Spitting like Daddy

The Phillips Phamily has never claimed to have the best manners, so you may or may not be surprised to see this video. I posted a video quite a while back of Kory spitting and Kanyon laughing SOOOOO hard. It has continued to be a source of side splitting laughter for Kanyon so of course, we keep doing it. (plus, sometimes we REALLY need him to smile at the camera!) This video was taken the very first evening we were home from Eating Camp and KLP and klp were doing their spitting/laughing thing. Then we realized after KLP would spit, klp would try to do it too!! So I ran and grabbed my camera. Again, a little trick he taught himself. Are you seeing a pattern here, almost all of the "tricks" he's mastered are ones he's taught himself. Who needs mommy, right? I missed the best spits, but managed to get one before my memory card filled up. If it happens again, hopefully I can get a better video. Enjoy! p.s. Halloween is Saturday and we STILL don't know what Kanyon is going to be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yamboree!

We've been home for a little over a week now and I just can't get my feet on the ground. I am SLIGHTLY (by slightly I mean MAJORLY) overwhelmed as we try to settle into things. It doesn't help that klp has YET to sleep through the night (well, the first night he did....for 12 hours!) and we can't figure out why. BUT all of that is another post for another day. For now I will share pics of our great weekend in Gilmer for the Yamboree.

I managed to remember to dump my camera so my memory card would be empty and ready for pics, but didn't notice my battery was dead til we got there. So these are all Mo's pics and maybe Rachel will send me hers later.

Landry and Nolan waiting with great anticipation for the parade to begin!

The two big girls. They turned 3 yesterday. Seriously? 3??!! They are at such a fun age for everything at the Yamboree, they loved it! And no, we didn't tell them to pose like this. They just did the exact same thing.

Part of our crew on the curb and part standing up on the grass. Do you like how my giant belly makes my stripes look like an optical illusion?? Nice.

We were at the end of the parade route so there were a few times that there were some gaps in the floats. Landry was totally bored waiting for the next one to turn the corner!

Here we are with our crew (klp, landry, nolan, avery, roselyn) and Norah and Caden too!

These signs are all over town on different businesses. So very festive.

I will just say that klp LOVES his cousins. Its so fun to watch him. He gets so excited...he squeals and laughs so much! Here he is laughing at Avery.

Almost the whole group......

Ahhhh NOLAN!!!! YEAH! And you can see Avery decide that she wants to hold HER baby sister since Ro is holding Nolan.

Landry says I'M NOT A BABY!!!!!!!!!!

These two are particularly big buddies right now. Landry is SOOO sweet. Wherever Kanyon goes, she goes. She loves to rub his head and follow him everywhere. Here she is about to get a kiss from klp.

Mom with all her little chicks.

Back and my grandparents' house after a nap. I LOVE this picture. 1. the look on his face is SO him. 2. he is missing a sock on the other foot. always. 3. his mouth is covered in food! Haha! 4. This tractor has been around since we were little. Its been ridden many many miles. Kan was content to just sit on it. Which is probably good because I'm not sure it works anymore.

Not sure what Kory was doing, but it was VERY funny!

Back on the tractor after church Sunday. Now you know the truth about why he loves the tractor....the steering wheel spins! Yep. that's all he cared about. He would spin and lick!

I realize all these pictures are of the little ones. We had a great time with our WHOLE family and everyone except 1 cousin and 1uncle were there. The weather was perfect and we had a great weekend!

Eating Camp- THE END

We made it home from Dallas Thursday afternoon just in time to grab lunch with Kory on our way into town. We got home and hit the ground running with a busy weekend at my Grandma's for the Yamboree. Now I'm trying to get settled and get my feet under me. I have a lot of adjustments to make to our daily doings here, so it may take me a while to figure it all out. So far so good with the eating thing at home. This weekend was probably a bad time to evaluate that since we were on the go and all over the place. Considering the circumstances, we did pretty good. Here are our last pics of Eating Camp '09

NO MORE BRACELETS! I had to wear the orange one, he had to wear his ID one. NO MORE!

