A few more pics from september….

Here is where I would post a super cute picture of the little guy, but I just realized those photos are not on this computer. Technology is great!!!!

On Saturday, Sept. 17th 2011, we had our 3rd Annual Oktoberfest party. It was quite a bit smaller this year and instead of the Carlson clan preparing everything, everyone chipped in and brought an Oktoberfest staple to the gathering. We held it on our backyard and it worked out great. We will probably do the same thing next year. Mark you calendars folks! It is always the same day as the first day of Oktoberfest in Munich. Our typical Oktoberfest schedule goes like this:

Morning: prepare preztel dough and set-up decorations and tables. We try to make it look like our favorite tent at the original Oktoberfest in Munich – Hipodrome. We still have a long way to go…

12:00pm: Brian taps the keg and starts the celebration with an official PROST!  We improvised this year and went with bottles for our smaller gathering.

Afternoon: Yards games, meat and cheese plates, pretzel making and eating, german beer drinking, music and just good old fun.

Evening: Dinner with german sausage, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut and some sort of chocolate dessert. Camp fires and more fun.

This year was another success and L & O even attended. They were the hit of the party as always. They didn’t have leiderhosen this year but they sported some corduroy overalls that did the trick. It was a little chilly out, so their outfits were covered most of the day with thick winter sweaters and blankets.

LEIF

Weight: 15 lbs. 13.5 oz (10-25th percentile)

Height: 26 3/4″ (50-75th percentile)

Head: 16 3/4″ (10-25th percentile)

OLLIE

Weight: 14lbs. 10.5 oz. (5-10th percentile)

Height: 26 1/4″ (50th percentile)

Head: 16 5/8″ (10% percentile)

Looks like we will have tall and lean boys on our hands. It’s hard to imagine that they have more than tripled their weight since birth. Leif has always averaged about a pound more than Ollie and used to be about an inch taller. So, it looks like Ollie is catching up. They pretty much eat about the same every day give or take a couple ounces. Ollie is always moving which I think is why he always weighs a little less. The doctor noticed that Leif still was tilting his head some in the neutral position and thought some physical therapy might speed up correcting it. Which will also help to round out the back of his head faster. Both boys have always head a tendency to look to their right and down. The doctor said it was due to being so crammed in utero that one of the neck muscles gets really tight. Making it uncomfortable to turn or look a certain way. We have been careful to make sure we hold them and feed them in positions that would encourage them to look to their left. I even would go into their room at night and turn their heads while they were sleeping. She thought they would probably outgrow it on their own as they started to spend more time off of their backs. Ollie seems to be corrected for the most part. He still prefers to turn his head to the right when on his tummy or sleeping on his back but doesn’t seem to tilt it when in the neutral position as much. He was the one we were worried about the most in the beginning but I think because he is more active it has worked itself out. The doctor thinks his will continue to improve on his own but Leif would probably benefit from some p/t. His first session is next Wednesday at Children’s.

We are so proud of our two little guys. They are smiling and laughing all the time. They can roll over both ways but love to roll from their backs to their stomachs. They love to grab and reach for things and are more attentive when reading books. They still like their activity gym and grabbing at the toys, but we can tell they are starting to get bored with it and want more motion activities. They have an older excersaucer that my sister picked up at a garage sale that they are starting to really enjoy. They also have Johnny Jump Ups but they haven’t figured out how to jump in them yet. I started to look for the Fisher Price  Rainforest Jumperoo on craigslist. I have heard from other moms that this is a favorite of their babies and they can figure it out earlier than the jump ups.

Ollie loves to stand on his feat. He thinks its the greatest thing in the world. I have a feeling he might be the first to start walking. We have started baby food and so far they have had – rice cereal, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, pears and squash. They seem to like the sweet potatoes the best.

It’s been a long and short 6 months. Most days it’s hard to imagine life before the twins. They are so happily intertwined in our lives now. We still have those hard days and sleepless nights but for the most part we got this down. Our six month daily routine is by far easier than our six week daily routine. The house is usually still disorganized and the bathrooms don’t get cleaned as often but we are having fun. I look forward to the next six months!

The second first and far better one is the boys have discovered their toes. They have been playing with them for awhile but this week I have caught them sucking on them on more than one occasion. My new favorite baby stage! Oh and Leif also loves to blow bubbles with his lips. I’m still trying to catch pictures of both of these and I will post them as soon as I get a chance to upload the photos.

“Our world”  sure has changed drastically with the addition of our handsome twin boys. Leif and Oliver are 5 1/2 months old and they have been running this house since February 26th, 2011. Here is a short re-cap in photos of the last 5 months as we were thrown into the realm of not only becoming new parents but becoming parents of TWINS!

Holding Leif after I woke up from surgery in the special care nursery.

Holding Ollie for the first time. I was put under for an emergency c-section after delivering Leif. So, I was very anxious to see and hold him.

We finally get to hold the twins together and look at them at the same time. I think this was on day 4. They were born on a Saturday and released on a Thursday. I was released one day ahead of time but couldn’t bare the thought of going home without my boys so we stayed in a parenting room next to the nursery for one night.

Taking the boys home.

Life at home

Visitors. I know I am missing a few pictures of other friends and family visiting. I will find them one day.

Other fun stuff we have done.

Twins game

Memorial Day weekend

Working at the house in Rochester

Playing in the backyard

Playing at home

There are hundreds more pictures to post and things to write about that happened the last five months, but this post has already taken 1 1/2 nap times to complete. So, there is the last five months in a nutshell. I hear babies waking up….

