Month 30, or Officially 2 1/2

Dear Corbin,

You survived the camping trip! You got to stay up late and eat smores. You spent hours every day playing in the sand with your cousins. You threw many rocks into Lake Superior. You ate fish fry and got a boat ride from Uncle Mark. You became a stinky feral child who cried his way through a bath the first night back at the Cottage. Fortunately, you have recovered some veneer of civilization again since you've been home.

You donated several pints of blood to the mosquito population, of course, but that's to be expected. I said to your Dad last night that I hope you grow enough arm hair to cover up any scars left from you scratching your bug bites. You also have a lump on the right side of your neck, which we assume is bug bite, but I made you a doctor appointment anyway. You have your own explanation for it. You heard us talking about your "lump" and how it must be a "bite," and then told us that it's a heffalump bite.

You've made progress sorting out your pronouns, and your tenses are starting to appear, which we can tell because you've started narrating your life in declarative sentences. You know the difference between, "I'm running," versus, "I ran." You've also started the typical adding "ed" to anything to make it past tense; "I throwed it," or "I stealed it (about my coffee thermos)." And we keep parrotting things back to you, in order to either reinforce concepts, or correct grammar, or correct pronunciation.

Speaking of parrots, you met one the other day. Our neighbors' son had his pet parrot over at their house, and you and Dad went out in the back yard and got to see him up close. I don't know exactly what happened, but you came back in the house with almond crumbs all over your chin.

I love asking you what you think, when you ask me questions. The other day, you heard Dad's table saw going in the garage. You asked me, "What's Dad doing?" I said something like, "It sounds like he's making something. What do you think he's making?" You said, "A hot air balloon!"

In house news, we have finished painting the wall in the living room. Now we must hang up the curtains and move the furniture back, and it will all be back to normal. Maybe. Your train set was originally in a corner by that wall, but I moved it to under the window in the dining room. I had intended to move it back when we were done with the wall, but you seem to have declared public domain on the dining room because the train track now stretches over six feet of real estate. Train sets appear to share the property with gases; they expand to the size of their container.

We've gotten to the point where you have some of your books memorized. Before bedtime the other night, I was making you "read" "One Fish Two Fish." You knew almost every phrase on the first dozen pages or so, and lots of the rhymes later in the book. You also have set responses for specific events in some books, and every time we get to those pages, we have the same dialog. That's the fun of having the same books for a long time. One thing that has changed is the songs that you request from me at bedtime. It's a struggle to accommodate you sometimes, but I do my best. The songs you requested the other night were, in order:

The spider song

The great great great big spider song
The pufferfish song
The big pufferfish song
The big spiny pufferfish song
The teeny teeny teeny tiny pufferfish song
The rainbow song
Twinkle twinkle twinkle twinkle twinkle little star

You've also requested the Corbin song and the Corbin sleeps song, the Pooh song, the grasshopper song, the Cat in the Hat song, and when I've been out of town you've asked Dad for the Mama come home song. You certainly give our imaginations a work out, but there's nothing better than sitting in the rocking chair with you for a snuggle.

Love,
Mom



Cousins camping:
At the Cottage:
Wall primed and painted:
Jodi and Wan Ling over for breakfast. Jodi made you a leaf garland:

Month 29, or Where did July go?

Dear Corbin,

This summer has continued with a heat wave that simply defies adjectives. It's been very disappointing. I was planning on spending lovely weekends playing outside in the yard. Instead, we've holed up in the house with the air conditioners on, sitting in front of fans and watching lots of episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba! on Netflix streaming. Our yard has turned into a buggy jungle dotted with toadstools. The dogs have been to the dog park once in four weeks. Our electric bill is higher than it's ever been before. Summer has never been my favorite season and this year I am definitely ready for fall.

At the same time, July seems to have flown past us. You came back from the trip to VA addicted to listening to a cd of Cat in the Hat stories to go to sleep. This is fine with me, since it means I don't have to stand in your room singing songs for half an hour anymore. You've also started saying, "Get more baby blankies," which I think is funny. I try to limit you to four, in case I want one to put over you later. Sometimes you lay down and say, "Put baby blankies on him," and sometimes you just smoosh them up under your face or under your pillow. You've also started asking me to leave the door open when I leave your room, which is only fine with me because you sleep through noise so well.

One of the interesting things that the trip taught you was about fire alarms. You noticed our smoke detector in the hallway upstairs and said, "Alarm makes noise." It took me a minute to remember that the fire alarm had gone off in one of the hotels on your trip and woken you all up early in the morning. So far, that's the one noise that I can think of that you haven't slept through.

We had our 4th of July party, which was really fun. You spent a long time kicking your little soccer ball around with Grandpa Lam and then clapping for yourself. Doug and Adrian brought over a scooter to lend to us, and you learned how to ride that in about a millisecond. The next week, Grandma Lam and I took you to Toys R Us to buy you a helmet. You very loudly refused to let me try it on your head in the store, but that afternoon when we were going to go down the block to a party at Kim and Andy's, I said, "Do you want to ride your scooter?" and you said, "Ride scooter! Put helmet on!" You barely waited for me to cut the tags off. Goodness knows what we would have done if it hadn't fit.

Your vocabulary is getting quite big, and you keep surprising us with things that you say and know. Today at the dinner table you counted all the way up to fourteen. This afternoon you said to Grandma Lam, "Flowers in Liz's yard," and she hadn't heard you use a possessive before that. You're starting to sort out your pronouns, too. You have started knowing the stories in the books that we read. The other day I stopped reading a Curious George book because I thought you weren't paying attention, but you looked at me and said, "Read rest of book." One of the funniest things that you've said recently had to do with the cat. You like to help scoop out the litter box in the basement. One morning I was filling up Laney's food dish, and you said, "Go down and scoop poop." I said, "There's no poop in the litter box right now." You said, "Go down and poop, Laney."

You've also gotten obsessed with puffer fish. I showed you one at the fish store one day, and now you make us draw puffer fish and puff up our cheeks and every time you see a picture of a large-ish fish it's automatically a puffer fish. I was in Chicago for a conference last week, and one of the museums that I got to visit was the Shedd Aquarium. I managed to get a couple of photos of a huge puffer fish at the aquarium. But your actual souvenir was a stuffed triceratops from the Field Museum. I had meant to see more of the Field, but the dinosaurs were so amazing that I totally lost of track of time and was in that gallery for at least an hour. I also got to see the U boat at the Museum of Science and Industry, and I got you one of the old-fashioned molded wax statues of it that you can do in the machine for two dollars. It's going to be a lot of fun when you're a little bit older and we can take some trips to Chicago to see those museums.

But now you're off on another trip with Grandma and Grandpa Lam. First to Madison, then to Menominee, and then way up north in the UP on the family camping trip. You've never been camping before, of course, and I'm hoping that all will go well and that you won't be miserable with bug bites or not able to sleep the whole time. I'm sure you'll be fine and have lots of fun, but I won't be able to call you on the cell phone, so that will be hard for me. Dad and I will meet you at the Cottage the next weekend so we can all go to my cousin Jenny's wedding. I'll be happy to see you! Hopefully, in the meantime, the weather in Minneapolis will be nice and we can finish painting the wall in the living room and the railing on the mud room roof. Having those chores done would feel good. The good part about missing you is that I try to fill up my time doing something useful. Of course, the longer you're gone, the more of your college education goes to Dad and I eating dinner out at restaurants, so you might want to keep that in mind.

Love,
Mom

We started redecorating a wall in the living room:


Mr "Where's my helmet?"

Party at Kim and Andy's house:

You creating a Zen car garden in your sand box: