Kevin and Renee - Baby Updates & News

In the past few weeks, Kennedy has tumbled down the stairs twice. Both times she was playing in her playroom upstairs and decided to head down with an arm full of toys. Few things make you run faster than hearing a thud from elsewhere in the house followed by a blood curdling scream. Thankfully, she was ok after both falls, but now we are extremely cautious about having her out of our site. We’ve tried to enforce throughout the day that the only way to go downstairs is on your butt. She gets it and she knows what to do. But given the fact that she did it twice in a row, I’m not convinced she’s learned her lesson.

Then, three days ago, I was upstairs sleeping in the spare bedroom (more on that later) when I was awakened by a huge thud and Kennedy screaming from her room. I bolted in to find her lying outside her crib that she had apparently just crawled out of. That’s a big fall for a two year old–the equivalent of you and me falling sideways off a 12 foot roof. She cried hard for a few minutes until mommy offered up an M&M then all was fine with the world.  We checked her out thoroughly and went downstairs. However, after eating her cereal she grabbed her wrist and said, “hurt, hurt.” So Renee called the doctor and they could see her in 20 minutes so Renee rushed her down to the doctor to make sure everything was ok. The doctor didn’t find anything in his initial examination, but wanted an x-ray just to be sure. Renee took Kennedy over to St. Luke’s for the x-ray and spent about 45 minutes in the admission area. The entire time there Kennedy was playing and using her arm just fine and didn’t say it hurt once.  Because Renee had rushed right to the doctor (less than an hour from when it happened to seeing the doctor) she started to second guess if the x-ray was really necessary.  Kennedy’s pinky x-ray was around $400 and Renee was starting to wonder if she had just “freaked out” to soon and wondered if we should spend that much when Kennedy was acting like all was fine. We talked about it on the phone and both decided that since the doctor wasn’t that concerned, we would wait to see how she did.

That day, we took the steps to transform her crib into a toddler bed so we wouldn’t have that issue anymore. Kennedy was quite pleased about that.

Yesterday, Renee took her to the indoor playground at Burger King (she can play in that thing forever) but she was very hesitant to run around and play, and didn’t climb up into the play area at all. That was enough for her to take Kennedy into the doctor this morning and they discovered that she did in fact have a hairline fracture in her right arm. Kennedy is wearing a splint and is in good spirits (she actually likes it) and she should have it off next month.

I’ve gone 30 years without breaking a single bone. Renee broke a bone when she was 5, falling out of a bunk bed, and her parents didn’t know until a week later when they took her into the doctor, who also didn’t think it was broken, but did an x-ray just to double check (sound familiar?). Kennedy made it two years.

Anyone who knows me knows my little brother means the world to me.  I love him and respect him and I know he feels the same way about me.  We can be honest with each other and we both know that no matter what we will be there for each other.  He has my back and I have his.  We share our past and believe in each other futures.

I say all that in hopes that someday Kennedy and Caleb share the same bond.  It is neat to see that love and bond already forming.  When Caleb was four days old Kennedy saw his little toes and played “this little piggy” with them.  She always wants to hold him and give him kisses.  She even gives him our special “nose kisses.”  Sharing isn’t one of Kennedy’s strong points yet, but she has even let him hold her most precious toys.  She absolutely insisted that he have her princess skirt and her favorite Lego flowers.  It is priceless to see her expressing her love to her little brother.

I know many squabbles are in Kennedy and Caleb’s future, hopefully less violent than my brother and mine were (me being hit with a giant tree branch that left a large bruise or Rob being spanked by me with a wooden spoon which broke), but I hope and pray they will always have a strong love and bond with one another.

Kennedy has recently learned the power of pretending not to hear things she doesn’t want to hear.  Whenever we say, “it is bedtime” or ask her to “pick something up,” she responds in her cute little voice with “HUUUHHH?” like she didn’t hear what we just said.  It has gotten to the point it is pretty comedic. 

The other night I was up reading stories with her and I told her “only one more story and then we were going to bed,” to which she responded “HUUUHH?”  It was so cute I busted up laughing.  Then she proceeded to say “HUUUHHH?” fifty more times to keep me laughing.  The repeat the “joke” if you get a laugh is something my little brother, Rob, was notorious for growing up.  I think seeing her do something I had seen him do a million times when we were little kids made me laugh even more.

