Welcome Little Maxwell

We welcomed little Maxwell James Butterfield into this world on October 31. He is our little Halloween baby.  He was 8 lbs 7.2 ounces and 19 1/2 inches long.  He is such a sweet baby boy and we are so excited to have him as part of our family. It was fun to find out after 9 months if our baby was a boy or girl.  Zeke had told us from the beginning that we were having a boy baby on Halloween! He was exactly right, he had said multiple times that if it was a girl he would be mad because he wanted a boy baby!

He was bigger then both my other babies who were only 7 lbs, and he has pretty blonde hair, my other two kids had black hair when they were born and a lot of it. Maxwell aslo passed his hearing test which is always such good news to hear!

 

 Our family of 5! I still can't believe I have 3 kids already!

I love how Zeke is just staring at little Maxwell, he sure is a proud big brother.

Kristiina sure loves him too! She wakes up asking where the baby is. 

 Maxwell was pretty jaundice so he had to be on the Bilirubin lights from Friday to Wednesday at home.  It was kind of a pain because he always had to be naked and we couldn't swaddle him.  He is such a snuggly baby that it was pretty hard and he had a hard time sleeping. 

 Maxwell is such a calm, sweet baby.  He hardly cries and loves to be held and snuggled.  He is an awesome eater too, which is so nice and makes it easier on me.

The proud big brother

I love this picture that Zeke took! I love how he was able to capture a smile of my happy, smiling baby!

18 Months!

This sweet little thing is 18 months! I can't believe how fast the time has gone. Kristiina is such a sweet girl and we just love having her be a part of our family.

At 18 months Kristiina is talking up a storm! She says a lot of words and it is so cute! If you ask her a question she usually answers with "I do." In the morning she wakes up and says she wants, "nana" and even during Sunday School at church she saw a picture of a banana in a book and started crying saying, "want nana." She will walk around the house yelling "Z" when she is looking for Zeke. She says Mom, Dad, Meow, woof, milk, Cheese, hot, animal, Elmo, hat, shoes, hide, bath, back pack, eyes, and bath

She still loves to eat and will usually always try new things. She usually eats more then Zeke. :) Her favorite things to eat are Mac and Cheese, yogurt, bananas, pastas, potatoes, peaches, grapes, and toast.

She loves baby dolls and loves to give them kisses. Which is funny because she is pretty stingy when it comes to kisses for anyone else. I am lucky to get 1 kiss a day. She loves giving my tummy kisses though because it is big and there's a baby in it. I don't know if she quite understands that there is going to be a baby in the house in 7 weeks or less, and she is most likely going to have a hard time because she still is a baby.

This girl LOVES water. She is such a water baby. She usually wants a shower every single day and loves to just stand under the warm water. Which I think is kind of weird because usually kids hate getting water in their eyes but not her. When we went to Bear Lake this summer she would just lay in the water kicking her feet and she had the time of her life, she was in heaven!

Happy Halloween-2011

I know that this was pretty much from a year ago but I never posted our Halloween pictures from last year. I made Kristiina's costume and she was the Very Hungry Caterpillar and Zeke was Buzz Lightyear. 

Zeke at Gardner Village with the witches

Zeke at his school party trying to eat a donut off of a string

My Hungry Caterpillar trying to eat a leaf

 

Drake, Zeke, and Logan gutting their pumpkins

Zeke's friend Drake after carving their pumpkins

Zeke's preschool class.

To Infinity and Beyond

Family picture that I can't get turned the correct way.

Zeke is done with preschool at USDB

 I wrote this post  back in June and have failed to post it so I thought I better post on this poor neglected blog. 

  Zeke is doing so well and he gets to go to a normal little preschool in the fall. (He is currently going to one now.) We are going to miss Utah School for the Deaf and his wonderful teacher! We got  his end of year Aural Habilitation Summary  in the mail and I couldn't be more proud of Zeke!

It says:

Zeke is a 4-year-old preschool two student with a profound bilateral hearing loss. He has 2 cochlear implants and wears them 100% of the time.  WIth his implants, Zeke's hearing tests within the mild to normal hearing range.

