It only seems like yesterday that Angela and I were dancing to “Home Now.” It was our first dance as husband and wife. Eight very short years later, I sit here listening to sappy love songs just like that one. I’m feeling a bit inspired tonight so I thought I’d do a little writting.

Our volunteers came rallied tonight to help out so that Angela and I could get away and have dinner on our anniversary. Thank you so much Judy, Judy, Judie and Ellen. Bonnie, thank you so much for the gift and cake!!! My bride and I had Italian at a nice place a little way up the road. It was very nice.

Every year during dinner, we do an evaluation of our year. What a year! We think back and revisit everything that happened; a year in review, if you will. It’s really amazing how much happens in just a year. I recommend that everyone take a minute and think back to everything that’s happened in the past year. I’m gonna share a little of that with you.

The most obvious was the delivery of our quintuplets. I’ve written a ton of stuff on them already so I’m gonna skip a lot of that stuff. There are images and feelings that I experienced during this thrill ride that will never be matched and I’ll take them with me forever, but it’s all the other stuff that we talked about, like…

…Angela spent nearly 5 months in bed. Oh my god! She was so miserable; throwing up all the time. I have an undiagnosed case of ADD and there is no way that I could spend 12 hours in bed let alone 5 months. 2 of those months were in the hospital. Most people are begging to get the hell out the hospital after a couple days. I still have no idea how she did it.

…driving to the NICU. I know Angela was getting tired of it driving back and forth once she was out of the hospital herself, but I was about to go insane. Before she was out, going back and forth with Meredith took so much out of me. I thought that child was gonna turn into a chicken nugget given all of our stops to McDonalds. There’s no question that the quints were in the right place we wouldn’t change a thing. I just know that I spent a ton of time in the car going back and forth. Sometimes, I was in the car more than I was actually there visiting.

…some of Meredith’s firsts. Meredith had her first birthday, Halloween, and real Christmas this past year. Meredith was a Turkey for Halloween. She was so cute and I took her around the neighborhood. Christmas was when we told family about Angela expecting. We took a picture of Meredith in a T-shirt that read “Big Sister” and sent it to family. At the time, we didn’t know the real news that there was more than one!!!

…During the pregnancy, we lost Angela’s Grandpa, Romayne. I’ve written about this before, but we were really happy that Angela was able to attend his funeral. She was close to not being able to attend. Romayne had a stroke months earlier, but we’re certain that he knew about our cherubs. I’m glad that Angela had the opportunity to say good bye to her grandfather on her terms.

…giving up Meredith. While Angela was in bed and/or in the hospital, I had cases where I couldn’t take care of Meredith on my own. To this day, sending her away because I couldn’t care for her and listening to her cry is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It still tears me up and I will do everything I can to never have to do that again out of necessity. Fortunately, a few good things did come from it. I truly believe that she and I have a much closer relationship because of our one-on-one time together. She also has much more involved relationships with her Grandma Becky, her Oma and her Opa because of her travels.

There are a ton more and I could go on forever, but my glass of wine is empty and Angela is in bed alone, again. I just want to make sure that I say this…

Angela, thank you for 8 wonderful years. Sweet Dreams. I love you.

Until next time…

Now that I’ve scared you a bit with the title, I want to let you know that we’re fine. It was brought to my attention (like I didn’t know) that I haven’t written in a while. Two reasons,

1. Normally I write my posts in the evening after Meredith and Angela (Angela goes to bed early so that she can get back up a 1 am for the overnight feedings) go to bed. I normally help with the evening shifts until I go to bed around midnight. Prior to the kids, I would work in my office at home for a few hours at the end of the day. Now I can’t because I start to help with dinner and the kids as soon as I get home. I still have work to do so I end up doing that in between feedings until midnight or so. Because of that, I really don’t have the time to write. With that said, I could probably make time to write, but…

2. I haven’t had much to write about. Writers block, if you will. It’s the same stuff every day. The kids get a diaper change, drink a bottle and go back to sleep (or at least we hope they do) every three hours. By the time the last one is done, we start all over in just a little over an hour. Meredith is doing well. Angela and I are doing well. The volunteers are great!!! It’s not like new major milestones are being made every day. Little things are happening I guess that I may take for granted. The kids are awake more during the day. They all hold their head up great. They’re all gaining weight. We get to go in for weigh ins every other week now so I don’t have any updated weights. My bet is that Alex is close to 10 and a half pounds.

