Still Big

Well Thursday came... and Thursday went... and I am still big.


I never took any of those belly growth pictures on a weekly basis like some girls do, but I do remember taking one when I was 4 months pregnant and starting to get chubby enough that my clothes didn't really fit.


I thought I was getting a prego belly at the time, but when I went and pulled it up, I had to laugh at how little I was compared to now. I AM HUGE! I tried to wear the same shirt so that you could get a good comparison, boy did it have to stretch pretty far!

Asian Night

This afternoon we got together with Harm & Derek and Stacie & Mitch for a themed dinner. We all dressed up in our cool Asian attire and ate yummy Oriental food -- which meant that I didn't have to cook, because Caleb made Bul Gogi (Korean meat) from him mission for us to contribute. I thought it was all pretty good, my favorite thing was Harmony's simple stir fry, but Caleb really enjoyed it.

He misses his Korean food, and I have never been big on cooking Oriental for him, so it was good to try something new and have some fun with it. Our picky little eater even ate the tofu and rice noodles, we of course had to make him eat all the vegetables and he didn't even touch the meat... we'll keep working on it.


I tried to find cool outfits at DI, but nothing would fit over my belly, so in the end Caleb and I borrowed some jackets that my dad had picked up on his mission to Taiwan. Corbin however got to be a modern Asian boy with his slightly too large, bright orange, tie-die, Yu-Gi-Oh tee shirt and extreme hair spikes. He looked pretty sweet! (I didn't get a group picture showing our outfits, so we'll have to get a copy from someone to post later.)


Corbin seemed to like sitting on the floor eating at a little table just his height. However I don't know how those Asians get their kids to sit still during a meal when they can run around so easily between bites. Corbin definitely needs to be strapped into his high chair or at least on a chair where it takes effort to get down. And he was most definitely a fan of Harmony's tiny tea cups, which I think he refilled at least a dozen times, but loved drinking out of!

Silverware Boy

Corbin has official reached the age where he now has his first chore. For awhile now he has been taught to help clean up his toys and such, but after aways wanting to be a "helper" in the kitchen whenever I am doing anything (which of course is more work for me trying to help him help me) we have discovered a job he can do that actually does contribute something. He is the official Silverware Boy.


I am pretty sure that every house in America has a Silverware Boy. This person is almost always the current youngest child that can walk and is constantly called whenever the dishwasher needs to be unloaded. In our home, Corbin has now assumed that role, in a couple of years his little sister will take over and so will continue the passing of the "Silverware Boy/Girl" title throughout the end of time.

"Open da door..."

Corbin is not very good at staying in his bed at night, so like all good parents we follow a regular, calming bedtime routine, tuck him in and then proceed to lock him in his room. (We don't literally lock it, but he doesn't know how to open doors yet, so it's basically the same thing in his mind.)

And almost every night he immediately gets his pillow, stuffed animal and blanket and makes a little bed on the floor in front of the door. Then he lays there all comfy cozy in his make-shift bed, sticks his fingers out from under the door and calls, "open da door... Mommy, open da door, please!" for the next 10-20 minutes until he eventually falls asleep. He obviously has no hope of actually getting someone to open the door, since he settles in for the long run each night, but he never gives up trying... what an annoyingly persistent little trooper - gotta love him!


Every night before we go to bed Caleb has to go in and slowly scoot the door open, pick him up and move him to his bed. Heaven help us when this one learns how to open doors!

Last weekend my little brother was watching him for us and Cameron said the saddest thing was when he was putting Corbin to bed, Corbin looked at him and said, "but why? Paam, why?" (don't ask me where that nickname came from, but that is how he says Cameron's name... we encourage it, because Cameron doesn't seem to like it :) in his ultra sad little helpless voice. I am amazed Cameron was strong enough to say goodnight and shut the door. The older he gets the better he gets at finding your weakness and getting you to cave in and give him what he wants, I don't think I could have handled a "but why? Mommy, why?"

Snow Day

Today we went outside and spent some time running around in the snow. Literally, Corbin thought it was the coolest thing ever that he was allowed to roll around in the snow, because normally when we are walking to and from the car I yell at him if he tries to run through it instead of going around on the sidewalk.


