Father's Day, one year later, and a lap full of dinner

Happy Father's Day!

Campbell and I are blessed to have a lot of great fathers in our lives. Each of these men are oh-so valuable to us!

Her exceptional beyond words daddy and the love of my life.

Campbell has three wonderful grandfathers who absolutely adore her. It is a blessing that these men are involved in her life on an everyday kind of basis. Russ & I couldn't hope for anything more for our girl.

My daddy & Campbell's Geda.
Russ's dad & Campbell's Paw-Paw.
Russ's stepdad & Grandpa Bob.
We love you guys!

A year ago, on Father's Day, Campbell was dedicated at church. That morning I took these pictures of her all dressed up and sitting on the chair in Russ and my bedroom.
Wasn't she a precious little thing?

This morning Campbell and I were sitting in the bedroom talking to Russ while he got ready for worship practice before church. I thought about those pictures, taken last Father's Day.

Trying to recreate those pictures with my squirmy, wormy one year-old was a little more difficult!

I put Campbell's dinner on a cute little plastic tray (think miniature cafeteria style tray) tonight thinking she was ready for that. She has actually done pretty well with bowls lately and not totally dumping them out. I stopped paying a whole lot of attention a few minutes into her eating dinner and looked up just in time to see her dump her whole tray of pasta, banana, and pork chop pieces over her head and into her lap.

She even dumps her food cute.

So normally she would have totally gotten in trouble for that, but I realized later that I was too intent on taking pictures. Oops.

Famous Last Words

Life is becoming increasingly more interesting every day since Campbell turned one. It's like someone (someone? :) flipped a switched and amped up her personality. Today she kept Missy and I entertained on a shopping trip to Target and Old Navy with a bag of goldfish and just enough attitude to be cute.

Missy and Spencer came over tonight to check on the progress of our current house project (that is another story for another day!). Missy was telling me that Ellison had just pooped in the bathtub. I thought to myself...not smugly, mind you, just matter-of-factly...that Campbell has never done that, not even as a newborn.

Famous last words. (Thoughts?).

Literally five minutes later, Missy, Spence, and Ellison left and I put Cam in the bath. She was just starting to play with her toys and instructing me which toys to hand her, when I saw IT. It was huge. I yelled for Russ and pulled her out of the tub.

We both totally panicked and acted totally bewildered...like we haven't been dealing with her poop for over a year now.

She was, of course, so funny.

If you have a sensitive stomach, you should probably stop here. I promise it's tasteful at least!


She then instructed her daddy on washing the bathtub. If you know me, you are not the least bit surprised that my child is already demonstrating an overwhelming amount of bossiness. Seriously. How can you spend that much time bossing people around when you only know ten words at the most?



Bathtub's clean. Let's try again.


Second time around was definitely less eventful!

First Birthday!!

So it's about time I got around to posting first birthday party pics of our girl.

First up, her actual birthday. Some time ago, someone had given me the advice to spend time just the three of us on her actual birthday. We thought it sounded like a great idea. Looking back, with the chaos that was her party, we are so glad to have had that evening together to celebrate one year of life with Campbell Rose.

We started by turning her carseat around to face the FRONT.

She wasn't as excited as I thought she would be at first. She was pretty happy about it the next day though!

Then we went to Double Dave's. Cause you know, we trust the crust. Campbell had her first taste of pizza!

Next we went to get ice cream. I have been BEYOND neurotic about what Campbell can and cannot eat. So other than family members (yes, I know who you are!) sneaking her bites of things, she has not been allowed to have sweets at all. We didn't want to give her cake and ruin the birthday party cake effect, so we opted for ice cream instead. I think she actually enjoyed the ice cream much more.

Birthday party post coming soon!

Diapers are for babies

Campbell is officially on the mend. She hasn't had any fever since yesterday and is starting to eat and drink like normal again.

Today we saw the return of her personality. When I laid her down for her nap this afternoon, she was in her diaper and a shirt. When I went to get her up, this is how I found her....


Her daddy said I had to censor the pictures. She was just too proud of herself!

Poor Baby

We have had a rough few days in the King household.

We woke up Wednesday morning like normal. It was a work day for me and Campbell was going to my mom's house for the day. When I got her out of bed she felt warm. I took her temp and it was 101. She was acting normally though and didn't have any other symptoms. I gave her Tylenol and we decided I would go to work and get some things squared away, then call the doctor's office when they opened. By the time the doctor's office opened she had no fever and my mom said she was acting fine, so we decided to just keep an eye on her. She was fine all day, then at 2:00 my mom called and all the sudden her fever had shot up to 102.5. I called the doctor, left work, and met my mom and Campbell there. Our doctor was out for the day, but we saw another of the pediatricians. She thought that with the lack of other symptoms (no congestion, ears looked fine, etc), that it was probably viral. Russ had a bad cold the previous week, so it wasn't so far fetched.

