Kirk and KayLynn's Adoption Quest

God Bless

Kirk

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

It has been too long since our last post, or should I say Kirk's last post.  Kelby is now a little over two years old.  He is a VERY rambunctious little boy.  We celebrated his second birthday at Chuck-E- Cheese.  He had a blast!  He loved all the rides but the most fun was putting the tokens in.  He jammed one of the rides by putting a handful in at a time, last time we rode that one for the night (see pics of his birthday)

I just re-did Kelby's room during the holidays.  He is all about trucks, trains, airplanes and tractors, so that is what his room is.  The first time he saw it he said "cool". (see pics)

Kelby loves to sing, his favorite is twinkle twinkle little star.  He plays it on the piano (his version) and sings a capella.  Last week he was outside on the deck with Kirk, there is a tight wire that runs from corner to corner of the gate on our deck.  If you hit it, it makes a twang.  Kelby got a stick and was "twanging" it singing his song. 

The newest thing is story telling.  Kelby is now in daycare/preschool full time, so Kirk and I have a regular home life again, with Kirk also back on the day shift.  But, every day Kelby comes home with some stories that I am pretty sure are just that..."stories". But, I always have to check with his teacher to make sure.  One day he came home with a bruise on his back.  Turned out one of the girls at daycare pinched or bit him, the teacher did not see, but the little girl, Rainey, got a "time out" for doing it.  Kelby was devastated…this is his favorite little girlfriend.  Last night he had a tiny red "pin" mark on his foot.  Kelby pointed to it and said "owie".  I asked him what happened?…."Rainey bite me" "uh sorry, hug me" "timeout"……uh huh, sure.

When Kelby has a story he repeats it a LOT.  Prior to Christmas, we had a huge snowstorm.  Snow here is usually minimal, if any, and usually melts next day.  We still have small piles around two months later.  We were really worried about the weight on our new deck.  Kirk couldn't shovel because of his surgery and there was so much it was almost impossible to keep ahead of, plus we have a metal roof, so all of the snow from the roof was sliding off onto the deck as well.  We got over three feet of snow.  Anyway, the first day it started to snow, it was in the evening, dark outside.  We heard a large bang on the front porch.  Kirk turned the light on in the front and we looked out the window,  The cats had knocked a larger planter off of the top porch railing and it crashed on the porch, leaving dirt all over.  I looked out the window as did Kelby and I said "oh no, the kitty's made a big mess".  That evening we were leaving to go to the Lights of Christmas (see pics).  It is a park decorated with over a million lights, food booths, entertainment, horse rides, train rides, etc.  It was still snowing all evening, and all Kelby kept saying was kitty, kitty mess.  The next morning we woke up and he ran to the window and looked out and said it again, kitty, kitty mess.  Well, we finally figured out that our kitty's have grand powers and they were the ones creating the snowfall.  All Kelby saw when he looked out the window the first time after the initial noise was the new snow…..A few weeks ago we took a weekend trip up to the mountains to the town of Leavenworth (see pics).  It is a quaint Bavarian Village and every year they have the Ice Fest.  As soon as we got into the mountains where there was some snow on the ground, Kelby yelled from the back seat…..Uh oh, kitty kitty mess. 

The other day we were talking about little boys and little girls, not sure if it was in a book or on TV, but I said to Kelby are you a little boy?  He responded, 'No, I'm Kelby". 

Kirk is still in physical therapy for his arm.  Before the surgery, the doctor warned us that there are complications that could happen, I think the percentage was 2%.  Kirk is one of the lucky 2 percent.  The inflammation that occurs after the surgery promotes extra blood flow, which in turn can promote extra bone growth.  So, now there is bone growth preventing Kirk from turning his hand inward.  It completely stops at a certain angle and is extremely painful.  Very proactive physical therapy and a home contraction that he has to do twice a day for 20 min, breaks up the extra bone.  If these do not take care of the bone growth, surgery will have to be performed to remove it.  Kirk has been really down in the dumps because he is so limited to his activity and he is such an active, outdoor person normally.  All that matters to me, is that he heals up fine and quickly, so please keep him in your prayers. 

