Hangin' with the Grands...

Gram-Z and Papa-Z arrived a little over a week ago, and we've been enjoying their visit with Gram-Z baking up a storm and Papa-Z playing up a storm! :)  Kaleb absolutely loves to beg his grandma to cook, so there have been buns and tarts, with the potential for butter horns (or maybe we'll save those for Christmas!)

Kaleb has all of a sudden proved to us that he IS paying attention, even when we think he's off in his creative little side-world, when he busted out printing last week!  He knows many of his letters and how to form them, although he is still struggling with some of the common letters, and some letters that his brother Zachary struggled with as well.  He also does not yet have the concept that you print a word in a line, so he'll just write the next letter anywhere on the page, they don't have to be beside each other! :)

Zachary and Kaleb writing words with Gram-Z and Papa-Z's help

The boys headed off last Sunday to Braelyn's Pirate party.  Zachary did not want to get dressed up, while Kaleb insisted that he couldn't go unless he was appropriately attired!  Thankfully we were able to throw together a costume of sorts in order to pacify him and off they went.  It was great fun with lots of games and a beautiful day to celebrate a special little girl!  Happy Birthday Braelyn!

Last Sunday Amy and Karis attended the required baby dedication pre-meeting at church.  When we walked in, we walked near another young couple who said "Hello Neighbors!" (so friendly!).  Sadly, we were heretofore completely unaware that this young couple, the Hoatsons, lived in our neighborhood!  Jeff, Kaitlyn (spelling may be wrong) and their little girl Avery live just down the street from us!  Hopefully we'll get to see them more often now that we have made the connection.  We'll have a complete update on the baby dedication in next week's post!

Addison has been hilarious this week, with giving these unexpected WIDE-OPEN mouth kisses.  You end up feeling completely bathed in saliva but it is too sweet to refuse!  She has also started this very funny habit of pulling her leg up to her mouth while you're changing her diaper and sucking on her big toe - as if it is a thumb!  Crazy girly!  We have had to switch from Pampers sensitive diapers to Huggies Pure and Natural.   We had a diaper rash that we just could not get rid of.  We had to use Huggies with the boys, but earlier on we had tried a different line of the Huggies diapers for Addison and didn't like them, but it does appear that these Pure and Natural ones seem to be doing the trick, so we're very thankful.

WHAT is you kiss is entirely up for grabs....even the floor may get some love from Addi! :)

Kaleb giving his sister some hugs!  She loves the little piano that she can stand in and play

There hasn't been an update on Karis in a while - he went back to work when we got back from ski trip and thankfully it has gone very well.  He wasn't nearly as debilitated by it as Amy feared, although he is definitely tired and sore.  His limp continues to get better (in part thanks to compression socks that he's now wearing, which help keep the swelling down). 

Two different views of his ankle - you can see the pins, rod and the cable. ICK.

Good news!  Even though we accidentally wrote over our computer, the data recovery experts were able to get most of it back!  Yeah!  It cost us $350, which is much less than the company over in California as well and it was local, so we didn't have to ship anything across the country.  Karis is now in the process of trying to go through and see what was fully recovered vs what may be corrupted etc.  There is so much on one's computer that is hard to recreate - pictures, videos, Christmas letters from years past, bank rec files, tax records etc etc.

Ski Trip!

Two weeks ago, we headed off for Amy's annual work ski conference (we are truly blessed to have a ski conference every year, it delights Karis' spirit!).  This was the first year that Kaleb joined us, as he's now old enough to take ski lessons (and have them be productive!).  He was quite excited.  We were lucky to have Amy's Mom of course watch Addison back at the 'farm'!

Our hope every time that we take one of our children for the very first time is that they will 1) do their best, 2) listen to the instructor and 3) have FUN!  No other expectations beyond that.  But, we were stunned, shocked, floored....when we received the report card after Kaleb's first day of skiing lessons.....Kaleb is a little skiing prodigy!  The teacher described the lesson as "mind-blowing - I've never seen a four year-old first timer pick up skiing this fast and master so many things on the first day!"  He continued to excel, and was already on a green run by the 2nd day of lessons, and a blue run on the 3rd day!  There's no way to tell for sure, but we believe that the skating lessons certainly helped!

Happy as a clam, riding on the chairlift! 

