*sneaky snake*

Kaden and Daddy have a favorite tune.....I have yet to get a video of them having a jamfest together, but this impromptu performance of it by Kaden is one of my new faves.....


~I took this on my phone, not sure why the quality is SO bad, but still you can hear him rockin out.


~I love this one too...he's got moves, that one!

*prelude to insanity*

~some much needed family fun time.

You ever have one of those weeks where everything is especially nutty? Yep, that is what this week has felt like for me! It started out with poor little Kaden getting his staples pulled out on Monday. I remember watching them do this with Chad's staples after his surgery, and I remember the incision falling apart in the intern's hand, and the look on the surgeon's face when he ran into the room, saying he needed to get back into surgery. The look on Chad's face that day was blinking in my mind like a fast polaroid picture, when Kaden got his taken out. Ok, so there is a big difference between a little cut on the head and major skull surgery, but a staple is a staple. And it is never easy to watch someone you love have them taken out!

Kaden and I also have been bitten by some crazy bug or virus thing. Kaden seems to have kicked it, which is so good, but Mama can't shake it. It was so horrible last week, that I actually missed my own baby shower! My wonderful co workers threw the shower and have been planning it for months, it would have been way too hard to reschedule. They took pics and I was totally there in spirit!

I feel like we were running around all over the place this week, trying to squish everything in! I went and registered at the hospital this week (oh yeah, it would be good to do that, huh?!) and Kaden had his speech assessment with ChildFind on Wednesday. He was referred by his daycare teacher who was concerned that he was struggling with pronouncing certain letters. When she first mentioned it to me, I was taken aback, because doesn't every parent think their child is a complete brainiac??? I had never noticed that he was having trouble with certain letters. So after 4 hours of assessing him, they came to the conclusion that he does not qualify for speech therapy services, but does have a mild delay, which is basically three letters. Most likely this is caused by being born tongue tied, because these particular letters have to do with the tongue not stretching far enough. We go to see the ENT on Monday, and we will see if he can possibly have the surgery done to take care of it. This surgery could have been just a simple SNIP that would have happened when he was just days old, and he wouldn't feel a thing, but our hippie Californian doctors said that they didn't really think it was all that important and it would stretch out eventually. Damn you hippie doctors! We were also referred to the ENT after Kaden failed his last two hearing tests, and there seems to be fluid that is not draining out of his one ear. So, he may have to get tubes in his ears.....oh and there is a baby on the way. Like in two weeks. holy cow.

This week is week 37 that this little nugget has been baking in the oven, 16 more days to go! My hormones are beyond beserk and I have been a weepy mess all this week. We have been so excited to meet this little one, and now the day is so close, it doesn't even seem real.

Happy St. Patty's Day weekend to everyone! Cheers!

~these ecards always make me giggle, this one especially made me smile.

*staples are not just for paper*

~he picked this outfit to wear to the Drs. Gangsta Kaden.

Kaden has been squishing in some serious doctor visits in the past month, and he is quickly becoming NOT a fan. We have been to the audiologist twice to have hearing tests done, both which he failed. We have been to see his pedi several times to see if it is due to an ear infection, but it looks like it is just leftover fluid from a cold he had a month ago. We finally got a referral for the ENT to see what the heck is going on with his poor little ears.

Yesterday we had his three year pedi appt, and they gave him ANOTHER eye test (he just had one with the audiologist two weeks ago) and he was not a happy camper. He was not a fan of the whole checkup at all, especially the shot at the end. Our sweet Dr gave him a popsicle to attempt to win him over again, but on the way out, he announced to a full waiting room that "This place is NOT fun". Poor little guy.

So today, I got a call from daycare that he fell off a bench backward and hit his head on the bottom shelf of a table. He was bleeding pretty bad, but he calmed down after a minute or so and went back to playing with his buddies. I picked him up early, took one look at it, and just about fainted. Took him to the pedi right away, even though there were screams from the backseat quoting the pedi saying "She said I didn't have to go back till I was FOUR!!!!!", and my poor lil dude had to have two staples in his head. He was so brave, and held my hands and sucked on a popsicle (brilliant that Drs have a costco sized supply of these) while they did it. Of course I cannot wash his hair for four days, and he has crazy purple paint all over his hair from some painting extravaganza. I told him now he is officially JUST like daddy, as daddy had staples in HIS head too, AND he has crazy colored hair just like him too!

