Month 22, or Would you like some snow with that?

Dear Corbin,

You are 22 months old, and that's about how many inches of snow we got two weeks ago. We spent a while outside that Saturday shoveling, and then we spent a long time outside on Sunday shoveling. You were okay outside and you really wanted to help use the snow thrower, but then your dad took you down in the sled to Grandma and Grandpa's apartment to shovel the snow away from their doors, and he shoveled it right onto you. After that, you were happy to stay inside for a while.

You've been learning many new skills lately. You and Dad were playing balloon tennis, using your plastic frying pan as a racket. You love to climb up on things just to jump off of them. You learned that the dinosaur tub toys can squirt water all over the bathroom. You're getting better at brushing your teeth, which is good because your first set of molars have come in. But the most surprising thing is that you've been experimenting with potty training. It all started when Dad was home alone with you and needed to use the potty. That night, before your bath, you pulled your usual imitation of adult life and peed in the potty. So we got you a potty chair, which I didn't mean to leave in the dining room, but I put it down there when I brought it home and then you discovered it and now I guess it's just going to stay in the dining room. How very...unappetizing. So now when we change your diaper, you like to sit on the potty chair. Normally, nothing happens, but the other day you peed in the potty chair! Okay, you peed both in the chair and all over the floor, but it was a good effort. I'm really fine with the fact that you want to potty train about a year earlier than I was planning on, but I'd just like to warn you that it may come up someday that you owe us for cleaning up after you peeing on the floor for a whole extra year, and so no, you may not have the car tonight.

In other family news, you have a brand new cousin. Baby Ray was born yesterday, about 7bls and 21 inches long. Everyone is healthy and happy. We'll get to see him when we go to Indiana in January to visit. We'll be taking your infant wardrobe with us, because it's never too early to get your cousins used to wearing your hand-me-downs.

You are in Madison right now with Grandma and Grandpa Lam. You were fascinated by putting the Christmas tree in the van, and you're a hit as usual with the hometown breakfast joint. Dad and I took the opportunity of nights without you to see a movie, but not together. I'm not sure if that says we've got a really good relationship or not, but we each had fun seeing the same movie on different nights with different friends. Tonight we'll be finishing up the Christmas shopping, and tomorrow we'll be heading down to join you all in Madison. Yay, presents!

Love,
Mom


This is the snow that we had on Dec 3:

This is the blizzard on Dec 11:
This is you goofing around in the kitchen:

Month 21

Dear Corbin,


You are 21 months old this month. This has been the month of sickness in the family, which wasn't any fun. You got a cold at the beginning of the month, and then you went to Madison with the Lams. While you were there, you got a little stomach bug and I came down with a cold. Then Grandma Lam got the stomach bug. Then you all came home and both me and Dad had the stomach bug. You still had your cold, and then you had a cough for a couple of weeks. Everyone seems to be healthy now, and hopefully we'll all stay that way.


Other than illnesses, it's been a quiet month. It's definitely winter now. After a nice spell of Indian Summer, we had our first snow fall a couple of weeks ago. I was in Denver for a conference, and I was lucky that my flight home wasn't cancelled or delayed. That snow was followed by a couple of days last week of freezing rain, and we're supposed to get more of that this week. Which is a bummer for everyone traveling for Thanksgiving.


We will be at home for Thanksgiving, with a couple of friends coming over. Your father put together the menu for dinner, which is going to be interesting. My whole life, Thanksgiving dinner was always a capon, mashed potatos and gravy, cream style corn and some other frozen veggie, cranberry sauce and rolls. This year, we're having Cornish Hens, squash soup, stuffing, applesauce and maybe even asperagus! I made Dad keep the potatos and creamed style corn and cranberry sauce, just because.


