3 Weeks Old

Well, Asher is 3 weeks old already. It is amazing how fast it goes. It's a little sad to think this is the last little tiny baby we are going to have, and that soon he won't be a little tiny baby anymore. I remember with Kaleb thinking it was going to be forever before he sat up or crawled or anything. Now he's eight & we're on baby number four. I never would have thought it would pass so quickly. I'm trying really hard to enjoy every minute of the kids being little, because I'm realizing more & more that it's not going to last very long. (Just in case you were wondering... the hospital sent Asher home with a couple of pacifiers, and since he has already discovered his thumb, we let him suck on them every once in a while. Either way, Rhyan thinks it's funny to pop them in her mouth and run around with it. So, that's why you can see her in the background with one in her mouth. She doesn't really get the point, because she doesn't suck on it. She just sticks it in and starts laughing.)

Rhyan Pictures

This is the first time Rhyan had her hair up in pigtails. She was quite impressed that her hair was in two pony tails instead of just one.

















As you can see, Rhyan loves to lick the beater. She sits there very patiently the whole time to make sure she gets it, then it's a no holding back, get off every last bit a batter process!
















We were a little worried about Rhyan & the new baby, because she's quite possessive of mom & dad. She has been awesome though. She loves o give him hugs & kisses, she wants to hold him & help get his clothes, and she says he's her baby. One of the neighbors came over to see him & while she was holding him, Rhyan glared at her and said "baby, mine!" I think she was a little concerned Kesha was going to take her baby away.

Swim Time!

Our summer once again revolves around swim lessons. We are there Monday through Thursday and the kids are having fun. Kaleb is becoming quite the swimmer, and has advanced to level five. He is pretty proud of himself! Mayson will be starting level two, and she definitely needs more practice, but she is getting better too. According to her teacher, she has no fear and needs to listen better. And I'm paying them to tell me that!? Rhyan loves it, because during lessons she gets to play in the wading pool and LOVES it! she is going to be a little fish I think.

Kaleb's Getting Ready!

Kaleb had his interview with the Bishop on Sunday, and it's official... he's getting baptized on the 5th. He is really excited, and I can't believe I have an eight year old! Where did the time go?

Urs Visits Cleveland... again

Urs came out again to help when we had the baby. He came a little sooner than we were thinking he would, so he beat her by a couple of days. It turned out okay though because the Campbells were staying with us when we had him, so they stayed with the kids for us, & Urs got here the day I came home from the hospital. It was a real blessing that she was here with us. It was great to have someone here for the other kids when we were spending time back at the hospital after Asher went back. She was a lot of help & I know the kids are really going to miss having grandma around.

Milkaholics Anonymous

Hi, my name is Asher. I'm two weeks old, and I'm a milkaholic. I eat and I eat, but I just can't seem to get enough. It's not even that I'm really hungry, it's just this compulsion I have to eat. If there's not any milk to be found, I just start sucking on anything I can get in my mouth...

Father's Day

Well, it's Father's Day today and the kids decided that he needed to have a smiley face pancake for breakfast. So here is Larry's smiley face pancake. I know for Larry it's a good father's day if for no other reason than Asher is home & doing good, and the other kids think they're daddy is the greatest thing around!

Asher Goes to the NICU

Well, Asher had his first doctors appointment on Wednesday, and as you can see, he was yellow. We knew when we left the hospital that his bili level was high (the stuff that causes jaundice) but they said as long as he was eating and pooping he would be fine. Either way, it was at a 11.4 when we brought him home onMonday, and when they called us Wednesday afternoon with his blood test results it was at a 21. We were told to take him to the ER at Rainbow Babies and have him admitted. Now, I wasn't happy about this obviously, but I was doing pretty good until we got there, got up tothe NICU and they got all the stuff hooked up to him. I took one look at him with all the wires and everything else they had going on and lost it. I know that it was something that for the most part they could fix, but when you look at your tiny newborn babyhooked up to all their stuff it is really hard. So, when it was time to put the IV in the nurse offered me to go & get a drink & I figured that was a great idea. Every four hours they would draw blood and run his levels again and thankfully, it was coming down. I never realized jaundice was such a big thing, I just knew it made them yellow. But apparently it can cause brain damage if the levels get too high. Anything over 20 is hospital time, and if they hit 25 that's when they start to talking about blood transfusions to get the blood with the biliruben in it out and the clean blood to replace it. Luckily 21 was our highest level. So, here are the pictures of Asher under the UV lights getting his first suntan, and of course we had to include the picture where he was mooning us! The lights help to process the biliruben through the skin so that his body can pass it without his liver having to process is. They had him in thebed with the lights for not quite 24 hours, and when his level was about 14.9 they moved him to another room to watch him and to continue taking blood to make sure it was still going down. It went up to 15.2 and then down to 13.7 and that is when they decided he could come home. They sent us with a bili blanket that you wrap around him and it has the UV lights in it, and the home health care nurse came over to check his blood yesterday. We were at a 13.1 yesterday and he goes back in tomorrow to our pediatrician to get checked again. Hopefully he will still be dropping. He is a little yellow, but he definitely looks a ton better than he did. Apparently part of the reason he got it so bad is because our blood types conflict, and his little body is killing off the blood cells from me. The dead blood cells are where the biliruben comes from, and because his little liver can't keep up with it yet to process it all out, he had way too much in his system. Now I can't guarantee that this explanation is 100% accurate, but it is how I understand it from how the doctor explained it to us. I'm am so glad he is home with us. I think we have taken for granted with the other kids how lucky we were that everything went great and there were never any issues. I have a much greater appreciation for the parents who have to leave their babies at the hospital due to the many reasons they have to be there. It's a hard thing to do. We are counting our blessings that he is home with us and things are going good, and praying they continue to stay that way.

