about them from a safe distance. For instance, I could install a two-way mirror in our home so that I could be in range but out of reach. I would be Brad Goodall, observer of the playful and social climbing human toddler. As it is, if I would sit down with my laptop on the couch, like I used to, and begin to watch them and type, this is what my entry would look like:

“Ian is walking towar…. Stomp… waddle…asdvassssssssvvsssssssss” At which time I would be looking for the ‘s’ key on the floor between bits of cracker, blocks and sippy-cups. After unsuccessfully searching for the key for several days it would be added to the long list of items lost in the Toddler Relocation Program (TRP). A few items recently recovered from said program include: one sandal in a baking tin in the cupboard, a pair of kitchen tongs under the dresser and the remote control in the diaper can.

Regardless, our life as often suffers from cute overload as it does from TRP. I know it is a parent’s job to find their kids cute regardless of their slobber and snaggle-toothedness, but that is not the kind of cute I am talking about. It is that after a year of double the workload we are beginning to reap the benefits of two-ness. I don’t know what we would do with one. What is better than two mop heads starting a game of peek-a-boo with each other around the side of a chair, and getting themselves laughing so hard about it that they lose control. Or when Jeremy goes pacifier hunting in the bedroom and brings back two with the express purpose of giving one to Ian. Or when Ian sees Jeremy and excitedly shouts Jay Jay.

In the news:

I received word today that I have been ‘awarded’ a new position at SkyWest. I have been a ‘First Officer’ for the last two and a half years and will now be a Captain. Initially I will be based in San Luis Obispo, until a Captain leaves Santa Barbara. This is very good news, and again very unexpected as far as timing goes. I will go back to the Brasilia: the smaller, louder, slower airplane that I flew in my first year at SkyWest. It is considered an upgrade because of the job position even though it is a ‘lesser’ airplane. It is kind of a little-fish/big pond vs. big-fish/little pond kind of situation. If you end up on one of my flights please don’t make any jokes about where first class is, or ask if I wound up the rubber bands or include any phrases about props being for boats. It is good to remember that one of the things that you should not tell a man is small, is his airplane. Your cooperation with all uniformed crewmembers is appreciated.

Beach Babies

2006-06-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

"Hey, what's in your bucket, Ian?"

Jeremy on his makeshift cell phone

Ian

Baja Babies

2006-03-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures from our last-minute trip to Baja. I had a week off work and airline priveledges. We had two stroller/car-seat combos, one roller bag, a day-pack and two toddlers who seemed to think Mexico would be as much fun as the toys on the living room floor. The idea was to find a "fishing village" on the Sea of Cortez side and stay in something with a thatched roof. We found it several hours up the coast in La Ventana. Here are the pics.

The Ideal.

The Real!

Jeremy front, Ian back.

Why we love Super Pollo!

Jeremy enjoying the view.

2006-03-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

Jeremy in the Santa Barbara snow!

Ian standing, Jeremy kneeling

While we usually brag about the warm weather in Santa Barbara, today we get to brag about the snow. We drove to the top of La Cumbre peak, and sledded with cousins, Nathan, Jake and Ryan, and Aunt Melissa and Uncle Ben. The snow was falling like crazy, and made for an exhiliaratingly terrifying drive back down the mountain in our German bobsled, Gus the Bus. Praise be to God for choosing to let us live to brag about our cold California weather.

There goes the college fund.

2006-02-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

In spite of the boys' excellent effort in Hollywood... No one was chosen. There were 6 sets of twins who were called back. None got the job. In fact it went to a friend of the director's kid. We are too new to the business to be jaded so I'll withold my speculation about why we got to drive to my favorite town twice. All said, however, it was a positive experience. We are hopeful that the fact that casting director did really like I&J will be helpful in the future.

Goin' to Hollywood

2006-02-16T10:03:00.001-08:00

I hate Hollywood. Not in a soapbox way like I hate the morals and left wing agenda... blah blah blah. I like movies and tv so I'm pretty much off my high horse about that. I just mean that I hate the town. It is dirty, confusing, busy, filled with people that need baths, and is anything but glamorous. So it was with mixed emotions that we accepted an offer to have the boys audition for a commercial which would be shot in Hollywood.

Before anyone gets excited let me say that we are not trying to be the next Marykate and Ashley, or Mcaully Caul.... whatever his name is that sued his parents. This all occured when we learned that twins are often in demand for photo shoots because of the strict labor laws about how long a child can work in a day. It is good to be able to swap one out for the other when one gets fussy, etc.

They got their first job before they turned one as swimsuit models for a Red Envelope Father's day catalog, which will come out, I presume, around Father's day. While on that shoot, a couple of people recommended that we get the boys connected in Los Angeles, since most of the work is down there. We sent out a few cute snapshots, including the ones below, to L.A. agencies and got a call for our first audition shortly after. This all seemed like reasonable work for a family with a stay at home mom, allowing Megan to stay with the boys while working.

The Boston Market Audition on Monday was for babies age 1-2 who could dance and "shout" or "sing" along to music. Our kids can barely stand up unassisted, and were the youngest there. But when they were asked to bang on a drum, they did so with pleasure, and when they turned on the music, Jeremy instictively clapped his hands as though that were his sole purpose in life. The audition was all of three minutes, and we left feeling pretty sure we wouldn't hear from Boston Market again. We did however, get a "call back" which is essentially a second audition after they narrow the field. Today we go back to my favorite town, along with 6 other sets of twins. We still have low expectations, but are encouraged that it seems like a reasonable story that they might get some other work.

So far it is fun for everyone and will end when it isn't, and could make a drop in the college funds.

Stay tuned, the blog is not dead, only slumbering.

Jeremy left, Ian Right

Ian front, Jeremy back

Happy Birthday Pics

2005-12-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

The boys turned 1. Here are a couple pics from the party.

Birthday shirts. Ian left, Jeremy right.

First time ever that Ian did not smash his meal!

Grandma Janet and her 5 boys. L to R, Jeremy, Nathan, Jake, Ian, Ryan.

More confusion about cake eating. Ian left, Jeremy right. Yes, we sang Happy Birthday twice.

Pumpkins

2005-10-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

Fall again is upon us, subtle though it is. Fall in Santa Barbara is more a manufactured event than a season. A bit like snow at Disneyland, charming if not authentic. It is hardly noticeable except for the occasional desire to wear a sweater, the proliferation of Indian corn on our mantles, and the fur on our teeth from eating all the way through to the bottom of the bag of candy corn. It is my favorite season, except for the other 3, which are also my favorites when they first begin. And all are my least favorite when they over stay their welcome, around 3 months from their arrival. Mostly, for us it means the boys want to eat dry leaves. Everything else is the same. We also changed our photo props to pumpkins. That’s about it.

Jeremy

Ian

Jeremy

Ian

Megan with Jeremy, Brad with Ian

Happy Birthday to Me

2005-09-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

I remember turning 25 and writing in my journal that it was an age that expected maturity. Today I am 36, a number that is closer to 40 than 30, closer to mid-life crisis than college. Jesus, after all, had already changed the world permanently and been dead for 3 years by this age. I, on the other hand, change at a different rate. Not having started out perfect, I think, had something to do with that. If 25 expected maturity, I really am not sure what 36 expects. I am quite sure that it is not maturity. I gave up the maturity kick a while ago, and things seem to be going better. It is, after all, a virtue of diminishing returns. At some certain point, around the middle of your life, it is better to start working in the opposite direction. Were you to pursue it throughout your whole life you would find yourself a stodgy old rule maker, a critic of all new ideas and possibly a turtleneck wearer. Aged but not seasoned. More old, but not more wise. That is why I plan on watching South Park from here on out.

Because of my impressive maturity I now have to work for things that used to be easy. Like not getting fat. Part of my plan to not be fat and 40 at the same time is to run. It prevents fatness and makes me a hero. Here’s how: I take these two wiggly boys who have become rather un-cute to their mother by 3 in the afternoon, and put them in a Jogger and parade them by 4 miles worth of tourists at the beach, who’s comments I hear as I pass at my Special Olympics pace. By the time I come home, the babies are magically cute again to their mother and also I am a hero.

The true magic of the run though, is that I smile while I run now. It is really hard to smile and run, much harder than pushing a stroller into the wind. I used to groan my way through a run, thinking the whole way, how hard it is to run. Thinking how hard it is to breathe, to keep putting the next foot ahead of the other one and then do that again. And breathe. Now, I can do all that and smile too. It is nearly miraculous, how lucky I am. All these people go by me while I am running, unaware that they are my entertainment. Unaware of the soundtrack playing in my headphones, or of the people ahead and behind them who will also be a part of my little movie. The movie is about the same every day, but it is a good one. Only the characters change, the theme is always the same. A 4 mile string of people from all over the world all saying the same thing. The family from the Midwest who slow their 6-person surrey to coo. The girls from City College, smiling through the over sized sunglasses that someone decided were cool. The homeshcooling Mom wearing white Velcro Reeboks that she decided didn’t need to be cool. The Asian Family who forgets to get out of the bikeway as they rotate to watch the stroller pass. The scraggly and unaffected kids at the skate park even turn. The older man who lets out a smile through his bored look, the rich ladies on their coffee walk, the son who stops his rock throwing to look, and his mother collecting aluminum cans from public trash cans. They all have one thing in common. The little movie strip that passes by me is made up of people saying with their eyes, their comments, their uncontainable and unintentional half smiles, their rubbernecking walks, and swerving bikes that I am a Lucky father.

