5 Months Old: Update & Pics

The boys turned 5 months old on September 12th! I'm slightly behind in posting this update. :) They are doing fantastic! Not sure what all I've posted update wise on them and I'm too lazy at the moment to go back and read my earlier posts. So if I've already told you some of this stuff, well..... enjoy it a second time!

The boys have been spending a lot of time in their walkers and jumpers, which they love! It's so incredible watching them grow and progress! It's funny watching them jump. We'll sit and laugh at them and watch in amazement. Jeriah gets excited and jumps really hard and high. He kicks the ground when he comes back down and really gets that thing bouncing! Jace will jump forever at a nice steady pace, just bouncing away. They both will stay in the jumper for sooo long! Sometimes in the evening when we're getting their bath water ready, preparing their rice bottle or getting their food ready (they eat now), they'll be getting fussy but will keep jumping away even while fussing/crying. It's so funny!

They both are doing great at eating! Jeriah got the hang of it quicker and seems to enjoy eating more. Jace seems just as content to nurse. He'll definitely be the harder one to wean off nursing. He loves his momma and really enjoys his cuddle time and nursing. Jeriah seems to want to cuddle less and less. He's a mover! He never holds still. He's always wiggling, trying to climb up my chest, sit up, roll over, jump, grab his feet, etc. He's gonna be our handful!

We've started sleep training recently. It started off pretty rough! More so on Monica as she's the one that mainly gets up with them at night. It's really paying off though! They fall asleep on their on faster every night and more awake each night. They are sleeping 7 hours again before eating and usually fall back asleep after they eat. It's been wonderful! Jace had been harder as he's the cuddly one that loves being with his momma. We think it has been more a separation issue than anything with him. He still wakes up once or twice but falls back asleep quickly on his own. They're both in so much better moods too! They've always been really good babies, but they have been even happier since they've been sleeping more.

Overall they're doing fantastic!! They're pretty much out of their 3 month clothes now :( We're gonna have to take inventory of what 6 and 9 month stuff we have and start preparing for winter!

Enough chit chat, here's way too many pics for you to enjoy!

Jeriah - "Whatcha wanna do today?"
Jace - "How bout a nap?"

LOVE these puppy dog eyes!

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My One Year Challenge

I recently posted about my commitment to fitness. My goal is to do 2 days of running and 2 days of lifting a week for a one year period. I've been slacking in the exercise department and that has always had negative consequences. It's been quite some time since my last hospital admission and I want to keep it that way!

I've been compliant with my treatments now for over 2 years. I rarely miss a set of treatments. Currently I do my vest twice a day for 30 min (as soon as I figure out how to program it, I'll be changeing it to 45 min), hypertonic saline twice a day, albuterol twice a day, pulmozyme once a day, and rotate months of Tobi twice a day (nebulized) and Cayston 3 times a day. 

In addition to exercise I've been practicing taking better quality treatments. Ronnie from rsbr.com had a post some time back that stuck with me. It's something as an RT I knew, and practiced but had gotten slack on and enjoyed the reminder. He talked about taking quality treatments. 

It's easy to strap on the vest, put the neb in my mouth and zone out in the computer doing whatever waiting for my treatments to finish. However, when I do that, I notice that my breathing is more shallow and I tend to lean over or slouch. 

Shallow breathing is somethin I noticed a long time ago. I could make some educated guesses as to why, but when the vest goes on, if I don't consciously make an effort to take deep breaths I will breath shallow. If I'm shallow breathing, the medicine isn't getting down deep in my lungs where it needs to be. Also, the secretions in the bases of the lungs aren't going to be shaken loose so I can cough them out. That's the stuff that needs to be coughed up too!

So how does one take a quality treatment? Sitting up straight, taking breaks to cough, making sure not to breath shallow and take occasional deep breaths with a slight breath hold. I also like to take 10 minutes or so after my treatments to stand and cough until I feel like I've gotten every little bit of mucus out of my lungs that I can. It takes some concentration and determination but it's 100% doable! If I can do all these things without gagging a bunch and throwing up its a successful treatment set! :)

So what do I hope to accomplish over the next year? 

1. To see a rise in my PFT's ( more specifically my FEV1) hopefully back into the 70's.

2. To see an increase in my weight, hopefully into the 160's. 

3. To run a half marathon

4. To complete the Tough Mudder with a good time

5. To be the best version of myself I can be for my wife and boys! (A phrase coined by the man himself, Ronnie Sharpe)

Committed to Fitness

I'm making a new commitment to fitness! I want to exercise for an entire year on a weekly basis.

I've been good at sticking to a rock solid routine for 1, 2 or even 3 months. 3 months was the longest when I did the full P90X routine. It always ends the same. I take a week or two break, or something comes up and I miss a few workouts. That week or two, or couple workouts turns into months with little to no exercise. That absolutely WILL NOT do!

I've been through this many times before and motivated myself to start working out and have stuck to it for awhile, but ultimately fizzle out and quit again. This time I want it to be different. This time instead of trying to kill it for 2-3 months, I want to set a realistic goal and stick to it for a year. I figure if I can set a goal of a year and actually meet that goal, working out should have long become a habit by the time a year rolls around.

You may be wondering how this all came about. Well, it's been brewing for awhile. I saw some pictures of myself not too long ago of when our boys were born and it actually disgusted me. I thought, "Do I really look that scrawny and weak?" I guess my mental image of myself was better than what the reality was. Good for self esteem I guess, but seeing the reality of how scrawny I look in pictures brought that way down! This past weekend, two things really brought all this to the forefront.

