It’s been a rough couple weeks here at the Tille’s, but we seem to find a way to plug our way through. If you’ve been here the past couple days, then you know what we’re talking about. A couple of our volunteers have kind of given me a look upon walking down the steps on the way out that screamed “Wow, that was a long 3 hours!” They’re exactly right. Every 3 hour shift seems to take a little more out of everyone.

This all started last weekend when Meredith came down with a cold that turned in to a temp of 105 in the middle of the night. It spooked mom and dad a bit, but we got her under control in a few hours. We went to the clinic over the weekend where they poked and prodded her a lot for blood samples, x-rays, and everything else. At one point, she sat motionless and silent for 10 minutes in the waiting room. If you know anything about Meredith, you know that she wasn’t feeling well if she sat there quiet as a church mouse like that. We tried to isolate her from the other kids, but it just didn’t work out. Lauren has some minor symptoms, but everyone else has a very very serious cold. Alex is in really rough shape. When you have one sick kid, it really puts a stress on a family. When you have 5-6 of them that feel and look like holy hell, you’re life isn’t all that “peachy.” Basically, they’re all still sick. Mom (Angela) had a really tough time making it through the week emotionally and I had a couple “moments” myself, but we’ve managed to stay healthy (knocking on wood).

Needless to say, we really need to pass along some thank you’s. Our volunteers have been awesome this week. The schedule has been full. Thank you so much everyone. It has been the most challenging week to date in my opinion and you’ve really come through for us. Several people have brought meals for us, which has been a huge blessing in that we didn’t have to worry about meals on top of everything else that we’re dealing with. You guys are great.

We also really want to pass along another massive Thank You to a very important and wonderful person. Brenda Derks has been a huge asset to our family over the past year. We called her out of the blue one day last winter and told her only what our immediate family knew at the time in that we were expecting quintuplets. We had so many questions. Never having met us before, she agreed to meet with us and talk. I’ll never forget that day. She told us a year ago that the River Falls community would come to help us and they have. I have no idea why, but she came to us offering and wanting to help out by managing our volunteer efforts. She’s been a sounding board for us and she’s been such a blessing, but this past week Brenda called to let us know that she needs to back away from her role as the coordinator of our volunteer efforts. Brenda just stretched herself too thin and has too many other commitments (like her own 6 kids and a job) to continue in that role.

So with that said, we’re praying for a new angel to come to our aid to help manage the volunteer efforts. Ideally, this person would already be a volunteer, but that isn’t necessary. This person will need to be willing to make phone calls to fill open spots on our schedule, have basic computer skills as we manage our schedule on the computer and be able to monitor and respond to email over the course of the day. We’re uncertain of the time commitment at this time, but think that it may average an hour or so a day. We do have 3 other people that will support this person by assisting with phone calls as needed. If you think that you have some interest, please send us an email by clicking here or giving us a call. Our number at the house is 715-426-0334.

Please keep an eye out for further communication from us on the status of this opportunity. If you’d like to take a peek at the schedule, click here. If you see a spot where you’d like to help out and fill in, click here to send us an email or call the number above to catch one of us at the house.

Until next time…

Alright. I understand now that most, if not everyone, must enter in account info to gain access to view the photos. I am very sorry for that. My first thought is that I would just give everyone my username and password, but I just can’t do that. If I did, I would open ourselves up to the risk of someone destroying our finanical lives, if the kids haven’t done that already. So with that said, you’ll need to open an account with snapfish to view the photos. As you can see from some of the others comments, its very easy and only takes a minute. I’m very sorry, but this is just one of those times where I have to protect ourselves. I hope you all understand.

If you come to the house and you want to see the pics and didn’t or can’t set up an account with snapfish, let me know and I’ll show you here.

The origional message is listed below.

Our family was very fortunate over the holiday period to have Lorah Haskins , the daughter of one of our volunteers, come to our home and take some photos. After seeing what she did for us, we’ve decided that she can come back to our home any time she wants (yes, even though she’s a Badger…they’ve got a good marching band).

For all of Lorah’s 352 pictures of the Tille kids, click here. You’ll be redirected to a new website. You can view them one at a time or click on the “play slideshow” botton. There’s a color and a black and white of each photo. I’m sorry that I had to forward you to another website to view them, but there were just too many for me to manage on our site.

