Promotion!

There has been a promotion in our house....and it isn't Brett or me. Kellan has been promoted to BIG Brother!! We are so very excited to be expecting our second baby, due June 28th, 2014.

 

2013 Christmas Card

Baby K #2 at 10 weeks!

Which means we have about 6 months to get Kellan over his fear of babies. I often envision the day the new baby is born, Kellan comes up to the hospital to visit us....pretty sure it won't be a picture perfect moment. And it will get progressively worse when he realizes the baby is coming home with us. Lots of playing "house" will be happening the next few months.

 

Kellan continues to learn, grow and amaze us each and every day. I was trying to count the number of signs he knows now and I couldn't come up with a number. He pulls new ones out all the time. It is very fun to be able to communicate with him considering his only word so far is still "YA" and he says that very selectively. By far, his favorite signs are 'hat' and 'phone.' Since my Dad, "Poppy" is always wearing a hat, Kellan has so lovingly nicknamed him 'hat' which is the sign he does instantly when he sees Poppy.

 

The fake phone is much more fun if he can have the real phone at the same time.

Most times, his signs are used in regards to something with Elmo....i.e. signs "on" and then points to the t.v. He loves singing and especially loves songs that have signs or hand motions to go along with them. Hickory Dickory Dock, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus and Twinkle Twinkle are some of his favorite.

In November, we took Kellan to the Kalahari in the Dells for a night. He absolutely loved it. The combination of Brett taking him down slides and him watching the other kids run and splash around meant pure heaven for Kellan. The weekend after that, Brett and I spent a weekend away in Door County to celebrate our 4 year wedding anniversary. It was a very relaxing weekend. I was very early in the pregnancy, so constant nauseouness and extreme tiredness were the main parts of my day. Brett enjoyed drinking alone while I slept next to him...it was perfect and just what we needed! We ate breakfast at the White Gull Inn, simply amazing. Visited a place we both went to when we were kids, Pebble Beach, rented a movie and went out to dinner for awesome bbq. Perfect little weekend away.

We took Kellan to see Sesame Street live in the beginning of December. To say he loved it would be a huge understatement. He sat perfectly on our laps and I'm fairly certain he didn't even know we were there the entire show. When he gets excited, his body tenses up....he was tense for so long, he had beads of sweat on his nose. He was in heaven.

 

His love for Elmo has only intensified. We are working to ween off Elmo while eating, we know it isn't a good habit. Though, it is a great negotiating tool. Since Brett's new job, I've taken over the duty of dropping off and picking up Kellan from daycare. Kellan is not a morning person (much like his mom) so we often start talking about Elmo to make him happy in the morning. He knows my van has a dvd player in it, so I usually let him watch Elmo on the way to daycare. Yep, I totally used to judge moms having their kids watching tv in the mornings....now I'm one of them. So worth having him be happy for the 10 minute drive. Speaking of daycare duty, I don't like the job at all. Kellan is in a phase of becoming very sad when I set him down to leave. The biggest pouty lip you can imagine accompanied by clinging to my legs asking to come up. Heartbreaking.

Brett is loving his new job so far. The company is called Stafford-Smith out of Elkhorn and he is selling kitchen equipment to restaurants, hotels, resorts, and universities to name a few. The company has done kitchen equipment for Miller Park, Lambeau Field, and Potowatomi! Brett's main travel area will be Madison and Milwaukee. Hoping this is his "dream" career!

We are going to come up a little short of Kellan walking by his 2nd birthday, but we are so absolutely happy with his progress. No doubt he will be walking soon. Other progress we are happy with, he's been sleeping like a rockstar. Most nights all the way through! Simply amazing. He must sense that his mama really needs extra sleep these days!

We've had a slow few months with appointments outside of his 3 therapies a week. Based on recommendations from his current therapists, we are going to have Kellan evaluated for vision therapy. His PT feels with the strides he is making with signing and motor skills that he should be more advanced when it comes to playing with toys. He definitely can see better when things aren't real close to him. He rarely makes eye contact when he is close to you. His OT noticed that when food is on his tray, he more so feels around for it versus looks down and sees it. I'm hoping it is one of those appointments where we go to it and they say he is just fine. I say "one of those appointments", but when I think back, not sure we've had too many of those!

We got to visit Santa at his therapy clinic this week. Wasn't sure how he was going to react to Santa, but he did quite well. Unfortunately I forgot my camera chip, so the first few pictures that I took were the best, but those were not captured. Humph. Here is one that the staff took for us.

