And then there were 3!

Welcome to world Peter Brian Vnak!

Born Sunday December 16th at 7:33am, weighing in at 8 lb, 3 oz, and 20.5 inches long.

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes! (Start playing "Eye of the Tiger")

At 1:30 AM in the morn, I was wrestled from my midnight slumbers with an elbow to the stomach.

"Get me a towel!" exclaimed the babe.

Auntie Keith and Uncle Kelly quickly arrived, and off to the hospital we went.

Contractions started around 2:30. Epidural at 5, and Katie started pushing at 7:25am. Bam. Bam. Bam.

Baby. Beautiful baby.

We were anticipating a baby around 7 pounds with small features and black hair. What did we get?

8 pounds of love, big hands, big feet (and you know what else), and reddish brown hair. More red than brown.

Oh Jesus, you've done it again!

Everybody is doing great, except that we think little Pete has his days and nights messed up. He sleeps most of the day, and decided to eat on the hour, every hour, all last night.

Oh how we don't misss the insanity of sleepless nights.

Our first night at the hospital was pretty hilarious in retrospect, but not in any form at the time. Just imagine being awake for the better part of 44 hours with only one hour of sleep and having to sit on the most uncomfortable hemmroid inducing wooden chair ever made trying to console a child who you and the world have only known for 17 hours. Needless to say, a few tears were shed, a malicious rant on how terrible hospital furniture ensued, and I stubbed my big toe (twice at that).

Tom and JOe having taken to their little brother well. "Ohhhhh, da baybee! Da baybee!" "Baybee crying." It'll be interesting to see how it all works out. Thank God they have each other.

Anyway, our Christmas is blessed and I hope yours is too! Happy Holidays!


Holy Belly Batman! (And no, there is not a pillow underneath that moo-moo!)


PBV minutes from the womb and already working it!


Within like five minutes he found his thumb and went to town.


Here's Captain Sweetnas with Lil' Sweetnas da Thurd


Men, men, men, men! Tom and Joe meet Pete.


SuperMom with her little Lumpkin!


Joe giving Pete some love.


Tom giving Pete a kiss.



Pete on day 3. Now 3,000 times cuter!


A bunch of people think Tom and Joe look extremely similar and they are correct. Here are two good pics where I think they look different. Hopefully this helps.



So we tried to have an hour long Christmas photo shoot, and that quickly turned into 10 minutes of complete frustration. Try to get 2 18.5 month olds to sit in a chair and both put a nice smile on their faces. Nice try. Anyway, these are the two best pics we obtained, so if we don't get a X-mas card out this year, this will have to suffice.

18-Century style with no smiling allowed.


Dude, sweet hat, let me check it out.

Hit it!

We’re back and we’re betta than eva!

Yes, I know, “Damnit Vnak! It’s been almost 6 months!”

6 months, you gotta be kidding me? Oooo, I guess it has. Well, at least there plenty of good reasons. There are plentiful good little anectdotes that are worth sharing, but alas, only so much time for typing. I’m sorry if I duplicate anything in previous posts, but I don’t have the time to reread what I wrote.

“But Vnak, there are other people who have an infant and they seem to update their blog fairly regularly!”

Correct, but they only have one child. Not two, or three.

Yes that’s right, for those of you who don’t know, Vnak #3 is on the way. This oven ain’t shut’n down, it’s only warming up.

Baby Vnak #3 is due on Christmas Day. Yes, that’s less than three weeks away. It’s been another wild ride. Katie was sick the first trimester again and had to miss work for about 8 weeks. But then she felt great during the second trimester. We were able to head off to Chicago to celebrate the weddation of Nick Lambrecht and Jess Boehm which was a devilishly fun weekend.

And the third trimester was looking like it was going to be great, no 10 weeks of bedrest this time around. But then the day before Thanksgiving came, and Katie went into active labor a full month ahead of schedule. We went to the hospital, spent the night, and she stopped progressing, however, she was dialated to 3. We didn’t get home until noon on Thanksgiving and then the rest of the day really sucked to be honest, as we were super exhausted. So, Katie had to stop working and take it easy (which is anything but easy with Tom and Joe). She has been contracting on and off sense then, so by technical terms, she has been in active labor since the day before Thanksgiving. Not fun. She is super uncomfortable, and the baby has been taking turns pressing against her sciatic nerve, which is no fun either. Last night, she started contracting like crazy again, so off to the hospital we went, but still no baby. Maybe he (yes, we are having anotha boy!) is going to hold out for Christmas. Who knows.