Zeke has been attending Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind's auditory oral preschool program where the focus of the curriculum is auditory, language, and speech development. He has recieved both small group and individual auditory-based speech and language therapy.

Language:  Zeke has made excellent progress this year. At the end of the 2010 school year he was using 3-4 word utterances and now uses many 7-9 word grammatically correct sentences.  According to standdardized testing he is functioning withing the average range when compared to his same age hearing peers.  He is bright and learns new vocabulary and language structures quickly.

Speech:  Zeke's speech is  100% intelligible. He can produce all vowels and consonants correctly at the phonologic and running speech level. At times he may need to be reminded to use a known speech sound correctly, but will correct it with an auditory model.

 Auditory Skills:  Zeke has made excellent progress in his auditory skill development.  He had some difficutly adjusting to his new implant but this resolved after a few therapy sessions with the new device only.  At the beginning of the year, Zeke had difficulty repeating 5 word familiar sentences leaving off articles and be verbs.  His auditory memory skills have improved significantly as he is now able to approximate 7-9 word sentences.  He can repeat 4 single digit numbers presented in random sequence and follow 3 step related directions.  He can detect foolish statements about a familiar topic and fill in missing phrases from songs and nursery rhymes.  He answers riddles with three clues and is able to repeat all of the clues. He can discriminate rhyming words with initial consonants different by manner, voicing and place.

Summary: Zeke has made excellent progress this year and will be mainstreamed next school year!


Isn't that great! I am so happy he has done so well and he continues to improve everyday!

This is Zeke's amazing teacher, Teacher Shellee,  who we are going to miss so much! She is such a wonderful teacher who truly cares about these little kids.

Most of Zeke's little class on the last day of school. We are going to miss all Zeke's little friends that he has made at school! He loves each one of them!

Guess What?

Yes! We are having a baby and we are so excited! We are not finding out what this little one is until we deliver, call us crazy but we are so excited!

Happy Easter



I am so grateful that we can celebrate Easter and remember our Savior and the sacrifice that he has made for each one of us. Zeke was so excited about the Easter Bunny and the candy and the egg hunts and I tried to teach him why we have Easter. I had the lesson for Young Women's on Sunday and since it was a short lesson there was time for me to do something about Easter. I got this great idea from my mom and sister about the 12 eggs that each have something in them that represents Easter and our Savior, for example one had a small nail, a thorn, a Sacrament cup, etc. and the last one was empty representing that He is Risen. Zeke was very interested in all the eggs and what was inside of them and had lots of questions for me about them and the items inside. I took that as a great teaching opportunity and explained everything to him. I think he was scared of some of the things like the nail and the thorns but I think he finally realized why we have Easter.   We also watched this beautiful video from the church website, lds.org called He is Risen which I put above. If you haven't watched it yet I encourage you to, it is beautiful and a great reminder of our Savior.

We had such a great Easter! We spent time with family having good food and fun Easter Egg hunts! We have way too much candy and goodies that I don't know what to do with it all. Zeke especially loved the hunts. He didn't have any school the week before so we spent time coloring eggs and then Zeke and I would take turns hiding and looking for them. He got pretty good and you can probably say that he is a professional egg hunter now! I am so sad I forgot to take my camera with me to our Saturday festivities but we had a good time at the Herriman Easter Egg hunt and at my parent's for their big hunt! Zeke had to empty his basket twice at my parents because there was so much stuff! Kristiina pretty much didn't have any idea what was going on except that the eggs have candy in them. If she found eggs she would usually just shake them and get mad when I tried to put them in her basket.

My handsome little Zeke gathering the eggs!

Here she sees an egg but isn't quite sure what to do about it.



Zeke loves to make silly faces and it is nearly impossible to get pictures of him just smiling.

Happey Easter!

Happy 1st Birthday!

Happy Birthday Kristiina! You are 1!

What a great year this last one has been! It went too fast but we are so lucky to have this cute little munchkin in our family! Pure Joy! We love her so much and can't get enough of her cute giggles, silly noises, and cute personality.

