so, i got to thinking the other night while i was wondering around my local walmart picking up paper towels and the like… seriously, i sometimes look *forward* to buying household supplies as an excuse to get out for awhile… in the seasonal aisle at the store all of the back to school supplies were being stocked.  how can that be?  wasn’t it just july 4th?  wasn’t the summer supposed to last forever?  i guess some parts of the country do literally go back to school at the beginning of august (we here in new england don’t go back until around labor day) but i guess that means parents can start planning ahead. 

i then saw a little girl with her mom and a “school supply list.”  we never had those as a kid, but just in passing, i noticed there had to be about 40 things on there!  the poor mom was going a bit insane… and then i noticed she had two other daughters with her!  wow… that’s a lot of school supplies!

as i was packing up the car, i started to think what my life will be like in a couple of years.  two school supply lists, two new backpacks, two new lunch boxes… two new “oh-i-must-have-that” wardrobes.  better start saving!  what about those kids whose parents can’t afford all of these supplies?  are those kids left in the dust without the fanciest graphing calculator?  i recently saw this story… what about those families… especially in this economy!

i was so glad, then, to find that i am honored to be one of 50 bloggers who had the opportunity to bag it forward this summer.

this is a great idea.  while you are shopping for your other items in the store or even your own supplies pick up a few extra for someone who can’t buy supplies for their children.  (just an aside, if you are looking to get the most for your donation, i have to say that walmart was a great place to start!  they had amazing back to school prices (hi, a notebook for 15 cents!  not kidding!) 

can’t get to the store right now?  well, there’s one thing you can do to make an impact right this minute (ok, and maybe tomorrow morning too if that works better) 

help elmer’s help adopt-a-classroom

helping classrooms in need this back to school season is as easy as 1 – 2 – 3

1.  write a post about this charity blog meme

2. send a virtual bag of school supplies to another blogger and challenge them to join the #bagitforward movement

3. link up your post at bagitforward.org

sweet!  elmer’s just donated $10 for your post to adopt-a-classroom!

ok, so here are the details of the program again:

elmer’s will donate up to $10,000 to adopt-a-classroom with your participation. join now!

the elmer’s virtual bag it forward is charity blog meme, where bloggers can raise $10 per blog post for Adopt-A-Classroom (simply by writing a blog post and donating a virtual bag of school supplies), up to $10,000.

 you can give as many virtual bags as you want.  the elmer’s virtual bag it forward will officially begin at 12a est 7/22/10 and ends at 12p est 8/12/10.  the blog post link has to be submitted in the comment section below for your participation to be counted.

wait. what?  what do i do?  can you just give me something to copy and paste into my blog to make it easy?  why sure!  here you go… copy and paste the following text into your blog post:

elmer’s virtual bag it forward rules:

• copy and paste these rules into your blog post
• create a blog post giving a “virtual bag of school supplies” to other bloggers or write about your back to school shopping trip (or trip to pick out your latest sunglasses or socks or exercise equipment) 
• link back to the person who gave you a bag of school supplies
• let each person you are giving a virtual bag of school supplies know you have given them a bag
• leave your link in the elmer’s virtual bag it forward comment section. you can also find the official rules of this virtual #bagitforward program there.
• elmer’s is donating $10 for each blog participating in the virtual bag it forward donation to adopt-a-classroom (up to total of $10,000 for blog posts written by august 12, 2010).
• please note that only one blog post per blog url will count towards the donation.

i’m sending my virtual bag to caryanne at “about the small stuff” and am challenging her to #bagitforward with elmer’s!

hi everyone!

for those just clicking over to this site, i thank you for taking a look… i started this blog to keep my friends and family informed throughout a lot of the process (although we did use a carepages at the very beginning)

if we can help one other family out there going through even a little bit of what we’ve gone through and provide them with some hope that others have gone through it and they can do it too, then i’m serving my purpose.  we had no idea how strong we could be.  feel free to reach out to me at any time!

here’s the article!

i received a lovely comment from a fellow blogger after my last post here.  she too has twins and while we both are facing different struggles, the parental feelings and experiences are all too similar.

while i was checking out her blog, i came across this.  that post referred me to a lovely blog about a grandmother (and wonderful artist) that is trying to help raise money for her granddaughter, hailey.  hailey has cerebral palsy and many of the therapies that work for her are not covered under insurance (go figure… sheesh).

the woman’s name is janet harrold and she has a lovely website displaying her artwork.  turns out she is based in the boston area! 

i will be sending her a check with a picture of the girls and can’t wait to see the result!  if any of you would like to do the same, please check out her latest post on her blog.

don’t you just love the blogosphere?

