I had Thursday-Monday off.

Thursday was a sick day because both boys had outpatient surgery. DS1 had hypospadius repaired (that means he can now write his name in the snow without a slant to it when he is older if you know what I mean). DS2 had a bilateral hernia repaired.

My parents came into town mid day Thursday and watched the boys while wife and I got the house ready for a party on Saturday (it was DW's mother's 60th birthday).

Saturday was the party and my MIL was shocked. We had 60+ people in our house and it was not crowded at all (good thing). That was first time we ever had that many people.

Sunday my wife made saurbraten for dinner and we cleaned up. Actually I took a nap and my wife and parents cleaned up.

DS1 was being fussy on and off all weekend. Never slept thru night at all- side effect of surgery is he has a stint (tube) up his penis, so I guess I don't blame him for being uncomfortable. I took Monday off from work so wife could work all day and I spent day consoling my son.

Wife balanced the checkbook and the $2500 cc bill which included the party on it could be paid in full.

My kids also got to open 5 gifts from people. They now have some toys to play with- they light up, make noise and keep them entertained. The best gift is a Buffalo Bills bean bag which they take naps in now and can climb on.

Both boys also ate their first meal from a high chair yesterday.

Here is one of the photos MIL got as a gift on her 60th B-day. Picure taken when boys were ~7 months old, they are almost 9 months old now.

Our santa gifts are all wrapped and under the tree.

The boys will be getting 5 gifts from Santa.

They will share a big thing my wife wanted to get them. It is a multifunctional thing. It has this cool thing which blows plastic balls in the air, lets kid fetch it, then put it in this thing which spirals it around and shoots it out again.

My cousin had one for her girls and I played with it for hours.

That gift passes daddy's criteria (I can play with it too).

We got them each a small toy which makes noise and lights up. At 9 months they are really into things like that.

They are each getting their own train set too. Before they were even born I told my wife they were getting train sets for xmas. When my parents came to visit, my father and I went out to get the sets.

Again, the gift passes my criteria (daddy can play with it too).

Know what boobs and trains have in common? Read on for the answer.

I am sure Grandma (wife's mom) and my parents are going to spoil these two with even more presents (trumping the 5 from santa -wife and me).

Any over unders on how many toys each of them get? 2 grandma's, 2 aunts, 3 cousins (on mom's side) and 10 cousins (draw names) on my side?

Answer-
both are for little boys, but daddy's like to play with them too.

I will get back to posting some tax things as I prepare to take my tax final next week. In the mean time, here is pooh and tigger.

My boys were born 3 months early in March. The first 4 months were tough mentally and the kids did not have it easy either. The boys are now 7 months old.

DS1 crawls (4 months adjusted age) but he keeps his stomach on floor when he does it.
DS2 rolls across room, has not figured out how to push with legs.

DS1 has thighs like a football player- he will do squats if I hold his hands. His thighs are solid- more muscle mass than me or his mother I think.

Here are some recent photos:

ND Fans I hope


One of my favorates


A good one

The twins can now go 6 hours without feeding.

Actually DS1 goes about 5-5.5 hours and his twin goes about 6.5. We can usually time the feeds so one of us goes to bed at 11 pm and wakes up around 4-5 am to do the morning feed while the other spouse can "sleep in" until 7am. Yesterday I did not get out of bed until 7:30 am because both kids slept a little longer after the 4 am feed.

My wife and I discussed our household budget over the long weekend. She had been dreading the conversation and putting it off for months.

The first few conversations we had like this 7-10 years ago were tough- I had to tell her rent came before getting hair and nails done, and she was not used to that (her mom did not require her to pay rent before she moved in with me).

The last few have been real easy. She initiated this one because she wanted money for a vacation to disney world in July of 2009.

We sat down and plugged various numbers into our budget spreadsheet. I had a raise which had not been added in, and we decreased the phone bill from $100 to $55 by removing some options from the line. We need a phone line for home high speed internet- we have a satellite dish so roadrunner/dsl is not an option.

End result was we save 20% of gross pay and pay our bills. And have $5000/year left over after all spending is accounted for.

WOW- my last raise was only 3k and we increased Roths once the raise hit the bank account.

Needless to say, looks like our kids can meet Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.

As stated previously, my goal is to pay off my mortgage before my kids start college.

My twins are 5 months old at time of this post in September of 2008.

College for them begins in September of 2027 I think.

Our mortgage was originated in Dec of 2005, then refinanced in April of 2006 to get both loans (1st and 2nd mortgage) on fixed rate payment plans.

2nd mortgage is ~50k borrowed at 7.5%
1st mortgage is ~284k borrowed at 5.75%.

I need to pay both off more than 10 years early for this plan to work.

We currently round the 2nd mortgage payment up every billing cycle- meaning if we owe $385.85 we round payment up to $400. This cuts SIX YEARS off the payment according to the spreadsheet I ran.

In 2 years when my truck is paid off, the $700 truck payment goes to second mortgage. This will pay the second mortgage off in about 5 years from when I start the extra payments.

The $1100 extra ($400 2nd mortgage payment and $700 car payment) which will be available in 2015 goes to funding 3 goals:

1) Kids private school education- we don't like the public schools where we live, we estimate needing $400/month for both kids private schooling for elementary school.

2) New car fund for me. Probably $500/month going to this account

3) $200/month going to mortgage independance fund.

