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:

Month 28, or Trips and Falls

Dear Corbin,

This has been the month of major trips and minor injuries. You went up to the Cottage with the Grandparents Lam just before Memorial Day. Originally the plan was for all of us to spend the long weekend up north, but the weather forecast was rain all weekend, so we sent you up during the week instead. You came home on Saturday, and it was nice to have the long weekend at home, even though it did rain much of the time.

The next weekend, you fell down the top part of the stairs at the house. It was Saturday morning, and you and Dad were heading downstairs to play. Arrow was laying on the floor with his feet pointed at the stairs, and you stopped to pet him with your back to the staircase. Then next thing Dad knew, you were falling down the stairs and he was chasing after you. Fortunately, you didn't fall head over heels, but instead down on your belly. I heard it happen and came out of our bedroom in time to see Dad picking you up. We all sat on the steps and you cried for a few minutes, but your only injury was a bruise on your cheekbone that quickly went through the stages of being a black eye. During the week, you had managed to skin up both of your knees, and so you suddenly looked like you had joined a rugby team. Here is the lovely progression from "just a little bruised" to "technicolor glam rock eyeshadow":

You can see that it disturbed you greatly.

The rest of the month has been only normally injury prone. A bumped head on the table, or a finger pinched in a belt buckle. Oh, and I did clonk you on the head with the handle of the shovel when I was digging up some tiger lilies and didn't realize you were right behind me. We do a lot of kissing bumps to make them better, although I also stocked up on band-aids again the other day. But I know that for the amount of running and climbing and jumping that you do, we are incredibly lucky that kisses and band-aids are all that we have needed so far.

Your verbal skills continue to develop. You are pronouncing sounds better, and you really make an effort to pronounce words the way that you hear us say them. Sometimes when we're reading, especially the ABC type books, I'll make you look at me and mimic how I move my mouth. I'm not at all concerned about your progress, but I know that's a helpful trick, and you get a kick out of imitating us. You've also started helping us tell your favorite stories when we read them. Before I turn the page, I'll ask you, "What happens next?" and you will either tell me what you think, or give me this funny grin-and-bounce which I think means, "I don't know."

It was the summer solstice this past Monday, but it hasn't felt like summer at all. It's been cold and rainy instead. We had two days that was hot: the first day was about 85 degrees, and the next day it was freakishly hot at 103 degrees. But that seems to have used up our entire summer's worth of heat so far. We put the air conditioners in the windows in preparation for the super hot day, but we haven't needed them since. I flew out to DC for work on weekend, and it was 55 degrees when I got on the plane at MSP and 85 and humid when I got off of the place at DCA. The whole weekend it was a toss up as to what would kill me first: the heat or the walking.

But it's hard to complain about being in DC--it's such an amazing city to visit. I love feeling surrounded by the history of our country. We are fortunate to live here, and I believe very strongly that we must continue the work that so many amazing Americans have done to make the people of this country more free, more equal, and move us closer to the ideals under which the nation was begun. Don't ever let anyone tell you that our country is perfect (or any other country, or anything at all under the sun for that matter), but neither is it worthless or even so terrible. We should not forget that something of quality is only created through hard work. It is easy to help our friends, but it is important to help our neighbors and communities, too. The people of this country have made beautiful, powerful, impressive things. But those things should always serve as reminders of how important we the people truly are.



Right now, you are on another trip with your Grandparents Lam. You left for Madison on Monday, and you spent Tuesday night in Indianapolis with your Grandparents Thorne. We got some cute photos of you and your cousins from Grandpa Thorne already. You should arrive in Norfolk today, for a weekend of visiting with Uncle Alex and Aunt Lena. We miss you very much, so we've been occupying ourselves with trips to the hardware store and eating out at restaurants. Our project while you're gone is redecorating the south wall of the living room, and perhaps moving all of the furniture around if we get that far. We've already to the wallpaper down, but stripping and refinishing the woodwork is what will take the longest, even though we've done it before in the dining room. It feels good to be doing something useful around the house, but it also underscores how much time we have when you're not here. I hope you're having fun, and I'll be glad when you're home to have fun with us again.

Love,
Mom

Month 27

Dear Corbin,

Yesterday, you napped for about three hours, which was long enough to sleep through a tornado hitting North Minneapolis. Three houses of friends were damaged, either from trees falling or roof damage or worse. Heidi and Garry lost their whole garage. But nobody was hurt, not even pets, and so we have plenty for which to be thankful.

It amazes me what you sleep through sometimes. Thunder storms, fireworks, sirens, bad kung fu flicks. We are in quite the bed time rut these days. Bath, snack and books, and then we just turn your fan on, sing you a couple of songs, and leave you to put yourself to sleep. Sometimes we hear you talking, although we don't know you're saying or how you're entertaining yourself. If often makes me want a video camera in your room because I'm terribly curious. But you don't seem to stay awake too long, which is good. And then in the morning, it's always interesting to see where your stuffed animals have ended up. They seem to move around quite a bit.

When it's not pouring rain, it's finally nice enough to be outside after dinner. Sometimes that makes going up for bath time a little harder, but that's okay. One of the funny things you've been doing outside is trying to fit Dad though one of the holes in the side of your climber. You push on his back as if you're actually going to put him through a hole barely the size of his head. It's quite funny to watch. We had to find a carabiner to use on the gate latch, because you learned how to open the gate, and as soon as the gate is open you are off and down the sidewalk. You still love to run everywhere, and chase us, and have us chase you. When you run, you hold your arms stiff at your sides, and it gives you this kind of penguin waddle. It's both endearing and entertaining.

