Ups and Downs of the Fender Family: February 2014

Kearington - Month 9

I'm a little late on this post...but not as late as I normally am, so I call that a success! We are truly in love with our peanut and are enjoying watching her grow every day. Between last month and now, it seems like she grows overnight. She goes from just sitting to being able to scoot around to pulling up on things to almost crawling! I love to watch her figure out new things, but at the same time I want to freeze time and keep her this little forever. She is quite the little ham especially when trying to take pictures.

What's back here?

She was in girl monkey's bubble

And because I think he is beautiful and very patient with K...

*16 lbs 3.5 oz

*Wearing mostly 6 month clothes

*You love to call for "D D" while you wait in your crib for me to come get you in the morning (yes, that's the dog)

*You say Ma Ma and Da Da all of the time!

*Starting to say "bye bye" and wave

*Two teeth and one more coming through

*Your favorite toys are yours blocks and rings

*Loves pulling out and chewing on all your books

*Sleeping 10-12 hours at night

*Loves pretty much all foods especially those with most texture

*Scooting around and getting into everything

*Pulling up especially to get to momma

*You don't like the word "No" and your little lip comes up every time to make me feel bad HA!

Kearington - though some days are tiring cleaning up after you, you bring nothing but joy and happiness to our lives. You have such a loving spirit and keep us smiling all of the time. Even when I'm not feeling well, you can always bring a smile to my face. Thank you for being such a wonderful baby. We can't wait to see what the next month brings but know no matter how big you get, you will always be our baby.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Our first Valentine's Day was a success! We enjoyed sharing the love with this sweet face this year! She stole our hearts from day 1!

Kendall

Now that I have had some time to let everything digest, I would like to share the story of our furry baby, Kendall. After we lost our furry baby Addison and had our miscarriage, I felt lost. Not only did I have to say goodbye to the girl that had been through everything and gave us unconditional love, but I also had to go through the disappointment of another failed IVF attempt. Diesel (our furry fella) has always been the husband's dog. He just seems to love Brandon more than me, which was fine when we had Addison, since she was a mommy's girls. But once we lost her, I needed something to fill that need to be a mom and be loved (yes I know my husband loves me but this was different).

About a month after everything happened, I started begging the hubs to get another dog. All I wanted was a furry "little" baby to love on and keep me company. He kept telling me "this isn't a good idea," "she will never be Addison," "we really shouldn't go down this path quite yet," and "no" over and over. I just kept ignoring him and begging him to please let us get a puppy. My husband does everything in his power to make me happy, so he finally agreed. I found a litter of Great Dane puppies not far from us, so we went and checked them out.

There were several of them to choose from and they were all SO cute! Kendall would end up being the fat one that was sleeping in the corner. When she finally decided to grace us with her presence, she came over to me and lick me in the face. I knew then that she was the one I wanted.

The first night we had her

Since Diesel is small dog aggressive (Addison and Diesel were both adults when we got him), we weren't sure exactly how he would take to a puppy. Thankfully he was very patient and loving to Kendall. I think he enjoyed having a companion again. Kendall followed him everywhere, and her favorite spot to sit was anywhere on him. Did I mention how tolerant he was of her?!

Kendall quickly became a member of our family. I loved her but man oh man did she constantly test my patience. Between running in the road, getting into everything, chewing on everything, peeing in the house, and destroying several dog beds she could be quite the handful. Of course my loving husband kept reminding me this was my idea to get her every time she would do something wrong. There were many times that I could have just given her away, but I did love her a lot.

What?! Am I not supposed to be back here?

I was a little worried about how she would do when we brought Kearington home from the hospital, but she was wonderful with her. She was gentle and kind and as Baby K got older would even let K pet her. She was really great with the baby! Kendall would always watch over Kearington and try to console her when she cried.

Kendall was very energetic for a Great Dane, so when she started to seem calm and wasn't running around like a crazy right before Christmas, we knew something was wrong. She also stopped eating for a few days. There isn't anything that Brandon and I won't do for our dogs as long as we have the means to do. We took her to three different vets and two specialists to try and get her better. We thought we were making a turn for the better, but then everything went downhill.

She ended up having to have a blood transfusion and being hospitalized. To make a long story short, she had a lot of different things going on but the ultimate cause was an aggressive Lymphoma. If she didn't have some many things going on that effected her immune system, we would have done chemotherapy to treat the Lymphoma, but in our case this wasn't an option as it would only prolong her life for a very short time and would be strictly a selfish decision on our part. We didn't get nearly enough time with her (she was barely two), but we did enjoy the time that we did have. It is never easy to make the decision to say goodbye, but we knew we had done everything we could for her and it was time.

I was thankful to have her home for a day to spend time with her as well as get some extra pictures of her with Diesel and Kearington. She will forever remain in our hearts and we will always cherish the memories we had with her.

In Our Hearts

We thought of you today,
But that is nothing new.
We thought about you yesterday,
And days before that too.
We think of you in silence,
We often speak your name.
Now all we have is memories,
And your picture in a frame.
Your memory is our keepsake,
With which we'll never part.
God has you in his keeping,
We have you in our heart.

-Author Unknown

Our first family trip

We went on our first family trip right after Christmas. It was nice to get away, have some time to relax, and enjoy New Years with our great friends. It is certainly different taking children on vacations versus just going as husband/wife, but we did have a lot of fun! We decided to go to Savannah as it would be warmer than home and wasn't too far of a drive. The weather was perfect until New Year's Day. We are hoping to make this an annual trip together!

We spent half of the week at a cottage on the river and the other half in a condo downtown. The cottage was quiet and very relaxing. The view was wonderful!

Vacation is so exhausting!

She might need a phone book to sit on

Always happy with daddy!

We had a great view of downtown and enjoyed watching the New Year's festivities and fireworks.

K was very excited for 2014 and all the firsts to come!

Through the eyes of a child

The Holidays came and went so quickly! I felt like I blinked once and Thanksgiving and Christmas were already a distant memory. I was a bad mom and barely took any pictures at Thanksgiving. Once I realized I hadn't taken any pictures, it was past K's bedtime so the few that I took weren't great. At least we have some evidence that she had her first Thanksgiving. HA!

Christmas was a lot of fun this year! It's amazing how much more fun and exciting the holidays are when you have children. It makes you feel like a kid again, and we really enjoyed watching Kearington try to figure out what was going on. She wasn't quite old enough to fully understand, so we are definitely looking forward to Christmas this year when she will be a little bit older.

We did take her through her first drive-thru lights show. She was mesmerized and couldn't stop smiling and looking at all of the flashing lights. I think we will make this an annual tradition with our BFFs. This by far was the best Christmas ever! I can't wait for the years to come and look forward to baking cookies for Santa and seeing all he has to bring our sweet girl!

We had our BFFs over for pre-Christmas dinner and attempted to get a few pictures of the girls in their matching pajamas...which was not an easy task!

We spent most of Christmas Eve at home since K was fussy, but we did make it to SC to see our families late that night. Then we spent all day Christmas Day making the rounds to see all of our family. It was a little exhausting but K was a trooper and did great the entire day!