Update

Well, the babies are doing better. They had some rapid breathing last night, but apparently that has calmed down. I feel sick (running a fever) but am trying to minimize contact with my wife and babies and using lots of hand sanitizer. Rebekah nursed the babies today which was cool for her. She didn't get to nurse the girls until a long time after they were born. Rebekah is still in a lot of pain, but that's what darvocet is for right? Anway, this is a pretty small hospital in some ways. It's for profit which is interesting. The hospital itself is very nice, but the rooms are fairly primitive. The OR had a manual adjust bed (verses electric). I had to move so they could raise the bed up some more half-way through the operation. Then, they wouldn't let me stay w/ Rebekah after the babies were out. I had to leave. That irritated me. Then, to make me even more grumpy, they said I couldn't see her for an hour after the surgery. That's when I made clear to somebody (hey, they asked) that I was displeased and they might want to move away. Since they didn't, I voiced my complaints and she got an exemption so I could at least be with Rebekah in the recovery room. But the people have been pretty professional, and that's the most important thing (professional implies competent and courteous).

Anyway, I've got a slow connection on my cell phone that I'm sharing via wi-fi to my laptop so we have some communication w/ the world.

babies names are Trinity Pearl and Clell Peter.

not much news is good news.

Ugh.

Nothing is quite as enjoyable as breaking into your house after your wife has twins.

My sister-in-law took my key to lock up since I was going to stay @ the hospital. At my wife's urging I came back home to sleep so that I would be rested. I think this was selfish on her part because I'm an uber ogre with stress like this (just joking... about her being selfish). Yeah, so I came home and didn't realize until I pulled in the driveway my predicament. I ended up breaking in through my basement. This would normally concern me with regard to burglars, but I have guard spiders.

Oh, you want to know about the babies?

Trinity was 5 pounds 4 ounces
Clell was 6 pounds 7 ounces? something like that. don't even ask me about other dimensions. mama and babies are doing fine (so far). They're still early so if they decide that breathing is on their own is too much work (I know it is for me) then they may have to be transferred.

ok, i'm out. night night.

Favorite quotes of the day

"We need our users to not be dumb." --by RL

"I have four kids w/ two in the chamber." --by me

"I don't care whether I'm a good influence or a bad influence, as long as I'm an influence." --by me

Life sucks sometimes

Our mail lady who has been here twenty years just got laid off. Once again, I'm bummed.


Rebekah has been having really strong contractions today. She see the doc, so hopefully we can get a C-section date.

How do you know?

I had a friend ask me a while back "How do I know that the Bible is true?" He wasn't talking about the miracles or anything that specific, but rather what makes it true and other holy books wrong. I'm probably getting this nutshellisation (look Mom, I made up a word!) wrong, but since that's how I remember it, I'll go with it rather than put this off longer. Well, since picking apart every other religion out there would take waaay too much time (and I'm lazy) let me tell you why the Bible is true.

1. Because I said so. 'nuff said.


Ok, not really. I actually had pondered this myself some before Juan asked me so let me start over...

1. All archeological evidence regarding anything in the Bible is to the affirmative or at the worst, indeterminate. There have been arkies (i'm tired of typing that other word. too long) that have disputed everything from the flood to cities locations to peoples existance. Yeah, they've been proven wrong.

2. Historical evidence. The Bible, if nothing else, is a great book for history because it has been shown to be incredibly accurate. In fact, it predicted the last layoffs at work and mentioned some tall godlike fellow being let go. Naturally, I thought that I was doomed. Apparently, I'm not the one they were thinking of as they let my boss go instead. Ok, not really, but if you are interested I can get you some examples. They're freakin' amazing how they line up with history. Actually, the layoffs joke was about prophecy and that comes later. I'd change it but i'm too lazy.

3. Prophetical evidence. Ok, insert prophecy joke here. Ok, now that you're done laughing or confused (since I really am quite godlike in some ways), I must continue. Some theologist/historians think that Daniel was a historian and lying about the book because he predicts the rise and fall of four(?) empires. Maybe so... but there's no evidence to that end. How about Christ's sacrifice for our sins? Oh, it's mentioned about a trillion times in the old testment in Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel and other spots. In fact, the only major bit of prophecy that was entirely left out was the Church age. But God had his reasons for that which I won't bore you with.

4. Simple sanity/continuity. The Bible says that it was written by "... holy men of God spake as they were moved by the  Holy Ghost." II Peter 1:21 (methinks). Ok, there are 60 books of the Bible. Written over the span over at least 1600 years by 40 different Authors. Do you think they all put their heads together to write some farce? If so, that was a freakin' miracle all its own.


Ok, that's some reasons. I hope it's enough to get you thinkin' Juan old boy. I got more, but I need to send my kids to bed.

