The fun never ends!

We have been up to our eyeballs with fun activities lately in the Knott household!  It seems it is just one fun thing after another these days! 

We have been attending sporting activities like Addi's soccer, my neice's Emorie Claire and Kendra's soccer games, and both nephews Trey and Dylan are playing football.



Nana with some of Trey's biggest fans at football.





Tired of watching football so played on the track and practice field.  All 3 ran around the entire track!



We went out the the Katy Rice Harvest festival a few weekends ago.  The weather was beautiful and we had a great time listening to the live music!



My favorite little girl!





The boys listening to the band.  This is just after Coop was dancing around playing his air guitar!



We were so fortunate to go to the Texans game with the Rentfros on Sunday.  It was THE BEST GAME I have ever seen in person!  We had a blast!  Thanks to Katie and Scott for watching the kids that day!



Kevin, me, Ursula and Joe at the game




Go Texans!



Speaking of Texans, at work this week, we had a visitor on campus.  Matt Schaub visited in support of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.  I took Cooper's Texans hat that he already had 2 autographs (Jacoby Jones and Danny Clark) on and Matt added his to it!  Couldn't pass up a picture for proof!

Twins

The other day, I walked into Cooper's classroom at school and noticed these life-size (2 year old life size) paper dolls sitting around the room.  They had a front and back and were stuffed with some type of soft filler to make them "plump".  They each had clothing on and were colored and decorated each in their own way.  Ms. Marcella pointed to one of the dolls and asked Cooper who it was.  Cooper responded, "He's my twin!"  Ms. Marcella would ask where the other people's twins were around the room and he would point to each as she said their name.

Apparently, all the kids laid down on paper on the floor and the teacher's traced them.  Cooper's twin had some of his extra clothing on that had been in his cubby.  He also had some crazy hair and a baseball cap on.  After a day or two, we took our twin home and Cooper has been so proud of it. 

His twin has a special place for now.  It is sitting on the rocking horse that is right next to Cooper's bed until we can figure out what to do with this lovely piece of artwork!  :)

BTW, Addi likes the twin too and had to get a picture with him.  Don't you just love how she is sitting with him?

Our Little Soccer Star!

We decided to sign Addison up for soccer this season. She has practices on Thursdays down the street from us. And she has the cutest coach (that would be her daddy, by the way)! At the YMCA meeting, no one volunteered to be the Head coach for the team and for some reason, people looked at Kevin like he would be a great guy for the job! I have to say, I am proud of him for taking on the commitment and I know Addison is proud that her daddy is out there with her!

We were both a little concerned how she would do with soccer since she has never played a team sport and is a pretty shy, non-aggressive girl. But to our surprise, she has done great! She is participating, keeping up with everyone, and getting right in there with her team!

At her game, she started out really strong and seemed to be loving it! After a while, she asked to go out of the game – I think was just getting so worn out because it felt like a million degrees out there! Obviously, that is to be expected and worked out fine considering all the girls have to take turns playing during the game. We are so proud of how well she did and her team even won their first game! GO SHARKS!

Cooper was there and wanted to get right in the game with the girls.  I kept reminding him that he can't play on the girls team and he has to be 4 years old.  After a while of being out there, he said, "Mommy, I want to go home!"  And I thought, "We have to get used to this, buddy.  This is the first of many games that we will be attending, either with Addison playing or Cooper playing!"

Takin' care of business

I have to say that I am very proud of my little buddy, Cooper. I am pleasantly surprised that I can say that he is potty trained now! He is still wearing diapers / pull ups at night and at naptime for now, but that may not be too much longer! We are still at the point where we ask him if he needs to go potty and his response usually is “I already went potty!” even if it was hours before. 

Notice his aim is a little off!

Otherwise, it is Super Coop that is letting us know when he needs to go! I always thought boys were suppose to be harder than girls to potty train, but that doesn’t seem to be the situation we have. I remember Addison was 2 months shy of her 3rd birthday before she was fully potty trained, including night time. All kids are different, so I guess only time will tell. But I can say, I am ready for NO MORE DIAPERS! :)  Yay for COOPER!!!

His teachers have been working on the potty training with him since he got into this classroom in May or June. It took him a bit to catch on, but now, the teachers say that he is teaching the other boys in the room how to take care of business! They have been a huge help in the process.

We are so lucky that he has great teachers, especially Ms. Marcella. She is just a wonderful teacher that I am so glad that both my kids have had! She and Ms. Vanessa work really hard to make the classroom a fun environment, but they are truly learning lots of things. They don’t just sit around and babysit…they take the opportunity to really teach the kids, even at the difficult age of 2!

Kevin's stroke

Most of you know that Kevin suffered a stroke on Tuesday, Aug 17th at 9:45pm.  He was having back problems leading up to this and that night, he got up and his back tightened up which caused tons on pain and he went to his knee and then rolled onto his back.  I was walking a few steps ahead of him and turned to find him on the ground.  I immediately went to him saying, "What's wrong?  What happened?  Why are you on the ground?"  I have to say, at first I thought he was kidding with me.  He was rolling around on the ground and making noises and trying to say something.  He looked toward me and that's when it hit me that his face was not moving on the left side.  He tried to smile and his left side stayed in one place while the right moved as normal.  He got off the ground and I got him into the bathroom and continued to ask him "What's wrong?  What are you doing to your face?  Are you playing around with me?"  He was still slurring and not saying much.  I saw him try to pick up his toothbrush and realized he had no control of his left hand.  I called my parents frantically, assuming that Kevin would stop me if he was really playing a horrible joke on me.  He obviously didn't stop me and I began telling my mom what was happening.  I got off the phone with her and called 911 and then our neighbor to ask them to come stay with the kids while they slept. 