So today I bundled him all up and let him go. (Although I might have over-bundled him considering his neck was starting to sweat by the time we came inside :) After the thrill of running wild wore off we built a snow castle and then played on the playground. He got a kick out of going down the slide and landing in a pile of snow. Then unfortunately all good things must come to an end and we had to go inside to take a nap... which he actually did!


Lately he has stopped taking naps, which means I miss out on my "get things done" time. I think that it is probably because we have been staying inside most of the time and reading books, coloring, playing with toys, etc... all things that don't burn off as much energy as when he used to go outside everyday. So it was good for him to get out and run around and just be a boy.

Colonization

I don't know how many of you remember this great game from my childhood...


...but it is way fun. Caleb got me a copy for my birthday that we played this weekend. I would highly recommend it. They have made a few graphic improvements over the years...



...but otherwise it is the same great game I remember playing on Sunday afternoons growing up.

My Birthday

Yesterday was my 24th birthday. It ended up being great. Thanks to all the family members and friends that took the time to give me a call and wish me a Happy Birthday, it was fun to hear from everyone.

Since it was Sunday we went to my parents house for dinner with my family and they all got me great gifts, thanks everyone. It was apparently not part of my birthday, but my mom also gave us some cute outfits and blankets she made for our soon to be daughter, which has only gotten me more excited for her to finally get here next month. The best thing was that Caleb got me a new digital camera. Our other one was getting pretty old, in fact my whole family was making fun of it not 2 minutes before I opened the new one. I am excited to have a reliable camera that has a focus feature that will hopefully work more than 50% of the time, unlike the last one. As should many of you, since I often would take multiple pictures of the same thing, since inevitably one would have the colors slightly (or largely) off and/or be really blurry and pixelated. It really was a pretty nice camera, back in the day when we got it, but lets just say technology has come a long way in only a few short years and there are some pretty cool things available now. I am still trying to play with all the buttons and figure things out, but it looks like a good one.

Caleb also said that he would make me a cake, if I would pick out what kind I wanted. I am not a big cake eater (unless it's cheesecake, which is really something else) so I decided (after much mind changing and debate, which nearly drove Caleb crazy) that I wanted an ice cream cake.

I was a little nervous when Caleb pulled out his tool kit, rather than normal kitchen appliances to assemble the cake (typical male cooking techniques I suppose), but it turned out really yummy. First he crushed up a package of oreos (thus the hammer) and mixed them with a 1/4 cup of melted butter. Then poured chocolate fudge over the oreos. (I think the recipe called for this layer to be in the middle of the ice cream, but Caleb determined that putting it on the bottom would be easier and not have any effect on the taste of the final product, so it became a crust instead.) Then you layer on some ice cream, followed by whip cream and top it off with chocolate sauce and a couple decorative oreos. Not only did it look surprisingly good, but it tasted amazing! I was quite impressed, I think it will become one of my new favorite dessert recipes.


Of course Corbin has to be involved in everything I do these days, so he "helped" me blow out my candle.


We gave Corbin a bowl of soy ice cream and a couple of oreos (oddly enough a hyper allergenic child can eat them, cream filling and all, since they contain no actual milk or eggs, lucky for us they are all 100% artificial flavors and other unhealthy substances :) so that he could join in the celebration with us. You can tell from this picture that he is not used to cold or sugary treats.


Another indication that he doesn't eat much sugar came about 40 minutes after he ate his dessert at which point he began running around my mom's house yelling excitedly and literally bouncing off the walls. At one point he started rolling around on the floor, wrapped up in the new baby blanket, I seriously don't know that he has ever been that hyper, you should have seen it.

Potty Training

So it has been a few months of Corbin asking to sit on the potty whenever he wants a treat and then just hanging out for a random amount of time until his body naturally goes pee. His interest hasn't really died like I thought it would though (I assumed that was just a phase). So now that the holidays are over and things have calmed down a little I decided maybe we can start to step it up a notch and try and teach him to recognize when he needs to pee, rather than just recognizing that he wants a treat. Plus my brother and his wife (mostly his wife did all the work, I assume) started potty training my niece that Corbin plays with once a week, so I was inspired by their efforts.