If you’d like to learn more about Lorah’s work, click here for a link to her website or you could send her an email at lorahhaskins@gmail.com.

Did anyone have trouble viewing the photos? Angela told me that she had to log in to snapfish with a password and she didn’t know what our password was. If anyone else having that issue? If so, I need to know so that I can make some changes.

If its an issue, please post a comment so that I know about it. Unless someone tells me that there’s an issue, the issue doesn’t exist.

Until next time…

I’m in a much better mood now and so happy to publish this next post. We’re very proud of these photos.

Our family was very fortunate over the holiday period to have Lorah Haskins , the daughter of one of our volunteers, come to our home and take some photos. After seeing what she did for us, we’ve decided that she can come back to our home any time she wants (yes, even though she’s a Badger…they’ve got a good marching band).

For all of Lorah’s 352 pictures of the Tille kids, click here. You’ll be redirected to a new website. You can view them one at a time or click on the “play slideshow” botton. There’s a color and a black and white of each photo. I’m sorry that I had to forward you to another website to view them, but there were just too many for me to manage on our site.

If you’d like to learn more about Lorah’s work, click here for a link to her website or you could send her an email at lorahhaskins@gmail.com.

Until next time…

Tonight’s post is reality check. I wrote this a couple days ago, but decided to hold off and sit on it given the “reality” of the content. If you like the fluffy “all is well at the Tille’s and you guys are doing a great job,” stop reading now and come back next time. This one is gonna be: Heath opens up a bit about what is really happening and running through our heads. I started this post on Sunday night, but finished on Monday.

So my daughter forced me to drink tonight (Sunday). Brooklyn just cried and cried and cried tonight; just screamed her damn head off. Her cry sounds unnatural when she’s like this. If you’ve heard her when she’s like this, you know what I’m talking about. She had been like this a week ago for several nights in a row, but it had gone away and we thought it was in the past. Brooklyn typically won’t calm down until she works herself up to the point of throwing up. Angela tried to comfort her for a while, but had enough with her. She handed her off to me and asked me to go away with her. There was a scary look in her eye when she told me to “just go.” I took Brook downstairs where I tried for a long time and eventually began to get upset myself. I put her down, and went to the other room for a beer. She cried for a long time, about an hour. Angela eventually came back, took over for me, and got her to sleep after screaming like a child possessed. I’ve only gone to the fridge like that one other time and it scares me a bit that it happened again.

Anyway, Brook and Angela are sleeping now and I felt the need to write. I’m not sure how this post is gonna go, but I have a few things that I want to write about. Angela and I have a difficult time sharing and dealing with our frustrations that we face on a daily basis. We handle our challenges in different ways. Writing is one of the ways that I deal with it. .

Angela and I have been pretty stressed with the kids in recent weeks so I called my parents, Oma and Opa, last week asking for help. We never want to overuse our volunteers so we rarely ask for extra help. Angela and I have been at each other a bit and the kids are really wearing on us. My dad took a few days off work and they made the way up on Thursday. Angela and I left the house on Friday night to run some errands. We also grabbed a quick bite to eat and went over how things are going at home. Saturday was a big day for us. We arranged to meet a new couple in town in Hudson at the GiggleFactory. This is a great place for kids like Meredith to run off some steam. Meredith met some new friends, Emma and Ella, and we’re hoping that they spend a little time together moving forward. They live down the street from us. On Saturday, Angela and I had our first date night in nearly a year. We had dinner at the West Wind, my favorite place in River Falls and we saw Avatar in 3D. Avatar is the best movie I’ve seen in years.