And then I come home a hero. As though I had performed a great service. Lucky me.

Ian.

New Photos for August

2005-08-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a little photo journal from the last week or so in the boy's life. Our life is changing quickly with the onset of quasi-crawling. Fortunately it makes them really happy to be able to get around on their own.

By the way we don't always keep Ian on the Left. It just happened that way.

Peas! Ian - L, Jeremy - R

Intro to Hiking Coldsprings trail with the boys. Ian - L Jeremy - R

Costco run: Train 'em young - Jeremy

Why "Baby Einstein" is Genius. Ian -L Jeremy - R

Bath night. Ian - L, Jeremy - R

Perhaps I've lost my ability to be discening about baby pictures. Have I turned "over-proud?"

2005-08-03T20:24:00.000-07:00

My friend Jeremy almost died on Friday. It is hard to know how close you have to be to death to be able to claim that you ‘almost’ died. But nearly everyone was surprised that he didn’t. The accident involved a 4-point buck deer who did die and Jeremy on his motorcycle who didn’t. He T-boned the deer at 70 MPH on an Oregon highway south of Bend, flew over the handlebars, demonstrating one of those physical laws about an object in motion remaining in motion. In the same direction at the same speed he slid along for an unknown distance, thinking about the things on either side that he did not want to hit. As he slowed, the slide turned to a tumble and came to a stop on the highway where he assessed his faculties. His toes wiggled, his arms moved and all his protective gear was still in place. An ambulance took him to the hospital, which he walked out of several hours later with some band-aids and a few stitches on his knee. His worst injury was perhaps to his pride. After so many friends warning of the dangers of motorcycles, so many jokes about donor-cycles. I personally will never defend the position that motorcycles are as safe as cars, but I have to agree with Jeremy that the motorcycle had nothing to do with this particular accident. If he had hit the same deer at the same time at the same speed in his Accord he would have had an even worse chance of surviving, especially had it come through the windshield. In this case his separation from his bike may have been the best thing.

Two days later Jeremy was at our house, shuffling up our walkway with a cane and a straight leg and asking what he could do to help with the babies. I am sure that if His head had been on fire he would have politely yielded the sink to someone washing their hands. It is completely irrational, but he is genetically disposed to that type of behavior. Irrational selflessness can drive you crazy, even if it is really Christ-like. But one of the great things about Jeremy is that he lives by what he learns. I think he may have learned quite a bit on his solo drive home from Oregon in a rental car. I am looking forward to some sort of explanation of that time. Some help for those of us who haven’t seen asphalt sliding by our eyes. He is a songwriter, so I am hoping for that. He condenses volumes into verses and distills the critical truth from mere information. I can’t help but feeling that the world is at a loss for not hearing more of his songs. That sounds really dramatic, but let me explain. We both move people around in airplanes for a living. It is “important” that we do it safely, but when the flight is over it is immediately forgotten. There is no lasting effect from our effort except that people are in a different place. It is similar to a Job that we also both had years ago, as valet parkers. At the end of the day we had a wad of money in our pocket and a whole bunch of cars were in different places than when we began. I remember very little of it. Yet the songs that Jeremy wrote and recorded are still in circulation, still, in some way relevant to a handful of people who were eager to hear what he had to say. Yet, all his passengers get to hear is something about seatbelts.

So Jeremy came to our house and tried to tell us what he thought about on the trip after his fall. He said that he thought about the things that were important to him, that that is why he stopped by Santa Barbara to see us, and to see Ian and Jeremy. Neither of us is very good at talking. Which is probably why he writes songs and why I keep up this blog 7 months after our boys birth. What he tried to say was that there are reasons that it is better that he did not slide his head into the guardrail on Friday, and that our little family is one of those reasons. I fumbled around and tried to say that that meant a lot, that I was glad that I didn’t receive a different kind of phone call, then fumbled around some more, aware all the while that every time I have to say something really important I struggle to line up the right words to make it sound as important as it is. I usually give up and hope the person senses my frustration and interpolates what I was getting at. This time I decided that it didn’t really matter what I said. I named one of my kids after him after all, maybe that says best what I was trying to say.

Twins @ Giants

2005-06-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

I used to hate baseball in the same way that I still hate golf. The kind of way that makes me embarrassed to have changed my mind. Just about everything I have ever dogmatically opposed I now enjoy with my tail between my legs. Why would I spend 3 hours watching a game that is tidily wrapped up in a 3 minute highlight show? Maybe because I married into it. Even a guy who hates sports can appreciate a wife who condones watching baseball games. I don't have to do any marital bargaining to get an approval on watching baseball. That alone may have been enough to change my scroogy baseball heart. But if it was not, perhaps being disowned by the rest of her Giant's loving family would have been. But if not all that, then I am fairly certain that the garlic fries would have put me over the edge. Now I am more embarrassed by how little I know about baseball than I am of the fact that I was a late bloomer in it's appreciation. Now I know that it is usually easier to just like something than to maintain the illusion that my dislike of something is somehow a loftier preference, as though my distaste for anything impressed anyone. I, for one, am rarely impressed by anyone's ability to continue disliking something. Just the same, I still think that golf is for old men with more money and time than I. The only difference is that now I have seen the trajectory of my own age and recognize that I will soon be an old man, hopefully with money, and maybe with time to regret that I spent my whole life hating golf.

Below are a couple more reasons that I think baseball is neat, even if your team is awful and your friends make fun of you(bring it on Matt).

Jeremy in left field.

Ian has bad parents.

Twins @ Giants

Babies are bad

2005-06-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

Did I recently say something about sleeping more? I would like to retract that. Last night the boys tag-teamed us all night long. Alternately they woke up every 45 minutes through the night. I take back everything good I’ve ever said about them. I understand that they will not fully understand punishment if I attempt retribution now. But I have a very long memory.

Most parents send out only the cutest pictures of their babies. Intended of course to convince the recipients that that is how the baby always is. And the recipient’s heart is warmed and they wish they had a warm little cuddly baby as well. Because I think that this is a dishonest practice, I am considering posting the video that Megan recently took of the touching former bedtime routine at the McCarter household. It is nearly 5 minutes long, and is just close ups (with audio) of the boys turning red and popping veins as they join in a screaming chorus. Long, frantic, quivery screams punctuated with implosively fast gasps for air, with changes in frequency, rate, and desperation. They are equally pathetic and un-helpable. But as the tape rolls you begin to wonder what kind of parents they must have. Are they wartime journalist who would sooner film a burning man than help him? Do they take pleasure in this? Now that the boys do not perform scream fest any longer, we are glad that we took the video. It helps us remember that maybe things aren’t so bad now. It’s like watching a VH-1 segment on an awful band from the 80’s; Time has a way of turning all tragedy to comedy.

So far, last night is still not funny.

Aloha

2005-06-08T20:32:00.000-07:00

Ian left, Jeremy right

Greetings from Maui. The boys are pictured here before their first swim.

Vacation is easy with twins. Just bring Grandparents. We do not, however reccommend taking the Red-eye.

Twin-Celebrity

2005-05-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

I have read back through this blog so many times now that I could have read “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” It used to be shots of hope, tid bits of reasons to believe that God had arranged something greater than we could see while we were occupied driving to some doctor’s office. Now it serves more like a defibrillator. It is an abrupt reminder to me that Ian and Jeremy were not a foregone conclusion.

We need a reminder sometimes, two months ago especially, before they learned about the connection between nighttime and sleeping. In retrospect, now that they do sleep at night, it seems that the days after the nights were the greater problem. It was as if we forgot what we all learned about all-nighters in college. So there we would be standing with bags under our eyes in the check out line at Ralph’s, when some sweet old well-slept woman would look over from the next line over. At first, she started cooing, so that we heard her before we saw her. I would look away and act like I didn’t feel her breathing down my neck, invading my little irritable bubble of stupor. “Ohh, how sweet” she would say, while I tried to decide weather I could continue withholding eye contact. While I went over in my mind how we got up 15 times last night and wondered what was wrong with them. How they kept crying after we fed them, how they finally went to sleep while the sun was coming up. How Megan and I are too brain dead to smile at each other, how they, maliciously, are sabotaging our marriage. And finally she asks the question: “Twins?” There were so many responses that came to mind! None of them were “yes.” “How old?” “ Two boys?” “ Are they identical?” “Do twins run in your family?” All of which we answered politely wondering how many times we might have to answer them all again before we got to the car, because if I had to hear one more story about someone’s neighbor’s sister-in-law’s friend who had twins I was going to lay down in traffic. Twins are not that rare!

It is no small wonder that more of these well meaning baby-appreciators are not killed every year. Like drinking and driving are hormones and sleep deprivation. The worst part of Twin – Celebrity, is that it is the parents who are miscalibrated. I feel like a lottery winner, irritated that the press wants to interview me. Shouldn’t I be standing on a mountain or something? Proclaiming with a 6 foot Herald Trumpet and banners every middle of the night scream as a miracle? That, before they had names, we thought Jeremy would not survive, and that Ian, if he survived would have cerebral palsy?

So now that we sleep close to 8 hours again, we remember more often. We remember almost every night when we wake them up to feed them at 10, and they are lumpy, sleepy and put their arms around our neck and fall back to sleep. We remember that Jeremy was slowly starving to death, and was just over half of Ian’s size. That Ian’s organs were not going to develop right because Jeremy was pumping all the food for him. And now they are nearly the same size and perfectly healthy.

