Sharing

Corban is learning to share. It's not a tough concept for him to grasp and he does really well with it...as long as he is only required to forfiet only one grape/cheese or if he can immediately take back what he has given (toys). He really is a doll and loves to make Malia happy. Sometimes he will actually share or give up his toy so Malia is happy. But when it comes to food he will likely share only one piece and then wants the rest for himself...even though I offer him as much as he wants. What cute kids.

Addison is a new person every day. She has grown so much. Her cheeks are chubby and she has beautiful blue eyes. Hair color is still a mystery, but she is precious. I love my little Famliy!

Especially Amanda. She is the love of my life. She always talks about how she has zero patience, yet our kids come out of everyday unscathed and in love with her. She helps them by teaching them all the time. She is always wanting them to be learning, so will allow them to watch a learning video instead of a movie...I am lame and always give in to the movie. She takes care of me and reminds me of the kind of man I want to be for her. I love this woman!

Teaching...

J: "Do we hit Corban?"
C: (smiling) "Yes"
J: (serious) "Do we hit Corban?"
C: (giggling now): "Yes"
J: (still serious) "Do we hit Corban?"
C: (timid, but giggling) "Yes"
J: (sigh) "We DON'T hit."
C: (pausing, then reluctantly) "We don't hit."
J: "That's right..." (have to see if he understands) "Do we hit?"
C: (Big smile and giggle) "Yes"
J: (sigh) "We'll try again later..."

Happy Unbirthday!

When Corban was born Jared and I decided that we would celebrate his birthday in the summer since is birthday is just a few days after Christmas. I hadn't necessarily planned it out for this year until I went shopping and couldn't resist buying toys from him. I needed an excuse to give them to him for Jared to be okay with me having spent the money. Let's have a party!

It has now been 4 weeks I have held onto these gifts, anticipating the day when we could celebrate so I could see Corban play with his new toys. We called up the Clawson's so we would have some great party guests to entertain, and they accepted our offer. With such short notice I was thinking they wouldn't feel an obligation to bring a gift. They didn't...they brought TWO! Their gifts out did mommy's with all the moving parts and boy fun! Hopefully we fed them some great food, yummy carrot cake, and provided entertainment with our little ones.

Here is a photo run down of how the day went:

Right before I was getting us into the car, I came down the stairs to this scene:

Here is the beautiful cupcakes that Jared made. Yes, that one with the candles does have 2 bites out of it. Corban couldn't resist.

Corban watching the sparking candles. He was SO adorbale to watch when trying to blow them out. One of the candles would go out and then light back up. The first time it went out he said, "Oh no." It lite back up and he blew it out again and said, "Oh, goodness". I will try to post the video at the end of this post.

Notice I dressed him in his birthday suit? That really was no choice of mine, though I didn't put up a fight with the pink diaper.

All the kids helping him open his presents. Malia is a ham for the camera, just like Corban!

Corban focusing intently on getting this dumptruck out of the box. What great toys! THANK YOU Clawsons!

At 2 1/2 this little man is full of surprises everyday. Here are 10 things, in no particular order, of what I love about my little Corban:

1. His big blue eyes that give so much expression to what he is thinking or doing. He loves to do the raised eyebrows when interested in something or as if to get approval on something.

2. He is all boy and really revs it up when daddy is around- taking with a pretend deep, manly voice, karate chopping things, making sound effects, and running around like he is crazy.

3. "Kiss it better" still works like a charm.

4. He loves to be naked, but he will settle for a diaper when necessary. He now will NOT sleep in PJs.

5. He is a talker, finding new words to say everyday. I love to give him new big words to just hear him say them- he too enjoys my game.

6. His LOVE of water, especially the ocean! He is facinated with the "rocks, water, and sand."

7. He is always curious and eager to learn. He seems to be quick at catching onto concepts.

8. He gets so excited when mommy or daddy come home, ALWAYS greeting you with a big smile, and "oh mommy!" or "Daddy's home!"

9. He is really getting a memory, recognizing where we are driving to and knowing what we do at certain stores even if we are only in the parking lot.

10. His sweet wake up call on mornings we get to sleep in. He comes in with "pink" and tells you that "baby's wake" or "new diaper" or "I want breakfast".

It is so much fun to watch and enjoy them getting older, but it brings tears to my eyes and an aching in my heart to know that I will never have these exact sweet moments again. It is a really good thing sweet moments keep on happening!

Free Nutrition and Fitness coaching

With my desire to make my 3rd pregnancy just as successful as the first two, I have started a Nutrition and Fitness blog. Knowing myself, I do best at following my own advice when I am sharing it with others. This is my way of using my expensive education.

