March for Babies

The mission of the March of Dimes is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. Unfortunately, I have been touched by all three of these.

Last year, The March of Dimes changed the name of its biggest event to March for Babies. It's a great change because it makes very clear exactly who I am walking for -- all babies. I am very excited to be part of the second March for Babies; please support my participation.

The March of Dimes champions the needs of moms and babies in our community and across the nation. The money raised for March for Babies will support life-saving research, services, education, and advocacy that help babies get a healthy start.

I will be walking in memory of my daughter, Delilah Kaye, and in honor of her twin brother, William Charles. Lila and Will were born at 31 weeks on September 27, 2007. Lila was diagnosed with an encephalocele and holoprosencephaly when I was 11 weeks pregnant. Lila lived for 1 hour and 37 minutes and only knew love during her short stay with us. Please support the March for Babies so that all babies can get a healthy start.

Welcome to my first video on blogger. I decided we needed a change of pace today, so I brought out the water table for Will and Dylan to play with this morning. It kept them occupied for nearly 45 minutes! Don't worry, the video isn't nearly that long. Enjoy.

Book Review: Twilight

I finished Twilight last night, so I guess I should review it. It has been many, many years since I have written a book report/review, and I have never written on holding a sleeping baby and typing with one hand. This is a first!

I'll admit that I wasn't too sure about reading Twilight. Vampires? Really? I have never read a book about vampires before. But I buckled down and started reading. I actually liked it! Granted, the vampires in this book are nothing like the ones that I've heard about before, but I'm not sure that the love story part of the book could have been as believable if they had been. I didn't particularly enjoy the ending as it left things hanging a bit too much for my tastes. But there are more books in the series. I guess I'm committed to reading them all now.

15 Months

Will had is 15 month well baby visit yesterday. Dr. H was pleased with his development, but was a little concerned about his size. At 15 months he weighs 17.8lbs and is 26.5 inches tall. His height is below the 3rd percentile for a 9.5 month old and is the average length for a 6 month old. So he wants him to be seen by an endocrinologist. Dr. H doesn't feel that his height can be attributed to his prematurity any more. He does know that genetics is working against Will but feels that it can't hurt to get him checked out just to be sure. Will's appointment with the endocrinologist is on March 11.

If you are interested, there is a pretty neat chart on the CDC's website.

TBR Challenge

I stumbled upon the TBR (to be read) Challenge and decided to give it a try. I haven't been reading as much as I would like over the past 15 months (I wonder why?!?) and think that this might give me a push in the right direction.

The rules:
* the challenge is to read 12 TBR books in 12 months -- you can read those all in one month if you want, or one a month, or however you wanna do it.
* you need to have a list posted somewhere for others to see (even if it's in a comment here)
* you CANNOT change your list after January 1st, 2009!!!
* you can create an Alternates list of MAXIMUM 12 books, if you want, in order to have options to choose from (you can read these in place of books on your original list).
* audiobooks and e-books ARE allowed
* re-reads are NOT allowed, as they aren't TRUE "TBRs"
* you CAN overlap with other challenges
* OPTIONAL: you can join the Yahoo! Group created for participants of the TBR Challenge, if you want to have a place to keep your list, or just to share with others about how you're doing! :)

Here are my TBRs:

1. Twilight finished 1/6/09
2. In Defense of Food
3. Mothering Your Nursing Toddler
4. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
5. New Moon finished sometime, forgot to post a review, oops!
6. The Last Lecture
7. Scarpetta
8. Animal, Vegeable, Miracle
9. Black and Blue finished 2/7/09
10. Eat, Pray, Love
11. Silent Knife
12. Odd Hours

Alternates

1. Schindler's List
2. The Choice
3. Lightning
4. The Time Traveler's Wife
5. Running with Scissors finished 4/11/09
6. Eclipse finished 3/18/09
7. Breaking Dawn
8. A is for Alibi
9. Love and Respect
10. Friday Night Knitting Club finished 5/30/09
11. The Thirteenth Tale
12. The Audacity of Hope

My personal goal is to read 18 of these. We'll see how I do.

Spaghetti and Sleep

We had spaghetti for supper tonight. Will tried to use a fork for the first time with it. I guess it wore him out because I looked over at him and he was nodding off. A few minutes later he was fast asleep.

I Got Tagged!

Casey from The Beautiful Letdown tagged me for the Seven Random Things meme.

The Rules:

1. Post the rules on your blog.
2. Write 7 random things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post.

1. I am thankful for a working furnace. Ours has gone out twice in the past week. It's working now. Hopefully it will stay that way.
2. I am about to have to leave for work (probably before I get this posted) and am going to freeze. Who thought that soccer made a good winter sport anyway? Again, I'm thankful for a working furnace.
3. Infertility, a failed IVF cycle, a successful IVF cycle, the birth of my twins and losing one of them have changed my life more than I could have ever imagined.
4. I never knew I would have such a wonderful group of friends that I met online. If that makes me a nerd, so be it.
5. I love Christmas ornaments. At last count I have about 250. I also have a spreadsheet documenting when I got them, where I got them, who gave them to me, etc. This also may make me a nerd.
6. Despite my last two facts, I really don't think I'm a nerd.
7. I have finished shopping for Christmas, but I still need to wrap the presents. I have yet to figure out how to do this with a 14 month old trying to "help."

Tag! You're it!

Four Martins
OpheliaZepp (I haven't been ignoring you, but for some reason your posts haven't been showing up in my Google reader account. After I get this posted, I'm off to catch up.)
The Perkins Pack (Anyone who has posting privileges here can do this.)
Life in the Eyes of a Child (Only post if you have permission from your Mommy. I don't want you to get in trouble for blogging when you shouldn't be!)
Lindsey
Mindy
Summer