Just Another Update!

It's been a busy week! Busy is good! My great friend, Leah, traveled from Pittsburgh for a visit. (They just moved to Pittsburgh early this summer for Mike's residency.) We got a couple of days to hang out and I'll probably see her in Duluth this weekend too. Leah and Mike's girl number 2 is due in January. So many girls!

Sofia, Josie, and Madeline sitting with Anna in the background. Future best friends!!

My brother, Jon, traveled from LA for almost a week. They really grew since the last time he saw them! Plus, they are doing so much more. He even bottled one of the babies for the first time! He also got to experience the witching hour. Woohoo! No, I think he had a good time and it was so fun to hang out. Now, he's back to his thesis work in California. Good luck!

Josephine and Jon (remember his character from his project is named Josephine!) Grandma Alice and Sofia are in the background too.

Of course, there was even more excitement when my grandma Alice and my cousin Emily came from out east. Right now, Emily is working in NYC in the school system, which she enjoys. Emily was definitely thrown into things and she helped with every single feeding. I wasn't sure if she knew she would be put to work the whole time but she claims she did. Thanks Emily! Hopefully it is not too long before we see each other again! I know the girls will be running around by then, though. My grandma was excited to meet the girls and I'm so glad she could make it all the way to Minnesota!

Emily hanging out with (foreground to background) Sofia, Josie, and Madeline.


Four generation picture! My mom is holding Madeline, my grandma is holding Sofia, and I have Josie.
Emily with Madeline, Josie, and Sofia at my parent's condo.


Sofia is in the low 13's for weight and she is as cute as ever. She loves to babble and laugh. The belly laughs we get are to die for! She is really good at sitting but hasn't figured out how to scoot around yet. You can tell she really wants to, so it should be soon.


Madeline is in the upper 14's for weight and still scooting around. She and Josie get up on their hands and knees and kind of rock back and forth. They will be crawling soon. Madeline keeps getting chunkier- so cute! We get belly laughs out of her too... Madeline must have known I was writing about her because she just got up from her nap! Hi Maddie!



Josephine is mid to upper 14's- very similar to Madeline. We still don't think she looks identical to Madeline! They have different eyes and Josie's dimples are way more obvious. I wonder if they will look more similar as they grow (or less!) Josie is unfortunately our worst napper/sleeper. If someone wakes up at 3, it is usually her. It might be because she sucks her fingers and thumb the least amount. Not quite sure yet how to self-soothe. We are pretty lucky, though, since we more often than not get a whole night's sleep uninterrupted.


This weekend we are heading up north (Dan's even taking Friday off). Lara, Charlie, Dane, and Peter will be in town again. It will be fun for the cousins to see each other. I don't even want to know how much bigger he will be! Moose! Some of Dan's extended family are going north too, so it will be lots of fun!


I had to add this picture. Doesn't Odin look so patient to go on a walk? What a great dog...
Have a great rest of the week and weekend!

Support My Bro!

My brother, Jon, is here visiting from LA. He has his script and idea all set for his thesis film for USC Graduate Film School (talk about prestigious if you are in the film industry!) He's making a stop motion animation film and he even named a character after one of my girls! It's called Josephine and the Roach. Go watch the promo and spare a buck or two if you think it looks interesting! Any donations are due Sept 11 or he doesn't get a cent (I guess that's how the site works). There are rewards if you donate certain amounts (ranging from drawings to DVDs to keeping the actual puppet from the movie). Click Here!

I'll update soon with more pics of the girls! They are all doing very well right now. It's exciting here in the Klopp household. Jon is here 'till Sunday and soon my grandma and cousin are coming! Exciting!

8 Months Plus!

The girls are over 8 months old already! How can that be?? I was just getting over the fact that they are half a year old! It's hard to tell from the weather, but summer is on the wane. Before we know it we'll be planning their birthday party.... (I hope not too soon because I love autumn.)

The girls are all doing splendidly. They keep doing more and more and they make us laugh everyday. Yesterday we had a NICU follow-up clinic. The therapists put them through a battery of tests to see how they are developing. They were all separated into different rooms (Debbie went with Sofia, Dan went with Josie, and I had Madeline). The bummer was that Debbie and I tried so hard to get the girls to have a good solid nap in the morning, but of course it didn't go as planned. Despite their tiredness they did pretty well!

Madeline: In every category: cognitive, motor- gross and fine, and language- receptive and expressive, Madeline either scored in-between her adjusted and actual age, or right at her actual age. She showed off her new skill of army crawling and also sat for a long time. Luckily, she was in a good mood almost the whole time.