We had our annual work picnic on Saturday. It was a lot of fun! Monica was working so I solo parented the trip with the boys. Everybody loved them! They were so good and smiled at everyone! They got passed around the entire time I was there. I held Jace for a little while, but most of the time I only took them out of their car seats and put them back in a few hours later to leave, lol. We played volleyball, threw a Frisbee around, ate hot dogs and burgers. It was a blast! While me and a buddy were throwing the Frisbee around, I realized just how out of shape I am. The small amount of running I did had me breathing heavy and gassed. I actually had to quit because I was breathing heavy and ran out of steam. This never happens to me! I'll get worn out and breath heavy sure, but never do I have to quit playing around because of it. No bueno! That was number one.

Number two happened Sunday. The release of the long anticipated Living Extreme: Beyond Cystic Fibrosis documentary! It's an awesome video!! I strongly encourage everyone to follow the link and watch it, especially if you are a fellow CFer! When I first heard of the video I honestly thought "Oh I should submit myself and see if I could be on it. I'd probably make the cut." After watching the trailer I knew right away.... I'm lame. Haha!! I'm not extreme! The folks in the video (in my opinion) are the epitome of extreme! There's a brother/sister duo that are crazy good snowboarders. I'm talking travel the world competing snowboarders! A doctor in her 50's who works out like crazy, and a lady who golfs 18 holes on a regular basis, carrying her clubs and walking the coarse, as well as swimming laps several times a week! These folks are extreme!!! The most extreme of all was a guy named Brooks. His PFT's got down in the 40's. He started running and now runs ultra-marathons. That's 100 miles!!! I have yet to do more than a 5K and he's running 100 miles. This was number two.

So what's my goal??? Here it is...

To run 2 days a week and lift 2 days a week.

If I do more, I do more. I wanted to make it 5 days a week. Thought about 3 days a week. Maybe 4 is a little ambitious, but it shouldn't be. Wednesdays are tough for us. Sundays are tough. My schedule on Wednesdays goes as such, leaving me with literally one hour or less of down time.

5:00am - wake up, get dressed, grab meds out of fridge
5:05am - start treatments
5:40am - end treatments, grab bite to eat to go
5:45am - leave for work
work 8 hours
4:00pm - get home from work, play with boys, spend time with wife
4:15pm - start treatments
5:15pm - end treatments, maybe eat dinner
6:00pm - leave for church (I teach youth on Wednesday nights at our church)
9:00pm - arrive home, start putting boys to sleep
9:45pm - usually by now boys are both down for the night, grab a snack, shower, get ready for bed
10:30pm - hopefully I am snoozing by now so I can get 6.5 hours of sleep before getting back up at 5am again.

This leaves me with Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to workout.

I figured 4 days should be good to start because something will always come up. A birthday party for one of the families, a church outing, something will inevitably eat up an entire evening on one of the weeknights I'm supposed to workout. So with leaving 1 of the 5 days I have available open, I should be able to compensate for such events.

Ideally I want to run a third time. For right now I'll stick to two.

I thought about holding off on posting this until I got closer and had more time to think about this. A post I read by a fellow cyster (female CFer) encouraged me to do it now! Here's her post, click here. I need to be held accountable and now I will be :)

I have to make exercise a priority and get into a routine. It has to become a normal part of life. After all, my life depends on it. The stories of those in the video are living proof that exercise is key to survival with CF.

My start date is October 1st.

I hope to look back on this post on October 1st, 2014 with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and not be overwhelmed with shame.

As one of my favorite reality TV stars Christopher "Big Black" Boykins would say "DO WORK!"

Twin Update & Pics

It's been awhile since we've posted some pics of the boys and given an update on all their current developmental progress. So, I thought I'd update you all!

The boys are 2 days shy of being 5 months old! It's hard to believe it's been that long. I was holding my niece today who is about 1 month old. She is so tiny! She was born a little shy of 8 lbs. It's hard to believe our boys were 2 lbs less than that. At one point, little Jeriah was 4 lbs 12 oz after he lost some weight in the hospital. It's hard to remember them being that small. They are growing and developing so fast!

They learn something new almost everyday. We have two stand up jumper/bouncer things that they play in all the time. They love it! They like to be big boys and stand up. They are so smart!!! They see a toy and grab it. They know how to make the spinning toys spin, and move all the other toys. On one of them there is a see-saw toy with a turtle on one side and a duck on the other side. Jace loves to play with it and teeter it back and forth. It makes a sound when you move it too. If we're in the other room, or walking through the house, we can hear it going "crick, crick" every time he moves it! As I'm typing this, he's next to me playing with the see-saw! :)

He has also recently discovered how to be loud. He likes to hear his voice. He will take a deep breath in and let 'er rip! He opens his mouth real wide, and wiggles his tongue around inside his mouth while he's "yelling."

They're hair is getting so long, especially Jeriah's! It hangs down onto his forehead now. It's adorable! While Monica was video taping the boys the other night, Jeriah said "momma" for the first time! Of course he was just making noise, but he had his lips curled over his gums and was saying "mumma, mumma" over and over. It was priceless! Today when Monica got home from work, he said it again when he saw her. Almost seemed like he knew what he was doing, lol!

They both roll over all the time and have found ways to "scoot" around. We started giving them bananas a couple days ago. Jeriah loves em! Funny too because I call him my little monkey boy. He's like a little monkey. Pulling his feet to his mouth, grabbing at everything. He hardly ever holds still. Jace didn't seem to care for eating too much.

I'll stop rambling on about them and put up some current pictures! Plus Jace is ready for a nap. Can't type and hold a baby :)



 

A friend's wedding. Notice their Converse!

Their shirts match the color of their eyes :)

In his walker at grandma and grandpa's house

drooly face

somebody just woke up

I didn't do it

not quite tall enough yet

I don't know how he did this...

Cruisin

Monkey face



Passed out at the breakfast table with his great uncle