 

After visiting Santa, all the kids sat in a circle and sang songs. Kellan didn't want to sit in the circle, but he absolutely loved being an outsider watching all the kids sing. We then got to have a therapy session at the clinic later in the week which was very nice. Here's a picture of him playing with shaving cream in therapy. I was pretty impressed with him. Definitely a texture he wasn't sure about at first but got better as we played with it.

 

The Kleczewski family has a lot to be thankful for, can't believe that we are on the cusp of 2014. It should be a very exciting year for us. Starting the year celebrating our little bug's 2nd Birthday complete with Elmo everything followed by finding out if Kellan will have a new baby brother or sister! See you in 2014!

Turtle in a Half Shell

Where to begin....Kellan is flourishing like crazy and it is so.much.fun. I think I'm going to go bullet point style for this post just because he has a lot going on!

• Al's Run was a HUGE success. An awesome day, beautiful weather and the best family and friends there to support us. Simply amazing. We ended up raising just under $15,000!!!

Our inspiration!




Not all 112 team members made it in time for the picture, but that is still a big bunch of people!!

• Kellan got his first hair cut on September 7th in anticipation for his big T.V. debut and Al's Run. He instantly became a little boy!
• He is coming along with sign language. He has just started to realize he can sign what he wants or needs and we know what he is talking about. He has mastered water, eat, ears, nose, milk, phone and all of the signs to 'Wheels on the Bus.' He continues to say 'Ya' if you ask him a question. He uses it in the right context when he wants to say yes. Wish he could turn that 'Y' into a 'M' so I could hear MA!
• Kellan is crawling like crazy, loves to be chased and can move rather quickly if he knows he is being chased. He is also moving around like crazy holding on to anything and everything so that he can walk places.
• He loves going down slides...working on his core to actually have him sit down and go down, but for now going feet first on his belly is a grand ole time.
• He also LOVES books. The one thing he will sit for a very long time and play with. He first must take them all off the shelf. Once they are all removed, he sits in the heap of books paging through them. He will often hold one up and say "eh" which means, please read this to me :) His favorite has become Brown Bear Brown Bear or the Patty Cake book. One day he was reading alone while I was making his bed and I watched him do Patty Cake while paging through the book.....melted my heart.
• We've found a new place to play and it is amazing for low muscle tone kids. The trampoline park. He loves the foam pit. The opportunity to fall off the edge of something whenever he wants is his heaven.
• You can't even say the word E-L-M-O without him immediately pointing to the tv, ipad or our phones. Why the heck do kids like that guy so much!? He is obsessed.
• He recently had the flu for 6 days, 2 of which I had it too....longest 6 days I've had in awhile. Pretty sure Elmo was on more than it was off trying to get through those days.
• We've also formed a very bad habit of putting Elmo on when he eats. Getting him calories is way more important to me right now more than him watching T.V. Whatever it takes!
• Speaking of eating, he is officially off his $35 per can formula that would last 2-3 days. WOOT! He has moved to a soy based formula that offers the same amount of calories and smells like cake. Way better than the other stuff.
• With that, we also got him a new speech therapist, Linda. And we LOVE HER! She is way more aggressive on getting him to reach milestones and get eating and signing better, I needed her in my life! In the first week we had her, she had visited daycare and wrote an elaborate food plan for Kellan. She's also very energetic and fun which is right up Kellan's alley.
• We also started him in Occupational Therapy. We've realized he has some sensory issues. He doesn't like things that are wet. We are working to hopefully fix that before he gets too old and set in his ways. Come on Kellan!!! We've also started a brushing technique over his body that is supposed to aliven his senses and get him stronger and walking. Though our physical therapist wouldn't mind if he didn't walk quite yet. She is bound and determined to get his core stronger.
• We have also learned that even though he has bad hearing in one ear, he sure can hear lots. He has recently become sensitive to some noises like Grandma's house phone, Poppy's paper shredder and the teapot whistling. He looks in sheer terror and immediately wants to be held. Strange.
• Kellan is still in love with anything that has doors. Opening and shutting them and removing the contents of everything inside them. The other day I walked into the pantry where he was "playing" and he was standing there holding a jug of water! Talk about some muscles! DVD's, pots and pans, tupperware and cookie sheets are far more fun than any toys he has.
• Speaking of sheer terror, his dislike against babies smaller than him continues. He has now associated even a baby carseat and what it holds as scary. When meeting cousin Liam for the first time, they hadn't even put his carseat down and he clinged to one of us and started crying. He's slowly warming up to cousin Tanner. Over the weekend, we realized he really liked the picture of Tanner on the wall. I think it's just because he realized Tanner wasn't in the room and was happy with that.
• Daddy just got a new job, so he traveled to Michigan for 3 days. I'm not sure how single parents do it every day. I was ready for some reinforcement after two nights alone with him. We are very excited at the new opportunity.
• There have been talks of Kellan moving up to the next room at daycare. I'm nervous and excited for the transition. I think it will be good for him to be with older kids versus babies. He is now at least 6 months older than all of the kids in his room. Some kids his same age have moved up once already and are moving up to the next room soon which means he will be 2 rooms behind. Don't focus on those things Kelley. The new room will mean nap time on a cot, eating with a utensil and sitting at a table. Very hard to grasp that he is ready for any of those things but a main reason why I like the daycare. They push him to move on!

