6 Years Since a Little Wonder was Born

Not much to say, really. Ollie would have been six today.

We still miss him, and we always will. Each year get's a little "easier", but that's all very relative. I will be forever thankful for the capacity of the mind to highlight the best memories of our time with Ollie and keep the worst buried a little deeper. Today is one of those days that the two fight it out, but that's OK. Life is made up of good and bad moments. That balance is what makes us human and helps us understand and empathize with others. Ollie taught us a lot of lessons like that.

We are thankful for his crazy little brother and sister that keep us so occupied and focused on the future. It will never stop the "what might have been's", but those two give us a whole different set of possibilities.

Love ya little guy!

Happy 4th Birthday to our Favorite Set of Twins

It's hard to believe, but yep, it's been 4 years since we ended an unbelievably stressful period of hospital stays for Bekka only to begin an even more unbelievably stressful chapter of hospital stays and surgeries for two tiny kiddos. Thanks to incredibly talented doctors and nurses, they both made it home.

When I say tiny, I mean tiny. 1lb 7oz for Penelope and 1lb 11oz for Isaak (or 650g and 780g for our hospital and foreign friends ;) That's what being born at 25 weeks and 3 days gets you. If you want to relive that, just follow this link: A one line blog post! and then click on newer below each post.

When Penny came home (nearly a month before due date), she only weighed a little over 5 lbs and when Isaak came home a month later (just after his due date), he weighed just over 6 lbs. Now they are both around 75th percentile. Amazing.

Thanks for all the support, love, wishes and prayers over the years. The kids are ecstatic as Grandma and Grandpa are here visiting from Oklahoma and Nana and Pawpaw will here this weekend. I predict a lot of spoilage.

I won't be so dramatic as to post "birthday" pictures today, but enjoy a couple from shortly after they came home (when they would have been full term):

And a goofy picture from this morning when Grandma gave them Doughnuts for breakfast (What else are Grandma's for? Amirite?)

 And a couple of silly pictures:

Happy Birthday Little Man

36 hours to be born.

363 days to live an all too short life.

1 Beautiful Little Boy.

We love you.

We miss you.

We will never forget you.

Jakob Oliver Mastin.

Ollie.

Our Son.

Pictures, Pictures and more Pictures

So here we are. 3 albums of pictures. A set of general April pictures, the huge birthday bash in Raleigh and the party in the mountains.

There are more. I haven't touched the general pics in May yet and I have TONS of video that I'd like to sort through.

In the meantime, please enjoy these snaps of your favorite internet twins. Thanks to Amanda Milloway for taking most of the pics in the Raleigh Birthday Album. She did a great job documenting their big day.

And thanks for checking in - we know that updates have gotten sporadic at best, but crazy work and busy twins keep us going non-stop. We hope to have more thoughts on just what that milestone meant to us, but that will have to wait a bit.
                                                                             

First a few cute pics during the month of April, highlighted by Bekka's father meeting the kids for the first time.

Penny and Isaak - April 2011

Next, the big (100+ in attendance) party in Raleigh for all those friends and acquaintances that have been such a huge help over the past few years with Oliver and these challenging little monkeys. Pay special attention to the gorgeous cake. (Thanks, Sarah! :)

Penny and Isaak's First Birthday Extravaganza

And finally, some of Ollie's and the twins' biggest fans at the celebration on Powder Horn Mountain. Thanks so much for loving our children. All 3 of them.

Penny and Isaak - First Birthday on the Mountain

That's it for now but you should see May and June soon and hopefully some video and new original blog content. Wouldn't that be great?

The Contraction Countdown

We didn't know it, but the afternoon of April 29, 2010 saw contractions beginning that heralded the arrival of our children. We'd seen this show before as can be noted in the first post:

http://olliestale.blogspot.com/2010/04/contractions.html

A few hours later, Bekka was still experiencing contractions and the growing concern is evident in my post. I sounded calm, but I think we both knew that this was going to be "it".

http://olliestale.blogspot.com/2010/04/contractions-update.html

Sometimes I think life throws things at our family more like Phil Niekro. A nasty, wobbly knuckleball that approaches the plate with agonizing slowness. You can't hit the thing because of it's random motion but you have to wait and wait for it to get there. Often I think the more predictable Nolan Ryan fastball would be far, far preferable. It may come at you at 100mph, but at least it's over with...

A Year Ago Today...

A bit late on the post today thanks to a pre-6am start at work and traveling all day.

Last year at this time, we actually thought things were going pretty well. This post classifies the day as boring...wish that had lasted! Tomorrow would be when the excitement began - slowly at first, but then building.

http://olliestale.blogspot.com/2010/04/25-weeks-1-day-and-some-sweet-sweet.html

Today is the day that Ollie died. Not the date of course, but the relative time to his birthday - 2 days before. I've become increasingly anxious as we have approached this 1st birthday milestone with these little tykes. Today I'm glad that I was very, very busy and did not have time to ponder. Oliver didn't get to see his first birthday and all the cool birthday favors we had for him...he didn't get to see anything else after that day.

Saturday will be wonderful and uplifting. It will also be bittersweet. I feel bad about that for these little guys.

We'll love them, and squeeze them and look for butterflies.

Ollie had a two-thirds Birthday!

It's hard to believe that it's been 8 months since our beautiful baby boy was born!

Many of our closest friends and just about the entire Wolftrap Road cul-de-sac came out on Sunday (4/5) to celebrate this milestone in Ollie's life with us. Robin made a cute little Easter Bunny cake and the little guy racked up several gifts. It was a pretty big party...

Thanks so much to everyone that came out, it was wonderful to share this day!