A Few Moments with Elijah

"Daddy, who is this present from?"
"That is from your Nanna, she sent it in the mail for you."
"No...its not from a banana, that's silly!"

*****

"Elijah, what is your full name?"
"I'm Elijah Ethan Kaan."
"And what is Stella's full name?"
"Her name is Stella Wyoming Kaan."

*****

"Elijah, buddy, it is sleepy time, ok?"
"No! I don't want to go sleepy right now."
"Buddy, come on, we go to sleep every night."
"I can't go to sleep right now, the christmas tree is too beautiful."

*****

A song for the Season, by Elijah (kinda to the tune of 'Have a Holly Jolly Christmas')

"Have a Merry Merry Christmas,
There are presents under that Christmas Tree
I better not open them because
Momma said 'No! You better not open them!'
Thank you, thank you
Don't bite your friends"

*****

Three Weeks Old

Stella is three weeks old! She had a doctors appointment this week and is now weighing in at 6 pounds 6 ounces. So far she's been a very easy baby. She loves to eat and sleep. It's amazing how different kids can be. Elijah hated getting his diaper changed, loved pacifiers, and only wanted to sleep in someone's arms. Stella likes getting her diaper changed, pacifiers make her gag, and she'll sleep anywhere as long as she's full, burped, and changed. Crazy kids.

Ben and I have definitely been trying to get used to having two kids. The hardest thing so far has been that right now they both have colds. So poor Elijah and Stella have runny noses and coughs...it's really sad. I think Elijah got his cold from a combination of going to MOPs and then playing in the snow all day on Thursday (he had a lot of fun). Then Stella got a cold from him.


You'll have to excuse my bad transitions and mild confusion in this blog, but I can't think very well right now. Anyhoo, I was looking through some pictures and found the ones of Elijah from Halloween, so I thought I'd throw a couple of those in too. Enjoy.

Stella! :)

This past week has been quite an adventure for us. On Wednesday we went to Kim's weekly doctor's appointment, only to find out that the doctors had decided that the best thing for Kim and Stella would be to induce labor early, like the next day. So we rushed around for a few hours (thanks to Andy and Larissa for the short notice babysitting), got the t's crossed and i's dotted with the doctors, and then that evening, Kim and I went to the hospital.

Grammy (Vicki) came down from Missouri to watch Elijah. At 7:30-ish on Thursday morning, the doctor broke Kim's water. A few hours later, however, it was becoming apparent that the labor and contractions were putting more stress on Stella than she could handle, and Kim was having some issues with the effects of the epidural. So, the doctor made the decision (with Kim's consent of course) to do a C-section, and things became a blur of motion. I suddenly found myself in full scrubs sitting in the operating room next to Kim while the doctors began the operation. I have to admit that I purposely didn't look while they made the incisions, but a few minutes later, we heard a new voice crying, and Stella Naomi Kaan was born! (10:59, Nov. 15, 5 lb. 4 oz., 18 in. long) I followed the nurse to the scale and snapped this photo, a little blurry, but that is exactly how I remember it.

After all was said and done, things turned out just fine, and both Kim and Stella are doing fine. The doctors and nurses took good care of them (although the hospital cafeteria seems to think that a 'diabetic meal' means 'no seasonings').

Thank you to all the visitors who traveled to come and celebrate with us, it was fun to have so many people here (even if you all did take over our house, haha). Kim and Stella were cleared to come home today, which is really good, because Kim was starting to go a little stir crazy in her hospital room. :)
Check out the flickr bar for more photos.

Pumpkin Patch Fun and Congrats to Shawna and Jeff

My cousin, Shawna and her man, Jeff got married last Saturday in a very fabulous wedding, so Congratulations! Happy marriage time to you two. :)















This past weekend Ben and I didn't have anything going on, so we got to take Elijah to our favorite pumpkin patch in Lawrence (it's our favorite 'cause we haven't been to any others). We went last year and had a good time, and this year turned out to be an equally good time. The weather was fabulous (not rainy), and there were lots of families running around. Elijah really enjoyed the hay bale maze and the pumpkin slingshot game. We also got to take a tractor ride out to the actual pumpkin patch and see "stinky" cows on the way. My favorite part about the pumpkin patch is the gift shop in the barn. We usually don't get a pumpkin from the patch because then we have to carry it around with us everywhere and stand in a really long line to get it weighed, so instead, we buy little pumpkins in the gift shop for Elijah to paint when we get home. He loves it. :) And Ben and I buy some jalapeno jelly that they sell in there too. Made in Kansas. woohoo. My favorite part of the whole thing though is that you can pretty much let your kid do every fun thing there, and it only takes about an hour and a half...just the right amount of time before everyone starts getting grumpy and tired. We even had time to drink apple cider slushes, eat popcorn, and let Elijah get his face painted (he picked out a spider). It was a good time.

