So today I (Diana Lobato) am starting a 12 week herb cleanse. If you are wondering why it's because I started feeling nauseous last september and after what felt like about 100 pregnancy tests and 50 different doctor visits I got my gallbladder out ( big sad regret) and I was still feeling nauseous. So I read a book called "Never be Sick Again" by Ramond Francis and also a book called "The Detox Miracle Diet". Both of those books talked about healing your body through wholistic treatment such as herbs and natural vitamins and RAW FOODS. So, here I am six months later with the first package of herbs weeks 1 and 2 and starting my journey to optimum health. Although the nausea subsided months ago ( Reasons still unknown ) there are many other areas where my body can use some rejuvenating. So! For twelve weeks I will be taking one dropper full of all the herb tinctures you see above morning noon and night before each meal along with three capsules of the bowel formula to keep things healthy and moving along smoothly. I have to maintain an 80 to 100% raw food diet while taking the herbs for best cleansing results. So this morning I blended together 1 and a half banana, 2 oranges, 4 strawberries, 1 kiwi, 1 pear, and some ice. It was delicious, unlike the herbs which tasted like hot saki mixed with ginger. Yuck. It says to "burn the alcohol off" by simmering 1 to 3 ounces of water, put it in a glass and add all your dropper fulls of herbs into the water. It tasted like I had taken an 8 ounce shot of hot vodka. Not pleasant.

Although I got these herbs a week ago I have not been able to start the cleanse because we have not had groceries ( raw foods) and I was able to go and get some yesterday. Greg had gotten movie tickets for 7pm and I only had an hour to shop, during rush hour, with our 18 month old boys. Let me tell you that was a challenge! The shopping carts at Sunflower market are not big enough for 2 children and I go there because they have a good assortment of organic produce. I put Leon in the child seat of the cart and Julian in the big basket and start dashing for groceries like a mad woman. As I am putting food in the cart Julian is grabbing it out of the bags and trying to eat it. I am trying to weigh the fruit as Julian again is stepping on all the tomatoes and cucumbers I jut put in the cart. He is saying "Nana! Nana!" because he wants a banana and doesn't understand the concept of paying for the food before we can eat it yet. So I end up having to carry Julian in one arm just to keep him from crying for not being able to eat the food surrounding him, I am pushing the cart with one hand and trying to juggle getting a produce bag and fill it with salad greens and everything else I am trying to scramble to buy before the movie starts, not to mention I still have to drop off the boys with Gregs mom Patricia who is 30 minutes away before the movie. I had to get my shopping done on Wednesday because they have double ad that day so there are double the things on sale. Well, after I managed to get everything I forgot about the construction that was going on on state street and ended up calling my sister Cathy to babysit since she lives right next to the jordan commons where our movie was. All ended up working out. I sort of went on a junk food binge last night knowing I was starting this cleanse today so I picked up snacks before the movie for Greg and I which consisted of dougnuts, peach o's, a coke, laffy taffy, kit kat, twix, and a mini cheese pizza from the theatres pizza hut. Wow, talk about indulge!

Among other things Greg recently got a promotion at Market Star and they upscoped his new team which means he is getting ANOTHER RAISE!! :) Which we desperately need! Now don't get me wrong, Greg makes plenty of money to support us already but since he bought me the 07 corolla in december 10 and himself a brand new 2012 corolla last summer times have been tight. I am so proud of him for being so good at his job and being able to support a family, I know that must be hard work for him but he carries it well.

Julian and Leon are mama's boys and they are too adorable for words. They give each other kisses and rub each others back while saying "nay" which means Nice. They love to play in the car and pretend to drive. They love air planes in the sky and playing in sand. What else can I say, they are just wonderful:)