The focus of the blog is nutrition in pregnancy for now, though much of the advice would apply to anyone. I have plans to continue the blog after the arrival of #3, and will then make the focus more general. I am also more than happy to answer any personal questions you have and will take it in the direction my readers desire.

If you are interested, stop by Active Cultures and see if there is anything of interest to you.

Miss Congeniality

For the past one and a half, at least, Malia has been on the move. Her crawling skills blossomed long ago...between 5 and 6 months, and that just wasn't mobile enough, so she put herself on her feet. She has been walking around furniture and will occasionally use toys, but what she really wants are YOUR fingers. This wouldn't be so bad if you were her height and didn't have to bend over to help her walk. I thought for sure she would be walking before she turned 9 months, but that came and went. Liz, my great friend, kept suggesting that we practice with her, but it took her actually initiating it this Friday for it to happen. Well, there were a few steps in that practice, but the next morning when we showed daddy, she was even better! And I might say that her Sunday practice is even better than Saturday. Now that she knows it is a game to mommy and daddy, she is loving it. She gets just as excited as we do when we clap for her accomplishments.

Corban was one to do it all on his own. The week before he walked we went on a cruise, where I don't believe I let him down on the ground ever. I guess he had had it with that, so when we returned home he just started walking. That was at 11 months, so I guess it makes sense that Malia would need a little help. She just wants to do everything early.

Malia is also starting to blossom with her own little personality. Reading that doesn't say much, as she has always had one, but I really don't know how to put it into words. Her actions have me giggling at her all day- the way she swings her feet, her love for being upside down, her reaction when you direct her another way, her excitement over watching people- do what? I don't know, her LOVE for following and copying Corban...this is so irritating to him. This reminds me of a story from yesterday:

Corban was trying to enjoy "Horton Hears a Who" with his green and pink blanket. Malia decided that she too wanted to enjoy "pink". Corban doesn't like sharing that particular one very much, so he kindly (surprising mommy) shared "green". She loved on that for maybe 1 second, and then went for pink again. I would remove her, but shortly after, would find her back on pink and Corban starting his whine. The best part was when he lied down on the ground on top of another blanket, pink still right there with him. She too lied down back on the blanket, right by his side rubbing her hand over pink. It was almost like she was doing it just because she knew that it would annoy him, but at the same time it was like she wanted to just do whatever her big brother was doing.

On top of the cute stuff, she also has down the manipulative cry. This cry sounds like you have just hurt her, but it means that you have done something that she doesn't like- things like lay her down to get her diaper changed, put her in her seat to have a snack (before the food arrives), or take her away from mommy (that one is cute).

Corban, on the other hand, does have his good moments away from being grumpy and getting mad at "M-lia". Yesterday he was sitting in his highchair just naming off fruits and vegetables. I have no idea where he came up with making lists, but it was hilarious to listen to. He has since repeated a similar list- fruits and vegetables again.

I allowed him to help me with preparing dinner the other afternoon. It required baking mix- or in his eyes, pancake mix. As I was mixing the eggs he said he wanted to do it. Harmless, I thought, so I handed the whisk to him and turned to get something. When turning back to Corban, he had the whisk held up and he was saying "Yummy" and putting the whisk in his mouth. Mommy wasn't fast enough to catch him, so he did get to task the not so yummy raw eggs. Next when mixing the batter together, he said, "First, um, ya exactly." He is such a good little helper! When I couldn't really have him help very much, he had his fingers in the COOKED meat sauce, saying , "It's yummy." Unfortunately he wasn't saying the same thing once dinner was presented to him. He has been tough, but he eats when he is hungry enough.

This little man can count to 50, knows his basic shapes (including star and diamond), upper and lower case in the alphabet, knows the days of a week (when singing a song), and his colors. Some of these he even knows in sign language, thanks to Baby Signing Times. None of this is really new, except the counting to 50- and that isn't completely perfect yet.

Last little story was today when I asked Jared to take Corban with him to choir (so I could be lazy and blog) Jared was telling him they were going in the van. Corban said, "Mommy, in the truck?". Like he was asking if mommy wanted to come too. Then he kept insisting that they were going, "In the truck". So daddy would respond with, "Okay, we will go in the van." They continued this all the way out the door. I don't really know how it ended, though I do know they went in the van.

Okay, okay, okay

This is what Corban says when he wants you to stop, but this is what I am thinking as I have neglected to write about the cute things my kids do daily.
One of my favorite things he has been doing since we have started working on puzzles together:
Mommy: "Corban, is it this piece?"
Corban: "Oh! Thank you. You're welcome."

He has this obsession with Sword in the Stone, so I could go on and on about the funny things he has said. Here are two:
"I'm not a boy, I'm a squirrel!"
When you ask him to tell you what your name is, "Your name is Wart." (said more like, "Is name is a Wart.") He also likes to tell you that his name is Wart.

