4 months old!

Wow - can you believe it? The girls were four months old yesterday (Saturday). They've been in the NICU or Special Care for 123 days. They weight 6lb 3.8oz and 7lb 6.1oz. They've really come a long way.

Also yesterday, during a visit with Grandpa and Ya-Yai, they both showed off by doing VERY well with their bottles. Natalie took all but 6ml of her feed. Abby took a while to get going, but finally took 51ml of her 65ml. They had actually stalled out again, so this was a nice surprise.

We've been taking care of all sorts of little details before rooming-in begins and the girls come home. Cleaning, sorting, final nursery prep, washing clothes, bottles, and everything else. My mom arrived today and is helping us - thanks mom! She's so awesome at motivating and cleaning. I've also been cleaning up the office (well, I'm IN the office so that sort-of counts:-) and checking on the bills for the next few weeks since I figure I'll be otherwise occupied. I figure any kind of cleaning/organizing/projects that aren't done by this afternoon aren't likely to happen.

About 5ish this afternoon (after the Panthers game) we will head to the hospital to begin the rooming-in process. I am so excited. I have already been shown how to place the ng tube (although I haven't actually done it yet), check for placement, and push their meds. We'll probably switch to oral meds when we go home. We have our own stethoscopes which is very cool. I've always wanted one. The monitors have arrived and we will take them to the hospital with us. The milk pumps, which we hopefully will not need much, will arrive tomorrow.

It's such a strange feeing to think that we will finally have babies in two more days. It seems very unreal. We are excited and nervous at the same time. We are also a little sad in some ways. It's been Johelen and Ben for 8 years, and now that era is over. We were very aware of our last Friday night alone together and our last dinner out alone for a while on Saturday. We have loved so much being together and being wifee and husbandy. It's a little sad for us that it's coming to and end in a way. We know it's not completely over, but it will be different. It's not to say we aren't thrilled about our new roles of Mommy and Daddy, but we never want to forget who we were and what it means for us to be together and happy. We have had an amazing marriage so far and been able to focus only on each other. Our Promise to each other is not to forget the other as we shift our focus to Natalie and Abigail.

I may have a computer in the hospital so I can update. Otherwise, I will check in Tuesday evening with our first report post-hospital.