Your table manners have reached a state where you love to eat off of everyone else's plate. You'll eat part of your meal, then want to get down from your high chair. You used to go and play, then, but now you'll get up into someone's lap and happily eat their food. We were out to breakfast with the Chapmans last weekend, and you thought that you should get to eat whatever Baby Sofia was eating. Lucky for you, Ms Becky thinks you're the cutest boy ever, and gave you handfuls of blueberries and yogurt drops. Of course, that's what I do, too, so I can't really blame her. It's a good example of how much I love you, that I let you have any of my food. I've had several friends, including your dad, who would trade bites of their dinners with people. I think that's weird, and I only put up with it from you because, well, you're my kid and you're 21 months old. But someday, you'll be older, and then you'll just have to trade food with your dad and not with me.

We celebrated Grandpa Lam's birthday on Sunday the 21st. Grandma had bought a giant Happy Birthday balloon, which you loved. You made Grandpa blow out his candles twice. We gave you some cake and ice cream, and then you wanted to sit and watch Winnie-the-Pooh. Maybe on Thanksgiving we can watch some of the Macy's parade and show you those huge balloons.

We have also started making video calls with Grandma and Grandpa Thorne, so that's been fun. We still have some technical aspects to work out, but they had fun watching you play while talking to us on Sunday. I'm glad we're able to do things like that. Only seeing each other once or twice a year just isn't enough. Hopefully we'll be able to do that once a week, and they'll really be able to watch you growing up. Of course, that also meant they got to watch you be mad when it was time for your bath, but I guess that's all part of the fun!

Love,
Mom

Month 20

Dear Corbin,

You are 20 months old this month. You're getting at least two more teeth. You love music and singing and dancing. We had a very eventful month: your Uncle Alex and Aunt Lena got married, and then we spent a week seeing Kings Canyon, Sequoia National Park, and Death Valley.

On Sunday October 3rd, you left for California with G&G Lam. You drove for four days to San Diego, and by then you were very ready to stop being in your car seat all day. But you did really well on the drive--you played with stickers and you colored and played with balloons that Grandma blew up for you--and you did manage to sleep pretty well each night.

On Thursday the 7th, Dad and I flew out to San Diego to meet up with everyone. On Friday we had the wedding rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, at which you charmed everyone like you always do. Saturday was the wedding, which went very well and was a lot of fun. You enjoyed yourself at the reception, especially after you and I sampled a bit too much of the chocolate fountain. Of course, that was exactly when the wedding party got up to give their speeches, so we had to go and have our sugar highs somewhere else for a while until that was done.

Sunday was a fun day, when Dad and I went kayaking with my Aunt Cele and Uncle Russ. We saw sea lions and tiger sharks and got to kayak into some caves. Then we had dinner with the Lam relatives and said goodbye to everyone since that was our last night in San Diego. On Monday morning, we headed north to KC/SNP. It was a much longer drive than we expected, mainly because the road into the park is so twisty and turn-y that we could only drive about 30mph. The best part was that we saw three bears driving into the park--exciting!

We spent the next two days walking around in the Giant Forest and the Grant Grove of sequoias. Those are some really big trees. Really. They're big. And old. They're about 24 thousand months older than you are right now. It's really impressive to stand next to one of those trees and contemplate the idea of life on earth. We all agreed that Dad's idea to see the big trees was a winner. Dad and I also hiked up to the top of a peak called Big Baldy, which had some pretty incredible views. And then I got really excited about seeing a crow, and your dad laughed at me a lot.

On Thursday the 14th we left KC/SNP and drove east to Death Valley. We stayed just outside of Death Valley National Park, in Beatty, Nevada. You made your first foray into a casino, because there are very few restaurants in Nevada that are not in casinos. I don't think anyone let you gamble, but if you did, you lost. Let that be a lesson to you.

Death Valley is actually a very interesting place. It seems to have something of a chip on its shoulder about being named Death Valley. Its museum is a bit strident about the fact that lots of people have lived in Death Valley, and that even though immigrants to CA named it Death Valley, only one immigrant actually died there. There were some interesting exhibits about the mineral mining there, but you really liked the giant dinosaur skull that they had. After driving to the place with the lowest elevation in the US (minus 282 feet), we turned east again and drove to Las Vegas.

