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.

Memorial Day Weekend

On Saturday we got up and went with my brother to the driving range and hit a few golf balls around. (Caleb and Cameron's went far and ahead, mine were the ones going all around :)

Then we went to the temple and out to dinner while Corbin went and hung out with Jan, Ken, Erika and Daisy (their rabbit that he apparently chased all over the yard).

On Sunday my family was out of town so just Cameron came down to our house and we played Mario Party and Mario Kart on the Wii. Those are probably my two favorite video games, along with Eye Toy and Dance Dance Revolution, so it was fun.

Then on Monday we got up and went to our ward's breakfast. It was suppose to be a big party at the park with tons of games and food, but the darn rain forced everyone inside instead so we didn't get to play much, but there was lots of yummy food.

After breakfast we came home and cleaned up and got ready for our family barbecue. Jake and Ashley and the whole Lloyd clan came over and we grilled, played games and then went to see Indiana Jones while my parents babysat The Bean. Towards the end of the afternoon the rain let up a little and we took Corbin and Rachel out the playground behind our house to play. The problem came when they both wanted to swing at the same time, but there was only one toddler swing, so we solved that problem...

(He looks like he hates it, but he was actually having a good time, I swear.)


Here Corbin is trying to give Rachel a hug and saying "Oh..." since he heard us say that because he was being cute, but in the picture it just looks like he is biting her. Oh well...

Puzzle Mania

This weekend Caleb and I put together a puzzle. Ever since we had a kid we have had to come up with new at-home date nights, and doing a puzzle while we watch a movie has become a popular one. It was so stinking hard though, you can't tell from the picture, but none of the pieces were normal shapes, and there was no flat border. The top half, with all of the trees, took us forever and a day, but it was still fun.

13.1 Miles

Last weekend I ran a half marathon. It was awesome! (Actually it sucked, but finishing was awesome!

My goal was to do it under 2 hours, which is 9 minute miles. Good runners start slower, and pick up speed throughout the race, but I hadn't trained doing that so I figured I would just run my steady pace throughout

Now people had warned me that the last three miles are hard, because they are the last three miles, but also because there aren't any downhill parts and told me to pace myself. So I ran the first three miles good, almost 9 minute miles exactly, but then I was feeling pretty good and decided to ignore them and push it harder so I ran the next 7 miles in 8:30 minute miles

And then came those last 3 miles that I had been warned about and I wanted to die. The 11th mile, I ignored it and keep my 9 minute pace, the 12th mile I slowed down, the beginning of the 13th mile, I slowed down a lot.

I lost track of my time and somehow looked at my watch wrong and thought I had already passed 2 hours, so I was sad and lost motivation. Then I saw the big clock and realized I had read my time wrong and there were still a couple minutes left, so I ran as hard as I could the last quarter mile and finished in 1:59.03!

So I accomplished my goal, but I was sad that I slowed down at the end there. Next time I run I will have to learn how to pace myself better.

I brought my MP3 player to keep me entertained and distracted, but didn't think to check the batteries, so it died halfway through the first song and I had to spend the next 2 hours running on my own. Needless to say I did a lot of thinking and meditation.

Overall it really was awesome though, everyone should run one at some point in their lives.

3 Down, Eternity to go...

Yesterday Caleb and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary. It has been a fun three years. At the beginning of our marriage we decided to try and give each other the traditional marriage gifts each year. Paper, cotton, and this year was leather. Caleb got me a really nice new wallet-coin holder thing (I think that anyone who has seen the old one that I have had since early high school is probably celebrating that fact). And I got him a banana gaming chair. I think that he likes it, but he really hasn't gotten a chance to sit in it much since Corbin has been playing on it non-stop ever since it came out of the box. He thinks it is his own little seat since it is so low to the ground.


Also, the past few weeks Corbin has started to get really attached to DVD and CD cases. We keep them on the bottom shelf, and he has always pulled them off and made a mess pretty much every day since we moved in. But lately he picks out one or two of the cases and totes them around with him all day long. Yesterday at his Grandma's house he apparently started crying when she wouldn't let him take it into the bathtub with him, and today he slept with one clutched in his hand. I even tried to sneak in and take it out so that he wouldn't roll over onto it in his sleep and get uncomfortable, but he had a death grip on the thing. I don't know, that kid...

Our Busy Week

Caleb's 26th birthday was this past week. On Wednesday we went to see Iron Man, which was a really cool movie, we strongly recommend, especially to Tyler. Then we stopped by the Lloyd's to pick up Corbin and enjoyed some no bake cheesecake (thanks to Ashley's great recipe suggestion). People were really generous and gave Caleb some nice stuff. He got a good dress shirt, a new video game, some ear buds (up until now we have only owned one pair and we always end up fighting over it :), a really good electric shaver (he still uses the one from his mission which requires a Korean to American electricity adaptor, which is really annoying), some new sandals, a Winger's gift card and some money. He used the money to go buy a new mattress this weekend, since he has always hated the one I picked out when we first moved up here. We met this elderly woman who spent $1,000 on a brand new custom mattress less than two months ago and then fell trying to get into bed, (it really is a high mattress), so now she is afraid of it and wanted it out of her house, so we got it for dirty cheap, and it is way nice even though it is slightly used.

Then on Friday we were able to attend Adam's law school graduation and afterwards got to go out to lunch with Caleb's family and Aunt Mel and Aunt Mimi and two of her boys. We had such a good time visiting with everyone. Then of course the boys had to hang out Friday night and watch the Jazz game.

Today we drove up the Lloyd's after church to celebrate Mother's Day. We all made homemade personal pizzas and played games. We also got to go and see Tyler's new garden space. We are little jealous, growing a garden two years ago was so much fun, we are thinking about doing some potted tomatoes, but I don't know how well those would work out, so we'll see.