We had a hilarious video of Kaleb skiing down Bucky's Bumps (some rolling bumps on Wide West, a bunny hill easy run!) with Kieran at the bottom running to greet him with arms wide open....and it was like watching a train wreck....as Kaleb flew towards Kieran as if to run and give him a hug too....except Kaleb is flying and completely crashed into him and they were a flying mess of hands and feet!  Thankfully neither boy was hurt, but it was sure funny on the video!  But, read on below to the end of the blog where we discuss our computer.....as the video is not available.....

Kaleb following Loghann 

Zachary continues to be a skiing machine as well - already going on moguls and learning how to confidently ski and worked on hockey stops and parallel turns.  He actually already has skied a black diamond, although his mother was none too happy about him skiing a black diamond!

Luke and Zachary posing by a run

Zachary is in the red, white and black jacket, right behind Rob (so second in the line)

Kaleb had a blast at the tubing hill, laughing and giggling all the way down the hill.  Zachary insisted on continuing to ski, and would not go on the tubing hill.  Kieran and Kaleb were thrilled to have Uncle William pull them along on the tubes, and asked him to do "the whoa!" which means that they wanted him to swing them in circles on the tubes as they screamed "Whoa", sometimes ending up tumbling out of the tubes.

Addison was a little bewildered when she awoke after our departure, wondering it seemed "where are all my peeps who entertain me all the time"  She learned a  few new tricks while we were gone - including sticking her tongue out and making all kinds of shapes with it AND doing a few belly laughs for Grandma in response to zerberts on her tummy!  We can't wait to experience these new tricks for ourselves!

The usual group was back together this year with Johnsons, Cochrans and Deiningers along with us, which was very fun.  Karis didn't ski obviously with his leg, and Amy didn't ski with the fact that she is still pumping, so the adult Zbaraschuks enjoyed some quiet time in the lodge in between running kids back and forth to ski lessons.

We were thankful for Johnsons when we landed, finding out van with no battery!  Thank you Kent!

The stinky news this week is that our computer become possessed this week, and wouldn't let us get past the password in the beginning......and as Karis attempted to fix it, he mistakenly hit the "restore" command, which then wiped out the computer.  CRUMB!  We're attempting to get it recovered (thanks for nothing, it costs almost as much as the computer itself!!!).  Thankfully, we still have our old computer in storage, which has all of our old files and pictures.  Therefore, if it all goes south and isn't recoverable, then at least we'll only have lost our pictures from December forward.  That is a bummer though because Addison of course has grown a lot in the last 3 months, so would hate to have lost all of those pictures, but our fingers are crossed.

Phrase of the week:  My legs are still fresh, I can keep skiing!  Zachary, as always, was intense about his skiing and was insistent that he was NOT TIRED and that he could definitely keep skiing!  That's our Zachary for ya!  And where did he get the phrase "my legs are fresh!?"

PS - we mentioned above that we had our computer crash, and couldn't post a funny video of Kaleb and Kieran crashing - but modern miracles have restored our computer and we were able to retrieve our information for the most part (thank God!), so we are posting the video belatedly.  Karis is sitting talking on the phone to Heather telling her where he is sitting so that we can join him to watch the boys ski...if the volume is up, you'll notice that Karis does not even react to the impending doom of what is about to happen! :)  Thankfully both boys were just fine, but it was hilarious to watch - Kieran just completely and deliberately ran out to the front of Kaleb's path, and Kaleb did not even attempt it appears to put on the ski brakes!!!

Official Six Month Photo Shoot

Two weekends ago, we had Addison's official six month photographs taken by Heather Rice.  Jennifer has partnered with her, and is doing mini stylized shoots where they create "sets".  It was very beautiful, and was out at our friend the Hilliards home.  It was freezing cold, so we were able to go inside for the pictures in which she has less clothing on! :)  The pictures turned out beautifully, as you can see below.

This could be a magazine cover!  Amazing!

I love her expression in this picture with the boys kissing her!

 

The boys' smiles are beautiful in this picture!



Phrase of the week:  As we discussed going out to take pictures in the cold (this was the evening before), Zachary informed Amy "It'll be cold, I'll get sick for sure!"  Amy informed him that he'd be fine (especially as he'd be in long pants, vs poor Addison in a dress!), and that cold didn't mean that you'd get sick either.  On Monday, would you believe it, but he came down with a fever!?  It surely didn't have anything to do with the cold temperature from the day before, but it didn't help Amy's cause too much!  Of all the luck!

The other words that brought us a laugh plus astonishment, was when Cole Hilliard came down the stairs after Karis called Zachary and Kaleb to come downstairs to take pictures with Addison, and he informed Karis that Maddie (the youngest Hilliard child) and Kaleb were in the bathroom upstairs and didn't have their clothes on.  Karis gulped (first for the reason that there were no clothes on, and the second that he had to traverse climbing the stairs with his sore ankle), and then headed up.  Sure enough, Kaleb and Maddie had (in Kaleb's words) had been jumping on her bed (GROAN, not allowed!), then he had to go potty, and then Maddie had to go potty, and then well, we just had our clothes all off! Kaleb was just sitting on the floor naked as a jaybird while Maddie was going to the bathroom, so nothing untoward was happening (although at the age of 4, not sure how much could actually go awry other than just plain curiosity!).  We had a long conversation about keeping our clothes on at all times when we're not at home!

First Meal!

As mentioned multiple times in this blog, Addison's weight gain is "turtle-like slow!" - and we have kept increasing the amount of breastmilk that she's drinking up to 29'ish ounces per day (even though Amy is not making that much per day....so this is not sustainable obviously - as soon as the freezer extra milk is gone, then we're in deep trouble!).  Even with increasing the milk, she wasn't gaining very much weight, so we have decided that while we preferred to wait until she was 7 1/2 months to start feeding her food, that we better start now so that we could get her accustomed to eating before the extra milk ran out.  So, Addison has had her first food - sweet potatoes!

It is obvious that the Z parents are rusty at this, and that our other kids didn't eat this early, because we blithely just fork mashed the sweet potatoes and put some breastmilk in there, and lo and behold, she wanted nothing to do with it!  After a day or two of trying, we had the bright obvious idea to puree the sweet potatoes and make them quite runny.  Now we're in business!  She has stopped rejecting the food and while she's still not gung-ho (although this is not entirely surprising as we used to have to coax her just to drink her bottle for the first few months, so eating just does not seem to be a big priority for little girly), she at least is eating about 1 cube of sweet potatoes twice per day.  We're going to keep her on just sweet potatoes for about 2 weeks before we try introducing mashed/pureed bananas.  We aren't rushing to introduce a lot of foods as we normally wouldn't have even started foods for another month or so.  Thankfully, she did have her 6 month doctor appt this week and the doctor said that her weight was fine even though she hasn't doubled her birth weight (typically what they look for by 6 months).  He said she looked healthy and that her thighs were chubby, so all was fine.  She was 15 lbs 0 ounces at her doctor's appt (25th percentile) and about 27 inches tall (75th percentile).

We had her 6 month professional pictures taken last week - it was a frigid 55 degrees, and the pictures were outside!!!  Thankfully it was at a friend's house, so we were able to take her inside to warm up and take a few of the less-dressed pictures indoors.  We'll post a few of the favorite shots next week!

The informal 6 month picture!

Zachary has been enjoying intramurals over at FLEEC, and just finished up a round of basketball before he moves on to t-ball.  Basketball and soccer are two of his favorite past-times, so it was great fun. 

Zachary is standing in front of the man with the white shirt, and has his arms up in the air (red shirt, white sleeves, grey shorts)

Kaleb has started to give us a bit of trouble with taking naps - not totally unexpected as he's almost 5, but we've been spoiled with how easily he's been going down for naps up until now.  He has started to play in his room instead of napping - such as sneaking in the Leapfrog to play with it, or getting out of bed and playing with his crayons and markers.  One such day this week, Kaleb emerged from his room with obvious signs that he had not taken a nap.....see the evidence in the picture below for yourself! :)

 Phrase of the week:  Kaleb was over at Jennifer's and they were cleaning up.  Blake got out the broom to sweep, and Miss Jennifer said "just don't sweep up the dirt outside" when Kaleb got down on the floor and curling into a ball said to Blake "Blake, I'm dirt, sweep me up!"  She took a picture of it and texted it to Amy at work.

Sir Lurch-A-Lot

Karis continues to improve, but doesn't have very much dorsi flexion in his ankle so when he walks around, he definitely has a bit of a lurchy gait.  Amy finds it amusing to dub him as Sir Lurch-A-Lot, so here's hoping that he doesn't feel bad about that!  The pain is like a medium headache as defined by Karis - kind of deep achy. 

We had had a run of some GOOD NEWS!  Yippee - we'll take it!  The first set of good news was that we took Kaleb to the eye doctor, and he has improved dramatically.  He went from 20/160 at the first visit (with no correction) and 20/125 (with correction) to.....drumroll please.....20/20 (with correction)!!!  The doctor indicated that his brain has turned back on his right eye, which is wonderful.  The 'bad side' of his brain turning his eye back on is the fact that he now has double vision at distance.  This is to be expected apparently - when his brain turned off the eye, there was no double vision, and now that it is turned back on, he has to learn how to get his eyes to line up properly again (kind of like a baby does).  She said that this is to be expected on the journey.  The other part of this journey that takes a while is the fact that his depth perception has improved (good) but not as dramatically as we would have hoped.  He had 1% depth perception and now has 15% - she said that this too is slower to improve and thus is expected.  Whatever the case, we definitely put this into a "good news" category!

The second part of the good news is that we took Zachary to the new allergy and asthma doctor.  We were very pleased with our experience with him - he was willing to sit and discuss the symptoms and options with Karis, and was supportive of trying more natural methods of controlling the allergies.   After reviewing all of the spirometer tests, he indicated that he did not believe that Zachary had asthma based on the fact that some of his pre-tests were so good.  Yeah!  On the note of allergies, they have concluded that he's allergic to grasses, dust mites, and some molds.  That is pretty expected as Karis and I both have those allergies.  We have had some really good allergy control actually by taking a daily dose of High Potency Vitamin C liquid.  Our friend Vasti shared that she gives her son this, along with liquefied Parsley.  We decided to try the Vitamin C first, alone, to see if that would work as we weren't sure that Zachary would take the liquid parsley.  Thus far, Zachary hasn't had much of a stuffy nose and hasn't been struggling with the dry cough that is so typical of this time of year.

Addison is starting to sit up by herself - not super stable right now, but she's getting better every day.  She has gotten pretty proficient at rolling over both ways as well.

What an overachiever - holding her bottle all by herself already!  You go girl!



Trying out the highchair for the first time - complete with entertainment!



In other exciting news, it appears that Addison is about to get a new best friend to play with - a little Johnson girl!  Uncle Kent and Aunt Kelli were excited to report that the ultrasound this week reviewed a little Miss in there!  We're very excited!   Between Devin and Little Miss Johnson, Addison won't lack for friends to play with during these early years! 

Snuggling in with Auntie Kelli

Phrase of the week:  Kaleb was sitting at the dinner table this week, intently looking at his water glass. While staring at the water, he says "Pee is yellow.  Water is not yellow.  How does water that is not yellow become yellow pee?"  Excellent question my son - one best answered when you're in front of a biology teacher in highschool!  But Grandma and Mommy attempted as best we could in four-year-old verbiage to describe how the water transforms from clear to yellow as it grabs all the garbage in your body on its way out....you just never know what they'll ask next! :)

A bit blurry, but couldn't resist including a picture of Blake, Evan, Zachary and Kaleb playing "Twister!"  They were loving it!

Wag, Wag, Wag!

Kaleb has always been super creative and imaginative, and this week was no different.  We had balloons from Chick-Fil-A, and the next day Kaleb decided that he wanted to be a fox with an orange tail, so took the balloon string and made a loop out of it to hook around himself.  He would then run around the house saying "wag, wag, wag" as he would wag his little behind to make his "tail" wag!  It was hilarious, and so precious!

Karis had good news this week when he went to the doctor and Dr. Cole said "Get up and walk" (while irreverent, it reminds me of the story in the Bible where the man is told "You are healed, get up and walk!").  If only it was so!  So with the doctor's firm permission, Karis immediately ditched the black boot and the crutches and has been "walking" (or should we say 'lurching', as it is still painful and doesn't have the range of motion back, so he looks quite interesting as he walks!) ever since.  It definitely makes life a lot easier.  His pain is still requiring him to take his meds on a frequent basis but he's hoping in another week that much of the deep bone aching will start to subside.
As is a tradition, we headed off to the park after naps last Sabbath (what a great way to run off some of your kids' endless energy!).  Amy was aghast after reaching the park when Heather H called to ask where we were - why weren't we at Adventurers!?  Whoops - totally flaked out on that!  Bergherms and Cochrans joined us, and Zachary was delighted to have Uncle William pull out orange cones to make soccer goals.  The boys played with those for a long time!  We also took the opportunity to have picture time with Addison and Devin!

Zachary adores being the goalie - and has his stance all ready for when the ball comes!

Speaking of soccer, last Sunday was Kaleb's first soccer game.  Man those 4 year olds are cute out there!  They are playing inside, rather than outside like it was when Zachary was at the JCC playing with Coach Eli, so that the ball is more contained and the kids don't get distracted picking the wildflowers!  Ha ha!  It actually is much nicer for those reasons, and the fact that it is so much more climate controlled!  Kaleb, Evan and Kieran had a great time.

