Life Changes

Happy Hump Day Friends :)
Today I thought I'd tell you all a little about all the changes that the Fordham Fam has made since finding out we were expecting.............TWINS!
First and foremost, we've done A LOT of laughing because during stressful times (ie. like re-working our budget a million times to make sure that we are going to be financially okay once these two little love bugs arrive...after all that stress, you pretty much feel like you just want to curl up and cry with all the uncertainties and unanswered questions! *sigh*) Daddy says..."no cryin' mama...just laughing!" That hubby of mine, let me tell you, he is my rock...my soul-mate...my very best friend! I'm the "stressor, the do-er, the planner" of the family and he's a lot more laid back and just knows in his heart that everything will just work out like it's supposed to...like he always says, God would not have blessed us with two babies at once if we were not going to be able to handle it...Amen honey!
We literally laugh about everything now...we just have to...it keeps us sane! We have made sure to spend every extra second we have spending quality time with our first love, Rylee Jane because we know how big of a change this will be for her too! She is always rubbing my belly and kissing her baby "siksters" and although I anticipate some jealous bugs from her, I think she's going to be the best big sister in the world...she is just so gentle and kind and LOVES to share! Hopefully she will stay like that when her baby sisters are actually home with us...time will tell!
One of the biggest changes that we've had to make is....................we had to get a..............are you ready for it................................a MINI-VAN (cue the laughter...it's okay...I still can barely even say the words MINI-VAN out loud without a smirk on my face! haha!) I was always that girl that said...no matter what, under no circumstances...will I ever drive a mini-van!!!!! And that of course was before I ever thought, in a million years, that we would be having two babies at the same time! Before the new wheels, I had a Hyundai Sonata that I absolutely ADORED! It was such a nice car...we purchased it shortly before Rylee arrived as we knew we needed something bigger than my little Saturn car and something much more reliable...that beauty had such a nice ride...so smooth and comfy! But we knew immediately that the Sonata was not going to fit THREE car seats so we began the search for a new "family vehicle." We got a pretty big reality check almost immediately that there was no way we were going to be able to afford a nice, SUV that would comfortably fit all of us and furthermore, the gas prices for an SUV would be outrageous...so sadly, my hopes for a cool mom vehicle dwindled and we narrowed our search to mini-vans! Chris was tickled pink about this...thought having a van would be so cool because they are just so roomy and comfortable and his humor quickly pulled me out of my "feel sorry for myself funk!" We lucked out and found a very nice, 2010 Chrysler Town and Country (the Touring edition!) This baby is fully loaded with leather seats that are heated none-the-less, two drop-down DVD players for the munchkins and a touch screen navigation system, back up camera, memory for thousands of songs, etc...you name it, this baby had it, lol :) It's still not what I ever imagined myself driving as a 28 year old but it's not about me anymore...that changed the second Rylee Jane came into this world! It really is nice...and we are very fortunate to have found it for such a good deal. It's a beautiful dark-gray color and the interior is all light gray...really pretty! Picture this...me and the hubs drop the buggy off at daycare, run through a coffee drive-thru and jam out to old-school Snoop Dog while crusin' around in the MINI-VAN...yep...we went there :) And we laughed the entire time!
Other changes we've had to make are down-grading our cellphone plans to save money as well as turning our cable off...poor Chris...right around football/hockey season but for $80.00 a month just for basic cable (damn you CHARTER! Rochester only has one cable company and they are not willing to wheel and deal at all...boo to the hoo!) we just couldn't keep it around! We are trying to cut back in every area that we feel is not a necessity...at least until these little bundles arrive so we know where we're at financially and then if we're doing okay, we will slowly start bringing some of the luxury items back into our lives...but for now, it's games and music and having tea parties with our lady bug...and I'm LOVING every second of it! It's a very humbling feeling to know that you can live with less and it just feels good to be in control of our finances...it makes me feel more in control of everything and right now, I need that! One more thing that I wanted to share with you guys is this HILARIOUS video that my aunt sent me...said it reminds her of what our lives will be like with three kids...and because Chris and I have gotten so good at having a great sense of humor...I could totally see us bustin' out in a rap someday...haha!!!
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

http://www.dump.com/parentsrap/

xoxo,

Amanda

The BIG Gender Reveal!!!!!!