All in all we are all doing well, we are both blessed with wonderful jobs and a great family.  We are also so blessed to have Kelby in our life.  I have uploaded a few pictures 

God Bless! 

Kay Lynn

Wow. It has been awhile. We had a major computer meltdown at home and I was out of work for two months. That really puts a crimp in the blogging.

Kelby is now 22 months old and of course growing like a weed and talking up a storm. The first time he seen it dark outside was when it started getting dark earlier at night (before his bedtime) he looked out the window and got a really worried look on his face and said “outside all gone”. He then took each of us by the hand to the window and pointed out telling us “outside all gone” over and over again. We had to take him outside and show him that it was just dark out and that outside was still there.

He is part monkey and started climbing out of his crib 3 months ago. We had to make it into a day bed so he would not hurt himself. A week after that he learned how to open doors. He would no longer stay in his bed or room when it was nap or bed time. He started waking up an hour after putting him in bed and would come into our room and climb into bed with us and start jump jump jumping around. We had a good week of no sleep before we were able to break him of that habit. Thankfully he is back into his own bed and sleeping through the night.

The learning of how to open doors turned into a problem fast. The first door he heads to is the bathroom door and starts playing in the toilet using my work boot as a cup and scooping out water onto the floor with it. I get him out of the bathroom and while I am cleaning up the water I hear another door, I look all over the house and cannot find him, I look outside and there he is running down the driveway away from the house. I ran out of the house with no shoes on trying to catch him, luckily for me he started laughing so hard he fell down on the ground and could not run any more. There was no way I could keep him in the house or out of the bathroom so I ended up putting latches on both sides of every door in the house.

He is choo choo train and airplane crazy. He calls all toys with wheels choo choo or airplane. He takes all his toy cars and tries to hook then together to make a choo choo and gets frustrated and mad if it does not work. One day I took some string and tied all his wheeled toys together and made a long choo choo. He played and played with it. That night I took it apart to put the toys away and threw out the string. The next day he kept handing me toys and saying choo choo. I was too busy and didn’t have any string handy to make a choo choo so I just told him to go play. Next time I looked over at him he had the dog leash and was trying to tie it to the toys to make his choo choo. We broke down and bought him a “Thomas the tank engine” train set (I got tired of tying toys together) and he plays with it nonstop.  The first day he had played with it for about 3 hours straight when KayLynn told him it was time to eat he said “NO Mommy I don’t want to eat”.

We started his potty training and he is doing very well on the pooping part. He has started telling us when he needs to go (sometimes). He has not told us yet when he needs to go pee but if you stand him in front of the potty he will go. The other day while I had him sitting on the potty and I was sitting on the floor waiting for him to go I farted and he laughed so hard and said “daddy pooped inside”.

The deck is coming along really good. The back deck is complete thanks to dad helping me put in deck screws. I was on the home stretch on the second story deck but as I was putting up long heavy boards by myself (it was a two man job and I’m to impatient to get help). I was holding the board in place with one hand while I was trying to drive a screw in with the other and it dropped unexpectedly and the distal biceps tendon in my left arm snapped. (Here is a cut and paste to explain what that is.) “A distal biceps rupture occurs when the tendon attaching the biceps muscle to the elbow is torn from the bone. This injury occurs mainly in middle-aged men during heavy work or lifting. Often the load is heavier than expected, or the load may shift unexpectedly during the lift. This forces the elbow to straighten, even though the biceps muscle is working hard to keep the elbow bent. The biceps muscle contracts extra hard to help handle the load. As tension on the muscle and tendon increases, the distal biceps tendon snaps or tears where it connects to the radius.”  (end of paste) The short story is it hurts really really bad and I don’t recommend it to anyone. I go in for surgery today.

God Bless

Kirk

Kelby was helping KayLynn fold laundry in other words pulling out every piece and trying to put it on.  I added pictures of the funny new way to wear a bra. I sure hope this fashion does not catch on.

