where have we been?

Well I have been busy making another baby and throwing up..

    SURPRISE to us all!

We were very very shocked to say the least. We have had some mixed feelings. We are so very blessed to be able to have another baby and to give Kohen a sibling. We are also scared to death! Will this baby come early? how early? will it have to stay in the NICU? will we not get as lucky this time? these questions run through my head every time I think of this growing baby inside of me.

I have always wanted to be a mom and to have a million kids. I am so excited to have another baby... just scared!

We are 16 weeks and are NOT finding out the gender of this baby.

Kohen and I agreed not to find out the gender. Daddy wants to know but will have to wait;)

 

 

Kohen is almost 9 months! NINE?! I hate that he is growing up but I love to see him learn new things and get even more of a personality.

(his adjusted age is 6 months)

He can now sit up all by himself but is still getting some arm muscle :)

He can get to where he wants to go but not by crawling like most babies.. while laying on his back he uses his feet and pushes himself using his head. He is going to go bald all over again!

He loves when you throw him up in the air, hang him upside down or do anything that is crazy.

He loves kids, LOVES them. He will sit and watch them whatever they are doing and smile at them even if they are not looking at him.

He is an amazing eater. He still loves his bottles and will down any food you give him (except for pea's)

He loves when you pretend to chase him.

He is ticklish EVERYWHERE!

He loves to swing outside.

He loves when anyone sings or plays some kind of music.

He is very spoiled if you ask his dad lol

He is not affraid of any animal. He will grab them and wants to be as close to them as possible.

He is our life!

I can not imagine life without him. We still have a hard time leaving him for date nights so we usually do a movie without him and then get him for dinner. We still sit in the back seat with him whenever possible (you never want to pass up a time to see that smile)

He has so many uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, great aunts, great uncles, great grandparents that love him so much. I am an emotional pregnant lady but I love seeing how much family loves him. I usually cry after having a Sunday dinner, seeing all the love he gets from all his family. Knowing he has ALL this support that will be by his side no matter what.

 

On an extremly sad note

We had to put our dog Duke down.

 He tore his ACL's in both his back legs and was not doing good health wise. It was such a hard decision we had to make. We are so sad Kohen will not get to grow up with Duke. Duke loved Kohen! He would come up to Kohen and lick his toes/body and Kohen would just laugh and laugh. We are still so sad going out back and not having Duke run up to you happy as can be. We are glad he is no longer in pain and will always remember our big bear!

 

Kohen's special day

Kohen's special day was a big event for us. It was his first time going to church(outside of his covered car seat) and it was his first time meeting a lot of family and friends.
It was a busy weekend preparing for it but it was worth every second.
Kohen went to bed the night before at 7:45 and has now started to sleep all night long so he woke up at 8:30 to eat and then went back to sleep till it was time to go to church at 10. Talk about a good baby, right? :) We got him all dressed in his outfit and just giggled at his cuteness.
As all the men were walking up to give Kohen his blessing I cried seeing how many men walked up there to support Kohen and love him so much! Kellen gave the most amazing blessing. I could not have been more proud of the blessing he gave our baby boy. Kohen was so great during the blessing and was so happy all day:) The sweetest testimonies were told that brought Kellen and I both to tears. We can not Thank all our family and friends enough for all the love and support they have given to us not only throughout our lives but through this crazy time in our lives. We have felt all the love and prayers that have been said for us.
Here are some pictures to enjoy...

 Kohen in his sweet sun glasses

He was so done with pictures and being held but he did so good all day :)

this month

This month it seems like Kohen has grown up all of a sudden.
He has started to smile at people and thinks he is a big boy that needs to be standing up at all times. He is so funny! This might sound ridiculous, if you don't have a premie baby or a reflux baby you might not understand but this last week we have finally started to sleep with all the lights off at night! We have always had the hall light or our closet light on so if Kohen made a noise we were able to see him as soon as we looked over at him... this week we turned off the lights! I was so nervous and used my phone as light a ton the first night. We are learning to calm ourselvs.
His reflux is so much better, he still has it and some days it is better than others but he doesn't stop breathing so I say it is great now! So many people have their babies in their own rooms by now but we just started to sleep in the dark! ha! One day he will move into his own room, but that day will  not be for a long while!

My ward gave us a baby shower, Kohen was not able to go but we are so greatful that Kami and Marcie took time out of their lives to throw us such a great shower! Thank you girls :) SOON we will be able to come back to a normal life outside of the house.

Kohen had an eye exam the other day and everything is NORMAL! premie babies normally have bad eyes and we are so blessed that his are normal:) He does have his fathers eyes and gets a lot of eye infections though.

I started to decorate his room and I am in love with it so far. I will have to post pictures when I am all the way finished. Thank you pinterest for all the help lol

 

my baby is 3 months!

