Revisiting the Past

One Sunday in early October, the 2nd of Oct. to be exact, we were out for a family walk on a nice new path in Wilsonville. It was a wet day, but that didn't stop the kids from wanting to play on a school playground that bordered the walking trail. Keenan's favorite thing to do at playgrounds of late, is the monkey bars--something he has been successful at for the past several months. He falls off sometimes, which all kids do. Unforrtunately, this time he apparently fell on his right arm (none of us witnessed the fall). He, of course, cried--but not very hard. We looked at it and nothing looked differently. He cont'd to complain, but mostly about having to continue to walk because we hadn't started our actual walk yet when the kids got sidetracked by the playground. After 15 minutes of complaining, we turned around and went home. Well, long story short. 4 hours later when Keenan's arm started to swell, we called the Providence advice line and were sent to the Milwaukie Providence ER where Keenan's arm was x-rayed and found to be broken in 2 places. After seeing an Orothopedic surgeon two days later, we were given further bad news: the break in Keenan's Ulna was too close to the elbow joint and so surgery would be needed to place a pin in his bone. Bummer.

So here is Keenan wearing his splint at Emanuel Hospital for an "out-pt" surgery. We arrived at 9:00 in the morning and didn't leave until 4pm in the afternoon. He doesn't look too thrilled in this picture, but he actually had quite a bit of fun riding the small cars and playing video games in the kid's waiting room.

This is the silly Keenan we know and love.

Waiting in the pre-op room and trying to keep Keenan occupied. He had already been given a dose of a relaxant and it was quite entertaining to see him start to act a little "drunk."

Post operation. Keenan slept for a VERY long time. He looked so peaceful.

Back to his usual crazy ways. In many ways, that cast did not slow him down one bit. Writing and eating were another story. He already had a difficult time writing with his right hand and so if you can imagine the struggle he had trying to write with his left. . . . Eating with his left hand was actually easier than I thought it would be. In fact, after he got his cast off, he continued to eat with his left hand for several days afterwards. He may have never stopped if we hadn't prompted him to use his right hand.

Last photo before we headed to the Dr's office to get his cast off.

4 weeks later and the cast is off! I had never witnessed a cast coming off and didn't really know what to expect. The technician said it would only tickle Keenan and boy, was that true! Keenan squirmed and kicked (the technician, yikes!) and I had to contain his flailing body parts while his cast was being "sawed" off. I brought Keenan's sling as recommended because his arm obviously would need some transition time from bent to straight. He gladly wore it pretty much the rest of the day, but by the next day he was as good as new :).

Epilogue: Later x-rays show the arm to be healing very nicely. Bummer thing is that in 5 or so months Keenan will have to go back into surgery to have the pin removed. Sorry, kiddo! :(

The Things Kids Say

Keenan: I want to marry a girl in my class.

Me: What's her name?

Keenan: Addie Mae.

Me: Why do you want to marry her?

Keenan: Because she's so nice and doesn't do anything bad. . . I really want to marry her. . but not now--when I'm older like you and daddy.

Keenan's Kindergarten Picture

Go Outside

A little recap of some of the Mattias' outside adventures. The music is by The Lonely Forest.

Happy Easter

I know I'm late posting for Easter, but if you compare what I've been doing the whole year (basically nothing), I think I'm doing pretty good! :) We had 2 Easter Egg Hunt's this year: One on Saturday (I try to separate the commercialism with the religious significance of the holiday) at home with all the candy; the other one, a small one down at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Dallas and with all the eggs we and my brother Paul's family dyed. This was the first year that Molly questioned the reality of the Easter Bunny and even now, I'm not sure if she believes or not because Kevin and I never gave her a straight answer. I don't want her to grow up! Next thing we know, she will stop believing in Santa Claus and I can not have that!

Anyhow, our house is not very big with not very many hiding places and so I thought Keenan and Molly would find their eggs quite fast. I was surprised how long it did take them. I love my kids, but they sure aren't very observant! ;0

Funny thing also is that Keenan kept following Molly around and of course, she was taking everything in her path leaving nothing behind for Keenan. We took several video clips and you could overhear me several times telling Keenan to go to a different place in the house or telling Molly to leave SOME candy for Keenan :) The first picture below is of Keenan with not very many eggs in his basket. Fortunately, he could care less, he was having a good time.

Keenan taking a break from the hunt to enjoy some candy.

Molly very pleased with her haul of the loot.

Easter egg hunt in Dallas. The clouds decided to open up right about this time, but the kids didn't seem to care too much.

I think this is a great picture.

Couldn't resist taking a picture of the slug who found his way on top of the brightly colored easter egg hidden in the green grass.

Always a challenge to get four little kids to not only smile, but to also LOOK at the camera :) (I love little Coley hefting that big egg up in the air: it was stuffed with rice krispy treats-yum!)

My baby boy is 5!

I've had this post in edit-form for quite some time now and figured it was time to publish it since I've got an Easter post all ready to go. Keenan turned 5 back on February 24th and although he wanted to go to Legoland for his birthday, we had to scale back his grand idea a bit and go to Spaghetti Factory and Wunderland Arcade instead :). He did, however, get some cool lego sets from his Aunt Karen and Uncle Peter and also from us. Keenan's most favorite thing in the world right now is Legos and will do ANYTHING to get a new Lego set. Fortunately for him, I'm very fond of building lego sets and we can spend hours together reading the directions and looking for the pieces. It's so great that something like this can hold his attention for so long :). I hope some day we can take him to Legoland. He would love it!

Helicopter from the 3-in-1 Set

Star Fighter Ship

Spaghetti Factory: Mine and Keenan's favorite restaurant. Keenan would probably eat spaghetti and meatballs every day if he could.

Happy spaghetti eaters.

Keenan's choice of desserts: a rich, chocolate shake

Wunderland Nickel Arcade: No Miss Pacman or other classic games, but that didn't matter to the younger generation: they just like games that win tickets to buy prizes!

You can't see it in the picture, but Keenan is actually driving a semi-truck :)

Some extra photos I threw in. He had a babysitter this day who styled his hair all spiky. "I'm a porcupine," he said to me when I got home from work.

It's still hard for me to believe that my baby boy is 5 years old now. This fall he will enter kindergarten and I don't want to let him go! I'm so glad he is such a cuddly boy because I always want to hold him on my lap and give him lots of hugs and kisses. I know that that will probably change in the not too distant future, so for now, I will take advantage and cherish it while I can. I love you, Keenan!

My 4-y.o. genius

I know every mother says their child(ren) are geniuses, and I am no exception :). Keenan has recently started speech therapy again through PSU's graduate program. He's working with a nice grad. student named Dan. He's only had a few sessions and most of it has been testing his cognitive skills focusing on language--both receptive and expressive communication. Keenan has some quite severe speech deficits including the inability to say sounds such as t, d, s, ch, sh, and th. Unfortunately, some may judge a person's intelligence by the way they speak and honestly, I've had my worries--esp. when Keenan didn't start to say any words until he was 3. So, if you can imagine my delight and quiet pride when Keenan answered one question after another correctly. He knows SOOOO much! He solved both addition and subtraction word problems. He repeated phrases that were 8 and 9 words long. He could pick out sentences that didn't sound right. His vocabulary is amazing. One of the tests he took AND FINISHED is normally stopped as soon as a child answers 3 or 4 questions in a row incorrectly. Well, Keenan was answering questions a 6 y.o. would know until there were no more questions! If only he could have kept going!

Keenan may have a long way to go toward correcting his speech patterns, but Kevin and I are definitely proud parents of our goofy, crazy kid. He's a joyful, bright star in our family.

Oh and, happy birthday my dear husband, Kevin. You say that 43 is a boring number/year, but be glad you aren't turning 83! You have so many more years to live! I love you!