Well, there's our last several weeks in a nutshell. Looking forward to the rest of fall, dressing Kellan up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and the approaching Holidays. I sure do love this time of year! 



I Know Where To Start

There are 2 things making me feel so absoultely lucky this last month. One being Kellan and all of the things he learned in the last month. Of course I will go in depth with those things in the remaining parts of this blog. :) Two being the love and support we feel AGAIN as we approach Al's Run and Team Kellan for the second year in a row. I can't even explain the feeling of knowing how many people we have in and out of our lives that have shown up to support Kellan. I can't thank each one of you enough. We feel so absolutely blessed to have the people we do behind us in this crazy journey.

I re-read my last post which was just over a month ago and I am SO happy with the progress Kellan has made. Crazy the strides he has been taking lately! Since my last post, we have a crawler! He has figured out how to be on all fours, though he still sometimes reverts back to his army crawl. He also constantly pulls himself up on anything and everything...cupboards, ottoman, entertainment center, kitchen stools, screen door, our dresser, the list goes on and wow are we proud! He meanders around everywhere while holding something for stability. Kellan has also apparently learned how to climb stairs. Not sure where he picked it up, but he looked like an old pro over the weekend!

He's also like a sponge with learning new signs. He has learned how to say hat (one of his favorite objects), open, shoes, blows kisses, waves bye-bye, occasionally signs water and has made the sign for monkey once [Hey, it counts!]. We are still working on milk, but when he gets excited (if his bottle is in sight) he tenses up in excitement. I think he is probably signing milk but we can't really tell. When he wants to, we hear the sweet sounds of 'ma' and 'da' coming from his little mouth! We also swear he says 'ya' for yes when we ask him things.

Kellan absolutely loves singing....working now on the sign for music. Instead, his way of signing that he wants to sing a song is by doing the 'spider' in "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" or hands together for "Bringing Home a Baby Bumble Bee." My sister taught him the Bumble Bee song for the first time on our Daiker Family Vacation and it immediately excited him and he learned the signs that same day. He also loves Elmo. Pretty sure he actually said 'Elmo' the other day. We use the i-pad quite a bit in physical therapy (crazy, yes, but whatever works....kids nowadays :) ) and we always watch Elmo videos. Elmo's song, Elmo and Will.I.Am and Elmo and Bruno Mars are some of his favorites!

Speaking of Daiker Family Vacation, we had a great week. The weather was so-so, sunny on and off, slightly windy most days and overall not really swimming in the lake kind of warm. But, we still had so much fun. With the exception of the mornings when Kellan would decide to wake up for the day around 4am. This schedule was not conducive to Mom and Dad's night time habits around the bonfire but we made do. :) I really attribute Kellan being around all of his very active cousins for a week the push he needed to get crawling.

Kellan continues to be the sweetest little boy. You can just tell his heart is so big. I secretly love when he plays shy and snuggles up with me, but no matter how shy he acts, he usually always has a smile for everyone. There really isn't anything better than watching the reactions of people when Kellan goes in with a wide open mouth, tounge out kiss. Most people don't appreciate those 'kisses' as much as Brett and I do!

