Where'd October go?

What do you mean, it's November already?! What happened to October?

Oh, right, it was a busy month! Sorry for the crickets here on the blog!

The month began with our memorial service for Charlotte and Oliver on October 1st, the anniversary of Charlotte's death last year. We held the service in Georgia at the church where their great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother, great-great-aunt, and other family members are buried. We dedicated a memorial marker placed in the family plot. Many of our families were in attendance; it meant so much to us to be reminded of how many people love our children and are touched by their loss. It was a difficult event to plan and attend but we're so glad to have done so. The memorial turned out beautifully and it's so reassuring to have a permanent marker in their honor.

October 8th, we went to Baby Claire's first birthday party - what an event it was, and how wonderful it was to see Claire and her family again!

Next, my parents came up for a long (long!) weekend to help plan and execute a long-awaited major re-landscaping of our front yard. We took out some azaleas and nandinas that hadn't been doing well in the full sun, removed the black plastic sheeting (!) that had been used in place of landscape cloth, uprooted tons of grass and weeds, planted all sorts of new plants and re-mulched the existing beds, added two new garden beds, installed a stepping-stone walkway down to the mailbox, and more!

...Hmm. Although I have plenty of "before" and "during" photos, I seem to have failed to take any finished "after" pictures. I will try to remedy that soon - take my word for it, it's a HUGE improvement. Thanks Mom and Dad!

On Sunday of that weekend we had to make a trip to the emergency room because Eliza's g-tube fell out by accident. When that happens it's at risk of closing up quite rapidly, which would then possibly require surgery to re-open, so after a couple of failed attempts at reinserting it ourselves, we hurried to the ER. The ER doctor tried a bunch of times and also couldn't get it back in, so he finally called one of the pediatric surgeons to try - and of course she got it reinserted on the first try.  Thank goodness she did since Eliza was completely exhausted and in pain from all the repeated attempts. It took her a few days to feel herself again but it's all better now.

The following weekend, we took Eliza to the North Carolina State Fair for the first time. My sister Emily joined us for her first Fair too. We went first thing in the morning to avoid some of the crowds and parking issues and that turned out to be a very good idea. We saw prize-winning flowers, fruits, vegetables, and farm animals, ate too much fried food, and watched the BMX/motorcycle stunt show until Eliza got tired of the noise. All in all, a successful State Fair experience!

Eliza and I joined a "parent and child" swim class. The pool is too cold for her liking (I think she could use a baby wetsuit!) but other than that she's doing very well in the water. She's really good at the kicking part!

Then it was Halloween weekend! We took Eliza to a Halloween party on Saturday (for which Heather made some very cute cake pops), got Eliza's ears pierced Sunday, then stayed home Monday evening to hand out Halloween candy. Despite the cold and rain, there was quite a turnout of trick-or-treaters, but we were prepared and for the first time since moving into our house, we DIDN'T run out of candy halfway into the evening!

And of course in and around all of that, there's been everyday life with Eliza. She finally got over her ear infection and UTI from the beginning of the month pretty well, thank goodness. We've now successfully made it through her first sickness since being out of the hospital. Successful meaning no trips to the ER or hospital stays or too many parental freak outs.  Her bottom two teeth are continuing to come in, though she still won't show them off to us - we'll hope to get a picture as soon as she does! She's having some issues with low muscle tone in her eyes so she's having to wear an eye patch on alternate sides for a couple of hours each day to give them both a good workout. She's being a very good sport about that so far!

Plus there's all the other miscellaneous PT, OT, and DT... we're going in to the SICC for her one-year developmental evaluation on Thursday, so more on that subject after that!

Birthday Bash

Eliza's first birthday party was this past Saturday. We decided to have it at our house so that Eliza would be in a comfortable environment, but since our house and yard aren't that big it left us busting at the seams with people -- and it was great! We felt that this was quite a momentous occasion for our baby girl and wanted to celebrate with family and friends just how far she (and we as a family) have come in a year. From 1 lb 4 oz, 11 inches, micro-preemie knocking on death's door, to a 15 ½ lb, 26 inch, thriving happy baby that she is now. “How sweet it is!” That's exactly the sentiment we ran with for this party!

Eliza's sweets shop - candy, cupcakes, and snacks, oh my!

