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!