oh my goodness… a moment to myself!  before midnight!  well, this doesn’t happen often… we’ve had a crazy week over here at the farrell’s (per the usual) and i have to tell you, i think we could use a vacation.  to the backyard everyone!  yeah, that’s about as far as we’re going to get this year i fear, but hey, it’s honestly been my one wish since the beginning of this ordeal… to just have the whole farrell four hanging out on a blanket in the backyard.  did i expect the temperature to be hovering close to the weather in the devil’s playground though? well no.  we’re sort of captive behind the air conditioners at this point due to the girls’ lungs… and to be honest, the air conditioning isn’t that great for them either, but it’s the lesser of two evils.  case in point:  we just got back a little while ago from (what was supposed to be) a lovely walk at a nice oceanside park in our town.  it has lovely, smooth paths and is directly on the ocean… and the parking is free.  even better!  so, we had this wonderful idea about 8:30a this morning as we figured we’d capitalize on the cooler morning and started to get packed up… oh how i wish for the days when we can say, ‘ok, let’s go,’ and we can do just that… we’ll all just jump in the car and off we’ll go.

but, of course, that’s not the case right now… which is fine… but it is a bit wearing (and i must admit i think more than twice before going out anywhere)… here was our routine…

8:00am  decide to go for a walk in the park… woo hoo!

8:05am something smells… who is that?  disarm possible explosive situation

8:15am situation neutralized… sort of… time for a quick tubby

8:20am looking for hme (also called a “nose”… it’s a little piece of complicated plastic that fits over mad’s trach and keeps her airway humidified… and also protects her airway some from tubby splashes as direct waves into her trachea isn’t such a great idea).  find hme in toybox with drool all over it.  lovely. 

8:25am mommy’s back is thrown out… dead lifting a 28 pound wriggling bundle of joy without getting any “explosion” on her takes a bit of work… and her back has just about had it.  daddy takes over tubby time and mommy continues to get our excursion underway

8:30am hmm… everyone should probably have their medicine before they go… draw up 5mL, 3.4mL, 1mL of various meds for madeline… draw up 4mL, 2mL, 1.4mL of various meds for molly… draw up flushes for both… grab inhaler for molly, finally get wrenched back onto floor with molly, realize i’ve forgotten the little connector to get the medicines from the syringes to the feeding tubes… attempt ill-fated gymnastic move to get myself up without hurting back and whack head on floor… nice!

8:35am molly gets her medicines and tries to escape at every turn… mommy decides it’s time for some fun “stationary” time in the exersaucer… not the best parenting option, but if you really knew ms. molly, then you would know that she pulled out her j-tube (an aside:  thank you to the childrens hospital interventional radiology team who had to come in specially on *july 4th* to put our darling molly’s tube back in… i’m not kidding) *and* tried to crawl out the front door within about an hour of each other last weekend.  she’s definitely our little houdini.

8:40am  tubby complete and madeline’s medicines administered.  a little cream here, a little tape there, a trach collar and sponge change and a j-tube sponge change and we’re good!  madeline gets floor privileges and commences tearing apart the pile of toys on the floor while molly looks on, pointing and yelling her special “baby” commands.  i’m not sure what they say to each other, but they’ve caught on to their own little thing in three weeks flat… we are so in for it

8:45am get feeding pumps ready.  both girls are tube fed and require the bag to be changed every morning.  gather the two different formulas, prime pumps, hook ‘em up… beep beep beep… “no flow in”  what does that mean?  reprime madeline’s pump… works fine now!

8:55am beep beep beep… “no flow out?”  what?  what does that mean?  consult manual… still don’t understand… reprime again… seems to work ok now… there is a reason they sent an instructional dvd for these things.  guess i should watch it again.

9am refill portable lquid oxygen tanks.  this scares the living bejeezus out of the whole family (as it sounds like a rocket taking off each time)

9:10am madeline to the car with her belongings:  portable oxygen tank, feeding pump, suction machine, emergency trach kit, extra oxygen tubing, speaking valve… and extra diapers, wipes and outfits for unexpected previously referenced explosions.

9:15am molly to the car:  portable oxygen tank, feeding pump, diaper bag… she’s the easy one!

9:20am wait, mommy’s still in her pajamas.  quick change.  decide pajama shirt will have to do as the laundry has been washed and folded but not put away since madeline came home (and mommy and daddy’s room could possible qualify for one of those a&e shows right now)

9:30am on the road

9:40am stop for much needed breakfast-ish sustenance for mommy and daddy

9:50am hear gagging in the backseat.  stop car and jump out.  molly (aka “the easy one”) is throwing up all over herself.  lovely.  look for napkins, find a diaper in the glove compartment (mommy has been a bit tired lately).  molly throws up all over daddy.

9:51am molly smiles.  daddy gags.  we decide to press on. 