All loaded up and ready for the ride home.

The last night we were there, the only way we could keep this boy occupied and happy was to take a bath. He had LOTS of fun splashing. So much fun that my mom had to hide behind the shower curtain to keep from getting soaked.

Kasey came by to see us one last time! Its the end of an era for us and Kase since we won't be going back to Dallas weekly anymore.

This was his last dinner. He finished both foods. Not without getting it all over him though!

I'm so happy to be home! I have said it several times over the last few weeks, but we really have the best friends! They constantly sent cards, goodies, gift cards, and magazines, etc. When I got home Thursday my house was SO CLEAN. I was so happy! I was so proud of Kory for doing that for me since he knows it makes me feel so good to come home to a clean house. As I was walking through the house and unloading I noticed that the house was REALLY clean. Like cleaner than I would think Kory might do. No offense to him, but ya know. So I started to think maybe he hired someone to clean it. When he got home from work I thanked him for the clean house (I didn't want to accuse him right away of hiring someone) and he quickly confessed that it wasn't him. Or a hired gal. It was my dear dear friends Amy and Mindi. They had come over one evening and cleaned my whole house. Like mopped, dusted, bathrooms, the WORKS!! How great is that??!!!! Thanks girls!

Eating Camp Day 23 1/2

The Kan Man is set to go home TOMORROW!!! We are THRILLED with this and all of us are VERY READY. He is now bored, fussy, bossy, and DONE with this place. He is doing great in his meals and his drinking is on a slow, but steady climb up. We're trying just 4 meals a day instead of 5 (more on this later) so we'll see how his calorie count is with just 4.

The last 3 nights he has slept ALL NIGHT and I've had to wake him up in the morning to get him ready. I guess he's finally settling in to sleeping here. Nice timing.

One thing that has kept him happy (which has been pretty hard these days, especially since its been rainy and he hasn't been able to walk outside with mom) are these stickers. Our awesome friend Holly (mommy of Kan's lady Addison) sent these window gel sticker things to decorate your window to look like a pumpkin. klp doesn't take too much interest in making it look like a pumpkin, but he LOVES sticking these on the window.




THE BIG 3-0!!!!!! We made it to our BIG goal of 30 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I went to the Dr. here yesterday and everything looked great. Baby measured perfect and healthy and about 3 1/2lbs! My cervix got an A+ again, its is perfect!! All these things show that we should make it to our next BIG goal of 32 weeks. So very very very thankful. And large as you will see in the pic below!

I am carrying this baby much like I did the twins. High and pointy! :) My belly button is now flat and I think I'm about the size I was when I delivered Kanyon and Jayde, but I'm anxious to look at my chart when I go back to my Dr.

I'll update tomorrow or sometime when we get home. I'm going to have A LOT of adjusting to do. In many MANY ways, this whole eating thing is going to make my life much harder and will require a lot of my time, but we'll figure it out.

Maybe the most exciting thing is that we are making it back just in time for the EAST TEXAS YAMBOREE!!! We will get to be with lots of family and enjoy all of the festivities of the YAM in Gilmer!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eating Camp Weekend Update

Hopefully this will be our last weekend update!! My mom left on Thursday and Kory got here Thursday night. We wanted him to be here on Friday so that he could watch the therapists feed Kanyon and see how it works. WEEEELLLLLLLLL it didn't quite go that way. He felt TERRIBLE Friday. He woke up feeling bad and something just wasn't right. He was puney all day so we didn't do any meals, we just had a few bottles. He started feeling better on Saturday and we tried to eat a couple of times and he did OK, but not great. He finally got back to his normal self today, so that was nice. We think that maybe a new medicine we tried upset his stomach. It was FOR his stomach (well, his poopie situation) but we're thinking we won't try that one again.

