Say What?!?!?

OMG are they twins?  Are they identical? Are they fraternal? They look so much alike! They look nothing alike!  How do you not know?  ----Yup, those are the same questions I get asked on a regular daily basis.  If that wasn't exhausting enough, I hated not being able to give an answer.  Sometimes I would just say no they're fraternal just to shut people up, but honestly the "not" knowing was eating me alive.  As a mother, how did I not know what my little girls are? I know I always make fun of people for asking me so many silly twin questions but the truth of the matter is I don't really blame them.  Before I found out I was pregnant with twins, I didn't know anything about it either.  I, too, was ignorant about the subject.  So before I can jump into the whole finding out thing....let me give you a quick lesson on twins lol.

There are three types of twins:

• Mono/mono - This means both babies share a sac AND a placenta, therefore they are identical.  This means that they come from one egg. Identical twins can only be the same sex; girls or boys.  Boy/girl twins are NEVER identical.
•  mono/di-  This means the babies are in separate sacs but share the same placenta.  This also means the babies are identical unless they had different placentas but ended up fussing together.  In that case, they babies can be fraternal.  Yes, I know, a bit confusing.
• di/di- This means the babies are in separate sacs and separate placentas.  This typically means the twins are fraternal, from two different fertilized eggs.  There is however, a 20-30% chance that the babies could be identical.  This means one egg spit in half and separated very early on.

*Identical twins can happen to anyone.  It's a "freak of nature."  The egg splits into two. Your chance of having twins again does not increase.
*Fraternal twins is genetic or happen through fertility drugs.  Two eggs are fertilized.  This is also common in older mothers over 35.  If the twins were conceived naturally, then the chance of having twins again increases quadruples.  Fraternal twins may look similar or different, just like siblings, they just happen to be the same age.

My twins are Di/Di twins.  They didn't share a thing lol. In my head it made sense.  Twins run in my family.  Yup, I thought my body dropped two eggs and boom...TWINS!  I still knew there was that small chance they could be identical.  Once we found out the sex we still couldn't be 100% sure because both babies were girls.  Then we found out that they had the same blood type because Brad and I have the same blood type and therefore all of our children will have the same blood type.  Yup, still no answer. 

Once the babies were born I could tell them apart right away.  Still to this day they look so different to me.  But I also know that they have many similarities: same color eyes, same color hair etc.  So after thinking about it for a very long time, we decided to do the zygosity test. My friend recommended the same place she used to find out what her twins were, Proactive Genetics.  So I went online and bought the zygosity kit. It was so weird because I got really anxious as soon as I bought it. I even started to sweat lol. 

After a few days we finally received the kit with all of the instructions.  We had to do several cheek swabs on two different days. 

 

 

Juliana thought it was so funny to have that in her mouth.  Isabella hated it.  She's like get this thing away from me haha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I mailed it, the waiting game begun.  Deep in my heart I always felt my girls were fraternal.  How can my two distinct little girls be identical?  However, a part of me wanted them to be identical so that in the future we could have baby #3 and not worry about having twins again.  Then finally the results came...  I had to wait until Brad came home from the gym to see the results together!

 



Ahhh I didn't have to read this at all.  I could see right away in bold letters...IDENTICAL!!!!  Say What?!?!?! I cried.  I was so happy to finally know.  I was very happy with the results.  I mean how cool...to think that my egg split in half!!!!  Brad must have super sperm haha.  I spent the next few days thanking the girls for splitting lol.  I'm so lucky to be amongst the few to have di/di identical twins.  I'm so blessed that this "freak of nature" happened to me us.  I can't imagine life without my little twins!!!

♥I hear that identical twins share an even stronger bond ♥

Half Way to TWO!

Can you guys believe that our twinkies are 18 months old?!?!?! Seriously, time is flying by, which reminds me that I will be 27 in less than a month...eww.  It's so hard to picture life before the girls.  I feel like they have been around my whole life.  I can't thank God enough for blessing us with them.  They're beautiful, healthy and happy...it doesn't get any better than that =)  Yesterday we found out they are IDENTICAL (blogging about that soon!).  Here are a few pictures of our 18 month photo shoot.  Taking pictures of them is getting harder and harder.  They don't want to stop for a second.  All they want to do is explore and run around.  Enjoy!

 My beautiful family ♥

 We each get to play with one hehe

 Absolutely in love with this man!