My sister Bonnie came over last week and did a huge photo shoot with Caleb. After about an hour, he was pretty much done with us picking on him, but Bonnie got some awesome shots that we will certainly treasure forever. I wanted to share a few of them here on the blog. In all of these shots, either Renee or I were holding a space heater on full blast just out of view. Caleb (like all babies) enjoys the heat and that kept him still. For the record, I was completely against the daddy/baby foot shot. My feet, just like yours, are ugly, but I will admit, combined with Caleb’s feet, it’s a cute idea. Finally, in my son’s defense, the flowers were not my idea. He’s already being forced into dress up by the girls. Get used to it dude. You have a sister and three aunts! As always, you can click on the photos to enlarge.

I thought the days would zoom by before Caleb was born. After taking two weeks off, keeping Kennedy occupied while Renee took care of Caleb, it seems the sun is setting before it even rises. Needless to say, I’m already behind on my blogging, but I have lots to catch you up on, including an awesome photo shoot that I can’t wait to share.

Two weeks ago, I promised to write up the story about how we landed on Caleb’s name. I have to warn you that it’s nothing too exciting. Renee and I really struggled with a name this time around. With Kennedy, we had a tough time too, but with Caleb it seemed pretty hopeless. We had his middle name, Jaymeson, for awhile and we at least agreed on that. For first names though, (you know, the one everyone cares about), I had my favorites (Kai, Ryden), Renee had her favorites (Kolten, Bryson) and there were a bunch of names in-between, but we could not find anything that we were both really excited about. It got to a point where neither of us really wanted to talk about it, because the conversation ended in frustration after hours of brainstorming and no progress.

It was getting to a point where it became a necessity to have a name. Neither of us wanted to be at the hospital juggling last minute ideas and settling. So on Thursday morning (the 13th), Renee printed out some definitions of a bunch of names and we headed to Idaho Pizza Company for an emergency meeting. As a last minute find, Renee quickly printed out information on Caleb and we discussed it for the first time during lunch. Something about the name just stood out and we ended the meal with a name that we both loved and were confident in. Although the name is extremely popular (in the top 20 last year), we were both at a point where we just didn’t care about uniqueness anymore. A good name that we both agreed on was really the only credentials. Early the next morning, Caleb arrived.

Because we didn’t have much time to research the name, we actually discovered some cool facts a few days later. Caleb, it turns out, is a strong biblical name (his story is found in Numbers 13; 14 and Joshua 14; 15 and he is also mentioned in Judges 1 and 1 Chronicles 4:15). His major strength was his expressed faith in God’s promises in spite of apparent obstacles. He chose God’s way above and beyond the majority opinion. To put his character into an everyday view, his decisions were based on his faith in what was right, and not in what was popular.

When Renee and I were researching names for Kennedy, we came across a site that gives “horoscope like” descriptions of people’s personalities based on their first and middle names. The site is called Kabalarians.com and is based on the Kabalarian Philosophy, none of which I care to know much about. However, as previously mentioned, the site has pin pointed both of our personalities as well as various family members, and it certainly got Kennedy’s personality spot on (even though we picked it).

We actually based the spelling of Caleb’s middle name (Jaymeson) from the personality descriptions on the site (we also looked at Jamison and a few others). I know, it sounds a little odd, but it’s no different in our minds than saying his name means “solid tree” or “wave of the ocean” or something equally as meaningless. We just want you to know the site served as inspiration and idea generation and nothing more. That said, it has been spot with our family to date.

So there’s the story of Caleb Jaymeson McNeese. Renee and I are certainly satisfied with having both a boy and a girl. We are not going to make any permanent decisions regarding more children, but if we do decide to have more, I’m hoping we find that special name a bit earlier in the process.

We had a pretty exciting weekend. On Thursday of last week, we had a doctor’s appointment and scheduled induction for Monday. Without getting much time to process the reality that baby boy would be here within 72 hours, Renee’s body decided to move things along a little earlier, 10 days ahead of schedule.

At 9PM on Thursday night, Renee started having serious contractions every 8-10 minutes, that gradually moved to every 4-6 minutes by 11PM. At midnight, we called the hospital and they said to come on in, so we called Bonnie to come sleep at the house with Kennedy while we quickly gathered everything together.

Already, we were on a different path than with Kennedy. Renee’s water broke with Kennedy and there were no contractions and little pain, which made the process very extended and drawn out. This time around, Renee was certainly feeling the wave of contractions, but then when they were gone, she commented that she felt perfectly fine. It was a process that I could tell was throwing her for a loop.

