Koopman Kraziness

Granted, he has been for a month already, but I'm so stinking proud of my boy!  Soon we'll be starting our adventures in homeschooling and I can't wait!

I know I'm super behind on posts so I won't write a book, I'll just post some pictures.  Kamden loved Easter this year - especially since for the first time he understood the fun of the Easter Egg Hunt!  He got to do one at church and one at my parents' house.

For the first time in MONTHS I felt like getting out and doing things for fun with my boys.  We went to lunch where Kamden had his first ice cream cone.  Then we went to the Veteran's Memorial park here in town and to get gifts for Kaidi for tomorrow.  It was a good day with lots of laughs and good memories made. What I woke up to find in our bed.  Little relaxed? Ready to go for the day with new summer hair color! He bumped his head and told us he had to go to the hospital.  After telling him he'd be fine, he grabbed this and said he just needed, "slow, deep breafs"

I'm going to try to keep this as clear as possible but I'm so overwhelmed, in a good way, that I'm not totally sure how. Tonight marks one year to the day (not the date) that we said goodbye to Kaidi.  In all honesty, I dreaded today more than I did her actual birthday.  I guess because it is right before a major holiday, it will always more hit me that it was Sunday night, before Memorial Day.  Anyway, I'm getting off topic here. There are going to be details in this that are kind of going to make you go, "Did she really just say that???" but they are things we all do, so just know it goes with the big picture okay??? Anytime there is a major stressor or a big event in my life, you can bet that I change my hair color.  I don't know why I do it, but I do.  This week I attempted to go from almost a mahogany color to bleached blonde.  Don't try it.  Two bleaching sessions and a burned scalp later, my hair was basically just yellow.  SO, ab...

I don't really have the words to explain it...but today just HURTS.

Every day that brings us closer to our one year mark with living in the land of parents-who-have-lost-a-child is more tense and anxious than the last. Once I finally get to sleep, I wind up sleeping later and later every day.  I guess it's my way of avoiding having to face and feel anything more than I have to.  Poor Kamden is having more and more behavioral issues.  I know part of it is due to the move and all the big changes that happened there, but I know a big part of it too is that he senses things are different and that Jeff and I are more on edge than normal too. I went and bought flowers for Kaidi last night.  It seemed completely surreal.  I felt like I was buying them for someone else.  When I got home I sat looking at them and thought, "This is absolutely wrong.  I'm not supposed to be buying things to decorate my daughter's grave site.  I'm supposed to be buying a frilly dress for her first birthday.  I'm supposed to be gettin...

I can hardly believe that in just over a week we will be facing the one year mark of Kaidance's birth and death. I didn't expect to be "sadness free" by now or anything like that, but I did expect the pain to be at least a little less. Boy was I ever wrong... I've all but stopped sleeping without the help of tranquilizers and even then, I wake up thinking I hear her cry and trying to get to her.  It's only after the fog of sleep lifts that I realize, with brutal force, that there's no cry to go and soothe.  Worse than that, there's no way to make the crying go away.  I can't control that I hear it.  It's part of that day that's stuck in my mind that I can't make leave.  I thought that I'd start moving forward, and some days I do, but most days I feel stuck on May 29, 2011... I function just enough to say I do stuff.  Since moving to my parents', I sleep all the time or don't sleep at all.  I spend much of my time not talki...

Life has been a blur for the last six weeks or so. Mother's Day was harder than I'd been expecting it to be.  I tried to just focus on Kamden and on the fact that I had a handsome, healthy 4-year-old to spend the day with, but the thought of what it'd be like to have a gorgeous 1-year-old princess to spend it with too kept haunting me.  The day itself was nice.  All the women who were mothers were recognized as a group during church, and with my dad being the pastor, I had checked well ahead of time to find out if there were going to be any questions singling out specific moms (ie youngest mom, most kids, youngest kid, etc) and knew what to expect. In the week before Mother's Day, Jeff, Kamden and I moved from our apartment back to my parents' house.  It was a hard decision, but one that had to happen.  Between problems with adjustments to the GI Bill that wind up causing the total payment to those using it to drop by $300 a month as well as the loss of unem...