Happy 2nd Hearing Birthday!!

This past weekend on the 11th we celebrated the second anniversary of Kemper's cochlear implant activation. Two wonderful years of hearing. If only I could have fast forwarded to this day when he was first diagnosed  I could have saved myself sooo many tears. He's doing great .He's just your typical toddler boy!

 

I love being able to celebrate his hearing birthday. It gives us a chance look back at all of our accomplishments and thank all of the people that have helped and supported us through this journey.

  K loves birthday parties, so the day before I told him we could make his favorite chocolate cake and invite our family over for dinner & a party for his ears. The morning of the party he woke up so excited, he didn't even have his"ears" on and he said " Mommy I wake up! I go to Target and get chocolate cake?"
He had fun decorating his cake with sprinkles and M&M's.

My side of the family over for dinner. I cooked K's favorite spaghetti dinner. K and my dad had us laughing as they waved their hands talking with an Italian accent " It's a spaghetti!"

yummy!

Cake time!!

We normally don't do presents for his hearing birthday but his aunt Maria couldn't resist. She got him a Mickey Mouse and friends t-shirt and underwear and also a huge cookie!

He had a great time. He kept saying "Everybody at my house!" he loved having everyone over.
We are all so very thankful for this day and the many more hearing birthdays to come!


Here is the video of Kemper's hearing journey I posted last year. I updated it a tiny bit. Enjoy!

Happy Valentines Day!

                             I saw these cute little projects on Pinterest so I had to try them out myself.

Funny thing is that K has had a thing for mustaches lately.

A couple of our family members have one and I think that is where he got the idea.

He  keeps telling me he wants one so I made it happen. ;)

 

 I made these lollipop mustaches for the kids in his mothers day out class. 

He got a kick out of modeling them for me.

You know he liked them since he let me take his picture!

oh and lollipop lips for the girls.

Hope they like them!

They were so easy to make.

I just traced the shapes I found online into some "foam paper", cut them out, and poked a hole for the lollipop.

We have a family date planned for Valentines. What could be better than dinner with both of my loves??

Happy Valentines Day!!

Not a great start to the New Year

Well we didn't quite start the New Year as expected, but we still plan on making the best of it! I  was originally scheduled to work at the hospital on New Years Eve, so we spent the day before hanging out as a family, celebrating the New Year a little early. That evening we decided to take K to his favorite restaurant,  Joe's Crab Shack. On the way there K fell asleep in the car. This hardly ever happens, I think I can count the number of times on one hand. He was a little grouchy waking up, but perked up one he recognized where we were. He was not very talkative, but was acting pretty normal.
The food arrived at our table and K didn't want anything to do with it, he didn't even  want a single sip of his juice. This is when I knew something was going on. By the time we got home K already had a  low grade fever. He was still acting pretty normal so I gave him some Tylenol and sent him to bed. My hubby and I spent the rest of the evening watching K on the baby monitor and the ball dropping in New York on TV. Not the most exciting New Year but at least we were together.
  Overnight I watched him like a hawk and he did well. Although when he woke up he was miserable. Poor child could hardly speak and I could feel the heat radiating off him.

Since it was new years Day K's pediatrician was closed, so off to the acute care clinic we went.Thankfully we didn't have to wait long before we were seen. My poor K was so sick , he was beginning to drool a little bit because it hurt so bad to swallow. I immediately told them my suspicion of him having strep throat. They swabbed his throat and ten  minutes later came back with the diagnosis. Strep Throat. :( We got our prescription for amoxicillin and  headed on home.

 

The next day after two doses of antibiotics and a good nights sleep we had a new kid. A really hungry kid might I add. He had not eaten hardly anything in over 24hrs. " Mama I hungry, I want some phood." First thing he asked for were pancakes. So I made him a batch of Mickey Mouse pancakes. We spent the rest of the day quarantined to the house sharing our coodies. Like I said it wasn't the most exciting New Years, but I had both my boys at my side and  I'm content with just that.

Hope everyone has a happy and HEALTHY new year!!

The Christmas Post

I've been a slacker in blogging department and this really bothers me, just for the simple reason that I would like to go back and remember the stories behind the pictures. 
Can you guess what one of my New Years resolutions will be?
Ha! we'll see!

Oh Christmas tree...

Or as Kemper calls it "mistress tree"  We really need to work on that one!

We had two Christmas trees this year. Why two? A few days after Christmas last year we came across a 9 ft pre-lit Christmas tree at a hardware store & they were practically giving it away so we had to get it. We put it in the living room and put our old 6ft tree in the den. We called the smaller tree our "sentimental tree" because that's where we put all of our favorite and gifted ornaments.The larger tree was nicknamed our "Show off" tree.;)

 My husbands favorite holiday is Christmas, so it's pretty much the only time I can get away with going out and buying stuff to decorate the house. We had fun as a family decorating the house with the movie Christmas Vacation playing in the background

Next year my hubby wants to "Griswold" the outside of our house. That should be interesting...

Thankfully we have a very well behaved toddler that never got into any of the decorations. He loves them all so much, I'm not quite sure how to break it to him that they have to be put away soon.