Madeline
Sofia: She scored well in the cognitive and motor categories (in-between adjusted and actual age), but she was too sad to show-off her language skills. I guess she was crying the whole time and did not feel like babbling! She was our first babbler so we know the results weren't accurate. These tests are very dependent on mood, unfortunately!

Sofia

Josephine: She scored in-between for all the categories as well and even scored above her actual age in receptive language. I'm not sure what she was doing to score so well since I wasn't there during her test, but woo-hoo! Yesterday, before the test at home, Josie army-crawled for the first time. Of course she didn't do it at the clinic, but that's just how it goes.

Josie

It was great to hear what we already believed: that our girls are on track and catching up to their actual age. By two years old they should be caught up developmentally. The therapists who tested them were pleased overall and were so happy how much they loved tummy time. While we were at Children's, we visited some of the nurses and nurse pracitioners that took care of our girls. They couldn't believe how big they were! It was great to see all of them again. The next follow-up clinic will be when they are a year old adjusted (March!)

Here are a couple more random pictures... couldn't help but share them.

Josie, Madeline, Sofia

Sofia and Madeline ("Whatcha lookin' at?")

Madeline fell asleep in the Johnny Jump-Up!

Madeline, Josie, and Sofia showing off their sitting skills. LOVE this pic!
Here's Madeline demonstrating her army crawling! Uh-oh, we better start baby proofing!


I have to mention a cute little tidbit about Odin... On more than one occasion, when the girls are crying "bloody murder", he has ran down to the basement and brought up his blanket. We are thinking he is trying to help out because he has never randomly done that before. What a sweetie!

On a side note, Dan and I just had our third wedding anniversary! Dan picked a nice Italian restaurant in Stillwater while my parents watched the girls. Nice choice, Dan! The next couple weeks are going to be exciting because my grandma from out in Connecticut is coming to visit, as well as my cousin traveling from NYC and my brother from LA. Yay!! Have a great rest of the week, everyone!

7 Months

Here are the professional pics we got back..... the photographer was Sarah Swanson and she did a great job! Here are her two websites.

Click here to view these pictures larger

G-TUBE OUT!!!

What a happy day it is today! Dan, Josie, and I all went to the GI doc and he went through his list of criteria of whether he thinks we should take it out. Josie met all the criteria and he just knew we wanted it out! It was a very quick procedure and it only hurt for a couple of minutes. The rest of the day she was her good ol' self! Woohoo!!!!

Summer Heat!

Hey everyone! As I'm writing this, it is a steamy 86 degrees in our house- ahh! Our AC is broken and today is just a hot one! Where's Lake Superior when we need it? Actually, our neighbor has a pool and they invited us over tonight. Dan, Pete, the girls, and I all took a little dip. The girls didn't know what to think at first but seemed to like it after a bit. The water wasn't cold so it wasn't as big of a shock as it could have been.

This past Sunday, Dan and I thought it was the right day for the girls' first trip to the zoo. It was a really hot day and it was super crowded, so we made it a short trip. It was fun! I had Sofia in a Baby Bjorn, Dan had Josie, and Madeline was in the stroller. Madeline slept through the whole thing, but Sofia and Josie stayed awake. There's no way they saw the lions as they were just laying in the sun 50 yards away, but they did see the seals and the fish. One seal was swimming under the water and when it appeared out of the water suddenly, Sofia and Josie startled! We were right in front of the aquarium and the fish were bright and fast so those were easy to see.

Dan with two of the girls.


Sofia and Me.

Sofia is over 12 pounds (12 lbs 2 1/2 oz) and she caught up to her sisters in the back to tummy rolling game (they all rolled the other way a while ago)! It took Deb and I all day yesterday to actually catch her rolling; in the morning I found her on her tummy in the crib! Finally I saw her do it! YAY! She's been eating well and is getting even more social. She is just a riot to watch, especially in the Einstein exersaucer. We get the biggest laughing fits from her and her sisters; the other day I barked pretending to be Odin and she thought it was hilarious. I am so in love with this age!


Madeline is a rock star eater of course and is now the biggest at 13 lbs 8 oz. If I leave the room for one second, she is basically across the room when I come back! She rolls and pivots to get places, but she is getting closer to crawling. She loves to wiggle whenever I try to change her diaper or put clothes on her.


Josie is just a happy baby! She is now 13 lbs 4 1/2 oz but doesn't really look smaller than Madeline. She is just as social as the other two and matches Madeline with her rolling and moving. This Friday, we have an appointment with the GI doctor to talk about when we can take the G-tube OUT! I hope it can be soon because we don't use it at all and are confident she won't in the future. We need to get rid of it before she pulls it out herself! (Scary!) I'll have to update when I hear more!


