my first 'pregnant notice' from a stranger:

I love Target, and therefore I go to Target. My shopper-savvy-sister-in-law alerted me to a great deal on cribs there, so I went to check the scene. Whilst browsing amongst the not entirely satisfactory boys baby bedding I was approached by a random woman:

"Are there any Target employees working today?" she says sarcastically.

"Most likely," I reply "though I haven't been looking for one."

"Are you pregnant?" she asks.

I guess by this point I'm pretty obviously pregnant, so I'm not offended by the question and reply "Yes, I am."

"Oh." she says. "I just saw you looking at the baby stuff. My daughter's friend was pregnant. Yeah, she carried all the way thru the pregnancy, everything was just hunky-dory and then she delivered and the baby just up and died, right there in the delivery room."

I had heard that people would do this sort of thing to me, but I secretly believed that no one would be so socially unaware and unfeeling as to actually do it. I stared for a moment, I could tell my face was turning red in surprised and shocked stupor and then I replied: "I don't think that's the kind of thing you tell random pregnant ladies."

"Well I'm just saying that that's how it is sometimes!" She defensively snaps, "I mean, the baby just turned blue as a corpse right there and just died."

"Well I'm very sorry to hear that, but I don't think you should go out of your way to tell pregnant strangers about it anymore." I start edging away.

She continued to talk to me, completely stopped in the middle of the aisle, like she wasn't finished with our conversation, going on complaining about Target's customer service. I however called out "have a nice day" over her chatter and walked away. It was awkward, and I felt like a bit of a punk, but at the same time, I just didn't feel like she had warranted a sympathetic listener out of me at that point.

So there you have it. My first random stranger "are you pregnant?"query ended with tidings of the possibility that my baby could die in the delivery room. I am so glad I didn't mention that I was having twins, who knows what would have happened then.

Luckily for her I wasn't too upset by it. I was more angry that she felt it socially acceptable to do something like that. I mean, you never know what people have been through. What if I had already lost a child in a similar manner? Anyway. When I told my friend Al about it she said: "You should have replied 'yeah, i knew a lady walking around in Target talking to strangers, and then she died."

crazy 3D ultrasounds

Since I'm having twins the lovely medical personnel here have me come in every 2 weeks for ultrasounds. So we get to spy on our little guys a lot, which I enjoy. This week I had an intern practice on me which was very educational. Her instructor-nurse-lady walked her thru how to do everything, which let Nick and I learn along with her. I kind of wanted to ask for my turn each time the intern tried out something new.

Because she was learning it took a bit longer too and she had me laying pretty flat on my back, it actually felt like my head was lower than my legs, but that could have just been my perception. Anyway, at one point I asked if I could be raised up to an incline or something because I could feel all the blood running into my head and the instructor lady got all concerned that I was going to go down or something. I don't know, maybe I was, but she wouldn't be appeased until I rolled over so I was kind of on my side. That was interesting. At that point she took over to show my intern some things. One thing that I thought was really funny was that the whole time the intern was practising the instructor kept on saying "you don't have to push so hard...you don't have to push so hard..." I however was fine with the pressure being used on me. But this instructor lady, I tell you what, SHE pushed hard. She was crazy style all upon my belly. I almost told her "you don't have to push so hard" but I'm a little too mild mannered for that sort of thing.

So anyway, moving on, she pulled out the 3D ultrasound, which I wasn't expecting and took some shots of my li'l nudgers, as amy likes to call them ( I think it's amy, is it you amy?).
I was expecting aliens, but these turned out a little more baby like than I was expecting:

Baby A made us all laugh when he extended a nice and shapely pointer finger at his brother. Evidently he was letting us know that Baby B did it. That or he's number one, we can't be completely sure at this time, but I'm sure he'll let us know when we meet him.


Here's A's face (above), since you can't see it very well in the last shot. Woo hoo! I'm brewing up some cute babies! Does he look identical to his brother below?



Here's a nice one of Baby B, and I will admit that I think he's pretty cute, in a, you know, developing fetus sort of way.

So there you have it: Crazy 3D Ultrasound Technology. All those kids are contained in this, my 19-20 weeks-along-self. That means I'm 5 months pregnant, isn't that nuts?

Oh, they're in there. They like nudging and smacking me all day long to remind me about it.

Nick would like me to add that during the appointment he touched the viewing monitor and then realized there was a big sign on it that said "PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH MONITOR." But he was able to identify the 4 chambers of the heart.

fancy indie twin stroller

Nicole: While snooping around trying to find inspiration for my boys new room I stumbled across this sweet giveaway. The Bumbleride Indie Twin is amazingly well designed and there's no way I'll afford it unless I win it, so here I go.