Mortgage independance fund is PRPFX- a mutual fund which should have about a 6% annual return and be relatively consistent in most market conditions.

My plan is to get this fund large enough to pay off the mortgage- might take 5 years, might take 10 or 15. Once this fund has enough money to pay down the mortgage, I will actually send the $200/month directly to the mortgage.

The risk before mortgage is paid off is liquidity- if I sent payment to the mortgage, I could not access the money. So by using an investment with intention to pay off the mortgage, when kids are 18 I either have a paid off house, a large taxable investment account, or both.

A few weeks ago there were 2-4 threads about college savings.

My general advice is that it is better to pay off mortgage before kids get to college, then use the old mortgage payment to fund their education.

I also think it is important to finance some of the education cost and have the kids pay that portion off after graduation. Gives them a chance to learn about debt and learn to not like debt in particular.

Because birth was an emergency C section, we did not find out at time of birth if kids are identical or fraternal twins.

Look at this pic and tell me.

Here are photos of twins on 4th of July.

Here are first family pictures with the twins not taken in the NICU.

The four of us


Dad and boys


Mom and Boys

I will post more pictures once my wife gets them transferred to CD.

In meantime the growth of both boys has been nothing short of amazing.

DS1 was born 2 lbs 14 oz, was discharged at 5 lbs. 5 lbs was 5th percentile for weight of premature babies. He weighed in at 11 lbs 14 oz last week, which is 87th percentile for premature babies at his age.

Once he is 100 percentile that means he is not "premature" and can start being compared to normal babies (born at 37 weeks or later).

DS2 was born 2 lbs 6oz and discharged at 6 lbs. He was 3rd percentile weight at discharge. He weighed in at 9 lbs 10 oz today and that is about 67th percentile. Doctor was pleased enought that his formula's calory intake was reduced from 26 to 24. Doctor said in one month he will probably be moved to a more normal formula (like the one his brother uses).

Formula for DS1 costs about $15/can in store and we have been getting it for $5-$10/can on ebay.

Formula for DS2 costs about $35/can in stores and we get it for about $15-$19/can on ebay.

Twins turned 4 months old on July 27. WOW what a difference 4 months makes.



Both eat like it is going out of style. I survive on about 5 hours of sleep on a good night.

I have modified my work schedule to be 1pm-10 pm so I can be with kids in morning. Most afternoons my wife works from home and watches them.

The savings of us modifying the work schedules is close to $13k per year.

That is 13k which is still getting invested.

Life at my house has changed forever.

Both my sons are now at home. Born March 27, wife was 28 weeks (and 4 days) pregnant.

DS1 weighed 2 lbs 14 oz at birth
DS2 weighed 2 lbs 6oz at birth

DS1 was discharged at week 38 at 5 lbs 7 oz
DS2 was discharged at week 41 at 6 lbs
DS1 now weighs 7 lbs 7.5 oz
DS2 now weighs 6 lbs 4.5 oz

DS2 faced several problems. He was born at one hospital and 8 weeks later was transferred to a surgical hospital. In those first 8 weeks he had a bout with NEC (an intestinal infection), some respiratory issues and a few other "minor" problems. After further tests, surgery was taken off the table and he was put on an eat and grow regiment. It took 4 weeks for doctors to figure out a formula he could tolerate 8X per day and grow from.

Here are pics of the first day both kids saw each other for first time (it was Wed June 16).

Probably been a week or two or three since I last posted here on babies. Two weeks ago one of my sons was transferred to a different hospital. He was at a level 3 NICU, but that hospital does not do surgery. So he was transferred to another level 3 NICU and put on Surgical rounds to deal with his problems.

Two weeks later, no surgery has been done. We now have two kids in two different NICUs about 15 minues apart in same city.

Here are pictures:

DS1 weights 4.06 lbs and is going through the car seat challenge tonight. He will be strapped into his carseat for a couple of hours in the ICU and they need to see if he has any cardiac episodes as a result of the car seat.

DW and I will be staying at hospital all night on Thursday in a transition room with DS1. If he handles schedule and feedings well, DS1 gets to see his HOME!

DS1 ripped out his feeding tube today. This means he is on bottle feeds for the remainder of his stay. He had his first bottle on Friday, I think.

Here are baby pics for anyone interested.

My wife and I want to take pictures of our sons before they grow out of their incubators with objects which show relative size.

Wedding rings were suggested already by hospital- those pics will be taken tommorrow.

A friend gave us two build a bears which are each bigger than each of our sons, but the issue with the bears is
a) they cannot be put in incubator (not sanitary) and no one really knows how big a teddy bear is (you could buy a teddy bigger than me and I'm 6'1" 170#.

I was thinking maybe a coffee mug or similar. Any other ideas?

Like their father, my kids could not wait. My wife had an emergency C section on March 27 to deliver 2 boys. My wife was 28 weeks pregnant.

The good news is my wife came home. She had been in hospital since the 20th week of her pregnancy and our house was getting lonely for 8 weeks for me.

The boys are stable in the ICU at a great Neo-natal unit. Within 5 days they were taken off all breathing support (they are breathing on their own). Now we need to see kids grow.

DS1 was born 2 lbs 14 oz and was 2 lbs 11 oz when he was weighed yesterday.

DS2 was born 2 lbs 6 oz and was 2 lbs 3 oz when he was weighed yesterday.