Hi friends :)
So...this is a very special post as I will reveal what these two little buggy's are...are they boys?! are they girls?! or one of each?! I can tell you that from the moment we knew we were having twins, I knew I wanted to try to do something really special to tell our friends and family what the gender of the little babes were! I saw on pinterest many different ideas...mostly the infamous "cut into the middle of the cake to see what color frosting" idea appeared but there were a couple ideas that showed the couple opening a box with the color of gender (blue or pink) helium-filled balloons coming out of the box and floating into the sky; I instantly thought this was so adorable but wanted to put our own little spin on it so I thought to myself..."self, why not have buggy open the box at her birthday party?!!!" How PERFECT!!! Instead of the box saying.....boy? or girl? ours would say........brothers?! sisters?! a brother and a sister?! Now...the catch was having to wait and keep this GIANT, HUMONGOUS secret for ONE MONTH...that's right friends...ONE WHOLE MONTH! And if you know me well at all, I'm so bad at keeping huge, exciting news in!!! It was pure hell knowing for an entire month when the most important people in our lives weren't in on the big news...I also don't have a poker face to save my life...I literally cannot lie...I like break out into hives and get all red in the face so when our family continued to ask us when our ultrasound was, we just told them it was...August 22nd...which was not a total lie because we really did have another ultrasound today (we have to have them on a monthly basis now until these little lovies arrive just to make sure they are growing and developing on track...even the healthiest of twin pregnancies are still considered high risk so they do what they can to very carefully monitor the mama's and the babies! There were many questions about having to wait "extra long" and we just said that it probably had something to do with it being multiples, lol! So anyways, as we tried to avoid the questions as much as possible, we waited and waited and then buggy's birthday party FINALLY arrived...it was SOOOO EXCITING to see the precious surprised look on everyone's faces as we opened a present that looked like this:

We just took an old box that we had from buggy's kitchen set and wrapped it in plain brown paper and me and my wanna-be artistic skills decorated it up! The orginal plan obviously was to have Rylee open the gift to unveil the gender of her baby siblings but we saved this gift until the very end...she had opened many gifts already and she was pretty much over it so Chris and I had to open it for her!!! Click on the link below of a video that my bestie and her hubby took for us...they were in on the big surprise but still had no idea what the box contained!!! (Thanks Bridg for being my personal photographer and videographer on Rylee's special day! xoxo!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQFZdB8vqjY

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DRUMROLL........................................................

Yep...that's right friends........TWO more baby GIRLS!!!! We are SO excited...and we feel so blessed and so happy. Rylee Jane has said from the very beginning that her "baby siksters" were in mommy's tummy...it's like she had this wierd intuition and knew all along! I thought FOR SURE that we were having two boys...or maybe one of each...but never ever did I think that we were having TWO more girls! And...NONE of our family thought girls either so that really added to the shock factor :) We always said that we wanted to have four little bambinos so perhaps that fourth will be a little boy for Chris...besides, as excited and blessed as I feel to have two more precious little girls, I would also like to know what it's like to have a little boy too...but at the end of the day, it's all up to God and I know that and believe that with all my heart...our family will be whatever it will be...and we will be happy and feel so fullfilled and blessed NO MATTER WHAT :) We had another ultrasound today that again confirmed that they are both 100% baby girls...they were just adorable today...holding hands and moving around together...it's still just so surreal that there are two babies in my tummy...it's just incredible! I'll have to post some belly pics on here before my belly gets too big, lol ;) My belly measured at 31 weeks today when I'm only really 24 weeks...Good Lord, I feel so huge already! When I compare pics from when I was pregnant with buggy, I'm really not that much bigger than I was with her but the measurements are much farther ahead...they keep telling me "this is perfectly normal" but I'm not going to lie when I say that I get a little anxiety wondering how my body is going to house these two little beauties for another few months!? I just trust that God will see us and the more importantly, these two little babies through this journey!

Well...hope you enjoyed the big surprise as much as our family and I!

xoxo,

Amanda



Happy Birthday To My Sweet Rylee Jane

A birthday letter to my sweet baby girl....
Dear Rylee Jane,
I can hardly believe that two years ago today (12:32am to be exact!) your daddy and I were laying eyes on you for the very first time...it's safe to say that this was without a doubt, love at first sight. You are the most amazing, most beautiful little girl...I love you more than you will ever know. You are my sunshine on a rainy day...you inspire me and make me want to try harder than I've ever tried at anything before. I am so in love with being your mommy...I love everything about being your mommy. You make me laugh and you fill my heart with so much joy that most days, I feel like I could literally burst! There are no words to truly describe how special you are to me...my first born, my lady bug, my everything. I hope that you always know how much your daddy and I love you unconditionally and I hope you always follow your dreams and follow your heart...you have the most gentle soul and you are already so caring and genuinely concerned for others when they are hurting...this is such a special quality and I'm so proud of the little lady you are becoming.
A quote from one of your favorite books (and mine too!) is "heaven blew every trumpet and every horn on the wonderful, marvelous night that you were born!" And I believe that heaven continues to blow every trumpet and every horn in your honor because you are truly an angel from God...I love you more than life itself my sweet, beautiful baby girl. Happy birthday my love!
Xoxo,
mama

M.I.A.