You too can enter this giveaway! All you have to do is leave a comment. Wouldn't my boys look fancy riding in this? Yeah, I know. They'll look fancy anyway.

Nick: My boys ain't no fancy boys.

a couple of days ago it snowed, and today I'm writing about it.

We've heard that Chapel Hillians hope for one good snow a year. Last Tuesday it happened. I (Nicole) was pleasantly surprised to see the snow here where I thought I never would. As chance would have it I was up extremely early for my current schedule ( I think it was 7:30) and I took the opportunity to take pictures before anyone had messed up the snow.



I am absolutely in love with the view from our back door, it's so picturesque. I'll admit, I stare out of it quite frequently.

*sigh

As chance would also have it I didn't have the leave the apartment as I thought I was going to have to, so I got to climb back into bed with my lovely Nick Empey and sleep for another few hours. Talk about idyllic.

Once Nick was up and ready I walked him to the bus stop. I love this picture, but pay no attention to the big trash hamming it up. Note: I am NOT calling Nick a trashcan.



When I got back home I realized the lighting in our apartment was the best it's ever been so I took a few shots of our front room. This first one is a little blurry, but I think it captures the overall space the best.


This next one is pretty much the same shot but less blurry. I inherited that aloe plant from my friend Kokoro, and I'd say he's pretty photogenic.


And here's a shot looking toward the front door. I think I need something more hanging by my recycled three ring binder guts key holder thing over by the door.

So you may have noticed that I prefer a monochromatic color scheme at home, which I sometimes wish I could get over. And everything is blue by default. It seems that anything that was ever donated to me is blue, and so my tendency toward harmony thru monochromy (is that a real word?) has resulted in a very blue home. It's soothing I think, but someday I'm going to have red instead.

Bye now!

4 days is as a minute to the Empey's

It all started with breakfast:
A delectable assortment of Frosted Mini Wheats and 2% milk followed by the scriptures. Breakfast was early this morning!

We made our way to campus, into the parking garage, and across the walkway:
It was a brisk morning. Not one that you lollygag around outside standing like a flamingo fishing in, if you know what I mean. We entered the building, talked to 3 receptionists, and found a couple of pleasant and large waiting room chairs. Nicole had to use the restroom:
The bathroom wasn't very far away from our chairs. Nicole was pretty sure that it was connected to an exam room, but nobody was using it (the exam room or the bathroom), so she was safe. They called our name and we went into the exam room. It was dimly lit so that we wouldn't snoop--they don't know us too well. There was a big machine with buttons and knobs and hardwired instruments and a viewing monitor. A lady came in and asked Nicole to sit on the big chair, and we saw the most amazing pictures come up on the monitor:















"Baby A" decided to show us his 1" long foot and then do a faceplant. Crazy little guy. "Baby B" decided to just chill out, relax, max out, and cool showing us his little handsome profile:
In the end we found out that there are 2 identical twin boys living inside of Nicole right now that weigh in at 1/2 lb each. Crazy stuff. Monochorionic diamniotic. They appear to be as healthy as can be. Nicole is doing about as healthy as can be. No sickness or nausea to this point. Nick is about as healthy as can be...he weighs 165 lbs. It's really cool to think that identical twins occur completely spontaneously, so no genetic factors had a hand in this--not that they would since twins don't run in Nicole's family. Although, it should be noted that Nicole's brother has identical triplet boys, which of course is also spontaneous, so family photos should be pretty fun. Thank you everyone for your prayers and rejoicing with us.

Fun news

Nick says, "I guess you'll just have to hold tight on this one for a minute."

Random thoughts

Nick speaking:

We watched "The Importance of Being Earnest" again last night, and I keep finding myself speaking in a British accent not making much sense at all, which can be sometimes amusing, but at the same time can be frustrating for Nicole who has to ask me, "What?" all the time because I speak so fast and nonsensical as to entirely miss the meaning of my sentences sometimes...sometimes.

Long sentences have also been a frequent topic of conversation as Nicole and I make our way through James Talmage's quintessential Jesus the Christ; where every page averages approximately 5-8 sentences each; mostly because he uses semicolons like they were going out of style, which they might have been in the 1940's. I've never read the word discomfiture so frequently in my life either, but I tell you what: am I ever glad I'm not a Pharisee--or Sadducee.

Bebes have also been on our minds, and in one certain case (at frequent times) our bladders as well. We had an appointment with another doctor (we chose to meet with different doctors the first few visits so that we could know them all since you never know who will be in the delivery room when it's time), and he decided since the first doctor had neglected to include pictures of the first ultrasound--or even mention it had been done--to perform another complimentary ultrasound, even though the 20 weeker was the following week. They were lying on top of each other for the first bit, but then one of the floppers decided to turn completely 180 degrees and start kicking the other baby's legs. It was cool. That's all I can say.