So with that all said; I have 2 requests…

1. If you’re reading this and you’re a night owl, Angela and I would like to cordially invite you to spend your night time hours at our house with our kids. We’re still doing new orientations to add a few more people to the list. Check out the schedule and orientation info, by clicking here. If you can’t make it to an orientation, but want to help, please send me an email by clicking here. We’ll make special arrangements. We know that shift sucks, but frankly, people during those overnights are worth their weight in gold.

2. I am putting out an open request for topics. I don’t mind writing and will make the time, but I’m running out of ideas now that things are pretty solidified and scheduled at home. I have a few things in the hopper, but nothing that has me all hot and bothered enough to make time for. If you have an idea or would like to know more about something in our daily lives now that we have six kids, just post a comment or send me an email by clicking here.

That’s it for this glorious Saturday morning. The Hawkeyes are on ABC tonight. 7 pm. We own Penn State and I’m giddy about tonight’s game. The kids will all be dressed in black and gold and I’ll do my best to get some pics up soon afterward. Speaking of Black and Gold, I seem to be missing a photo of my favorite ISU fan from Satuci in her new Black and Gold. I expect I’ll see a pic by email by the end of the week. You know who you are!!!

Until next time…and Go Hawkeyes!!!

This will be brief tonight, but wanted to get out updates and pictures of the kids.

The kids are growing like the weeds. We took everyone in for weekly weigh ins this afternoon and tonight. We take two trips because we still don’t have a big ass van and we didn’t think we could handle all five at once yet anyway. Even with splitting up the crew, we took along another set of hands to help because Meredith went along during the second trip. Thank you Angi. Here are the totals.

Brooklyn – 8 lbs., 11 oz.
Lauren – 7 lbs., 4 oz.
Alex – 9 lbs., 10 oz.
Madeline – 8 lbs., 11 oz.
Emma – 7 lbs., 1 oz.

That is not a typo on Alex. He’s flippin huge!

Meredith went along because she got her flu shot tonight. All of us have one now. Meredith was crabby most of the afternoon and into the early evening. I frankly thought the gates of hell were gonna open up when Jody stuck that needle in her leg, BUT Jody is the most awesome nurse in the whole wide world. She has to be because Meredith barely knew it happened. I felt it when I got mine a couple weeks ago and it hurt for a couple days. WTH…I guess we’ll see how she is tomorrow!

Speaking of flu shots, if you spend time at our home with our kids we would really like you to get your flu shot. It was talked about at our orientations. Our children are extremely healthy now, but we don’t want to just take that for granted. Please take care of yourselves. Additionally, RSV season is quickly approaching. Not many people know much about RSV until it directly affects someone you know. To most, RSV doesn’t affect you or may just appear as a common cold. However, RSV can kill a baby, especially a premature one. Please do everyone a favor and wash your hands. Think about it next time you wash your hands. When you think you’re done scrubbing, spend another 15-30 seconds scrubbing before you finish. It isn’t the soap or the water that cleans your hands; it’s the friction from the scrubbing.

Now that’s it for my soapbox. Here’s the link to our photo page where you can see the pictures of The Things.

Until next time…

So it’s been forever since my last post. I’m sorry for that. I think about it several times a day, but never get to it. I’ve started a couple times, but I can never get past the intro before I get interrupted. I can’t let it go any longer. I need to thank some very important people who did a ton to help out the Tille family.

If you don’t already know, I sell medical supplies for Coloplast. We’re a market leader in a variety of product categories. None of the products are flashy and sexy to sell, but if you have a problem related to one of my products, you absolutely need them. It doesn’t hurt that we really have the best stuff in the market place. I sell to a variety of customers: doctors’ offices, hospitals, nursing homes, distributors, medical suppliers, and pharmacies. Many of them read this blog. A couple weeks ago, one of them showed up at our front door on a Saturday morning and I’d like to tell you all about it. Handi Medical Supply in St. Paul is my largest customer. I have many great relationships with people all over this organization from the warehouse to customer service to management. When I’m in a pinch, I have no hesitation calling anyone from Handi and asking for a favor.