Sunday came around and we knew that my parents would be leaving. This is the time when Angela starts to look at the schedule and stresses out. She stresses about blanks on the schedule as much as, if not more than anything else in our lives. If you’ve ever been at our house and seen her in front of the computer, she’s looking at the schedule and panicking on the inside about how she’s gonna make it through the day. If you’re a reader of this blog and you’re a volunteer that comes to our home, I would like to make a request. If you know that you can and will volunteer for a spot, please let someone know as soon as possible, even if it’s two weeks in advance. We’re starting to see a trend in that sports don’t get filled in until the last minute. A variety of things happen when spots don’t fill in until the last minute. Angela freaks out on the inside all the time and Brenda has to start making phone calls. When both of those things happen, it starts to affect me and I have to start adjusting my work schedule. I did it just today. I booked an appointment later in the day instead of for a preferred 9 am knowing that we might not have anyone at the house to help Angela out. This is my plea for help…if you know someone who has any interest in helping; we want to meet them; even if it’s just for one shift. If you’re on our list of volunteers, but haven’t been here recently or at all, we’d love to have you back. It is worth its weight in gold to not have my wife worry about how she’s gonna make it through the day. If you’re a student and you read this, tell your friends and class mates. My only request is that new people talk with Brenda or one of us beforehand. We’ll still ask for the background check, and if someone isn’t willing to fill out one out for us, then we’ll deal with the volunteer shortage. I think everyone can and should understand where we’re coming from on that. Long story short is that we’re concerned about the schedule. Let me be clear as I finish this portion of the blog, this is not a request for those of you who help 4-8 times a week to do more. We can’t afford to burn you out! You know who you are…

Meredith is entering in to a new stage in her life. She’s throwing, hitting, talking back and just behaving poorly when she doesn’t get her way. She even bit Angela yesterday to get her attention (also another reason that we need to have enough so that Angela can focus on Meredith). Her behavior normally wouldn’t be that destructive if there weren’t 5 other very precious little ones lying around. I don’t subscribe that she isn’t getting enough attention and isn’t dealing with sharing attention with the other five. She’s attached to Angela’s hip every waking moment. She has “mommy-itis.” Tonight Meredith took a soft toy and wound up and swung it at Lauren, who was lying next to her on the floor. She really hit her hard, but Lauren didn’t cry. I saw it happening. It was one of those moments where you see it happen and you feel like it’s happening in slow motion, but you can’t do anything about it. I had Alex in my arms and I almost dropped him reacting to Meredith’s poor choice. Angela got to Meredith first and it was good for Meredith that she did. It wouldn’t have been pretty if I had gotten there first. I’m glad that Angela beat me to her. I don’t know that anything Angela said or did anything that will change or affect her behavior in the future, but I’m still glad she got there first.

Tonight (Monday) was another round of RSV shots for the kids. The kids all got weighed. They’re getting huge. Alex is still the largest at 16-14, followed by Brook at 16-2, Madeline at 16-1, Lauren at 15-4, and Emma at 13-15. They handled the shots pretty well.

Lastly, I want to take a moment to thank my parents for making the trip up to help us out and get us out of the house for a while this past weekend. We needed it. I also want to thank Laura Haskins. Laura took some wonderful pics of our kids over the Thanksgiving break and I’ll get them on the site somehow in the near future. There’s a couple hundred of them and every single one of them is awesome. Please keep your eyes open for future blogs.

I’m sorry for the reality check and downer of this blog post. We expected things to get like this. This blog has always been a vehicle for me to share how I’m feeling and deal with things instead of bottling them up and blowing up some day. I’m not asking for a bunch of “you’re doing great job and keep your chin up.” I’m just a bit frustrated and letting it out a bit.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re doing well. The kids are 7 months old this week. They’re all flourishing and we have a lot of really wonderful people that help us out. Thank you all so much for helping. We’d be in so much trouble with out all of you.

Until next time (and hopefully in a better mood)…

For those of you who are footballed out, what a shame. You missed a great game last night. My beloved Black and Gold Iowa Hawkeyes beat Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl. The entire family was dressed up and cheered them on. Daddy was the only one who satyed up to see the end. Awesome! By clicking here, you can see the entire photo gallery. Another test…can you guess who’s who? They all look grown up when they have jeans and a t-shirt put on them, don’t they. Hey Wendy Hill, thanks so much for taking the photos. They turned out great!!!

Man, this kid has really started to like her bouncer. She’s growing up so much!!! If you look back through our video history, you’ll see that Meredith used to love it too. Carefull or the video will make you dizzy.

Its been a terribly long week and I’ll write again soon. Long and short is that I took last week off, Angela had surgery, she’s still on the mend, but better now and the kids are showing their independence. Change is in the wind.

Until next time…