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?
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 :)
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well I have finally gotten around to putting together some pictures from our trip to California a couple of weeks ago. We went to Universal Studios, Sea World, the beach, Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo. It was a lot of fun despite the fact that I couldn't go on any real rides and had morning sickness the whole time. No doubt Bean has already forgotten it, but it was so fun to watch how excited he got over every little thing.
This week we attended the Andersen (Caleb's Mom's Family) Family Reunion. On Wednesday we went to Lagoon. It was a lot of fun to see the cousins and go on lots of fun rides.
We started out with the carousel and the train that we were able to go on with him.
He loved the rides! I think we ended up doing the carousel like 4 or 5 times, it was definitely his favorite. He loved all of the animals.
Then we stuck him on his first ride by himself. We were too tall to ride on it, so we buckled him in and told him to have fun. Little did we know the space cars lifted off the ground and went flying around super fast. He sat there covering his eyes with his hands and crying the whole time. We thought that we would have to spend the next 30 minutes consoling him, but as soon as it stopped he looked up and started saying "more" "more?" Like, "why did we stop?" Ridiculous child.
After that we put him on some nice slow rides.
We figured it was time to be done when he attempted to climb out of the boats and play in the "wawa" (You will notice the nice other child his age sitting quietly, very still, enjoying the ride).
After that we took him on the Log Flume and to Lagoon A Beach to cool off.
The next day we went down to Provo and had lunch, played games and visited with Caleb's cousins and extended family. That night his mom got everyone hotel rooms down there so that we could hang out together. The little kids went swimming and splashed around.
On the 4th of July we hung out with the extended Miller family on his Dad's side. Then we went to the Stadium of Fire. It was ultra cool. Definitely something to remember.
On Saturday we went to the Murdock's and played on their giant slip and slide that they built in their backyard. The water was cold at first, but it was so hot this weekend that by the end it felt really good and Corbin loved sliding in water. Then Aunt Mel watched Corbin and we went to see Hancock with Uncle Ron, Jake, Ashley and Celeste.
It was a fun week, and it was great to see all of Caleb's family. This next weekend we are leaving for California with the Lloyds, which should be a lot of fun too.