Sometimes it's really nice...

to have your boss(es) recognize that their actions have reactions and then see them act to remediate said actions. Could I possibly be more vague? :)

35 weeks

So, most of Rebekah's buddies know this and most of mine don't care that much but Rebekah hit a milestone this week. So, I guess if she goes into labor she can go to the normal hospital instead of going to the further away and pricier one in Boise. Current stats are: baby clell is 5'7 oz. and baby trinity is 5' even.

Easter Madness

The Grant Ballard family had a wild and wooly easter. We had an all day event at a friends house. We'd never been over there as a family but it went well. Forrest and Titus played with a couple other boys that were there and rode bikes, played in the dirt, and blew bubbles. Lots of bubble blowing. Probably violated some EPA ordinance or something, but we'll keep that just between us. The girls roamed around and participated in their first ever easter egg hunt. They picked it up quickly and had the hardest time getting the egg in the bag (darn walmart plastic bags). To be honest, it was actually quite amazing how "peacful" it was. I use quotes because it's kind of like peace in the middle east or any combat zone. It's just a slower pace of war and violence. There was little fighting between kids and for the most part, I didn't have to discipline very often because the kids were good at playing together and had lots of different things to do. There were a lot of adults to generally keep the kids in line so I wasn't constantly going around playing policemen. The girls did really well, and didn't even get a nap today. Yeah, they had had it by the time we got home (around 7) but were really good pretty much the entire time. And they got to hang out with another pair of twins that were 3 years old. Rebekah did pretty well. No contractions since this morning. She just showed me a bump on the bottom of her belly. I guess from the Ultrasound she found out it was Trinity's bottom :)

34.5 weeks!

just a wee bit scared

Well, I took Rebekah to the doc today. We tried to get the babies monitored, but they couldn't find Trinity. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't seem to find her. They even got an ultrasound machine (an old one) and tried. Finally, they got her Dr. and he could find the baby with the ultrasound, but they still couldn't get her monitored with the little fetal monitors. So we finally went over to where they had a good ultrasound and the expert did all sorts of measurements. That lady didn't seem to have any trouble with her better equipment, but we were pretty scared for a bit. The ultrasound turned out ok, but the girl is smaller than the boy and they don't like to see that. So, now  Rebekah has to be monitored twice a week to make sure that Trinity isn't in distress. The good news is that both babies are over 4lbs with baby Clell almost at 5lbs. So, the stress has increased a lot, but the babies both seem to be ok and that's good news. The ends is in sight, but unfortunately it looks like it's gonna be a bumpy landing.

Finally! Some pictures

Libby on the Left

Renny loved this cart

Liberty wouldn't leave my side for very long

Forrest is patting Serenity in this picture

Liberty picking herself up from a fall. No tears :)

Renny running around

Titus on the trike

Babies Update

Yeah, that doesn't really roll off the tongue. I'll leave it to my sis-in-law Amy (English major) to tell me what it should be...

Rebekah went to the doc yesterday and things still look good. Heartbeats were a little lower but the doc didn't seem concerned. the next four weeks are crucial. If Rebekah can make it to 35 weeks before going into labor we can have a (semi) normal experience. Otherwise, if she has problems they'll pump her full of drugs and steroids to stop the labor and then kick her over to St. Lukes like last time. Ugh!

Please pray for grace and health for both Rebekah and the babies. Rebekah just has to deal with the pain and she's been a real trooper. I felt the boy last night and wow, it was freaky. not just a little kick. He was doing somersaults and ninja moves and stuff. I thought he was gonna go all Sigourney Weaver Alien on me. I had to stop myself from jumping up and grabbing my flamethrower. (No, I don't really have a flamethrower but I do have matches and some hairspray. that'll do the trick)

Baby Clell only has two arteries in his umbilical cord which is not atypical, but that does mean he is a higher risk baby. Titus was the same way and came out normal. Well, he's got more cuteness and mischievousness (is that a word?) than is normal, but that's ok.

anyway, we'll keep plugging away. We're trying to round up child care and stuff. That's kind of coming together but volunteers are welcome.

up late

I'm staying up late because one of our c02 detectors went off. A little freaky, because we couldn't figure out anything wrong. We have a wood stove, so that was probably producing it, but we couldn't get it to stop. I finally took it outside and tested it and it still went off! Well, that seemed suspicious. Unfortunately, the other detector started going off too. I swear, it was sympathetic alarming or something. After yanking the batteries and putting them back in, it quit going off and then I never could get it alarm again. So, hopefully we're ok and not going to die in our sleep or anything. That would be a real bummer.

Correction

Rebekah just corrected me. She's @ 29 weeks. I can't keep track. it keeps going up for some reason. Like the inverse of the stock market.