We arrived at the hospital around 1:30AM and they confirmed Renee was dilated to a 5. The next three hours went by pretty fast. Renee got an epidural and was pretty comfortable (well, as comfortable as one can be in that situation) after that. Then we got the word that she was ready to start pushing around 4:30AM and five minutes later (no joke), Caleb Jaymeson arrived (more on the name later).

We were both totally stunned. Renee has two contractions, three major pushes and two smaller pushes and that was it. She pushed for THREE HOURS with Kennedy in what seemed like a process with no end in sight. Talk about a completely different experience and it continued after birth as well.

After Kennedy was born, we had a never ending cycle of doctors and nurses coming in and out and then our families were waiting patiently and eager to see the new baby, so we really had little down time or alone time with Kennedy after she was born. With Caleb, we probably had at least an hour with him alone in the delivery room before they moved us upstairs and it was very quiet. This probably had to do with the time of delivery and also the fact that we didn’t wake everyone up in the middle of the night to rush down to the hospital.

That time alone with Caleb was so incredible. We could already tell a difference in personality. He was extremely calm and collect and only fussed when he was being examined by the various nurses. He instantly got on a routine of eat, awake time, sleep and latched on the first round of feeding (and has been great since). (Row 1: Kevin’s sister Bonnie, Kevin’s mom)

In fact, both of us were ready to head home by noon on Friday, but because of hospital policy, we had to stay the night. On Saturday morning, we were discharged around noon and couldn’t wait to get home, partly because we were both going on about 48 hours of little to no sleep.

Kennedy has welcomed her new brother with no issues. She has been asking about baby, concerned about him when he cries and has shown a lot of interest overall.

Again, we are so blessed to have both of our families here, and even had my grandparents from North Dakota in town (great timing)! Both mom and baby are doing amazing, everyone has caught up on rest and we are excited to have a new source of inspiration for this ongoing journal of our expanding family! (Row 1: Kevin’s sister Katie, Renee’s brother Rob, Rob’s wife Stephanie; Row 2: Renee’s cousin Krista, Kevin’s dad, Kevin’s parents; Row 3: Kevin’s mom, Kevin’s grandparents, Renee’s mom, Renee’s grandparents)

We enjoy reading your comments so make sure to let us know you stopped by.

We welcomed our healthy and handsome baby boy into the world on Friday morning at 4:35AM. He was 8 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 3/4″ inches long. Mom is doing great and we are so happy to be back home. Over the next couple days, I’ll be posting many more photos, thoughts on how this birth was a night and day difference from the last, and how we finally arrived at a name we both love (but are still getting used to) during the eleventh hour. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers! We feel so excited and blessed.

I’d love to write a drawn out post right now, but I need to get to bed and make sure I’m rested so I’ll write a quick summary and hopefully expand more tomorrow. We went to the doctor today and she scheduled induction for Monday at 7AM, so for sure, baby boy will be here no later than Monday. Tonight, Renee has been having regular contractions and she was dialated to a 4 this morning the doctor. You just never know but it could be sooner than that. As in, hopefully we’ll both get some sleep tonight. We have landed on a name as well and I’ll share that soon. I’ve been pretty calm. Knowing we could be hours away, I’m getting a little jittery.

Today we had an appointment with our doctor for baby boy, and this was the one we’ve been anticipating for awhile. Because of the doctor’s concerns about the size of the baby, she wanted us to have an ultrasound and then we were thinking she would also schedule induction a week early, as planned all along. Well, the ultrasound was a bust. We were hoping for amazing pictures that people typically don’t get this late in the process, but I guess it was like putting a fork to your arm (Renee’s analogy). You just couldn’t see anything at all. We did get a good look at his kidneys though. That was…exciting?

The baby measured 7 pounds, 12 ounces and we have two weeks to go. They say a baby will grow a pound a week in these last few weeks so we’d be looking at another baby that’s pushing 10 pounds at full term.

When we asked our doctor about inducing a week early, she didn’t seem to gun ho about the idea anymore, and mentioned that we might just go full term and see what happens. Yeah, that doesn’t really fit in with my schedule. Can we get this date on the books please?

Renee, being forever positive, just reminded me that it’s all in God’s timing and if he needs to cook to full term, there’s a reason for that. I hate it when she humbles me like that.

So we’re nearing the stage where it could be any day, but probably not. Could be any week I guess. That leaves us plenty of time to hunker down and figure out his name! Hunker. That has a nice ring to it. And Hunk for short!