Thank you again to EVERYONE that has played a part in Al's Run this year. No words describe what we are feeling. The outpouring of support this year is incredible. SO looking forward to this weekend and celebrating Kellan's last year with some very special people in our lives. Family, neighbors and friends...where would we be with out each and everyone of you? Thank you from the very bottom of our hearts. Tune in Thursday night at 10pm on Channel 12 to watch our little bug in the spotlight. Anxious and excited to see the story they put together. It is our story, it is our life and we are so humbled to be in the spotlight for a few minutes for all of Milwaukee to see.

As I have always felt throughout this journey, lyrics of songs speak to me. As I was running the other day, planning out Al's Run in my head, not even able to fathom all of the people involved, a song came on and it spoke to me. After many months of working so hard to teach Kellan new things, I feel like our dedication to making his life as great as possible is finally starting to pay off. I remember my special needs moms giving me advice a few months back. They seemed like old pros with their kids and the things they needed in their life. I'm finally starting to feel that way. I do feel like I know where to start. So I leave you with my latest inspriational song lyric ~

"I can't tell where the journey will end, but I know where to start." Avicii

Our Little Learner

Well, it's July. Where in the world does time go? I blame it on....Vegas...it was a time trap. And money trap for that matter. Still recovering and we've been back almost a week. Probably one of the most fun trips we've ever taken. And even though I was turning 30, for those few nights in Vegas I felt like I was back in college! And now, I remember and feel every single bit of 30 as I still feel sleep deprived and the hangover lasted several days. Yuck! Although, reality is...I am sleep deprived. Unfortunately, little Mr. Kellan got sick while we were gone and slept terrible for the first 3 nights we were back. Not what my wore out body and mind needed! So anyways, on to Mr. Man, who just turned 18 months on June 29th. Now really, where does time go?

As I do with every blog post, I start making a list of things I want to touch on. I've come up with so many things since I'm way overdue on a post, that I think a list is in order to make this single post shorter than a novel.

So here is the latest on Kellan:

- Since my last post, we did confirm Kellan is allergic to dogs. Poor guy can't catch a break. As many of you know, I'm not the biggest fan of dogs anyways, nor is Brett....but, most people we know have a dog. So travel plans will definitely need to be changed often in the future and I think the possibility if Kellan would ever need a service dog is out.
- He has mastered the army crawl and is sometimes even getting his little butt in the air. He's popped up on all 4's a couple of times. We still have hope that he is going to crawl. I think he is going to figure it out! His PT Kris gave us a hard talk about how smart he really is and that he has learned to get what he wants by being whiney. Granted, she isn't with him all day, but he definitely knows if he puts is hand out for long enough and makes his insistent "eh, eh, eh" sound, that eventually we will just give him what he wants! She told us we need to get tougher...easier said than done!
- Kellan is still obsessed with the DVD's 'Baby Signing Time.' He knows exactly what you are saying if you ask him if he wants to watch it. His little head turns immediately to the tv and he lets out the happiest little sound. Not sure if his recent signs have been because of Brett and I or Signing Time, but I don't care either way. Since my last post, he has learned to sign 'please', 'book' and do some of the hand motions for the Itsy Bitsy Spider. Not that I could say no to the kid before, but now when he pats his little belly for 'please', it just melts my heart! He has also mastered 'more' and 'so big.' And he's very close to 'milk.' We are getting there!
- We just realized last night as we were driving and dancing in the front seat that Kellan knows how to dance. Brett told him to dance and he put both his little hands up in the air and then brought them down to his lap. Not sure where he learned that move, but he did it at least 5 more times each time we asked him to dance! Crazy how fast he seems to be picking up on stuff suddenly.
- We definitely deserve all of these happy moments with him since we survived 4.5 days of a horrible flu bug just 3 weeks after he had gotten over the flu. "The flu" has a whole new meaning to me....really need to teach him about the bathroom or a bucket! After 3 days of the flu, we took him to the ER in fear that he was dehydrated. They didn't do anything for him and said he didn't seem dehydrated. Not sure how that is even possible, but it saved us a night in the hospital. Once his flu symptoms cleared, he got a terrible cold that we are still working with now. We are trying allergy medicine now to see if maybe just maybe he doesn't have a cold that literally is lasting 6 months. One can hope. I actually think he is getting better.
- Father's Day 2013 was quite eventful. I decided to get the "cheap" sunscreen, Water Babies for Kellan instead of his normal stuff. His skin got a few red bumps as I was spraying it on him, but I didn't think much of it. Before his nap, Brett gave him a bath and when his skin hit the bath water, his entire body broke out in huge hives. We immediately gave him Benadryl and got him ready for his nap. About 10 minutes after being up in bed, Brett heard a large thump and then loud cries. Somehow, Kellan managed to fall out of his crib. Though it was so scary and I felt sad for him, I was also kind of excited that he figured it out and that we could finally move his crib mattress down!
- We x-rayed his tonsils and adenoids to try to get to the bottom of why he gags so much. I was kind of hoping one of those were the reason for his gagging, but both appeared normal. The Doctor then ordered a swallow study to see if there was anything else we were missing.
- We had his swallow study the day before we left for Vegas. Very interesting, but unfortunately it didn't show anything we didn't already know. He was a champ. He sat on a little chair and they had an x-ray machine that moved to where his mouth was. We fed him liquid and solids. The conclusion, he is a very dis-organized eater (not the typical suck then swallow) and his low muscle tone is very apparent since there was a lot of residue left on his tongue after each swallow or bite.
- We are trying to teach Kellan to be gentle. For any of you that have hung out with him for more than 5 seconds, you know that he loves to grab hair and he has a death grip on it! A work in progress, but he surely knows what we are saying when we tell him to be gentle.
- We are really making progress on his physical therapy. In the last few days, he has learned to pull up to sit when he is laying down. Something so simple and most babies you don't even have to think twice on, but this is HUGE for Kellan. Since he has learned that, he is also getting up to actual crawl position. Now he just needs to figure out how to move. As I sat reading him books last night before bed, he kept getting up on all 4's. I sat there with the biggest smile and tears in my eyes. Seeing him learn these things is the most amazing feeling in the world. Here's him in action!

