Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Crawling...backwards?

Up until the past couple days Korben has shown no interest in crawling. He has interest in so many things, but crawling has just not been one of those. We were so excited on Sunday when we noticed him getting his bottom off the ground for the first time. We thought, "hey, thats progress." Now all of a sudden, he seems really determined to go somewhere, but can't seem to get anywhere but backwards. You will see in the video that he doesn't cover a lot of ground, but this is still a big milestone for him!

In this video you will also get to hear just a LITTLE bit of the babbling he has been doing lately. I've been telling Aaron that since Monday he has these little jabbering sessions that are just hilarious. Well, he did not know what I meant by that until last night when he was giving Korben a bath. All of a sudden, Aaron yells from the bathroom "Do you hear him talking???" I was like, YES...thats what I've been telling you! Its so cute. I was JUST playing this video off of YouTube and Korben looked up from playing with his toys and started responding to the "Korben language" he heard from the videos. HE knows what he is saying.

He gets unhappy at the end of this crawling session. Sorry to be cruel and post that for the world to see, but I couldn't figure out how to edit this. Again, I'm learning as I go with this stuff!


"Life with the Rodgers" IT IS!

I want to thank Elizabeth Hammon for the awesome advice. She helped me fix all the issues I mentioned in my last post in about 10 seconds. Now I just need to notify everyone that the name has changed, and we're in business!

Calling all blog experts:

I have started to feel bad about naming this blog "korbenrodgers.blogspot.com." Lord willing, we would like to have future children, and I regret naming this blog just after Korben. I did it impulsively, not thinking this would be something I would keep up with over the years. I hope no one is getting any ideas...We're not planning on having another child for a long time. I just want my blog to be in order when we do. I just checked and "TheRodgersFamily" is taken, however, I just created the blog, "LifewiththeRodgers.blogspot.com."

I know I have a lot of blog experts that read my blog, so if there is any advice you have, please comment on this. Here is my dilemma. I'm ready to switch to my new blog at any time, but is there any way I can take my posts from my old blog to my new blog so they can all be on the same site? I have used my blog as a baby book for the past two months and I would hate for those entries to be on an abandoned site all alone.

Also, has anyone ever printed out their blog entries? I have a paranoia with technology that one day blogspot will disappear and I will lose all of my entries?

Any Advice?

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

As I promised, here are some pictures (and videos!) of our Christmas decorations! Please know that we have a lot more we want to do such as...get a real tree skirt, tastefully hide cords, and hang stockings...but this is a SNEAK peek! Korben was just looking too irresistibly cute this morning in his Christmas pajamas to wait any longer to take pictures of him with the decorations. So, here they are!

Where's Waldo?





















































Mistletoe. Korben's new favorite toy in the house. He has to ring the bell every time we walk by.





























Videos:




Korben's new squinting trick. I like to think that he is winking at me with both eyes.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Girl Weekend/ Boy Weekend

I had the opportunity this past weekend to attend my first "Women of Faith" conference with about thirty ladies from our church. First of all, I just want to give a shout out to my amazing husband for making this trip possible. Aaron did not bat an eye at staying home with Korben for two days. He fully embraced my instruction sheets, and was very enthusiastic about their "man time" together. I am well aware that most husbands would not be willing to do this with an eight month old, and I am blessed beyond measure. Every time I would call and check in, he would say don't worry about us, we're great, enjoy your time away, and you deserve it! How sweet is he? He seemed as excited for me to get away as I was, and he never made me feel guilty. I know Korben will greatly benefit from being raised by a man like this.

When I walked in the door Saturday night I heard Christmas music playing...then I noticed mistletoe hanging in the doorway...THEN I noticed lights and garland on the mantle! It was so pretty I almost cried! Aaron said that he and Korben saw a commercial that Lowe's was having a Christmas sale so they wanted to surprise me! Well, this fully got me in the Christmas spirit, so we picked out our first Christmas tree after church on Sunday. It is the biggest thing I have ever seen. I knew we had twelve foot ceilings, so a nine foot tree seemed appropriate. I had NO IDEA a nine foot tree would be so big. It pretty much lights up the whole house. We re-arranged the furniture in the living room to fully accommodate the tree. We are crazy about Christmas, so we don't mind the fact that it is over the top.

So, back to the Women of Faith conference. The speakers and music were fantastic. The laughter and worship did good for my soul. However, my favorite part of the weekend was just the fellowship with other ladies. There were people on the trip I had never met that I had the opportunity to get to know, as well as people that I already knew I loved that I was able to get to know better. I love being around people that model "what I want to be". You can only hope when you are around people like that, they will rub off on you. I hope some of these ladies rubbed off on me somehow.