Fall is here

Well, it has finally started to get colder here in eastern Kansas, and it also is very rainy here that last week or so. Kim and I planted some grass seed a few weeks ago in the scant 50 square feet of earth we are renting along with our townhome, and it has sprouted and is growing quite nicely. We have taken to calling it our 'lawn', even though it is only a 2 foot-wide strip surrounding the concrete on our patio. Haha. School is keeping my mighty busy, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will be done with my classes next May. It looks like I will end up getting a job in Kansas City, unless something completely surprising happens (you never know, right). Kim and Stella are doing just fine, and we are starting to realize how close we are getting to the due date. Before you know it, there is gonna be another little Kaan in the world!

Good Times

I think I forgot how busy the end of summer/beginning of fall can be. Lots of fun has been happening since we last posted so I thought I'd do a little recap with pictures to fill you in on the fun. So I'm 28 weeks along now in my pregnancy, and I wanted to show you how big I'm getting. The first picture is from August 20th and the second picture is from tonight. I'm gonna be so huge by the end of November! But anyhoo, things with the baby are going pretty well as far as we know. She moves like crazy; she's always sticking her legs out. Realization is starting to hit that we're actually going to have two children soon...yeah, we're a little slow.









Elijah and I went to Chillicothe last weekend for the crafty fair called Chatauqua (I really don't know how to spell this). It is a very good time. I bought a stuffed animal llama, and Elijah had a good time and called it the "party park". Elijah especially enjoyed all of the inflatable things they had there for kids. He got to ride the giant inflatable slide with Uncle Will. Yay for Uncle Will!





This picture was actually taken about a month ago, but it's so darn cute I had to add it. This is my niece, Julienne at about 5 months old with my cousin Sarah's daughter, Ainsley. That would make them third cousins or something. Very cute!










That's a little updating. Things are going to be very busy this fall. Ben's still working really hard on all of his school stuff, Elijah and I joined, MOPs (a mom group called 'mothers of preschoolers) and that starts this Tuesday, I've got a ton of doctors appointments for the baby, and Elijah is still working on potty training, which I think I've finally convinced him does not actually involve a train. If anybody has potty training advice feel free to share. :) Have a lovely week! Oh, and Happy 28th Anniversary to my parents, Mark and Vicki!

Learning Elijah

Elijah has several US states puzzles, and he has been working on learning the states. Yesterday, Kim informed me of his progress. So far this is what he says as he is putting the puzzle pieces back in their places:

"Texas, finger, boot, guitar..."

finger is Florida, I think, and Louisiana is boot, and Alaska is guitar. How funny is that?!

:)

Mongolian Bug Food!

So we went to this Mongolian Buffet resturaunt today, and they serve crayfish. I brought some to our table, and Elijah started to give me this speech about how yucky they were and how bugs are not for eating, and he was very distressed, well, initially. Then, suddenly he wanted to hold them, so we decided to take the picture of him conquering his apparent disgust...haha! After a few minutes he was talking to them and trying to get them to walk around like Uncle Dan's hermit crabs.



That's my boy!!

New Home Sweet Home

Well, we are all moved in to our new townhome, and we would like to give a HUGE thank you to the Posch's and Ford's for helping us move. We absolutely could not have done it without them!! We got most of the moving done late Friday night and earlier on Saturday, and then BONUS, the family stayed Sunday to help us clean the old joint. So again...many, many thank yous!

We spent the week settling in and we have only a few more boxes to unpack, so we are doing pretty good from that standpoint, but what is really cool is that Elijah likes the new place. He likes that we now have two floors to live on, so he gets to travel up and down the stairs. He's already rolled a few times, but thankfully, the stairs are well carpeted and Elijah just gets right back up.

