Brothers!

Here are the pictures I promised of the Klawiter Brothers. Oliver loves Phin, at least he loves it when he cries. He seems to enjoy when his siblings are upset and crying. Typical big brother I guess. Oliver loves when Phin snuggles with him, he is very curious and becomes very still. Oliver is not a still kind of kiddo. Everyone is adjusting well, we are just getting used to a new kind of crazy. The biggest issue is that we have had some nursing shifts open that didn't get covered in time. It is a juggling act to maintain all of Oliver's vent and IV stuff with a newborn but we made it.
I know many of you are wondering if Phin is okay. As far as we know he is fine, just like all of our kids. Oliver is perfect in every way so if we are comparing him to Oli or the girls yes he is great. We have the option to do an MRI to see for sure but John and I both agree that the risks of the sedation are not worth it. If Phin starts to show signs then we will do it, but for now we are just enjoying our kids. I would be lying if I said it didn't cross our minds that it is a possibility. This is the official news as far as that topic goes. If we ever do learn something we will tell you all, so stop worrying.
Happy Halloween! We will have some pics of that I am sure.

Oliver checking Phin out for the first time. These are some cute brothers.



That's a lot of toes!


Our first attempt at a family pic with all six. Not sure I would say successful!


All four kiddos, don't the girls look thrilled?


The boys alseep in their chairs, life is good.


Phin sleeping and snuggling Oli's hand.


More sleepy boys living the life.

It's A Boy!

Phinneus Tyrone Klawtier
October 17th, 2011
11:33 A.M.
7 pounds 15 ounces 21.75 inches
Adina and daddy picked name. Middle name after Grandpa Tyrone Hanson


I think he looks just like daddy! Cute as can be.


Proud sisters, tomorrow he gets to meet his awesome big brother!


Proud mommy and daddy!


Silly sisters.

More pics to come tomorrow of the brothers meeting!

5

Adina finally had her Birthday and is now a big 5 year old! She had her party at the Eagles Nest (huge indoor playland in New Brighton) and all of the kids had a blast. Adina does not enjoy attention, so eating, the Happy Birthday song, and opening gifts was painful for her but once they got to play life was good. I think all of the kids slept pretty well that night. Cora is doing well, she thinks she is five. Everyday we drop Adina off at school she also tries to walk into the class and is very unhappy when we say no (she even took one of the nametags of a kid who was absent and tried sticking it on the door). Oliver continues to be our stud muffin. As we keep increasing his feeds, we are pleased to know that he has gained almost a whole kg, a little over 2 LBS! Way to go Oliver! He really is so amazing.
Baby will be here on Monday the 17th, assuming he or she waits until Monday, (a little more then a day) I will be induced. Life is good and busy as it is for everybody right now. We are busy getting all of our Halloween costumes ready. We have fantastic nurses that work with Oliver and they are all like family to us. They deal with our craziness and love Oliver so much, we are incredibly blessed and life is good. We will update Monday with the news of number four. More craziness to come!!!

Oliver in his rock star skull headband. He will be wearing this for Halloween. He will also have a Mohawk, we have been patiently growing it out.


Adina making a candle at the Renaissance Festival.


Cora and Adina by the fire truck at Falcon Heights fire station.


Cora sitting on her favorite seat, the baby! Also, she has discovered the art of picking her nose. Yes we are proud parents!


Adina and cousin Charlie at the Eagles Nest on Adina's 5th Birthday.


Cole, Brayden, and Adina at the party. These are Adina's good pals and possibly a future husband. There have been proposals!


Auntie Martha, cousin Arne, and Uncle Dude (Mike). I love this picture!


Cora admiring herself.


Adina finally gets a two wheel scooter. First trip out she flew off the sidewalk and got a pretty sweet knee scrape. She did not find it awesome at all.


Adina's ice cream treat from her small celebration.


Cora's grumpy face.

Aug/Sept

Life is good in the Klawiter house. We are finding a new groove for fall and getting used to John being home more during the day. We are all loving it, but I am reminding myself that it is only for one more year. After John finished his internship we crammed as much summer as we could into two weeks and now we are cramming as much into the weekends as we can before baby comes! John is enjoying his classes and somehow finds time to play with the kiddos a ton and get all of his work done!

Coraline finally decided on her own to walk. She is very stubborn! I really don't know where our children get that gene! She is 16 months going on 5. She will try and walk into Adina's class room at school and gets mad every day I drop Adina off because she wants to stay with all of the big kids. Adina started preschool and is loving it. John and I are also enjoying the five day a week schedule although I do miss my girl! Last year I had to peel her off my leg and run out of the classroom the first week of school. This year she walked right in, I kept looking in hoping for one hug or wave, but she was little Ms. Independent!