A mother of a student in our youth group was on the trip. She and I had actually never met. We started talking and she said, "I've been wanting to tell you that I've been praying for you ever since Jeff announced you and Aaron were coming to our church." I expressed my gratitude. She said, "I want you to understand, it was God who kept laying you on my heart." "So I don't tell you that I was praying for you for you to think I'm a really neat person, I'm telling you this so you know how much God loves you." That taught me so much. So often we think when someone pops in our head to pray for that it is OUR idea, and we tell people "I've been praying for you" hoping that will make them feel special that we thought of them. But it is GOD who lays people on our hearts. It definitely makes me feel loved that God would lay me on the heart of so many people just to tell me that he loves me through others.

I will post pictures of our Christmas decorations and Korben soon. The latest Korben news is that he has two bottom teeth! They have broken through the gums, but they are not yet big enough to see when he smiles. I promise I will post a picture as soon as they are.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Baby's first Branson trip!

Thursday afternoon we loaded up the car and headed to Branson for a three day trip. The first night was a little bit rough for all of us. We allowed Korben to go to sleep with no noise in the room which punished us for the rest of the night. For every time we rolled over and the sheets made a noise, Korben would startle and wake up...meaning, we all woke up A LOT. I had even put blankets around the porta-crib so he couldn't look at us. Well, to my surprise, there was one time in the middle of the night when I happened to wake up and I looked over at his crib to see that he had not only moved the barrier blanket, but he was wide-awake, STARING at me. As soon as I made eye contact with him, he gave me the biggest grin ever. I had to laugh out loud. It was really sweet...although, a tad bit creepy. :-) We learned our lesson. On nights two and three, Korben had a loud TV on when he went to sleep and we all slept soundly!

Big news: Korben said "MaMa" for the first time on Friday morning. I have only ever heard him say sounds that start with "B." Like, "Buh' and "Boo." Well, Thursday night, I told Aaron, I think I am hearing an "M" sound...like, "Ma." On Friday morning I was feeding him fruit in the high chair and at least three times he said "MaMa." The first time I thought I was just hearing things, the second time Aaron said "HE JUST SAID MAMA", and I know he did it one more time for good measure. Ha. We haven't heard it since, but stay tuned for an update on Korben's verbiage. Another thing to report...I think I see a glimmer of something white on Korben's lower gum. I may just be imagining things, but sooner or later he will surely get a tooth!

After a fun day of shopping at the Tanger outlets, we met up with Don, Julie, and Dustin for a late dinner at Waxy O' Shea's Irish Pub at the Branson Landing. Fantastic food! Korben slept through the entire meal, and live band, which I have to admit, was a nice little break for mom and dad.

On Saturday, if you had told me it was -30 degrees, I would have believed you. It was absolutely FREEZING. This was the day we had planned to go to Silver Dollar City. We were doing some shopping that morning (assuming we were going to go to silver dollar city in the afternoon) and I opted to buy Korben something even warmer to wear to brave the cold. Check out his pictures in his one-piece, fleece outfit. He even wore his big poofy coat on top of that, so the poor little eskimo didn't have a chance at moving his arms. He looked so helpless in the stroller...but at least he was as warm as we possibly could have gotten him!

So, we headed off to Silver Dollar City, and we were motioned by the parking attendants at the park to keep driving. We pass all over silver dollar city's overflow parking lots, and drive almost five miles until we find a parking lot that isn't packed. We are already thinking at this point that it wouldn't be fun to be at the park if it was that crowded anyway. Well, then we stepped out of the car, and our choice was solidified. It was EVEN colder. Nothing about being in an overly populated theme park or freezing to death (all of this- with a baby) sounded fun to ANYONE, so we loaded back up in the car.

It was totally meant to be because we ended up having a fantastic time at the Branson Landing, and we ate at the most fantastic restarant, "Cantina Laredo." It was gourmet Mexican food, and absolutely amazing!

Saturday night, Julie was kind enough to stay in the hotel with Korben while Don, Dustin, Aaron, and I drove through the light display at Shepherd of the Hills. We pretty much laughed for two hours straight. I could never explain all the crazy jokes that went on in that car, but at the time, everything was funny. For many reasons, we are now in the Christmas spirit!

We had our last wonderful meal on Sunday at lunch at the Outback (not the chain restaurant- this one is even better). Korben attacked an alligator for our protection. He used the "kill with kindness" approach. See pictures below.

To say the least, we made lots of great memories, and had a wonderful"first mini-vacation" with our son!




Our great little traveler. This is my view of him when I would peak behind the seat:
































Our little "blue bear" in his warm new outfit:


































Action shot:























Family pictures at the Landing. The Christmas decorations were beautiful!















































Our little one, taking one for the team, and protecting us from the gator:





























I'm sorry to say that these are the ONLY pictures we took! My camera never left my purse, but thanks to Aaron and his iPhone we got these great shots.