Kaleb about to kick the ball in the center of the 'field'

We capped off the weekend by heading over to the Cochrans for the second annual Superbowl party with the usual crowd.  Karis in particular had a great time visiting with everyone as he was just so happy to be out of the house! :)    One particularly cute moment was when we were about to leave, Brady Grodack came over to where Jenn was holding Addison and wanted to give her some 'loving' - so cute!  We highly encourage all possible future marriage connections with folks that we like - who wants to have in-laws that you don't know and don't like!  Ahh, if only arranged marriages were still in vogue! :)

Karis and his black boot - thanks to Allen for taking this picture as Amy didn't actually get a picture before Karis discarded the boot!

Survival of the Fittest

Amy feels like she has entered into a game of the "Survival of the Fittest" and thankfully we are surviving thus far.  Karis' surgery was successful as we reported last week, but recovery is slow and hard.  He has been having a fair amount of pain, so has to take the pain pills regularly.  He has also noticed that now with the hardware in his ankle, that whenever his foot gets cold (so even just touching his toes to the cold plastic floor covering where our office chair is), his entire foot and ankle hurts really bad.  But, he is slowly coming out of the fog of post-surgery and is starting to seem more like his old self - at least mentally.  We are thankful for that, as we've missed both husband and daddy!  We continue to be ever so grateful to Amy's mom, who has been taking care of Karis and Addison each day, and helping Amy with cooking and getting the boys to bed.

Addison has had a good week - some of her accomplishments this week include rolling over multiple times in a row, beginning to try and sit up (front to back stability isn't too bad, but the side to side stability isn't quite there yet!), almost a laugh (Grandma heard a single "ha" that was almost the beginning of a laugh).  Yesterday, when Amy was holding her, she was doing her 'squirming with delight' dance and then started to lean forward repeatedly to "kiss" Amy on the check (mouth wide open with slobber everywhere, but hey, that's okay when kisses are being given out!) Her daytime schedule of naps etc is still pretty unpredictable, but imagine that over the next month it'll start to tighten down a little bit.  She is starting to refuse to take the 5:00PM short nap, which makes for a slightly more crabby baby in the evenings!  She is also is starting to do a 'happy shriek' (Corey, it slightly reminds us of Brady!) - wow, it is long and high-pitched, that's for sure!  She isn't doing it at full volume yet, so we're kind of hoping that this is the limit that she goes because it could probably be ear piercing if she takes it up all of the way.

Amy took the car in this week to get fixed, so we're now proud drivers of a XC60.  It is kind of funny because we considered getting this Volvo cross-over when we weren't sure that the car seats would fit in the back of the S40 (which thankfully they do once we got the Diono car seats).  It is fun to actually have an extended test drive of a vehicle that you'd consider getting in the future!  Some of our observations - shoulder checking in the car is a little bit more "blind" as it seems like the windows get elevated and much smaller as you look towards the back of the car, the speedometer in the car is in an odd location, which isn't intuitive as you look down at the dashboard to see how fast you're going, you have to move your hand a lot of times to see it, and Amy is clear that she wouldn't want a vehicle much longer than this one - she is too used to a short car! :)  But, the car does drive very nice, and we love the Volvo safety feel of it.

With everything that is going on, we haven't taken that many pictures so this post will include some random pictures that we've taken over the last six months that we've been meaning to include on our post, but just never got around to it!

Phrase of the week:  Mommy, why is your hair falling out? Kaleb was curious as to why there is so much hair on the bathroom floor etc, which thankfully usually starts to decrease around the six month post-partum mark for Amy - at least with the boys.  Anyway, Amy's answer was "hormones" to which poor Kaleb having no idea what those were answers with "her moms?"  Ha ha - always good for a chuckle.  Zachary loves to play legos now, and has several of the police lego sets, that come with little policemen complete with handcuffs.  Zachary though likes to refer to them as "handCUPS"  Ha ha - what kind of parents are we that we just let him call it by the wrong name because we think it's cute!?

How blessed are these boys to have Grandma play soccer with them!?

Getting the mid-year patch honors for Adventurers.

Christmas-time - Kaleb was "conducting" the Christmas carols in an adult Sabbath School

Sporting our hockey jersey (thanks Aunt Evelyn!)

Isn't this what these garden tubs really are for!?