Other major fun items besides Tom and Joe:

1. We bought a house. And moved. Long story short: found the perfect house. Bought it. We sold our townhouse in 30 days. Take that national credit crisis! Eat housing market! The new crib is schwiggity schweet. It’s only 8500 sq feet, but I think we’ll fit by the time we’re done with Vnaks #16 and #17.
2. I was able to partake in all male weekend to ND for the season opener against Gtech. Home opener is always the best, we didn’t suck at that point, so the times were great. Mucho kudos to Cieslak for letting us crash at his Fischer Grad brothal for the weekend. Three crazy nights going out in a row resulted in me losing my voice until Wednesday of the following week. Good stuff!
3. Home remodeling. Before the baby is born in December, we’ve been on a big push to get the main level of the home painted and fixed up. Normally this would be an easy task. But two kids turns the easy upside down. It’s a big project, but we’ve got most of it done so hopefully we can enjoy most of the holidays.
4. I know I’m missing a million other things, but this will have to suffice.

For those of you who want more updates, you are in luck. My resolution for 2008 is to most more often than every 6 months, so that we guarantee at least 3 updates.

On to the boys:

What a joy! Being a parent never really gets easier, it constantly demanding and difficult, but always changing to keep you on your feet. You trade sleepless nights for disruptive behavior. It’s all relative. Katie and I can’t wait for sleepless nights with the new baby and disruptive behavior with the boys. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

The boys have been walking/running for what seems forever. I can’t even remember when it started. All I know is is was one step, two steps, a thousand. The boys have an outstading vocabulary for their age (would you expect anything else?). It is incredibly entertaining. Although they don’t get out all of the syllabals, you can tell they are trying. They can mimic just about anything, so here are a few recent stories I can remember.

“Joe, can you say Tom”

“Pom”

“No, no, Tom.”

“No, no, Pom”

“Forget it.”

“Okay!”

Dad was watching football, and the announcer screams, “Touchdown” and Joe goes running around the house with his hands up in the air screaming, ‘Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown!” Datta boy!

Halloween was very entertaining. Tom was a big butted lion and Joe a big butted Zebra. See pics below.

The boys know when to say, “Hey!” during Jingle Bells. Very entertaining. They love the Itsy Bitsy Spider. And old McDonald.

It’s really interesting being the parent of twins and watching how they interact. For those of you with one child out there, ask yourself the question, “Who does my child know best?” And the answer is easily mom or dad. But for us, Tom and Joe know each other best before mom and dad. It creates a completely different dynamic. Today I had to take Tom to the doctor by himself while Joe stayed at home. Both were lost without each other. It’s cute and you can see how twins develop their life long affinity towards each other.

For all of you without kids, make the most of your time before starting a family. I don’t mean that in a negative context. Having a family is the most rewarding experience ever, but it really puts in context what is important in life as well as how much of your life you wasted (time and money) before you had kids. Someday you’ll all know what I mean.

Ok, it’s awfully hard trying to recollect when the window of time (6 months) is so large, so I’m going to cut it short and let the pictures do the talking. I will try to update more frequently, and if I don’t I apologize.

Enjoy and happy holidays! I probably won’t post again until the new baby is born, so please pray for us that all goes well!

Take that back, we bought a new camera and should have some sweet new pictures since we don’t have to wait five seconds for the camera to take pictures anymore.


Here's Tom and JOe's room before my remodel. Yes, I do my own work.
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The bedroom post remodel


Dad and Joe hoopin it up.


Tom and his French mustache


Tom and JOe chillin under a stool.


Tom and Joe after they broke the drawer on their crib.


Dad reading books with Joe and Tom


Katie reading with Joe and Tom


Joe getting all gussied up!


Joe, Justin Timberlake style


Joe busy at dnner


Joe and Tom helping Grandpa (Boppa) pick up leaves


Tom and JOe watering the lawn


Katie 6.5 months pregnant


Joe playing Peek a boo.


The boys wrestling on the floor


Zebra and Lion big butts


Joe the zebra


Tom the lion


The whole family on Halloween


JOe cheesin' it up


Tom eating some fingers.


Tom and Joe getting in trouble


Joe hamming it up, Tom focusing hard on teh books.

3rd Post in 3 Days

Yes, I've done it.

Take that corporate America.

3 days.

3 posts.

Now I'm back on average to one per month.

Eat it!

Ok, so I have to have some content. Katie and I were meandering on nice car ride today like good married young adults with children are supposed to do. Fa-la-la-la-la, drive by a house here and house there, and all of a sudden there is house that is 100% completely on fire. Head to toe. Burnin' like a motha to the ground. Hot diggity!

Now, I've never seen a house fire, much less an entire house on fire, but sweet lord it was site to behold. Someone's life has been tragically impacted: The terror, stress, emotion, sadness. And here's the ironic part: no further than 35 yards from this blazing ball of fire are 100+ people standing by, watching the fire with smiles on their faces. It seems so inappropriate. But I guess that's the role of being a spectator. So, I guess there should be a moral to this story, so, um, the next time you have a fire in your house, make sure to put it out before the whole house lights up.