I decided the best way to teach him was to buy him some underwear and just plan on him peeing his pants a few times. Maybe that wet feeling would help him recognize when he needed to pee. So we went to the store, I let him pick out some cheezy superhero underwear and he ran around looking semi getto in just a pair of Mr. Incredible underwear the first night. Sure enough, he was jumping off a box and peed his pants (the lady at Walmart told us to buy those plastic underwear covers to save the carpet, so luckily clean up was pretty easy). I tried to talk to him and explain that when you wear underwear you have to put your potty in the toilet. Afterwards I felt confident that I had given him a pretty good understanding of this whole "big boy" process with key points and rationalizations.

So sure enough the next morning I dressed him in his second pair of underwear and was in the kitchen doing dishes when I hear him yelling from the bathroom, "Mommy I done, I did it. I want a treat!" I was thoroughly confused, then walked into the bathroom to see him sitting on his little toilet with his underwear still on and a puddle of pee soaked through his underwear and dripping into the toilet. Apparently I wasn't clear in my excellent potty training discussion that you take off the underwear before going pee on the toilet, and he had run in there when he needed to go and sat down on the toilet to pee, just like Mommy had said. He was so proud, and technically he had obeyed the rules and listened to me, fully expecting a treat for his good efforts so I had to reward him anyway, despite having still peed his pants.

Needless to say another discussion followed this experience and he is actually doing surprisingly well at using the toilet. We are quite excited for him, but mostly for ourselves, that's one less diaper change each time he does it right, I figure that's worth paying out a skittle or two.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas... sort of. (WARNING: This is a long one, but since I am not good at keeping a journal for Corbin, I figured I would take this time to make a record of our adventures for the future's sake :)

On Christmas Eve we went over to my Aunt's house and enjoyed a nice Christmas dinner with the whole extended family. The plan was then to go up to my parents house and spend the night awaiting Santa, but Corbin started wheezing and we thought that it would be better for him to sleep in his own "safe room" with the humidifier and air filter going.

So the next morning I woke up before Corbin and loaded Christmas into the car and got ready to head up to my parents first thing in the morning. Normally Corbin is one of those people that has to spend 30 minutes waking up before anyone should dare talk to him, so I assumed a 20 minute car ride would be perfect, we would carry him straight out there and he would be awake and ready to go when we arrived.

Boy was I wrong. We had been telling him on Christmas Eve that he needed to go to bed and while he was sleeping Santa was going to bring him a present and that in the morning we would open all of the other presents under the tree. And when we started to hear him waking up in the morning we went in to get him and take him to the car, and he saw us and jumped out of his little bed, ran straight past us, and stopped dead in front of the Christmas tree in the living room. "Where da presents go?" Oh I don't think that poor kid has ever looked so confused and devastated in his whole life. I am pretty sure he thought that Santa stole his Christmas, so Daddy quickly explained that Santa took the presents to Grandma's house and we were going to go get them.

There was no time for breakfast, shoes, or anything else, he headed straight for the door saying, "I ready... let's go."

He was quite excited to finally get to Grandma's and open his presents (along with everyone else's presents -- he wanted to help pass out the presents, but once he gave them to the person, he was also quite interested in helping them open it, "Oh, a ladle!" he was so enthusiastic about every little thing.)


Then about the time we finished opening presents and were starting to eat breakfast and play with all of our cool new stuff, Corbin took another turn for the worse and started with the wheezing really bad again and coughing and such, so we packed up and took him back home to sit in front of the humidifier again.

This was a particular bummer for us, because we each got a new game and needed additional people in order to play them, so we mostly we just laid around. Caleb did drive us around Bountiful to various points of interest, playing with his new GPS system and Corbin got to pick what we had for Christmas dinner... which meant pancakes of course.

The next morning we got up and Corbin was once again looking better so we packed up the car and headed down south to see Caleb's family. There was a snow storm that prevented us from getting all the way up the canyon to the cabin at Brian Head ski resort where we were staying, so luckily Caleb's brother was kind enough to drive part way down and meet us, and all of our junk, to get us the rest of the way up. Although I am think that he might have regretted that because that night is when things really took a turn for the worse, we slept maybe a total of 2 hours and spent the rest of the night comforting Corbin or coughing to death. We all three got sooo sick, it was ridiculous. So while everyone else went skiing and snowboarding, we hung out in the sick bay watching Disney movies with Bean. Luckily my mom had given him a portable dvd player to watch movies in the car on the way down, so we were able to stay fairly comfortable in our room. Considering how crappy we felt, it actually was a pretty good trip, everyone was super nice and even played games with us (sorry to Jake, who was already starting to feel a little sick when we left, we hope you can shake it before it gets too bad).