Now we troll for Twin-Celebrity.

What Would John Denver Do

2005-04-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

Ian left, Jeremy right

Today I come home from the previously mentioned 6 weeks of training. My first little bit of mental free-space is being used toward reviving the now 6 weeks dormant McCartertwins blog: Using wisely my time between flight attendant’s announcements and layovers.

I was being served biscuits and gravy by a waitress who called me honey this morning when my soul came back to life. Last night, after several weeks of simulator training I flew the plane for the first time in Idaho Falls. That is where I was, in a hotel restaurant along the Snake River, when St. John’s vocals rang through the Radio Shack stereo and nudged me awake. John Denver singing ‘You fill up my senses’, with all of his glowing conviction, and all of a sudden I felt something again. I did not think it. I felt it. Whatever it was.

After six weeks of emotional deprivation, of being surrounded by fluorescent lighting, institutional carpet, the sound of a well ventilated building with no windows, the smell of hotels trying to smell good by covering the bad smells. Surrounded by people who speak acronym and want to test my knowledge of their weird and inefficient language; people who quote Top-Gun with suprising regularity. Airports of glass and steel, more hard carpet, and continuous loops of recorded generic voices reminding you where to stand, smoke, park your car and put your stuff. Then John Denver shows up with his big, dumb heart and sings ‘come let me love you, let me give my whole life to you. Let me drown in your luaghter, let me die in your arms’ and my Salt Lake City-dried heart lurched around in my unexercised, accustomed to sitting down body and my bacon got a little saltier as I leaned over it listening to John sing it and mean it.

How can you fault a guy who loved so much? He died in his own airplane. I don’t know the details except that he ran out of gas. I picture him buzzing around slowly with his Grapenuts hair-do and a silly grin, looking at trees and mountains, loosing himself in the beauty around him, estatic at the magic of being above it all. Right up until he ran himself out of gas and into a smoking hole in the ground. Living so freely that he died.

And here he is singing for me, on the banks of the Snake River. Me, who has spent a month and half of life training in efforts to not die in this shiny airplane. Practicing every event that could kill you, so that it doesn’t. And in so doing have died to everything else that is good. I have no senses left to fill, until John Denver comes along and the thought of going home makes me cry in my bacon.

I ache to see my little stretching, yawning, smiley monkey boys, and the hero-wife woman who played single mother of twins so our family will have a dad who likes his job. If we die in each other’s arms today it will be from her sleep deprivation and my overwhelming relief of being somewhere real, organic, warm and free. Home.

Given the choice today I am not sure which is better, to become figuratively dead by trying so hard to stay alive; or to die of life-loving induced stupidity. But since I am literally alive and able to recover from my temporary, figurative death, I will call it a success and absorb all the life of my family cheerfully; until around 8 o clock tonight when the stretching, smiling monkey boys will be screaming inconsolably. Then maybe the smoking hole wont look so bad.

2005-02-26T08:03:00.000-08:00

From the Union Street Roastery, on the corner of Fillmore and Union Streets in San Francisco, this long overdue post is born. The floors are wood, the coffee earthy, and I am plugged into the wall through Grandma Janet’s laptop.

We are in a season of Firsts. Everyday marks a first something for the boys. Mostly completely unremarkable firsts, like ‘first February,’ and several remarkable ones. Meaning of course that the proud, if long-winded, father is willing to remark. Amongst these are things that every one the 6 billion of us have done, yet become amazing, life-changing, telephone call provoking, remarkable events, when done by one of our own. Wednesday Ian rolled over; once as an accident and then once again to prove that it wasn’t. Thursday Jeremy and Ian produced what we deem their first ‘genuine’ smiles. It is always hard to be sure, but the evidence became conclusive when neither smile was followed by passing gas. Proof positive in our books. How could any of this be entertaining? I do not know. Except that perhaps it is one of the few things in our lives that we enjoy at the right time. Neither looking forward to the next first, nor glorifying the last one, but as genuinely excited as a cynical 30-something might ever be. Right there in the comfort of our own home.

Yesterday we took the boys on their first airplane ride. The same plane that I fly, of course, this time I was in the back. They apparently loved it with all the passion in their hearts, which they showed by sleeping from terminal to terminal. They unfortunately missed the captain’s announcement welcoming Jeremy and Ian aboard for their first flight and recognizing them as the world’s cutest twins, and the flight attendant saving a row in the front for them. Every profession has its perks.

Grandma Janet’s new apartment in the heart of San Francisco has proven a great retreat. Over the fields and through the woods to Grandmother’s Victorian flat in Pacific Heights we go. Today’s other firsts included first MUNI bus ride, first boat ride, and first bottle feeding in a former federal penitentiary.

My month of family leave will end with the end of the month. I will shave my beard and go back to early wake up calls. Megan will go back to a far lonelier night and early morning shift. Lord help us. We have found the twinfants quite manageable with two of us not working.

We were very surprised early this month to learn that I will be moving to the next aircraft in the SkyWest fleet. In the airline world all upgrades and moves are based on seniority. We expected my seniority to allow this move a couple years from now, not now. I will (amazingly) be able to do this and remain based in Santa Barbara. The plane is called a Canadair Regional Jet. (CRJ) It is a 50 seat jet, that is about twice the size of my current plane, quite a bit more modern, a lot faster, and prettier… Because that is what matters. Another very unexpected blessing. The only downside of this is that I will have to go to about 6 weeks of CRJ specific training in Salt Lake City. This could spell a disaster on the home front. However, we are working on several creative solutions that will hopefully keep the wife out of the psyche ward, the boys alive, the husband un-distracted, and the marriage in-tact. In other words: Pray for us.

Thanks

First Flight

2 Years

2005-02-02T10:16:00.000-08:00

Today marks 2 years since the day that I asked Megan if she would marry me. Then we were single, tan for February first, and skinny. I had a ring burning a hole in my pocket that I picked up only days earlier. Its weight was growing, yearning to serve its purpose. I was Frodo, single-mindedly pressing forward to unload that ring in the fires of the gazebo at Alice Keck Park. She awoke to my call just before sunrise, and followed a trail of flower petals for 2 blocks, to the center of the park where the turtles and koi, the sun rising on the water, a cup of hot chocolate, a guitar, and I were waiting. I sang a simple song, which convinced her that she should say yes. She did. It was our happiest day. Yet.

Today began with that song, a carefully timed moment to be sure. It is commonly known that you should not wake a sleeping baby, but less frequently recited is the more important rule: never wake a sleeping mother. Yet these are the trials of romance in a house of babies. If I do not awake her with our song, our boys will with their hungry cries. So I have to ask, which shows my love more, romance or sleep? Two years ago sleep was only a trifle when romance was at hand. Today we savored the 3 minute song, laughed at what 2 years can bring, laughed at what 21 months of marriage can bring, laughed at family planning, then started changing diapers.

Two years, two babies, two pale white flabby parents whose romance has not faded, only been squeezed into shorter intervals. It is not blooming. It is growing deeper roots. Perhaps we appreciated our tan-ness because we knew so little of what else there was to appreciate. Two years ago I did not know which occasions my then girl friend would have to rise to, only that I was confident that she would. Now she has risen to far more occasions than I would have hypothetically imagined, and shone. Brightly. So that I love her far more this morning than I did that morning. Pale as she is.

The Miracle of Boringness

2005-01-27T15:19:00.000-08:00

After 45 long minutes of juggling technical jargon around the left side of my brain, it is sore. Inflamed, trying to determine when ‘relay box DC buss 3’ is powered by ‘relay box DC buss 2’ and when it is powered by the auxilliary DC bus. The airplane I fly is built in Brazil, by people who like tangled wires. It is built in the Jungle and the schematics explaining it look like the jungle. Though the lines and figures are angular, and meant to clarify something complex, they are of little help. At first glance they appear to help, then they start to wiggle, when you trace one line to another box, to another triangle, to a circle, they start to move, like a houndstooth coat under fluorescent light, vibrating. Soon you have to go back to find the line you started with. I turned to the text for relief. Airplane manuals are rife with FAA legalese which I am sure is intentionally placed for the express purpose of eliminating the weak. I have grown used to it, but our manual has another problem. It was written in Portuguese. A romantic language for a decidedly unromantic subject. Of course it has been translated for us. Sort of. I imagine that they asked around the factory floor to find someone who took English as their foreign language requirement in high school. Or perhaps they hired a staff of Amazon Pygmies who had been evangelized by English speaking missionaries from Oklahoma. I prefer that scenario. It explains far more about how the end product turned out.

Oh am I supposed to be writing about our two cute little boys?

The high drama days here at McCartertwins.blogspot.com have evaporated. I am not sure if readership has decreased accordingly. I would have no way of knowing. Hits to the site are as unknown as they ever were, it still has not registered on anyone’s buzz index (whatever that is), and advertising revenue has held steady at zero… A wonderful success, with every boring post from here out securing the miracle of boringness.

We are like alcoholics at AA. We are building “dry days.” The drama never truly evaporates from the twins’ history, but it does become less relevant with every passing day of normal twin operations. It does not dissolve but it is absorbed into their increasingly long history, becoming a smaller percentage of what is important by the day. The main difference being that we are not having any dramaholic cravings.

