Carsten's 3rd birthday party!

Crazy us!

My good friend Sarah from grad school and her husband Joel and her daughter Makenna

Chad and Jeremy one of our friends living here from AR

Miss Brooke (Carsten's "girlfriend" from Kansas:)

I'm three!

Brooke's baby brother Alex and their dad Andy

Blue spongebob cupcakes courtesy of yours truly (okay so not as good as his first year cake but they tasted way better)

New to the east coast life

Whew!  Wow, finally a breather.  Okay so the last what 2 months have been literally crazy out of control this is seriously the first time I've sat down at the computer!  If you all know me you know one of my favorite movies is Overboard with Goldie Hawn, I know I know old and corny (I still cry at the end every time)!  But the last few days all I could think about was how I feel exactly like she did at the end of her first day working at the house and the three boys find her sitting on the couch and all she could say was bababa  ba  ba bababa.
You have to see the movie to understand:)

Anyway, yes we are finally SETTLED in North Virginia in a little suburb called Burke.  I absolutely LOVE it here, my only complaint so far is there are NO drive throughs anywhere, nada.  Welcome back to city life I suppose.  It's just too hard with two kids to just "stop by" and grab a coffee, boo, oh well I've had to resort to my faithful Folgers.  Chad's commute isn't too horrible (yet) and we've already got Carsten started in all of his therapies.  We've have a ton of doctors appointments and school paperwork to turn in trying to get his IEP (individualized education plan) finished.  I'm still waiting on the official meeting and more testing, but I'm hopeful that Carsten will start school this fall!  He will most likely be at an elementary school that has a special needs preschool program 5 days a week in the morning.  He is so wanting to talk and babbles more and more and his sign language vocabulary keeps increasing.  I'm really hoping that this is the year he will take off with language and eating.

Our baby boy turned 3 on July 17th!  We had a little birthday party for him two weekends ago.  Lots of kids running around, spongebob pinata, cupcakes, the works.  My good friend Sarah and her family even came to visit from Illinois, what a treat that was.

Today is Miss Chloe's 6 month birthday!  She is quite a delight to watch grow as she is babbling a little bit now, rolling everywhere, laughing, and watching every move her big brother makes!  It's so much fun seeing their relationship develop.

Other than that, we are excited to be in DC and so thankful to have friends around this year.  I am meeting new moms every week at therapy and praying a little group will develop between some of us.  Chad and I have been to a church the last few weeks that we have really enjoyed called Fairfax Community Church.  We tried the mega church McLean Bible (I will save that experience for another blog:)  We will prayerfully see where it goes but I'm hoping we've found a spiritual home.  Hope this finds all of you enjoying your summer!  After two summers in Atlanta and now here in Virginia with record highs I hate to say it but I'm ready for some nice fall weather!  I was so hot yesterday running both kids around everywhere I told Chad to just go ahead and sign us up for Alaska next, ha!  I'm obviously not so much into blogging at this time in my life but I will try to update and post pics when I can (i.e. if the kids are ever both fed, asleep, and/or happy at the same time which is rare but nothing is impossible with God right?

      

    