Big Bird

Last night we attended Cameron's Eagle Court of Honor. (Congratulations to Cameron.)

While Corbin did enjoy the giant bald eagle that was brought in, he still got a little (or a lot) restless during the ceremony. So my cousin Tanner tried to entertain him for us. Here is a picture he took with his phone of Corbin wearing his sunglasses.


As you can see, he is one styling little kid!

Corbin-Borbin

Here are some fun random pictures of Corbin.

I made Corbin his own special vegan corn muffins. At first he loved them, and was gobbling them up. But then he got full and discovered how fun they could be to play in if you crumble them up...


Busy season has been winding down for Caleb and last weekend he got home by 6:30 so we went to the park for a family barbeque. It started to get cold right as we were leaving and the sun was going down, but it was fun to get out of the house and do something as a family.


So our church is at 1:00 o'clock, which is a nightmare with a toddler, as that is when he normally naps. I try to put him down before church, but he just isn't tired at 11:00, so he plays in his crib for an hour until I get him up to get dressed and ready to go. And then he gets ornery about 30 minutes into sacrament meeting, and we struggle through the next two and half hours. Only five more weeks until he is old enough to go to nursery! Anyway, last week we brought him home and put him in his chair to eat lunch and he fell asleep sitting up eating within about five minutes. No joke, he must have been exhausted.


On Thursday Caleb's company sent him down to Cedar City to help with some recruiting events at SUU, so Corbin and I tagged along and we made a vacation out of it. Corbin had tons of fun seeing his Grandma and Grandpa Miller and his aunts. He especially loved seeing Molly and playing in the backyard. I have decided that as soon as we can afford it, I want a nice, fenced-in backyard. Corbin loves playing outside, he probably asks to out about 10 times a day, so it was good to be able to just send him out and not have to go out and watch him the whole time.


He also discovered this fun little car that Caleb used to play in when he was little. He had fun playing in it, but he could only figure out how to go backwards, so he got himself stuck a lot!

Books

I've been tagged..... this is a very strange thing, and I don't know why you all would really care, but here ya go! - Ditto!

This is what you do:

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).

2. Turn to page 123.

3. Find the 5th sentence

4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog.

5. Tag 5 people.

My book is "PHP and MySQL for Dummies" by Janet Valade.

"For instance, suppose your file has the following statements:"

I tag whoever is willing!

I am also reading some slightly more interesting books, but since I am sitting at the work computer and I was trying to create the code for my rating system earlier today, this was the book sitting closest to me. So there ya go!

But I just wanted to say that I am glad that Harmony has become a book worm lately, because she got me hooked too. I borrowed her Women of Genesis series by Orson Scott Card, and they were good books. Even though they are largely fictionalized they really got me thinking. For church my book group is reading "Before the Dawn" by Dean Hughes, which I am going to start next. Let me know if anyone stumbles across any other good books..., or knows how to create an action form in PHP that will connect to a MySQL database on a remote server :)

Hi!

It has been awhile since we have posted a new blog, so Corbin just wanted to take a moment and say "hi".

Our FUN Weekend!

This past week our good old trusty computer died. Well technically our motherboard died, but that meant that everything else had to be replaced since they were old parts that were incompatible with the new motherboards. So Caleb spent all day Saturday rebuilding our computer for us.


He tried to teach me how things worked in the process, but I got bored relatively quickly. So all I know how to do is take it apart, I left before learning how to put it back together. But if anyone ever needs their computer taken apart, I can totally help you out!

Easter

This year for Easter we went to a community Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning with the Lloyds. Corbin had fun picking things up and putting them in his basket, and he especially loved seeing the Easter bunny. A lot of kids seem to be afraid and slightly hesitant about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and such, but Corbin got down and ran to him with his arms outstretched.


After the hunt we went over to Corbin's Grandma and Grandpa Lloyd's house for lunch. They had set up a little egg hunt for him as well, only they had found soccer ball shaped eggs. He started picking them up and playing with them the second he walked in the door and saw one sitting on the stairs. I think that he liked them even more once he discovered they had gummies inside of them.


On Easter morning Corbin woke up earlier than usual and in a bad mood. But once he got a drink and settled down he was pretty excited about his Easter basket. He got some pinwheels, bubbles, books, a Jamba Juice and a pail to scoop pebbles into at the park. Here is the before picture:


And the after:


Even though he only got a smoothie and some gummies he was all hopped up on sugar and would not sit still during church, or after church, or at the Lloyd's family dinner, or after dinner... he basically didn't stop moving until we stuck him in the car and he finally fell asleep on the way home. But it was a good day.

Super Hero in Training

Lately Corbin likes to pull his hooded towel off the hook in the bathroom and have you put it on his head.


He then proceeds to run around the house wearing it like a cape for the remainder of the day.

Children's Museum

Today I took Corbin to the Ogden Children's Museum with Tori and Rachel and Rachel's cousins. He had a really good time, and it was fun to get out of the house and have him play with, or should I say play around, other kids. For the most part he hung out by himself. So far he doesn't seem to like other kids his age, but he will play really well with adults and older kids.


He loved picking up vegetables out of the garden, if only he would eat real vegetables at home.


Here is our little firefighter, he liked wearing the hat most of all, after we took it off he kept patting his head and pointing back towards it.


Corbin has been really into animals lately, so he liked the fish exhibit, here he is showing us what a fish says.


He is already better than me at using chop sticks :(


Here he is enjoying some fine Asian cuisine with his cousin. They were pretty cute "pretending" to eat together. I think that part of the pretending was merely attempting to really eat, only failing since it was plastic.


And finally, forget McCain, Vote Corbin for President!