On Memorial Day I dressed up all the kids in RED, WHITE, and BLUE and we went to take Kooper some new flowers. The big mistake was taking the kids around lunch time but not feeding them first. Everyone was hungry and no one wanted their picture taken.
The past 4 days, everyday the kids have ran through the sprinklers or jumped on the tramp with the sprinklers on underneath….I am a little scared to look at my next water bill!
This was her engagement picture. 
I don’t know what I can say to you kids to comfort you and give you hope except we know that we’ll see and have that wonderful little child to get to know, care for and love again. And we also know that there are several great-great Grandmothers up there to welcome and love and care for him until you get to have him and love him again.I know my grandma is now up there caring and loving on my little Kooper. I love and miss them both very much. I am sure the reunion she has been having with all her loved ones that have passed on is a wonderful one but we miss her dearly here on earth. She was an amazing women and such an inspiration to me. Until we meet again, I love you!
Kade with his best friend Shane.
Kamryn has been such a silly girl lately. She is growing before my eyes and sometimes I think, wow when did she learn to talk and understand so many things. She listens so well. She understands so many things that it amazes me. She is so funny. Lately if we are going outside or out into the garage she holds the door and says “C’mon yets go!” and every animal is named “CJ” she says his name so well! All she wants to watch it “Bawnie”. When she is hungry she walks over to the pantry and opens the door and says, “Whacha want?” She signs or says please without asking. Whenever she wants to go somewhere she says, Car (but sounds like she is from Boston.) She recently started to FINALLY say I love you. I have been working on it for a while now. She loves to give Eskimo kisses and real kisses. Lately she puts both of her hands on your cheeks and brings you in for a kiss! She LOVES to brush her teeth! Every night and morning she always goes into the bathroom and gets her tooth brush or she tries to steel someone else's. At night I don’t even have to remind her to brush her teeth when it’s bedtime she walks right into the bathroom and grabs her toothbrush.
When she can’t do something herself she says, “I nee help."
When she asks for something, even if you say no she say, “K” I don’t think she gets the no part because she cries again for it even after another no and responding with “K”.
She asks to go “aside” outside all the time. She runs through our hard grass (I never knew grass could be hard until I came to AZ) or the rocks without even thinking about it. There are so many funny and cute things that she says, I could go on and on all day!
I thought she would be better at sharing considering she has a younger brother who plays with all her toys and an older one that takes whatever toy she is playing with. But not so much. She hates to share. Although she is always willing to share her food and treats. I have to watch her because she just hits Keegan over the head with anything she can get her hands on…jealous a little?
She doesn’t like baseball hats, or any hat for that matter. She likes to try them on herself but doesn’t like them on anyone else. Ryan came out the other day with a hat on and she hid her face and wouldn’t come near him. Hot took his hat off and she smiled big and gave him big hug and even a kiss. I put the hat back on Ryan and when she saw him again she turned her head away and covered her eyes. So silly.
She is such a tough girl that wrestles with Kade. If she falls and skins her knee she doesn’t even cry! She is a princess dressed up in her high heels and purse one minute then wrestling with her brother the next!
When she is eating or drinking and it starts to go down the wrong pipe she pats her own back when she coughs from it and looks for concern from everyone else. She will fake cough until you ask if she is okay.
She is sleeping in her bed so well. She doesn’t get up and try and come out of her room and this morning I heard her so I opened the door and she was playing with her kitchen. Recently she started taking her clothes off. It is getting hot here. She would rather run around in a diaper than have clothes on! Oh dear!
I don’t know if I have written about if much here on the blog (I forget what I write) but after we lost Kooper I felt like I was the only person in the world who had lost a baby right before they were born. I hadn’t heard of it happening very much and I felt like no one understood me. I didn’t know what people thought of the circumstance and I felt like they were considering my loss similar to a miscarriage. Though a miscarriage has to come with pain and heartache having your baby at 38 and a half weeks die is different. I am not trying to minimize anyone else’s loss, I am just saying it’s different. Although I have never experienced a miscarriage I have talked to mother’s who have experienced both miscarriage and stillbirth and through their experiences they are different. Nobody else has really met that baby but you. You have felt their kicks and hiccups for weeks and weeks. They already have a routine if you pay attention. You have an idea of their personality and in most peoples mind once you reach 32 weeks it seems like if anything were to go wrong they would just have to stay in the NICU for a little bit. Not many even have a thought or consider that something could go wrong. I still wonder when I tell people about Kooper, especially when they are asking how many kids I have and Include him if they think of it as a miscarriage and think it’s silly that I would tell them about a child that I never raised outside of tummy. I never shared pictures of Kooper’s service (only a couple) on the blog and I decided to share it because I am ready now and I have been for a while I just never thought to do it until recently when I was looking back to older post.
Because we didn’t have any family here in Arizona none of our family was able to see our beautiful perfect little boy after he was born so we decided to have a viewing. I was a little worried as to what he would look like once he had been embalmed. I wanted the service to be just our family and very close friends. Now that I look back I wish I would have opened it to anyone that wanted to come. Ryan works for a very large company and he had so many friends and coworkers there for him and our family. I too had many coworkers and friends that were there for me but it felt strange to me that the possibility of all these people that I didn’t know watching me grieve. I think it all went back to my feeling that nobody understood.
After the burial we went back to the church where the viewing was held and had lunch.
Many may think that I am weird or it is weird that I am holding a 1 and a half week old baby at Kooper service. Yes I had a hard time around babies, but not this one, not SaraJane! It probably helped that she was a girl, I still missed my baby but SJ was like my baby too! It felt so good to be holding a baby because that is what I had waited 9 months to do, but at the same time it was heartbreaking that it wasn’t Kooper. I love her so much!
We love and miss you so much Kooper! You are on our minds daily and we always feel like someone is missing in out family. You have helped motivate me to be a better person and be the best I can be so that we can be together again.