I set out some of Eliza's first baby clothes as a reminder of just how far she'd come. We also got a doll made by Wee Bundles to the exact size and weight Eliza was at birth. It's easy to forget just how small she was. She's come a LONG way!

We were fortunate to be able to have a professional photographer present to supplement the pictures we always forget to take! While we won't have the photos for a couple weeks yet, she's posted a preview on her blog and I have to say they look AMAZING! I can't wait to see the full set! Of course plenty of the guests brought cameras too - Eliza got to have her very own paparazzi experience! (If you got some good ones, we'd love to have copies...!)

And to give credit where credit is due:

A great big HUGE thanks to my mom for all her hard work on this party. She really did most of the work and it would have never turned out as well as it did without her!

Husband - way to rock the 1 year video! Thanks for your perseverance through the technology debacle:)

And a shout out to my friend Jean. She created the cute cupcake toppers and water bottle labels just for Eliza's party and also printed, cut-out, and shipped them to me! Thanks Jean!!

And to family who drove and flew up from GA to make the day special -- you guys are great!

"Finally! Party is over and I can get out of those clothes!"

Eliza's First Year

Despite my last post, I was finally able to finish the video retrospective of Eliza's first year. We played it at Eliza's birthday party (expect a post on that big event soon!) and it went over really well. I know I'm very happy with how the video turned out. My only real complaint is that it's very quiet - some of the clips we recorded when Eliza was in the hospital are very quiet, and since Windows Movie Maker doesn't seem to offer any way to increase the volume of a clip, I had to bring everything else down to the same volume level to match. Thus, you'll probably want to turn up your volume (and click the icon to view it full size/full screen!) when you watch it.

Enjoy!

Eliza's First Year from Heather Matthews on Vimeo.

Stupendously stupid slideshow software

In preparation for Eliza's upcoming birthday, I've been working on assembling a video slide show of the past year of her life. You've surely seen the type - photos and video clips, with captions and smooth transitions between images, all set to music. Pretty commonplace and straightforward to create, right? WRONG. This project has been unbelievably troublesome and frustrating so far, and there's probably more to come since I'm not done with it yet.

My first attempt was to create the slide show using Picasa. All of our photos and video from the last year are already in Picasa, and it offers slide show creation as a feature, so why not give it a try?

We have video clips from four different sources:

• Our video camera produces HD video clips in .MOV format.


• Hannah's video camera produces HD video clips in .MOV format.


• My iPod Touch produces video clips in .MOV format.


• Heather's iPod Touch produces video clips in .MOV format.

Guess what format Picasa doesn't handle properly in the slide shows it generates?

That's right - while the .MOV files play just fine from within Picasa, when splicing them into a slideshow, the video file becomes just a single still frame in the slide show. Naturally Picasa doesn't give you any warning or error message about this, either - it successfully creates a new video file of the entire slide show; only when playing through this video can you see that that 30 second clip of Eliza taking her first bath at home has been replaced with a single blurry frame of the back of Heather's head.

Seriously? It's 2011, folks - I thought the whole incompatible audio/video file formats situation had long since been solved. I remember dealing with this kind of problem back in 1998, for goodness sake! The .mov format has been around a LONG time - this is like having a photo program that doesn't know how to handle .jpeg files or something.

It gets better - searching the Picasa user forums, this has been an issue for at least two years. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but Google doesn't provide actual tech support, nor does it provide ANY way for you to actually get in touch with its employees. If you have a problem with a Google product, your options are:

1) Read whatever documentation pages Google has provided just in case it was user error or something. (It wasn't)

2) Check the Google user forums to see if others have seen the same problem (they have, for several years) and if anyone has managed to come up with a workaround (nothing definitive, but various solutions). Again, these are USER forums - all of the questions and answers are coming from people like you. No one from Google who actually knows anything actually reads these forums or replies to them. For all I can tell, Google might have no idea this bug even exists (how would you bring it to their attention, after all, since there's no way to contact them?).

So I found a couple of possible workaround ideas on the user forums. First - "Just rename them from .mov to .mp4 to fool Picasa, it handles .mp4 much better" - no luck. Second - "Install this megapack of third party video codecs from a dubious website" - hmm, well I think Heather's PC's antivirus software is up to date, so what the hey, let's try it - interesting, when I start creating the slideshow, about 40 little icons get added to the Windows side bar, but they go away when it's finished - hey look, the slide show now includes video clips - but not the associated audio. Oh well, it's not like it would be nice to HEAR Eliza giggling at her Pops or anything...