At a year old Kristiina:

• Loves to walk around and get into everything!
• Loves to make silly faces
• Loves walking around yelling "dad!"
• Loves Oatmeal, Bananas, Goldfish crackers, Spaghetti/Lasagna, Milk, oranges, yogurt, applesauce and pretty much anything she can reach in the pantry. She is a very good eater!
• Loves her Blanky
• Loves sharing fruit with daddy
• Likes throwing her food on the floor when she is all done
• Finally signed "all done" yesterday. She has refused to sign until this week.
• She likes cats and dogs, she says "oo, oo" for cats and monkeys and "woof woof'' for dogs.
• Loves being outside and going for walks
• She is always happy!
• Loves her big brother!
• Loves to dance and shake her cute little booty
• Loves drinking water!
• Loves to go shopping with mommy. At the grocery store when we walk past the food she says, "MMM" and points to all the yummy stuff!
•  Loves to carry around little stuffed animals.  Especially Zeke's pink monkey, they often argue over it. 
• Loves to carry clothes around and put them around her neck
• Kristiina loves being the cutest little thing around! We love her!

Silly faces

My silly girl is really into making silly faces. She sticks her bottom 2 teeth out and squints her eyes. They are totally better in person but my sister was able to capture a few silly faces with her phone.

"I 'Mustache' you...

...do you think I am cute?"

I do! I can't get enough of this darling girl!
and this sweet boy!

    

Love my Kids!

                                         

11 Months!

She is 11 months! Almost a year! I might actually cry, she has grown up way too fast!

At 11 months Kristiina is:

• Walking like a pro! She has been walking for about a month and a half now and she is getting pretty good at it. 
• Refusing now to keep anything in her hair.  She use to be okay to keep a ponytail and a clip in but now she just takes them out. So her hair always looks like the above picture! But she is still darling!
• Finally sleeping all the way through the night and sleeps until around 7 or 8.  Took long enough but I can't complain she is such a good baby!
• Eats, Eats and Eats! She eats like a pro! She often eats double of what Zeke eats. She must have my love of food genes and knows what is delicious. She is a smart one!
• She refuses to sign! It makes me kind of sad. We have been working on signing for a few months and she just refuses.  I will sign 'more' and she will usually just say "moe, moe" but I guess it is okay.  She doesn't really need to sign since she can hear.  :) It did make it easy with Zeke though, he never threw tantrums because he could always tell me by signing what he wanted.
• She talks and says:  
• "moe" for more and for water.  Whenever she sees a cup and needs some water she yells Moe.
• mama
• dada
• kitty
• "zee-zee" for Zeke
• and a few other things that she says over and over but I am not quite sure what they are yet.  :)
• She does this fake laugh sort of thing, it is like a courtesy laugh and it is hilarious!
• Kisses are hard to get from her unless you are Zeke or another baby. Makes me a little sad that I have to work so hard to get kisses from her but at least I know she loves to give her brother kisses.
• She loves Zeke's drawer. We have a drawer in the kitchen that we put all of Zeke's cups in and other kid dishes and Kristiina has found it and loves to play in it.  She pulls out sippy cup lids and walks around with them in her mouth.  When I am cooking or doing something in the kitchen she always finds her way to the kitchen to play in the drawer or in the cupboard with all my plastic bowls.  It usually looks like a tornado went through my kitchen by the time I am done with dinner.
• Loves playing with Zeke and all his cars. When Zeke isn't home she loves to carry around a car or two because Zeke usually doesn't allow her to play with just any car.
• She still puts everything and anything in her mouth.

We love our baby girl! She is always so happy and such a joy to be around! Love you lots Kristiina!

 
 
 

Happy 4th Birthday Zeke!

I am a couple weeks late posting this but...I can't believe my handsome little man is 4! I can hardly believe how much he has grown just in the last year!

 

Zeke is so funny and I love listening to him talk.  He always has something to say and often talks too much! Sometimes when I tell him he needs to be quiet or not talk so loud or so much, I feel guilty.  We want him to talk, and telling my deaf son not to talk so much or to be more quiet seems wrong, but it just shows that he is a normal 4 year old who can hear! We have worked so hard to get to this point and Zeke has worked even harder! We love his Cochlear implants and are so happy for all that Zeke has accomplished with them.