The good thing was that his speech therapist was actually here feeding Saturday morning (usually its a tech which is fine, they're good, but I wanted him to see his actual therapists that feed him and work with him every day), so Kory got to watch her and then Kory fed him several times over the weekend. The therapists or feeding techs are in the room helping or answering questions while the feeding is going on, so its nice to have them there, but it makes me nervous. Kory did great and I'm glad he got to be here to watch, learn, and ask questions. Its kind of a nerve racking process having someone in there watching your every move and every word that comes out of your mouth. Its not that the routine/protocol is that difficult, its just that its set up to be done EXACTLY the same way every time. That means you have to say exactly the right thing and do exactly the right thing and it can be overwhelming to try and keep it all straight during a feeding.

I started feeding klp Thursday where I thought I wouldn't start until Monday. SOOOO I'm thinking maybe that can cut a day or two off our stay...maybe MAYBE!! We'll see. As of now, the plan is to go home Thursday. It was much easier saying bye to Kory tonight when I know we're so close to being home.

We are ready for week 4!

Eating Camp Day 16

Hello from Eating Camp! Things are moving right along. We have a few new things:

We dropped another bottle. We are now down to 2 a day. One a nap time one at bed time. They dropped it because he didn't need all those calories, but he does need the fluids, so I'm having to make sure and give him water/juice a few times a day to make up for the 8 oz. we lost with that bottle. We're supposed to do about 10 oz. a day outside of meals. This is fine, the trick is they don't want it to be too demanding for him to have to take that. They want to keep the demand and the "hard stuff" for his meal times. So, they don't want to struggle with bottles all day trying to get the fluids. Today I gave him just 2 oz. 5 times a day and that seemed to be ok. He will usually take that much without much difficulty so I don't feel like we're asking him to do too much. They just don't want him to be "working" in and out of meals and if I can keep up with it like I need to and remember to do it, the 2 oz. at a time should work fine.

He has gained 2 lbs. since we've been here!!

He is eating great, very little refusals, and his volume is good. The drinking is coming along. He is doing a good job opening his mouth and accepting it, he just has to get used to something coming out. He kind of bites at it and almost looks like a little bottle calf. Its kinda funny. He's learning and today's intake sheet showed that he took more like 20-30 mls each meal. Before today, he'd have at least 1 or 2 meals where he only took 10-15. We're getting there. That will just be a slow boat. BUT the biggest thing is he's not refusing it, so I'm thrilled about that. As these meal drinking numbers go up, we'll have to do less and less outside of meals.

I am now sitting in the room while they feed him. Probably Monday I will start feeding him while the watch and help me and that is the beginning of the end!

Speaking of the end, as of right now, our plan is to leave here and head home next Thursday!!! So that means we will be here about 4 weeks instead of 6!!! YIPPEEEEE!!! I guess there is a chance it could be sooner. I have already been trained on most of the protocol, so if I don't need 3 days worth of help from them then maybe we can cut another day off or something. We'll see. Another week doesn't sound bad.....unless its night time. Last night at 2 am with a restless non sleeping uncomfortable floppy squirmy 2 year old, a growing belly, a tiny bed, and way too bright lights out our window another week seemed like a LOOOOOOOOOONG time!!

Kory is actually coming Thursday after work to be here Friday so that he can watch and learn how this routine works. I don't want to be the only one that knows how to feed him and I don't really want to be the one to teach Kory. So he'll get to be here and watch the pros do it and have an extra long weekend here with us!!

My mom headed home today to get ready to go to my cousin's wedding in Florida. We were sad to see her leave! She will come back next Tuesday unless we go home sooner than Thursday. I have lots of reasons to be sad that she is gone and so does Kanyon, but I think Kanyon's biggest reason is because she will miss this:


klp loves to be outside and so they just walk 'round and 'round the outside of the hospital. I could do that with him, but I try to only go a lap or 2 at a time so as not to "over do it" so he's glad to have mom go much longer. She counts the laps and brought her pedometer back with her this week so she could count the miles she walks. She's getting exercise, he's happy outside. Its just perfect!

