Happy Thanksgiving!

We have a very long list of things to be thankful for this year!  I want to spend the day with my family instead of writing on the blog, so I will only mention a few.

Obviously, the healthy arrival of Rooney and Brady is at the very top of our list.  We will be eternally grateful to Mrs. R for her braveness, love, stamina and sacrifice, and for keeping them growing and healthy for 37 weeks and 6 days!

Arriving home safely six days ago is also high on our list.  Without the help of Poonam and Rachna at SCI, we would likely still be in Delhi trying to get our exit visas instead of cooking Thanksgiving dinner at home with my mom and sister.  

We are so thankful for the many hours of late night feedings my mom has logged over the past week, which has made jetlag almost none existent and Lee’s return to work almost painless.

Our friends and family have been amazing this year, helping us celebrate so many milestones!  The support and encouragement we have received this year has made everything just that much more sweet!

And last, but not least, thank you to everyone following our blog.  We have read every comment and greatly appreciate the support we have received from the blogging community!

Happy and Healthy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Smiley Brady

Sweet Little Rooney

Home Sweet Home

We made it!  After a 14 hour delay, the eagle took off headed for home.  We arrived home on Friday night, exhausted but VERY happy!!  The delay turned out to be a great thing for us because many of the first class passengers made alternative arrangements, which led to plenty of room in first class for our upgrade to be processed.  The flight was fantastic.  R&B had a bassinet to share, we had seats that opened into flat beds and the entire crew visited us frequently to hold the babies and check out our lovely babies.  Lee and I find it amusing that at 11 days old, R&B have passports, Onepass numbers and 7,500 miles traveled in a manner most only wish about.  If you are returning from India with babies and can swing the upgrade, it is well worth the extra money! (be sure to just pay for an upgrade and don't buy first class seats, much better deal).

Once home, R&B were greeted by a few new faces....

Grandma G. and Brady



 Aunty Amy and Rooney

 Uncle Jeff and Brady

Both babies lost their umbilical cords this past weekend, so we gave them their first baths.  I expected many tears, but they both loved it.  My mom thinks they may be future swimmers, but I think it might have something to do with their home for the past few months!



  Rooney

Brady

It was a bit sad to leave India not knowing when we will return, but there truly is nothing better than being at home with our babies!  R&B have made us unbelievably happy and now that we are stateside, we can't wait to introduce them to so many of our friends and family! 

Delayed

We have all the necessary documents to leave India, but no aircraft.  Our flight is delayed 13 hours!  We will head to the airport tomorrow and hope that the plane arrives ready to take us home.

I have lots to tell about the last 11 days, but it will have to wait until I am on the other side of the world!

Because I know this is why you visit this blog.......

Rooney, Dr. Shivani, Brady and me

Brady

We have Passports!!!

Rooney and Brady have the much-anticipated passports!   After dealing with a bit of Indian bureaucracy to obtain the birth certificates, the U.S. passport process was a dream.

For anyone planning to go through this process or interested in how we got passports so quickly, let me tell you -

Babies that are genetically related to one or two American citizens are automatically citizens.  Where they were born or from what womb they came out of doesn't matter as long as the genetics are clear.  So, to anyone wondering, no we did not have to adopt Rooney and Brady since there is a genetic link.

Prior to coming to India, I emailed Nancy Hamilton at the US Embassy to introduce myself and explained our specific situation.  She answered the few questions I had when filling out the forms and in general was exceptionally helpful!

Once the babies were born, Rachna from our clinic (SCI) filled out all the necessary paperwork to get our birth certificates, which have me listed as the mother.  Rachna completed the paperwork on Monday afternoon and we got our birth certificates on Friday evening.  Be prepared for some wait with the birth certificates.  We had two broken machines - the type writer that they use to manually enter the information and the stamp machine used to make the certificate official - which delayed the process by a day or so.

With the birth certificate in hand, we made the Embassy appointment.  The appointment was much like any government-related appointment in the states.   We had three things to accomplish at the Embassy -

1. Consulate Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA) - U.S. governments authentication that a U.S. citizen was born abroad.  This will take seven days and will be mailed to our house in the U.S. and is not needed to receive the exit visas.
2. Social Security Number - the embassy submitted the birth to the social security department, much like would happen if the babies were born in the states, and in a couple of months we will receive the SS card and number in the mail.
3. Passport - we used the same form and documentation as if  we were applying in the states.  The only difference here is that the Embassy issues emergency passports, which allow you to enter the U.S. and then we will send the passports to the State Department to issue us regular 5 year passports.  There is no additional charge for issuing the passport once we return home, if we apply within one year. 