We decided to try out solids! They aren't fully accepting it yet, but we will keep trying! Of course we don't want to push it, but they seem pretty open to trying it.

Here's Madeline, who decided she wanted to feed herself!
Sofia is saying "are you crazy!?"
I love the look on Josie's face. Ahh, oh well!



I'll end with this cute pic from my parents. Hope everyone enjoys/survives the summer heat!

Long Update!

Where do I even begin? It's been awhile since I last updated because I've been up north! Dan and I left for Dan's family's cabin (which is north of Duluth) on the Saturday morning before Independence Day. They were contently awake almost the entire ride. They started to fuss a little the last half hour. No biggie.

The cabin up north was a lot of fun- tons of family around to help! Never had so many baby-holders! Lara, Charlie, Dane and Peter drove all the way from Detroit, so we finally got to meet little (NOT) Peter. He is definitely bigger than Sofia but his hands and feet are crazy huge next to our girls! It was also weird being around a newborn again because we had to remember to support the head and of course he slept much of the time. Sometimes I miss the girls' ability to sleep whenever and wherever. Our girls will have so much fun at future reunions with their cousins Dane and Peter (Dane will totally be the ring leader and instigator!)

Peter and the girls posing... he fits right in size-wise! (L to R Josie, Madeline, Peter, Sofia)
Ring leader of the cousins, Dane! Cutie pie!!
The girls in their 4th of July outfits (thanks, Mary and Dave!) (L to R Josie, Madeline, Sofia)

A side story from the cabin: look at what we found attached to our little Sofia!!
Yes, that is a deer tick. Neither Dan nor I have even seen a deer tick let alone have one attached to us! Our poor little girl! We've been looking out for the tell-tale bulls eye to signify Lyme's Disease. We learned from an infectious disease doc that it would show up within days of being attached so I think we're in the clear. Also, we learned that it would need to be attached for at least 24 hours and I don't think Sofia was even close to that. Phew!!!!

Since Peter was to be baptized a week after July 4th, I decided to just stay in Duluth so we didn't have to make that trip two weekends in a row (Dan went home to Roseville). I loaded up the girls and their GEAR (whoa, the Yukon helped us out there) and drove to Duluth from the cabin on the Tuesday after the 4th. My biggest mistake was to leave during "witching" hour. Oh my goodness, they bawled bloody murder the whole hour-long trip! Hearing three babies wail and knowing there's nothing really I could do is super hard. It is so tempting to pull over and try to calm them down, but really it is delaying inevitably putting them back in the dreaded car seat! Anyways, I made it with three babies safe and sound to my parent's house in Duluth. That was the longest hour ever!

Hanging around my parent's house that week was nice and relaxing. We took a lot of walks and enjoyed the beautiful weather on their deck. My parents even babysat so I could go out to lunch with Lara. If the car ride was the slowest hour, that was the fastest! It was so nice to just sit and enjoy a meal!

My dad with Madeline on their deck.

Play time! (L to R Josie, Madeline, Sofia)
Uh-oh, I think Josie wants Maddie's toy!
Josie and Sofia playing at my parent's house.
Sofia and I at Brighton Beach in Duluth, a gorgeous rocky beach.

The crew at the beach- feeding time!
The Baptism for Peter was very nice and I'm glad we were there! Actually, the girls were so good and we even fed them during the service! I have to include a picture of Dan's grandparents and all of their great-grandchildren!
Last minute, I decided to just stay in Duluth another week because Dan had to be out of town for work. Why not? I love Duluth in the summer- no better place to be! I packed up my stuff from my parents house to Dan's parent's house since my parents were off to their cabin. I had a great week. Deb and I hung out during the day, taking some nice walks. We even made it to the board walk!

Madeline doesn't seem to love being caught in the middle!

The girls are working on sitting alone. Could Sofia be any cuter?

I think we can say they officially discovered their feet! (Madeline)

One of those rare moments when all three nap at the same time (sometimes it's fun when they share a crib)!

Daddy missed his girls!! Here he is feeding Josie.
Traveling home from Duluth was a big production this past Friday morning, but I survived. I had a lot of help from Deb packing up everything. Luckily, Dan's aunt, Mary was able to come over once I arrived in Roseville to help unload and feed. What would I do without all the help? Duluth was beautiful and fun but it's always nice to get back home. Hope everyone is doing well and congrats if you made it through this long post!