Oliver is doing really well. We will always have our daily issues from nurses calling in, to calls to and from clinics, to a lot of pain and not knowing where it comes from, med changes, etc. We just deal with it the best we can and life goes on. Oliver has been happy and laughing again and playing with his toys. It melts my heart every time he looks at me with those beautiful eyes and big smile. He is awesome! Two weeks ago he had a quick surgery but recovered really quick! Now we just wait and see what happens during viral season. Oliver's main struggle right now is his movement disorder. We are trying to find the best medication to help calm his movements but struggle to find the right cocktail. It is times like those that I wish we could figure out his true diagnosis so we could know the best way to help. It might seem hard to understand this, but at times I honestly get jealous of other families that get a real diagnosis for their child. Yup, I actually hope, pray, and wish for a diagnosis! I don't think this is in the cards for us though, so back to the motto of, "life is life," I guess. No matter what, Oliver is a stud and teaches us endless lessons about life without saying a word.

Baby #4 will be here soon! John and I keep reminding each other that it is actually going to come. We have managed to keep the gender a secret, Oliver is the only one who knows. John and Adina picked the name, Adina just doesn't realize that she picked it yet. She said the name and we liked it. I know I said it a few posts ago but we are asking that nobody visits while we are at the hospital. We love you all but will need a lot of rest and also want to limit the germ sharing that we bring home to Oliver. Thanks again for understanding. We will let everybody know as soon as it happens. I am hoping to be induced the 14th of October. If not that day, for sure the 17th. Stay tuned for #4!

Milking a cow at the State Fair


Cora looking corny


Cheese!


First day of school



Oliver getting love and smoochy-poos (kisses) from his sisters



Adina sharing her ice cream cone after the girls got shots


Cora working on the first steps


Adina and Dad looking at Flamingos. I guess they are trying to blend in?

July/August Pics

Cora playing dress up. She would wear this all day if I would let her!


Adina running the bases during kickball at VBS.


Somebody found Mommy's make-up. Clearly not a future cosmetology pro!


Cora is the victim of Adina's dress up games.


The three cuties laying on Olivers make a wish gift. It is a massive vibrating bean bag bed! They all love to lay in it.


Adina: "Mom, Cora colored herself again!" Me: Hmm, how did she reach the middle of her back so well?" Adina: "Ugh, Mom.. Cora has really long arms!"


Adina "chillaxin" with Oliver. Yup, those are her words.


I decided to try my cosmetology skills and give Oliver a haircut not with the clippers. I had to get creative with positioning while I cut! Oli was giving me the "seriously mom" look! This is the before pic. Kinda getting a mullet.


After the cut. What a stud!


Quote of the week. We were sitting in the shade eating ice cream. I mentioned that it was a little chilly in the shade. Adina says, "Mommmmm, that's why they call it the shade." Amazing, four going on fourteen.