- Lastly, Team Kellan is back for this year's Al's Run and we hope you can join the team and raise money on behalf of Kellan. If you aren't available to be on the team for the actual run/walk on Saturday, September 14th at 10am, we hope you will consider making a donation on Kellan's behalf. Please visit the link below to sign up or make a donation! We appreciate ALL of the support.

http://events.chw.org/site/TR?team_id=2860&pg=team&fr_id=1070&et=I4NvV138EKJu0-TEmDYV3w&s_tafId=2080

That is all for now! Hopefully my next blog will have just as much good news and accomplishments for our little man!

Sunshine and Warmer Weather

Our little bug continues to flourish making the time with him sweeter and sweeter. Within the last few days he has started to put his arm out toward what he wants repeatedly saying, "Eh, Eh, Eh" until we get him what he wants. Without any words, I will blame this new skill for how our living room looks on a daily basis. Most days every toy we have is out, most of them played with for a max of 3 seconds even if it took us several minutes to figure out what "Eh" is. We find him talking the most when he is playing by himself, still working intensely to hear 'MAMA!'

He has learned what bubbles are and absolutely loves them. Though I think he likes the bottle they come in more than the actual bubbles. On Easter Sunday he signed his first sign while big Cousin Charlotte was jumping up and down with a stuffed animal on her head in front of him. We were all sitting around and asked Kellan if he wanted more....and he clapped his little hands together. It was amazing! Since then he has signed 'more' on a daily basis. If only his 'more' didn't look like his clap we would be in really good shape. You can imagine the level of teaching that has gone on since that day for him to pick up more signs. There is no better feeling than seeing him learn something we work so hard to teach him. He has mastered eating puffs and graham crackers (finally), hoping to move him on to some other foods and phase out the bottles in the next few months. Our bank account sure would love to not buy so much formula!

He has become so much more interactive in the last couple months. He still continues and LOVES to pull hair, or your chin or cheek skin. Sounds pleasant, huh? We are working on teaching "no", but most times he just smiles and continues doing what he was doing regardless of how serious our "no' is. He has come to love dropping or pushing things off any surface. Last night he managed to lift the tray off his high chair. Brett went over to him and told Kellan to not drop it. Kellan sat there with the entire tray in his hand dangling it over the side...and then, of course dropped it. Stinker! It's refreshing to see the defiant behavior though. He continues to still put everything in his mouth, cannot wait for this teething nonsense to be over. It's pretty tough to count how many he has in there because if your fingers go anywhere near his little mouth, he will for sure chomp down on them. I think he has 8 bottom teeth and probably that many on top too. It's sad when his laundry needs to be done because you ran out of bibs.