We got home from our trip safe and sound on Monday, and spent Tuesday holed up in our house trying to get better. For Christmas my mom gave me a juicer, which we decided to try out. We went to the store and bought some yummy fruits, our first experiment was pear raspberry... which tasted excellent. Corbin definitely liked helping drop the fruit in and watching it get mashed up and then drip out the end as juice.


Let's see... that brings us to New Year's Eve celebrations. We went up to my parent's house to play all of our games that we missed out on at Christmas and of course eat lots of junk food and treats. Since we were all still recovering from illness, we didn't stay until midnight though. Instead we stopped by the Walker's to visit for a little while and then headed home. We did however let Corbin stay up at home until midnight to ring in the New Year... as you can see he got a little hyper and silly missing all that sleep.


So that's basically everything we have been up to lately. We are now enjoying the last few days of freedom before the weekend is over and Caleb goes back to work and real life sets in again. Busy season will start up and we'll bunker down waiting for the baby to come :)

Lights on Temple Square

Tonight after our traditional Sunday dinner with the Lloyds we went down to see the lights on temple square.


Caleb showing the Korean holiday bag to Corbin.


Corbin riding on Grandpa Lloyd's head.


Our family... you will notice that my coat can't even button up all the way; um... embarrassing.

Gingerbread House?

Tonight while Caleb was watching the big BYU bowl game, I decided to entertain Corbin by making a gingerbread house.

I was too lazy to make some gingerbread pieces or even go to the store to buy a kit, so we went with graham crackers. He can't touch royal frosting, which is what you would normally use, and we had some leftover chocolate frosting left in the fridge that was dairy and egg-free so we used that. But without the special frosting that dries rock hard I couldn't get a good roof to stay on.

So basically we ended up decorating a square graham cracker box with some non-wintery brown frosting, but he still had fun.

Every now and then he would sneak in some candy-eating, but for the most part he did pretty good putting them on the "house." (There was a lot of finger licking after each piece went on though, thus the brown frosting ring around his lips :)

Christmas Season

Harmony made Corbin a cute little advent calendar to count down the days to Christmas. Every day we put some gummy vitamins in the slot and he takes a paper off and sticks it on the fridge and gets a treat. He gets SOOO excited; he runs around saying, "Harmony calendar, I got a treat!" Little does he know they are healthy vitamins that I would make him eat anyway... :)


Also, on Sunday, my mom sent us home from family dinner with a bag of small presents to open on the 12 days leading up to Christmas. Though he really doesn't understand the whole "Twelve Days of Christmas" thing he seems to thoroughly enjoy the thrill of opening a present, no matter what is inside. I could list two examples of the gifts so far, but I am pretty sure my brother's family likely got the same ones and may not have opened them yet, so rather than ruin the surprise, we'll just leave it a mystery!


We have been reading lots of Christmas stories out of the Friend and books from the library, singing holiday carols and watching Christmas movies, so Corbin is getting excited, I just don't know if he realizes what he is getting so excited about. But having a toddler definitely makes the season a little funner, as you experience his excitement and see things through his little eyes... it takes us about 10 minutes to get from the front door to the car because he has to stop and point out every decoration on every door we pass, poke at every light and ask a zillion questions about "snow." Sometimes I start to lose my patience and yell at him to hurry up, but it is nice to be reminded to slow down and take the time to enjoy the holidays.

Christmas Tree

Tonight for Family Home Evening we decorated our Christmas tree. On Saturday I made Caleb go and cut one down. The compromise was that instead of going up the mountain and tramping around in the cold we would visit a local tree farm, where they prune them all year to ensure they look pretty and that they are grown in nice straight lines that you walk up and down. However, this tree farm was not really a farm at all. It looked like some old man was merely letting people cut down trees on his property. They were not pruned, they were not easy to wander through... basically our tree still looks like it came from the wild. But it smells great and looks pretty good, once we got the decorations on. Plus, now we have the fun memories of Corbin wandering around picking up every loose stick in sight and attempting to "help" saw down the pine tree.