9:55am arrival at park.  daddy runs to the bathroom to rinse off.  mommy assembles stroller.  realizes she can’t bend over to put the big, back wheels on so just stands there… (i can be such a help, i know)

10 am molly is changed into an extra madeline outfit, which is three sizes too big.  she is not modest, so does not care that it is clearly falling off.  she seems happy as a clam.

10:05am everyone, including all supplies, machines and monitors are now in the stroller… the stroller now weighs 2,309 lbs (or it feels like it anyway).

10:10am mommy and daddy realize as they start their walk that the temperature may have risen 30 degrees since they decided to go for this walk… two hours ago…

10:15am – 10:35am mommy complains about back… daddy sings ‘row, row your boat’ 50 times to keep the girls from biting each other’s toes… girls repeatedly takes hats off… mommy puts them back on… mommy is sweating… mommy is out of shape… daddy says ‘let’s go!’  the farrell four reach the last bend… molly looks at us and in ‘exorcist’ fashion throws up all over herself… nice.  daddy catches some in the palm of his hand… extra nice… the farrell four are collectively deciding that it is too hot… mommy complains, daddy sweats, madeline yells and molly vomits.

10:40am we’re back in the car on the way home. our air conditioning oasis on the hill beckons.

10:45am home.  thank goodness.

all is quiet now with everyone (except mommy) taking a much-needed nap.  hey, at least we got out of the house, right? 

i’ll admit it.  i’m kind of a car girl… i like cars.  people would be aghast to know the thought of a minivan recently entered into my mind… at some point the chaos that is motherhood rendered me to enter the ‘function over form’ stage of life.  but alas, i/we don’t want a car payment.  we’re not at the financial stage where adding *anything* to the budget (ok, the occasional lip gloss or salad or overnight diapers (expensive but totally worth it!)) is in the cards, so alas, i get to keep my little silver bullet, my toyota camry solara.  darnit {wink}

my love affair with the camry solara began in 2003 with a commercial.  it actually doesn’t really stand out too much, other than i remember looking at it and saying, ‘ooh, i want one of those.’ … and the car was red.  of course, i had just finished grad school and had a new, fancy professional job… and was living in my parent’s basement.  yup, i had a good amount of disposable income… sooo, i went and bought one.  i financed the whole darn thing pretty much and drove it off the lot. 

since then i have loved it!  the nice curves, the sunroof, the quiet, fast ride… even the gas mileage has all been wonderful.  people are always asking me what kind of car it is and a gas station attendant even went so far as to ask me how much i wanted for it as he wanted to buy it for his girlfriend.  i feel confident in it, i feel safe.  it’s curvy enough to feel young and hip and girly, but it doesn’t dissuade my husband from driving it… although he does feel like it’s a ‘girl’ car.

toyota has gotten a bit of a bum rap lately and some would say rightfully so.  i personally never felt anything but safe in any toyotas i’ve driven in… and my family has a lot of them.  my brother drives a camry, my mom a highlander and my dad a tacoma.  we’ve found them pretty reliable and safe.

the only (one and only!) thing i’m a bit bummed about is the whole two-door thing… the big honkin’ carseats the girls are in make it a little difficult to maneuver and i’ve put them in our suv… although we did put the infant car seat in the back ofthe solara no problem.  if i could just make it a four door, well, then i’d be in perfect heaven.  well, that and always driving with michelins hitting the pavement!

until then, i’ll take my rides to target and the grocery store in style, sunroof open, music loud and stress out the window!

*i’m participating in a toyota/twittermoms campaign, which inspired this post. my opinions, thoughts and feelings are my own. as a twittermom, i’m eligible for a courtesy gift

i don’t know when it happened… when did i get so old and fall out of touch with all of this new darn-fangled technology!  i have spent a good part of my free time (so, at least 15 minutes) trying to figure out how to get from wp.com to wp.org.  i suppose if i had a single clue what the silly instructional manual was talking about, i’d be in much better shape… i am equally acronym(ly) challenged and it’s just like trying to navigate your way through a foreign country without a translator.

the good news… my blog is so pretty!  the bad news… my blogroll took to the hills and i somehow managed to blow out *all* of my previous posts with video… awesome.  *so,* look for this week to be rife with “this page under construction” images and cursing emanating from my little shore town.

we, as a family, had a great weekend.  it was quiet and slow, with a great many hours spent in pajamas (don’t you just love that?)  both girls have decided (within hours of each other) to start wreaking havoc of the physical kind.  i have found molly munching on madeline’s trach tubes, with madeline drinking molly’s bottle (ps… the girl doesn’t eat by mouth… it was a huge surprise!)… i have found madeline with her alarms ringing from the monitors to find her having pulled off her vent tubing and “blow drying” her amazingly wavy hair with a big smile on her face.  i have found molly with her little teeny bum stuck under the coffee table (i have no idea how she got there… did i fall asleep?  bad, bad mommy)

molly had a big, big doctor’s appointment at the end of last week and we’re about to embark on a little bit of a journey to get her all better and growing strong.  i’m too tired to write about it now and will update tomorrow.  everything will be fine, but i’m still weary of this nicu walk (over 425 days later!) with its’ two steps forward and one step back.  it’s really, really getting on my nerves, even if it is making me stronger. 