While I sit here typing, letting the other side of my brain fight back, Megan is involved in her own form of minimizing the importance of traumatic parts of her past. August 25th she left her office at the County after lunch for an ultrasound appointment. She left the papers on the desk and the computer on, expecting to finish up in an hour or so. Yesterday she returned for the first time. This time not as a Human Resources Analyst, but as a Mother. What became of those years of gainful employment? I mean, what did she gain? Surely we both appreciated all that money. We are not certain, however, that it was a net gain. Hours of occupying an office, doing what people do in offices, traded for dollars to use in the other hours. Is that a trade up? Of course her new occupation is not as lucrative in that way. Every hour yields benefits that last, and while they are sometimes repetitive they are always invested toward our own agenda. And every day away reinforces that any brilliant person can plan the County’s hiring agenda but only she can love and take care our boys the way she can.

Assignments

2005-01-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in the low spot in our sofa, where the two cushions meet in the center. The low spot appeared sometime between the end of bed-rest and the beginning of mid-night feedings and remains in spite of cushion flipping. It is the least of the abuse that our furniture will sustain over the next several years, and for right now the most convenient of defects. The depression caused by the weight of me and my lap-top has allowed a convenient collecting place for our cylindrically wrapped pod babies. Ian's cheek is pressed up against my corduroy pants and his face frozen there in a content baby look. One which will surely leave his face striped when he decides to move. Jeremy's cheek is pressed up against Ian's shoulder and ear so he can hear his contented squeaks. All of this takes place in about 10 inches from my right hand pants pocket. Though I know they are hungry, they both have a wonderful feature which allows them to forget all of their worries so long as they are being held. In this case, so long as they are piled up against each other in a cozy depression on an entry level sofa with memory foam.

After a month on the outside, they collectively weigh more than a big single baby. While that is not a measure that anyone else is paying any attention to, we are. We have to keep reminding ourselves that our babies are small. When I see a big 10 pound baby with their great big round head, I have a moment of wondering "what is wrong with that baby." I remind myself that it takes both of ours to make that weight. Now at over 6 pounds and almost 5 pounds, the boys are feeling a little less floppy, a little more chubby but still small enough to hold against my chest with one arm.

That is all we ever prayed for. On January 5th I got to hold both my boys at once. Each facing each other, happy and squeaky, against my chest. A moment every bit as fulfilling as the day they were born. All at once the twins were reunited, the family of four became four in reality, and we marveled with deep and continuing gratitude that both are here. Here at all, here with us, here and healthy, here because, for whatever reason, they were assigned to us. Of all the months of praying for this outcome I remember the prayer that we prayed on the day that we were diagnosed with TTTS. Ben prayed that if God would spare these boys, that we would give him all the credit. A prayer that is proving far more difficult than I might have imagined. And not because it is hard to assign God as being responsible for our miraculous outcome.

While I hold my two healthy boys against my chest, I often think of the events of the last several weeks. Our friends who's son was born 2 days before Ian and Jeremy at 28 weeks lost him 4 days later. Two weeks later another friend of nearly 20 years didn't hear a heartbeat at 19 weeks and his wife delivered their son who was named after him, but never breathed. They named their sons for people they loved, prayed for them every bit as much, were supported every bit as much. In almost every way they were demographically the same as us. Yet I am holding my two sons. Can I make sense of this? Every attempt is trite at best. If I start trying it is not going to fit in the narrow column of this blog spot. A season for everything?... Regardless I hold God responsible for everything good. We can work out the details later.

For now, we are constantly aware that we were entitled to none of our blessing. That our sons are not deserved, earned, or bought by any formula of anything that we did. They are assigned and barely ours on loan.

Click here for the newest pictures.

Reunited

2005-01-05T20:13:00.000-08:00

JEREMY LIBERATED!

More news and pictures on the happy reuniting when the premier of 'Alias' has passed.

Our New Pet

2005-01-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

Our borrowed cat Ginger who danced on our living room floor, and endured much unwanted love, has been displaced, and replaced by our new pet. She went home with Grandma Janet a bit dejected that she could no longer hop up into the crib with all those blankets. As far as pets go, however, Ian is a little bit high-maintenance. As far as sons go he is well above average. While he can't dance yet, he does accept our love more graciously than Ginger. His highest function is to suck. A simple action that allows him to add an ounce a day to the package that we have to carry out to the car. The fact that Ginger ate from a bowl was also a plus. Ian, on the other hand,just keeps sucking, day and night: Like he's just waiting for us to put some food in there for him. They say that is normal. Normal for him if no one else. He easily makes up for his all-night sucking habit with his all-day being cute habit.

So far we have been about 90% successful in keeping him to the four hour eat/sleep cycle that the NICU nurses so thoughtfully put him on. Maybe he is too small to make much trouble yet, but we think we have it pretty easy. The only real problem with having him home is how incredibly obvious it makes it that Jeremy is not. In the beginning of our NICU stay it felt like the best thing for all of us was to have them there. Not anymore. Jeremy is a couple ounces away from his release, most likely this week, but not soon enough. The more we learn about Ian the more we are aware of how little we know about Jeremy. The more we hold, cuddle,and play with Ian the more painful it becomes to think of Jeremy in his plastic crib, receiving only visits from people who have to scrub and put on gowns before they touch him. The more we hold one at a time at different times in different parts of town, the more obvious it is that they should be together. Of course we realize that it is short lived, yet every time we go to the hospital it feels unfair that he has to rely on us taking a drive to come over to see him while his brother is under our constant care. Every time we leave him there we have to tell him that we will break him out soon, that he will be reunited with his brother soon. Our outings take place with a constant place-holder. Half of our sons is missing. We feel his absence though we have not yet experienced his presence.

All that sadness aside, Jeremy is easily on track to be home this week. He needs to be 2000 grams, last night he was 1921. He is doing great and often eating as much as his heavier brother. Just a couple of grams until freedom.

Ian Home!

2004-12-22T17:51:00.000-08:00

Ian is home, in my left arm as I type with my right.

2004-12-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

Left - Ian. Right - Jeremy

Christmas is coming, the twins are getting fat

2004-12-21T16:18:00.000-08:00

I keep thinking that I should write a post where we thank all of you publicly who have given so much to the cause of our boy's safe arrival. To acknowledge that all of your many meals, house cleanings, house moves, calls, prayers, e-mails, gifts, cards, flowers, offers to help with literally everything, entertaining Megan, grocery runs and bringing more meals has helped us more than we could ever express. If I were to make a speech at the Academy Awards I would get cut off by the bumper music before I was half way done. So I won't do it. But know that our gratitude runs far deeper than something we could put in a thank you card, or a blog entry. I keep trying to say it in person, in some form or another, but I keep stumbling over a word to make it sound important enough. How long can I say the "So" in thank you soooooo.... much? We would all get embarrassed if I could somehow get across how much I mean it when I say thank you. It goes beyond gratitude. You all are like shareholders in a start-up company. We needed your investment to make it work. We often comment that we have no sense of what this all would have looked like if we did not have your long-lived and active support. Collectively, as viewed from our perspective, all of your contributions large and small have made a clear picture of God's love for us and for our boys. Thank you.

The boys are doing great. They are both still very healthy and hanging out in the "growers and feeders" section of the NICU. Ian may come home with us tomorrow or very soon after. Jeremy has to stay until he grows to the minimum release weight of 2 kg (4.4 Lbs). Ian is teetering on crossing that weight now and Jeremy will probably need a few weeks to get there. Megan is doing well too, minus the expected tiredness associated with getting off of 101 days of bed rest, recovering from surgery and food production.

Introducing

2004-12-11T14:04:00.000-08:00

We woke up yesterday before dawn, lit a fire, and turned on the Christmas tree lights, on the day that all parents know is THE turning point in the rest of their lives. It was as quiet as the lower Westside ever is, and as I walked out to the dryer to get some pants the sliver moon was rising in the east along side Venus and over a palm tree and a run down garage. Today I will meet my sons. Today I am a father. Today our questions will be answered, our fears realized or relieved.

Three hours later behind a blue surgical curtain and surrounded by 13 doctors and nurses we huddled and tried to act like we weren't nervous. We weren't, regarding the surgery anyway. The template was already set for that back in September. What we feared was silence. The silence of a baby being pulled out without being able to breath on his own. The ensuing silence of the Neo-Natologist, respiratory therapist,and nurse working to help him breath without scaring the parents. The silence of our babies being whisked away to NICU for an unknown reason.

3 Minutes later the room was filled with the best sound I have ever heard. Better than a waterfall. Better than Handel's Messiah and every bit as God-Breathed. The sound of suction, and the healthy wail of my son Ian. He is breathing. 30 seconds later, and slightly masked by the sound of "cute baby" comments the doubly anticipated sound repeated as Jeremy breathed his first, and doubled the volume in the room. Then the sound of Megan gasping through the happiest cry I have heard as it hits us both, they are both fine. We have never been more relieved. Ever. A deeply grateful relief that keeps resurfacing every time I hold one of our little healthy boys.

Names:
It is fortunate that we are not Native Americans. If we were, our boys would be named, Standing Nurse and Beeping Machine. Instead they are named things that should garner little criticism or cruel rhymes from thoughtless school children. Did we name Ian after the famous cricket player Ian McCarter and Jeremy after the not so famous conservative journalist? Would we have ever known about either if we did not Google all of our prospective names? Did we name them to sound like Jeremy McGrath (Moto-x) and Ian McKay (Fugazi)? We wish we were so hip. Heres the real story.

