Arts and Crafts

So Corbin in typical boy fashion, rarely sits down and focuses long enough to color, or anything creative requiring fine motor skills, really. Every week so far he has come home from nursery with a blank piece of paper with his name written in the corner. I always see his cousin Rachel sitting quietly and being occupied coloring wherever we are, and I wish I could get him to do that so that I could get more done.

So I decided to let Corbin try putting stickers on the paper instead, thinking maybe he would have fun and concentrate on that. So I showed him how it worked and helped him get started, then went to do the dishes in the other room. Within about 2 minutes he came in to show me his masterpiece.

Here is the result:


Then of course he wanted to try and see if he could stick any on my face... so much for getting things done.

But I must say he sure was proud of himself. He kept pointing and saying "nose" and smiling at himself. (I don't know if he was aware that he also managed to get one to stick to his hair.)

I guess I will have to keep working on it with him.

The Zoo

Last week we went to the Zoo with Eric.


Checking out the rhinos.


Sitting on fun tiger statues.


Ironically enough...sitting in a giant egg.


Poking at the alligator's teeth.


At the end we stopped and let Corbin eat his lunch and play with the giant ball in the water.


You will notice in EVERY single picture that he is toting around a Zoo map. They gave us one when we entered and he wouldn't put it down. (I think it was a replacement for the lack of DVD covers :)

The Great Outdoors

This weekend we went camping with the Walkers up in the Uinta Mountains.

I think that Corbin might have been in heaven... a full 3 days of playing in the dirt, chasing Kona around, poking at rocks, flinging sticks, splashing in the water... pretty much everything little boys always want to do, but their OCD mother's don't let them do. When we first got there he kept falling down on the uneven terrain and every time his hands would get dirty he would walk over to me and say, "hans" and stick his hands out for me to wash, because I always get mad at him for wiping his dirty hands on clothes and such at home. So when Harmony first told him to brush the dirt off on his pants he looked over at me with "the look" and was shocked when I told him to go ahead. It took him awhile to get used to the fact that he wasn't going to get in trouble for wandering around in the dirt, but once he did, there was no stopping him. I don't think that he has ever been so happy. (Little kids are easy to please.)

And lucky for us the Walkers brought Kona along, and Corbin loved that poor dog. I say poor dog because he wouldn't leave her alone, he was constantly poking or pulling at some part of her. She made an excellent babysitter, as he followed her around for hours at a time. Luckily she was really nice and let him hover as much as he wanted.


"Hugs" - really Kona was trying desperately to take a nap, but some annoying kid kept laying on her, wonder who that could be?


Whacking her with giant leaves a few minutes later.


For Mother's Day Corbin (aka Caleb) got me one of those cool toddler carriers so that Bean can come on all of our hikes with us, it really worked out great, he loved being up high enough to see what was going on and we didn't have to walk .2 miles per hour (aka toddler speed).


An example of walking at toddler speed, cute but relatively annoying when going more than 15 feet away.


I have always enjoyed shooting BB guns for some reason. I remember lining old pop cans up on Cedar Mountain at Grandma and Grandpa Nash's during the summer as a kid and trying to hit cans halfway up the mountain. Although neither one of us has ever actually gone hunting and shot an animal. (Unless you count whatever happens with boys and rabbits at scout camp and in the desert for Caleb :)


Harmony showed Corbin how the trees smelled sweet, like butterscotch. I don't know if he ever really caught on to what was happening, but he sure did look proud after he sniffed the tree, just like his pal, "Hmoney."


Oh my heck did that boy work up an appetite while camping. I guess walking around for 10 hours a day, stopping to pick things up and throw rocks must burn a lot of calories because we now see where the phrase "bottomless pit" comes from. If he wasn't bothering Kona he was eating. The first night alone he ate two full peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (well almost full, he does still pick off some of the crust), a couple of bananas, a few graham crackers, two cups of juice, a cup of milk and some raisins. And that was after a big lunch too!


It took awhile for him and Kona to learn that they weren't allowed to eat each other's food. But once he realized that he could feed her her food, he loved putting things into her mouth. He thought it was awesome.