Below he is in his standing machine we are borrowing from his Physical Therapist. Don't let the smiley happy face fool you, he only likes to be in it for about 30 seconds. He is supposed to stand in there for 30 minutes per day. Because of his low muscle tone and not using his legs to stand for most of his life so far, Kris the Physical Therapist is concerned that his hip socket hasn't properly formed to "cup" his hip bone. We need to get better at having him spend time in here. I feel myself getting frustrated and sad at times, I just wish we could play with him and let him do whatever he wants like a normal baby. Instead I feel like we constantly need to be working out with him, engaging his core, tracking his vision, practice having him on his hands and knees (4 point) to prepare for crawling, and the list goes on. He has certainly mastered going from sitting to standing if we offer our hands out to him for support. All he wants to do now is stand and though he doesn't have the strength yet, he tries to pull up on everything.

Kellan's school had Carnival Night a few weeks ago. We learned there that he loves sitting at a table and chair and is always very proud of himself for sitting there. A sad moment when all the kids got to decorate cupcakes and Kellan sat there watching, not being able to eat or touch them because of his dairy allergy. Clearly as you can see in the picture, not a sad moment for him, he was as happy as can be. As I watched all the kids in his class run around and a parent give me a strange look when I responded to her question, "How old is he?" I realized though Kellan LOVES kids and doesn't know anything different, it is sometimes hard to be around normal functioning kids. A hard lesson as his mom to remind myself that Kellan doesn't know anything different and he is happy just how he is.

 

He has managed to be sick for I think 3 months straight. We have done 3 different antibiotics over the course of the few months and he still sounds very congested and his nose is running constantly. We are on to antibiotic #4, though I think the true medicine we need is sunshine and warmer weather. Because of our little sicky, we got to weigh him....STILL has not hit the 20lb mark, darn't! He weighed in at 19lbs 14oz just shy of being 16 months.

 

We've had a nice little break from Children's the last couple months, but we have quite a few follow up appointments coming up. We had Audiology to check his hearing again. We went in the sound booth and decided we will not be going back as frequently as they want us to for follow up appointments. He can't hear out of his left ear, but once he saw the blinking little animal on the left side of the sound booth, that little thing is all he would look at! I think he is just too little to really get any idea of what he hears from the sound booth. If we would suspect his hearing changed, we would bring him in, but for now we know he can hear, just not great.

 

We will be seeing allergy again to test him against dogs, we suspect he has an allergy to them. We also follow up with opthamology to check his eye. He continues to HATE the eye drop, a little anxious to hear what they have to say. Our last appointment is with GI, cannot wait to see what our little porker weighs in at. I feel like most days he looks chunky, LOVE IT!

 

As I said in my last post, hug and cherish the ones you love. The world we live in is absolutely crazy.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Little Magician

Kellan is full of new tricks this last month. If you spent an hour in our house, you are likely to hear the word ‘ball’ about 700 times. 699 of them coming from Brett or I….but, the one that comes from Kellan is the sweetest thing my ears have heard. He also pulls out a few more words at times he knows he has to put the charm on….getting rocked to sleep when it is way past his bed time for example. I’ll often find him clapping, saying “ball”, followed by “da” when you just want him to close his eyes. Stinker.

Speaking of closing his eyes, the sleeping through the night was going great for a few weeks but then he got a cold and it hasn’t been great since then. I apparently spoke too early in my last blog when I expressed my excitement of his new sleep habits. I should have kept my mouth shut. He is definitely a ‘sleep feeder’ as they call it. For whatever reason, he eats his bottle like a champ when his eyes are closed. It’s hard to not feed him in the middle of the night when we know that most times he gets in more than half his ounces overnight. I’m fairly certain Brett and I are going to go crazy very soon…so I’m thinking an attempt to get him sleeping will be in our very near future. He has also mastered eating a bottle by himself. Proud mom moment for sure!

Perfect example of how bedtime goes for Kellan :)

Kellan is almost done with his first session of swimming lessons. He has done great. He kicks almost the entire time….as in the minute we enter the pool area, we don’t even have to be in the water yet! It never fails that he lets out a few squawks at the other boy in the class when they have to sit on the stairs and come into the water like big kids. I’m pretty sure Kellan’s favorite part of swimming lessons is the locker room before and after where he enjoys watching the action of all the kids in there.

