Hey everyone!!

Can you believe the twins are already 4 weeks old?! Where has August gone?!?

We’ve had kind of a big busy week again (maybe I should stop calling it busy and just accept that this is life now haha!)

In my last update I mentioned that Elsie would potentially be coming home with us, and without Eli. She officially past all her tests and came home with us Wednesday night which has been such a joy as well as causing some guilt and sadness with leaving Eli behind (and we’re definitely getting a lot less sleep!)

It was so fun loading her in her car seat, bringing her outside for the first time ever and bringing her home. But also hard leaving Eli earlier in the day so that we could get Elsie home, get somewhat settled in, and realize even with everything we’re learning by being in the NICU we still have no idea what we’re doing!! “Where can we set her down? Is she only meant to be on flat surfaces? Should we set up the baby monitor? Is her eating weird?” All kinds of stuff hahaha (having to figure out how to keep her oxygen tank close and not realizing that if she sucks too hard on a bottle it stops working properly didn’t help... we probably looked nuts!)

With Elsie home that means we load her up and bring her with us back to the NICU during the day so that we can still be with Eli. That first day we brought Elsie back the the NICU felt so weird to have her in the same room but with no monitors and technically no help from the nurses either since she’s been discharged (but they still help when they can, thank goodness!! Otherwise I’m not sure how I would ever get to go pee or eat!)

We’ve been told that Eli is doing really well and not too far behind, but as usual that still means no firm date! He also got circumcised Thursday which was CRAZY to watch and another good sign that he’ll be coming home pretty soon! He took it like a champ and now just has to heal up and keep eating as much as he can on his own.

(Also, in case you’re curious about why they would send home one twin before the others, the very over simplified answer is that it’s all about insurance. Our doctors did their best to keep Elsie a bit longer but since she had hit all her milestones insurance gets huffy about continuing to cover her costs if it seems like she doesn’t need it...)

If you’re still following along and interested in our prayer requests here’s what we could use some specific prayer for...

Good communication! Sam and I are usually able to stay on the same page and communicate well but parenting is a whole new thing (we have no idea what we’re doing almost all of the time) and we’re both tired (which means our brains are a little slower, HA!) so we’ve been on totally different pages more often than we’re used to, and more on edge which all just leads to us feeling disconnected.

Patience! All around I think we could use more. Patience for Eli learning to feed, patience for each other and with others, etc.

Eli feeding well! He’s continually making slow steady progress which is amazing!! BUT with that being the last hurdle to get him home we want his feeding to take off so that we can all be home as a family and start settling in to our real routines rather than needing to factor commuting into our daily schedule.

Our biggest praise right now is for how well Elsie has been doing since birth. She was always the one at risk during my pregnancy, so to have her out, and healthy and already at home with us is seriously AMAZING! We’re beyond grateful to have TWO healthy happy Toner babies that we get to love on and snuggle and kiss all day.

Thanks for all your continued love and support! We’ll check in again soon!!

-the Toners