Ten on Tuesday

1. First off I need to send out some birthday wishes. Happy birthday to Emily whose bday was the25th, sorry it totally passed in the midst of the move, but hope you had a great day. And an early happy birthday to Uncle Brent, whose bday is this Saturday. Also, Happy Birthday to Papa whose birthday is next week, then it's Rowan's big day!

2. We finally got all our things moved into the rental house Saturday after Zach drove to STL and back within a twenty four hour period to pack up that house. Then we pack up the farm and got our stuff from storage. Lots of driving big trucks and hauling boxes. Thanks to Able for the extra man power and to Kari for covering for him at the shop so he could be there to help. Couldn't have done it without him.

3. Since then there has been all sorts of struggles and battles for which I will spare the details, but so far we have only gotten to sleep there two nights and things are still quite a disaster and unorganized, which is my least favorite part of moving. But we are working on getting everything fixed so we can get settled and move forward.

4. Before we left the farm we had some gourd painting fun. Zane painted a Power Ranger, Mom (with some help from Zane) painted a free style, sparkly gourd, and I made a snowman and Santa. They all turned out super cute. Mom needs to grow a bigger gourd crop for all my other ideas. Also a great activity for kids since it takes multiple steps,  over a few days. Zane loved it.

 The power ranger gourd is on the shelf above him by Mrs. Tiggywinkle.

 

Here is our little snowman/woman. I think I'm going to get her a top hat so she can be a boy also. Santa is finished, but haven't gotten a picture of it yet.

5. We also made and epic zoo in Mom's front room. It started with the idea that we could make a lego zoo on top of the piano so Rowan wouldn't wreck it. Then it grew into involving every animal, bug, bird, and reptile we could find. It was very impressive and my Uncle David dropped by just in time for a tour. I'm not sure he was into it, but Zane loved showing off his work. Of course Zane took his baby on a tour in her stroller (aka his shopping cart).

The snake/lizard house.

 6. Currently we are all sick, coughs and snotty noses. Rowan is terribly pathetic, but still not a fan of cuddling. I'm thinking we will probably see the doctor this week since snotty noses turn into ear infections quickly. Today we had a sick day with the Richard's kids, who are equally as sick, while the repair men continued to work on the house. Lots of resting and playing. Fun times.

7. Tonight I'm going to see Don Quitoxe performed by the Moscow Ballet here in Edmond. Last week we went to see Chicago so I'm feeling quite cultured. Fun to have some girls nights out here and there.

8. I have raved on the blog before out Savory Spice Shop's Great Plains Bison Beef Rub hamburgers. They were life changing, and still my favorite, but this weekend we did have a burger that is a close second. Pike Peak's Butcher Rub burgers are now fan favorite at the Korenak house. They were amazing. We also found Pepper Butter (an Oklahoma Local product), and Smokey Hill Cheese Powder for popcorn both of which are wonderful. Love being close enough to try new things frequently.

9. Highlight of my week so far is probably the boys Pirate Themed bathroom. In no way did their bathroom need a theme, but I needed something to cheer me up and get me a little bit more excited about the house. So yesterday Zane got to pick out a shower curtain and of course pirates won! Lots of boy fun. I enjoy the decorating part of moving, but am not a fan of the endless unpacking and my house being a complete wreck. Soon we'll get to decorate the boys room too which will also be fun, I'm sure.

10. Zane's favorite part of moving has been unpacking all his toys. It is like Christmas morning all day long as he uncovers all his treasures. So far the favorite thing we have found is his Batcave that he has thoroughly enjoyed and was devastated when we had to leave it and come stay at Abbey's. There are a ton more boxes to open so I'm sure there are a lot more treasure to uncover!

Rowan's 11 Month Update

The big news from this past month is that Rowan officially can walk and takes more steps everyday. He can turn himself around sometimes, but usually gets way too excited about where he is going. There is still lots of falling down and he still mainly crawls, but especially at night he loves walking around the room, squealing with delight, and taking lots of tumbles. It is hysterical to watch since he is such a tiny person. It doesn't look right and I love it. Zane gets overly excited when Rowan is walking which usually ends in a crash with one, or both of them, in tears, or in trouble. But Zane is over the moon that Ro can finally walk. It's just a matter of time before he can play.... right???