Midway through Angela’s pregnancy, she was admitted to the hospital for the first time based on the doctor’s recommendations. She was there a week, and was discharged. She was doing so well; they didn’t feel she needed to be there. On the day of her discharge I got a phone call and learned that Angela’s grandfather had passed away. I spoke with the staff first as I knew that there would be no way that I’d be able to keep her at home and in bed. They felt that she could head back to Iowa for the funeral as long as she got a wheelchair and used it. Handi was my first call. We stopped on the way home from the hospital. They were there waiting for us. Many employees stopped by to say hello and asked how she was doing. We got the chair headed south the following morning. Angela was able to say goodbye to her grandfather. Thank you.

Mary, the owner of Handi, has a special interest in our situation. She has a couple beautiful little girls, but they were born very premature. I’ve been able to talk with Mary about our situation and she’s been a great source of inspiration. She called me in to her office one day recently and asked what we needed. She wanted to help us out and that all came to fruition a couple weeks ago when Mike and Kim Bailey rang our doorbell. Mike is the COO at Handi and Kim is his bride. They were dropping off their only child at college for the first time. The University of Wisconsin – River Falls is located in…if you guessed River Falls, you were right. Yea you! I’m sure it was emotional for Kim. However, I wonder a little if she was more emotional that they left their only daughter at school or if she came to the realization she was gonna be on her own with Mike for the rest of her life. All kidding aside, they had a van full of stuff for us. They came through with the 5 brand spankin new car seats for us. They’re the second level of car seat for kids. They’ll hold the kids from this winter for a few years. These days, kids have to be in a car/booster seat for what seems like until their old enough to drive themselves. AWESOME huh? That wasn’t it! They also had 5 shiny Schwinn Tricycles for the kids. The trikes were totally tricked out: chrome, ribbons, and a bell.

They didn’t forget about Meredith either. Mike and I brought in Meredith’s gift. She got a pony, a friggin life size pony!!! She was so happy. Then Mike destroyed her life as we know it. I will take this memory with me forever. This isn’t just a normal pony. It neighs, shakes its head, blinks its eyes, wags its tail, and even chews on its own plastic carrot. When Mike flipped the switch, Meredith went in to a state of panic and fear that I had never seen. I felt so bad for Meredith as she ran to me crying and screaming. She was crying for “momma,” but she wasn’t in reach. I quickly got her to momma. I felt so bad for Mike. He was doing such a great thing for our family and then he scared the death out of our child like no one has ever done before. It wasn’t long before Mike said that he and Kim disrupted the harmony of our home enough and probably needed to go. You guys are always welcome and please tell your daughter that if she has any down time, we’d love to let her spend some time with the Tille quints, if you know what I mean.

Brief update on the kids since its been over a week since my last post. They’re just gaining a ton a weight. Chubby cheeks and all that jazz. They’re doing great!!!

Brooklyn – 8 lbs., 1 oz.
Lauren – 6 lbs., 11 oz.
Alex – 8 lbs., 13 oz.
Madeline – 8 lbs.
Emma – 6 lbs., 12 oz.

We have weigh ins weekly so we’ll get new updates on Wednesday. And…if you’re wondering at all about Meredith and how she’s getting along with her Pony…she’s doing fine. She isn’t thrilled about it when we flip the switch, but she seems to like it a lot. She even needed to give it a hug and kiss before bed the first night we had it in the house.

Angela and I want to say “Thank You” to Mary and your family, Mike and your family, and everyone else at Handi Medical Supply for your support of our family.

Until next time…

I know its been forever since my last post. Its been so busy. I think about it often, but there’s always something. I promise I will have a new post up tomorrow. I will be thanking some very special people. Stay tuned.

until then…

Oh, almost forgot. How ’bout them Hawkeyes!!!

I really want to take some time in this post to thank some people who have really helped us out lately.

