Determination

April 25, 2012 was easily the most emotional day of Krista and I's life. If you have followed our blog for the past year, you already know that our son Kelson was born 9 weeks premature with a serious condition called Hydrops. He spent the first 70 days of his life in the NICU.

Three days after he was born was the Champaign-Urbana Marathon. My cousin, Sherrie Eimen had flown in from Colorado to participate in the event, along with Krista's doctor, Kate Austman, who diagnosed and delivered Kelson. Sherrie came to visit us at the hospital after her run. I also received a text message from Dr. Austman saying "I ran for Kelson today. Every time I wanted to walk, I thought about him, and how hard he is fighting." It was that day that I made up my mind to run in the Half-Marathon the following year.

I started small. The first steps included taking the stairs (9 flights) each day when visiting Kelson at the hospital, and parking in the employee lot and walking, as opposed to taking the shuttle. Next, I started running a few mornings a week around our property. Slowly I worked up to a mile, then 2. I wanted to push myself, so I signed up for my first 5K in September, and did another one in October. I had to take a short break to recover from an injury, but I didn't let that stop me. I ended 2012 running 4 miles.

Once 2013 came, it was time to push myself farther. Despite bad weather conditions, I committed myself to running at least once a week, adding about a half mile each time. Two weeks ago I hit 11.5 miles, and last weekend I ran 10.

Although I partially ran for myself, running today was really for my kids, Claire and Kelson. If Kelson could go through what he did and survive, I knew I could survive 13.1 miles. Today I have proven to myself, Claire and Kelson that anything is possible if you set your mind to it, and have the determination to see it through. The highlight of my day was Claire joining me for a short run at mile 12. I finished in 2 h 47 min, and resisted every temptation to walk.

Thank you to everyone who had supported me through Facebook and Runkeeper, and special thanks to Krista for making sure I had the time to commit to my goal!

Month 10+

The pictures are in a random order, but here are some updates on what we've been up to in month 10+. 

 

 Claire changes clothes ALL THE TIME!  Before we went to grandma and grandpa's for Chinese chicken she had to change clothes.  Polka dot pants, plaid coat, flower hat.  Wow. 

 Trever was gone last week for work and Monday morning these randomly showed up at work.  This is on the 2nd time in 7 years I've gotten flowers from him and the first time was on my first birthday after we started dating, almost 7 years ago. 

 Kelson has been trying a lot more foods.  Daddy made him some homemade chicken and carrots and he really got in to them.  If you look closely you can see his one tooth (It finally popped through February 22nd).

 Crazy hair after a bath!

 Last week was another trip to Carle and a visit with the developmental doctor and his team (Social Work, Physical Therapists, Speech Therapist).  Overall Kelson is healthy but he's still pretty small and is lacking muscle tone, especially in his upper body.  We also started up with our new physical therapist and we're really liking her.  We're working on sitting up (we hit 9 seconds today!), crawling and holding his own bottle. 

 We finally had some snow in March.  Claire was SO upset that they canceled dance, but when I told her she could put her snow pants on and go outside she was so excited she could barely stand still long enough to get dressed!

 Here's his 10 month picture with the bear.  It's getting harder to catch him in one spot.

 You probably can't tell by the picture, but this was one of the first times Kelson had really gotten to where he wanted to be.  And he wanted to be in his sister's Easter candy.

 We all went to Beef Expo the end of February.  Kelson had his first chance to pet a baby calf.  He even tried to eat her ear!

 

 Claire is learning about peace at JAM (Jesus and Me). 

 Kelson and Caisey finally got to meet in February.  She came to the hospital a couple of times, but you have to be 18 to come in unless you are a sibling. 

 Caisey joined us at Sheels where we checked out the moose. 

 And Claire encountered a bear.

 And we enjoyed some awesome wings at Quaker Steak & Lube!

 After a baby exploded on me, my phone accidentally took a swim in the washing machine.  The pictures were rough for a little while, but I really love this picture.  Especially how Kelson was grabbing Claire's face!

 There's a lot of this going on these days.  Claire thinks she can "hold" Kelson.

 Claire got some blingy jeans and a cow showin' shirt for valentine's day.  She had to send a picture to Gammy & Aunt Kyla.

 Claire's first french braid.

 Claire's dance studio has a daddy daughter dance.  These two were pumped to get dressed up for their date.  I however am not looking forward to junior high dances after the fight to do her hair.

 The end of January was a trip to Ohio for a birthday party.  The kids thought it would be fun to hide in the cabinet!

 Kelson really enjoyed playing on Kempton's tractor too.

Another picture of Claire trying to love on her brother.

 

We've been busy figuring out what normal is these days.  Kelson has speech therapy weekly, hearing therapy twice a month and physical therapy every couple of weeks.  The kid's sitter, Connie, has been awesome working with him on all of those things and has been pushing him to try some more foods. 