Ian: The one name we expected to use back when we thought we would only need one boy name.
Bradden- My name
Jeremy and Benjamin: How fitting that our Donor twin who pumped blood to his brother to his own harm, would share names with My friend Jeremy and Megan's brother Ben who both would selflessly give even if to their own harm. And who happen to make their good names look better.

Here are The Pics:
Ian
Jeremy
Brad and Jeremy
Megan with both

Birthday!

2004-12-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

Ian Bradden McCarter (4lbs, 5oz, 15in) and Jeremy Benjamin McCarter (3lbs, 4oz, 14in) were delivered this morning via C-Section. They are doing well in the Cottage Hospital NICU! Congratulations to Brad and Megan! Praise God, everybody!

Harvest Day

2004-12-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

The harvest season has passed. The leaves and gords on our mantle are slowly becoming outnumbered by pine boughs and cranberries. The Christmas tree is up if not decorated and our Sons are on their way, ready or not. The on-going decision making process of where they will thrive most and strive least has finally yielded a day. A Birthday. Or perhaps in the case of a scheduled c-section: a Harvest Day. At 33 weeks the risks associated with prematurity are very minimal while the unknown, and normal risks of leaving them in persist as time goes by; so the decision to take them out next week was made. December 10th will be their birthday and for once in their lives we are more excited for it than they are. We do not know what to expect except that they will be very small, and that they will both likely go to NICU right away. Will they be rushed away? Will I get to go with them? Will they need help to breath? Be hooked up to tubes? We do not know, except that we have exceptional trust that the NICU here is as good of a place as there can be for them.

It turns out that the highly optimistic numbers from the last post were too optimistic! They appear to be a misread, within the margin of error of the equipment used to measure them. This doesn't mean they have stopped growing, but it unfortunately means that our little guy did not close the gap like we had thought. At this point, if the measurements are close we expect that they will be born approaching 3 and 4 pounds respectively. Unfortunately the retraction of the previous great news along with their eminent and premature birth has resurfaced some of our worries for them. The Roller coaster of TTTS presses on, whether it is fun or not.

It appears the dormant season for MCCARTERTWINS.BLOGSPOT.COM is coming to an end. Frequent news ensues. Stay tuned.

Normality

2004-11-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

Depending upon which side you view it from "normal" can be a blessing or a curse. To the over-achiever nothing could be more boring. To the disabled, nothing ever looked so good. From our vantage point on this sunny Sunday in November, Normal is a Miracle.
In August we learned that our pregnancy was not normal, that the range of normal outcomes included both babies dying, and one or both having severe disabilities. We learned nothing about what a normal pregnancy is like, so we spent our time praying for normality.

On Friday our bi-weekly ultrasound revealed... a Miracle?... Normality? Two weeks ago our "little" guy was not on the charts for average size, and our "big" guy was hanging on to the bottom line. And their weight discordance was 27%. Friday they weighed in at 2 1/2 and 2 3/4 pounds. About 12% discordance. And They are both on the "normal" chart now, and it never felt so good. My friend Andy, who boldly predicted a 15% difference by birth, was our most optimistic guess, but still was not optimistic enough. If this continues at this pace our "little" guy will not be so little.

Our fear of ultrasounds is waning. More memorable than their growth, the ultrasound showed both of them sucking their thumbs. We watched as one switched from his right thumb to his left. They are healthly little boys. The long list of things that could still go wrong is shortening and every kick we feel hastens the return of the proud parent.

Dr Sofficci says that in terms of a due date we will treat this as a normal pregnancy, which depending on a couple things could give us babies anywhere between Thanksgiving and New-Year's Day. The later the better.

Practice run

2004-11-02T17:50:00.000-08:00

At our doctors' recommendation Megan checked into the hospital this afternoon for what turned out to be an in and out mission. In at 12:30 out at 4:30. She was having increasing contractions every 4 minutes, not painful or strong but frequent. They tested her likelihood of going into pre-term labor within the next 2 weeks and it came up negative, which is great news. Our doctor prescribed an anti-labor drug to be taken only if she has another bout of frequent contractions. She is stabilized and feeling confident that we are good for at least another couple weeks. We celebrated our quick release from the hospital with an exciting excursion to Goleta where we picked up Terbutaline and In and Out. All is well.

Reality TV

2004-10-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to forget that there will be babies in our house? Soon? We sit on our couch with Megan's belly bulging with babiness, with scars and bedrest to remind us, and somehow the baby part sneaked out of our thoughts. In our minds we are perpetually pregnant and on bedrest. Our own personal Groundhog Day. Not only have we adjusted to this sad way of life, we have accepted it as our lot. We were looking forward to the two month mark, the time when Megan would have her work rules relaxed. We were hoping for several hours of roaming freedom per day. It was a great dangling carrot. If it seemed she couldn't lie down anymore I could always remind her that it is only for two more weeks. Until Saturday when Dr. Delia called to check on us. Maybe he installed spy cameras in our house, because somehow he only calls when Megan is standing up. After telling a little white lie Megan had the nerve to ask him what he needed to see to let her off full-time bedrest. And as if his cameras had revealed her unhorizontalness he then administered his punishment. The boys need to be the same size! Something that we aren't expecting until they are two. Instead of being one week away she is only half way after 2 months. So we have settled into our lot, knowing that we can't hope for their early arrival lest we spend that time in nicu. Bedrest Vs. Nicu, Bedrest always wins. Sorry Megan.

We awoke from our alternate reality Saturday night when, for the first time in the history of reality television, the television was more real than reality. We know better than to watch anything on the Discovery Health Channel but we were roped into "Special Deliveries" by the promise of the c-section delivery of mono-amniotic twins.(not what we have but intriguing if bored). After a half an hour of crying our way through 3 seperate birth/nicu stories we realized what everyone else already knows. We are going to be that family. Even if everything goes perfectly normally, birth is scary. Every woman would be given a purple heart for it if it weren't so awfully common. We somehow have been feeling that the worst is behind us and only the joy of meeting our boys lies ahead. Sometimes we need a little Reality TV to recalibrate!

Our ultrasound tonight revealed continued progress. While they are both on the smaller side of normal they are both growing normally and even continue to close the gap between them.

The Numbers:
Big Guy : 871 grams - about 1 pound 15 oz.
Little Guy: 631 grams- about 1 pound 6 oz.
Discordance - about 27% . That is down from 39% pre surgery. From 34% a month ago and from 30% 2 weeks ago.

The objective now is just to keep them in as long as possible, and in so doing, simultaneously keep Megan out of Labor/Delivery and out of the phsych ward.

Better Problems

2004-10-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

Unlike the days of waiting in Milwaukee where blogging was a welcome time killer, now it is something I have to make time for, sometimes feeling like I am sidelining more important things and people to be sure to keep it up. Perhaps I am in training for fatherhood. Our lives are so full of wonderful things that I want time off. Didn't I pray for a flying job in Santa Barbara? A house of our own to do projects on? Family and friends? My own family, currently all in one package? How can you have too much of any of those things? I can't, but somehow I feel guilty trying to get out to a coffee shop to write this post. I am rushing to relax. This is all a warm up course, I suppose, for when an hour to write a post will be like an eternity. A ridiculous luxury which I would not even think to ask for. What wonderful problems we face! We are equal parts bored and busy. A situation that will soon change to exclude the bored part. We will be trading bed rest for baby-chasing. Position changing for diaper changing (we estimate about 20 per day). And our days of trying to decide which tasks we should complete will be traded for the perpetual cycle of our sons' input and output. Again, all answers to prayer.

As our problems decrease and our new problems are byproducts of much larger answered prayers we have temporarily grown used to our strange life. As though it were normal to have Megan at home and sideways all the time. We have settled into something weird and find ourselves wondering why our life seems flat. Perhaps it is because it is, literally, actually flat. We have to remember that we used to do things. We have to remember that we used to go out to dinner downtown. See movies. Go to the beach. Go hiking. Go swimming. That last summer we did a triathlon. That this time last year we were at the end of a 6 week trans-continental road trip. This year we are at the end of 6 week couch ride. It is not that we are ungrateful. Or that we have just become used to the fact that our boys seem to be ok. It is more that we are lulled into not feeling a whole lot of anything as we try to just pass the time until this phase is over. As we do that we try to remember that we face boredom only because our prayers are being answered. Remember that six weeks ago it seemed just as likely that we would be mourning the loss of one or both of our boys by now. Here is the power of prayer.

We have learned that Elk Creek Baptist church in McCall Idaho is praying for our boys. We are on the "prayer-chain" at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in St. Catherine Missouri. Also in Red Bluff California. Our church routinely prays for them. Our home group too. An unknown church in Montgomery Alabama is praying. A Presbyterian Church in Columbia South Carolina. One in Sommerset California. Noe valley in San Francisco. Trinity Presbyterian in San Carlos. Our family is praying and so are the folks at Life Network. Our friends kids are praying. Our neighbors are praying. Is God's mind made up? Will our praying more sway the vote? Last Sunday I went to "receive" prayer from one of the "prayer teams" that stand by to pray while the church takes communion. It was my first time. The team were Elders and friends who already knew our story and were already praying for us. She is wise and he is a doctor and they offered up heartfelt and educated prayers which were no more or less important than the ones my four year old niece prays. I pray the same things over and over. God heard me the first time but I keep asking him again and again. If He knows what we think before we think it, perhaps it is that we expose it all to him willingly that matters. We pray most fervently because we have so little to offer to the equation. We pray because we are never home free even when we feel like we are.