I usually walk the first lap with them, then head inside. They stop by the window every now and then to wave to me. Kanyon will be sad tomorrow when we can't do this. It sure does help the time pass when he gets restless inside.

Yesterday when I put him down for his nap, he was already asleep in my lap. This is how he stuck when I put him in his bed!!! So cute! He didn't stay like that long, but I did have time to snap a pic!

This was a long one...sorry! I am heading to bed in hopes of only waking up to roll my belly over!! I will be on my own here tomorrow so we're praying for a day of Kanyon's contentment playing and not forcing mommy to work too hard!! I think we can do it!

Eating Camp Weekend Update

We had a good weekend. Kory made it here Saturday afternoon and we had a great time. Kanyon ate and drank pretty good this weekend (last weekend he didn't do as good) with the different people feeding him. I am hoping to touch base with the director by Tuesday at least to see about progress and going home. I think at the very longest we'll be here 2 more weeks.

I'll let the pictures give you a little peek into our weekend.

klp and KLP sharing a little beef jerky

Not to be irreverent, but sometimes we go play in the chapel. It has doors so he has room to roam but can't get away, no one is ever in there, klp likes the stained glass...... it's just a good place to play. It also has carpet which, as we all know, can cause klp to loose his britches.

I included this one because they have the same look on their face.

Phillips Pham self photo

As you've seen, Kory did a lot of carrying Kanyon around on his shoulders. I took a lot of pictures because I just think its so cute.

Not sure if this was klp overwhelmed with love for his daddy or if he was taking a rest, but either way it was pretty sweet.

Maybe a new favorite pic of my klp

Oh yeah, the chapel also has a piano too. Pretty fun.

This weekend update includes NO trips to the hospital. I'm feeling good. Here is my belly at 28 weeks and 5 days. I'm growing, but still don't think I'm as big as I was with the twins.

I had Kory bring us a couple of new toys from home and we sent a couple back with him that had lost their charm. klp was SOOOOOOOO happy to see Slinky Dog. By "see" I mean lick and spin.

YEAH FOR SLINKY DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and one sock...that seems to be all we can keep on these days)

Thanks for keeping up with us. We realize that we have an incredible support system and we DO NOT take that for granted. We are so very thankful. Our church as a whole, small groups, ladies class, etc. have kept a steady flow of treats, snacks, and time passers this whole 2 weeks. Friends are keeping Kory fed while I'm gone, comments and prayers from ALL OVER, calls, emails, etc. have been non stop. I know that most people don't have the kind of encouragement and support we have and I wish they did. This place is full of people doing this alone. Thank you for making sure the Phillips Pham is NEVER alone!!!

Eating Camp Day 11

Not much new to report today. Everything with eating and therapy is about the same. Kory has to work Sat. morning, so he'll be here in the afternoon. My mom/life saver is still here and will leave sometime tomorrow when Kory gets here.

As I type this belly is visibly wobbling all over the place. I am SOOO happy that baby is still in there. Speaking of, I'm in my 3rd trimester. I'm a first time 3rd trimester-er!!

This picture below shows a couple of things we've had fun with lately. For weeks I've been trying to get klp to stick his tongue out.....I know that will eventually be something he gets in trouble for, but I want him to learn new sounds, so I've been trying to get him to find his tongue. Well, he found it today. He sticks it out and wiggles it around. He can't quite find it on command, but when he remembers its there, he has a good ol' time with it.

The other thing is his "computer". He always wants to play with the lap top, so we found a toy in the play room that is computer-ish. Its actually a McDonald's cash register, but don't tell him that. He LOVES it!!

Cliff and Jacey Kerby and Deon came by this afternoon/evening to visit us and bring us yummy Mexican food from one of their fav places. The food was great and the company was EVEN BETTER. Thanks y'all!!!

I realize I look like I'm bending over like I'm in pain in this picture. Not sure why. I feel fine, I just don't know how to stand up and smile I guess.

Happy Weekend!