Lately he doesn't like it when we pray over the food. During the entire prayer he will say "No" to everything we say we are thankful for. Tonight at FHE while Jared was praying, he started off as usual saying "No" to everything and then he said "Name", pause, "Name", small pause and then a more insistant, "Name"...and daddy finished, "In the name of...."

Both kids have been sick today, but as lively as ever. Corban was enjoying that mommy didn't resist when asking to watch another movie. Malia was her sweet little self, almost more sweet and giggley. More than once I realized that she had been awake in her bed for a while, but she was just in there talking to her bed. One of my favorite things, which reminds me of Corban, is when you go in to get her after she has been awake and chatting, she BEAMS as you approach the bed and does this little bounce of excitement. Who can resist picking that up?

For a short version of catch up on our lives, we have the amazing news that we are now 19 weeks along in our 3rd pregnancy. Call us crazy, having three under three, but we are thrilled! We are gearing up for a huge challenge, come the end of Oct., with some changes already making life a little smoother. For those of you who already are the organized, clean types, you are just laughing at me, but it really does make a difference. With Lisa moving in I switched rooms around and in the process did that Spring cleaning that I NEVER get to. This gave me ambition to do it through the entire house. Not done yet, but very close. Jared so kindly spent hours upon hours cleaning the garage, switching everything around to create paly space out in the garage. I believe this will be what saves me when it is too cold to send Corban outside once baby #3 arrives.
Along with cleaning, Jared and I are scheduling our week together every week. He probably feels it is my way of having control, but it is making a world of difference on my stress level. Most people live lives with some sort of consistency. There isn't much consistency with managing retail other than you have to consistently be flexible. Scheduling is helping me to be more flexible, if that can even make sense. I am feeling much more on top of things, which is noticable by how many meals we have on the table.
Lisa (Jared's youngest sister) moved in with us 2 weeks ago. She transferred her job from Orem and started as a server at PF Chang's TODAY! We are thrilled for her because the last 2 weeks there has been a cloud of disappointment that they were taking her on as a Hostess first, which was movement down the ladder. On Saturday as she was filling out paperwork and preparing to start work this week, her new manager said that she could now use her as a server because 3 people had just given their 2 weeks notice. Yahoo! We look forward to eating at PF Chang's and having Lisa do an amazing job serving us!
She has been a fabulous house guest! Lisa helps with the kids mess, my mess, and keeps Jared from making a mess. She has helped out with the kids more than a handful of times. Hopefully we don't abuse her with that convenience...she is now part of our weekly scheduling meeting as well. It is fun having another adult around for conversation, but most of all I am enjoying getting to know her a lot better. One on one is always the best way!

And that is our life in a nutshell for the moment. Don't get too excited about the next post :)

That's how long it's been...

I couldn't figure out how to start a new post to the blog...that's how long it's been.

It's sad really. I love looking back and seeing the cute things that have happened and we have missed writing down a lot of them here on the blog. Here are a couple off the top of my head.

Corban (forcefully) "TIME! TWO MINUTES!"

We read somewhere that you should only put your kids in time out for as many minutes as they have years. Usually we don't have to put Corban in time out because the mere threat of time out makes him cry and stop the bad behavior. Apparently it didn't take too long for him to understand that if something is going on that is not liked (say putting a child to bed at night, or trying to change a diaper, or simply asking him not to yell at Malia) then you have the right to put someone in "time out" for two minutes. This always makes me laugh.

Corban "So, um.....exactly."

We think that he picked this one up from mommy on the phone. She will begin explaining something, "so, um" and then there is a pause where the other party is obviously finishing the thought, then "exactly". For him there is no context, he just says this sometimes.

Tantrums are the worst! I'll just leave that without explanation.

He's actually quite the chatterbox, not that it's all coherent. He talks quite a lot and sometimes it takes some deciphering, but for the most part we understand what he wants. Now if he would only make more effort to explain to us reasonably before he freaks out, that would be awesome. When he freaks out, I always approach him asking him not to cry and to use his words. This works 80% of the time. Success!

He is a cutie!

Malia is MOBILE! She has been crawling for a while now, and is trying to walk all the time. She will use anything to aid her, especially if it has wheels. She will always want for Mom or Dad to help her walk and get upset when we try to stop the walking. she could probably walk on her own, but still won't risk it. She is such a great child. Hardly makes a sound, even when upset. She will cry when she wakes up, but only until she sees you, then everything is ok...except for the tear rolling down her cheek. I am afraid that she will just get what she wants by rolling out the tears, at least from me.

She is still a chunk and loves to eat. we are feeding her all sorts of goodies and now she has a little help as 2 bottom teeth have finally broken through. I could just eat her up she is so cute.

Here are some pics.