Well, it's been a long week, but hopefully we'll get to post again soon. Happy week having!

Moving....again.

Well, we are packing our stuff for what seems like the hundredth time! For anyone not up to speed on our lives, we have moved once a year for the last 4 years, and so this will be move #5...but luckily we are only moving like 6 blocks this time. And, as an added bonus, we are probably going to be blessed with 95 degree weather and upwards of 90% humidity...so basically, the sweat will be running like water. :0

Elijah has apparently entered the "fall asleep in random places" phase of his life, and so we were able to take this photo while he was "watching" cartoons.

Two days ago I had taken a break from some serious packing, and was able to get the camera out just in time to catch this photo of a notorious pirate running around our apartment, yelling "I a pirate....jump!"

I have been trying my hand at ebay lately, and was doing pretty well at first, but apparently I just had a run of dumb luck in which the random object from around the house that I had chosen was actually desired by some strange person in either New York or L.A. (with names like Ford Zenabou, and Arubusa Heimendinger-something-or-other). Alas, my luck has failed, and the latest round of clutter I had hoped to turn into profit has proven to be much less desirable. Who knew that a broken computer moniter would sell much faster than a signed, framed, original drawing of Ray Charles? It is a crazy world I tell ya!!

Kim and Elijah and I went for another ultrasound today, and it was confirmed that our baby will most likely be a little girl. Together with the doctor we stared at the strange ink-blot-like shapes that grew and danced in black and white and grey in the odd, rounded portion of the monitor. Every once in a while, the doctor would intimate to us things such as "Those are the ventricles, see, right there, and there are four, which is just how it should be.", or "Mmmm...that thoracic arch looks normal...and the septum too." To these we would reply, "Oh..um, ok, that's good.", while straining our eyes to attempt to figure out what exactly we were supposed to see before he deftly changed the views. However, the good news is that after ten minutes of that, the doctor said that everything looks great (heart, bone structure, kidneys, etc.)! So that is definitely nice news to hear. I was slightly disappointed, though. The doctors had made this ultrasound seem different and more important than the other by calling it a "Level-Two" ultrasound. Ignorantly, I had assumed that up until today I had been forced to view my children through lowly "Level-One" ultrasounds, and that now I would be seeing a crisp, clear picture of our baby, maybe even 3-D, with the blue and red glasses and everything! But, alas, no such luck, and I was not able to tell any sort of differnce, or advantage, between the level one and two systems. Oh well, at least our baby is healthy! :)

Happy Birthday Elijah!

Hello, All! Sorry we haven't blogged in awhile. It was a fun and crazy week, and we lost track of time. My mom and sister, Corrie came to visit during the week, and we took Elijah to the Kansas City Zoo for the first time. After about two hours of animals he was pretty much all zooed out, though, so we had to find him a playground so he could burn off some of his excessive 3-yr-old energy. On his birthday, Kim and I made him happy-face pancakes, and some cupcakes. Then for his party we made two kinds of cakes, chocolate cake with strawberry icing (which Elijah picked out at the store, apparently becuase of its pinkness), and strawberry short cake. Elijah's birthday and birthday party went off without a hitch, and was quite a fun time. Check out more pictures by clicking in the Flickr bar to the left. Thank you to all of you who lavished him with presents and cards; he is truly enjoying all of them.

Elijah's Birfday Plans

Hello, All!

For those of you who may not know, Elijah is turning 3 years old this Friday, July 13th. And so, in honor of the little rascal, we are having a little party on Saturday, July 14th at noon. It will be extremely fun for him, and everyone else will get to enjoy pizza and cake and watch a very entertaining three year old all hopped up on lots of sugar.

The party will be in Lawrence at our apartment, so if anyone can make it and needs directions please e-mail me or if you happen to run into my mom or sister they also know our address. Ooh, also please leave a comment that you are able to come or send me an e-mail so that I know how much food is needed. (on a side note...we fixed the comment box so you don't have to register but it still can seem a little complicated because it asks you to sign in using your google account, but for those without a google account all you have to do is choose the circle marked 'other' and type your message in the box and then type your name in the name space and that's it.) So anyway, we hope to get to see everyone, but understand if you can't make it. :)

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to all who have July birthdays! (aunts and uncles and Will and dad and my crafty friend, Larissa's, son Donovan who just turned one today) Yay for birthdays.

