Teresa Dee Meyerhoeffer Christensen's Life History : Kristopher Craig (K.C.) 1989

KRISTOPHER CRAIG (KC) - Corvallis, Oregon 1989

We were settling into life in Corvallis, the home of the Oregon State Beavers. Roger applied for and began the MBA Program at OSU. (I went to a class for him when he couldn’t attend, took notes and even participated in the discussion. The instructor was surprised.) I was busy with four darling, active girls, teaching Joy School for Chelsea and in the Relief Society Presidency over Homemaking organizing huge activity/dinners for the women every month.

In July of 1988 I found out another baby was on the way. I wanted to tell Roger in a way he would be excited and not stressed about one more mouth to feed. His birthday was coming up so to celebrate I rented the movie “Overboard” with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. I told him it had a message for him. It was a funny movie about a widowed, working man with four boys who tricked a wealthy woman with amnesia into believing she was his wife and the mother of his children. At the end of the movie he asks what he could ever give her since she has everything and she replies “a little girl”. Since we had the four girls, I was hoping he might pick up on I was maybe going to give him a boy? It was a little too abstract and he had no idea what I was going for. So I gave him a little box wrapped in purple paper with the EPT test showing I was pregnant inside and left the room while he opened it. It was a sweet experience, he was happy about his baby-gift arriving in 8 more months. On September 19th I heard the heartbeat. A baby was really on the way.

While waiting for it’s arrival life continued. My parents, Roger’s parents and brother Chris with a new girlfriend Tracey came to visit our new home. We decided to name the baby “Kylee or Keelie Brooke” if a girl and “Keegan Roger” if a boy. I did not like my new doctor team in Corvallis and Dr. Woodfield called from Ontario to check in and said he would give me an ultrasound to tell me the sex of the baby if I came by. (I found out later he had to go into drug rehab). Then in February we had a huge snow storm and were snowed in for 10 days and school was off for a week.

Over spring break in March, I took the girls roller skating and Emily broke her wrist. We spent the afternoon of the 23rd in the Clinic getting it set and I had some contractions there. A new family the Catchpoles with four boys and a girl in Chelsea’s Joy School had invited us to Easter Dinner that Sunday. Good Friday morning, March 24th, 1989 we were dying Easter eggs and I started having contractions again. I went to lay down for a few minutes and they did not go away, so I picked up a babysitter, called Roger and we went to the hospital.

Dr. Kraus checked me about 3:00 P.M. and said I was at 4 cm, so broke my water as I protested. I was not mentally ready. I had been studying the Bradley Method of relaxation techniques for delivery and by the time I asked for pain medication I was already at 9 cm so it must have worked well. I just concentrated on relaxing my muscles and letting my body do it’s work. I visualized the cervix like a turtle-neck sweater stretching to go over the baby’s head. With two only pushes at 4:19 P.M., K.C. Christensen was born! Named Kristopher Craig after our two oldest brothers. Roger wanted to name him Casey and I did not want a name that could be a girl’s name too, since we already had four girls I wanted a definite boy’s name….so we used the initials K.C. instead. Roger was so surprised and excited to have a boy. I am sure people could hear him down the hall! K.C. was wonderful, 8 lbs. 5 oz. and 22 inches long. Roger went home to take the babysitter home and brought the sisters up by 6:00 that day. We were all in love with him. I wrote in my journal: “K.C. doesn’t really look like anyone yet. I think he is going to be fair. He has a skinned nose I guess from the sheets, a lung full of fluid from being born and loose ankles from his cramped position.” You would never know it. He seemed perfectly healthy and happy.

I studied and discussed with our pediatrician Dr. Rampton about circumcision and he felt the reasons not to have it done were emotionally based and for health reasons recommended it. I held K.C.’s head and talked to him through the procedure. I wrote: “He was so calm and we love him so much!” We brought him home on Easter Sunday. His named seemed appropriate. Christopher means “Christ bearer” and Craig means “hill” (maybe Gethsemane). We now had the fantastic five…quite the houseful of children and I was only 29 years old. (I would turn 30 the next July).

K.C. (or Kase as I sometimes called him) grew three and a half inches and seven pounds in two months. He was 100% or off the charts for size and took three steps at seven months old! He always looked older than he was. When KC was two months old I somehow got locked in my bathroom while getting ready and the door would not unlock. Emily and Stephanie were at school and Chelsea and Hailey outside in my bedroom with KC. It was awful, but so crazy it made me laugh a few times. I was trapped for over an hour with KC screaming as Hailey tried to take care of him and Chelsea tried to help me get out. Chelsea brought me tools that did not work and finally slid a pencil and paper under the door for me to write a phone number for her to call for help. Judy Garnett another Joy School mom came and took the door off so I was finally free (and could get dressed).

A few other adventures from that year:

1) In July 1989 our family went camping to Honeyman State park on the coast. We met an LDS family named the Lillenbergs, a fireman Mark and wife Deedee with four kids who were camping all the way up the coast for their vacation. We shared campfires with them a couple nights. We were going to have Sacrament meeting with them Sunday morning, but it rained so hard overnight there were puddles everywhere and we decided to pack up our sopping camping equipment and go home. We invited them to stop by on their way (really out of their way) by and dry off if they wanted to, never thinking they would. They did and they stayed at our home for two days and two nights! Interesting how having the gospel in common made us fast friends and we still exchanged cards many years later.

2) I took Emily to the Portland Temple dedication that fall and she ended up on the cover of the Church News!

3) On January 13, 1990 we had a massive wind and rain storm come through Corvallis. At 12:30 A.M. our power went off and the huge Douglas Firs started falling in our neighborhood. It looked like a war zone. We carried all the kids to the basement and Roger said a prayer that angels would guard the four corners of our house before he left to go help. In the morning we saw trees had fallen on two of the houses in our cul-de-sac and on a car, they had fallen across roads, but our home was safe and intact.

4) I invited Roger’s family (33 total) to come for a three day reunion for his 33rd birthday…“Come to the Christensen Clan Caravans” . I let them choose/vote on three out of seven adventures to experience in the area. His parents and Craig and Cheri’s families came and we went to the Oregon coast, Silver Falls State Park and a few other local sites.

5) Roger’s Savings and Loan was taken over dramatically by the Feds and Bank of America ended up buying them (which caused us eventually to move to Bend, Oregon for another job).

6) During tithing settlement in 1990 when KC was a year old, one of his sisters was carrying him and tripped and fell on KC which caused him to break his leg. He ended up with a large plaster cast that Emily drew a Little Mermaid on because she was his favorite and he would dance to the Disney video. KC had so many broken bones in his young life we feared people would think him abused…broken finger in a nursery chair, injured elbow running in the church gym, broken leg at one, broken arm three different times, two from football and once from slipping on the ice. The broken arms caused him three surgeries to put in plates and screws, then one to take them out and another to put them back in. His surgeon for the three surgeries was a former NFL running back for the Patriots who retired due to injuries. KC had one set taken out again after his mission for a total of four arm surgeries, but he still has a plate with screws in the deeper arm bone.

We moved from Corvallis when KC was 2 years old.