They finally came home! ;) I was so happy this day and also realized I had no idea how to care for a baby, let alone two babies. Mine and Greg's thoughts were as follows. " Are they cold? Are they hot? Are they breathing? Are they hungry? What do we dress them in? Where should we put them? Where should we ourselves be? Put the dog out. Is it to loud? etc. etc. As new parents we were very high strung. Me, being stressed to the max with the nursing two babies every three hours on top of everything else I was worried about, was turning gray on the spot. The first thing Greg did when we got home was put on the movie Avatar because he wanted to do what he loved with the babies and that was watch a movie. One of the awful nurses at the hospital had told me that we should'nt let anyone near them for six weeks because they are very suseptible to sickness since they are so new and small. If they get sick they will be up at primary childrens with higher security than the NICU, I wouldn't be able to hold them, they would be on respirators, they could DIE and all the awful things you can imagine. So, we told everyone we didn't want visitors but of course Greg's parents were the first one's to come over. That first night I was listening to them sleep and heard Leon with a little congestion, like a tiny snore. I immediately FREAKED out and panicked, burst out into tears, started pacing the floor, called the hospital in a panic, the nurse said just to suck his boogers with the booger sucker and not to worry unless he couldn't breathe through them. That calmed me down but I hate that nurse for making me more stressed than I already was. I was so determined to nurse that I woke up with them every three hours, changed one baby's diaper, nursed him, changed his clothes if needed, swaddled him, and put him in his crib. Then changed the other baby's diaper, nursed him, changed his clothes, swaddled him, and put him back in his crib. Sometimes this took 45 minutes and sometimes it took an hour and a half, so that would leave me with an hour and a half to two hours of sleep before the next round. This went on for about 3 or 4 months. All I have to say is thank goodness for family and I survived! I never woke Greg up at night to feed them since I was nursing, and our rule from the beginning has been never to bring them into our bed to sleep. I know how easy and addicting this has been for other mom's and I didn't want it to become an unbreakable habit so we have always had our bed for us and their beds for them. The first night they were home I slept them in their bassinett next to our bed but since I was so sensitive to every peep I couldn't ever fall asleep so the Dr. suggested I put them in their own room in their own beds so I could get some rest. So I did. And since their second night home they have slept in their own room.

Julian rolled first, crawled first, and walked first. He is my little dare devil, Julian will attempt everything untill he get's it right. Leon is a little sweetheart and when he decides to do something it is deliberate and perfected. In a nutshell this last year has brought us two new cars ( an 07 toyota corolla and a 11 toyota corolla) BIG MISTAKES! Our pug Chato died :( (Sad day), my 13 year old cat Baby died who stayed at my dad's when I got married ( Another sad day ),Greg and I had our two year anniversarry, the babies turned 1. We had their first birthday party here at our house in West Jordan. We got a room mate ( Greg's best buy friend Gabe Perez moved into our basement from August 11 to Feb 11 as a favor to us so we could get a little extra income), Julian's first steps were on December 24th 2011 and Leon's first steps were on January 23rd 2012. Both of them are still a little wobbly but they're getting better everyday:)

Recently (last weekend) we drove down to Mexico as a family with my dad and sister and her daughter to visit my family. My grandma had a stroke last year and my dad wanted to go down and see her. It was 12 hours one way and it was hard on the babies but not as hard as when we did a road trip to New Mexico with Greg for a business trip last year with them when they were just 8 months old and had to stop alot more frequently because of blow outs in the car seat. To add to the "Vacations" if you would even categorize the above in that category, Greg won a trip to Maui, Hawaii at his amazing work and he gets to take ME! We are leaving feb 6th and come back the 12. I am going to miss my baby boys so much since the longest I have spent away from them has been one night but at the same time I am so excited to be going to Maui with Greg and bike down a volcano and go to a luau:) I hope I have covered the important parts of this last year and a half and will try to remember to update our blog more frequently. Life is good:)

"Baby B" Leon Gregory Lobato

Ok, I hadn't realized that it has been over a year since I have updated our blog so I will try and cover everything important. Our sweet boys were born at exactly 36 weeks ( exactly one month early). I was at home thinking maybe I was havig braxton hicks (fake contractions) but I didn't know for sure since I hadn't felt them before and I didn't know what to expect. So I started counting minutes between them just in case they were real. Reuben (Greg's brother) came over on his way home from work that night to bring me a grounding device and stayed untill after one thirty in the morning, since Greg and I are night owls that was not out of the ordinary. Right around 2:20 am I was laying in bed trying to go to sleep and my water breaks! Greg was laying next to me and I was like " Oh shoot.... Oh shoot, oh shoot, oh shoot! I think my water just broke." Greg jumps up and grabs me a towel as I carefully get up and walk to the bathroom i say " it's still going!" So naturally as everyone does, I get in the shower. Why everyone get's in the shower when their water breaks is unknown to me but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. I am sitting down in the tub thinking "this isn't it, I don't feel like i'm in labor" so I tell Greg just that and he tells me to call my midwife just to make sure. So I do and sure thing she says " if your water broke you are in labor girl, you need to go to the hospital" LOL. Shows how much I knew. So Greg being in a panick called Reuben back over, I don't know why since Reuben had never had kids before but I'm thinking just for moral support for Greg. So we pack up and go to the hospital, wait, get the epidural, wait, finally around 5 am we felt it was safe to call the family and tell them we were about to have the babies! Now since I had wanted the genders to be a surprise everyone was that much more anxious for the arrival of these twins. I was feeling every contraction even with the epidural in place which didn't hurt but I could definately still feel everything and that made for my cathedar to be very painful so they ended up taking it out per my very strong request. Finally they make greg put on a full body suit and shoe covers and a hair cover and a mask as we enter the operating room for me to deliver. Even though I wasn't planning on having a C section they had to deliver me in there since it was a " high risk" delivery, it was a very sterile and scary looking room. All white and with super bright big lights shining on me. I was able to move my legs and transfer myself from my bed to the operating table and that right there told me that the epidural was not working as it was supposed to. As the contractions started getting stronger I started feeling more pain, and as we hadn't taken any birthing classes I had no idea what I was doing. I started getting a fever and all my push attempts were getting nowhere. The doctor would tell me to push and hold my breath for 10 seconds while holding my own legs up, after a few of these I was ready to pass out. Not to mention the IV in my arm was in just the right place so when I would bend my arm it was super painful so every contraction I would push and hold and get dizzy with no result. Finally, and if you have never had kids you wouldnt know this, my midwife says "push like your trying to have a bowel movement" (tmi sorry) and miraculously i feel baby A start moving down the hatch. Now that we are making progress the baby shows it's head and the nurses start to take guesses on the gender based on it's crown. Haha! Me being on the top end not seeing anything I was listening to everything as one nurse says "it's a girl!" and I get alarmed not knowing the baby was out that much to tell as she says again " it looks like a girl head".... OMG! I was a little annoyed at them making me think the baby was something when they were just guessing. A couple more pushes and baby A is born. I hear "IT'S A BOY!!" and i hear baby's first cry and look at Greg and start to cry myself. Greg had been sitting next to my head the whole time rubbing my hair. The Dr. hands Baby A to greg to hold before they take him away and we await the contractions for baby B to get ready to come out. I guess with all that new room baby B decides to move around and flips or something because the Dr. reaches up inside of me and turns the baby in my belly, this was the most painful thing I have ever felt, next to giving birth of course. 20 minutes go by as I think " oh no I have to do that again!" and out comes baby B and I hear "IT'S A BOY!!", I look at Greg again and start to cry as I hear baby B's first cries. This time they put him on my chest and let me hold him before they take him away. My first thought is pure joy and as I look at him I think " who is this little stranger that I love so much" It is weird how the first time I laid eyes on this little person I felt like I knew him and yet didn't at the same time. Needless to say the labor went fabulous, no C section needed and I was rolled back to my regular hospital room, Greg went to the waiting room and announced to the waiting family that it was two healthy baby boys. For some reason the NICU (New born intensive care unit) was very busy that day. Since the boys were born a month early they were taken straight there and put in an incubator. I was very motivated to nurse my twins and so I wanted to go and see them and get started. For three hours they kept me from my babies and I was livid. Every time I called down to the NICU they said I could'nt come down to see them yet. This made me very angry. Finally I called and wa fed up and they said " oh i'm sorry no one told you, our doors have been open for an hour now", as you can imagine I was furious. So I went down and saw my two boys for the first real time together and they were beautiful. The lactation nurse helped me do the first attempt at nursing, and after that I went down to the NICU every three hours to nurse, determined not to let the nurses give them formula. We stayed an extra day on top of the three that they keep you at the hospital so I could continue to nurse and when I went home I was forced to let them feed them formula since I did not have a supply of breast milk to give them overnight. The nurses at St. Marks Hospital NICU were very difficult with me wanting to nurse them by the way and I ended up having a break down with the head nurse over how awful they were making me feel for wanting to nurse my babies. Reguardless, ten days later both of my babies came home the same day, with no medicines or oxygen or machines or special instructions like all the nurses told me would happen. I strongly beleive this was because of mamas magic milk:) And that covers up to the day we brought them home.

"Baby A" Julian Gregory Lobato