What a difference a year makes!

One year ago today we left Washington for Indiana to try and get pregnant.  1 baby was going be a dream come true, 2 babies a miracle.  I never dreamed 1 year later we would have 4 precious gifts.  God is beyond good & faithful.  Thank you to Him and our dearest Amber.  I love our family!!! 

The Great Baby Reunion

For those of you that haven't yet seen it, here's a link to the story that KOMO 4 (the Seattle ABC station) did when Madison, Victoria and I returned home from Indiana:

Kirkland family welcomes two sets of twins

What a great gift!

Our friend Jenni shared our story with Kelly Chandler Photography whom she had used for her wedding photos. Kelly was so touched by our story that she offered to do a free photo shoot for us! You can see part of the amazing results below. Kelly was so great to work with and was well equipped to handle even our large family at her studio. We would highly recommend her for your family photos!

4th of July cuteness

Ok- now that I can update the blog via text, hopefully we will keep it more updated! We are super busy with babies and still working on getting more sleep so sorry for the long delay in updating. For the 4th, we took some pics at home, our good friends the Pennebakers hung out & brought yummy pulled pork for dinner & then we watched the fireworks on tv. It was a good one - yay for the babies 1st 4th of July!

Connor

Hope

Madison

Victoria

Madison chilling with daddy

Matt, Cortney & Beckett Pennebaker

Blogging via Text Message!

Ok, it's really a multimedia message. At any rate, Brian helped me figure out how I can update our blog via text message, so hopefully that will make it easier to keep you all up to date on how the babies are doing. I often send out some daily pictures via text message when I'm up feeding the babies at night. Look for some new pics soon!

Our Southwest Story

Part of our journey home from Indiana was made so much easier by Southwest Airlines. Here is a snippet of how it all happened:

When I opened a Customer e-mail from Julie Baker, I had no idea of the events that would unfold over the next week.  Julie, Brian’s mom, described the impending birth of her grandchildren as “unique and rather amazing.”  Reading on, my heart stopped when I read, “My son and his wife, who live in Seattle, WA, are expecting their first babies, two sets of twins, any day now.”

Read more on the Nuts About Southwest blog.

On the way to Seattle

Quick update:

Misty, Connor and Hope went home on Sunday. The same day I left for Indiana to meet Madison and Victoria. M & V were discharged Monday. We are headed tithe airport now with Nina (grandma Baker), and Aunt Jen. Excited for the big reunion tonight!

And in the other corner, it's Madison and Victoria

Our Indiana girls we're so excited about Connor and Hope being born that they have decided to join the party too!

Amber began labor on Friday morning and the girls were delivered Friday night. Everyone is doing well at this point.

Here are the details:

Madison Grace Baker
Born 7:04 pm
5 lbs 14 oz
20 inches

Victoria Faith Baker
Born 7:37 pm
5 lbs 15 oz
19.5 inches

EDIT: in my sleep-induced, calendar-confused state I stated the wrong day. M & V we're born on Friday, not Thursday. So the babies are about 35 hours apart.

 

Madison

Victoria

Sisters!

Introducing Connor and Hope

Wednesday evening we went in to Labor & Delivery at the doctor’s request because Misty’s blood pressure had been a little high. After a few hours of monitoring Misty started into early labor! They decided to admit and soon a c-section was planned for Thursday morning. As Misty’s contractions progressed the doctor decided that we should go ahead and so we headed back to the OR about 4:30 am. Soon after, Connor and Hope were born!

Here are the details:

Connor William Baker
Born 4:53 AM
5 lbs 13 oz
19 inches

Hope Elizabeth Baker
Born 4:54 AM
5 lbs 14 oz
18.5 inches

Mom, Dad, and babies are all doing great! Dad held the babies while Mom was stitched up, and then everyone went back to the room. The babies didn’t need any observation time in the NICU! They have been good at working on breast feeding and latched on right away. So far we’re on track for heading home on Saturday.

Read on for a few pictures!

Nursery Pictures

Finally we have a few pics of the babies’ rooms. For those of you that don’t know, we are using two bedrooms that are right next to each other. Instead of splitting the babies up two and two, we’ve taken the advice of another quad mom and set the rooms up by function. The “crib room” is for – you guessed it – all four cribs, while the “staging room” is where the dressers, changing stations, clothes, and supplies will go.

Below you can see a picture of three of the cribs (it’s hard to get a good angle to get all four of them in the same shot.) Click through to see a few more pictures.

Three of the four cribs

We made it to 36 weeks!

Saturday we crossed a big milestone – we made it to 36 weeks which is the average gestational age at which twins are born. If we get another week in we’ll be considered full term. However, both doctors are thinking the babies might come any time now.

There’s been a lot of activity over the last few weeks that we’ve been meaning to share (including a few visits to the hospital), but those stories will have to wait for another day as we’ve been so busy prepping that it’s hard to find time to write them up. So instead, enjoy these pics!

We're on the LA Times web site!

We were recently interviewed by Rene Lynch of the LA Times, and her story is now available on latimes.com. We don't know at this point whether it will be published in the paper or not.

Attention Media

If you're interested in talking with us or the Pluckebaums about our story, please direct all communication to brian at brianandmistybaker dot com. I will get back to you but please be patient as life is busy as we prepare for these four little ones.

To be more specific, please do not directly contact the Pluckebaums or our families. Thank you.

Full version of RTV6's story now online

RTV6 has posted the full story and video segment to their website. The video is currently on the right hand side under "related to story" (note there is a short ad that plays before the story). Hope you like it!

Maternity Pics

Special thanks to Nicholas Dunne Photography for taking these great maternity pictures. Hope you enjoy them!

		Maternity Pictures VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Did you see us on RTV6?

Did you find our site after watching the story on RTV6 Monday night? We’d love to hear from you! Feel free to leave a comment here on the blog. Or, if you would prefer to send us a message in private you can email either Misty or me at (our first name) at brianandmistybaker.com.

Preview of our story on WRTV

The Indianapolis ABC station is doing a story on us! You can see a preview on their web site. If you're in Indiana, you can catch the whole story this Monday at 11 pm. For the rest of you, we'll keep you posted when the full story is made available!

Get an email when we post

In case you haven’t noticed, we now have a feature right over there on the left hand side of the page, where you can sign up to get notified by email whenever we post a new entry here. Try it out!

Easter Photos

I thought I would share a couple of great photos taken on Easter by our great friend Whitney.

It’s an IKEA assembly party!

First off, I know you all have been waiting on getting some updates on this blog for a while. Trust me, we have lots of good intentions about posting here but blogging time has to compete with all the other things we have to do…
For example, a couple weekends ago we had a bunch of friends over to help us get some new furniture ready. Since the baby’s will be taking over both the old guest room and the old office, we have to move all that stuff out and find a new home for lots of stuff. So this was all about making space in several parts of the house.

The boxes look so innocent…

It's a... No, wait -- They are...

A boy and three girls! Or as Misty is calling them "three princesses and a pirate!" :) Special thanks to Amber for letting us "attend" the ultrasound today via FaceTime video chat--and thanks to her husband Brian for getting the tech working!

Checking out the action back in Indy

Misty's reaction after the news

Brian's reaction after the news

Happy Parents-to-be