alrighty, i must will myself to bed before i get sucked into some late night sunday nothingness…

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ick.  ugh.  yuck.  blech.  any one of those words pretty much sums up the last two weeks or so for my household.  it all started with out dear ms. madeline catching the bug going around on her floor at franciscans.  it’s the nature of the beast in a place like that where the kids are all seen by the same doctors and nurses and therapists and attend playgroup together.  it’s like a medical day care and we all know how those places are virtual petri dishes… ick.  i got a call about two weeks ago saying that mad had, well, um, the poop-adee-doop-allees… really, really bad.  it was the sickness du jour and they didn’t seem too concerned.  over that night it turned to a little more nausea than it reached its grand finale with both.

now… i love my madeline to death, but at that moment we couldn’t chance getting sick.  we quarantined molly from visiting and both pete and i pretty much said hi over the phone.  a day later i went to give her some loving and she seemed better.  oh dear flu bug, the tricks you play. i felt fine on monday morning and even was making plans to meet up the following day with my friend jods and her cutsy tootsy ellie.  less than an hour later, i’m laying on the couch with molly destroying the place and me unable to do anything about it.  for the next week, i was down for the count…  molly was herded to the grandparents and i was left to rot (i mean recuperate) on the couch…

over the weekend, i went nuts cleaning and washing and deodorizing and sanitizing every single surface in the darn place …and now… my husband goes and gets sick.  how dare he!  (and for the record, i love him, but he is worse than the girls when sick… i’m just glad we don’t have one of those little dinner bells)

one of the upsides to being deathly ill (other than a reason to stay in pajamas for days at a time) is the ability to watch daytime tv… now there’s not a ton to choose from, but I love a couple of the morning talk shows.  who doesn’t love ellen?  … and the view?  love it.  catfighting?  l-o-v-e it.  controversy?  all over it.  … and guess what?  i was selected to be a brand ambassador for the view on mom central!  yay!  what does that mean for me?  well… I get a bit of a sneak peek on some upcoming guests and topics and have an excuse to blog about the “hot topics.”  what does that mean for you?  i hope it means that you’ll join me in some watching of “the view” so we can have some fruitful discussion.  sound like fun?  thought so.  stay tuned and we’ll see what happens next!

after fuddling with blogger for a year or so, i’m on to try the much-touted wordpress… apparently i’m very ‘2001′ in the tech department.  onward and upward i say… alright, it’s a lateral move, but whatever.  it’s easier for me and frankly (see post below) i’m darn happy to have a minute to myself these days.

hey all,

i’m pretty bad at this blog thing… i’m actually in all honesty pretty bad at the whole staying-in-touch thing in general lately… perhaps it’s b/c i have twins, one still in the hospital, a full time job, a house to clean… and a marriage… just don’t have time for the little things (or anything for that matter) anymore. in a way it stinks b/c i’ve always thrived on a little bit of independence, but having my girls makes it all worthwhile.

so, the girls turned one yesterday… how surreal is that. it should have been a bright and shiny happy day for me, but i can’t help but let some of that guilt and weirdness that came along with their early birth last year. as many times as people tell me, how can i not feel guilty that i couldn’t complete the one task i was put forth to do and that’s keep the kiddos in my belly for nine months. it just totally and utterly stinks that i will always have that memory, that feeling around the holidays and around their birthday. i will feel that the next time we may be blessed with another kiddo… is it going to happen again? why did it happen? what did i do wrong? the only thing i can think of is that i was baking cookies the day it happened and was lifting cookie sheets out of the oven? that seems pretty trivial… but you better be darn sure that you won’t be getting any cookies from me or even hearing the word cookie the next time i’m pregnant.

… and i like how i’m saying that…. the *next* time i’m pregnant… as if i’m not up to my eyeballs in craziness and diapers and responsibility and work (and fat) right now… we can be assured of one thing. it will be in the future, but not soon!

ms. madeline is doing awesome. her vent is being turned down day by day and she’s off most of her meds. she’s a smiley, chubby wonder and i’m so glad to have her in my life. my molly just got home this week from a brief stint in the hospital. any little respiratory bug wreaks havoc with these two… it stinks, but it’s our new reality. molly is trying so hard to move around, but is busy building her strength and coordination. she manages to get her hands into anything, so i’m actually not in a rush to have her completely mobile… we’ll pretty much have to tie the furniture down at that point.

anyhow, happy new year to all. my resolutions are to find a bit of time for myself each week, ea healthier and not sweat the small stuff. what are yours?