Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner...

We had the privilege of celebrating Halloween early tonight at our youth costume party at church. It was so much fun!! Aaron and I have been so excited about debuting our little hot dog. We already had the Ketchup and Mustard costumes, and I tried to think of what Korben could be to go with us...so, I started looking up "baby hot dog costume" on the internet back in the summer, and this is what I found...

We're better!

I'm happy to report that we are feeling much better than the last time I posted! I felt 100% better by Monday after several doses of Mucinex. Love that stuff. I'm just now thinking Korben is better. Last night was the first night that I didn't hear him cough all night, and his runny nose seems to be better. I hope his ear infection is better, only time will tell. I've taken a few cute pictures of him the past couple days that I wanted to post. His favorite thing to do right now is stand up while holding on to something. Here are some pictures of him standing up against the back door, staring into the back yard. He was so entertained.




























He was so proud of himself!






















He looks like he is trying to introduce himself to the neighbors in the picture below:






















Cold weather is here, and it was time for Korben to get his first coat. I bought it for him last night, and we tried it on him this morning. We thought he looked so cute in it! (Don't worry, we do put plan to put pants on him when we take him out in the cold!)



























Below is a picture I took accidentally. I actually ended up liking the picture because it shows just how beautiful his blue eyes are.

Buried in Kleenexes.

Korben and I are sick. It started with Korben on Wednesday with a runny nose. I didn't think much of it until the nasty cough started on Thursday. By Friday there was a fever, and he started doing something funny with his eyes (like squinting and rolling them). We went to the doctor on Friday and as it turns out he has his first ear infection. She thinks the cold symptoms are just viral, but she put him on an antibiotic for the ear infection. She said if his other symptoms were bacterial the antibiotic would clear it up. So, that makes me feel better. He doesn't seem much better yet. His nose is still running, and he is coughing a lot. We hear him all night in his sleep just coughing away. I had already ruled out going to church today because he is not fit to take to the nursery, and then I woke up sick. It is very common for me to get sick in the fall and spring because of my allergies, but I normally do not have sinus pressure like this. I feel like I was punched in the face. My nose, eye sockets, and cheek bones feel bruised. Its very strange. I wish we were at church today. We already missed Wednesday night because my car wouldn't start. I really hate missing church. I'll be honest, there was a time in my life when I actually liked a sick day home from church. I know that's terrible, but it is true. I am the complete opposite now. I look forward to Wednesdays and Sundays and I hate to miss. I'm so thankful our pastor's sermons are on the internet, because I hate missing what he is going to say. Lord willing, Korben will be better by Wednesday and we will be able to go to church then. Wednesday night we are having our youth costume party. The Rodgers' family's costumes are ready to go. Korben just tried his on yesterday and he looked so cute. Stay tuned...I will post pictures this week. Hopefully by then we will not be buried in Kleenexes.

Pictures: some old...some new.

The first five pictures were taken on 9/7/08 when mom came to Fort Smith for the weekend so I could go to a youth lock-in. The rest were taken on 10/10/08 (Korben's 7 month birthday), while I was staying at her house. He got to meet his 18 month old cousin, Bailey for the first time. As you will see, they loved each other. I also included pictures of Korben's favorite toy in the world. He loves the musical instruments...he beats them to death every morning! And the last couple pictures are from Arkadelphia's homecoming game. Notice that Korben is wearing his very first OBU hoodie.

The amazing, standing baby video!

The past couple of weeks...

I am so grateful to say that we have our happy baby back. If you read my last post, you will know what I am talking about. It took about a week after taking him off of cow's milk formula for his tummy to feel better, and a good two weeks for his reflux to improve. Thankfully, I believe it is all out of Korben's system and he is happy and content once again. Thank you, Jesus.

We said goodbye to Aaron at 5 a.m. on October 9th for him to go to California for a youth ministry conference. We packed up and headed to Jacksonville that morning to see my mom. The next day I took him to Heber Springs so he could spend the weekend playing with his Mopsy and Poppy. They had a great time. Here are some awesome pictures they took of him over the weekend:


























































My mom and I had a great time too! We had a lot of fun with Korben. He has so many new tricks. He has started rocking while he is sitting on your lap, like he wants to ride the horsie. Its so cute. I've noticed he also seems to do that while his toys are playing music, so I think it also has something to do with him wanting to dance as well. He is also really interested in trying to pull up on things and stand. He is happiest when I am allowing him to hold on to the coffee table and stand up on his own (I am bracing him, of course). What am I going to do if he decides to walk before he crawls? I work with him on practicing crawling every day, but he is not showing much interest yet at this point. He just gets very frustrated that he get to the toys he wants.

