I know this is a fairly obvious statement most of us would agree with. I decided a couple years ago, when I didn't have much in the way of income, I would rather save my money and do without until I could afford the right solution, than to throw away my money on a half-way solution.

Why do I bring this up now? We have been using my vacuum from my college days in our house. We have known for awhile now its days were numbered, but we finally grew tired of the smell of burning rubber, and the dust it recycled back into the air. We tolerated this because when we purchased our next vacuum, we wanted to make sure it was a good one, and would last for years to come.

Enter our new vacuum...Dyson. This machine is amazing. It was like we never really vacuumed, and we keep a clean house!

It is easy to generalize my comments about "professional" photographers, "hobbyists" and "snap shot takers". I'll do my best not to speak in those generalizations. The best way to do that is to speak about myself and my art, my intentions, my passions. Let's see how that goes...

Having a digital camera has been a great addition to my bag. It allows me to make near instantaneous changes to how I capture an image. No longer do I take shots of a sunset, take the film to the lab, wait for the transparencies to return, then critique my images and hope the next sunset is as memorable as the previous. I am able to make on the fly adjustments and make the most of each photo opportunity.

What this does not mean is I take a stab in the dark with my settings and adjust from there. My years of experience and training allow me to capture the image I have preconceived. Hours, more hours I can count, have been spent learning to pre-visualize the final image I am after. With digital I am able to capture the light (after all in a nutshell that's all photography is, capturing light) as I perceive it to be, then fine tune the nuances.

With film you have the basic settings, film speed, aperture and shutter speed. Digital, although allowing more people to enter the field of photography, actually has many more "settings" to fine tune. Now you have something called White Balance and no longer do you select the film speed for each role, you can adjust it on each image.

Once you have captured the image you now need to process it. The lab used to take care of this for the photographers, now it falls on the shoulders of the photographer. At the bare minimum this requires Sharpening the image. A term foreign to film shooters. And at greater lengths it requires color balancing and cross processing.

All this, and the bar has been raised because accessing great images has never been easier. The internet can connect you instantly with the work of masters like Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, and Galen Rowell.

There is a lot involved in the final image of a photographer. All this as an introduction to a couple before and after shots. I have posted each image as it came straight form the camera, and along with it, the final image as I had pre-visualized it prior to depressing the shutter release. Enjoy! ~Matt

On October 27 I launched my site and BLOG. On November 1 my wife went into pre-term labor and my BLOG turned away from photography and towards keeping friends and family across the country up to date on my wife's, and twin boys', health. Now that Carolyn has stabilized and her contractions are under control, I am turning back towards photography.

I have several topics I want to expand (and expound) on ranging from digital vs film, before and afters, passion. Please, those of you who came to this site for updates on my wife, don't tune out, keep checking in. It will be fun, and maybe you'll learn a thing or two. I hope to learn from your comments, and mix in humor when I can, usually at my own expense because I seem to learn a lot from my (often silly) mistakes.

Enjoy, I will be posting some before ad afters later tonight or tomorrow and the fun begins anew...again.

~Matt

Good news (we’ve had a string of this lately). Today we did a tour of Dr.’s offices as we went for some testing at the hospital and then went to our Dr.’s office for a check up. The sonogram at the hospital showed us our good, and surprising news. Baby B, on Carolyn’s left side, is no longer ‘breach’. In the last week he apparently learned introductory gymnastics and did a summersault. Now both boys are head down!

Carolyn is doing well and adjusting to bed rest at home. We are grateful every day as to how everything worked out. Having her home is priceless. She is able to sleep and keep her strength up. The boys are in a big growth stage right now and Carolyn resting is a top priority to ensure the boys get all they need to help them grow. They are active in her and it is not uncommon to watch the contraction monitor jump as they kick and squirm.

Oh man. How many times do you let yourself set simple expectations just to have even the most basic assumptions get dashed. It is the middle of the night thursday and we are trouble shooting the monitor Carolyn is hooked up to. We began our first one hour monitoring at 8:45 as soon as we were given instructions on how to use it. At 9:45 we began to send the data to the company that revues the results. The firs attempt didn't work, so we trouble-shot the issues for 45 minutes until we finally had it all worked out and they said to try monitoring for another hour and report back to them.

