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Friday, August 12, 2011

July Vacation 2011 - Addison 11 months

Hi there! Here are some recent pictures of our July vacation and Addison at 11 months. I will be posting pictures of the "birthday girl" after her party!

Much Love xoxo
Katee, Kirk and Addison


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Saturday, May 7, 2011

Spring Update - 9 months

Hi Friends & Family –
Just wanted to touch base and update you on our crazy wonderful lives. We are doing well and staying busy. Our Addison is growing by leaps and bounds. She is definitely keeping her Mommy and Daddy busy!! She is a very active and happy 9-month old. She just had her 9 month checkup and the Dr Chaban said she is doing beautifully. She is 28.5” long and 21 lbs. Also, she had her gastroenterologist appointment this week and Dr Bhargava said we don’t have to come in for any more appts. She said her reflux is better so we can finally start tapering down the medicine and also stop thickening her bottle feeds which is great! The thickening of bottles has put weight on our cutie but, it helped keep everything down with the reflux. We could not be happier that Addison’s colic/reflux is behind us now…what a rollercoaster ride! Addee has been doing her normal army crawl and gets around quite fast. She is now pulling up on furniture and standing for quite a few minutes at a time. She is very persistent so we think we will have a walker soon. She is so much fun. She loves her walks and playing with Grandpa K. She is so friendly and happy…enjoys being with people. We can’t tell you how many people say: “What a happy baby”. Addison is drinking water from a sippy cup and doing pretty well. She is eating some finger foods now too…puffed cereal, graham crackers, strawberries, bananas, and other soft vegetables. She is very independent and enjoys picking up her own food. She has 2 bottom teeth that are almost in and has been pretty good so far…not too fussy. But, believe me we know fussy with her colic and reflux. So, I think we will get through teething. She certainly is very vocal with her squeals and babbling different sounds. She really enjoys books and turning the pages. During story time at night she turns the pages for us. We cannot even explain the fun we are having…she really is a dream come true. We had a fun 1st Easter with Addison. She enjoyed getting into her basket from the Easter bunny and even went in the pool for the first time. She loved the pool – we knew she would. An update on the Mommy and Daddy….Kirk loves his job at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is so happy! He has not had to travel too much but, does have 5 day trips here and there. We are both working from the house and it has been working out great. Kirk also still works a day or so per week at Williams Sonoma. I have been keeping busy working 2 part-time positions from home. One is at Universal Creative where I am recruiting for their project based division. I go into the office occasionally but, I am mainly working from our home office. The other new role is a new part-time position for a banking software company called Open Solutions. I am working with their Sales Proposal team managing their RFP database. I am still learning the system but, so far so good. Also, calligraphy has been picking up so have been fitting that in as well. Still involved with the Diabetes board and walk committees. We have our corporate breakfast this Wednesday and hoping for a good turnout. Busy at our household is an understatement. We are looking forward to a July 4th trip to Sky Valley, Georgia with the Yallalys and Bunn families. Also, we plan on visiting with Mom and Dad Cooper in South Carolina. We finally booked a cruise to go and celebrate my Dad’s retirement. We will be going in August on a 1 week cruise with my Dad, Blain, Loretta, and my Grandmom. I think it will be a fun time…it will be Addee’s 1st cruise! In just a few months our Addison will be a 1 year old. It is amazing how time flies when you are having fun! We are so enjoying our sweet girl. She is truly a blessing and we are honored to be her parents. She is a JOY!! Loving every minute of it. I am looking forward to celebrating my 1st official Mother’s Day with our girl. I miss my Mom everyday especially on Mother’s day. She is still my inspiration especially raising Addison. Wishing my Mom K, Mom C, Grandmom Selters and Aunt Jackie a very happy Mother's Day! Also, Happy Mother's day to all of Addison's Aunts too. Enjoy your precious families! Enjoy the latest photos below of us!

Until next time…always remember to Live, Laugh, and Love!
Love, The Coopers :o)

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Sunday, February 6, 2011

6 Months!

Woo Hoo...our sweet girl is 6 months old! Sorry for the long delay in posting. Life sure does get crazy with a little one especially during the holidays.

Our family participated in the Step Out Walk to fight diabetes in memory of my Mom on Nov 6th. It was a nice day and enjoyed having our friends and family's support. We raised over $2,500 this year. It was a very successful event! We hope that a cure is found for diabetes soon! Also, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday. Our stetson family got together at our home for turkey day. It was lots of fun to get together and with our kids too. It was a great time seeing everyone. We had Addison's baptism at St. Margaret Mary by Father Pat on Dec 22nd. It was a beautiful service and Addee looked beautiful. She was so good during the ceremony and loved listening to Fr Pat. Blain and Loretta are her amazing godparents. They flew in from Toronto for the holidays. We had a small reception afterwards at our home. It was a wonderful day with close family and friends.

