Haircuts (and other news)

Long time, no blog!  The unfortunate side-effect of us starting to use Flickr is that we rarely (i.e. never) post to our blog anymore.  And given how many big changes (well, 2 small ones if we're being sticklers) are coming our way, it seems like a good time to take up a new hobby.  No seriously, we are just amazed by how fast time is passing by and how much of a blur the last 5 years already are, and figure that adding 2 more small children into the mix will pretty much completely annihilate our memories.  As such, it seems like a good idea to try to be somewhat more regular about documenting this time.

So, yeah, as alluded to in the previous paragraph, we are expecting again!  And oh, are we ever.  I (Katie) am 20 weeks pregnant with identical twin girls.  Twins do not run in either of our families (and identical twins are not hereditary -- just a random and rare fluke), and so you can imagine our shock when, at an early ultrasound back in mid-November, we found out that there were two little hearts beating in there!  We were both very surprised, but also quickly (I'd say within about 3 hours) became extremely excited about the whole thing.  That excitement pretty quickly turned to worry once we started googling "mono-di twins" and learned of all the potential complications that can befall twin pregnancies in general, and monochorionic twins (this means "sharing a placenta") in particular.

But, we are now nearly 21 weeks along, and after our "big" ultrasound today (the "Level 2 anatomy scan", which is is normally where you find out the sex, though we have been having bi-weekly ultrasounds due to some concerns specific to the one-placenta situation and already knew that we were having girls) with great results, we are feeling really positive and optimistic.  My due date is June 30th, though I have been told that they would probably like to induce around 36 weeks (which is June 2nd) if I haven't already gone in to labor.  I guess that the fact that 2 babies are sharing one placenta means that it won't reliably last as long as it would otherwise.  Another interesting factoid that we have learned is that twins' lungs actually mature a bit faster in the womb, and thus twins are considered full-term at 37 weeks (as compared to 40 weeks for singleton pregnancies.)  So 36 weeks is not as early as it would otherwise.

But anyway -- that is our big news.  In other equally earth-shattering news, we decided that Noah was starting to bear too close a resemblance to George Washington and got the two "big kids" haircuts this weekend. So here are some pictures of that:

BEFORE:

AFTER (during a Valentine's Day Dance Party):

And just for fun, here's a little video of said dance party:

More new pictures and videos on our flickr page...