Much Fun

We hope everyone had a fun 4th! Ben, Elijah, and I went to Chillicothe (where my parents, sister's little family, and lots of other fun relatives live) for the 4th of July. Ben made very wonderful kabobs which were a big hit, we got a special visit from Sammi, Ellie, Jacia, and Pat since Ellie and I are both pregnant and we had to catch up, and then we went over to my Uncle Jerry and Aunt Diane's for fun and fireworks watchin'. It was good times. Elijah was thrilled with the fireworks and Julienne didn't even cry at all.

The pictures are of the guys (my Dad, Will, Ben, and Uncle Jerry) playing a fancy game that has to do with throwin' bean bags in a hole. Apparently, there are fun games that don't involve electricity, who knew? Oh, and the old guys beat the young guys, I believe it was 10 times in a row, but the young guys finally came through for one game in the end. So anyway, hopefully there will be more pictures whenever I figure out the problems I'm having with uploading them (or when Ben comes home and fixes them for me). Have a fun Friday!

EXTRA PICTURES: so I added some more pictures to this post because they were taken on or around the 4th. The baby is my niece, Julienne again. I just can't help myself. :)

It's a Girl!!!

We did an ultrasound today, and we are pretty sure (like 95%) that we are having a Girl!! :D
Elijah was a little sobered by the thought that he is going to have to share his toys, and he thought the ultrasound pictures looked like monsters. Check out how very curled up our lil' girl is!

Our Niece

We have a niece... woohoo! Will and Kristen (my sister) had a baby girl in March, and her name is Julienne, and she's very adorable. So here's a nice picture for everyone to see.

Background Info

For those of you that we haven't talked to in awhile because we're either too busy or lazy (probably too lazy) I thought I'd give some info on the whole baby havin' thing.

So I'm pregnant, and i'm 17 weeks along at the moment, and my due date is somewhere around December 5th. The pregnancy is going pretty well so far, and I, thankfully, have not been sick at all this time. The only problem is that I'm diabetic now that I'm pregnant, and the doctors think it might be preexisting type 1 diabetes and not the kind you get later on in pregnancy refered to as gestational diabetes. So that's that.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Kids Grow Up So Fast

Kim and I are amazed that Elijah is growing up so fast, and I know many experienced parents can relate. One minute they are small and helpless in your arms, and the next they are coloring on the living room carpet with the sidewalk chalk!!!!
So, if anyone has any tips on getting chalk out of carpet, we are all ears.
For anybody who didn't notice the bright yellow rectangle, we have added a link to our flickr picture albums so you can easily view and download pictures of us (but mostly Elijah, right). But seriously...sidewalk chalk? Anyone?

Soon Enough...

For all of you hoping to find out if we're having a boy or a girl, there is a chance that we will know very soon. We have a sonogram appointment scheduled for this Monday, July 2nd. Ben thinks it's a boy. I think it might be a girl, but really I have no idea. I'm just super excited to find out what it is so that I can go through all of Elijah's old stuff. Speaking of Elijah, we have observed that his favorite way to eat blueberries is to grab them by the handful, squish them, and then try to drink the juice as it runs down his arm...yes, it's very fun to watch, but must be followed swiftly by a bath. Oh, congratulations to Pete and Nikki on their new little baby boy, Noah! He's super adorable, and I'm sure Eden will help take good care of him.

Have a happy weekend!

Summertime News

So, Kim is now through the first trimester, and things are going pretty well. It is a big bummer that she has to give herself shots everyday, but it will all be worth it when we have that lil' person staring at us and filling its diaper! Ha! I am doing research for KU this summer, so that is keeping me pretty busy and also paying the bills. Elijah is exploring most things these days, we taught him about the air conditioner the other day, so he was running around the apartment pointing to all of the vents and saying "There's another one airtondishen"...
Well, that is about it for now, Elijah's birthday is on July 13, so for anyone who is contemplating presents, he needs clothes! (3T-4T)

Elijah says:
"Tooshie pockets have pictures"

And now for your Elijah pic: