10 Things I Love About You

Corbin. You are my first born. Every stage you go through is a first for me and that doesn't always make things easy. I get frustrated with you and sometimes expect more from you than I should. I'm working on that. The very same things that can be frsutrating about you are the same things that make me love you so much and that will help you out down the line. So be patient with me and I'll try harder to be patient with you as we grow together.

So here's my list for you today. I feel like I could name a million little things but here, my baby, are 10 things I love about you:

1. Your cuddles. I'm so glad you haven't outgrown wanting to snuggle with me yet. I'm not looking forward to the day you do.
2. Your passion. You never feel anything halfway. Whether you're mad or sad or happy you do everything over the top.
3. Your love of learning. You always want to know everything about everything. You remind me of myself that way and I love you for it. Even if your never-ending questions do sometimes drive me crazy.
4. You love to help. And you really are a big help.
5. You're a terrible liar and generally tell on yourself if you've done something wrong. I hope you always stay that way.
6. You don't try to be someone you're not. It doesn't always win you the most friends or make you fit in the best but you always march to the beat of your own drum. I hope you always stay that strong.
7. Your love for your sister. Sure you fight sometimes because all siblings do but you really do love her. She is so lucky to have you.
8. You always give me another chance. I screw up. A lot. But you are always my biggest fan. I know that won't last forever.
9. You have made me grow so much. I am a completely different person than I was before I had you. You have changed me for the better in so many many ways. Thank you so much!
10. You are you and you are perfect. I couldn't ask for anything more. :-)

One Month Since School Let Out

Corbin's last day of school was June 9th so its been one month since he got out. In that time we have:

Had family visitors (my sister, brother-in-law and niece) for a few days
Went to Downtown Disney twice
Went to Epcot once
Went to DisneyQuest once
Went to Magic Kingdom once
Went to Typhoon Lagoon once
Celebrated his 6th birthday
Went to the zoo two or three times
Went to the Seaquarium once
Went to the beach a couple times
Swam in the pool a few times
Went to the movies 3 times - Cars 2, Yogi Bear (free) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Saw an Aztec dance show at the library
Been out to lunch or dinner at T-rex Cafe, Bongos in Downtown Disney, to a greek restaurant where a belly dancer danced on the table, at a sushi buffet, to Golden Corral (his favorite lol), to a yummy Italian restaurant and to smaller places a few times
Read countless books, played tons of games, did lots of crafts, did several science experiments, worked on memorizing addition facts, did a few projects from his Nature Journal, went on lots of walks and cuddled up to watch cartoons many times

It's been a fun busy month and I've got just as much planned for the next month. What a life we live. I wish his summer break could go on forever :-)

Sweetness

Alora has been sleeping at least part of the night in her own room for the past couple of weeks and sometimes stays there all night. I'm excited about how well she's making the transition, especially since she initiated it on her own, but I do miss her cuddles sometimes.

Last night she came over to our room at about 2:00 am and said, "I found you!" with a huge smile on her face. I was still awake and told her "I'm glad you found me. I love you" and she says, "I found love!"

Awwww. My sweet little girl :-)

30 Days of New

This week Pat's family was here visiting and we went down to Key West over the weekend and camped out at a KOA campground in Sugarloaf Key about 14 miles north of Key West. The kids had so much fun and so did I. Even though I've been living in Miami/Homestead for 7 1/2 years now it was my first time going all the way down to Key West and I enjoyed getting to explore a new place.

I love trying new things, eating new foods, and going new places. But with Corbin in school and just the every day work, school, cooking, cleaning, entertaining the kids routine it sometime becomes just that...a little too routine for me. We do get out and go somewhere fun every weekend and I'm constantly looking for new recipes to try so our lives aren't completely dull or anything but I love variety.

So I'm going to try to do something new every day for the next 30 days. Some days will be simple things like trying a new food or exercise/workout (my fitness life definitely needs a shot of something new because I've been slacking off the last couple weeks). Other days we'll hopefully get to go explore new places we haven't yet been. Let the fun begin! I'll try to check in about once a week or so and maybe even figure out how to add pictures to my posts for once. LOL!

Girl Meets Bike

Over the weekend Pat started to talk about wanting to get a bike so he could go out and ride with the kids. What?? And leave me at home? Not that I couldn't use a break from time to time but I've had it in my mind for a while that I wanted to learn how to ride a bike and it sounds like a fun way to spend time together as a family. Besides, now was a perfect time for me to learn because Corbin's been going with his training wheels for a while so we can learn together and, frankly, because I still have health insurance right now. It will be ending soon when my job does and if I'm going to learn something that is fairly likely to result in me breaking something it's better to be insured when I do it.

So we went to a few places to look at bikes on Sunday and Monday when I got home from picking up Corbin from school Pat was there with a surprise...my first bike! So it's official. At 28 years of age I am finally attempting to learn how to ride a bike. I barely tried as a kid. Actually, if I remember correctly, I think I was rocking the training wheels, tried one time without them for about 10 minutes and decided it wasn't for me. But as an adult I'm a lot more confident and determined than I was as a child so I have that on my side at least.