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we went down to Cedar City and spent the holiday with Caleb's family. Corbin's favorite food, by far, was sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted on top. Does it get any better than that?

Caleb's mom did a great job of entertaining the grand kids, so that we could relax and enjoy our vacation. We went and saw the new James Bond movie... it was really good, we would just recommend watching Casino Royal right before you go so that you can remember who all the major characters are, because a lot of them carry over into the new one. We also went shopping to the good old Cedar City Walmart on Black Friday... not nearly as cool as everyone makes it sound. We did get one pair of pajamas for Corbin for Christmas (shh... don't tell him :) and some soy milk. We also played games and Corbin got to help hang up Christmas lights.

Birthday Cake

Here is a picture of the awesome birthday cake that I made for Corbin. He is really into animals lately, so we decided to go with a farm scene. It took me forever, but I was excited that it came out okay in the end. Plus, he seems to like playing with the leftover animal pieces.

Happy Birthday Corbin!

Yesterday was Corbin's second birthday. What a big kid he is becoming. I don't know if he really understood what a birthday was, but people kept telling him Happy Birthday, singing to him and asking him how old he was all day long (to which he has learned to say, "two," while holding up one finger -- we are still working on learning numbers :) I think he was mostly likely confused about why we were all acting so weird.

His Grandma Lloyd stopped by and brought him two balloons, which he is in love with. He always points out balloons in books and at the store, but I think this is the first time he has ever actually owned one. His biggest problem is he always wants to hold them both at the same time, the actual balloon, not just the strings, which his little arms can't handle, and as soon as one slips, it flies up to where he can't reach it. He also enjoys grabbing the strings and flinging them around in the air, which is fun to watch because the whole time is face is all scrunched up as though he is bracing for impact because he can't control them enough to not hit himself in the head repeatedly.

It being a weekday we mostly just hung out at home all day, other than a trip to story time at the library, and played as much as possible. When Caleb got home we had Corbin's favorite food for dinner:


If you ever ask that kid what he wants to eat, I would say 80% of the time he will ask for pancakes. I found a pancake mix at the health food store that has no eggs or milk, so he can eat it, which we use in the mornings when I am too lazy to make them from scratch with the proper substitutes for him (which is becoming more and more frequently :) The only thing is the mix is made with kamut flour, what kind of a grain is that? Anyway... he likes them.

Caleb ended up having to work kind of late, so after dinner we just hung out at home as a family and showered the kid with as much attention as possible and let him stay up late and eat a bowl of soy ice cream, what a lucky day!


Having only had ice cream one other time in his life, which would have been a year ago on his last birthday, he was kind of concerned that it was so cold, and played with it the majority of the time, rather than eating it. But oh, well... as long as he had fun, right?

Success!

A little while ago we bought Corbin a little potty chair. At first he would sit on it, with his pants on, and read books while I showered. Then he started asking to sit on the potty naked. So I let him try.

He seemed to like it, he would sit there for well over an hour and ask me to read him books. I was excited, thinking holy cow, this potty training thing is going to be a breeze, I haven't had to do anything yet, he's not quite 2, and he wants to sit on the potty chair. Great!

Then I discovered that he liked to sit there, for a long time, and the second he announced he was done, he would stand up, walk two steps and pee on the floor. This happened on numerous different occasions over the last month or so. Okay so clearly he isn't ready and does not understand the concept. But for some reason I kept letting him sit there and try whenever he asked.

So today he tells me he is all done after sitting there for about 45 minutes, and I grab the diaper, lay him down and get his bum covered as soon as possible, to avoid the inevitable accident on the floor. Then I notice, he actually did it! He peed in the potty chair before he got up!


So we celebrated big time with lots of hugs and congratulations and of course, lots of marshmallows (his favorite sugary treat). I still won't hold my breath, hoping that he is ready to potty train, I think that it was mostly luck and he's still too young, but either way, that was a pretty exciting moment for me.

Side Note:
No, he is not hugging his pee, the pictures were taken AFTER I had emptied and wiped down the chair :)

Halloween

This year for Halloween we attended Caleb's work trick-or-treating. Since there aren't a whole lot of treats that Corbin can eat, and I still think that 2 is a little young to get a basket of candy anyway, we weren't going to take him trick-or-treating, but then when we showed up he saw the other kids and got really into it. He was wandering up and down the hallways of Caleb's office, saying "tick-o-teet" to everyone.