Our basic assumption was that for the first time in a week we would be able to have an uneventful evening at home and get a good nights sleep. Not gonna happen. Instead I am going in to work tomorrow one again looking like I barely survived a night out with the cast of Animal House. This means I will be splurging tomorrow morning on the ay into work and stopping by Starbucks. My drink of choice when open eyes are desperately needed...Medium (grande?) Iced Americano, no room. This has enough kick to get me going fairly quickly and hopefully keep me awake and productive for a couple hours. Only time will tell.

Carolyn is HOME!

Sorry for no update yesterday. I was under the weather and took a sick day from work to recuperate before I got worse.

Today Carolyn received the OK from the doctors and came home around 4:30. She is still fairly heavily medicated to keep the contractions minimized, and is still hooked up to a monitor, but she is home and will sleep in her own bed tonight. In fact right now she is taking a well deserved shower.

Every 8 hours she hooks up to a phone line and transmits the previous 8 hours worth of contraction readings.

Another small step towards independence. carolyn had the stint (IV) in her arm removed today. It wasn't hooked up to anything, but was left there as a just in case.

What this means is can now take a real shower. Not a quick stand in the water like she took this weekend. This also means that with some help from Jacque she can begin the process of untangling her hair. I can;t imagine what it will take to untangle the thick curls she has that have been matted down by the hospital bed for 6 days.

I am excited to see Car after work today to see her face light up after being made to feel human again by bathing.

That's all for now, just thoguth I woul dkep up the updates.

~Matt

Good news when I walked in the door to Carolyn's hospital room this evening. Jacqueline was standing in the spot previously occupied by the IV stand! Carolyn was unhooked from the stand and given a degree of freedom.

Freedom, like so many things is relative. Carolyn's version of freedom means she can rollover in bed (more easily), use the bathroom, (instead of portable commode), and has a greater range of motion to reach for objects on the bedside tray. This is great. Right now she is awaiting her dinner delivery, as am I. Car's meal is coming from the dining hall (surprisingly good food) while Jacque is doing a dinner run for the two of us.

I have been thinking about may things to type as updates today, more global views and reflections on this ordeal, but right now I am way too tired. maybe later.

Today Carolyn had another exem/test. This test (without getting too personal) measuers how far the kids are from daylight. The Dr. expected a middle of the road number. If a low number resulted, Carolyn would be taken to Barnes, not good. But, the result was great. Not just good, but great. This is the best news I could hear today. I am very excited and looking forward to seeing Carolyn once I get off of work. She is still in the hospital and doing well. Without all the excitement from this weekend, she is able to relax a bit more and get an occasional nap in.

11/4 Carolyn is doing well. I forget sometimes to simply say what is going on. So there it is, the headline for the evening paper is that Car is doing well. She is being eased off one of the meds. Specifically the med that has been connected to her arm through an IV since Thursday afternoon.

This is a big step because without the IV, all she will be hooked up to is a monitor for her contractions. If the contractions stay suppressed, it will be a major success. he doctor feels there is no reason why she should not remain pregnant for many weeks to come. This is a good thing. Car is 25 and 4/7 weeks pregnant. We want to at the very least make it to 29 weeks, but 32 weeks (12/20) wold be fantastic.

Survival rates for babies at 25 weeks is incredibly high, but there is a greater risk for lung, eye and brain complications when born that premature.

The difficult thing about tonight is that I am sleeping at home for the first time since this all began. I have been spending the last 3 nights on the floor of the room where Carolyn is. It was a hardwood floor, my therma-rest camping mat, and me. he bed will feel great tonight, but Carolyn must spend the night alone. She is in great hands with Sheila, the nurse for the last 3 nights, but I have risen with her the last 3 nights every 1 - 2 hours when she would use the restroom (the IV fluids kept her hydrated, but required may frequent bathroom visits.) I will undoubtedly wake up tonight and wonder if she is awake, or if I was there with her, would I be helping her at that time.

