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)