This month Ro got two new teeth, both coming in at the same time, a top and bottom pair. The rest of his gums remain swollen and he is on a pretty strict Tylenol and Motrin rotating schedule to keep him happy. I don't know if it is the teeth, or if he has a little cold, or if it is just that his life is in such upheaval currently, but Ro seems pretty restless and crabby as of late. He isn't on any type of schedule (see before mentioned upheaval) so some days he take a big nap in the morning, some days he only sleeps in the car, some days he doesn't really nap at all. It's all a pretty big mess and I'm sure that is rough on an eleven month old who is in desperate need of a routine. My attempts at getting the boys to sleep at the same time usually fail, but that is a top priority when we get settled in our new house. But everyday they both wake up at different times and then we are driving all over tarnation and it rarely works so for now I gets lots of one on one time with them both, accomplish nothing on my giant to do list, and am exhausted, but it's fine. 

 

This hand me down fish bowl from Aunt Trina is one of his current favorites. He tries to stick his whole head in it. He is a very funny boy, with lots of giggles, and silly faces.

Even though he can walk by himself the alligators still get a lot of use.

 The duck face, complimented by his chubby baby legs. LOVE!

By far Rowan's greatest love and favorite toys are all things electronic. No he doesn't ever get to actually play with anything electronic, minus toddler lock occasionally on my phone, but he absolutely loves all of it. I think it top pick for piece of technology would be mom's land line phone. It has buttons that make noise and light up when you touch them and sometimes a random lady talks to him on the other end when he calls the operator. He will throw baby fits trying to reach it or when mom is using it, completely irrational, but pretty entertaining. Cellphones will do, in a pinch, and of course computers and iPads are great fun as well. But no one ever seems to let him really get his tech work done. Very frustrating to my little man. He tried desperately to type on Aunt Abbey's computer, but that lasted all of about five seconds. He had his hands on the key board just right, but I knew it would soon lead to violence so the computer headed to higher ground, like all technology around here these days. Zane and Ro got in there first fight over the iPad the other day, a small glimpse into my future I'm sure. So far Rowan has only played bubbles and maybe peek-a-boo barn, but I'm sure he will be a huge fan once I actually let him have play on it.

This is one of my old cellphones that will suffice for his technology

 fix, right up until he realizes it doesn't work. No fooling this kid.

 I like this picture where you can see Zane looking down on him, this is how Ro probably sees the world most of the time. I'm guessing it's pretty frightening. He still relishes his hour of safe play after Zane goes to bed.

 This so captures Ro. He takes toys, and when he is done playing with them or investigating them, he puts them behind his ear and drops them behind his back. Usually crawling onto the next thing. Why not just set it down kid?

I feel like this month he has gotten a lot bigger, speeding right through his nine and twelve month clothes and mainly rocking 18 month stuff now. All of which looks way to big to me, but fits perfectly when I try it on, baggy of course, but the right length. I weighed him the other day and he has finally broken twenty pounds, weighing it at 20.5, get excited!!! He is loving his new carseat, still refacing for probably forever, but much bigger, and roomier, such a big boy! His other big boy activity for the month is holding his own bottle and drinking, fairly well, out of sippy cups. He gets better at this everyday and I'm trying to give him lots of practice for the sippy cup switch over that is coming soon.

This month Rowan celebrated his first Christmas, which was lots of fun to watch, rung in his first New Year, and got a glimpse at the third place he will be living in his short little life. There has been lots going on, with all sorts of changes, and constant craziness. I feel bad that that has been basically how is whole life has gone so far. Packing, unpacking, new places, new people, and stressed out parents. I am hoping that by his birthday things will be settled down and he can try to find some peace in a new, calm, environment. I'm sure he would appreciate less naps in the car and more time with his daddy. We are all looking forward to that and can't wait to celebrate his big day next month.

Ten On Tuesday

1. So apparently my baby boy is turning one next month. This seems crazy to me, but I thought I should start working on his baby book again. I did a little bit this weekend and realized that I hadn't taken his ten month pictures on the twenty first like I had been doing previous months. So Yesterday we did a quick photo shoot with his ten month sticker. He is still ten months old for a few days, but he was not walking when the month started, so slightly misleading. I have ordered pictures up until now so maybe will be caught up soon.

2. Besides learning how to work this little guy is also working hard on learning how to drink out of his sippy cups. He is doing surprisingly well, figuring out that you have to turn it up to get water out. Zane really struggled with this concept so I'm very excited with his progress. Maybe our transition from bottles to sippy cups, next month, won't be as difficult. I am very excited to be done with formula.