The ambulance (and fire truck and police officers) arrived a few minutes later and Kevin was evaluated at the house and soon transferred by ambulance to West Houston Medical Center, which I had never even heard of before this.  They immediately took him for a CAT scan which showed he was not bleeding in his brain.  After they evaluated him, they also concluded that it was a stroke.  He was a good candidate for tPA, which is a medicine that has been shown to reverse the symptoms of a stroke if taken within 3-4 hours of episode, as long as you are not on blood thinners, young, and mostly good health.  Because the side effects did include the possibility of him "bleeding out", it was a scary time while the administered it. 

Kevin was then transferred to Ben Taub by helicopter where he was for a week while they performed lots of tests, exams, x-rays, etc.  Besides the stroke being confirmed by the MRI, the Echo and TEE tests revealed that Kevin has a PFO (small hole in the heart that is present in ~15% of people) and a slightly enlarged right lower ventricle. This is not the reason for the stroke, but could have allowed the blood clot that probably formed in his legs to shoot up to the right side of his heart, move through the PFO to the left side and not get filtered through the lungs like it typically would. Instead it went to the right side of his brain, where the stroke occurred, causing the temporary paralysis on his left side. But, when you see him or talk to him now, you would not know that he had suffered a stroke! We are so thankful!



Things could have been so much worse. I realized this week that I was supposed to be out of town on business from 8/16-18, but because the event that I was attending was cancelled due to the tragedy in the Gulf, I was at home that night right where I was suppose to be…to take care of my husband and get help. Because Kevin got to the hospital quickly and was treated with tPA within the 3-4 hour window, it looks like he has no lasting side effects from the stroke. We are waiting for some blood tests and over the next few weeks/months, we will be getting more opinions from different Stroke specialists in Houston - we will be talking to Neurologists and Cardiologists.

Kevin is already back at work, taking it a little easy. He is on baby Asprin and a cholesterol medicine (even though he has cholesterol to be “envious” of according to the doctors) to help lower the risk of another stroke. We are being sensitive at this point to anything he is feeling, whether it’s a headache or light-headed. But overall, we are so pleased with where he is today…God was definitely watching over him and had a hand in all of this.

Kevin and I wanted to express our thanks to all of you for your prayers, love, concern, and support that you have given our family over the last 10 days. We knew that we were blessed prior to Kevin’s stroke, but it’s even more evident today. It's been overwhelming - all the prayers, visits, calls, texts, voice mails, emails, offers to help, meals, cards, flowers, etc is so much appreciated. Thanks to you all, I could be at the hospital with Kevin while our sweet kids, house, dogs, etc were being taken care of. Really, we couldn’t have made it through this scary time without you.

Hot days of summer!

What's just about the best thing that could happen when the kids are helping us wash the cars, playing with toys in the sprinklers, and sweating on a really HOT, summer day?

The ice cream man makes a swing through our neighborhood!

It made their day!

Growing up before my eyes...

Lately, I have realized how FAST my babies are growing up…they have been doing some pretty great things lately to remind me too!


Addison can now be considered a SWIMMER! In the last month, she has improved drastically – it just blows me away. She can swim from the steps in my parents’ pool to the other side without help. She is even coming up for breaths along the way!

Cooper is now officially paci FREE! He has not had a paci anytime since July 25th! Before that, it was only at bedtime and naptime at home (not at naptime at school for months). But now, we told him that we had to give it away to baby Parker (even though he doesn’t take pacis either!) and big boys don’t take pacifiers. The first few nights were a little rough for all of us, but after 3-4 nights, there were no more tears. I have to say that I am a little concerned at what it has done to his teeth – we will find out more at his first dentist appointment at the end of August.

Addison is really getting into a game that we have started playing – the rhyming game. She loves for us to say a word and then she comes up with at least one rhyming word. She is very good at it and it’s something that we can play anywhere! She also surprised me the other night while we were watching “So you think you can dance” and said, “Mommy, doesn’t that say Fox?” as she pointed toward the T.V. Sure enough, we were watching the Fox network and on the bottom of the screen, it said FOX. I know that she knows all the letters and how to spell a couple words, but I thought this was great!

Cooper is getting closer to being potty trained! He is wearing “chumpies” all day at school, except naptime. He usually has a couple of accidents a week still, but in the last few days when I pick him up at school, he is wearing the same clothes that we sent him in! At home on the weekends, we need to start working on it more. During the week after school, we keep him in underwear and he goes potty (“tee tee potty” and “makes bubbles” as he says). But on the weekends, we are always on the go, so it’s a little harder. He also went #2 on the potty for the first time at home last night!!! I plan to get more serious about the potty training very soon! Before you know it, we will have a diaper free household – that will be a great day! :)