BTW: Ultrasounds continue to show the same good news. Our next one is on the 26th so we will post some numbers then.

Progress III

2004-10-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

Good news. Today's ultrasound revealed continued progress. We looked forward to this ultrasound because it is long enough after the surgery to see some long term effects. The little guy has fluid around him and he is kicking and moving around and from my figuring he is very slightly even catching up. Here is some math for those who are interested. It is not very interesting but is still easier than figuring out if the Giants have a shot at the wild card.

Post surgery ultrasound :
Little guy (LG) 180 grams
Big guy (BG) 295 grams
Discordance 39%

Today's ultrasound
LG 407 grams
BG 614 grams
Discordance 34%

The numbers aren't super important, but the trend is. The trend is good and at the minimum they are both growing normally at the same rate.

We are grateful in every way for God's hand in this and for all of yours. More on that later when time allows.

Lying in wait

2004-09-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

Megan is concerned about her shape. Not like you would expect of a pregnant woman. She is not concerned that she is getting out of shape, that is an expected by-product of remaining horizontal for several months. She is also not concerned that her belly is super-sizing itself, another expected change. She is used to the idea that 3 protein drinks per day along with normal meals will also change her shape. But what she really wants is to be a pentagon. The problem is that when you start eliminating positions, IE standing, sitting, lying on your stomach, lying on your back, what you are left with is two positions, one hip, or the other hip. You can move from the bed, to the couch, put your head at either end of either piece of furniture, move to one of the mats on the floor, put your head at either end of that, move the mat outside, put your head at either end outside for a while, and repeat, and by the end of the day you have only been in two positions. You can read, watch, TV, do crosswords, shop online, write e-mails, cards, letters, take a bath, baby-sit, eat, still only two positions. She figures a pentagon offers a few more options.

Aside from the two-hip limitation life has normalized for the most part, I am a little too busy with work to get much done in the way of home projects, and Megan spends a lot of time wishing she could help me with projects when I do do them. We are hopeful in our waiting stage, though we realize that there may be major battles still ahead. We don't know. We don't spend a lot of time wondering why this has happened to us. We imagine that the why part will be answered over the course of a long, long, long time. Already we are confident that there are sufficient reasons.

Believing that everything occurs by chance does not suit me. When we look back at that morning that we were frantically trying to get to Tampa, and how frustrated we were that the flight cancelled for a mechanical issue, how convinced we were that things weren't working the way they were supposed to, how we later found out that the Dr. was out of the country, and a wave of 4 consecutive hurricanes was arriving at the same time, I can't feel too crazy for thinking that it wasn't coincidence. Last week we were boarding our passengers in San Diego when my plane had a mechanical issue that delayed us a half hour. We took the passengers off and they were all frustrated. By the time we got it fixed a mother and daughter showed up late with a family medical emergency, we were able to take them because of that delay. I can't think I'm too crazy for thinking we were inconvenienced for their benefit, in their hour. They looked so happy to have made the flight. Walking back to my plane at LAX later that day I was humming a hymn that says: "praise to the Lord who over all things so wondrously reigneth," as a 747 lifted off for Bangkok, "shelters thee under his wings, yes, so gently sustaineth," as a commuter started up it's way too loud engines for Santa Barbara, "ponder anew, what the almighty can do" as luggage trucks, catering trucks, TSA, tugs, and lavatory service carts clattered by. In our darkest hour, in our daily work, God is meddling.

Far be it from us to need to know why what happens when it does, but my reasons for believing that the reasons are good are well documented.

By the way: I felt the big guy kick for the first time at homegroup on Thursday!

Progress II

2004-09-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

For those who believed me when I said we would post Monday night, and also happened to check, my apologies for my tardy entry. Our ultrasound last night was more good news. Both the boys are still growing, and still appear to be doing so in unison. That means that they are still about the same size difference as a percentage, but are each getting bigger. Ultimately we would like to see the little guy catch up a bit, but if he does not it is not really any danger to him. Our next ultrasound is in 2 weeks and will be weekly after that, as they will then be beyond 24 weeks, which is the minimum age for life outside the womb.
It's brief.... but it's all we know for now.

Anticipation

2004-09-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

As we read the TTTS message boards we realize that we are responding quite normally to all of this input. We don't seem to be any more or less worried than anyone else, and we are probably not any more or less assured of success than anyone else. While it is true that we talk about when the boys will come, not if, and we talk about their room with an S' not an 'S; it is also true that we live from Dr's appointment to Dr's appointment. We are reassured even by the fact that we still hear 2 heartbeats. We are reassured when Megan feels the little guy kicking. We are reassured when we read peoples success stories, and fearful when we read about the continuing complications that other people are going through at the same time. Par for the course appears to range between consistent fear at one end and guarded hope on the other. We are quite hopeful, but anxious for every ultrasound just the same. Any longer than the prescribed one week between ultrasounds would be to long. The encouragement from each seems to wear off in about 5 days and we start hoping that they are both doing ok. Tomorrow is our next one. Today we post our emotions, tomorrow we will post the numbers.

Logistics

2004-09-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

Several people have mentioned that they did not realize that this was a consistently updated site. I think the problem was that if you use the e-mail link at the bottom of this page it only sends the current post. The best way to pass this on is just to send the address:

mccartertwins.blogspot.com

by entering that address they will get all of the posts and all of the archives.

Thanks.

Church

2004-09-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

From the back right corner of the sold out crowd church singing never sounded so good. It was a normal Sunday at Santa Barbara Community Church, Reed joked about Steves hair, the kids outnumbered the adults and the line for the unsalted crackers was really long. It doubled back on itself so that you had to walk up hill before you could walk down hill toward the "altar." The upside being that you could see the faces of those who wanted to remember God's grace. A long, patient, ungraceful line of us anxious to remember what God is willing to do for us. When I got there I wanted to stop, to hold up the line and dine. Should I take an extra for Megan who is at home laying down? Should I take 3 extras?

Here in the love of Christ I stand: With The Ewarts on one side, my Mom on the other, and a gap where my wife should be. Together with the saints we sang:

In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

I think I heard Carries voice a little louder as she sang "my comforter." I wondered as I remembered the loss of her father last year. And did I hear Matt's cymbals more clearly while we sang "when fears are stilled?" The cancer in his brain is a far fiercer storm than our own. I know that more than one of my own tears made it all the way to my shirt as I looked back on the two weeks since I was last in church. What heights of love, and depths of peace, when fears are stilled and strivings cease. Here in the love of Christ I stand.

---------

I am resuming something like normal life this week and return to flying tommorrow. Megan will remain on bedrest for at least 2 more months! That is a long time, and she will no doubt be bored out of her mind even if she is super-human in her efforts not to be. She will continue to welcome gladly any visitors, especially mid-day ones when I am gone, and is also looking for ways that she can help people do tasks that she can do laying down. (teachers with crafts?)

I will continue posting updates here as long as there is news, probably untill, or even after the boys are born. The frequency may drop off a bit now that news is happening more slowly. On the other hand I've been enjoying having a writing assignment so who needs news?

Progress I

2004-09-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

When we first discovered that we were having twins, knowing nothing of the problems that were ahead, we wondered how we would take care of two. And the word that kept coming to mind was "Manna". A weird, flaky, unstorable, food product that you can not grow but can only be given by God on a day by day basis.

When we left Wisconsin 3 days ago Megan was disappointed that we couldn't bring home the flowers that were sent to us from Santa Barbara. It was clear to me though, that the trip home would not be easy, with my post operative wife who had sat up and stood up a total of about 7 times in 5 days. Her in a wheel chair and me with 2 rolling bags and a carry on. I just couldn't see where we would put the flowers without ending up with a crumpled, wilted, loves me not looking mess by the time we got home. We made other plans. One bouquet I took to the nurses stand and told them they could give it to someone who was having a hard day. The other, a dozen Gerber daisies, Megan left in our room with a note. We knew that a couple was coming from Ohio the next day, who's twins have TTTS and would be undergoing the same surgery and recovering in the same room. The note was simple. It said that we were very happy with the Dr, the staff and that they were now in the right place to be taken care of.

We were surprised when Dr De Lia called yesterday and told us that some of our nurses had found our note and were moved to tears. He said that it helped put the couple at ease as they adjusted to their new surroundings, and the surgery that lay ahead. The ever-balancing scales of fear and hope were pretty heavily tilted toward fear when we arrived there a week earlier. We imagine it was the same for them.

Megan was lying on the 'doggy-bed', pieces of our vw van's bed laid out on our dining room floor and arranged near the computer and telephone to allow her to make a nominal effort at productivity while lying down, when a 2 foot long Fed-Ex flower package arrived. Less than 48 hours since we left our hospital room the blue vase that we brought home with us is again filled with a dozen Gerber daisies. And our scales have certainly tipped in the other direction.

Our appointment with Dr Soffici (our local perinatologist) yesterday was all good news. The babies are still the same % discordance, but are both growing. Our donor's bladder is visible, and there is already some measurable fluid in his amniotic sac. It also looks like the little guy is moving more. All great news which we hope will continue over the next weeks, as Megan remains on bed rest and geriatric supplement drinks and goes out only for our weekly ultra sound with Dr. Soffici.