Carsten Eating Update

A lot of people ask how Carsten's eating is going when I talk to them so I thought I would post a quick update on that this morning. He has made very good progress so far with the vomiting and ability to take in a larger amount of food. The nutritionist was here last week and Carsten has grown in both height and weight!! For a while he wasn't gaining any weight and Chad and I were getting a little concerned with the protocol from Baltimore, whether it was going to work. About a month before Chloe was born the vomiting kind of hit a pinnacle and brought Chad and I literally to our knees. He got a stomach bug and was vomiting multiple times a day. Other than the bug, he was still having reflux quite often (like a few times a week at least) but ever since one night when Chad and I were literally in tears, the reflux seemingly disappeared! Praise God! It was like the Lord knew Chloe was coming and he gave us all a little break. Since then, we have been able to increase his intake to about 10 ounces of food for lunch and dinner and 4 ounces of milk (which I think contributed to the weight gain). I am still a pureeing fool and spend much of my time pureeing and preparing his food and then manually feeding him four times a day. It is very time consuming and puts an extra burden on our family (especially for family outings) but we are thankful that he is eating and so we continue with the protocol from KKI. Lately, Carsten has been a little more aversive to his drinks and eating. It takes him a minute to get going with his bites, I believe it's a control issue that was spurred on by Miss Chloe and I'm hoping with time it will go away. The vomiting is rare these days (when I say rare I mean maybe once every two or three weeks if that) except when Carsten gets really hot. There have been a couple of times at a park or an inside gym where he gets too hot and out it comes and I mean everywhere! We are hoping he will continue to grow out of it as he gets bigger but know that it's something we will have to deal with for quite a while still. We are still going to weekly feeding therapy and working on solids. He still does not have good oral motor skills and cannot manipulate food in his mouth so the food ends up getting stuck on the back of his tongue and he gags, making it quite scary for me to attempt solids with him at home. We do work on gerber puffs a lot and he does okay with small pieces. We are still working on independent drinking and feeding, he has shown some increase in desire to put things in his mouth, using a pincer grasp to pick up food and knows how to tip his cup to drink but has little control and it ends up everywhere. He can and does drink from a straw but only water, go figure! But we praise God for his progress and maintenance of his oral intake and are looking forward to being in DC and hopefully getting better services. He will start preschool this fall in what sounds like a very well equipped preschool program for children with special needs, I am VERY excited about it and know that Carsten is MORE than ready to start school. His sign language is really coming along (as is mine:) and he is learning signs faster than I can learn them:) He is starting to use it spontaneously, meaning he will initiate a sign without me asking him for the word. This is encouraging that he has a desire to communicate and will with time and patience.

Aside from eating, we are getting ready to make our PCS June 12th. We will be heading to Arkansas for a couple of weeks then making the long trek out to Washington. We will be living in (I guess considered a suburb) Burke, it is just west of the city but will be somewhat of a commute for Chad. We ended up in this area mainly because of the services for Carsten and what other people recommended. I am excited and just trying to get things in order, organized, and honestly doing my best to just keep both kids fed, dry, and happy :)

They are starting to interact a little more which is so much fun to watch. Chloe watches every move Carsten makes and they are smiling at each other now. Carsten likes to hold his big sister and kisses her all the time and then signs "thank you" because we always say thank you to him after :). Chloe is finally growing out of her Colic, PTL! She is MUCH less fussy throughout the day and sleeps most of the night, sometimes she eats at about 2 or 3 and some nights she will sleep till 6, so I really can't complain. I have given up dairy food along with breastfeeding and if you know me it has been REALLY hard. I am starting to get used to my new diet now though and not missing cheese and milk as much as I did at first. I have noticed a huge difference in her eating when I have not had any dairy. So we will keep going as long as we can, my goal is 6 months to a year, I am just so thankful she is eating after everything we've been through with Carsten.

We will be in Arkansas from somewhere around June 12th through the end of the month. We would like to see as many people as we can so give us a call!

Happy Monday!

Momma Bridges

Fun Pics

"Carsten who stares at goats" Coming soon to a theater near you.

Chunky Monkey. Could I look anymore like my daddy?!!!

Swimsuit model boy :)

Happy Monday!

Easter Family Pics

Here are some pics from Easter weekend. Had our first "real" outing as a family of four, went to Stone Mountain on Friday and broke out the ole double stroller, talk about working off those pregnancy pounds I told Chad they should use those things for PT tests in the military! Saturday was the egg hunt in our neighborhood, thanks to me and my awesome gadget abilities none of which got recorded, I swear I thought the play button was on, total Kari move. Anyway, Carsten fanned out better this time, he managed to retain his easter basket and even got about 10 eggs with the help of his dad of course:) Church Sunday and Chloe's big debut, notice she's looking at her crazy brother in our pics, I couldn't get her to look forward but she was a doll I can testify. We did our best with our automatic camera, makes you really miss extended family on these special days. Happy Easter!

Real meaning of Easter

Wow, surprised to find this article on Easter on FoxNews website.

Easter at the Kids Spot

Carsten had his first Easter celebration today at his little gym The Kids Spot. He goes every Thursday for a moms day out program, he loves it and I really love it! Today the Easter bunny was there and they had a little egg hunt, we had ample practice yesterday in the living room so he was ready to go! He found about 5 eggs until another little boy stole his basket, oh well. It was fun and the first time Carsten has gotten within arms reach of a big character in a costume so big big progress for him, yeah! Maybe next year we'll actually get a picture with Santa:) Chloe was there all dressed up and bows in her hair. It was a fun morning and now Cman should be ready for the egg hunt Saturday in our neighborhood. (wow I can't believe I've blogged two days in a row) Enjoy!