Of course I wanted to ride it right that minute. Riding a bike looks like so much fun. So Pat took me out into a grassy area beside the club house in our community and ran behind me holding onto the back of the bike to help me balance like you would a little kid. I tried to pedal some but mostly just kept putting my feet down despite him telling me 500 times that I should use the brakes when I wanted to stop. I feel like I learned a lot that first day even though none of it had pretty much anything to do with me actually riding the bike. Here's what I learned in no particular order:

1. It's not as easy as it looks.

2.  Bikes are heavier than they look.

3. They don't actually help you stay upright at all. In fact, they seem to think you look better thrown on the ground.

4. If you're not used to riding a bike that seat is really flippin uncomfortable. Like someone kicked me in the crotch 20 times in a row uncomfortable.

5. I don't actually need to keep the steering wheel steady and straight. I don't know why I thought that. Unfortunately, Pat didn't think to tell me until the end of the lesson that I should be actually steering it to help keep my balance. It sounds obvious but it wasn't to me and its been so long since he learned to ride he forgets to tell me things like that.

I practiced for about half an hour or so before we had to give up because our kids kept trying to run away while Pat was helping me.

Later that night I looked online at websites describing how to teach an adult to ride a bike. The thing I kept seeing over and over was to lower the seat all the way so that your feet can touch the ground well, find a sloped area and  ride down without pedalling over and over to help teach you to balance. I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to compute to Florida terms. For those of you not from here, Florida is the flattest state ever. The closest thing we have to hills is landfills.

Not to be discouraged though I did have Pat lower the seat all the way and started riding the bike more like a scooter for the past couple days and I feel like my balance is improving. A little. Nowhere near as much as I'd like. It gets frustrating after a while and I just want to be able to put my feet on the pedals and ride at more than 0 mph. Every once in a while I'll actually get myself coasting and balancing for a few feet and get some false confidence and try to really ride...and then fall over.

So after two days of this I've decided tomorrow I want to go out on my own with the bike while Pat watches the kids. I mostly believe his intentions are good and that he's following me aorund because he wants to be close by in case I fall to my doom but sometimes I look at him and he's got this smirk on his face while he's watching me like he just wants to laugh at me so bad but knows I'll kick him in the nuts if he does. Plus Corbin keeps making smartass remarks about how slow I am. Easy for him to say. He still has training wheels.

But mostly I want to go on my own so I can yell at the bike. Pat sees complaining as weakness and seems to think an angel dies every time I utter a curse word so I can't say half of what I'd like to tell the bike. I want to be able to yell out things like "You stupid piece of shit! How dare you throw me on the ground!" without him glaring at me or unintentionally teaching Alora a new favorite phrase.

So thats our plan for tomorrow. Just me, the bike, and a lot of yelling and crashing and hopefully a little more balancing. Wish me luck.

Not a Baby Anymore

You'd think that parenting a second child would be less surprising than parenting the first but that's definitely not the case. Not only is every child different, but parenting styles tend to change over time. With Corbin I sometimes feel like I rushed everything. Not that I didn't enjoy him being a baby but I was so excited to see him do new things and he gave me a lot to be excited about. He felt so grown up to me all the time. I think partially because we didn't have many friends that had kids so we started going to playgroups when he was only 8 months old. The kids there were all at least a few months older than him but I didn't see it that way. I kept thinking he could do anything they could do and he proved me right time and time again. He started walking at 8 1/2 months and running everywhere shortly after. He was an early talker and knew things like recognizing all of the letters of the alphabet by sight before he was even 2 years old. It all just went by so quickly and it still does. He still amazes me every day with the things he does and all that he understands at such a young age.

I don't really think I understood how fast it had all happened though until Alora came along. Seeing her tiny little body next to his made him seem so big. Having to take care of the needs of a newborn after a few years break made me realize how grown up my little boy had really become. He didn't need me anymore the same way Alora did.

And Alora did really need me for everything at first of course. But now she's nearly 2 years old and its hard for me to accept that she's just not a baby anymore. Where I was in a huge rush for Corbin to accomplish every new milestone, I was more than happy to sit back and enjoy Alora being a tiny baby. She did not share these feelings. She quickly put to rest any ponderings I had about whether I had pushed Corbin to do things earlier than he would have on his own. She started talking just as young as him, started walking a week and a half after he did at 9 months old, and surpassed him on some milestones like crawling, climbing the stairs, feeding herself, learning her colors, etc.

But in my eyes she was still just a baby. No matter what she did I'd look at her compared to Corbin and think "Corbin can do that but Alora can't yet. She's still too young." Who was I fooling? Certainly not Alora. She just keeps right on growing up and I'm finally catching on.

