Tuesday, July 28, 2009

More baby chuckles. Just can't get enough.

From downloaded7_27_09

Another video of those wonderful baby chuckles. Again, click on the icon on the pic and it should work? Hope these are working.

Jeff's wonderful sense of humor

From downloaded7_27_09


OK I'm trying to figure out this picasa stuff. Can't figure out how to get the video to play on blogger, but I think if you click that little icon on the bottom of the left of the pic it will take you to picasa and play it for you. Let me know if that doesn't work.

While airing up the tires to my new stroller for the first time, Jeff decided to get funny and give me some theme music. I thought this was funny so had to share. Please excuse the messy apartment. There's not a lot of room for stuff and it gets messy quickly.

A little of July


Most of this is July except our house pics; those are from June. I apologize that I have a lot of the same pose. This mommy just couldn't pick one to put in the slideshow, I thought they were all cute! So I guess it's a long slideshow.

Friday, July 24, 2009

What did I do?

I met this person at a playgroup a week ago. I wasn't exactly sure how to take her. She was a little stand offish but at the same time all to forthcoming with all of her 1st borns accomplishments. She was quick to ask me if my daughter had started crawling yet which, of course, was an easy way for her to describe how all she had to do was show her son and he picked it up instantly. She explained how he is doing signs and even saying Mama and Dada. He is pulling up on things too. All this at 8 months old. Pretty impressive yes? Brennan isn't even close to crawling, pulling up, saying anything other than "ah" and "mmmmm", or doing any kind of sign language but....I'm not worried. They all develop at their own pace. Kadyn learned all those things at her own pace and is now ahead of her peers in many of the things she can do.

I admit I fell victim to this bragging game and played along as I described that Kadyn did all those things too; I felt as though I had to defend myself or prove myself; now in retrospect I wish I would've just kept my mouth shut. I don't want to come off as boastful as this woman was. Brennan will learn them when she's ready, and I'm not going to freak out if she isn't doing them yet. I work with her on them, and I can tell she just isn't ready yet.

Anyhoo...my first impression of this gal was a little sour but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I was a mother of one once. I've always felt Kadyn is a very bright child. She just picks things up so quickly and remembers things sooooo well. It can become easy to take credit for this especially since I work with her all the time on learning things to prepare for school. This "know it all" attitude is a horrible line of thinking but an easy trap to fall into. So I wanted to credit the woman's behavior to being a very proud first time mommy. She probably didn't even realize she was doing it. She just wants to beam about her son and wants to tell anyone who will listen. I get it. I was sure our next meeting wouldn't be so bad, or so I thought.

Tonight we happened to run into her and her husband when we were out and about getting my hair cut. I saw her and immediately greeted her with a warm "Oh Hi" and started walking her direction as to signal that I would like to stop and have a warm chat. She replied kind of matter of factly, "Hi, how are you." What struck me as odd was that she just said it as she was walking and didn't even slow down to hear a response and almost seemed as though she was avoiding eye contact with me. It was very awkward. I could tell by her husband's body language that he was expecting to stop and chat, but she just pushed forward and didn't act like she wanted anything to do with me really. Now, I can be someone who overanalyzes things, so I questioned Jeff on all this and he admitted that it did seem like she was trying to avoid me.

Oh I can't stand it when it seems someone doesn't me and I have no idea why? What did I do? Is this just her personality. Other than our little bragging session the other day in which all I did was respond several times with "My 1st did that too," the gal did kind of keep to herself. But how much of this can your really chalk up to a personality flaw? Our interaction tonight was on the verge of rude. It really bothers me. I hate that someone may not like me, especially when I don't know what I did to cause it. I hope I'm wrong. Maybe this woman just isn't a very social woman.

Well anyways. This isn't a normal blog entry for me, more just a personal rant that I needed to get off my chest. Thanks for reading. I feel better now.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I love...

...beginning and ending each day with you
sharing the ups, down, and in-betweens
knowing that what we've got it pretty amazing

...to love honor and cherish
in sickness and in health
til death do us part

I still remember and always will.
Happy 9 years honey! I love you:) xoxo

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Update #2

The test results are in on my mother and I don't feel as though I'm that much more enlightened. Here's what I do know, Mom's sarcoid is now in stage 4. She neglected to ask the doctor what that really meant, but I searched it on internet and it said people in stage 4 have 0-5 percent chance of it going into remission. He has given her prescriptions for meds that are half the cost of the ones she is currently on so that is a big help.

The good news is that she is feeling much better since she started the meds. She tells me she almost feels normal again and her voice sounds a lot better too. Her pulmonologist also told her that sarcoid isn't as rare as most people think and he has seen hundreds with the disease. He also said that the disease can kill but that it is rare to die from it. Mom said he in no way had the attitude that she should be very worried so I guess that's good news.