I told her as I left to not think of me as being across town, but instead to just pretend I am out on the couch sleeping, because my snoring was keeping her awake. She smiled big. It's nice now that the meds are wearing off some and her personality, lively eyes and bright smile are coming back.

The emails and comments keep coming in. thank you all. Some of the comments and anecdotes are hilarious and really help lift the mood in the room.

Tomorrow I have to return to work, so my updates will be less frequent. This is a good thing. Excitement right now is not a good thing. Boring can be a blessing.

~Matt

Our Dr. stopped by last night at 12:30 (as in just past midnight) I am still remembering parts of the conversation, but the gist of what he said was that he doesn't want to send Carolyn anywhere until he knows for certain how she will respond. Many Doctors would send her home and see how she would react, but the Dr. won't move her until he knows precisely what will happen.

Some tests will be run Monday morning/early afternoon and the results will tell a lot. At that point we could be moved to another hospital, stay put where we are, or be one step closer to home. My parents just showed up and we are visiting right now.

I can't stop thanking all of you for your thoughts and prayers. it is kinda fun to see another state represented on our website statistics ad brain-storming to try to figure out who it is. This "game" is actually fairly difficult at times because we are going on such little sleep.

More info later.

~Matt

I realize the title is overly simplistic, but wow, too many words can complicate things. The nurse is in here hooking up carolyn to the fetal monitors (we do this twice a day) and we are listening to their heartbeats. What is really neat os when they start kicking or hitting you can hear it too. It sounds like someone is rubbing their hand on a microphone. it is way past their bedtime, but they are kicking anyways. it is a beautiful sound.

Active babies are healthy babies.

Carolyn spoke with our doctor and he reminded us that we are his patients, not the the patients of the doctor who checked in with us earlier. Ugh! Good news is, we trust our doctor completely and we know that what he says goes, and we will follow what he says. the challenging news is that he probably would prefer a more aggressive approach ad keep Carolyn in the hospital a bit longer.

Yep. This is our life right now. Our options change on an almost hourly basis. Our doctor will be stopping by later tonight, it is 8:15 right now.

Always adjusting and trying to not expect much or make too many plans.

So much has happened today and so much more has bounced through my little pea brain. I'll try to put the big pieces down here first, then catch up with the rest later.

We met with a Dr. on the High Risk team. He and Carolyn quickly bonded with stories from each of their times as competitive high school swimmers.

He gave us the picture we were after. None of what he said is guaranteed, it all depends on many variables. So please, PLEASE, take this with a grain of salt, not as gospel.

He is slowly easing her off the anti-contraction medicine and will keep her for observation for a couple days. If, IF, this all goes well, Carolyn could be out of the hospital and on strict bed rest at home by late next week.

Right now Carolyn is on the phone with our Doctor so I am anxious to see what he says.

Update soon....

This afternoon our TV viewing was salvaged because Discovery Channel is showing Mythbusters. If you have never seen the show, I recommend checking it out. Especially for all those guys out there who would love to be behind the scenes at movie stunts.

Ok actually it is 6:30 as I begin to write this. Last night is a daze still. Our sleep came in 2 hour increments which is great. The first night in here we considered ourselves fortunate if we merely lost consciousness for a moment or two. But 2 hours of sleep has its own drawbacks. For me the most notable one is that coming out of sleep after being undisturbed for only 2 hours is tough. I am pretty much out of it and say a prayer of thanks of the nurse last night for bearing with me and helping take care of Carolyn so much.

The 6 am activities consisted of the nurse and carolyn talking and moving while sat huddled in a corner chair trying to wrap my mind around what was going on. The grogginess is mostly shaken now and I have decided to have a run at today. No more naps for me for now. I need to get up and get my day started, which for now consists of watching a Grey's Anatomy rerun on ABC.com and catching up on my writing. And a cup of free, strong, coffee.

Today is potentially a big day. We will hopefully be getting a long(er) term game plan. We are hoping to find out if we need to pack up to head home, or learn how to live in this room for the next few weeks or months. Do I need to fold the 'whites' in the dryer before she gets home, or can I live 'bachelor' style and pull out a t-shirt when I need it. Like I said, its a big day.

Around 3 am a major sign of how Carolyn was feeling came through the meds. Her concern at 3 am was for me. Specifically for my stomach. She was concerned that if she is here for an extended stay that I would either 1. wasted away from lack of food. or 2. Ballon up from eating nothing but fast food. Yeah. At 3 am her concern was for me to eat home cooked meals.

What she had forgotten in her foggy 3 am state of mind was the droves of emails, phone calls, text messages and Blog comments from our amazing friends and family. That and the fact I survived quite a while cooking for myself and probably cooked too well for myself.

Oh yeah, and she also wasn't considering the almost 100 unique visitors to the Blog updating the world with her progress. Wow.

As part of the 6AM roll call, I want to encourage people to leave comments on the Blog. Have fun with it. I have to read them before they are publicly posted on the Blog, the words we have received have been encouraging and a highlight for us both to see come in. I also want to encourage you to be happy. I know, you're thinking this will be a random Bobby McFerrin reference, but I am skipping that, for now. I want to remind everyone and help give some perspective.

Obviously what we are going through is not ideal, but it is not necessarily bad. It could have been potentially life threatening for our boys and dangerous for Carolyn, but right now things are good. The contractions are under control and everyone is out of the dark for now. What we want now is to have some fun.

Speaking of that, when she is relaxing and trying to get some sleep her mind wanders where so many of our mind wander when we are trying to relax...all the incomplete projects pending and hanging over her head, most commonly work projects. We are going to work to get these on paper today and tomorrow and hopefully then they will be off her shoulders. But until then I have been using anything I can think of to get her mind off work and house chores, and onto something goofy and relaxing. I have had the most success with having her think about my parent's goofy dogs. Maggie and Lulu. I know my parents are reading this, when you come to visit can you bring a photo of the two wonder mutts? It would be greatly appreciated. If you could bring an electronic version as well on a flash drive or email one to me I will post it here. Thanks!

I'll end this marathon entry for now. Now it is 7:37 and Carolyn is awake now and watching the Today show. Breakfast will be here soon.

It is 3:30 and Car has been coughing a bit since waking up at 3. Sheila is in here now listening to her lungs and there is no fluid, and her oxygenation levels are good. It looks like the coughing is from the dry air of the room. That is a good thing.

What we want to make sure of is that the muscle relaxers she is taking don't relax the muscles involved with the breathing. Your body forgetting to breathe would be a bad thing. (Understatement of the year).

Carolyn's prescription from the nurse...Suck on a jolly rancher while vitals and other measures are taken.

Newsflash*In a rare public shout out from Carolyn, she just looked over at me and said to make sure and thank Jen for the Jolly ranchers on the Blog.

We both had another couple hours of good sleep. Now we are off to try to get a couple more before the hospital comes alive in the morning.

It is Saturday about 1am and Carolyn just awoke from approximately 2 - 2 1/2 hours of sleep. By far her longest period of uninterrupted sleep.

With the IV fluids running through her she has to go tot he bathroom more often and this is why she woke up.

But, I need to get going because much like infants, if she is sleeping, I need to try to get some sleep as well.

Sweet Dreams

~Matt

In actuality they are HUGE Bubbles. Carolyn just had a monstrous mattress pad installed. It looks like medium sized black light bulbs. I'll try to get a picture of it.

The crew working here tonight is awesome. Dorothy, Marsha and Sheila just saved the night. Carolyn is grinning ear to ear and tail bone feels much better.

Wow. The number of people who have been following up with the whole shebang on the Blog is amazing. Thank you all.

It is 7:55 pm on friday night and all is well. carolyn s eating well and keeping food down. Her eyes are much brighter than they were this morning. Not that the numbers will mean anything to any of you, but they are relative to each other so here goes. She initially started on 3 grams per hour, they reduced her to 2 grams per hour, then eventually 1.5 grams per hour. With every reduction, her eyes were brighter, but the risk of contractions was higher. The key is to find the right balance of minimal haziness to Car, but stop the contractions.