At the same time, I was also getting frustrated with other limitations in Picasa's slide show creation - most notably, the fact that all of the picture captions were rendered in white text, regardless of the background color. White text on a pale grey background doesn't exactly make for readability.

So surely this is just a matter of Picasa's slide show functionality being an afterthought - Picasa is after all primarily an application for image importing, retouching, and organizing - and some other program would be much better? I did some searching online and found some sites that spoke highly of the Windows Movie Maker program, which is free with Windows. Surely a "Movie Maker" program would have all of the necessary functionality to make home movies with, right?

So, not having learned my lesson, viz., that free applications are often worth what you paid for them, I began trying to recreate the slide show in Windows Movie Maker. First problem? You guessed it - Windows Movie Maker doesn't natively support .MOV either. @#^#$^%#%!!%#^%$^#$$$$!!!! How can it be that three different models of consumer video camera output this format, yet neither of these apps supports it?

Time to do some more web searching. Oh look - here's a free program, with lots of glowing reviews, that can convert between many different video formats, including from .MOV to the .avi or .wmv formats that Movie Maker prefers. So I download it and feed the video clips into it. Ooh, nice GUI, very polished looking. It runs for 15 minutes or so and produces a batch of .avi files, just what I needed! Only not. I open the files and the video within is complete garbage, just a mosaic of randomly colored squares and shapes. Apparently this app doesn't like my video files. Why did it run to completion producing garbage instead of giving me a simple warning message that the format wasn't supported?

Time to do some more web searching. All of these video clips use the H.264 codec, which is not specific to .MOV versus .avi - .mov and .avi are just two different kinds of containers for the actual video data within. Maybe there's some way I can use that? I stumble across a site that provides a simple plugin to allow programs that can read .avi to read the video data out .mov files too. I install it and it actually works - Movie Maker can see and play my videos! The one caveat (which nothing on the site warned about) is that videos played through this plugin have a little badge (sort of like a TV station identification logo) superimposed on them. Ah well, at least it's pretty unobtrusive...

Okay, I've got all of the pictures and all of the video clips loaded into Movie Maker. Let's try constructing a test video to make sure it's all working - I don't want any more surprises with clips turning into stills or disappearing audio! I tell the program to publish the video. It starts a progress bar, showing that it'll take about an hour to render. I leave it alone, checking back periodically on its progress. It finally finishes - but what's this message?

Windows Movie Maker cannot publish the movie to the specified location. Verify the original source files used in your movie is still available, that the publishing location is still available, that there is enough free disk space available, and then try again.

What.

Time to do more web searching. Apparently this error, too, is a frequently encountered issue, and naturally, no one seems quite sure what the trigger or triggers are. Possibilities include not enough RAM (Heather's computer has 4 GB, which should be enough for a 20-minute video!), not enough disk space (unlikely, there's 60+ GB free), incompatible codecs or file types (hmm, perhaps?), or perhaps just that the project is "too complicated" for Movie Maker to handle (maybe also...). After some further investigation, it appears that the latter is to blame. By splitting the project in half, each half is able to render successfully. Supposedly it will then be simple to just splice the two halves back together to create the final video... I haven't tried yet, but I'm trying to be optimistic that it will really be that simple.

If you're still reading this, my apologies. I just had to get this off my chest. I do really like how the video is coming along - it won't be a professional production, and there's always going to be room for improvement, but I really do think the end result will be fun to watch and will be a good summation of the high points of the last year. Hopefully it'll be done soon!

Happy 30th Birthday Heather!

Today is Heather's 30th birthday. I've only known her for six of those thirty years but they've been the best six years of my life.

Heather isn't one of those people who insists on staying "29 years old" at this point. She recognizes her 30th birthday as a milestone in life but hasn't been obsessing about it or worrying about what it "means" to turn 30. It has probably helped that Eliza has kept us both busy enough lately that Heather hasn't had much time to think about it, but I think that Heather wouldn't be bothered by it even if she had all the time and energy in the world. She's sensible like that. I hope I'll be equally sensible when my 30th birthday approaches in ... oh my god, less than a year! Panic! (Just kidding...?)

