Dear Korbyn,

   You are now 1-year-old as of yesterday. I can not believe how fast this year has gone by and how much you have grown. From the first time I even learned that you were growing inside of me my heart started growing. And then I held you in my arms and I never knew how much love my heart could hold.

Someone once told me, “Love multiplies, not divides.” I completely agree with this. My love for you and your sister is more than I could ever describe to anyone.

You are the sweetest baby boy I have ever been around. Now I know I am a little partial but it’s still the truth. The only time you are not happy is when you are hungry. And even then if we give you a little snack you just go back to your chill baby self.

It is so fun watching you and your sister, Jayci, starting to play and have a relationship. She love you so much and tries to be a little mommy to you all the time. Sometimes you let her other times you fuss at her. But when she comes home from school or has been away for some time your face lights up. You love to crawl all over her and she will just let you do whatever.

I think that you know that you are supposed to be being a bigger boy now because today you started walking like crazy. You have been taking several steps at a time for about month now. But today you have started being fearless and walking everywhere. I love you being my baby but it is so fun watching you grow and learn new things!

You can say several words such as; momma, dada, bye-bye, hi, dog, and five (as in high five). One funny thing that you do is that your bye-bye wave and your hi wave is a little different.

You are still nursing some during the day and before bed but you are good about drinking milk or water from a cup as well. If someone would have asked me when you were just a few weeks old if I would still be nursing at a year I probably would have said no. But we have conquered lots of obstacles and will continue until we both decide it’s time.

Korby you have brightened our world so much since your arrival. I am so glad God made me your mommy.

~Kristen

Just me…

Hi! I’m Kristen and I write this blog. I am linking up today with Kelly’s Korner.

A little about me:

• I am a wife to a wonderful husband, Jay. Seriously, God could not have chosen a better man for me.

 

• I am a mother to a beautiful 6-year-old daughter and the cutest almost 1-year-old.

• I live in central Arkansas and am a pediatric nurse. I love my job and my patients.

Okay well that is just a few facts about me and my life.

~Kristen

Florida 2012

A couple of weeks ago we ventured out on a 14 hour road trip, both kids in tow, headed to Florida. Our first stop was to see my mom and her boyfriend then from there we would travel to Orlando.

The kids did excellent on the trip both to and from Florida. I was pleasantly surprised!

I’m going to stop right here and say this post is probably going to be mainly photos.

This was Jayci’s snack container (thank you Pinterest). Once it was gone she didn’t get anymore until we stopped for the day. I really thought she would eat it all fast but she made it last.

We spent a day and a half at Magic Kingdom and it was a lot of fun. Wednesday was not nearly as crowded as Thursday was. The crowd plus the fact that it was about to storm we decided to leave early and just go hang out at the hotel. *Pictures from Disney!

Jayci & Korbyn before we left for day 1.

Jayci & Korbyn with my mom, their Mimi.

The Castle from the ferry. We stayed off site so it was a heck of a time getting to the actual park.Just the Girls.The very first ride we did were the teacups and they were so much fun.I mean just look at that sweet face. She just looks so happy. This face made everything totally worth it!

Even Korbyn got in on a little ride action!My mom and Jayci waiting on the fireworks to start.

Jay and Jayci waiting on them to start. I had a picture with Korbyn and I but I am a hot mess so I dare not share that!

OH the Characters you will meet!!!

I think the picture with Chip and Dale is funny because Jayci has no clue who they are. She thought they were part of the Alvin and the Chipmunk gang…ha!

Jayci with all the princess. I just adore the middle picture of her and Cinderella! Melts my heart every time I look at it.

We also went to dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. It is my favorite place to go if there is one around.

My silly husband at Joe’s.

On Friday, Jay, the kids, and I stopped at downtown Disney. That was a fun little place. It had lots of shops and restaurants. We ate at this place called the T-Rex. It was very cool and had dinosaurs all around The kids LOVED it. Even Korbyn liked watching the dinosaurs.

Of course I left my big camera in the car so this is on my phone. But this was a HUGE fish tank inside the restaurant.

Jayci with Lego Woody in the Lego store at Downtown Disney. It simply amazes me how they build these things out of legos.

Saturday we spent the day just hanging by the pool and just relaxing because we would be driving home on Sunday and Monday. It was a nice little trip. It went by a little to quick and felt like a lot of driving but it was fun and the kids had a great time! Well, I know Jayci enjoyed it anyway. Korbyn is just along for the ride.

Just a few pictures of Korby inching his way right into the pool. He loved the water. We had to make sure we stayed by him the whole time he was outside!

Overall, we had a very good trip that won’t be forgotten. We made lots of special memories that will last a life time.

~Kristen

Just a post about being Jayci’s mom

I had wrote this post in the beginning thinking I would link up to Kelly’s Korner. I had misread her title and her Show Us Your Life is all about being a mom to ALL girls, which I am not. Anyway, I wrote the post and I don’t want to delete it so I won’t link up but I will still post it!

Being a mother of a girl is something more than I could ever explain. It is challenging, chaos, and drama but it is also rewarding.

It is a challenge because Jayci is so strong-willed but rewarding because I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know as she gets older I will want her to be strong-willed and independent. However, as she grows sometimes I just want to pull her back to being my little girl where she needs me more than anything. This in-between stage has been difficult for us. Me letting her go and her trying to pull away and become a young lady.

Onto some more fun things about having a girl….Barbie dolls, tutus, pink and purple (anything), and now softball! I always have someone to go shopping or get mani/pedi’s with. She loves having girl days! In fact I think it is time to have one sometime soon!!