At 1.5 car began having contractions so they bounced her back up to 2 grams per hour.

By the way, there are several things I am avoiding saying, the main one is what the medications are that Carolyn is on. In a nutshell, it is because it doesn't matter. I do not want people giving their opinion on the meds because we have faith and trust in our doctor and his opinion is what matters to us.

Another is the hospital and room number. This some people know, and that is fine, but in general, again, it doesn't matter. We are trying to control traffic around here so as to not overwhelm Carolyn. Not that it would happen, but if a bunch of people all showed up at once, it would stress Carolyn and possibly cause contractions.

I am trying to walk a fine line of gatekeeper. Letting Carolyn know of the support and love out there, but not letting everyone come and express it in person. I am not playing favorites and picking and choosing friends. Not the case at all. Our closest inner circle of family and friends has had limitations placed on their time with us as well. Again, my top priority is to my wife and children's health.

OK, so this is a little late, the Dr. was here around 8 and in his quick visit he got his point across clearly. He snickered and chuckled a bit then boldly proclaimed, "I am winning!."

That is the best news we could have heard. It means he has the contractions under control. Well actually it would be more accurate to say they are 'more' under control. Not out of the woods yet.

*NOTE: a piece of information I left off from earlier. My email address is matthewgcook @ gmail (dot) com I broke out the address so it couldn't be searched by google. hopefully you can figure out what the address is. If not, leave a comment here on the blog.

NOTE*#2 Protocol for visiting Carolyn. Please call first and please do not be offended if she can not see you at particular time. One of the keys to limiting her contractions is limiting her stress. Not that any of you are stressful individuals, but sometimes seeing people can take a lot of energy which results in stress. If you do visit her, only come if you are not sick. If you are, or think you are contagious, please (and I mean this as politely as possible) stay away. This could be a long difficult hospital stay and being sick during it could make things much more difficult. No offense, but I need to protect Carolyn right now. If you do visit, please wash your hands with soap when you arrive. We have a sink and soap on the room, so you can take care of it here.

Thanks!

WooHoo! we made it. Not that this morning was a milestone of any type, but a little enthusiasm at 6am is a good thing!

Actually I don't know if I'll go that far. Let's just agree to a little enthusiasm at 6am isn't a bad thing.

After sharing her dream with the nurse of swimming in a pool soda with giant big floating ice cubes, Carolyn was rewarded with a short stack Sprite. She said Sprite has never tasted so good. Her dry-mouth just wanted a little bubbly relief and she got it. Her voice really perked up when she heard the top pop in the hallway.

Carolyn and I usually watch the news in the morning, just like we are doing today, but usually I am finishing up a workout (I know, I hardly believe I actually get up early and hop on a treadmill, especially since my results don't necessarily show it) and she is finishing getting ready and making breakfast right about now. At least that's what we did yesterday morning.

Flash forward 24 hours to today. I am sitting on a small couch and Carolyn is hooked up to monitors and heavily dosed with some "Big Medicine" as our Dr. calls it. Not quite what we had planned (the story of our lives).

Two of the side effects of the med Carolyn is on are body temperature increase (she feels she is burning up) and dry mouth. But, she has been instructed not to drink too much water since she is already on an IV. If she drinks a lot, she could potentially have too much water in her system, but with the dry mouth she is craving it.

This tedious intro is to get to the funny thing she said. After getting up to use the bathroom (major task right now) she got all bundled up in bed and asked for a little water. I put the straw near her mouth and she slowly sipped some of the room temperature water and when she was done, laid her head back down to the pillow and softly said, "Ahhhh, beautiful." i couldn't help but laugh.

She is trying to get some sleep, but we know the nurse will be in soon to hook up her new bag of antibiotics so the sleep, if any, will be short lived.

What's that? Why is she on antibiotics you ask? Good question.