 

 seriously, just look at how chubby he is now! I love all his chub:) He is only 5 pounds away from being bigger than his cousin Amelia lol

Kohen is three months, THREE! I still cry thinking about his delivery day. Knowing  how close we were to not having this amazing baby boy in our life. He has this cute girl Jeanette coming from early steps to help him progress and make sure he is doing things he should be. He is developmentally a two month old, he is one month according to his due date and is three months old for real :)

He just started wearing some of his 0-3 month clothes and just started to smile at me when I talk to him. He has only smiled for me:) He is a HUGE mommy's boy, and I am not just saying that!

Kohen has always put his tongue on the roof of his mouth (pic above), the NICU told us that all premie babies do that and will grow out of it. His early steps lady told me she has never seen a premie baby do that but man does Kohen love to do it! We have to work his tongue down in order to get his bottle in there or his binki. He has gotten better with it though! He still loves tummy time but rolls over so fast now, he is getting closer and closer to rolling over from back to front.. and has the crawling motion down, so not ready for that! He has started to pull my hair and it seems like he always has some of it in his hands lol We were told that we can go out of the house now but its a high risk we have to be willing to take so... we are still not able to go to church, family functions and basically anywhere where someone will want to see him! boo:( but we will do whatever has to be done to keep him out of the hospital.



due date

 Today is my chuby baby boy's due date but he is 10 and 1/2 weeks old! These pregnancy pictures were taken for our Christmas card but ended up being our maternity pictures at 26 weeks.

This is the day Kohen was born... so crazy how tiny he was just 10 weeks ago!

This is the diaper he started out in and the diaper he is in now.. just graduated into newborn size!

This is my chub now! He is still such an easy baby. Never cries and enjoys laying flat on the ground.

The big news is, he started rolling over!!!:) We were told he would do things two months behind a normal baby so we were in complete shock when he rolled over.

Being a mom is the best thing EVER, everything I thought it would be and so much more.



HE IS HOME!!

Kohen came home January 14th, the first time. We were so excited to bring him home but nervous all at the same time. The Saturday before we took him home he had an "episode" is what we call them. He forgets to breath so his oxygen and heart rate drop and sometimes he would realize it and start to breath again and other times a nurse would have to stimulate him to remind him to breath. After he had his episode we were so nervous to bring him home. The nurse went and talked to the doctor and he said since he had not done that in the longest time that it was ok and we were still on to take him home Monday. When we went to get him on Monday the nurse said he spit up and it came out his nose, she was nervous to let him go but the doctor said he was ok and so we went home. He was fine most of the day and then started to do his episodes but when I would stimulate him it would still take him a while to start breathing again. He would turn grey and sometimes cry when he started to breath again. It seriously is so sad and scary! I was crying constantly and neither Kellen or I were sleeping much. We were scared even with a machine that will beep to tell us if he is going down. On Wednesday I called my brother Travis and he came over and called 911 (his fireman friends) and they came over to check on Kohen. He had many episodes that day and I knew it wasn't normal. They looked him over and checked out the machine to make sure it was working good and comforted us. Seriously all those men are the sweetest! I love knowing that if we ever need anything they will be the ones to come and help. They said if he has another one that we should take him in. He had another one about an hour later and so I called his pediatrician who said to not stop anywhere to go straight to the ER. We called the NICU since we had just left two days before, we knew they didn't let babies return but we thought it was worth a shot. They said to bring him back in and they will take care of him. ( he was pretty popular at the NICU, every nurse loved him and some would fight over who's he was lol) We took him in and they got him naked and started to do many tests and look him over. They found that he had aspirated into his lungs and that was making it hard for him to breath normally. They started him on antibiotics. Leaving him at the hospital this time was even harder than when I left the hospital the first time without him. He was back at the NICU a little over a week and then returned home January 25th. We were a lot less stressed this time since he had not had any more episodes:) He has been back home for a couple days now and we are loving every second of it :) I still don't sleep great because any noise he makes I open my eyes to see how he is doing. He is the best baby! He never ever cries and when he does he cries for a couple seconds, he has such a cute cry. He smiles so much and lovse to cuddle. He is wearing newborn size clothes now but they are still big on him lol
We still haven't had visitors and we don't take him out of the house. The Nurses suggested to wait for 6 weeks before having visitors so we are waiting till March to take him out except to doctor appointments and to bring visitors over. I can't wait till sicknesses are over with so we can show him off :)

chub!

This is a picture of Kohen's legs at a couple days old and then at almost a month old. It is crazy how much he has filled out but is still soooo tiny! We love him and can't believe he is already a month old(tomorrow) hopefully we will be celebrating his two month at home:)

He is eating from his bottle once a day but is eating all his food for that time, which is 32 cc. He downs that bottle!! He is going to be a good eater:)

He still hardly ever cries, he mostly just gets restless when he is not happy but we hardly ever hear a cry from this baby boy! He is usually all smiles or just has his mouth wide open. When he is sleeping really good his mouth is usually wide open. He is seriously just so dang cute!