Her fever went up and down Wednesday night and all day Thursday. We gave her Benadryl at night and Tylenol/Motrin around the clock, but even with that combination, she had a constant fever the whole time. When the medication would wear off it would get high - like 103.

On Thursday night we decided to set the alarm to get up every three hours and check her temp and re-medicate her if necessary. We didn't want to take any chances with her fever getting too high. At 1:00 we got up and went in her room. I felt her and she was BURNING. We have a temporal thermometer. It's not the most accurate, but it is a good way to gauge whether she has a temp at all and I need to check it rectally. I just set it on the back of her head and checked. It read 106! We pulled her out of bed and stripped her down and checked it rectally. It was 105.9. We called the doctor, put some cold washcloths on her while we waited and tried to get her to drink some water. She was really lethargic. The doctor called back almost immediately and said we needed to get it down to at least 103 in the next hour or we would need to take her to the ER. We put her in the bath. This woke her up a little and she was not pleased! We were able to get the fever down to the high 102's and keep it there for the rest of the night.

The doctor had us bring her in on Friday morning first thing and she ran some tests. Poor baby had lost more than half a pound in a day and a half. One of the things she mentioned on the phone the night before was a possible UTI. She needed to get a urine sample to test for that. All of Campbell's blood work came back fine, physically the doctor couldn't find anything, and they put a bag on her to collect a urine sample.

Our appointment was at 9:15. We finished with everything but the urine sample. The doctor had us wait for a while, offering her some beverages, to see if she would go. She didn't. We finally left there and came home, with the intention of collecting the sample and taking it back up to the office to be analyzed.

By 2:30 I was borderline a mess. It seems that between the bag taped to Campbell's vag, our constant checking to see if she had "gone" yet, and likely the pain that occurred when she did go, Campbell had made up her mind that not only was she not peeing, but she was not going to eat or drink anything either. We pulled out all the tricks. All her favorite foods, water, and milk were quickly rejected. I offered her juice, which I don't let her have, because I figured she would love the sweetness of it. No thanks. Same with popsicles. And baby food, which I figured would help since it has so much water in it. She has been weaned off the bottle and formula for about a week and a half. Even though it might have caused me physical pain...I did try to give her a bottle of formula. (I promise I wasn't even secretly relieved that she didn't drink it!). Basically this girl was not eating or drinking NOTHING!

At 2:45 I stuck my hand inside her diaper to see if the bag was full at all. To my horror and dismay I felt...wetness. Apparently, after so many hours the adhesive on the top part of the bag had come loose and the pee did what it normally does, soaked the diaper. Praise God there was the slightest bit of pee in the bottom of the bag and when I called the office the nurse said it was enough to get a culture. My fascination with my child's urine on this day is an aspect of motherhood I was not expecting.

We went back to the office, they ran the culture, and sure enough the preliminary results indicate a UTI. I am beyond relieved to know what is going on. The doctor started her on antibiotics last night and her fever has dropped significantly already. She still isn't eating, but she is taking in liquids, so we are feeling better about the risk of dehydration. She is also acting much more like herself.

Next week when we see the doctor to follow up we will talk about some tests that are standard after a child has a UTI. The doctor has recommended we do these to ensure that there are no kidney or bladder abnormalities. More than anything we are so grateful to the Lord for keeping our little girl safe, for waking us up right when we needed to, and for bringing healing to her little body.

I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend

Has it really been 5 years?

The Proposal!!

May 22, 2004

Moving from Nacogdoches to Houston (May 2007)

Third Wedding Anniversary (May 22, 2007)

KK's Masters Graduation

We're Pregnant!

Happy 5th Anniversary to the man of my dreams. Being your wife is always an adventure, Russ King.

What a journey we have taken to get here! I keep thinking about what someone said at our small group a few weeks ago, "if you can make it five years, you can make it sixty". While that might not be true for everyone, it certainly is for us!

I don't know if I can express to you how proud I am of you, of the man you have become. I knew I married a good guy, but I am in awe of the man you have become and the characteristics I have seen emerge in you. Your dedication to providing for Campbell and I, your discipline to be a wonderful, encouraging teacher, your desire and work to lead our home spiritually, the way you fulfill your commitments to the church, and of course your furocious intent to make sure our grass stays as green and beautiful as possible, to name just a few!

I am also so proud of us. We got married as kids. Young, clueless, selfish, so unsure how marriage should look. I feel like we are thirty years and three thousand miles from those two. It blesses me that we laugh more than we fight now, that after years of working against each other to achieve our own purposes, we have finally figured out what it means to be united. Thank you Lord for such grace and mercy and for those that have helped us figure this out along the way.

I love you Russell King. Thanks for making me one blessed wife!