 Mama and Isa ♥

 Dada and Juju ♥

 I love that the girls are smiling

 Juliana

They wanted to play with the flower

Isabella

When the Heart Aches

I only usually post about my twins, but tonight I have to vent a little.  A good friend of mine called me today almost in tears freaking out.  Her boyfriend is deploying next month for 8 months and she can't stop crying.  She's former Air Force and has been deployed herself but didn't have a boyfriend at the time.  Now she's on the other side, the one that gets left behind.  She has nobody else who she can talk to about this besides me.  I'm the only one she knows that can relate to this.  So what advice can I truly give her?  Honestly, nothing I can say will make it better because the truth is deployments SUCK!  That's exactly what I said.  All I can do as a friend is listen to her and give her my own advice of what I experienced.  Just hearing her over the phone and listening to all her worries brought back so many memories.  It's crazy that it has been 7 years since I went through the deployment with Brad, yet I can remember things so vividly.  To this day, certain songs will make me tear up and little things will trigger my memory back to that time.  When Brad deployed we were newly weds and I was still very young; only 19.  It was hard enough being the only one in my group of friends to be married let alone having my husband deployed to Iraq.  I'm so very grateful to the online friends that I made that were going through the same thing and my amazing friend, Tanya, whose husband, then boyfriend, was deployed with Brad as well. 
I'm happy that I can try to help a friend, even if all I do is listen to her.  I told her that if they can survive this, they will come out so much stronger when it is all over.  Saying goodbye has been one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But like I told her, homecoming day is so amazing.  Being able to hug and kiss your man after so long is such an amazing high...one of the best feelings in the world.  Not a lot of people get to experience that.  So with that said, my heart aches for her because I know exactly how she's feeling and exactly what's going through her head.  I pray that they make it through this and that he comes home safe.

To all my amazing friends that still have to deal with deployments, I love you!  I will forever be grateful to your man and you for making the sacrifice ♥


The day before I said goodbye to Brad I gave him a scrapbook that I made for him.  In return, he made two videos for me.  I tried posting the link but is not working.   

Brad in Iraq 2006 during a convoy



First time seeing each other after 8 months

Brad and Josh

♥My Babies You'll Always Be♥

I feel like time is going by way too fast.  There's always something to do that I've been too busy to stop and write about some of the moments that I don't want to forget.  Moments that in the future I want to read about, whether I'll need them when my girls go on their first date, go away to college, when I've had a rough day or just when I feel like they're driving me insane.  These are some of the moments that happened recently that makes every cry, tantrum, sleepless night etc so worth it!

* Isabella fell on the floor and started to cry.  Juliana started chasing her around the living room, which made Isa cry even more!  Finally Isa came to a stop by the couch and Juli patted her on the back and gave her a kiss.  It was such a SWEET moment.  It's like she knew her sissy was hurt and she wanted her to feel better.

* Today as I was in the bathroom, Juliana came in gave me a kiss, waved, said bye and closed the door.  Loved it!!!

* The girls started to spin around in circles.  They think it's the funniest thing.  Brad and I enjoy watching them because when they stop they can't walk straight lol. They look like drunk babies haha.

* Every morning when the girls wake up I love to hear them giggle and talk to each other.  Ever since they learned to say "Uh oh" they say it all the time when they drop something on the floor.  So now in the mornings all I hear through the monitor is "uh oh" because they're throwing their blankets, loveys and stuffed animals on the floor =]

* It's amazing to see how much they understand now.  I can tell them to sit down, give me or the dogs/cats kisses,  put their toys away, etc and they'll do it. 

* They are now obsessed with bracelets (I take full responsibility for this).  They love going in my room and getting all the bracelets out of my armoire and wearing them.  They've already broken two of them =(  They do, however, look absolutely adorable walking around wearing them.  I have little divas!

* When they get really excited about something, they start to move their feet really fast up and down.  I love watching them....this leads me to believe that they'll be great dancers like mama ;)

* The girls learned how to give "high fives" a long time ago but now they can do it with each other!!!

* Peek-a-boo is so much more fun now.  They actually put their hands over their eyes to play it.  They also put their hands over my eyes to play it.  They're so cute because they only say "boo" and it just makes it that much more cuter.

It's sad to know that they're getting so big, but we're truly enjoying every stage of their development.  It's very bittersweet!

Salt Life!

Well, I feel like I'm playing catch up.  I really want to blog about the girls' 1st birthday party, baptism, Easter and Mother's Day.  Seriously, I don't have enough time to sit here and blog my life away.  However, today was a pretty special day and I'm so eager to blog about it.  So all those other blogs will have to wait.  I have been dying to take the girls to beach.  I feel like they're growing up so fast that I don't want to rush and do everything at once.  I still want to have many "firsts" to look forward to.  So finally at 16 months old we decided to do it =)  We originally wanted to go on Mother's Day but ended up being too busy.  So today we got up, packed up our bags, packed lunch and we headed to the gym.  Hey....you can't skip leg day! Ha!  After the gym we went straight to the beach.  The girls took their nap in the car while on our way there.  The day was perfect.  It was sunny and warm and even better there wasn't a lot of people at the beach.  I was expecting my girls to cry or hate the sand....but seriously they LOVED it!!!! They had so much fun and we had a blast watching them enjoy it.  We even took them in the water with us and they didn't get scared at all.  They started splashing the water and giggling every time they felt a wave.   I can't wait to take them to the beach again.  I forgot to bring my camera so I was only able to use my phone.  Oh well, I didn't get to take that many pictures anyways because we were too busy in the water.  Enjoy!

Trying to walk on the sand

Taking in the beautiful view! Ruffle butt!!!

Safety first with the sun block =)

Juliana and I

My little family ♥

They were having a blast with the waves

Juju bean

Isa holding her hat...so cute!!!

Playing and eating lunch

They played with the sand for a while.

 

What an amazing day! These little angels make everything so much more fun! I can't wait to go back again. I couldn't have asked for anything better =)

I picked these sea shells to put in each of the girls box.  They will always have a memory of their first time at the beach ♥