We keep feeling that we are receiving far more than we have ever given. I suppose there is no way to measure that, but we are getting a concentrated dose of care and attention, groceries, cleaning, moving, transporting, calls, e-mails, casseroles and flowers. Manna.

2004-09-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

HOME

Recovery V and Release

2004-09-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

Word to the single men in the house. When cosidering a potential bride examine all of the things which all men consider, but also consider the "in sickness and in health" clause. Does she have a high tolerance for pain? Does she look good horizontally? In a smock? Is her abdominal sinew tough? All of these things will make your life easier. I know from personal experience.

If yesterday was a no-progress day, today has already been a great progress day:
1. Megan is not nauseous, and is eating well.
2. She is off of all monitors.
3. She gets to take her first shower today.
4. We had a pre-discharge ultra sound today which revealed:
A. A healthy, long cervix which will hold the babies in even if we travel.
B. A VISIBLE BLADDER in the donor (little guy). Which means that he is receiving enough food to have some output, and will soon start creating amniotic fluid. This is such good news that it is just barely starting to sink in. It does not mean that we are out of the woods but it is much welcomed, long awaited good news on the boys.
5. Our flight for LAX leaves at 5 pm TODAY! Also great news to go home to our newly moved home. We are still a bit nervous about travel with Megan still recovering, but the chances are good that we will get first or business class on the 747 flight, which will keep her as comfortable as is possible on an airplane.

Our biggest trouble today is how to pack up our room. It is a bit of a disapointment to leave behind the flowers that she just got yesterday. But we do get to bring home our first pair of matching 0-7 pound baby clothes which I bought yesterday. I realized while standing in Baby Gap that I was there because I had hope. I bought these microscopic "rompers" with every
expectation that we will be able to fill them. We also get to bring home a matching pair of Harley Davidson "onesies" from Milwaukee, the home of Harley Davidson. They were given to us by a Ewart family friend who lives here and visited us yesterday. Most importantly we get to bring home two boys who are already packed and ready to go.

Friends

2004-09-07T01:32:00.000-07:00

Brad and Megan - We made a little video of the move for you.
Click here to watch. You need the quicktime plug-in and you need a high speed connection:)

Recovery IV

2004-09-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

There are many challenges for those who are limited to the horizontal plane. A huge number of the things that we daily take for granted require movement on multiple planes simultaneously. So Megan in her present state of flatness is growing restless, looking forward to every opportunity to stand up for a minute. Our threshold for what qualifies as entertainment is being recalibrated. Our daily visits from Dr. Delia are a welcome social hour. A most unexpected feature in a highly qualified specialist. He is becoming a friend, and there is no doubt that he will be on our Christmas card list, or that he will continue to be interested in the boys' well being for a long time. It is also becoming less of a mystery that we have found a disproportionate number of TTTS twins with forms of his name Julian.

Our visits from every nurse have been at the very least pleasant. Time passes relatively quickly between visits, sponge baths, e-mails, phone calls, good books and bad TV. One very unexpected highlight now 3 days running has been our mid morning visit from Rosie. I doubt that many consider her a critical part of our recovery. She is, no doubt, at the low end of St. Joseph's pay scales. Her work is "menial", but she is not. To us her work has little to do with the mopping of the floor or emptying of our trash. Rosie is a grandma, an optimist, a pray-er, and a janitor. She held her preemie twin granddaughters in the palms of her hand and says that it is better when they are born small because you get to celebrate every ounce that they grow. Her voice is calm and sweet. She speaks slowly and doesn't stop working while she tells Megan "dis is your glory time now, you don't start feelin guilty now, you jes tek it in. you jes think bout all deh good dats gonna come outta dis now, you gonna hold der little fingers and there little wigglin toes" and the mop keeps moving. She must clean a lot of rooms, and talk to a lot of sick people, because she doesn't linger long. If I had to guess I would bet that as she cleans floors and toilets over and over, she prays for all of them. I'm sure she prays for our boys.

Rosie is not the only one who loves the unborn here. It is a long way from the highly respected NICU at UCLA where it is all too well known that it is very easy to get pregnant. Much easier than fixing a difficult pregnancy. Just like it is easier to buy a new microwave than to pay to fix your old one. It is easy to get advice to terminate. Here, we have seen pictures of 1 year old TTTS twins who's parents were told that there was not hope for their pregnancy, and that they should terminate. Here our boys have advocates outside of their own parents. One nurse summed up the pervasive attitude nicely: "Every one is Precious."

As the recovery continues we look forward to little things like the ability to take a shower and big things like the progress of our boys. Megan has had more discomfort today with nausea and headaches and some bedridden frustration. All of which our Dr. assures are quite normal. We can hardly wait to be at home, and have visits from our own friends and family. In the meantime your prayers are so valuable to us. Like the unseen babies, each one is precious.

Recovery III

2004-09-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

We aren't sipping Olde Milwaukee on the porch this labor day, but our optimism index rose a few points just the same. Today's first post-operation ultrasound showed both our boys are still with us. Not surprising news in our Dr's eyes but we both secretly feared for the little one. So it brightened things up quite a bit to see those two heartbeats.

We don't always know how much we can hope for. If we expect, with full faith, that we will bring home two healthy, full-term boys; we fear we will be all the more heartbroken if we don't. Reality is that like all disease this syndrome is measured in rates of mortality and morbidity. Percentages, means and averages. Some stories we read are hopeful and others are not. Can we say that bad things don't happen to good people? Or that God answers every prayer the way we would see fit? Do people who dearly love their monochorionic twins and pray passionately for them always bring them home with them? We want to believe yes but know that very bad things happen.

Yet we say with the lepper "Jesus, if you want to, you can heal me" and hope that he replies the same as he did to the lepper "I want to."

Megan is healing well, and is off the epidural and the IV. She is eating well and is doing great except that she isn't very good at laying down all the time. She is good at talking the nurses into not making her take the bad pain meds. She is now only on Tylenol and is more uncomfortable with the pains of laying down than the pains of having her belly cut in two.

More soon.

Recovery II (Hey Jude)

2004-09-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

While Megan slurs out unintelligible questions from her afternoon nap (I think she just said "body-cast's the worst"), 2000 miles away our family and friends are moving us into our first house. And I am pondering the significance of a passing comment that Dr. DeLia made yesterday.

This is a Catholic hospital. Something I would have never given a second thought except that it might explain why our Dr. felt comfortable showing us the pictures of the two Patron Saints that he always carries with him into the operating room. The first is St Gerard the Patron Saint of pregnant women. The second is St. Jude the Patron Saint of lost causes. The very thought of which puts a lump in my throat. Not because it makes me feel our boys are a lost cause. But because the foremost authority on the syndrome recognizes these cases as a lost cause, and has great hope for them any way. I am reminded that without the treatment that he pioneered they are, in the eyes of medical statistics, a lost cause. A battle that has already fallen to one side and offers nothing to gain by fighting.

As we lay here resting, the eight inch question mark shaped scar around Megan's belly button is healing. And we are asking: Is this a lost cause? Will our boys be on the right side of the statistics? Answers are still far away. But we do know that the battle is still on. Perhaps by the time the scar is healed the question will be answered.

We viewed the video of our surgery this morning. Not the gory parts, just the fetoscopic lasering part. We also got a nice picture of the big boy's face in full color. Dr. DeLia seriously said he looked like me. Of course I thought he did for what little that is worth. The video shows the outside of the placenta and all of the blood vessels which feed the babies. The idea is to occlude all of the vessels which run between the two, and leave all the vessels which are their individual food supplies. What he found though was that there were only very small vessels that appeared to cross-feed. He occluded all of them, but had expected to see larger more obvious cross feeding going on. He is confident from his experience that they are disconnected. So we wait to see results that are probably still weeks away.

Thank you so much to all who are moving our stuff, and washing the dishes that we left in the sink. We wish we were there.

P.S. I am glad that I am not praying to saints. They are really hard to keep track of. Did you know that there is a patron saint for pigs, pow's, peasant girls, pilots, pin-makers, prostitutes(reformed), pork processors and potholers? Just to name a very few! I didn't. Perhaps I need to understand the system a little better. Are the candles scented accordingly? If so don't send us one for the patron saint of pork processors...
No disrespect intended.

Recovery I

2004-09-03T19:16:00.000-07:00

One of the two windows in room 3232 of the ante partum unit at St Joseph's Hospital in Milwaukee now has a small bouquet of flowers, our boys first gift to their mom, thanking her for undergoing surgery for them. Attached to the vase are two blue surgical gloves blown up with happy faces on them. The one on the left slightly larger.

Mom is doing well, she is resting, continually in and out of sleep. She is well medicated and hooked up to a host of machines, tubes and monitors. An epidural keeps her lower 5/8ths numb and an IV feeds her sugar and protein in a continually uninteresting meal. For now she says she feels like a koala bear: warm, fuzzy, unmoving, slowly reaching or asking for anything she needs. She occasionally mutters in her half sleep things like "nutter butters" then says oops realizing that she let something from her sleep world out into the real world. All of that belies the fact of course that her belly was cut open wide enough to pull her whole uterus out in order to do the surgery. An act of sacrifice that will always be with her. A reminder for the remainder of her own life of the love she has for these boys. A battle scar from the fight for their lives, regardless of the outcome of this surgery.