You've started really enjoying stacking things and making towers. We stacked up all of the buckets in the bathtub one night, and now you stack all kinds of things. You stack up tall towers of Mega Bloks. You stack your stuffed animals. I stacked your sippy cup on top of a covered tupperware dish the other day, and now you stack your sippy cup on all of your dishes. But you've also figured out that the real fun of stacking things is in knocking them over.

Other than severe weather, it's been a good month. We bought a different car this month. We traded the SER in for a Mazda3 hatchback. It's been the first little car that you've ever driven around in, between our minivan and Grandma and Bapa's big van. It's nice to have a car that is more reliable and gets better gas mileage. I was always nervous driving the SER; I never trusted that it wouldn't strand me somewhere. So it's nice to go back to only driving the minivan when we really need the cargo space, or when we're traveling. It would be very nice to see the amount of money that we spend on gas go down. Bapa and I were talking the other day about how I remember stopping at O'Malley's gas station on the way to the Cottage, and gas was less than a dollar a gallon. Yesterday, I got excited when I saw gas for less than $3.75 a gallon.

On one hand, it would be easy to lament that times change, and seemingly not for the better. Gas never seems to get cheaper, and O'Malley's doesn't exist any more because the highway moved, and that's a part of my childhood that's just...gone. And yet, I don't lament the passing of time. I like my life and my self now, and it was sometimes a hard process to get to this point. It's painful to learn certain lessons about life, like how to tell if someone is a real friend, or how to choose an apartment well, or how to take criticism from a teacher or boss. I hope that you will see the passage of years as something to respect without feeling dismayed by what may or may not have happened during those years. Life will never happen exactly the way that you plan it, not even when you plan it as obsessively as I do. It is still hard for me to look at choices I have made and to be truly at peace with them. I'm much more likely to think, "I should have done that differently," and to feel some regret. But it helps to think that every single choice I made was leading me here, where I get to be with you and your Dad and our whole family. There is nothing that I would change about that.

Love,
Mom

Month 26

Dear Corbin,

You are 26 months old now. You are not necessarily learning more skills, as much as you are expressing them in bigger and louder ways. More and more you play games that take your whole body being active. You love to run. We were coming home from Grandma and Bapa's the other day, and you ran the whole way, saying, "Run run run." You love it when we chase you, and when you chase us. You made up a game that you call Pin Ball: you take a long-handled plastic cooking spoon in either hand, and then hit one of your round plastic foods (usually the apple, but sometimes the lemon) around the house. It works best in the kitchen where it can't go under anything. And you'll play this for a long time, until you make yourself all sweaty. I got you a plastic oversized golf club and ball from the grocery store, so you could play Pin Ball outside, but it doesn't work nearly as well.

It's funny to me that you're such a stereotypical boy some times. You turn anything into a ball, or into a vehicle. You love games that involve hitting things. When you get frustrated, you are quick to throw or kick things. But my favorite example so far is when we sat around the other day playing with your train engines in your doll house, especially when Thomas used the potty.

My Aunt Irene and cousin David Soong were here to visit all last week. It was nice to see them. They were in CA with us for your uncle Alex's wedding but this time we really got to talk and visit. They were able to come down to the museum, which was really fun. You climbed all over the kiddie ride and the replica coach, and crawled under the big horses. You also got to visit their hotel and swim in the pool. It was funny to see them here in MN, since I had just been in NJ the week before for work, and I would have seen Aunt Irene then if they hadn't already been traveling. I traveled twice this month, and it looks like I'll be traveling more in the next couple of months. You don't seem to mind my absences very much, which is good, since I'll be doing more of it. We're already planning some trips as a family, too. Mainly up to the Cottage this summer, but we also found out that Alex and Lena are planning on coming to Madison for Christmas this year, which will be really great.

The weather is finally starting to act like spring. We broke out your set of yard tools and got the yard raked. We made it out to the dog park, where the dogs proceded to get covered in mud. We even managed to grill out for dinner last night with Chris and Mony. We made moose steaks, which were good, but a little tough. You mostly ate chips and fruit and then made everyone take turns chasing you around the yard and wrestling with you. You tried to convince me that my beer was juice, so that you could have a drink, but you can't fool me, kid. I'm wise to your ways.

Otherwise, it was a fairly quiet month. Although, with how much you talk now, I suppose I can't really call it quiet. We noticed a few weeks ago that when we were driving down the alley, you would say, "Bye, house! Bye, house! Bye, dirty house! Bye, dirty house! Bye, dirty house! Bye, dirty house! Bye, dirty house!" I thought it was cute that you were saying goodbye to our house, although I could have done without the editorializing on how clean it was. But then one morning you said, "Bye, house! Bye, house! Bye, dirty house! Bye, green house! Bye, dirty house! Bye, dirty house! Bye, dirty house!" and we realized that you were saying goodbye to all of the garages we passed in the alley, most of which are white and in need of a paint job but one of which is green. Which made me feel better about both my housekeeping and your powers of observation.

Love,
Mom

Did the video load here for you? There should be a video here.