New Chapter

A lot has happened since our last post, many times I have sat down to write but life gets so busy as you all know. It is hard to believe that state fair time is here, which to me signifies the end of summer.
We moved back to the seminary student housing the first week of August. We intended on staying at the property we were at for one more year until John was done, but the place was potentially selling and we needed stability for Oliver. So it's one more year in student housing and the seminary was very gracious and provided a living situation that will work for our special needs.
John finished up his internship with a week up in the BWCA. It was VERY hard to leave Como Park Lutheran. It is amazing after one year how that church became such a special place to us all. Adina is taking it especially hard that we cannot go back. We had such a crazy year with Oliver and the entire church was always there for anything we needed. They made getting through those rough times much easier. It was definitely an expansion of our family. This is what makes it so hard to say good-bye. We would love to stay in touch with everybody but the rule is that when internship is over the student and family should also leave. It kind of stinks because we will miss everybody but it totally makes sense. There will be a new intern at Como and now it his and his families time to form relationships within the church. We will miss you all! Thanks again to everybody at Como Park Lutheran for EVERYTHING! If anybody is looking for a church to join that is kind and loving and supportive and do a lot of good things, Como Park is the place!
John has one year left of seminary and then we are off to who knows where. A lot of people are curious where we will go and we are too. We will let you all know when we know anything. Obviously, because of Oliver's doctors, we'd rather stay in the area, but it's out of our hands.
The kids are all doing well. Adina (John and I) can't wait for school to start in September. Cora is 15 months and sassy as ever! We have decided that she is most likely going to spend half of her life in time-out. I also wouldn't be shocked if we got a few calls from teachers, principles, cops, who knows! The possibilities are endless! Yes, we have high expectations for our children. She is not walking yet, but she has taken a few steps. She is on her own timeline and no we are not worried even when people say, "oh... really?? not walking yet?" Nope, not worried.
Oliver is doing really well this summer. I have wanted to post about it but get really scared that if I do I am going to jinx it. We are two ounces away from full strength feeds which, within two days, he will reach. He has not been at full strength since last year! When Oli gets sick we have to go down on feeds but the fact that we are this close is AWESOME!! He is still considered Hospice status and still has a lot of health issues but overall he is great. We are trying to bulk him up a little before viral season. He still does not have a lot of extra reserve to fight, day by day is how we continue to go. He was approved for his new wheelchair without being denied once! Usually denial is the first step, at least with our experience. It will take time to get it and fitted but we are really excited! We still and always will get funny comments from people when they find out we have a "special" son. All kids are special in my mind. My new favorite was, "oh we were so worried when we got pregnant there would be something wrong with our kid. We prayed that it wouldn't happen." How I would LOVE to respond.."Guess you didn't pray hard enough because after spending time with you and your child, I can tell you a few things wrong." No I didn't say that, this time anyway. I know people don't know how to respond, I get that most of the time. I always know how I would love to respond. There is nothing wrong with Oliver, he is perfect and loving and normal.
That is what we have for an update in August. We are enjoying a few weeks of calm before John starts classes again and then the new baby Klawiter comes. Because viral season in coming we are going to become those hermits again to protect Oli. Please don't come to visit if you are sick or have been around sick people or even if you suspect you are getting something. If you have a butt itch that you think is contagious don't come over! (Also, get that looked at) I know it seems like we are being nervous nellies but we are just protecting our kiddos. When baby #4 is born we will most likely not have visitors right away, I know you all want to see baby but that will be the start of the V season. We love you all and want to see you all, please know it is nothing against anybody. Just keeping our Oli safe.

July

Summer is already flying by and we finally have the hot weather to make it feel like summer. Oliver did get out of the hospital, I just didn't update after he left. They never did figure out if he was having seizures, so the mystery continues. We have had a really good month after the hospital stay. Yesterday we got the feeds to the highest they have been since before hospice entered the picture. We are realistically optimistic! Oliver's tummy has shown us many times that it will work really well and then shut down two minutes later. We would love to get him a little bit bulked up before the fall comes and the battle of the viral season approaches. Right now he does not have a lot in reserve to get him through a lot of sickness.

We thought his port site was infected so we went into Gillette expecting that we may be there for a few days, but the news was good. He has a little blister-like spot that looks super nasty but is nothing we need to worry about. We were so happy I could have kissed everybody in the room! I restrained myself, but am continually reminded that the doctors at Gillette are, in our mind, many steps above any other. Oliver has always been treated like a regular kiddo there. I don't remember ever getting the "pity look" from any staff there.

The girls are loving the weather and are both little fish at the beach. Cora will just crawl in and, so far, has no fear. Saturday we had a four hour period where we did not have a nurse. Since we have 24 hour nursing there are very few times during the day that it is just us. We LOVE our nurses and would be lost without them, but it was really nice to have a moment with just us. We hung out in Oli's room, he was on the floor and played Barbies with Adina. It was forced, but Oli didn't seem to mind, Adina even let him pick his own Barbie! We just listened to music and I tried to suck in every minute and tattoo it in my brain. We didn't go anywhere fancy, we were just together, happy as a family with a 4 hour break from everything.

Adina giving Oli a thorough exam


Barbie time



Cora likes to dress up


Kisses for big brother!


The girls both really love to be with their brother. Cora especially loves it when Oli is in his little chair so she can be right there. She also likes to crawl into the chair with Oli, unfortunately the chair is only made for one. Oliver loves his sisters! His all time favorite thing is the world is when Adina sits by him and plays with his arms and moves them to songs she makes up. He is happy and getting range of motion all in one!


By the way...It is that time of year again. Yes, we are moving again! We did not intend on leaving this house until John was done with school. Our unit is being sold and we need to have a solid plan. Not knowing what the new landlords will want to do with the place we are going to live at the Seminary until John is done. We need to have a plan because with Oliver we cannot just pick up and move to any place. What can I say, we are Nomads! We will just make the best of it!!