They had people who knew they would be in the office that day, and had candy available, tie a balloon onto their door, so that the kids new which offices to go to. However, Corbin didn't seem to notice that and while we were talking to someone, he wandered off and made friends with one guy that didn't have a balloon. I think he felt bad since Corbin keep telling him "tick-o-teet" and holding out his basket, so the guy gave him a couple of paper clips he had lying around, which satisfied Corbin and on he went, collecting goodies.

He came home with a huge load of candy, which is particularly hard since Caleb and I have sworn off sugary sweets for the next month, and now we have tons of candy bars, that Corbin can't even eat, staring me in the face all day. Oh well, what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger, right? So hopefully this will only prove to strengthen my will power.


After the work party we went home and Caleb and I got dressed in our costumes as well. Since Corbin likes to pretend to be Tigger and has run around the house jumping (well trying to jump, both feet have yet to leave the ground at the same time) and saying, "I bounce like Tigger" ever since he met the "real" Tigger at Disneyland this summer, we got him a Tigger costume. Since I am a bit strange and like to make the whole family dress up every year in themed costumes, that meant that Caleb and I were Eeyore and Pooh. Corbin thought it was pretty great hanging out with his Eeyore Dad and his Pooh Mom, it was fun to see how excited he got.


We then had to show off our cool costumes and so we drove around and visited family members and friends that live nearby. Corbin discovered skittles, and ate more sugar than I think he has in his entire life combined, and was wired all night, until our last stop when he crashed. Within minutes he went from running around playing with Kona (Harm and Derek's dog) and the toys to full on ornery and even told us he was tired. It took him maybe 2 minutes to fall asleep in their guest room and then we stayed up and played games. It was a fun night.

Fall Fun

This past weekend we took Corbin to a corn maze / pumpkin patch / fall kiddie carnival thing. He seemed to have a lot of fun, although it drove Caleb crazy when I let him lead us through the maze. His organized, well-planned, efficient self could not handle walking in the same loop over and over again, and Corbin refused to turn left. It was a pretty good day though.


Then we came home and carved our pumpkin for Family Home Evening tonight. Caleb was in charge of carving, Corbin was in charge of scooping out the insides, and I was in charge of Corbin. I actually ended up having to scoop out most of the innards myself because I have created an OCD child who was annoyed by how messy his hands were getting and didn't want to help with the yucky part. He was however, quite interested in helping Caleb with the knife part.

Big Trouble Bean

I wished I'd of thought to take a picture, but I didn't, so you'll have to use your imaginations here, but picture this:

I didn't feel very good this morning and I was way tired, so I caved and put on a show for Corbin in our room while I rested on the bed next to him. I have done this before when I was way tired or morning sick over the summer, but today must have been bad because I fell full on asleep, which I don't think I have ever done before, just sort of dozed always. So I wake up an hour later and he has 10 suckers opened and is having a sugar hay-day. Apparently there were some left in my nightstand that he could reach.

As soon as he sees me, he knows he is in trouble and he kinda jumps and then says, "blankies" and tries to tuck me in and get me to go back to sleep so I don't notice him breaking the rules. It was pretty funny.

He obviously knew he wasn't allowed to eat 10 suckers, at the same time, and he obviously knew that even though I was right next to him I was sleeping and wouldn't notice. That Bean.

I felt bad that I had ignored him and fallen asleep in the first place though, so I let him keep one sucker, and I think he was shocked he was allowed to eat it, instead of getting sent to time out. He kept looking at me like, "you're really not going to take it away?"

Real Salt Lake

This weekend we went to a Real Salt Lake game, down in Sandy in their new stadium. It was nice, getting the tickets, not so much.