We stayed the night in a very nice hotel outside of Vegas, and then on Saturday morning you got on a place with Dad and I back to Minneapolis. You did really well on the flight, which was a blessing because Dad ended up not feeling well so it was up to me to entertain you. It was really nice to get home and see our dogs and sleep in our own beds! But with the Lams driving back, you had to go to day care this week, which made for a few rocky moments but seemed to end up all right. Thankfully, we'll all be able to get back into our regular routine now. At least, until the Lams take you off to Madison again.

It was a lot of fun to see so many family members that we haven't seen in a long time. It's a good thing that there are so many fun things to do in this country, since we have family living all over the place. I hope that you don't pass up chances to visit and explore. Traveling can be hard in so many ways, and yet there are so many things that you cannot learn any other way. When I was younger and traveled alone, I learned a lot about getting along with strange people. Now that I travel with you and your father, I'm learning a lot about getting along with strange people.

Love,
Mom

Month 19

Dear Corbin,

You turned 19 months old a week ago. You are a running, climbing, throwing, yelling little boy who loves to push things around. You laugh when we play peek-a-boo, and chase you around, and wrestle with you, and tickle you. You like to dance, and pound on things, and color with crayons or sidewalk chalk. You love to read books. In the morning, you have to look at a book while you get dressed. At night, you have to look at a book while you get in your pj's. The other night, you made me read you, "Baby Bear, Baby Bear" three times in a row (one of them backwards).

You love balloons. Another little boy once gave you a balloon that he had blown up, and the two of you played with your balloons together for over half an hour. One day, you insisted that Grandma Lam buy you a balloon that you saw at the dollar store, and you spent the whole day bringing that balloon with you. You even held on to it when you were napping, and Grandma and Grandpa had to keep checking on you to make sure that you hadn't strangled yourself with it. We made the mistake of walking past the balloons in the grocery store the other day, and they had a balloon with dinosaurs on it. I thought we were going to have to put you on the conveyor belt when it was time to check out, because you did not want to hand it over to the cashier. Luckily, you're willing to sleep with this one across the room from you. I blame your balloon mania on the number of times the Lams let you watch scenes from, "Up."

We spent Labor Day weekend in Madison, cutting back bushes and shrubs at the Lams' house. You had fun helping us pile up sticks and Dad even let you help use the machete a little bit, because he likes to give me heart attacks. It was all fun and games until you were showing Grandma some toadstools and she tripped over a stump. She got a pretty good cut on her leg, and you cried and cried about it until we got a band-aid onto it. You didn't care that she landed on your doll stroller and bent it all up, which I think is a good sign. People are always more important than things.Your quest for independence these days means you want your own dinner now, your own serving of whatever is on the table. Sometimes you actually eat yours, but sometimes you don't believe us when we say its the same thing and you insist on eating off of our plates anyway. You still like fruits the best, but pasta seems to be a close second. And of course, any time we say, "ice cream" you run right over.

You still like to help us do whetever we're doing. You help us feed the dogs. You help us sweep the floor. You help us unpack the grocery bags. Grocery shopping with you is really funny, actually. You want to look at whatever we're buying, and when you're done looking at it, you'll turn around in your seat and drop it over into the cart with no regard for what it is or what's under it. So, for anyone taking you shopping in the future: just, you know, keep the eggs out of the drop zone, okay?

This month it definitely became fall instead of summer. We got out your long sleeved shirts and immediately lent half of them to Jaden down the street because they were already too small for you. We have to pack this week for our trip to California, so we've been checking the weather in King's Canyon. It seems to be very similar to our weather here, so it shouldn't be too hard to guess what we'll need. I'm really looking forward to this trip. It will be nerve-wracking to be the one officiating for your Uncle Alex, but fun to see them and the other relatives coming out. And I can't wait to go see the big trees. I think we'll have a lot of fun. Of course, the last time I said we were going to have a week of fun, it ended up being a heat index of 104 degrees for the week. Maybe I'd better stop with the predictions.

Love,
Mom

(The Sandbox one was actually from back in June)

1.5 Years

August was hot! And humid. You're growing pretty fast, mentally and physically. This month it seemed like you have really been able to process a lot of different things that we say to you. "Hold this." "Can I have that?" "Let's take a bath!" "Are you ready to eat?" We say these things to you and it's beginning to feel less like talking to ourselves. You say "Hot" and "Out" and "Eyes" and you almost say "Down." You can make some appropriate noises too, you make car noises with the car toys, and you emulate the DING when your food has heated up. You're taking an interest in other children as well, so I hope to have a chance to get you playing with some. We met with Doug and Cindy and Adrian for breakfast the other weekend, and you played with Adrian. Your Grandma says you like to play with the other children at the park as well. We may find some part-time daycare for you, or possibly some structured activity to get you socializing and to give your grandparents a break. Who knows, we'll have to find the right thing. We heard you're going to have another cousin - Aunt Erin is pregnant again. It's a boy, and he's due right before Christmas.

Here's some pictures... - Dad

Month 17

Dear Corbin,

You are 17 months old today. This month, you seemed to truly become a toddler. There was a day this month where I put you down for your morning nap, and when I picked you up two hours later you felt like you had grown in your sleep. Fortunately, we rediscovered a whole 12-18 month wardrobe thanks to a small, localized flood in the basement, so your wardrobe is still keeping up with your growing.

You have two more teeth coming in on the top, and possibly even two more on the bottom. You never did like the teething rings that I got for you, but you're perfectly happy to chew on the screen door while watching Dad mow the lawn, or on a wash cloth when I'm trying to wash your face, or on my shoulder when I'm holding you. You're also happy to chew on food. Dad has started following a rule of feeding you at least two times for each one time that he eats, and you seem perfectly happy with this arrangement. You also started brushing your own teeth this month. Grandma and Grandpa Lam got you a toothbrush shaped like a penguin and you liked it so much you even started brushing with the plain old boring toothbrush that I got you a long time ago.

You continue to demonstrate a strong understanding when we talk to you, but so far the only real word you say consistantly is "eyes." Grandma Lam thinks you also say, "Hi" and I believe her, because I swear the other day I heard you repeat me when I said, "Hi, Arrow." Oh, and you say, "hot." You have started really enjoying it when we sing to you. I have been trying to teach you, "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," and you play along a little bit, but mostly you just enjoy the song. When I stop singing, you sign, Please, which has become your default sign for both More and Please and Yes.

We survived the 4th of July for one more year. We had a very baby-friendly grill out, which meant everyone left at 8pm. You went to sleep just fine, and slept through the fireworks which kept me up until 2am. That's the only day of the year when I wish we lived anywhere else but our neighborhood. Our neighbors light off so many fireworks, there's enough smoke to make you think the whole block was burning down.

You spent some time in Madison twice this month. The second time, you got to ride in your brand new front-facing car seat. You grew too tall for your infant seat, but the first time we put you in the new seat, you looked so small again! You seemed to like being able to see more, but you weren't as comfortable when you wanted to nap in it. We'll have to get you one of those little neck pillows or something, since we've got at least two more road trips planned this year.

We had some happy news from the Spencers this month--you're going to have another cousin! Erin is due in December, and they're having a boy this time. We're going to send them most of your wardrobe, because nothing says family quite like photos of two cousins wearing the same clothes in two different years. If you suddenly start getting birthday presents of really expensive clothing, I guess we'll know why!

I'm looking forward to next month. I'll be done with this show, so I'll have a chance to catch up on some chores and projects. Plus, Grandma and Grandpa Lam are going camping for a week, so we'll have a long weekend at the Cottage with them, and then I'll have you all to myself for the next week. I will finally get to do all of the fun things that they do with you, like go to the zoo and to the playground. I'm sure you will make me totally exhausted by the end of the week, but I plan on having a lot of fun and you should, too.

Love,
Mom





So much for that eating with a spoon thing:

Adventure Corbin

Month 16

Dear Corbin,

You are 16 months old today. This month, you started climbing. You climbed up onto the couch in the living room. You climbed up onto the couch in your bedroom. You climbed up into your climbing cube and went down the slide. Then you turned around and climbed back up the slide. You are almost running and almost catching a ball. You are so much fun to sit and play with, or just watch as you play.