Speaking of my sweet Baby K, lately when I try and take a picture of him he tells me "No more pictures momma!" So we had to get a little creative in order to get pictures by the tree. We told K and his cousin Nolan that they could get under the tree IF they let us take their picture. As you can see it worked! My favorite is the "Home Alone" pose in the first picture.

Visions of sugar plums...

 Kemper and I did a little holiday baking. He is always asking me to get out my bowls and spoons so that he can pretend cook, so I knew he would have a blast cooking for real. He had so much fun mixing and pouring all the ingredients. We made his favorite sugar M&M cookies. We also made jars of cookie mix to give to all the neighbors and K's teachers. We called them "Kemper Kookies"

We also did some gingerbread house decorating  with my sister Maria and nephew Nolan. It took K a little while to grasp the idea that you are supposed to decorate with the candy and not eat it, at least not yet. ;)

All aboard!!

We made many trips to the mall this season, to get gifts for everyone and to see the trains of course! The Trains at Northpark were amazing, too bad my iPhone couldn't quite get all the details. K's favorite was the scene of Big Tex from the State fair.
One of the other malls has a train that you can actually ride. We were not quite sure if K would ride it because he normally won't do anything like that alone. We took the risk and bought him a ticket and sure enough he got on that train alone like a big boy. We were so proud ;)

Here comes Santa Claus...

Kemper is at the age where most children are scared of Santa. So this year I did a little trick to get him interested and wanting to visit Santa. Each time we would go to the mall we would stop by Santa's workshop. We would only stay and watch for a minute or two, then I would tell him we needed to go.(I know this sounds mean)The first two times he didn't mind, but by the third he was begging to see Santa. So we finally went to see him. The wait was about 45 minutes and he was very patient for a 2.5yr old.

When it was finally his turn he turned to me with a nervous look and said " I want to see Santa, no pictures." Ha! he was more upset about getting his picture taken than meeting Santa. So I did what all good parents do and bribed him with a cookie afterwards if he let us take his picture. Mission accomplished!

  

Twas The Night Before Christmas...

It was so fun getting to teach Kemper about Christmas this year. He still pretty young but he is beginning to grasp some of the concepts. He loved hearing the stories of baby Jesus and Santa Claus.

We started the tradition of leaving milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.
(Please ignore the pacifier, it's a work in progress!)

Christmas Morning...

At last it was Christmas morning. We took K downstairs to see all the presents Santa left him. At first he just stared at the presents, not knowing what to think. After we told him they were toys he was ready to open them up. He would unwrap a present and then want us to take it out of its packaging  immediately so that he could play with it. I don't quite know why manufacturers insist on making toy packages so hard to open, by the time we got one opened he was already onto the next toy. We found it funny that one of his favorite gifts was a simple $1 slinky I got at the grocery store. I think he liked it more than his new bike. Oh well that's a toddler for you!

Later that day we went over to my parents house to celebrate and open more gifts. K and Nolan were surprised with new cars! Their awesome aunt Maria got them for them.

We had a wonderful Christmas this year, and are looking forward to many more.
We are so blessed and thankful for Him and all his wonderful gifts.

The greatest one being the love of our family near and far.

 Welcome Christmas. Bring your cheer,
Cheer to all Whos, far and near.

Welcome Christmas while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand.

Dr Suess

Merry Christmas!!!

Happy Halloween !!

Halloween Weekend 2011

Doesn't he make the perfect Woody from Toy Story?!

We found these pajamas at the Disney store and they make the best costume.

The best part is that when the night is over I can just toss him in bed!

 He was so excited to be Woody.

I think the hat was his favorite part. He never took it off.

K with his cousin Nolan, a.k.a Buzz Lightyear, at the church Kids Carnival

 Kemper playing some of the games and having a balloon animal made.
He loved the catapult the frog into the bucket game the best. He was actually really good and won every time.  Each time he got ready to launch the frog he would stick his tongue out Michael Jordan style.

Full concentration!!

I have never bee a fan of clowns, they kinda creep me out.
K had no problem.
He kept wanting to visit him over and over.

K with his Daddy who was wearing his most "cowboyish" outfit.

Halloween day at Gymboree and all the kids get to wear their costumes to class.
I thought it was a perfect time for me to bust out my Halloween tights ;)

 K pretending to jump in a big pile of leaves.

K pretending to plant pumpkin seeds.
 Riding his trusty steed Bullseye.
Working hard popping bubbles with his bubble poppers. (notice the tongue again?)

Daddy, all decked out in Halloween colors, visited on his lunch break. Lucky us!

And last but not least....
Halloween Night!!

  Each year my brother and sisters meet up at my parents house with us and we go trick-or-treating in their neighborhood.

 K had a great time. He's usually pretty shy when it comes to talking to strangers but he had no problem saying "trick-or-treat!" "Happy Halloween" and "thank you!" to anyone passing out candy. 

Oh the power of candy!! 

He also had no problem telling us where to go next. He would point and say "This way momma!!"

I had to put in the middle pic of my husband doing a cochlear implant check. I think he did about fifty of them. Yep he still has them! ;)

Enjoying the fruits of his labor!

Hope y'all had a safe and Happy Halloween!!

oops almost forgot... our costumes ;)