Daddy's girl

by Grant

Liberty is a chip off the old block. She is sooo lazy. Watching her try to get out of the carseat is both frustrating and hilarious. And just now I put some crackers on the table right by her face. Instead of reaching up and grabbing them as I thought, she tried to suck them off the table with her mouth. I of course, indulged her a little by giving the cracker a nudge into the chasm of death (cracker death that is).

BTW, anybody on facebook can follow my blog easily because I have it importing into my facebook notes section. That is so cool. So non-techies that don't understand rss feeds can still stay on top of my inanities with a minimum of inconvenience.

I had somebody ask today what the gender is of the new twins (previously called beta twins in blog posts of yore). One male and one female homosapien is what they tell me. So, 3 boys and 3 girls. 1 dad. 1 mom. 1 female cat. I guess our next dog needs to be of the male persuasion...

Clarification

Rebekah is @ 28 weeks. the previous blog post about weight of the babies was determined by the ultrasound.

I was unable to attend the appt. w/ my wife as I had to be at work to disable a coworkers account and change passwords. I feel like the last man standing in IT. It's not far from the truth. We have a fair number left, but i'm the primary system engineer for about 200 servers and dozens of ancillary systems. I have to babysit the backups this weekend for all that stuff I just mentioned. Argh. But at least I have a job, right? :)

Self immolation

by Grant

What causes people to self-destruct? It's sad to watch. It's heartbreaking if you know the person well. Giving in to all your wants and desires is the surest path to misery and destruction.

Good news

the babies are 2 pounds and 14 ounces and doing fine :D

Uh oh

by Grant

Within the past two weeks we've had a bit of shake up in upper mgmt. The CEO stepped down and his brother's taking over. The CFO is doing something else and another guy was promoted into that spot. The temporary HR manager (who was running an efficiency program earlier) has been permanently put in the post. Now we have some sort of building wide meeting. All meetings these days are bad. But the IT director left for the day so I guess that's good.

In other less anxious news, I went to a car auction on Friday w/ a friend. I don't know if those vehicles went for too much or not, but paying thousands of $$ for a worn out vehicle isn't my idea of a smart move. Most were bank repos and old with high miles. A lot of them had some sort of damage. It was as if all the good vehicles got picked over by dealers and then the rejects got auctioned off to suckers. There were some pretty good deals, but I tried to buy a 22 year old van in pretty nice shape and some psycho lady was prepared to bid to the moon (or so it appeared). I had passed up minivans because thought I could get this cheap, but she wanted it bad. So, I let her have it. What was funny is that I went to lunch and when I came back the auction was almost over and there were still people waiting in line to sign up. Crazy. I'll bet they felt rather chagrined to find out they'd missed everything.

BTW, Beka is still hanging in there but she is not getting hardly any sleep. Typically she's not falling asleep until 4am. Crazy. I would have lost it and been in a padded room if that was me. God sure gives grace.

Beka update

by Grant

  Well, Rebekah is having a harder time. She pulled a muscle the other day (we think) and is in a lot of pain. Basically she's bed-ridden. Well, she's couch-ridden. I had to come home today and work but by doing that she was able to get some rest. Working in the afternoon works pretty well because the 3 youngest are asleep.

anyway, she feels a bit better now so we're gonna go out to eat for my birthday. All that I've had to eat today was some peanuts so if we don't get out of here soon, I'm gonna gnaw my arm off. After all, they're doing wonders in prosthetics these days...

Office Space...

...Should be required viewing for executives. This movie speaks to me so much more each time I watch it. I just regret the language in it. Mostly in some gansta rap playing when some guys take out their anger on a flaky printer in an empty field.

Pretty decent saturday. I got up early and activated the electronic babysitter for the boys while Rebekah slept. Her sweet slumber was interrupted a couple hours later by the boys pushing a little basket around screaming. I got some pictures as the boys slid around and crashed. They were having fun. I was enjoying the fact that they weren't fighting or bugging me.

I spent two or three hours this afternoon trying to resurrect my gerber multitool from a cremation attempt by my wife last year. She claims it was an accident, but we didn't burn something of hers now did we?
Anyway, we burned some boxes and the Gerber was in the boxes. Luckily I fished it out, but it had melted plastic into the mechanism and was non functional. So I got a propane torch and my dremel tool and went to work. It took me a couple hours, but the final result is functional if not fashionable.

Oh, and back to life at the WG (my work). Somebody actually quit this week. Fed up with it. Not my department, but I'd known the person for a few years. Good news (I guess) is that if there are any more layofss, one of the guys in my department is volunteering. Young guy with lots of options and he's probably being a bit facetious, but I know that he'd be fine with it. He says that he thinks his stress level will be less if he just stays home and plays "Call of Duty 4" all day. I tend to agree.

Church tomorrow!