They now don't think that it spread to the other organs because the pain she was having in her spleen area is getting better. They think that she was just soar from all the coughing which is now getting much better on the meds. They are going to do a catscan and a colonoscopy to be sure and we will know more on that in 3 weeks.

As for quality of life, she can never expect to be able to do very strenuous activities. Her lung capacity will never be fully functional anymore.

So...I am relieved in one sense with the new news, but also still worried about the diagnosis of stage four. I have told her to find out more about what that really means which she says she will do in 3 weeks when they get the results of the next round of tests.

Thank you everyone for your prayers. I'll try to keep you updated.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Never a lack of things to do

Well we've been here for a little over 3 weeks and I seem to be very good at keeping busy. A couple weeks ago we went exploring one of the local parks. It had all kinds of athletic fields, a walking track, tons of playground equipment, and a really cool creek. Ironically enough, I happened to run into our realtor's parents who had his kids for the day while there. Kadyn really loved playing in the creek and so did I until she fell down. "Don't worry mom, it will dry" she told me. I really could care less except I don't carry extra clothes for her anymore. I very calmly thought to myself that I could figure out something. I looked at Brennan who was in a rather large outfit that day and decided that I would put that on Kadyn. I also put one of her diapers on Kadyn too. Kadyn's crack was hanging out of the dipe and her whole midrift was showing, but at least she didn't have to ride home in the car seat wet or worse yet, naked. Brennan had another outfit so she was just fine.

Last week we visited the butterfly palace and got a season pass so we can go whenever we feel like it. We live very close to it. Kadyn's favorite part, or so she tells me, was watching the 3D movie about butterflies and the preying mantis ate the butterfly. I especially loved having to figure out how to answer the question "Mama what are they doing?" as she watched two preying mantises going at it. She really was loud with a ton of questions during that movie. It was an experience to say the least. My favorite part, of course, was the butterfly exhibit which also had hummingbirds.

Just today I got a membership to the local recplex. It has an indoor walking track and for only 30$ you can have access to it for the entire year. Jeff and I have both been feeling like we need to start taking better care of ourselves so this was a step in that direction. Currently it is just too hot to be outside much. I could bare a lot of the heat, but I don't want to have Brennan out in it too much. Today I walked two miles with Brennan in the carrier while I was waiting for Kadyn's VBS to finish.

Speaking of VBS, as I drove to church to drop her off, she exclaimed, "Mom, I thought I was going to High School." It really was quite comical. I'm not even sure how she knows what High School is. She told me on the way back she saw a chimpanzee....a real one. Hmmmm? I snuck in the balcony of the sanctuary to peek at the kids during the song sessions and she caught a glimpse of me. She yells over the top of everyone "That's my mom! Mama, mama, we're not done yet!" She must have jumped up and down a thousand times during that whole time I watched her working on the songs. She was easy to spot in a crowd to say the least. She is looking forward to a whole week of VBS. Jeff and I are contemplating preschool seeing as how she enjoys stuff like this so much. She really doesn't need it mentally, as she is miles ahead of her peers, but socially she really does enjoy the company of other kids her age and being led by another adult delights her too.

On my way to pick her up I got pulled over and recieved my first traffic ticket ever. I was really dissppointed in myself. We have been having trouble with our van radio. For weeks we haven't been able to get it to search for other stations until today on my way to VBS. I finally figure it out so was on a mission to get my new Branson stations set. In the process I wasn't paying attention to my speed going down a hill and then I saw the lights. Such a bummer. Thankfully, Jeff has had his fair share of tickets, so he wasn't too upset. He was just glad it wasn't him for once.

One of the perks of living in Branson is that you get some local discounts. I scored tickets to a show that typically costs families 79$ to attend for a whopping 11 bucks. Kadyn really enjoyed it. I think all of us felt our favorite part was the dancing bears and the poodles with lion masks on. It was quite comical.

Last Sunday we got to visit our first Branson church. It was VERY contemporary. The pastor wore jeans and t-shirt. The musicians were very loud but very talented. The sermon couldn't have been more perfect for the time because it was about the history of their church and what they stood for and what their goals were. The pastor was very humorous. This church is known for it's children's program and Kadyn LOVED it. She also especially loved that it was in a princess like castle the Celebration City theme park. The park has been shut down and the church is currently using this castle to meet until a new church is built in a couple years. Jeff and I were both surprised that we actually paid attention to the entire sermon and never lost attention. That's a good sign. I'm contemplating joining a women's bible study there soon. We have a few more churches I'd like to try first so we'll see, but this one has real possibilities. It is also VERY close to where we currently live which is a perk, and a 11:15 service is kind of appealing too.

Well there you have it, some of the highlights of the last few weeks. We are enjoying our new community and slowly getting involved. Hopefully we will start to feel connected within a few months. It really is BEAUTIFUL here and that is probably one of our favorite parts about living here aside from the fact that there is soooo much to do. Branson....home sweet home.