His latest trick (which I promise you, he JUST learned today) is JUMPING. I've put him in his "jumperoo" toy almost daily since he was 3 months old and he just stands there and plays with the attachments on it until his heart is content. Well, for some reason today, he decided he would start trying to jump and he couldn't stop. Aaron and I were seriously on the floor rolling we were laughing so hard. He was "feeding" off of our laughter, so he would die laughing, and start jumping like crazy again. Here is a little clip of his Kangaroo-like abilities.



Sorry, I jumped ahead of the timeline by telling you what Korben did today. Let me go back to the week I was at my mom's. Sorry I have no pictures to post of our time together. For some reason all of the pictures I took deleted off of my camera, and I only saved them on mom's computer. I will try to post a few at some point because we have some cute ones.

On Monday, the 13th, we were blessed by getting to spend the day with Korben's "big boy cousins": Carson Jackson and Anderson. Korben is not used to so much activity, so he was on overload all day taking in all of the excitement from the "big boys." Oh the fun memories we all have to look forward to as these boys grow together.

Korben and his 19 month old cousin, Anderson.


















Korben being strolled by his cousin, Carson.


















Anderson, Faith (the boys' precious cousin), Carson, Jackson, and Korben.


















At 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday the 15th, we picked up Aaron from the airport. Korben was sooooooo excited to see his daddy. He just squealed from his car seat when Aaron opened the door to see him! It was so sweet! We were so glad to get him back home safely! I think he was pretty excited to be back with us too!

The next morning, Aaron kept Korben while I went to a Doctor's appointment. My appointment didn't last long so I quickly ran in our new TARGET! It was glorious. Everything was fully stocked and just wonderful! I found Korben the coolest new inflatable bath tub that goes inside the big bath tub. He had seriously outgrown his baby bath tub. When I got home, I couldn't wait to inflate it and see what he thought. Watch this video, and see for yourself!



















































Early yesterday morning we set off on our first Rodgers family overnight trip (besides spending the night with family). It was homecoming weekend at Ouachita, and we wanted to take Korben to meet all of the people we love in Arkadelphia. We had the best time seeing some of our favorite people in the world. It did our hearts so much good to visit all of our special friends and walk Korben around the campus we love so much. He was such a good boy and smiled for everybody at Ouachita. Everyone either commented on his red hair or how big he was. If I had a dollar for everytime we heard "Where'd he get that red hair?" I'd be rich. We can't wait to teach him to say "GOD" so we can avoid the long genetic answer. Ironically, it was Arkadelphia High School's homecoming that night, so we were able to go to the football game and see so many of the students that were in our former youth group. It felt so good to finally introduce them to Korben since they all went through the entire pregnancy with me. Then, we took Korben to sleep at my friend, Rebecca Jones' house while we went to TIGER TUNES-the greatest show on earth. We had a ball, and didn't end up officially getting back to our hotel room until 2 a.m. We assumed Korben would sleep really late since we put him to sleep with a full belly and we knew he would be exhausted from all of the socializing the day before. To our surprise, Korben was uncharacteristically awake at 5 a.m. and ready to play. I tried everything to get him back to sleep, but nothing worked. We were so tired that we decided it wasn't worth waiting around for the OBU homecoming festivities, so we loaded up the car and left the hotel by 7. Not at all what we planned, but we are learning to be flexible. We really could not have asked for much more from our sweet little boy this weekend. He was just precious.

Well, that's the past two and a half weeks in a nutshell. It's been great!

Korben says NO to cows milk. (Not literally)

I forgot to mention in my post entitled "six month check up" that the doctor suggested trying Korben on cow's milk formula again. She said that milk intolerances are often just temporary, and since cow's milk formula has a few more health benefits it was worth giving a try again. He has been on soy formula since he was 2.5 months, after reacting terribly to breast milk for 1.5 months. Dr. Beene suggests that every six months we should re-evaluate whether or not babies still have an intolerance to cows milk. I started giving him cow's milk formula last wednesday, I noticed a little bit of abnormal grunting and fussiness over the weekend, but it started to get really bad sunday night. He was violently arching his back, coughing, spitting up and crying unconsolably. I didn't immediately think it was the formula just because I keep expecting teething symptoms to come (besides drooling and gnawing), however, I ended up taking him to the doctor today because these past three days have been terrible. After Korben has had a bottle he will arched his back so intensly that he can almost fly backwards out of my arms. You can just see all over his face that he is in pain. The happiest he has been the past three days is right when he wakes up and his stomach is empty. This has completely taken me back to the most challenging month and a half of my life. This is what life was like almost every day in April and May. I feel so bad we have had to put him through this just for the sake of experimentation. So, obviously, he is back on soy, and has had another dosage increase of his reflux meds. I'm praying all of the milk will get out of his tummy ASAP, and we can have our happy baby back. Dr. Beene told me that when he is one year old to clear out a week when we don't have anything really important to do and thats when we will experiment with whole milk. I'm dreading that week, but I pray that he will have outgrown his intolerance by then. If a milk intolerance is all we have to deal with, we are incredibly blessed.