She does new things every single day but the past couple weeks have just been a huge eye opening time for me. First we bought the kids as Plasma Car. If you don't know what they are, look them up because they're tons of fun. You sit on it and move the steering wheel back and forth to make it go. It's made for a little older kid than Alora but she ended up learning how to ride it faster than her big brother! Pat bought her a scooter. Corbin has had one for a few months and struggled with it and wasn't as interested in it as the bike...until Alora got hers. The first day out of the box she figured out how to ride it and keeps getting faster and faster at it. Now, of course, Corbin is learning to ride his really well too because you can't let your baby sister learn something before you.

Oh and the clothes. She has to pick them out on her own. We took her shopping this past weekend to get some new clothes since she was outgrowing everything. Pat sat her down in a store and told her "Go pick out your clothes" and she really did. She'd go through the racks looking at each thing, even checking the tags (no doubt copying what she sees us doing) and pick out the things she liked. She wanted to carry them to the cash register herself and hand them to the cashier. At home she picks out what she wants to wear pretty much every day and refuses to let me put clothes on her if I try to talk her into something else. She definitely has her own ideas.

And then there was today. I used to take Corbin to story time at the library around Alora's age so I got the idea that I'd take her once and see how she did. She can generally be a pretty spirited child so I had pretty low expectations and thought we'd end up leaving part way through but she did awesome! The story time lady read the kids 4 books, did a couple mini-stories with magnets on a white board and had them sing 4 or 5 songs with dancing involved. Alora went right along with it all! Most of the kids there were quite a bit older than her but as soon as we went in she ran right over and started trying to play with the big kids. When the story time started I waited to see if she would sit with them on the rug or come and sit with me. It took Corbin months of story times before he would sit with the other kids but she showed her independent side once again and joined the group without me. When they danced, she danced. Not always the same moves they were doing but she had a great time. When they sat for the stories, she sat for the stories and stayed (mostly) quiet and really seemed to pay attention. I wasn't sure if she was fully getting what was going on or not but then on the car ride home she said "I had fun!" I told her "Today they were talking about the letter H and hugs. If we go another time they'll talk about something else." A couple minutes later she asked me to sing the alphabet with her and when we were done she says "H mom! Hear H?" so she must have got that they were talking about H a lot :-)

So I get it, Alora. You're really not a baby anymore. Just don't grow up too fast and remember even if you're getting bigger mommy still needs lots of hugs and kisses.

What I Do When I Should be Looking At Jobs

I know I've mentioned a few times that my job is ending in a few months. Most days I really don't feel very stressed about this at all but when I look at available jobs from home I start feeling like I'm about to have an anxiety attack. They mostly look boring and pay far less than what I was making which wasn't a high income to begin with. So mostly I don't look. Great solution, right?? So I thought what better way to waste time and procrastinate on my job search than to make up a list of (fake) jobs I'd like to have and would qualify for. 

Note: These are not serious. Unless you want to hire me. Then I'm serious.

1. Shadow Man Destroyer. See previous post. If you live far away I could email you ideas on how to get rid of such a thing or at least entertain you and/or your child (most likely your child) until it goes away. Or if you lived close enough I could show up at your house in an "official" uniform and do some kind of elaborate routine to hopefully trick your child into believing it was gone. Yippee!!

2. Talking about my kids all day. I'm really great at this. And really, who doesn't want to hear several hours worth of why my kids are so great?

3. Master Procrastinator. I'm pretty sure this post is proof enough that I have a lot of talent in this area.

4. Teaching workshops on how not to make or keep friends. Another hidden talent I have. Oh I talk to everyone I see and things are usually going great, "Oh, you have kids? I have kids too. You like eating food? Me too! We have so much in common" until I throw up some freak flag like "I gave birth to my child at home and like using cloth diapers and breastfeeding for 50 million years" or something equally out there. Every once in a while some weirdo still keeps talking to me, most likely because they have nothing better to do, and we become friends. In that case I have to pull out a trick like saying we should get together 500 times and never following through on it and forgetting to call them or email them for many months at a time. Yeah. I'm a pretty poopy friend and with my help you could be too!

5. Tea taste tester. I'm obsessed with tea lately. Hot herbal tea, iced tea, green tea, bubble tea. Mmmm...tea. I could branch out and be a taste tester for other things too like beer or wine or chocolate.

6. Writing pointless blog entries. Does your blog say too much that people might be interested in? No problem! Let me have at it for a few days and I can make yours look like the diary of an insane person too.

7. Toy assembler. I've had a lot of practice at this. A lot. I worked as a babysitter through college and a nanny for a year after and those families always left toys for me to assemble so I had lots of practice before my tots even came along. And I actually like doing that stuff. It's a sickness.

8. Research Queen  I leave no question unanswered. Anything I wonder about I must look up right away. I never buy anything without reading 500,000 reviews first. I actually enjoy doing things like literature searches. Have I mentioned that I'm odd?

9. Breastfeeding cheerleader! I'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about breastfeeding and a lot of things you didn't want to know too :-)

10. Just being me. Because I'm obviously so fabulous that someone should have started paying me for that a long time ago :-)