Friday, July 23, 2010

The outpouring...

Wow!

Just WOW!!!

Thanks to everyone for their congratulations and heartfelt offerings of blessings and support.

Melissa and I are simply overwhelmed at the outpouring.

Our very best wishes to all of you and your families.

We were also extremely surprised at the great suggestions we received for names for the Vogel Twins!

Some examples are below:


Ronde and Tiki
Mary Kate and Ashley
Tiger and Elin
Brent and Matt

Jake and Gabe
Thunder and Lightning
Hawk and Animal


Clearly some are going to be better received than others by my darling wife!

Thanks for the suggestions!  Keep them coming!

The Vogels

Monday, July 19, 2010

TWINS!!! Update 7-20-2010


Melissa and Mike are proud to announce that we are expecting fraternal twins!!!


Here are the facts for those who just want the nuts n’ bolts:

What - Fraternal Twins

Due - Full term is Jan 26th, but twins often come about a month early.

Sex – Won’t know until at least September.  We are finding out.

Names- Don't have them, but won't share them when we do.  

Fertility drugs – Nope.  This is au natural.

How’s Melissa feeling – Pretty normal… a little tired, a little averse to food, but not sick.

House sold?  No.  We dropped the price and are hoping.  If we can’t have the process finished by November (when we’re in full-on “baby mode”) we’ll stick here until we’ve got our feet back under us and try again.

Mongo and Bongo - Like Mike was EVER going to win that battle.  Dream on!

Families excited?  Duh.


So those are the facts… the rest of the story is below if you’d like to have a quick read.


Melissa and I “stopped preventing” in 2010.  We were successful.  We are potent.   On June 1st Melissa took a home pregnancy test and we found out the good news.  We decided to keep it a secret from everyone but ourselves for a while to be sure that everything was ok and as Melissa describes it, “not to jinx ourselves.” 

So we began our secret preparations, buying a book or two and looking a little differently at the world through the lenses as expecting parents. 

Around June 15th, Melissa was experiencing some cramping that worried her a little bit, so she visited with her doctor (hadn’t picked an OB yet) and as a precaution they had her go in for an ultrasound to make sure all was good.

All was good and normal for a multiple pregnancy.  We were shocked.  There’s no real history of twins in our families and aside from a large quantity of baby-makin’ we were business as usual.  No fertility drugs or treatments.

With this little bit of new information, we set ourselves on a slightly different course.  Multiple births tend to happen a little earlier than normal pregnancies… which for tax purposes has Mike excited – deductions for 2010 YES!!! 

However, we’re also keenly aware that we no longer outnumber the little ones giving them a significant advantage, especially early on. 

We decided with the tightened schedule that we’d tell our families and friends who have close interaction (like a Lake Weekend over the 4th of July) but still wait until we had our “First Trimester” checkup to go public with our news.  And with some shock and great enthusiasm, our families have embraced our news.

Early this week we had our First Trimester checkup and all is looking good.  

2 healthy kids. 

For those of you whom we had to tell the occasional fib or gave a minor misdirection to, we apologize and promise to understand when you deceive us some day.  For those who have kept our guarded secret, our thanks for your help.

As you might expect, we’re incredibly excited, wonderfully proud, and like most first-timers a little nervous about the journey before us. 

We’ll continue to update this blog as we travel on this journey and will let you know when updates happen.

Please feel free to leave comments in the section below for everyone to share. 

Our love and best wishes to all our friends and family!

-Mike and Melissa