We will not know the outcome for some time. In 2 days we will have our first post operation ultrasound. We will not learn anything from this one except whether they are still with us. They will do ultrasounds every 2 days to check for progress, but we will not be likely to see much improvement until a couple weeks go by. It was unsettling for me today to do such an invasive surgery and have no conclusive findings at the end of it. Regardless, this surgery is judged by it's long term effects not an immediate result.

Personally I pretty well underestimated the effect of surgery on the party not being operated on. I have a completely new perspective on what this is like for our friends who are undergoing far more invasive scarier surgeries. As our hearts and minds are sometimes overwhelmed with emotion, fear, and critical decisions we feel the weight of our work of prayer shared, even fully shouldered by all of you. Again where we cannot, you can.

Our surgeon and literally every one of the staff that we have met at this hospital is amazing. We feel very human. They are compassionate, we truly feel like they personally care about our well being, even to the point of one of the surgery nurses giving me a big hug as I left the room before the surgery.

The next week will hopefully be "boring" and allow for us to catch up with so many of you who have been sending your love.

By the way, if the grammar and punctuation are deteriorating it is because my proofreader is on leave (and a whole bunch of opiates)

Good news for people who love bad news

2004-09-02T18:43:00.000-07:00

The bad news is that our case is as advanced as we thought it was. The good news is that it makes our decision to go ahead with the laser surgery a very clear one. It is good news indeed for us, because we had feared a prolonged middle-of-the-road diagnosis which would make our choices far more difficult.

After reviewing our boys via ultrasound with another Perinatoligist this afternoon, Dr. DeLia is ready to do the surgery tomorrow morning. As of Monday afternoon our case was borderline, but in the 3 days since then the fluid levels have changed to make surgery both safer and a more obvious solution. Any risks associated with this surgery now pale to the known risk of what will happen if we do not do anything.

We consider this a not small victory on the road to winning the war.

The surgery is planned to start between 10 -12 am (Milwaukee is 2 hours ahead of CA). I probably will not see Megan untill 1 or 2 pm. While we will have some indicators of the success of the surgery immediately we may not be able to breathe a true sigh of relief until 4-6 weeks have passed.

Now is a great time to unleash your best prayers, we often rely on you all to pray when we are too distraught or tired, and can't. Thank you.

Milwaukee I

2004-09-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Milwaukee. Bed rest at the Holiday Inn is about as interesting as it is on the west side of Santa Barbara.

We will meet with Dr Delia today at 4PM central, 2PM pacific. This will be an extensive ultrasound by one of the two specialist in the U.S. We expect to learn a lot today and will try to update tonight if possible.

Hope vs. Frustration

2004-08-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

If I had updated every 20 minutes today the story could not have kept up with the reality. So called facts, plans and emotions changed with passing minutes and proved to be hard too keep up with, even when we were required to.

Our highly respected second opinion perinatologist from yesterday (picture Billy Bob Thorton in Slingblade)had the bed side manner of a Russian prison guard. 50 minutes with him yielded about 50 words. He came with such high reccomendation that we hung on each one of them. While we are certain that he must be brilliant, we are equally certain that he will never communicate that brilliance in any useful way. The concerned parents enter nervous and exit flat out scared after the 50 minute russian silent treatment. We were booked on flights to both Tampa and Milwaukee today trying to get this surgery done "yesterday" to save our babies.
After our last post we spoke with Dr DeLia in Milwaukee. He considers our case a possibility for laser surgery, not an immediate neccesity. We now plan to meet with him in Milwaukee on Friday and do the surgery only if it is considered neccessary.

We also received encouraging and helpful advice from the director of the TTTS foundation, who lost one of her identical boys to the syndrome 15 years ago when laser surgery was just being pioneered.

By the end of the day we felt like parents again instead of an urgent weird science project. We sometimes slip into feeling like Megan is carrying around a moon rock in her belly, instead of our first two children. But when there is hope for them we remember that they are two normal, healthy, developing identical boys who only have an environmental problem, which we are fighting to fix. It is the placenta that has problems not our boys. We only feel sympathy, as they have nothing to do with the distribution problem.

We could have never imagined the depth or breadth of your prayers. Some of you have shared that your prayers for these babies have been the most pleading you have prayed, others that God has not heard so much from you in a long time. God is hearing prayers from churches I had never heard of. We are touched beyond what I could express even if I were less exhausted. Also, the action that you have offered in support of us, your calls, e-mails, they are our safety net. We answer when we can, but we always appreciate your active and heartfelt support.

Frustration

2004-08-31T08:52:00.000-07:00

Last night our second opinion confirmed that we are a "severe" case of TTTS (stage 2)and that we are candidates for the laser separation surgery. UCLA recommended that we go to Dr. Quintaro in Tampa Florida "yesterday". This morning we woke up and tried to contact Dr. Quintaro on our way to the airport to catch the first flight out. After speaking to countless unconcerned Florida hospital staff, and after the cancellation of the flight for mechanical reasons, we finally discovered that Dr. Quintaro is out of the country until September 7th. Too long. There are only two known specialist in the States for this surgery, so we are now waiting at home for a call from Dr. DeLia in Milwaukee. We spoke with him yesterday and were impressed with his personal interest in us, so we are hopeful he will call us very soon. Likely, we will fly there today regardless of if when he calls. We feel the need to be there and ready to match his schedule. Thanks Skywest!

While it feels that nothing can happen fast enough, and that it just is not working like we want it to, we simply do not know that it isn't working perfectly in God's eyes. We know that God knows "yesterday" what time Dr. De Lia will call us today. He knows where we will be in 3 hours, 3 days, 3 years. He knows our boys' names. As we do what we can, we rely on
Him for what we can't. We also rely on all of your continuing, faithful prayers.

Here's the science for those who care to follow along with the medical stuff.

Donor: weight 160 grams, 0 amnionic fluid depth, no bladder visible. (does not mean he doesn't have one but that it is not filling at this time. It is an indicator for the stage of TTTS but is not a defect - in fact, it is one of the criteria that qualifies us for the laser surgery).

Recipient: weight 260 grams, 8.4 cm amniotic fluid depth, bladder visible, no thickening of heart muscle visible (which means that he is not too overworked yet, it is good).

Both: No signs of damage or defect. Our boys are healthy now but their food distribution isn't, Which is why we want surgery NOW.

Next update hopefully from Milwaukee.

August 27

2004-08-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Friends,
24 hours ago we learned that our twins are identical boys, and that they are affected by a syndrome/placental disease called Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS). It means simply that they have a food distribution problem. They are still in two separate amniotic sacs, but share one placenta. I'll spare the rest of the medical details for now, but what it means is that our boy on the left (the one we called the crazy one because of how active he has been) is being over nourished while our boy on the right is being undernourished. So much so that at 18 ½ weeks the big one is 60% bigger than the little one, or 8 oz. and 5 oz. Left untreated neither is likely to survive.

We are just now learning much of what we need to know about TTTS so some of this info may be inaccurate or flat out wrong. But if you are interested there is unending info at the TTTS Foundation link at the top of this page. For now two treatment options are being considered:

1. Amniotic Reduction: we will almost certainly do this treatment regardless of the other. It is a simple reduction of the amniotic fluid in the big one's sac which temporarily relieves his organs from overworking and reduces pressure on the smaller one's food supply so that the food distribution may equalize to some degree. This is the standard treatment of most all TTTS cases but may not be enough for severe cases.

2. If further diagnosis shows that we have a severe case, and are good candidates we may do the next level of treatment. Dr. Soffici's impression is that we may be in this category and might benefit from this procedure, which involves using a laser to disconnect the shared food supply so that each twin gets his own food supply, as non-TTTS twins would. If successful, it actually cures the syndrome. This procedure would be done at UCSF.

We are going for a second opinion on Monday at UCLA with a perinatal specialist that Dr. Soffici recommended, which may steer us toward or away from the laser procedure. All treatments have varying levels of success, based on a lot of factors. As of today, we don't have enough information to know which procedures or outcomes are likely for us.

We are utterly and fully in the hands of our good God. We, in the course of a couple of hours, went from proud, if nervous parents who "routinely" prayed for their twins' health, to dependent, scared parents who pray gasping and sighing, wet, loud, and embarrassing prayers. Desperation prayers. And when we open our eyes we see our blurry family. We already cry as much for the sweetness of your support as we do for the fears of the possible outcomes. When we consider those outcomes, we are only glad to have each other to survive with, if all else fails. "If all else" is a long list ranging from bringing two healthy, if unequally sized boys home with us, to losing one or both of them, to bringing home one or both with disabilities. Yet, there is wonder-working power in the blood of Jesus.

This is our first web site. It is not as cheerful as we would have planned, but here it is. It is not a private site; it is open to all who will pray. It may be alternately too boring and too bleeding, to prosaic or too poetic (like now), but our hope is that four months from now it will be a well-documented story of a miracle.

Our most heartfelt thanks for all the time, talent, resources, love and care that so many have already offered. We are lost without it. Thank you Matt and Chris for setting up this site and passing on the wisdom from your own previous trials. We will try to update this site regularly which hopefully will be an easy way to update on a more regular basis, than we possibly could otherwise.

Use the envelope link in the lower right corner to e-mail this to anyone who would care to see it.