Leif & Ollie

So many things have happened it’s hard to know where to start. We are two weeks into our volunteering and are half way done. Time has gone by fast and we can’t believe that we only have two weeks left. I will run through our typical week so you can get an idea of what we do here in Vietnam. We are stationed in Quang Ngai, Vietnam which is the 4th largest city in Vietnam but still feels like a small town to us. The people here are great! We feel like movie stars as we walk down the street. Quang Ngai is not a touristy town so we get lots of stares and “Hello’s” along with “What’s your name?”. They are not used to seeing white people and find us somewhat of a novelty.

We live in a rented house just outside the main street with one other volunteer, Jarrah, from Australia.

We have a translator, Tuan, who comes with us to our placements. A cook, Mrs Be, and a night watchman, Mr. Mahn. We get up every morning around 7 am, toss the mosquito net aside, and make our way downstairs to our breakfast waiting for us on the table.

Mondays and Wednesdays we take a taxi to two small villages (Binh Hoa and Nghia Hanh) outside the city. Both of these places have rehabilitation centers where the parents can bring there kids. The rehabilitation center is not what you would imagine by western standards. It’s a large room that maybe has an exercise back and parallel bars where everyone sits on the ground waiting for us to arrive.

This was a little frustrating at first as we felt that they were waiting for some kind of miracle to be performed on their children. You want to do so much but sometimes have to realize that just by being there and walking with them or encouraging them is more than they get all week. I continue to remind myself of the prayer, “God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

We bring milk and fruit for the kids and plenty of toys and books. We try and play with the kids and stimulate them as much as possible. Most of them have some sort of disability and we try our best to work with them. GVN, the organization that we are volunteering through has received a sponsorship for a physical therapist to be at these centers as well and do exercises with the kids. We are very excited for this and think it will make a huge difference. We see some issues with the kids that would not be a big deal if they had the proper exercises or medical attention, but they don’t and it ends up impairing them worse than it has too. Most of these people come from poorer areas and the toys that we bring might be the only ones they have. For example, one day we brought little toy cars and noticed even the mothers being super protective over the car that their child was playing with and wouldn’t let it out of their sight. We ended up just giving them the cars at the end of they day because we couldn’t bear the thought of having to ask for it back when it maybe cost us 10 cents a car. We usually bring toys to and from the places. We spend about two hours there and then had back to the house for lunch and a few hours break.

At about 3:00pm we bike to the Social Protection Center in town. The SPC is an orphanage with about 80 children ranging in ages from 2 days to 20 years old. We only see about 30 children at a time as most are in school or older and do their own thing. We teach English with the 6-9th graders and bring toys and games for the rest of the kids.

There are about 4 children who have disabilities that we try and pay extra attention to since they don’t get any from the “mothers” at the orphanage. There are also two babies who I love but do receive lots of attention so I try not to spend to much time with them.

This is little Phuoc. I believe he has cerebral palsy. He loves to be held and make sounds back and forth. This is a great example where it doesn’t matter what language you speak.

I have already found favorites and it has been hard not to let is show. There is an adorable little four year old, Ty, who has a stellar smile.

Our goal is to get him in school. The administration doesn’t want to send him saying he is “mental” because his mom was labeled as “mental” we do not know to what extent she was disabled or crazy? But from what we can see and from what past Vietnamese speaking volunteers have seen he seems to have a normal mental capacity for a four year old. The “mothers” said he doesn’t always understand or listen to everything they are saying and he sometimes walks on his tip-toes. This sounded normal to us for a four year old. There are no other children his age there so he spends most of the day hanging out with the disabled children.

Tao is a lovely girl who is categorized as disabled. We are not sure to the extent of her disability. We are also trying to get her in to a disabled school. They say her brain has stopped working and won’t progress. But we brought her to Mrs. Kahn’s class and saw huge improvements. We believe she just needs some attention.

We don’t always understand the politics of the orphanage and find it frustrating when they put road blocks up for us. We think they would do well in school and really needs a chance to get away from the orphanage for a few hours a day. We visit SPC every day in the afternoon for a few hours and then go home for dinner.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays we bike to a disabled school where we help the greatest teacher ever, except for my parents, Mrs. Kahn. There is one classroom that Mrs. Kahn teaches of about 10-12 mentally disabled students and then another class for deaf children. When we arrive the kids all run up and give us hugs wanting to be at our side at all times. We love it!

We find the deaf boys difficult at times since they resort to violent means to get our attention and each others and this seems to be the norm. There is a range of ages and they are constantly hitting and kicking each other. Vietnamese sign language is quite different than American Sign Language so it is a whole new thing for us to learn. We try and make eye contact with them the best we can and use body language to communicate things. The disabled class loves to do crafts and the deaf class of boys love sports. So, we usually offer both when we are there.

Monday and Tuesday evenings we help teach English at the Foreign Language center. The classes range from intermediate to advanced. We mainly help them with pronunciation and conversational topics. We leave the grammar to the real teachers. It gives them a chance to converse and practice their English. Most of them are very excited to learn since being able to speak English in Vietnam opens many more doors to them and their families.

Thursday evenings we join Mrs. Kahn and her husband, Mr. Viet, at their English club. This is more laid back and strictly conversational. The number of students vary every week and we decide on a new topic of discussion each week as a class. We think they all speak English very well so we gave them some tongue twisters to spice it up a bit.