Some people have goals for what they want to accomplish before they turn 30, or 35, or whatever. Two years ago, we agreed that we wanted to have a child before we turned 30. I'd say we accomplished that indeed, although certainly not in a way that either of us would have ever expected. That's life, isn't it? It makes me wonder what expectations we have now that will have been fulfilled (or not) in unexpected ways by our next milestone.

But enough of such musings... today we have a birthday to celebrate, a 30th birthday, a 30th birthday of a woman I love deeply.

Heather, this last year has shown so much more of your depth and strength of character and will. When you were pregnant and on bed rest, I was impressed with how steadfast and calm you were in handling the daily ups and downs and challenges. When our babies were born far too soon, I was amazed with your courage and dedication in learning the ways of the ICN so that you could be their best possible advocate and defender. When first Oliver and then Charlotte died, you grieved but remained strong for Eliza's sake. As Eliza stayed in the hospital for what seemed an eternity, you dedicated yourself to spending every day by her side and caring for her in every way you could. Now that she is home, and I see you working so hard every day to being the best mother you can be, I am continually humbled by your focus, your insight and understanding of our daughter, and your dedication to doing everything possible to help her to overcome the challenges she faces and excel at everything life has to offer her. You are truly an amazing woman and mother.

Happy birthday, Heather! I hope this birthday is your best one yet and marks the start of a wonderful new decade!

Love,

Glenn

Year in Recap: 2010 (Heather's PoV)

I saw this on another blog that I read and thought it would be a good exercise in summarizing this unbelievable year that we've had. Here is my best try with my terrible memory.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Wheew this is a hard one to answer considering how much has happened to us this year. Just a highlight of the main ones:
Trained for a triathlon. Jogged (for part of the time!) in the Krispy Kreme Challenge. Got pregnant --pregnant with triplets even!. Canceled a cruise vacation. Saw my doctors far more often than I saw anyone else. Visited the ER. Went on bed rest. Stayed in a hospital (several times!) over night (many nights!). Had an emergency C-section. Gave birth to triplets. Lost my son. Watched my daughter die. Quit a job I liked. Learned oh so much about the neonatal intensive care unit. Gained some insight on how it feels to be a mother and the strength required to be one.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I never really make specific resolutions anymore since it is too easy to fail at them and then feel terrible about it. But I did plan to be more physical and possibly participate in a triathlon. Glenn and I both committed to the training and did a really great job I think. We both got bikes, joined a pool, and trained about 5 days a week. The triathlon was scheduled for May and a month before it I got pregnant and really sick with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. I had to stop training and couldn't participate in the race. I'm sad that I wasn't able complete it but I am still proud of how hard we worked to get there. One day I hope to get there again.
Looking ahead to 2011:
I would like to be better at remembering the special moments. I think I am pretty good at living in them ( Hope so at least!) but as for recalling them later, I suck. Whatever I need to do to accomplish this... writing on the blog, taking more pictures, doing SOMETHING with the pictures, video, taking ginko biloba, or whatever works at the time.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes, me! And a good friend had twins in the spring!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yes. Two of my triplets. Oliver when he was 3 days old due to internal bleeding (a liver subdural hematoma). Charlotte when she was a little over 3 weeks old due to a klebsiella infection and intestinal perforations.

5. What countries did you visit?
None.
 First year in many that I have stayed in the USA the entire time.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
A more boring, predictable, plannable year.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
So many.

• Easter: when I found out we actually had ovarian follicles for only the second time in a year and that we actually had a chance of pregnancy.
• April: Found out I was pregnant.
• May: Found out I was expecting triplets.
• July: Beginning of major pregnancy complications, strict bed rest and last day of working in the office.
• August 27th: Devastating OB visit resulting in hospitalization for rest of pregnancy.
• August 30th: Eliza's water breaks.
• September 8th: Babies' birthday
• September 11th: Oliver passes away
• October 1st: Charlotte passes away
• September & October: The most brutal months of my life to date

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Getting pregnant, and surviving the last 4 months.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not being able to keep the babies in for longer than 24weeks 2 days. Everyone says there was nothing I could have done and that I did everything possible to keep them in for as long as I did --But its still my FAILURE.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yeah the pregnancy was rough... ovarian hyperstimulation, retinal occlusion, cerclage, 3 hospital stays...