This past week Becky left us and went back to her home down in Iowa. Angela’s mom was the glue around here for a long time. She was with us for a month. She slept on a crappy bed in our basement with no privacy whatsoever. When we first started bringing the kids home, Becky took on some difficult shifts overnight feeding the kids. She helped out with meals and cleaning up around the house. Most importantly, she took on the lion’s share of caring for Meredith during the day so that Angela and I could focus time on the kids, sleep, and all of our other responsibilities. She’ll be back. I have a feeling that we’d have to beat her off with a stick to keep her away for too long. I have a funny feeling that she’ll have others with her when she returns.

Angela and I really want to thank the wonderful people at Satuci in Marshalltown, IA. Becky is a substance abuse counselor at Satuci and we can’t thank them enough for letting her go for such a long time to help us out. We will never forget it.

This weekend is Labor Day weekend. As you all know, it’s typically a very big travel/vacation weekend for families. Our volunteers have really come through for us. All of our shifts have been full over the weekend. We even got a little sleep. One of our volunteers is coming over today over the lunch hour to give us a break and let us get out of the house for a while. We’ll try to grab a little lunch downtown. I think we may try a new place in town and if we like it, I’ll write about it.

I don’t have a clever transition to my next talking point, or any transition for that matter, so I’m gonna make one up. In a situation like this, I think about John McDonald back in my home town of Rock Rapids. John was my English teacher my senior year of high school. (I have no idea if John reads my nonsense or not) In that English class, we had to write a research paper that was intended to prepare us for writing in college. I hated working on that thing and did poorly at it for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that I never had a smooth transition from one thought to another. I’ll never forget the amount of red ink used on that thing. After every other paragraph he wrote “Transition?” I didn’t even know what a transition was, but I understand now. Thanks John. Please take no offense when I say that I’ve thought more of you in the past few months than I care too. As I mentioned, I hated that project, but I can tell you that it prepared me better for writing in college and writing this silly thing every few days so that I can tell you all how our kids are doing.

So how are the kids? They’re doing great!!! Gaining a ton of weight. Some of them are even starting to look chubby. Click her to take a peek at their most recent pics. I gave weight updates in the last post so I won’t have an update with details until Wednesday night, but we’re pretty sure that they’re gaining weight. All of the kids are starting to wake up and spend some time awake with us between feedings, which is keeping all of us a little busier. They seem to be a little more consistent in how much they eat per feeding. They’re between 2.5 and 3 oz per bottle and we may increase them again soon as it isn’t uncommon for them to suck it dry from time to time. I want to make sure that I don’t leave Meredith out.

We’re trying really hard to not make her feel left out so we went out and got her something to play on outside. She’s such a little monkey and climbs on everything she can in the house so we got her a slide to play on outside. We took these pictures over the weekend.

If you’re a person of prayer, please say a quick one for us this week as we will be truly tested. I will be going back to work full-time on Tuesday and Angela’s mom will not be here to help out with Meredith. Getting enough sleep will be an issue for both of us and giving up some of the control over the quints is gonna be extremely difficult. We will have to trust our volunteers to do more without us. We’re prideful and giving up that responsibility will be a very big pill to swallow. Thank you in advance to everyone coming to our home to help out!

Until next time…

I’m sorry that I don’t get to writing something as often as I used to. The days are long and the minutes just don’t seem to be as available as they used to. Today was a big day and I wanted to write about it so I let Becky and the volunteers tonight take on a little more work without me so that I could get this written. 4 hours later, I’m finally getting it online.

Today was the original due date for the quints. They’re already more than 2 months old and we have 36 pounds of babies!!! They’re doing so well. Since my last post, they’ve done an awesome job with their feedings and they’re getting more efficient. Efficient? That may seem like a silly thing to be so happy about, right? With the kids getting fed every three hours, we often have to wake them up and we struggle to keep them awake long enough to keep drinking an entire bottle. What was happening is that we felt it was so important that they get enough per feeding that we were spending an hour or more on each child. Eventually, we had nonstop feedings going on. Clearly, from the weigh in that you’ll read about in a few minutes, you’ll see that they’re getting enough. One night, I had had enough. I made an executive decision that they each get 40 minutes max and I prefer that its 30. No matter what! Kinda hard core, huh? If they’re lazy or sleepy, they’ll just be hungry next time. I think that a couple of the volunteers have been caught off guard and a little concerned regarding my hard line stance, but I promise you that it didn’t take long for Alex’s lazy ass to finish a full bottle in 25 minutes. On a rare occasion, we worry about if Emma or Lauren are getting enough, but they’re taking enough over the course of the day and are gaining weight just fine.