We finally have had a little taste of beautiful weather this week! It was close to 70 yesterday and today and we finally had a chance to take K and his new bike out on the Cherry Creek Bike Trail by our house. He was completely smitten with this doggie in the background playing catch! After Baby Miller comes along, we need to seriously focus on finding another furry friend to join the family.

~chillin and enjoying the view at the Museum of Nature and Science.


Chad and Kaden have the such fun "daddy days". They have been hanging out at the skate park in Stapleton, and K rides his bike while daddy rides his skateboard. Kaden is now obsessed with getting a skateboard. I'm taking bets on how many staples my little guy has to have in his head by age 10!

*new home*

Welcome to our new home! I had been trying to squish in some time to update the blog and change the title (to be more accommodating to baby miller!), and I was struggling to find the time to do it. Strangely enough, it took a creepy stranger lurking on the previous blog to convince me to squish in the time to change to a new venue.

I always tend to walk around with rose colored glasses, and I am eternally a half glass full kind of girl, but this particular person caused me to open my eyes a bit and see that the internet is not all puppies and rainbows.

I originally started this blog for so many reasons...for a girl with a horrific memory, it allows me to look back and remember some joyful moments, for family that is across the miles to see life through our eyes so that we all feel a wee bit closer together, for kaden and baby miller to read about their own stories, and for everyone in our worlds to stay connected to us. I contemplating deleting the whole thing after being contacted by this person, but I feel strongly about my reasons for keeping it going. Rainbows win. Creepy loses.

My incredibly talented friend, the lovely Audrey Michelle, asked if she could take some maternity pics of me and Kaden together. To be honest, I so wasn't up for it this time around. When I was pregnant with Kaden, I felt amazing and enjoyed every second of my pregnancy. I look back at the pictures that my cousin took and I even loved the way I looked when I was 8 months pregnant! Now, I feel like a beached whale and barely recognize myself. We decided to play a little with the camera, since it is only fair for baby miller to see just how crazy his/her mama looked while pregnant. We had such an awesome time playing with the camera, and kaden is also super smitten with the lovely Audrey, so he most definitely had a fabulous time playing with the camera.

some other randoms from earlier in the month....

~his valentine hat was a wee bit bigger than him!


~swaddling his "babies".


~signing all his valentines for his big party.


~so excited about his "city" that he built.


~loving his Charlie Brown valentines day window decals that Mamaw sent him.

and for another randomly random....if I ever am feeling a career change, I think I would like to be in this band. I love their outfits and they are havin way too much fun! This is kaden's new favorite song. Today, he ran around the house screaming "holy guacamole, we got chips!" on repeat all.day.long.

crazy snow.

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend! We have been snowed in all weekend after getting hit by a crazy snowstorm. My work closed for two days, all the school districts, the gov't buildings were closed, even IKEA closed early! I wish we had gotten out to take more pics of everything, it was all so pretty! I love this link of pics that the Denver Post posted, you can so see the joy on the faces of the kids outside playing! The combination of the snow and wind made things pretty brutal. We tried to take Kaden out sledding, and he went down one time, and decided that was enough! It was a super cozy weekend, and so nice for us all to be together, which seems to be a rarity lately!

Baby Miller is being super busy in there, showing me his crazy karate moves the moment I get ready to get some zzzz's. I feel so much bigger than I was with Kaden, and every move seems to be exhausting! I think doing prenatal yoga with Kaden helped me so much more than I know. I barely have time to brush my teeth now, let alone attend a yoga class!

Going to keep this crazy short, as I'm up to my eyeballs in end of the month paperwork for work. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

a few pics of the storm.....


~the snow covered up half of him!






~hidin.


~kaden tells us that he learns karate in daycare.

lil bit nesting, lil bit mary poppins.

Kaden has been in love with Mary Poppins for some time now, but lately the scene with "Step in Time" has climbed ahead of supercalifragistic (which is also the name he has picked out for the baby coincidentally). We must have replayed the scene for two full hours with him perfecting his choreography juuuuust right!



my favorite kadenisms this week...

*hey mommy, where's babe? (referring to daddy, not the pig)

*mommy, when I get home, let's put on our jammies and make a smoothie and sit and look out the window. (1pm on a sunday, love it.)


~We have been taking out all the baby stuff and getting some new stuff along the way...and kaden has been taking a big part in the nesting process. He had to try out everything with HIS "babies" first, just to be sure.




~his family portrait with his "babies".


~playing with my phone at naptime.

white trash olympics.

There is just something about a long weekend that sometimes leads to randomness. Our randomness was also thrown in with a little quirky and straight up WT. We started the escapades off by meeting up with a group of Chad's best friends from high school at a sort of reunion at a place called Casa Bonita. A HUGE restaurant complete with cliff divers, puppet shows, a waterfall, mariachi band, caves to explore and a huge arcade...and was even apparently in a South Park episode. Chad has been telling me about this place since we first met, and I was excited to see it for myself. I was warned of the notoriously horrible food, but yet was still taken aback by how truly BAD it was! And yet, there was a line out the door when we got there! A strange atmosphere, but so much fun with little ones. I think it would be truly hilarious to take someone on a first date here...the ultimate impression.




~cliff diver. kaden now has decided that he wants to work at Casa Bonita and be a cliff diver when he grows up.


~Uncle Brian. amazing.


~the whole group of us....all of Chad's buddies from high school, such an awesome bunch!


~some creepy dragon is a creepy cave. weirdest.place.ever.


~poor lil guy's look of terror in one of the caves.




~this place is heaven for kids. There was even a pinata.


~checkin out the mariachi band with uncle brian.

Then we headed over to the Great Western Stock Show today to continue the adventure. I have heard so much about this, and thought Kaden would absolutely love it, especially seeing the animals. We spent most of our time checkin out the animals....so many piggies, cows and horses. We smelled like cow poop by the time we left there, pretty awesome.


~we were both so in love with the pigs, so cute!






~cows on parade.


~feeding Zip.

and we finished off the Olympics with dinner at Gunther Toody's diner, craptastic food, but hey they have hula hoops so who cares?




We did have spurts of normalcy throughout the weekend, a little zoo, playdates with new friends and sledding adventures.


~roaring at the lion.


~nosey-nosey with the baby giraffe.


~ready for some serious sledding.


~I found this pic on Chad's phone taken on Xmas eve. The church that we go to on Xmas eve is incredible, and downstairs they have this labyrinth where one can walk and have a meditative experience. Kaden spent most of the service down here, as he wasn't feeling well and really couldn't get into the spirit of church this evening. As much as I adore this shot, it also creeps me out a little and reminds me of a movie poster for a horror movie. Is it just me?

linky love

I have been following this incredible mother's journey on her blog now for a while, and I was completely heartbroken to hear that her little one had passed away. I hope that he is at peace now and that through all of this, we can raise awareness about EB so that we can put an end to this horrible disease. Tripp's blog is incredibly heartbreaking and inspiring. Hug your babies a little tighter tonite.

Blueberry Pie Baked Oatmeal. Need I say more?

I dream of the day we can own our own home and have a playroom! This post has so much inspiration, I love all the fun bright colors!

This article about the importance of unstructured play for little ones so resonated with me. I have been struggling with whether or not to start Kaden at preschool in the fall, and this article made me feel confident about our decision to go ahead and wait until next year.

This article is a must read for every parent. It saddens me how many people avoid this conversation with their children. Right now over half of my caseload at work, ages 5-11, are working through this.

and for all my therapist friends....please please please do everything you can to go see this man's seminar! I had the opportunity to go this week and I found him to be not only incredibly inspiring, but filled to the brim with the most amazing ideas and techniques to use with our little ones. Thank you Lisa and Rachel for encouraging me to go! Check out his website here.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

*love and peace*