Pony Camp

Mayson got to go to Pony Camp this summer for one of her birthday presents. She is very into horses right now & she loved every minute of it. She learned to groom the ponies, how to clean the saddle and bridle, the parts of the horse, and the very basics of how to ride. Her ponies name was Buttercup. The only sad part of pony camp was the day that Buttercup tried to nibble on Mayson's stomach. Mayson was very hurt that her pony tried to bite her, but it didn't leave a mark so it couldn't have been too bad. Once she got over her hurt feeling she was fine. She actually did really well and looks very comfortable in the saddle. The last day they got to ride Rachel, the dark horse she is on. She thought that was pretty
cool, but she looked so little up on top of that big horse! They also put on a show for us the last day to show us all of the things they had learned to do. She was so cuter out there on her pony with her pink cowgirl boots!

Asher Benjamin Kalke

We now have a new addition to our family... our new baby boy arrived a 11:11am on 6/7/08. He was 7lbs. 9oz. and 20ins. long. I for one am glad he was early, because if he was that big at 19 days early I would be scared to know how big he would have been had he waited. We are very excited to have him, and Kaleb I think is especially happy that he now had a baby brother. His name is Asher Benjamin Kalke, and we are all totally in love with him. Even Rhyan, who we were a little concerned about how she would react, thinks he is the greatest thing ever. She wants to help with everything, and is very possessive about how it is "her baby" if anybody else comes over
to see him. We got to bring him home Monday afternoon and the kids were very excited. A little piece of humor about how Asher decided to start out his life here in the world.... As Becky and I were at Home Depot Friday night trying to match paint to touch up her
walls, he decided it was time for my water to break. And let me tell you, in my white capris I was wearing, this was a hard thing not to notice. They tell you all the time how your water only breaks in about 15% of pregnancies (3 out of my 4 pregnancies my water broke), and that it's just a little because the baby's head blocks it off... don't listen to them. This was not a trickle. Had I actually been wearing a skirt, there would have been that puddle that you see in the movies! Either way, we left as quickly as possible, and I have to say I think Becky got a good laugh out of it. That's okay, it really was kind of funny. I'm glad this happened on the last
pregnancy though and not one of my first, I may have been scared to go out in public in my last month after an experience like that!

Kaleb's Field Day

We went to watch Kaleb in his field day activities & it was fun. You can see he was taking it quite seriously, and had his head band on so no sweat would get in his eyes and impede his athletic ability. Here you see him doing his best Indian Jones impersonation as he does the running slide under the pole. It's so fun to watch the kids, because they are always so excited about everything.

Kaleb's Birthday

Kaleb is now the big 8 years old. It is really hard to believe that I have an 8 year old... it really seems like we just had him. How time flies!! He had a transformer birthday party with all his friends and they had to wear their transformer masks & search
for the all spark to save the world. They had a lot of fun, and he got some fun toys. You can see that Rhyan's favorite part was the ice cream she got to eat. On Sunday for his actual birthday he opened his presents & we just hung out after church. He
was excited, and is definitely looking forward to being baptized. He will be baptized on July 5th when the family is out.

Kaleb's Fieldtrip to the Indian's Game

Kaleb earned a place in the field trip to go see the Indians Game at Progressive field the end of May. Larry got to be the chaperone for his class, and let me tell you... the guys were so excited to go. We packed them a yummy lunch and sent them on their way. Kaleb was really excited to have his dad go with him and they both came home saying how much fun they had!