We go in weekly for weigh ins. Because they’re preemies, we need to be there weekly to keep a tight watch on them. Angela and I are getting better at that too. We break it in to two separate trips to the clinic, but we manage to get there, strip em down, weigh em, dress em and get back home in about 40 minutes per trip. Here are the totals from today.

Brooklyn – 7 lbs., 6 oz.
Lauren – 6 lbs., 3 oz.
Alex – 8 lbs., 2 oz.
Emma – 6 lbs., 2 oz.
Madeline – 7 lbs., 10 oz.

We’ve also had a few memorable moments since my last post. Pastor Hall and his wife were here on bath night over the weekend. We joked with him that he was either well prepared for his sermon in the morning or he was looking for material. We enjoyed having them here and look forward to them being able to come back, assuming I haven’t scared them off. Lauren gave us a gem on another bath night earlier this week; a little pooping issue. Becky was getting Lauren undressed for her turn in the bath and I noticed before she gave her to me that there was a little poo on her butt. Becky took her back to wipe her down. Do any of you remember back to your childhood or your kids’ childhood where they used that device with Playdoh where you could push that lever and all the stuff would come out in different shapes? I swear that Lauren has a lever somewhere and Becky was pushing the hell out of it. That stuff just wouldn’t stop and we had to wait five minutes before she was done. Becky went through 3 diapers and more wipes than you can count. We had to change all the clothes and the changing table cover. All I kept thinking was how upset I would have been if that would have happened in my tub!!! I do not handle poo in the tub well. The world stopped when Meredith pooped in the tub on my bath night. Other minor highlights (and somewhat expected) include Alex and all of his sisters peeing on everything. Alex has peed on his own face and he marked his spot on the wall today.

Angela’s father, Dave, was in town this week. Dave had to take off today and head back down to Iowa, but he got to spend some much needed time with the quints and Meredith for the first time since the quints were born. For those that don’t know Angela’s family background, because of some changes with Dave’s job years ago, he and Becky had to move to Arkansas from Iowa. Becky has since moved back to Iowa. They remain happily married, but live apart during the week. They get to spend time together every couple weeks. The kids have obviously changed since he had been here last. Dave spent a lot of time with Meredith this week too. She absolutely loved it!!!

During a conversation this past weekend about limited space and organization around the house, a volunteer asked if we use the attic space above our garage. I responded with, “What attic space?” There never used to access to that space. There is now. Dave and I worked on that project this week too. It kept me busy but maybe more importantly, out of the way of everyone in the house. I wouldn’t have been able to afford the time to work on that little project without the help of all of our wonderful volunteers.

The volunteers have been great. Thank you so much to everyone for taking time out of your busy lives to help a couple strangers out. We can’t tell you how much you mean to us. I want to recognize Brenda Derks (a very special volunteer) for a minute. I’ve mentioned this before, but Brenda and her husband Jim are the original parents of quintuplets here in River Falls. Brenda has been backbone to our volunteer efforts by heading up the scheduling. She did another orientation this past weekend and has another one scheduled for the 10th at 7 pm at the library here in RF. She has done such an awesome job when she has so much going on in her life. Brenda’s quints headed off to Kindergarten today! I haven’t spoken with her yet, but I’m sure it was a great day. I can’t imagine the emotions that she felt. Angela and I would like to congratulate Brenda and Jim on surely a wonderful day!!!

Lastly, we were in the River Falls Journal again today. They wanted to talk about everyone finally coming home. We had our first picture taken as family at home and I’ll leave you with it. Sorry Meredith didn’t smile. She’s normally quite the ham!

Until next time.