His love for other kids is only growing stronger. I struggle some days with daycare because he rarely gets a nap that is longer than an hour and he doesn’t eat much at all. His pediatrician assured us that the social aspect of the daycare is almost just as important. I can’t see myself taking him out knowing how much he loves those kids there. He was moved up to the next infant room the first part of February. We were excited for the change. We started realizing he was the only kid actually sitting in the infant room and all of his “friends” were at least 6 months younger than him just lying around. He is now surrounded by walkers and crawlers. We hope they are some of the motivation he needs to get moving.

Our focus that last two months with physical therapy is to get him to use his arms. He has actually started to like standing, he’ll even do a little dance if you ask him to while he’s up on his wobbly little legs. But, we aren’t giving up on his crawling. We are also working on his transition from laying to sitting. He seems to be very far from grasping the concept, but we won’t give up!

This picture portrays better than he is doing, we left him there for like .12 seconds, but I still love to see it!

He's in his therapy shorts below. They help him keep his legs together versus the "frog" position they are typically in. Narrowing his base will help him start moving.

As for speech therapy, it still feels like we don’t do much during therapy (compared to physical therapy I guess), but I must say his communication skills have evolved immensely over the last month. If you ask him to give you something, he does. You can imagine how many times a day we ask him to give us a ball J. The trick doesn’t get old. The other night he was even alternating between giving the ball to “mom” and “dad.” This was caught on video as we were so proud! You can also show him 2 different things and ask him to give you one of the items and most times he is correct. He has started to LOVE books.  He has realized there are actual pictures and things to touch and feel in his books, not just something to chew on. We got a photo album that is specifically for babies. You put pictures of favorite people or things into the book to encourage him to open the pages, worked like a charm! Grandma Daiker and “Da” are mostly always the pages open.

We had our follow up appointment for his eye that we were patching. There wasn’t the change they were hoping for so their first recommendation was to patch for 2 hours instead of 1. I’m very certain that Doctor has NEVER had to patch a baby. 1 hour was nearly impossible, 2…well we knew we had to find an alternative. The options we were given were not great. Our original decision was to perform a test under sedation to see if his retina is even working. This would have to be done at UW Madison Children’s since they are the only hospital around that performs the test. When the nurse called from Madison to ask about Kellan’s health history, she informed me she was worried about how Kellan will do in the test. She went on to tell me he could stop breathing and they should look into the possibility of a breathing tube during the test. It was like she was thinking out loud, I couldn’t believe she was just so ‘ho-hum’ about informing me of this. It was that phone call that made me second guess our decision.

We ended up talking with Kellan’s pediatrician and he steered us in a different direction. Our other option outside of glasses was a drop that would dilate Kellan’s good eye for 6-8 hours per day, taking away his nearsightedness in that eye, forcing him to use his droopy/wandering eye. That option seemed horrible, but we’ve been doing it now for almost a week and it is so much easier than what we expected. He absolutely HATES getting the drop in, one of the only things he actually cries about, but once they are in he is fine. I’m really hoping it does what it needs to strengthen the other eye. We shall see.

I’m working to become better at managing his allergies. It is so easy to give him a ball or a balloon and not remember he can’t have them if they have latex. Poor guy. We just got an epi pen just in case, I feel much better now that we have that. I hope we never have to use it, but the idea of having it with him puts me at ease. I’ve also realized I really need to watch what people try to feed him. We were at a birthday party recently and someone wanted to give him a little cake. Ahhhh, no! It is definitely going to take some adapting to get used to a little kid with allergies.

On another note, my life was once again put into perspective when I found out a very close friend of mine got the news her little brother has cancer. He’s like a little brother to me…the news hit me hard. I was reminded that my faith needed to be strengthened again. My first time in church in quite a while and there were many signs that I should be going more often. I found myself drawing parallels with Kellan’s life to this family, a scary yet gentle reminder of the important things in life. As I sat there in church, I heard the words sung:

                “Be with me Lord when I am in trouble, be with me Lord I pray.”

We’ve had our fair share of troubled times the last 14 months and I know there will be more in our future. I have been praying so hard that God also has a plan for my best friend, her brother and their family. One of the hardest lessons I have had to learn, sometimes the plans seem to really, well….suck. Hug and cherish the ones you love because you just never know.

Kellan continues to be the happiness to my morning, fills with me happy thoughts throughout the day, and the smile and “squawk” I rush home for every night. The changes he has made the last 2 months are pretty incredible. He makes us proud and he is so fun. Becoming even greater every single day. His little personality shines through more and more each day….I can’t wait to see what tricks our little magician pulls out next.