We were at the office for a grand total of three hours, waiting for all documents to be reviewed and the passports to be made.  I was impressed!  Seriously, the Embassy had their stuff together.  Some may think three hours is a long time, but they had to review our medical records, birth certificates, three forms, submit all information to the various U.S. departments and make the passports.  Before we knew it R&B's passports were in hand! Not that R&B even noticed because they slept through the whole appointment. The total cost of our visit was $205 for each baby
 
About 30 minutes into our wait, the nice man who was handling our passport told us to wait in a little room off to the side of the main waiting room.   The room had a door that we were able to close to keep all of the germs away from R&B and the many curious onlookers in the waiting room.

We have confirmed flights for Thursday evening!!!  We will spend the next few days getting the exit visa from the Indian government.  We have hired a woman by the name of Poonam to assist us through this last part of "Operation Get Out of India".

Wish US luck...

These two little ones are off to the Embassy tomorrow!  If all goes well, they will have US passports before dinner.

 Rooney

Brady

It seems that we are only capable of accomplishing one outing per day.  Today, Rooney and Brady had their very first play date.  Their friends, Mila and Nev, broke free from the hospital yesterday and were up for a visit from the Khan family.

Mila, Rooney, Nev and Brady (down at the bottom)

A Quick Update

The past five days have been amazing!  We have been very busy getting to know Rooney and Brady and loving on our two little bundles of joy.  They are amazing and it seems time races on at the speed of light with these two around.  Both babies are very healthy and gaining weight!

I will post very soon the recent events, but in the meantime, I wanted to give you a little bit of our goodness....

Rooney and Brady

The Happy Family

Best of Luck tomorrow to the guys over at http://justoneoutofsevenbillion.blogspot.com/ , as they welcome their twins to the world!  

Having babies in a developing country...

...sometimes means you have to expect some things to not go as smoothly and as quickly as they would at home. We completely understand that and are pretty well-prepared to deal with it. Then tonight happens. The last thing I expected on the night I bring my newborns home is that there won't be any water. Not just only a slow stream or just a drip or two, but full-blown no water. It's kind of an essential element of life so naturally we tracked down our housekeeper, who then brought in his boss's assistant, who then called in a plumber and an electrician. The age old question has been answered...turns out, it takes 5 Indian guys (add me to the other 4) to figure out that the motor on the water tank on the roof was broken which is why we didn't have water...at the perfect time, of course. Who knew you needed a motor for a water tank anyway? But, we're assured it's fixed, but we still won't have water until about 7:00 AM. We were given two full watercooler jugs to get us thru the night and make sure the babies are fed). Over the course of the three hours it took to sort this all out, we also managed to sort out some details on follow-up pediatric appointments, found out the birth certificate won't be ready until tomorrow night, arranged car service to get to a diffeerent pedeatric appointment to check for jaundice (we had to agree to bring Brady and Rooney to the Dr's office for the next three or four days in exchange for bringing them home today) and welcomed a night nurse to help us make sure we don't break our babies in the first night or two.

But, none of that matters today because we got to bring home our babies this morning and have been enjoying them all day. I even managed to change my first poopie diaper, EVER. Brady and Rooney are as adorable as can be, even though Rooney is unfortunate enough to be a spitting image of me. She's definitely going to be my favorite daughter. Brady is the strong, silent type, who just chills while his little sister brings on the drama, earning him the "favorite son" tag. I'm not even making those titles contingent on what happens in their first night at home.

But enough of my rambling, here's what everyone cares about anyway, a cute pic of our two little angels.

Introducing Brady and Rooney Khan

The day Stacey and I have been planning for almost three years finally came and we now have two beautiful bundles of joy!  I still can't believe it and I still can't believe they're here, even though they took their sweet time. As disappointed as we were to have to leave them behind for two excruciating hours after we first met them, we couldn't have been more thrilled than when we were able to hold, feed, and generally just be with them for more than 5 hours during the day. Rooney even blessed us  by blowing out her too-big diaper, her little outfit, and her blanket, all on her first shot...she made her daddy proud (not so much her mommy though). Our time with our babies sadly had to come to an end for the day following their first official photo shoot - gotta love that the passport photo guy makes house or hospital calls. Due to their later than expected arrival, we're doing all we can, and getting a lot of cooperation from everyone who have the liberty, to try to get us back home so Brady and Rooney can meet all their wonderful friends and family. We wrapped today with yet another shopping trip to get some much-needed preemie diapers, a specific type of formula to help our little ones bulk-up (at a cheap price of $5 per can vs $20+ at home), and some gender-specific preemie onesies and other clothing for Rooney, who, unlike her one-minute-older big brother, did not have the benefit of having an older cousin (thanks again Ben) who was so generous with little girl clothes.

