Rachelle's amazing abilities

OK, I need to dedicate this post to my wife. If you know the back story behind our having these quintuplets (which you can find in our first posts) you know that we had a pretty difficult time coming to the decision to go through with it. The thing that finally helped us make the decision was a meeting with our Stake President (local church leader) where both of us felt very strongly that this was the right thing to do. From that day, Rachelle went from being worried and sad to being excited and very upbeat. She is at 29 weeks! For many women in similar circumstances, they are in absolute agony right now but Rachelle is as calm and as happy as ever. In fact, she was actually working to cheer me up yesterday! I think she is actually more calm with this pregnancy than with the previous two normal pregnancies. There have been a lot fewer random crying episodes and stuff like that which is amazing. I have found that when she decides something, she really goes after it with all she has. The doctor has been amazed with how well she is progressing and I believe that her progress is in part due to her wonderful attitude as well as all of the MANY prayers being offered in our behalf.

Something else she has that I really miss is a great ability to organize. That has hit home more than ever with my recent move into our new house. Although it is mostly because I don't have a ton of time due to work and other things, I have been in the house two weeks and have only managed to put up the garage door opener (which I did in only two nights!), assembly one of the cribs, and clear away enough boxes for me to move around. If she were here, the house would be totally devoid of clutter and everything would be in it's place. I end up spending a lot of my time trying to find small things (like screws for the crib) that have gone missing after the move.

Rachelle is very intelligent and methodical. That was actually one of the most significant things that attracted me to her in the first place. She has always been very bright. When we first met, I found that it was very refreshing to date a girl that could be interested in technical things but was still very girly. I wish that other girls would follow her example and let themselves just be intelligent. Some of the girls I have seen and known purposefully try not to be intelligent because (I assume) they think it makes them unattractive. It is true that there are some guys that like to date girls that are bimbos but I was not one of those guys. In fact, I have often felt that Rachelle and I are fairly evenly matched, except for that fact that she has a masters degree and got way better grades than I did.

The methodical part of Rachelle is something I have tried to learn from. By nature, I am less methodical and more creative. We found this out during our first week of marriage. We were trying to put together a futon and she insisted on actually reading the directions while I wanted to just look at the pictures and start going. In the end, I think I put something on wrong and have had to learn to read directions more as well as have a little more patience before just diving in.

All in all, I am so lucky to be married to such a wonderful woman. This whole pregnancy has further helped me realize just how great she is.

Lots to be thankful for

I really have a lot to be thankful for right now. Rachelle is almost at 28 Weeks and the babies are each over 2 pounds. That alone is really exciting. I also have a bunch of other things to be thankful for. I will list them here:

1. One of our friends from church, Liz Horton flew out to help Rachelle for the week when her aunt Jeanie was at the family reunion. It was really nice of her to take time off to go and help Rachelle out, get food for her, go be a personal shopper for her, and help her organize stuff from Rachelle's baby shower in Arizona.

2. One of Rachelle's old employers, Peter Peterka from SixSigma.us offered to buy us the quint stroller that Rachelle wrote a blog entry about! That makes us pretty excited.

3. Last week, another member of our congregation, Dr. Darrell Park at Buttercukp Dental (see www.buttercupdental.com), offered to give our quintuplets dental care until they leave home for church missions or school. That is awesome and it gives us some good incentive to never move.

4. My aunt Gloria Wilkinson went to order some micro preemie clothes from a company based in Utah. Micro preemie clothes are smaller than normal preemie clothes and are for babies in the NICU. The company was created by an LDS grandmother of a preemie named Elliot. When Elliot was born, the Grandmother wanted to do something for Elliot and decied to make him some clothes to wear while in the NICU. After she made them, she saw that it helped her daughter and son-in-law feel a little more a part of her grandson's life at a time when it was most difficult for them. Anyway, when Gloria placed the order for some sets of a t-shirt gown and cap in each of their colors, she got a call and found out that she was the 500th customer so the order was free! First, I was really grateful that Gloria was even thinking of ordering the clothes. But second, I was really grateful to Elliot's Preemies for giving us the order for free. The name of the website is: http://www.preemietees.com/

5. I am grateful for all of the woman that gave us stuff at Rachelle's baby shower in Arizona. Many of them came from her aunt Jeanie's congregation and didn't really even know Rachelle very well. They did tend to give a lot more girl clothes than boy clothes which leads me to my next thing...

6. I am also grateful to a colleague at work, Jackie Keating, and her friend Sherri who actually gave us a big bag of left over boy preemie clothes which will help balance out the girl clothes.

7. I am also grateful for the Wilcox family (another member of our congregation) who, just this Sunday, offered to help us by taking care of our yard on a regular basis while we deal with the baby situation.