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Trip insurance for the cruise we had to cancel at the last minute.
A crib off of Craigslist that ended up being recalled. We got a voucher from the company for a brand new one. :)
A chest freezer for all of the breast milk we are storing

12. Where did most of your money go?
Baby stuff

13. What did you get really excited about?
Pregnant!! Triplets!!

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
– happier or sadder? Happier and sadder
– thinner or fatter? About the same but in much poorer shape.
– richer or poorer? About the same.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Relegated myself to the bed/couch the moment I found out I was expecting triplets despite the conflicting advice. Maybe it would have made a difference.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worried about how we would afford and care for triplets.

18. How did you spend Christmas?
At the hospital with Eliza, just Glenn and I. Then at a friends for the evening. My family came into town at 3 in the morning the next day. They spent the entire night driving through the snow so they could be here with us before we were all snowed in. At 3:30am our electricity went out. Luckily we had enough blankets to stay warm for the 9 hours it was out. It was one of the strangest Christmas's ever but it was still great. If nothing else, this year has taught us to roll with the punches and to never plan anything in stone.

19. What was your favorite TV program?
Dexter, Breaking Bad, United States of Tara, Nurse Jakie, Modern Family

20. What were your favorite books of the year?
Sookie Stackhouse books. Thanks to my sister for lending them to me.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

Mumford & Sons, Matt & Kim, Ke$ha, Regina Spektor

22. What were your favorite films of the year?
How to Train Your Dragon, Inception, Date Night

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Turned 29. Glenn made me breakfast, went out to lunch with friends and had dinner with more friends!

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Argh. Don't like this question. What would make me immeasurably happier RIGHT NOW? Eliza being healthy, happy and at home in my arms. :)

25. What kept you sane?
HAHAHAHA - who said I'm sane? NOT!!

26. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
When all else fails, just one step in front of the other. Do what you gotta do, man.

Happy Due Day!

Today is the original due date (40 weeks gestation) for our babies. December 27. Eliza is now 110 days old, or zero days adjusted age. She weighs just shy of 3 and a half pounds today. It's a bittersweet day since we're happy that Eliza is here and doing as well as she is, but this milestone makes us especially miss Oliver and Charlotte and wonder what they would be like at this age.

The latest change in Eliza's plan seems to be working well for her. Previously, because she was not growing again, and kept dumping her food undigested out of her ostomy, they kept decreasing her food and increasing her TPN (intravenous) nutrition to give her more guaranteed calories and nutrients (since the TPN doesn't need to be digested and can't be dumped). But restricting her food intake so much was making her hungry and fussy, so she was burning extra calories by fussing, not the desired outcome!

On Christmas Day, one of our favorite nurse practitioners came up with a clever new approach - increase Eliza's TPN to where it provides all of her caloric and nutritional needs, and instead of giving her any fixed amount of food on a fixed schedule, just let her eat when she acts hungry, with food that gets successfully digested instead of dumped being a bonus rather than a part of her base nutritional requirements.

So far this new plan seems to be working really well. She's eating about every three hours, eating a LOT (nearly as much as she was being given before), acting content and sleeping a lot, and gaining weight fast. We hope it continues!

Birthdays and Snow

So for Glenn's birthday last weekend I tried to make a cake. He had requested chocolate and decadent so I found a baileys chocolate cake recipe I thought would fit the bill.. Oh what a disaster. Pretty much every single way it could go wrong, it went wrong, including not tasting good. I blame the recipe. ENTIRELY. Look at this work of art. I should have just stopped at the first inkling of disaster but I kept going..



Sooo the second attempt went A LOT better. Chocolate Reeses cake. Yummy.

Glenn's parents and family friend came up on Saturday and fortunately helped us eat it. They also brought us our wedding anniversary 3rd anniversary gift. It was a long time coming but worth the wait! Beautiful handmade mahogany china cabinet. Gene is quite the woodworker!



This past weekend we headed out to Asheville for one of Glenn's brother's 40th birthday party. Unfortunately we were snowed in and weren't able to see the sites but we made the most of it and had a good time playing board games and playing in the several inches of snow.















Once we got back home and discovered we had as much snow as Asheville, Pasha had a grand time running around and checking things out. You can see a video of her here. The snow has been pretty but im glad its melted off the streets today and life can go back to normal.