Thanks to all for the well wishes. Here are a couple pics from today, but we'll share more soon.  The plan is to pick our healthy babies up from the hospital in the morning!

Mom and her babies (Brady on the left, Rooney on the right-pre blowout)



Dad and his babies (Brady on the left, Rooney on the right-post blowout)



Little Rooney

Brady and Mom

THEY'RE HERE!!!!!

A new little Khan Boy and Girl  arrived this morning! 

 Rooney Lynn Khan (4 lbs, 8 oz.)

 Brady Gallagher Khan (5 lbs, 4 oz)

More details to come...we must go feed some babies!

What a difference two weeks make...

We met Mrs. R at Dr. Jolly's office for the scan this afternoon and I think her baby bump doubled in size!  Two weeks ago when we saw her I was shocked by how small her baby bump was and how awesome she looked for being nearly 36 weeks pregnant.  Today, I still think she looked awesome, but she clearly looked like she was ready to give birth on Monday.  Yes, this Monday.  Yes, November 7th!! The cesarean is scheduled for 8AM.  That is less than 35 hours from right now:)  Hours...we are counting in hours now!  How awesome is that?  I love that there is a set time - its just how I am.

TT was our little rock star.  In two weeks, she/he grew an amazing 25% and now weighs in at 5 lbs.  The wait was well worth it for that kind of weight gain!!  TT was so proud of his/her weight gain that she/he flipped upright.  TT's desire to stand up tall means that she/he is breech and is the reason for the c-section.

TO is now mearusing 5 lbs 11 oz, not too shabby of a weight gain for this stage in the pregnancy!  Let's hope they continue to gain at this pace outside in the real world.

There are no cute pictures to show you from the scan.  We barely saw their faces, as their world is a bit cramped right now and it was tough to figure out much of what was going on in there.  Dr. Jolly tried to show us both faces.  I could make out that what he was pointing out as TT's face was real, but it was a hard sell to believe he found TO's face.  We did see two very well defined spines, which was pretty cool.  And despite Lee's best efforts, he could not figure out the sex of either baby.

So, now we wait just a few more hours!  Any suggestions (besides sleep) on what we should be doing to waste away the next 35 hours?

Day 17 in Delhi...

We haven't updated in a few days, mostly because there is no big announcement to make.  The little buggers are sticking it out for the full stay in their current home.  Little do they know that they will be evicted in a few days, so they better get themselves ready!  Mrs. R has an ultrasound appointment tomorrow and we will know more afterwards.  I hope they have both packed on as many pounds as their dad has over the past two weeks!

Apparently very few people voted on our poll that TO and TT would make it this long...jokes on all of us...I am guessing November 5th will be the winner, since its the only day without a vote! 

In the meantime, we went to our first tourist spot in Delhi, the Akshardham Temple.  It was amazingly beautiful and recommended for anyone visiting, but be prepared for some serious security lines. 

We have been doing our best to stay busy.  Lee has been working until the early hours of the morning and I have been enjoying the great massages!  Only a couple of more days now and we will FINALLY meet our babies!

37 Weeks

We are very excited to have made it to this big milestone and are so thankful to Mrs. R for allowing our babies to "bake" for so long!  She truly has done an amazing job and we will always be eternally grateful for what she is doing for us.  The babies should be ready to go at this point and while they apparently are very happy in their warm and dark home, their parents are ready to meet them!  We both believe that today, 11/1/11 or 1/11/11 (depending on your order preference), is a great birthday.  Apparently, 20% of the people responding to the poll agree with us.   For now we continue to wait for the important phone call.

Times of India is reporting that a little girl named Nargis Yadav, born yesterday was the seven billionth person.  The truth is no one really knows who the seven billionth person is/will be or exactly when, so I am sure that my husband will continue to believe it is TO or TT!  

We have been attempting to keep ourselves busy, so we don't go stir crazy!! The wait is definitely starting to get to us. Yesterday, we continued our new favorite past time - shopping!  Enjoy some pictures of Sarojini Market.  In the pictures take note of the fact that it is just opening and "relatively" empty.  We have been told by our drivers that its too crowded for us in the evening when the market is at its peak.

A family we bought way too many fun bangles from

A quiet time in the market

Attempting to bargain..