Zeke is such a fun kid and is definitely a jokester! He loves to tease and make others laugh and smile.  He always knows how to bring a smile to my face when I need one. He reminds me that there is so much in life to be happy about.

Zeke's Mater Teeth

 He loves playing hide and seek and has gotten really good at hiding and being quiet while hiding. Whenever he hears daddy opening the garage when he gets home from work, Zeke runs to find a place to hide.

Zeke loves going to school and loves to learn! He is always asking me questions to try and find out more.  If he doesn't know what a word is he will ask me what it is or just assume it is a bad word and say, "that's a bad word, huh mom?" I then tell him what the word means and he usually figures out pretty quickly how to use the word in a sentence. He is a very smart kid.

Zeke's favorite thing in the world is anything from Cars 2! He loves watching the movie and playing with his cars and that is all he ever wants to do! He knew exactly what kind of party he wanted when I asked him.  He said he wanted a Cars 2 cake with Grem (the orange car), Lightning "the Queen" and Francesco. Zeke wanted friends at his party this year so we invited friends over on a Saturday for his birthday! It was crazy, but a lot of fun! The kids had races, bean bag toss into a tire and they made license plates with glitter glue, foam letters and mini pom poms. They had a blast, I think! I made Zeke's cake and I was pretty ambitious at first. I made Grem out of fondant but it took me like an hour and a half so I ended up just using Zeke's Francesco and Lightning McQueen cars. 

Zeke's Cake! He loved it and was so excited when he saw the finished cake in the morning.  I might seem crazy to take so much time to make a cake for a 4 year old party, but I love to do it and I love that it makes Zeke so happy! Zeke kept saying he wanted to eat Grem, I think it is because he is a bad car in the movie, but I couldn't let him eat it right away.  He did finally get to eat him a couple days later though and he said that Grem was delicious!

My cute 4 year old! Why do they have to grow up so fast?

Zeke waiting to blow out his candles.  Notice the cars in hand! He always has some sort of car in his hands.  They take baths with him and even fall asleep with them. 

Happy Birthday Zeke! We sure love you and are so happy you are part of our family! You make us all  smile and laugh and we love your sweet face around us.  We don't know what we would do without you in our family, you have taught us so much and are such an important person in our lives.  We love you Zekey!

"I'll Push You Out Kristiina"

 Kristiina usually wakes up around 8 or 8:30 to eat and we play for 30-45 minutes. She is then ready to go back to bed for a nap.  She already ate and played so we put her back in her crib to go back to sleep.  She was just talking in her crib and laying down. Zeke woke up and went in her room and said hi, then came into my room and told me Kristiina was awake and for me to go get her.  Zeke didn't have his implants on yet but he can read lips pretty well.  I told him she was tired and she was going to go to sleep.  He insisted that she was not and that we needed to go get her.  He kept saying, "come on mommy, Kristiina's awake let's get her." I stayed in bed because I told him she needed to go to sleep.  Zeke went into her room and said, "I will get you out Kristiina, grab my hands." He took her blanket out and then tried to get her out.  Obviously it wasn't working so Zeke decided to get into her crib and get her out that way.  I couldn't hear everything he said but I am pretty sure he said that he would push her out.  Brandon then intervened and got Kristiina out for Zeke.  I just thought it was the sweetest thing.  Zeke loves Kristiina so much and will do anything for her and Kristiina just adores and loves her older brother.  I love watching their sweet interactions with eachother!

Brandon then brought Kristiina into our bed and Zeke got in too. Zeke had his favorite cars from Cars 2 and he told Kristiina she could play with them. He said, "These are my favorite cars Kristiina, you want to play with me?" Now that is love! He loves his favorite cars and you have to be pretty special for him to let you play with his special cars.

Zeke also loves to help Kristiina with everything! He loves to feed her, get her things and just take care of her like a big brother should!

I sure wish Kristiina was looking at the camera! It is really hard to get a good picture of these two.  Usually Zeke will make a weird face while Kristiina is looking at the camera or Kristiina is looking away. Oh well, maybe one day.

  Notice her ponytail? I love it! She has so much hair on the top of her head and no where else, so since she hasn't wanted to wear headbands I can at least get an elastic and clips in her hair