Addison's 1st Christmas was extra special too. She enjoy opening gifts but, most of all enjoyed the wrapping paper the most. It was pretty funny how she wanted to eat it more than anything. We enjoyed being with Blain and Loretta...it is so fun being with them. Our visits are always special and our family really enjoys being together. We mainly enjoyed playing with Addison, eating lots, catching up and prepared hors d'oeuvres for Fr Pat's Christmas Eve service (always fun). It has been our family's tradition for many years each Christmas. Also, we enjoyed being with Kirk's family during Christmas too. Kirk's parents were here and also Mark, Terri, Spencer and Grace. So, Addee was able to meet her Aunt, Uncle and cousins from Denver. We also did the holiday fun with food, games, family pictures and catching up. It was really nice being together with the Cooper family.

Addison has come a long way since I last posted. Her colic finally stopped at the end of 4 months. She is very happy baby now and shares lots of smiles. She still has the reflux but, she is doing well with thickening her formula and the prevacid. That seems to help her a lot. It seems like the reflux is improving and she is starting to grow out of it. Addee is rolling like a roly poly and is doing a scooting crawl...like an army crawl. She is all over the place...we know its just beginning. She loves to crawl/scoot over to her toys so she is moving a lot in the family room. She loves it! Addison loves her walks. We just put together her jogging stroller so she can join her Mommy on some walks/runs. We started veggies at 4 months. She has always had cereal in her bottle for reflux plus now she has solids....fruit/veggies each day. We are making all her baby food in the beaba baby food maker. So far she has enjoyed sweet potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, zucchini, string beans, peas, bananas, and apple sauce. She loves everything so far! Addison is talking some saying baa baa and other sounds. She recognizing her name when you call her. It is truly a joy to have her in our lives. We are truly blessed with our beautiful girl. Some say she is starting to look a little like her Mommy but, she definitely looks like her Daddy more. We certainly adore our amazing baby girl!!! ;o)

Life has been busy but, going great. I am still recruiting from home part-time while taking care of Addison. I am now the logistics chair rather than committee walk chair for the Step Out walk for Diabetes. I am also still active on the board for ADA in Orlando. My Dad comes to help take care of Addison when I am on my calls...he is a lifesaver and awesome Grandpa. Kirk just started a new career with Pricewaterhouse Coopers in their advisory group. It is his dream job and he is enjoying it so far. He just started on 1/31. So happy for him...he really deserves this!

Wishing you all a wonderful week! We will keep posting soon. xoxo
Here are some pictures to catch you up since November...Addee's 6 month dr appt is 2/9 so more updates to come!
Love,
Katee, Kirk and Addison
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Monday, November 1, 2010

Update on the Coopers!

Hi there!
Hope you are all doing well and enjoying FALL!
Just wanted to share an update on our little family. Life is still a little like Groundhog Day (the movie). We are still having a time with Addison's reflux/colic. It does seem that the colic is gradually going away but, we still don't have the reflux under control. It seemed like the zantac was helping but, we noticed that she recently had the same symptoms that she had quite a few weeks back. It was almost like the medicine was no longer effective. Last week she was crying 30-45 min after her feeding and fussy and upset. She was also spitting up more. It was like she was regressing! Just when we thought things were getting better for her. Pretty frustrating! So, I called the gastro dr and pressed her to see if we could change her medicine to prevacid as we have heard/read that many parents say it works wonderfully for their reflux babies. So, we started that on Friday evening. At this point it is helping a little but, seems to wear off by late afternoon. We will see how it goes...we might need to have the Gastroenterologist change the dosage or it may take some time to start working. I plan to contact the Gastro dr to find out today. We just want to see our sweet girl "content" so please continue to keep us in your prayers. We are still trying to get to happy-land. Fingers crossed...it is soon! Addison will be 3 months old this week so it should be soon. Once she gets on solid foods colic/reflux should be much improved.

Kirk has been traveling quite a bit lately. My Dad has been helping us in the mornings which has been wonderful. Also Kirk's Mom traveled here for a couple weeks to help us which was fantastic. It meant a lot to us! My Dad just retired from the school system....yay!!! So happy for Dad...such a well deserved accomplishment for someone so hard-working. My Dad will be coming more often to help with Addison during the day while I get my recruiting calls/work completed. It will be awesome to have the help! ;o) We plan to go on a family cruise to celebrate my Dad's retirement sometime this spring/summer 2011.