It's hard to believe that it's been FOUR months since my last post...where does the time go?! I have SO much to update you on...so much has changed in our lives since my last post!!! We have been so busy with so many house updates that I can't wait to share with you...and I have lots of buggy fun to share with you too...speaking of my lady bug......she is going to be TWO tomorrow (GASP)!!! I can hardly believe it...like seriously every time I think about her being two, it brings tears to my eyes. The biggest news of all though...bigger than house updates and birthdays is............Chris and I found out right around Easter time that we were going to have another little buggy!!!! We knew that come March, we were going to start 'trying' and by that I mean...just go with it and have fun and when God blessed us with another baby, we knew that the timing would be meant to be...much to our surprise, we got pregnant right away and I got that big fat POSITIVE right before Easter! We were so shocked and SOOO excited! With your second pregnancy, at our clinic anyways, they don't want you to come in until around 10 weeks...it was the longest 10 weeks of my life because I was so sick this time around...I kept thinking to myself...it's gotta be a boy because I was just so sick. Every time I would try to get out of bed, I'd have to crawl right back and get into the fetal position and sleep it off. Thank GOD I have a very flexible job which allows me to work from home at times because I literally don't know how I would have gotten myself up and ready and into the office...I made sure to schedule all appointments with clients late in the afternoon and even then, I still felt terrible! Ughhh...not missing those days FOR SURE :) In mid-May, we finally got to go in for our first OB appointment (it was on a Wednesday.) It was very procedural, like the first OB appointments tend to be and then we were able to hear our little buggy's heartbeat...strong and fast!!! We were floating on cloud 9!!! We knew that we conceived the bug in March but I wasn't 100% as to when so they had us come back two days later for an early ultrasound to determine due date....that was when our lives forever changed...............................
We were called into the office...it was an elderly man ultrasound tech who at first glance seemed to be a little "up-tight" and wanted to get right down to business! He put the wand on my tummy and and pushed a couple of buttons and all of the sudden he says............."uh oh, what do we got goin' on here??" I looked at my hubby and my heart just sank...he squeezed my hand feeling my angst as I thought for sure that something was wrong...he then went on to say..."well, can you guys see the screen okay...what do we got going on here...can you count?!!!!????" Yes friends, he asked us if we could count which could only mean one thing..........................TWO fluttering heart beats in our little jelly bean-blobs that we could see on the screen!!! It was indescribable...so much emotion, so many racing-thoughts...just so much all at once! God is so amazing and even though I did...and still do have many fears about all the "what if's," (especially finances...daycare will be...are you sitting down??? $1800/month for all three babes...that is just insane to me but what do you do?!) I do know in my heart that God blessed us with two little miracles because he knows that we can handle it! Chris and I have always said from the beginning that we wanted four kiddos...I guess we're well on our way, lol! We laughed for a good five minutes and then our ultrasound tech, who turned out to be very warm and kind, went on with the ultrasound; he did end up moving our due date back a week so it went from December 6th to December 14th but either way, with twins, we keep hearing....prepare for November sometime!!! It's been months since we first found out and it's still just so shocking! I'm so happy and I feel so blessed. Our little ladybug always says that it's "her baby siksters" in mommy's tummy....we will see if she's right...I will share the big gender reveal with you this week!!!!
So...I know they say excuses are like "butt-holes" (pardon the visual! hehe!) because "everyone has one and they usually stink"...but I would say that my excuse for taking a break from my little blog is a pretty darn good one! I have really missed it this summer though...I recently made a promise to myself that I would do something for myself...aside from the daily grind of being a mommy and a wife. I need and crave this creative outlet and the hubs has so many things he still does...like plays hockey and softball, etc...and once I became a mommy, I just kind of stopped having much of a life. Don't get me wrong...my pride and joy is being at home with Rylee and Chris but I also need some "me time" too!!! So anyways, no more breaks (well...maybe a couple brief ones when the twins arrive!!) but I'm back and ready as I'll ever be to show you guys all of our hard work on our beautiful little home...It was hard...and tedious at times...and we still have a big laundry list of "to-do's" but so far, everything looks great and I'm so happy with the results! I also am back and more ready than ever to share the rest of my journey with you guys of this twin pregnancy and becoming a mommy of THREE...wow, still can't believe it! So much to be thankful for...................
I missed you and I'm so happy to be back!
Xoxo,
Amanda