But we definitely wore him out, by the last day he was starting to get cranky from having his sleep schedule so rudely interrupted, either that or he was coming down off of the liquid steroids the doctor had him on this last week. Either way it was a great adventure, and we all had a lot of fun poking at the fire, roasting marshmallows, playing cards, hiking, shooting, fishing, exploring, etc. Thanks to Harm and Derek (and Kona) for all the great times!

Our Poor Kid

Well in case severe dairy and egg allergies weren't enough, Corbin has now been official diagnosed with asthma. No, actually he has been diagnosed with "Reactive Airway Disease" because in this day and age we like to be politically correct and it doesn't sound good to label a toddler with such a harsh, chronic condition. So we call it RAD until he gets older, and then it becomes asthma.

Anyway... he had a runny nose when we put him to bed Thursday night. Then he woke up around midnight and was screaming and shrieking all night long, until finally I couldn't take it anymore and as soon as morning hit I called to take him into the pediatrician. Well the problem is we just switched insurances and along with that had to find a new doctor, and since Corbin hasn't had a well child check up since then they wouldn't see him. So that meant I had to take him to the instacare instead.

We showed up and a young nurse was trying to take his vitals, but she couldn't get the heart rate monitor to read on his foot correctly so she went to get some help. As soon as the older nurse came in to assist she took one look at his chest heaving and called the doctor straight in as well as oxygen tanks and albuterol treatments. Then as soon as they had him on the drugs and oxygen they called an ambulance and had him transported down to Primary Children's Hospital. All the while they forgot to fill me in on what was happening until I got all chocked up and the doctor finally realized he should probably update me on his condition. I guess he was having an asthma, make that a RAD, attack. I don't remember the exact numbers because I was too worried about figuring out what was happening to listen to everything, but I overheard them say that his oxygen saturation levels were somewhere around 80% (they are suppose to be around 95%, I think) which has caused his heart rate to increase to around 220 beats per minute, which is not good.

The ambulance brought us to the emergency room where they monitored him, but even with the steroid treatments they couldn't get his oxygen levels to stay above 90% (the magic number needed to be able to leave the hospital) without the oxygen tanks. So eventually they had to admit him for an overnight stay.

The next day was no different, his condition didn't worsen, but he didn't seem to be improving. However with our high deductible and 80/20 insurance the bill was really starting to add up so we told the doctor we would rather take him home and treat him there, so they ordered some home care and portable oxygen tanks for him and we were suppose to get the final check for discharge at 4:00 pm.

However, come 4:00 they took him off of the oxygen to see how he did and he kept it up at about 90-92% all by himself. So then they asked us to stay a few more hours and if he could maintain it they would send him home with some prescriptions, but no oxygen. So by 7:00 he got the all clear and we brought our kid back home.

So this was possibly the worst 32 hours of Corbin's life as he screamed from the time that oxygen tank showed up until around 2:00 pm when things finally calmed down and they got things figured out a little better (then he only screamed every 2 hours when they came to check on him and hook up that darn face mask again). He hated all of the poking and prodding and all of the tubes and face masks (you'll notice in the picture he has on about 3 layers of tape keeping that tube in his nose because he kept yanking it out). He even broke one of the monitors when he pulled the sensor off. But he was a little trooper all things considered.

The worse part for me, aside from the obvious, is that being hooked up to monitors and oxygen he could basically sit on his bed or in my lap next to the bed and that is it. Trying to entertain a toddler with two books, two toys and three stuffed teddy bears for that long gets exhausting. He constantly begged to get "dow" nonstop. At one point they let us take off the monitors and got an extension on his oxygen thing so he could wander around the room. That seemed to appease him until one of the nurses left the door open and then he stood there in the doorway with his cord stretched as far as it could go whimpering and saying "hi" to every nurse that passed until one lady took pity on him and brought him one of those little yellow and red, flinstone style cars that kids sit in and pad around in, along with a portable oxygen tank so he could go up and down the hall. But that almost made it worse since Corbin is the kind of kid that the "If you give a mouse a cookie..." book was written after. It wasn't long before he kept pushing his limits and trying to get more and more freedom until he finally had to just go back into his room because he wouldn't obey anymore and was starting to cause problems for the hospital staff.