Oh and our newest adventure is doing different hair styles. I remember when it was just a small pony tail on top of her head. Here she is in her second birthday pictures.

And here she is now at 6 and all that hair. She doesn’t love for me to style it differently but every now and then I catch her on a good day and she will let me experiment.

I love watching her become a big sister. She is old enough where it is a joy to watch them. There is very little jealousy and she just loves Korbyn. Today she got him out of his crib though and I about had a stroke! She like to try and be mommy except when it comes to diaper changing…

This beautiful girl changed my life more ways than I could ever imagine. She came at the perfect time in my life. God knew what he was doing. She made me grow up and become a mother. There are always things I would do differently but I would never want to change anything about Jayci Leigh.

~Kristen

First Tournament!

I should have posted this several weekends ago but I have been busy and really I have the hardest time blogging. I’m no writer that is for sure and when I read other people blog I just think how eloquently they write. But this is not for everyone else. This is for me and my kids so I need to be better.

All that being said here is a post on Jayci’s first softball tournament. It was March 17th and 18th.

Here she is at practice…She is actually pretty good at hitting the ball.

Of course K man LOVES softball. Although he doesn’t hang out in the stroller much he is much too mobile for that now.

Now onto the tournament!

Well okay a little dancing and booty shaking before the game…

Such concentration and ready to bat!

Team chant after the first game…

My FIL and K

MIL and Jayci watching the big girls play.

Let me stop right here and tell a little about the tournament. This was the first time most of the girls even stepped on a softball field. That being said you can imagine how all of these games went. We lost the first 2 games really bad. The third game the other team actually forfeited. So that actually led to us being in the Championship game. Which of course, we lost. But we still ended up getting 2nd place. So the girls were so very excited with their medals.

Jayci and her friend M with their 2nd place medal. They are also in Kindergarten together!

Team Aftershock!

2nd Place!!

I have to say I was a nervous wreck the whole weekend. Jayci struggles really bad with some social anxiety. If it is new and different she takes a while to adjust. She does great at practice but when it came game time it was a whole different story. She cried every single game. She was so nervous. She didn’t like the other team, people in the stands, the coaches yelling. I was so sad for her but stayed strong and made her play. I don’t know if that is wrong or right. But we have spent a lot of money on everything. Plus, I dealt with the same issues growing up and my parents would always pull me from whatever it was. I do not want to do that to her. I want her to stick with stuff and hopefully help her overcome her fears and anxiety. However, I pray I do not scar her for life. HA!

Either way she was so excited about the medal that it made up for all of it.

~Kristen

A Very Long Update

Oh where to begin….It has been over a month since I have blogged. I like to blog okay and it is a good way for me to keep up with stuff but I am not very good at it at all.

In the last month Korbyn has turned 10 months old. Some new things he is up to: he can crawl very well, pulls up on everything, has 2 bottom teeth, eats everything in sight, wears a size 3 diaper, weighs about 19lbs, and is the best  baby around! I think he might have said his first word tonight. Well he always jabbers “da-da” but hasn’t ever said it to Jay. But tonight I was telling him “night night” and it sounded like he repeated it. It was SO CUTE! Now if he says it again I will count it.

We have had several fever viruses in this house this season. Well this week was no different. Korbyn woke up on Tuesday and I noticed he felt a little warm about 10ish so I took his temp and it was 103. He had no other symptoms so I figured just another fever virus and started on the Tylenol/Motrin regimen. Well Tuesday night his temperature got up to 104.7 which concerned me a little bit so we headed to the pediatrician. She looked him over and did a flu test (which was negative) and determined he had a fever virus.

We went home and kept up with tylenol and motrin. When I put him to bed Wednesday night his temp was 104.4. We gave him some tylenol and I put a cool rag on his head while I was nursing him. Well when I woke him up to give him some motrin I checked his temp again and it was 105.3. Which totally freaked this mommy out and let me just say I don’t freak about fevers. So I called the on call nurse and she of course said to go to the ER. I called work and asked how many were in the ER and when a co-worker said 50 something I about changed my mind on going. But I was worried about a)the fact that it had gone up and b)seizures with it being so high. So we went to the ER got checked in and lucky for us I knew one of the triage nurses! However, that still did not shorten our wait any. We got to the ER about 10:45pm and did not leave until about 6am. And we didn’t even get back into a room until around 1ish and didn’t see a doc until about 2:30.

Let me just say I knew what the wait would be and choose to go there anyway. I work there and I trust them. Anyway, he got some blood work, an IV, a fluid bolus, and a chest x-ray. And when we left they still figured he had a fever virus. Oh well, it made me feel better to go and they at least got his temp down by the time we left.

Here he is trying to figure out his IV in his hand…Poor baby!

Okay so what else have we been up to?

OH my computer got a virus on it. Luckily we were able to get to all the files and back them up. Then we had to take our computer back to how it originally came. So all that pretty much sucked!

The weather has been BEAUTIFUL so we went to the park.

Just a cute picture of my blue-eyed babe!

Tonight Korbyn was feeling better and I had to go to Babies-R-Us for a shower gift so we decided to go eat at this fairly new restaurant call “All Aboard.” It’s a fun place where trains actually bring you your food. Both kids like it a lot!

Miss conductor!

Jayci also started softball this month. She is playing on a 6 and under coach pitch team. She likes it and is pretty good so far. I am kind of excited for games to start.

Well I guess that is pretty much it. Not a whole lot going on around here. Probably the main reason I have a hard time blogging.

~Kristen