We are happy Kirk is home for a week. He is off again next week. We are hoping the travel slows down soon but, we are hanging in there! We are looking forward to our Stetson family being together for the Thanksgiving holiday. It will be a fun time and great to see everyone. Also we are looking forward to enjoying the Christmas holidays with our families. Blain and Loretta will be here for a visit. Also, the Coopers from South Carolina and Colorado will be visiting as well. It will be a wonderful time being with family especially during Addison's 1st Christmas.

We have the annual "Step Out Walk to Fight Diabetes" that we do in my Mom's memory next weekend (Nov 6th). We are looking forward to the event and our team, Paula's Sous Chefs will be walking for the 3rd year. It will be Addison's first walk for her Grandma Kramer. We hope we will be successful and beneficial for such a wonderful cause! The following Saturday (Nov 13) will be the "Great Day in the Country" arts & craft show. Our family have been participating in this show for quite a few years now. Fingers crossed for a successful craft show. It is always a lot of fun. Our November is going to be quite busy already!

We will continue to keep you posted on our Addee. Feel free to enjoy the smilebox below of the latest pictures of our sweet Addison and our little family.
Much Love & Happy Fall! xoxo
Love, The Cooper Fam

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Friday, September 24, 2010

Our life is still a crazy rollercoaster ride!

Hi there -
Just wanted to share a quick update on our Addison. One would think that taking care of acid reflux would be easy since all we do as adults is take med and we feel better. Well, it is not that way at all with babies. We are still dealing with Addee's reflux issue. We have her on zantac twice/day. For feeding she is on breast-milk supplemented with a special hypoallergenic formula. She has been on zantac for 2 weeks and it just doesn't seem like there is much improvement. Also, she doesn't sleep much during day and still seems so uncomfortable. She does sleep wonderfully at night though except waking up for a feeding. Anyway, we went back to Dr Chaban this week. He gave us a special drops to help her with gas/stomach discomfort. He also suggested that we thicken her feeds with a little oat cereal to help with the acid. Dr Chaban also referred us to a pediatric gastroenterologist, Dr Bhargava. I quickly made the appt and got in this morning.

Kirk and I took Addee to the gastroenterologist and the Dr feels she does have reflux and also colic. She added an additional dose of zantac so now 3 x's/day. She asked that we continue everything else we have been doing. I am also to stop eating all dairy foods to see if that helps. It seems Addee may have a difficult time digesting milk proteins which is what happens often in reflux/colic babies. Also, we need to get her blood tested and take her for an GI x-ray next week. We go back to the gastroenterologist in 3 weeks for a follow-up.

We absolutely love our little munchkin to pieces but, this has been a VERY rocky start to parenthood. The crying sessions throughout the entire day, fussy times, and upset tummy are really hard to take sometimes. Taking care of our sweet one has pretty much taken over our days so we will do our best to be more in touch with you all soon.

We are really hoping we turn a corner soon so our sweet baby feels better and also so her parents continue to keep sane. :o) If you have dealt with reflux and/or colic then you know what I mean...you really can't explain it unless you live it. Supposedly colic can improve around 3 months so we are keeping our fingers crossed and hopefully reflux will follow after that. Just hoping for even some relief for now until it goes away for good. We know with time it will get better...please keep us all in your prayers. We really appreciate your love and support.

Here is a link to ALL the pictures from Addison's newborn photo session :o)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/givealittletlc/sets/72157624877365902/

I will post some updated photos soon!
Love, Kirk, Katee, and Addison :o)

Friday, September 10, 2010

Update and a few sneak peek photos! ;o)

Hi there! Sorry, we have been out of touch. Life has been a little crazy this past month. We have had our ups and downs with loss of our sweet Jasmine and caring for our sweet newborn, Addison. Thank you all for your support and love during our loss. We miss our Jazzy everyday.

Addison was just diagnosed with GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease). Silent Reflux is very common in babies and similar to acid reflux in adults. We realize now that this has been something that has been happening from the start but, her symptoms recently got worse and noticed a real problem especially when she wouldn't eat. So, our doctor has her on a new formula for acid reflux and baby zantac. We have not seen a big change yet but, hoping it will get better soon. She is eating better now. As with all medicine...it takes time. We just want some relief for our little one. We hate to see her upset and would love to see her content! ;o) The symptoms not only include acid reflux but, also similar to colic and include crying, gas, and irritability quite often. We do love our pediatrician, Dr Chaban so we are really hoping his plan helps us. Please keep our Addee in your prayers. We are trying to do everything we can to help her feel better. This has taken a lot of our time so we apologize for being a little out of touch. We love every little bit of our sweet girl and just want to see her feel better soon!

Here are a few sneak peek photos from Addison's newborn photo shoot. We were really pleased with our photographer. I will add more soon....

We will update more soon!
love,
Cooper Fam