Michelle has been home for a while now. I'm at work and about to leave because a Nor'easter is under way even as I write. But I thought I'd take a moment to give "the rest of the story", so to speak.
Michelle woke up on the 22nd at around 2AM (of course!) and said, "Scott, my water just broke". Naturally this happens at 2AM, as I've mentioned before. We called a good friend, Bob Aries, who came over to watch the house and the girls who were still asleep. We got to the hospital a little after 3AM. They did one last ultrasound in case by some remote possibility the babies had turned the right way. No such luck. So they told Michelle they were going to set her up for a Caesarian. We were to be next after this other woman who was about to go in a moment. But when they did an internal exam and found that Michelle was already at 4 cm dilation, they did what we computer geeks call "preemptive scheduling". Michelle went in within minutes. I got on my "scrubs", a first for me. By the time I was dressed, Michelle was already anesthetized and they were about to cut. The unzipping went fast and bang-bang the two were out. Zipping things back up takes substantially longer, which I have NO problem with. Take your time, doctors, and get it right. After Michelle was done, I took a peek at the boys in the nursery. They were doing fine and resting. Michelle was also resting soon after surgery. With nothing left to do, I went home to take care of the other children. I was home by 6AM and the kids weren't even awake yet. A new record for me. About 6:30 the kids got up. I got them dressed and took them out for some breakfast. We also had to pick up Grandma who was arriving at the airport at 11:15. I took Grandma and the girls over to the hospital to see the new arrivals. It took some work to make the girls understand that they could not climb on mom for a while. I quick look at the stitches made that a little clearer to Claire, but I don't think Abby ever understood. I won't go into any more details of the day. If you have any questions, drop me an email.
Since then, Michelle has been recovering quite well. She left the house for the first time (no kids) on Friday the 2nd. The following Saturday she took the kids to the YMCA to show her friends. No, she didn't do a step class! And we took the whole famn damily sic in the van to Mass on Sunday. Yes, the van was at max capacity that morning.
A baptism for the boys is scheduled for Sunday, February 18th at 9:15AM. Tom and Alyssa Tarpey are Michael's godparents. Ed Gieske and Bev Tarpey are Daniel's godparents. Alyssa, Ed, and Bev are flying out for the occasion. Tom will stay home with the oldest three of their kids. Alyssa is bringing their youngest, William (my godson), with her on the flight. My father is also flying out for that weekend. He has the same flights as Alyssa and should be able to give her a hand with William. We are looking into a proxy for Tom for the baptism.
I guess I'd conclude and say that now that the boys are gaining weight, they are looking more and more identical. It would not surprise me in the least if a DNA test said so. Mom, Michelle, and I can not find one thing different between the two. Perhaps I should take them down to the local tattoo parlor?! Just kidding!
I have some pictures from my own camera and I had the processor make a photo CD. I hope to get another half hour soon to put these on line. I'll keep these at a lower resolution so that they can print direct from a browser. For the earlier pictures from Russell's camera, you'd need to save the pictures and then print them in a separate graphics program at a higher dots per inch density than the default 75 dpi you usually see in web browsers. While this can be a bit of a pain, I did it so that folks could have higher quality prints. I hope this didn't cause too many folks problems. At least my intentions were good....