You have also started feeding yourself with a spoon. We started handing you a loaded spoon and helping you actually get it into your mouth. But it didn't take long before you wanted to do it all yourself, so I gave you a bowl with some mac and cheese and you fed yourself the whole thing. Which is kind of amazing on two fronts: using a spoon successfully for a whole meal, and eating a whole serving of any thing at one time.

Dad gave you a real haircut this month. He studied up on some videos on YouTube, strapped you into your high chair and snipped away. You were pretty patient and sat about as still as you ever do. I was afraid you'd end up looking like one of the Three Stooges, but you didn't. You look just as cute as you always have, thank goodness.

You became a theater orphan this month. I took a stage management gig so I've been missing out on bedtimes for a couple of weeks now. Grandma and Grandpa Lam took advantage of the situation and got me to agree that you could go on a trip with them. (They were like wolves: they sensed the weakest one in the herd and went in for the kill.) So, you went over to the cottage with them for a couple of days. Next week, they're taking you to Madison for four days, and I'm sure by next month they'll have just moved you in with them. Hopefully, they'll let you live at the apartment with them, so I can babysit for you sometimes.

It's been interesting being back in the theatre life, but also incredibly hard. Before you were born, when rehearsals got boring or tiring, I would think to myself, "This will be worth it when we are actually doing performances." And it was, and I would be a little bit sad when the show closed. But now my thoughts go in a different direction, and I think to myself, "I could have been home with Corbin," and I have discovered that no amount of anticipation is making up for that disappointment. I think my best bet is to wait until you're in highschool, and then direct your highschool plays. Don't you think? What do you mean you want to play football?

Love,
Mom

Month 15

Dear Corbin,

You turned 15 months on Saturday. It has been a busy month. We started with a trip to Missouri to visit your Dad's family. Then we went to our first cookout of the season, at Jody and Mary's house. (You had fun pushing your "car" up and down their driveway and eating your first hot dog. Their dog Scrappy spent some time licking all over your face, until you figured out that if you held your had up, he would lick your hand instead.) We went to Dairy Queen one day after doing yard work. We celebrated Mother's Day by taking Grandma Lam out for breakfast. We went to a birthday party, and I even let you have some cake. Yesterday, we went to a softball and grilling party at Wyndom Park in NE. And the night before that, Mom and Dad actually went out at night together! Crazy!

For Mother's Day, Grandma and Grandpa Lam gave me a great present--portraits of you. They even framed one for us, and we hung it up that same day. We all marveled that the photographer got you to smile for her, but you did, and the pictures are great.

It's definitely turned into summer this month. We had some rainy days, but now it's hot and humid. The afternoon that we were doing yard work, Grandma Lam filled up a Tupperware storage bin with water for you to wade in. You waded for about 30 seconds before you sat right down in it, shorts, diaper and all. After you were done playing in the water, Grandma got you all cleaned up, but when she started using the same bin to wash off some lawn chairs, you climbed right back in it, this time with your shoes on, too! I guess that's what we get for putting you in swimming lessons so young.

You have four teeth now, two on the top and two on the bottom (all in front) and you've discovered that Cheerios are crunchy. You've started wanting to use a spoon to feed yourself, which you might imagine sometimes results in you eating and sometimes results in the dogs having a treat. It also sometimes results in a good immune system, since I also caught you eating dirt off of the trowel the other day, as if it were just a big spoon.

That's just part of the independence that you want to exercise. You like to do whatever it is we're doing, which is fun. You help me pick up your toys. You help me sweep up the kitchen floor. You want your own napkin to wipe your own mouth. But along with this goes your temper, and when we hold you back from doing something you let us hear your frustration. Being stubborn is nothing new in this family, though, and you were born in the year of the Ox, so you definitely come by it honestly. Luckily, you're still easy to distract, and at heart you're still very easy-going. Besides, when you're insisting that you'd rather read books than play with something else, it's pretty hard to disagree with that.

Love,

Mom