Many times when women go into pre-term labor the doctors do not know what causes it. One of the potential causes is a small infection the doctors are unaware of. So, as a precaution, it is common to put pre-term labor patients on a course of antibiotics to treat the mysterious infection in hopes that if the infection goes away, so will the contractions.

Just a word for those of you who have never spent a night in the hospital. If you have the mistaken impression that hospitals are for rest. Ha!

With IV bags being changed, and the creature comforts a bit lacking sleep is not easy to come by in a hospital.

Carolyn is doing her best to get a few minutes sleep here and there but is so uncomfortable from the meds, contractions, and IV that even a couple minutes sleep provides some relief.

As or me, well, this isn't about me. But I am on the floor on my new Thermarest camping pad from the Alpine Shop. Great purchase. The couch that folds out to a bed is a back breaker. I would rather brave the floor than end up in traction to get my spine out of some pretzel-like contortion.

The staff though has done everything they can to help us and comfort us. The nurses are great and I have yet to see one do anything begrudgingly. They are immediate to respond to the damned IV pump mistakenly thinking there is a bubble in the line. If you have ever been awakened by the shrill beeping of one of these contraptions then you I'm sure share my sentiment.

While I was up having been awakened by the aforementioned alarm I checked my email to see a note from Nebraska. Joe I'm sure was checking his email during a late night feeding of his young son and sent his prayers our way. Thanks Joe and Karen. We love you guys. ~Matt

Just met the night OB on call. We are increasing Car's meds a little bit to try to reduce the darn contractions that seem to be so persistent. these boys are being about as stubborn as their parents. They get it form both sides of the family,

Carolyn will try to get at least a few minutes sleep. We'll see how that goes.

Our Dr. as well as the high risk specialist will be in in the morning.

By the way, just in case, we want to be prepared if the boys come. We need a first name for baby B. Please, I do not want a list of names you do not like, but feel free to submit fun or real first names, just keep in mind the last name of Cook. It can complicate name suggestions. Preferably we like 2 or more syllable first names to go with one syllable last name.

~Matt

Evening update. Hey Y'all, thanks for checking in again.

She is still having contractions. We met with the High Risk specialist earlier. He was a wealth of information but the gist of what he said was to hang tight until Saturday when we will re-assess the situation. She is still on some meds to calm the contractions, but the side effects of the meds are cumulative. The longer she is on the meds, the more relaxed the rest of her muscles will become. She will also have a greater likelihood of headaches and blurry vision.

Carolyn is doing well, but foggy right now. She had dinner and is keeping it down. Thank you for everyone's calls and concern. I apologize if I haven't returned everyone's calls. Obviously this was not planned for today and I have been scrambling with the help of Jacqueline to pull life together. I just got back to the hospital after driving home to pick up clothes and toiletries. I also picked up a camping pad to sleep on since Darren told me the couches here are a bit rough to sleep on.

Tonight I will be "camping" in the room. I have the pad, my travel pillow, and a heavy coat for a blanket if I need it in addition to any blankets.

Obviously there is lots going on. The outpouring of love towards us is great as we have received calls from across the country already. Thank you all for your love, support and prayers.

Random Gilligan's Island reference. Let me explain.

This morning we went to the every-other-week doctor appointment and the Dr. realized Carolyn was having contractions. Carolyn is 25 weeks pregnant with twins. Needless to say, pre-term labor at 25 weeks is not a good thing. Car has been admitted to the hospital and placed on a med to relax her muscles and slow down/prevent the labor. We are awaiting a visit from the high risk specialist to find out what the next few days, weeks and months hold for us.

The details: 1+ cm dilated; 50% effaced

I will try my best to keep this page updated. This doesn't mean don't call, but this will be the spot for the latest and greatest. There is so much going on, we will be relying on people spreading the word.

Thank you all for your love and support. Please, if I could ask one thing, take a moment right now to say a quick prayer for the health ad well being of Carolyn and our two boys.

Oh yeah, the Gilligan's Island reference....much like the tourist boat ride that fateful day, this was supposed to be a routine 15 minute Dr. visit. Our very own Three Hour Tour.