ND Tickets - Quote of the weekend

Well, ND pooped on Vnak yet again. Another years of donations, another of year of no tickee. Unbelievable. From what I've heard, even Sorin Society members got screwed, and that cost $1,000. Oh well, I'll still be at a game this year university so your attempts at removing me from the stadium are futile, futile I say!

With regard to getting no tickets, I have to give credit to Philip Wells, Falto extradonaire, who summed up his results so beautifully suscint that the Master of Brevity himself, Ben Merello, would be proud.

Philip expounded on the Falto listserv "The lottery gods smote me with NO tickets this year. Like a battered wife, I blame myself. "

Genius.

PS: I don't know how to use spell check.

Happy 4th of July!

Well, well, 3 months have come to pass since we last updated the blog. What does that mean? Well, probably only one or two people will randomly check this. Either way we will make an update for those of you still showing some love.

A lot happens in 3 months, and are lives are no exception, so we will do the best to update the important news. Katie and I enjoy the blog, but there is barely time to get anything done much less update this on a regular basis. So, Katie and I are going to try to both post so that there is 1) some degree of frequency for updates, and 2) some diversity in opinion.

Oh Lawd, where do we start?

THe boys: every month, every week and every day bring something new. The boys are crawling, climbing, and talking like crazy. The only walking they do is along the furniture and occassionally a few steps here and there. The steps just started in the last week, which we are excited about, but downright terrified of. We have friends who have twin boys who are walking, and let's just say, we are in for a world of hurt. It will be exciting. In the middle of May, the boys got the rotavirus, which is a terrible, terrible stomach flu. It lasted and week for the boys and also attacked Mom and Dad. The boys like to say "Oh oh" "oh no" "Mom" "Dad" "Up" "Hot" "All Done". We've been trying to teach them sign language and they have the sign for "More" down pretty good. One of the biggest challenges now is the boys start to point and moan when they want something, but you as a parent have no idea what it is. And they don't stop until they get what they want. It's actually pretty entertaining if you aren't Mom or Dad. We celebrated their first birthday three weeks late. Way to go parents! We actually have very good reasons for being so delinquent: 1) the rotavirus, and numbers two and three are described below. The party was good fun: balloons, cake, inflatable monkeys, sausage, strippers, the essential party fare. Watching the boys eat their birthday cake was a blast. Tom picked up his entire piece and tried to eat it. The pictures below tell the story far better. In the last two weeks we've taken the boys swimming twice at Aunt Kelly and Uncle Keith's swimming abode which has turned out to be a bunch of fun for everybody. THe boys had their first haircut yesterday which was a few weeks overdue. Gone are the days of long hair over the ears and mohawks. Sexy is back and it's name is Vnak, Tom and Joe Vnak.

As for the family as a whole, we have been extremely busy since the beginning of May. We have been passively looking for a house. By passively I mean we are perfectly happy where we are living, but if the perfect home came about, we would jump on it. Well, the perfect home came about. Basically, my Dad found out about the house word of mouth and we looked at it like 4 times before we jumped on it. The big kicker is that no realtors were involved, so there were some big time savings involved. Once we move in, I'll take pictures and post them. So this whole process took about 3 weeks from the initial viewing to the final negotiations.

We went to Nick and Jen Kimlingers wedding at ND which was blast.

Did I mention the boys had the rotavirus? Ugh, it was bad.

So then we had to work are arse off to get our house in shape for being on the market. So, in about one week we half moved out of our place and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. The townhouse was on the market for 30 days and we had 3 open houses and about a dozen separate showings, but we just received and accepted an offer, so the townhome is officially sold. Let me tell you, keeping your house in pristine shape with two one year olds is no fun, so we are glad to be done.

We are excited to move on to the new home, but it is a big memory jerker when you start to think back about the old home. It was our first place after we were married. We remodeled the place from head to toe over 2.5 years, and then we had a first children there. It's a great place, and we will miss it, but the future will be fantastic and place we are moving to will be a great next step. It's a very family friendly street with an elementary school at the end of it, so we will be able to walk the boys to school. Change, in this case, is good.

So really, that's taken up the last few months. Now that townhome is sold we can worry less about cleaning and enjoy the rest of the summer, that is before we move.

Below are a bunch of pictures from the past few months, enjoy:

Here they are in their new Aussie hats!



Here's Tom when he first went swimming.


Here's a closer pic.


There's Joe and Tom together


Here they are laughing it up in a chair!


Birthday picture on the actual date of their birthday, not the delayed party.


Here's what I do when I get five minutes to myself, which is a rare occurance.


I told you I wasn't fibbing about the inflatable monkeys


Tom after cake anhiliation!


Joe afte cake destruction!


Easter rabbit ears!


Tom slamming a Sunkist.


Bath time with nephew Braden in middle


Money!


3 generations of Vnak men playing the piano!