 

Claire is enjoying preschool and we've been talking about getting to go 3 days a week next year.  She's missed dance two weeks in a row because of weather, and there were tears because of it.  She loves going to JAM on Wednesdays with Miss Rachel.

 

Trever finished up his training and is now an official Financial Advisor for Edward Jones.  He's ready to help you start your investments so give him a jingle!

 

I'm hitting another busy season at work of meeting with growers and contracting acres.  There have been some changes at work that are taking some time to get use to.  I've joined a women's bible study while Claire is at JAM and this afternoon met up with some friends for our monthly cooking club.  I had an awesome shopping trip to Tuscola yesterday with Marla and got in some great deals and great girl time!

 

There are so many good things coming up.  We are looking forward to a very special 1st birthday party, welcoming some new babies in to our circle of friends, hosting lots of happy hours in our back yard and conquering the challenges that face us in between!

10 tigers

This morning when I picked claire up from wee worship I asked her what she learned about.  She told me she learned about 10 tigers that had ouchies and that jesus made them feel better.  But, only one of then said thank you.  Now, I'm no bible scholar, but I don't remember anything about jesus healing tigers.  So I asked claire about it and she said, not tigers mommy, leopards.  Then it hit me, she learned about 10 lepers that were healed by jesus!  The amazing thing is that she understood the message even if she was mistaken on the species with the ouchies.

Hearing aids

 Today was a big day for Kelson.  He got his hearing aids!  We've been working toward this for a few months now and we were all pretty excited to get them.  Claire and I talked about it this morning and she wondered if they will hurt him and what tool will we use on them.  She also asked at dinner tonight if she had hearing aids when she was a baby. 

We headed to ECHO for our 8:30 appointment.  We spent time working with Miss Jean, the audiologist, learning how to care for the aids, change the batteries and about how sophisticated the aids are.  In our goody box we even got a childrens book about an elephant who has hearing aids. It sounds like Daddy & Claire are reading it right now. 

Kelson's aids are set to hear everything but an adult aid can be changed depending on the sound situation you are in.  Well, his can to, but they aren't.  He needs to learn speach and you can't rule anything out that might help him learn his speach.  It's a pretty technological little tool.  We will work with the audiologist and therapists on a regular basis to get them set to just the right settings for him. 

Kelson is only wearing his aids for short amounts of time right now.  He had them on for around 20 minutes this morning and then we put them in for a couple of hours tonight.  The didn't seem to bother him at all tonight.  We noticed quite a bit of feedback in his left ear but we'll work on that.  In a few days we will teach the sitter all the tricks and he can wear them during the day too. 

We're not confident that he is hearing more but my first thought is that yes, he is hearing more clearly now.  He has been smiling when he has them in, doesn't mess with them, and turns toward us when we are talking to him.  Only time will tell, but this was a big step toward conquering this auditory nueropathy. 

First Day of Preschool - a bit outdated

I made this shortly after Claire started pre-school and I still can't figure out how to print it, but at least I figured out how to share it on here!

 

January 13th update...in random order

 

I've got tons of pictures to upload but can't get blogger to let me do it.  Looks like the cell phone camera wins out again. 

 

I'll start by giving you a brief rundown of what's been going on since Thanksgiving and then tomorrow (hopefully) I'll have another Kelson exclusive for all of you!  We have had lots of appointments but tomorrow is a big one. 

 

Kelson loves being naked!  He's been that way a lot lately since he has a tendency to choke on his food or have a coughing fit and spit up ALL OVER!

Early last week Trever was gone before the kids got up and headed to Peoria to take his last big test.  Claire sent this picture to wish daddy good luck!  Now, he's one step closer to helping you invest your money!

We've had a few struggles with eating baby food, but the kid LOVES ice cream!  

Claire's idea of a fun mommy daughter date is getting groceries.  Thank goodness for the free horse at meijer!  That's all she needs as a reward for being a good shopper!

Our whole house has been sick since Thanksgiving.  I took this picture because Kelson was finally starting to feel better.  He's still got one heck of a cough, but SO much better!

On Christmas Day Kelson turned 8 months old.  He's babbling, rolling back and forth, reaching for toys, likes to play peek-a-boo and sooooo big and get up 2-3 times a night to eat and primarily snuggle.  

December 28th is a special day around here since there are 2 birthdays.  Mom & Trever share a birthday but Claire didn't think it was fair to share a cake so we had two different desserts!

We also had our first trip to Immediate Care the weekend before Christmas.  Claire had a little pink eye going on and after a LONG wait we finally got some drops so we could start celebrating!

Claire likes to watch the letter game with me.  One night she walked up to the tv and started touching the letters.  She was "helping that lady out" and pretending to be Vanna.

Kelson licking his first beater.

Kelson keeps a close eye on his sister.  Sometimes his eyes light up when she walks in to the room and sometimes he cringes.  

An attempt at a Christmas card picture.