Like 3 weeks ago, we found a coupon in one of those Happenings books that the elementary school kids sell every year for 50% off the price of tickets. I tried to go online and buy the tickets but it wouldn't accept my coupon. It turns out that is because the coupon is not suppose to be valid at the new stadium, but they had printed a typo on at least the one copy of the coupon that I had, so I ended up having to drive down to their offices in Salt Lake one afternoon and get them to honor the coupon. Meanwhile, Caleb sat at home renewing our hold on these two really good seats left in the section we wanted (the next closest ones where like 10 rows back). They finally take my coupon and ask me what seats I want, so Caleb releases them at home, and he brings up a list of available seats and our good ones are not there. I ask him to double check and he is like no, they aren't there, someone must have bought them. (In the last 2 minutes... seriously?) Anyway, I pick out my crappier seats and he tells me they haven't printed the tickets for Saturday's game yet, but that they will mail them to me.

A few weeks later and the game is now in two days and we still haven't gotten any tickets in the mail. So I call them up again and they can't find me listed anywhere, finally I told them that I had talked to some guy whose name started with a C, and that he would remember me as the girl with the Happenings book coupon. She said there are a couple of guys with names that start with C, but that she'll look into it. Finally she comes back and is like, yep, he remembered, he accidentally marked you down for the wrong date (ah, that's why he claimed my good seats didn't exist), and that they will fix it and have my tickets for me at Will Call.

Saturday night we got to the game and headed over to Will Call, and proceeded to stand in line for 30 minutes. (Apparently they still haven't worked out all the bugs with this being only their second game at the new stadium and there were A LOT of delays.)

But once we got inside, it was great, they actually upgraded our tickets one level for me, and we were able to sit right on the center line, not too far from the field. They scored some awesome goals, which is good because we have been to a couple of their games every season so far, and I think almost every time was either scoreless or the other team scored in the last 2 minutes to win (literally every game).



My favorite thing was watching Corbin. He was really into it and sat there watching the entire first half of the game, and then during halftime everyone around us left to get snacks and he had a hard time. The little girl behind us (maybe 4-years-old) kept waving her popcorn in his face and then pulling it away and sticking it in her mouth as soon as he noticed. She seemed to really enjoy taunting him and her parents didn't seem to care that she was being a brat, so long as she didn't bother them. So I figured we'd splurge and get him an over priced treat from the concession's stand, but it turns out they don't sell a single thing in that stadium that he can eat.

Once he got over that little episode though, he was back to people watching and enjoying staying up past bedtime. His favorite part of the game was when a guy in a giant blow-up hamster ball looking thing, ran over the lion mascot. He also seemed to really like the shuttle bus ride from the parking lot to the stadium. And everyone around him (minus that little girl and the drunkard that almost spilled beer all over Caleb) thought that he was pretty cute in his little Real scarf, I would have to agree.

Witches!

Today I went with Tori down to Gardner Village to let the kids see all of the fun Halloween decorations. Corbin got pretty excited. They both wandered around saying "more witches" for about two hours. It was a fun outing.

Miracles really do happen!

New Bed

Corbin has recently learned how to crawl out of his crib. So we decided it was time to move him into his own bed.

At first I picked out a really nice, $300 twin bed with cubby holes built into the footboard, a bookshelf style headboard and nice drawers underneath. After Caleb suggested that we measure his room and plan out the furniture arrangement in advance we realized my dream bed would take up about half of his room. Plus, since we still need the crib, a rocking chair and a dresser to fit in there for when the baby comes, that idea went out the door. So instead we ended up with a $10 used toddler bed instead.

Corbin doesn't mind at all though, he keeps running around talking about his "new bed." He was so excited the first night that he jumped in bed (literally, see the video below:) and curled up with his blanket, ready to sleep. We kissed him goodnight and went out into the living room to wait for him to come running out, but he actually stayed in there all night long.

It has been not quite a week now, and he has stayed in bed every single night so far. I am still waiting for the newness of it to wear off and him to try to escape at night, but so far he is doing surprisingly well.

However, nap times are another story, but they have always been more of a fight.

Southern Utah

A few weeks ago Caleb used up the last of his vacation days and we spent a week down in Southern Utah hanging out with his family and visiting my grandparents. It was a lot of fun just to relax and not have any real responsibilities (other than our child of course :) Here is a video montage of our trip.



Corbin learned that he could out smart his parents and go outside to play whenever he wanted by using the doggie door.

We made cookies and Corbin was our "helper" By the end there was just about as much flour around the bowl as there was in the bowl.

He started to learn how to ride a tricycle. It worked best when he was on a slight downhill and didn't have to peddle as hard.

