Update

As you know I switched over to Wordpress and many of you haven't been able to follow me over. I wanted to update on the girls. Although I won't be sharing any pictures of them on this blog.

Lilah had her open heart surgery on January 27th. There were some complications and she lost a lot of blood. They also found another smaller hole in her heart, repaired a valve that narrowed and repaired the membrane around her heart. She was on the vent for 7 long days. After coming off the vent, she started going through withdrawals because of the amount of medications used to keep her sedated. She ended up in the hospital for two weeks, but everything was repaired! Initially we thought she would come home and be able to drink bottles. Since they had to send her home on methadone and she was on it for several weeks, she wasn't able to drink bottles and stayed on her tube. We were a little disappointed at first, but then a few weeks ago she came off the methadone and started drinking 100% of her bottles. She is now drinking almost 3 ounces per feeding! She went from being on over 8 medications daily to 1 heart medication. She is growing! My baby girl is up to almost 10lbs now. I can sit here and tell you how hard this journey has been, but there aren't words to truly explain unless you have been through it. I can honestly say I am so happy this is all over with. I hope I never have to watch my baby go through open heart surgery again in her life time. But the most important thing of all is we have our daughter. 

Olivia is doing fantastic. She is almost sleeping throughout the night and is such a charming baby. She is always smiling and loves to talk. Right now she is almost rolling over ( so close). She loves daycare and all the teachers love her so much. They tell me she is the smallest baby in the class and they just want to hold and cuddle her all day long ( which is okay with me). She goes shopping with her daddy every weekend. He packs her up and off they go. It is so cute seeing Al with her. And it is a special time for them. He told me the other day, now that Lilah is healed and off restrictions, he is so excited to take her with him also. 

Speaking of Al. He seems to amaze me each and every day with our girls. I always knew he would be a good dad, but never in my wildest dreams did I know it would be like this. He loves them so much. He changes diapers, he feeds in the middle of the night, he watches the girls so I can nap on days I am exhausted. He stayed home with Lilah for six weeks after her surgery and managed to still cook, clean and keep our daughter healthy. I am not sure what I did to deserve him, but I will definitely keep him. If I had a better paying job, we could let him stay home with the girls ( maybe one day it will happen).

We are also in the process of listing our house and finding a new home. I was so scared at first because I didn't want us to go into debt. After many months of budgeting and looking over things, we figure we could make this work. We can't go out and buy our dream home, but we can afford a bigger place with a few acres to raise the girls until they get older and then build our dream home on the property. I am really excited about this! We have three houses to look at this weekend. Hopefully we will be moving when Cierra graduates in May.

Cierra finally got her drivers license a few days ago. This has been a huge relief, because Al and I have been driving her back and forth to work for almost two years now. We are tired. She is graduating in May. I can't believe she is all grown up. I can't wait to see what she chooses to do with her life as an adult. Starting college would be the first step. And I have to say that Cierra is an amazing big sister. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine she would be so in love with her baby sisters. It truly makes my heart swell.

Before I go, I don't want to make it sound like our life is some dream world, because it's not, we do have our issues with the babies and life in general. That is such a small part though, it doesn't compare to everything in our life that is so blessed and we are blessed beyond measure. All my years of infertility, all the losses, everything, it was worth it to be where I am at right now. All. Worth. It.