ReasonS to Celebrate

 As I sit down to write this blog post, let me just tell you where I'm supposed to be.....the sleep clinic. But instead, I'm sitting on my couch. Why you ask? After talking with Kellan's physical therapist last Thursday, Brett and I decided to make a huge change in Kellan's life, one we were really dreading. We decided to make the transition to take Kellan out of his sleep sack swaddle (don't judge!). Yes, he was over 1 years old when we finally decided to try it out. After many, many, many, nights of terrible sleep, we've realized that Kellan spent his nights trying to break free! If only that little bugger could talk to us, we probably would have started getting some sleep several months back. So, we've postponed, hopefully cancelled his sleep study for now.

We can't look back at what we should have done, instead we are celebrating the little sleeper we have on our hands. I probably have about 15 pictures of him sleeping in the video monitor, it doesn't get old. He looks so comfy. Some day when you read this Kellan, you won't remember that straight jacket we kept you in (thank god), but you have made Mom and Dad really, really proud. Definitely a moment where I realized that milestones for Kellan are seriously exciting!

We celebrated our favorite one year old on his birthday, Saturday, December 29th. A reason to celebrate, yes indeed. What a first year our little man (and Brett and I!) have been through. The party was a success. We had appetizers, soup and salad for lunch. Due to Kellan's milk allergy, he had a special little cupcake that he wasn't too crazy about and the rest of us had a super cute cake! With Christmas and his Birthday, Kellan clearly has lots of people that love him. He is stocked up with some great new toys and cute outfits.

Here are a few pictures from the party....

I printed out his monthly photos and had them hanging!

 

Cousins and Neighbors!

  

Dad, Kellan and Poppy hanging out after the party... 

  

 

We forgot to take a picture with the little Birthday Man, he's in the monitor sleeping! 

My homemade cake topper.

 As the night before his birthday arrived, it felt like just yesterday that my contractions had started and we were heading to the hospital to meet our little boy for the first time. I often think about the times when we didn't know Kellan's diagnosis. Granted, I'd never want to go back to those times because he was a sick little guy with the un-diagnosed milk allergy....but not knowing the fate of our little boy, imagining the picture perfect little life I always imagined for my babies is a nice thought to drift back to every once and a while. We are blessed....(don't get me wrong) with seriously the happiest and greatest little guy in the world, it will just be a different world for us as we watch him grow up.

In other news, we decided to start Kellan in swimming lessons. We had our first lesson and what a fish he was! Kellan was already excited just getting changed in the locker room with the kids in there. I've never seen a baby more enthralled by little kids. He. loves. them. When we walked into the pool area, I'm not sure if it was the change in temperature or the movement of the pool, but he let out a huge happy screech and started laughing. He literally kicked the entire time we were in the pool. He even had an audience, Grandma Daiker and Poppy came to watch!

 

We only have one appointment at Children's this month, a nice little break from December. We met with the Allergy Doctor and confirmed the milk allergy. We also tested him for latex and avocado since he has reacted to both of those things. We learned that latex, avocado and bananas are linked together. Strange. We ramp back up in February with quite a few follow up appointments. This month, we meet again with the Audiologist to see if we can learn more about Kellan's hearing loss in his left ear. We continue to patch his eye for at least an hour a day. Well, usually at about minute 59 we let Kellan claw the patch off. He doesn't like it, to say the least. We work really hard to play and find fun things for him to do for the hour of patching. His weak eye doesn't do great when his strong eye is covered, not sure what they are going to say when we go back there in February. Trying not to think about it for now.

Here are Kellan's 1 year stats:

Staying steady in the 13th percentile for Weight | 18lb 13oz

Becoming long and lean like his Dad for Height | 30"   51st Percentile!

He's growing and the past few weeks he has made us really proud. He has started to eat cereal, veggies and fruit well again, drink bigger bottles, and sleep sleep sleep. Hopefully I don't jinx myself. Alternating "who's night" it is between Brett and I has sure taken on a new meaning.

As I think about what to write for a blog, I usually start a list of things I want to talk about. I asked Brett if there was anything I was missing. Later that day, I noticed he wrote something on the list. So here is Brett's contribution to this post.....

"He's [Kellan] the most beautiful boy in the world."

I hope the Holiday season and the New Year brought whoever reads this true joy and happiness. Kellan has given us many, many reasons to celebrate this past year and we look forward to seeing what 2013 has in store for our little bug.