He loved going for rides on Grandpa's four-wheeler.

And helping Grandpa feed the horses. He kept trying to climb under the fence so that he could run around in the pasture with all of the horses.

He basically spent the majority of his time in Hatch following Grandpa around. For anyone who knows my Grandpa Nash, they know that he always wears a hat around outside. So with the way Corbin took such a liking to him, I guess it comes as no surprise that when we got home I got out our Halloween decorations and he found this old hat in the costume box, and hasn't taken it off since. The other day we went to the park wearing some cow pants and the hat, while carrying a purse. Needless to say, he got a few good looks from the neighbors on the way.

It's a Girl!

So now the hunt for a name begins, feel free to leave any suggestions. We could use all the help we can get. Also, if anyone wants to volunteer to be the feminine influence in her life and teach her about makeup, dating, and all that other girly stuff, I am sure she would appreciate it, because her mother certainly isn't qualified :)

It's a little hard to see, but here is our little girl's first picture:


It was funny because the technician had a hard time getting a good look at the baby because she was facing a weird direction and wouldn't turn when the lady pressed against her and nudged her over. Plus, her legs were extended straight out and kicking the whole time and our ultrasound with Corbin was the exact same. He wouldn't turn the right way and his legs were straight out, forcing the rest of his body to curl up into an uncomfortable looking ball. I guess they already have a few things in common.

He Passed!

Caleb is now a full-fledged CPA!

Getting Chubby

Today we were late for church. Normally Caleb comes home from his meeting before church I am just about ready go and have Corbin all dressed. Instead today he found me not even dressed, with half of our closet dumped on the floor. I couldn't find anything to wear that would fit. Time to break out the fat clothes. Here is a scary picture of my prego belly.


The problem is I am not really big enough to need the maternity clothes yet, but my normal wardrobe definitely doesn't fit anymore. So lately I have been wearing a lot of gym shorts and tee shirts around the house, because my economically-minded husband doesn't want to spring for an entire "in-between" sized wardrobe for me to wear for a month. Oh well. It's all part of the fun of being pregnant I suppose.

Tomatoes!

This weekend Corbin's cousin Rachel slept over on Friday night while her mom ran a half marathon up in Huntsville. They had a lot of fun together, when they woke up Saturday morning they sat in Corbin's room talking and laughing for a long time before they ever cried for me to come and get them out of their cribs.

Later that day we went to Uncle Matt's soccer game. Corbin loved watching him, there was an unending chorus of "go Matt" for the first half hour. Then he got bored and wandered off to find some old rusty bleachers to play on.


After the game we put the kids down for a nap and my brother, his wife, and I all had a tomato party. We went and picked 11 bags of tomatoes and then spent the remainder of the day canning tomatoes, salsa and sauce.


It ended up taking longer than we thought it would, since none of us had ever done it before and we had no clue what we were doing. So by the end of the day Corbin was sick of being ignored and watching movies for hours on end, so I decided to let him help.


What a big help he turned out to be :)

Oh no...

So I used to let Corbin sleep in just a diaper, because we have no AC and it does get hot in our house. Then a couple of weeks ago he learned how to take off his diaper, which resulted in a disgusting mess, thus ending his days of being allowed to not wear pajamas.

Then this morning, I went in his room to get him up and this is what I found:


Now we have another problem, as he has learned to take off his shirt, pants and the diaper. He was so proud that he had taken them off all by himself. Luckily there was no gross mess... this time. Do I duct tape them on? He doesn't seem to understand the importance of leaving his clothes (especially the diaper) on.

Video of the Week

Update!

Well we haven't updated our blog lately, mainly because nothing much has been going on. I have been throwing up daily and so we mostly just hang out at home watching the olympics. We did go out to the pool the other day and pretend to be Micheal Phelps, I think that I could take him :)

A couple of weeks ago Corbin and I went down to stay with the Millers for a week. Corbin loved having a new place to explore and I loved having someone get up and take care of him in the mornings while I slept in. I didn't think to take a picture, but while we were there he loved playing with Molly (their dog), and quickly discovered he could fit out the doggy door. Free access to "owside"! It was pretty funny.

But ya, that's about it. Caleb went to Albany, NY last week for some training with work, and mostly we have just been being homebodies.