God Bless

Kirk

It's one of those questions. I loved it when somebody would ask. I would just love to talk about it. That was then, now I'm starting to cringe when I hear it and I still have a long way to go. It looks like it is going to be a long summer. 

The back deck is starting to look like a deck once again. It is all Composite wood and sliver free. It is so nice to be able to walk on it barefoot without worrying about getting slivers or ripping your foot open by a protruding nail. I still have a lot of work to do on it. This is just one of the three decks I’m building on to the house I have not even started on the other two decks yet. The railing is only competed on one side so we have to watch Kelby like a hawk.  He has no fear of height and constantly runs straight for the edge. Letting Kelby play on the deck now is a real workout for us. It turned out to be a big big big project that is taking much longer then I had hoped. Not the kind of thing a guy can knock out in a couple of weekends, ha.  I don’t really get much time to work on it. During the week I’m lucky if I get an hour a day while Kelby is taking a nap. Most of that time is spent just getting out the tools, and putting away the tools. When the weekend comes and it seems there is always something else that has to be done or places we need to go.  I never realized how many holiday weekends we have but it seems like almost every weekend since I started this it has been some holiday, with holiday get-togethers and festivities, and that means no work gets done. Oh well slow progress is better then no progress.

I added a new picture album with before till now pictures and a couple of Kelby in his new pool. The inflatable turtle has water spraying out of the back of his head. That is why Kelby has his mouth on it, he is trying to drink it as it comes out.

God Bless

Kirk

For a long time we could not figure out why Kelby calls our little dog Kramer, kiye.  He calls our big dog (Comet) down. He started calling Comet down ever since my mom came to visit.  Mom is not a real dog lover and poor Comet being the big loving dog he is tries even harder to get affection from anyone that shy’s away from him. The only words mom says to Comet is “down”, “get away” so it is easy to figure out how Kelby thinks that is Comets name.  Kramer does not bark much but he is a cry baby (literally sounds like a baby crying really loud) whenever he is not allowed to be with us.  When we go to the store and Kramer has to stay in the car he starts crying really loud and people give us “a look” and we know they are thinking that we locked a baby in the car and are just going to leave him while we go into the store. Of course we tell (yell at) Kramer to be quiet. When we let Kramer out to go potty if we are not right at the door to let him back in when he is done he starts crying and of course we yell "quiet Kramer".  So I just figured out that Kelby isn’t calling Kramer kiye what he is calling him is quiet but is just not pronouncing the T sound at the end.  Kelby has started calling me Kirk. He says Kirk and I say I’m daddy and he laughs and says Kirk.  He is a funny little guy.

God Bless

Kirk

Entry by Kay Lynn

Ever since Kelby has been a baby we have had this big, huge inflatable duck that a baby can sit in to take a bath.  Kind of like a big duck that you would sit on in a pool.  You squeeze the beak and it goes "quack quack quack quack".  Anyway, it has always been in the guest bathroom shower and lately, every time we pass the bathroom or Kelby goes into the bathroom, he says "quack, quack".  Memorial Weekend we flew to Reno to visit Kirk's brother and girlfriend.  We arrive at Kirk's brother's place, the first thing Kelby does is run into the bathroom, pulls back the shower curtain and says "quack, quack" looking for the duck.  It's a given, every shower has a duck, right? 

Anyway, while in Reno, we took at day trip up to Lake Tahoe.  We parked the car to get out and take a little hike, when a couple on a two seater bicycle pull up right next to my car door ( I am in the back seat with Kelby).  They are sitting right outside my door so I can't open it, they are adjusting their seats, helmets, etc. taking their sweet old time…They are both dressed up in their spandex bike, yuppie gear, all matching in this bright (duck) yellow…yellow pants, yellow jackets, yellow helmets, yellow gloves etc. I am sitting there waiting patiently for them to get going so Kelby and I can get out.  The window is open a crack, Kelby looks over and sees them and says really loud "quack, quack"......more pictures from Reno and Lake Tahoe.