8. I am also grateful For my parents who took care of Riley and Kaiya for the last two weeks and for my sister Alicia and her husband Mike who are going to be taking care of them for the next two weeks.

9. I am also very grateful for all of the many other people that are constantly offering support and encouragement!

I am amazed at what I have seen so far with people and I am really grateful for it. It is difficult to constantly feel in debt to so many people but I suppose that I will need to get used to it. I hope that all of these people are blessed for the service they are offering us. My heart goes out to those who do not have a church or friends like ours because I can't imagine what it would be like without all of the support we recieve.

Thank you again,
Jayson

Moving and Stuff
Well, we are officially moved into our new house now, thanks to a bunch of people from church. We did have some funny things happen when we moved in though. First, I backed into my van with the rental truck while trying to avoid the neighbors van. I dented the door a bit but I don't think it is too bad. That made me kind of sad when I did that but it could have been a lot worse. The move went pretty fast but now I am in a sea of boxes.

Something really nice that happened before we moved (and before Riley and Kaiya left) was that Cassaundra Redman, the person that has been cutting Rachelle's hair lately, came over and cut Riley's, Kaiya's, and my hair which was really needed. Since we got married, Rachelle has cut my hair. She didn't actually know how to cut hair when she started but it only took her about three haircuts to learn. However, because she was gone, I just had a hard time stomaching the cost of having someone else cut my hair. The last time Cassaundra cut Rachelle's hair, she offered to cut mine and the kid's hair for free while Rachelle was gone. That was really nice and I can definitely recommend her as a talented hair stylist and a wonderful person.

Something else that was really nice was that our friend and realtor Barbara Oldham (a really good realtor too) gave us her not-so-old entertainment center. It was a really nice one to and fit much better with things than our older one. Moving in to a new house is not nearly as fun when it is just yourself. I am trying to guess where Rachelle would want stuff because I want her to be excited and relaxed when she comes back.

She now only has about 7 weeks left which is really not very long. In reality it could be less than that. There was recently a sextuplet birth at the same hospital Rachelle will be going to and it was hard for me to look at those babies. They are just so small. It was when I was looking at them that it all hit me again. Lately, I don't think about it much because I so many other things to deal with. However, seeing those babies kind of freaked me out and made me realize that it will be me in a fairly short amount of time.

Closing on a house and sending the kids off to Grandma and Grandpa's house

The last week or so have seen a lot of interesting things. I visited Rachelle for Memorial Day weekend with Riley and it was a lot of fun. She is doing well and things seem to be progressing as good as we could hope.

Closing on our new house
Right after I got back, I had to get everything ready to close on our house. That turned out alright I suppose. At the final closing, my realtor, Barbara Oldham (a really good realtor if you need one) asked me if I was nervous. I honestly replied that I had a lot more to be nervous about that a simple house closing.
Doing the whole power of attorney thing was really tedious. It meant that every time I had to sign Rachelle's name I would have to sign, "by Jayson V Wilkinson attorney in fact". It took forever but I eventually made it through and got the keys to our new house which turned out nice.

Getting the kids to Grandma and Grandpa Wilkinson
Two days after closing on the house, I drove the kids to Amarillo which is approximately half-way between Denver (where my parents live) and Austin. I found that it is much more difficult to drive without a copilot who can both navigate and meet the needs of the kids. They were mostly good but had a few issues along the way and I only missed two turns which I felt was pretty good considering everything.

It is nice to not have the kids around because I can get a lot more done but at the same time, I already miss them. I really have great kids. Kaiya was starting to be a bit of a stinker (I think it was mostly from not having a lot of stability over the last few months) but I am sure she will be better when things settle down.

Article in Meridian
Last week we also got an article published in an online LDS magazine called Meridian. It was recounting the whole story but a lot of people saw it and sent some really nice emails to us. Here is the link to it:

http://www.meridianmagazine.com/journey/070601quint.html

Moving
I am now getting ready to move on Saturday June 9. I was going to try to visit Rachelle this weekend but realized that since she left on April 10th, I have only had two Saturdays that I was here in Austin. We decided that I would stay here and move and visit her again on the fourth of July weekend. I am hoping to recruit a bunch of friends from church and any from work that are interested to come and help me move.

It seems pretty amazing that in just about 8 weeks or less, these kids will be here. We still don't have any agreement on names but we haven't discussed it as much as we need to (which is my fault). There just seems to be so much going on that I haven't really had a chance to sit down and ponder names. A lot of people have a lot of opinions on this which makes it challenging. In the end, I am sure that we will probably ignore most of the opinions and just go with what feels right.