The other highlight of our stay was that I seriously had to give Corbin's medical history about 10 times. They wrote it all down in meticulous notes each time, but I am not sure what they did with it beyond that (obviously they didn't make photocopies of it, since everyone needed to get it again themselves). But they clearly didn't refer to it either, because the first time he asked for a snack to eat they brought him cheese and crackers. Slices of real cheddar cheese. Now, I enjoyed eating them, but really, shouldn't a hospital pay a little bit of attention to these kinds of things?

So then I pointed this out and they informed me that in the ER they usually don't handle snack requests, but upstairs once he got officially admitted they would have a dietitian that would have to sign off on everything they gave him. Okay, I guess that makes since, and the guy was really nice and went to get Bean some fruit from the employee lounge instead. But sure enough EVERY single meal that they brought him had something dairy on the tray. I was thinking we should have just slipped him some, after all he was in a hospital and they could treat him with epinephrine right away so he would be fine, but then we could sue the hospital and get enough money to cover this ridiculously expensive stay, but my dang integrity got a hold of me and I decided not to use my child like that :)

So basically this weekend's mini vacation was suppose to be a trip to ride the kiddie train in Farmington and play mini golf, but instead we spent our time cooped up in a hospital. At least we are already used to carrying around an epi pen everywhere we take Corbin, now we just add a fast acting inhaler to that. He is definitely going to be the weird kid at school.

Chreese

5 stars for the mac and chreese. I never thought that Corbin would be able to eat a bowl of mac and cheese or a grilled cheese sandwich, like a normal kid.

Yay for chreese! (Although it seriously does stink.)


I tried a bite and once you get over the smell it wasn't all bad, definitely not as good as real cheese though. Just don't tell him that! :)

Our Little Vegan

The other day we went to Wild Oats in Salt Lake City. It is basically a giant health food store, where you can purchase a lot of vegan products. We decide to get some fun new foods for Corbin to try out, since he has been getting super picky about what he eats lately and I am running out of foods to feed him during the day. We got egg-free, dairy-free cheese, yogurt, mac and chreese (no that's not a typo, that's what it is called :), etc.


Last night we tried out the cheese on him with a simple grilled cheese sandwich. And surprisingly enough, despite the fact that I gagged just smelling it, he actually liked it and ate almost the whole thing.


Today I am going to try the mac and chreese, we'll let you know how that goes.

Family Vacation

This summer, rather than taking off a full week and traveling somewhere, we decided to have Caleb use his vacation days to take off every Monday in June. And we are going to go on lots of little day trips over our long weekends. This first week we took Corbin to the aquarium down in Sandy. He ran from exhibit to exhibit pointing like crazy and yelling, "ish, ish, ish" nonstop.


He crawled back and forth through this tunnel for about 20 minutes straight.


Lately he really likes to "drive" so you can imagine his excitement when he saw a giant steering wheel.


He also thoroughly enjoyed lifting all of the flaps and pretending to read what it said inside.


And of course his all time favorite thing there was splashing in smelly fish water.


Most of the time the sting rays kept their distance from him, and his arms were too short to reach the bottom and pet them, but at one point, one swam up past him and brushed along his fingers, and boy did he think that was cool.

Afterwards we went to a park and had a picnic lunch with Bean.


Ever since I have been trying to get him to eat tuna fish sandwiches lately, he always opens his sandwiches to make sure they are peanut butter and jelly, and that Mom isn't trying to trick him. Which is annoyingly messy. You will also notice the pile of crust pieces building up in the corner of the picture, ya he refuses to eat those ones. He will eat the bread around them, but if a piece of crust accidentally gets in his mouth he pulls it out every time without fail.


Sliding with Dad.


Our son is starting to show some Monkish tendencies. He has to poke at everything he passes, and he has to pick up every piece of garbage he passes.


He basically cleaned up the whole playground area in the time that we were there. Including brushing the wood chips off of the slide and stairs where other kids had thrown them.