3. This week Rowan has also gotten another tooth, so has been pretty crabby, and has been adorably sticking his tongue out a lot, feeling his new little tooth. That makes five teeth for Mr. Man.
In his sadness he has become terribly attached to me which becomes frustrating for everyone involved when I have to do things like, go to the bathroom or do the dishes. Life is hard when you're 10 months old.

See my little tongue mamma! Then he chuckles.

3. Rowan's needing lots of cuddles and being attached to mamma makes Zane turn into a ten month old as well. Then they are both climbing on me, saying 'ma ma ma ma,' yes Zane too, like a baby. I do feel very loved in these moments, but also slightly like a dog with puppies hanging all over her. It goes both ways, when Zane needs cuddles when he wakes up then Rowan starts climbing on me too. Trying to savor them wanting me to hold me, but still kind of out of control boys.

4. One of Zane's new favorite activities is card games. Santa brought him Go Fish and we have since gotten Crazy Eights. He focuses surprisingly well on both, but Go Fish is by far his favorite. He will cheat, so be warned if you are ever playing with him, but it is lots of fun. 

5. In other adorable little boy news I found them these matching Superman shirts the other day at Target. They are made of super soft long john material (which turns out stretches out badly) and they have hoods. I haven't managed to get a picture of them both together in them, but they were so cute playing in their matching outfits. Here is Ro, rocking his hood, chewing on a sock. Socks are his favorite teething toy so you can find him looking like this a lot. 

 Why doesn't he have pants on you might ask? Well they fall off of him and impede his walking practice, so I just left them off. 

Socks are completely a lost cause. He takes them off immediately to chew on them. 

6. I finally got knew glasses ordered today only to find out that my contact prescription was only good for one year, not two like my glasses one. So I will still have to find a different eye doctor and try to work out the logistics of an eye appointment. So much for trying to be on the ball and get all that done before February when I thought both prescriptions expired. I'm hoping I still have the same prescription so my glasses and contacts will match, but that might be wishful thinking. Add that to my to do list, which is getting very long.

7. I had forgotten how terrible the wind here is. I guess I never knew any different until I lived somewhere that a nice day, when it's sixty degrees outside, was never ruined by fifty mile an hour winds. It's maddening. It's beautiful and your kids want to play outside, but you can't stand to be outdoors because you are being beaten to death by wind and dirt. This was Saturday here. We braved it long enough to take a trip down to the woods, where it is slightly less windy. Zane and Zach played Robin Hood and Little John until I couldn't handle the wind anymore then we were stuck inside the rest of the day. I'm hoping in OKC where there are a few more trees it will be better because we need to be able to be outside as much as possible.

 Robin Hood and Little John planning their next move.

This was the view from inside the hallow tree where Rowan and I were hiding from the wind. Pretty great view.

8. Saturday evening the wind finally died down around four so we had just a little bit of time to play in  the nice weather. We had a little fire and Zane worked on his marshmallow roasting/blowing out technique. This led to an impromptu science experiment of seeing what happens when marshmallows burn, which was actually pretty fun. Oh and we saw Ruby, the chicken, lay an egg and eat it. Very strange happening here. 

9. Yesterday I didn't realize the wind was crazy again and took the boys into town to run at a park. Turns out it was decently cold so we stayed at the park not quite as long as it took us to get there. There was lots of fun to be had though. Zane loved these jumping things, which were perfectly spaced and Rowan got to swing and ride a dinosaur. Good times. I do miss parks that have the rubber, bouncy stuff, under all the play equipment. It was nice to be able to let Rowan roam about without him eating handfuls of wood. I'm still searching, I'm sure there are parks somewhere here with that feature. 

I welcome any or all suggestions.

10. Zach is heading to the STL Sunday to help pack up the rest of our stuff at the house on Monday. I wish I could go, but don't know what I'd do with the boys. I miss all my friends there and am not sure when I'll be able to get back. We had an open house this past weekend with eleven couples coming through so hopefully things will start to pick up with the house selling situation soon. We move into our rental house within the next few weeks so it would be wonderful if the house could sell. Still praying everything falls into place. I did, finally get my Oklahoma nursing license so the job hunt has begun in earnest for me. No idea what I want to do, so we'll see where I land. I'm getting tired of the in between place, ready for things to be back to some sort of normal.

My Little Scientist

My father was a high school chemistry teacher and loved all things science. He knew all sorts of science experiments and was always very excited when he was doing them in class. Dad also had all sorts of tricks he used around the house that he referred to as "better living through chemistry." Such as shinning your silver in an aluminum pie pan, with baking soda and boiling water. My personal favorite Mr. Blakley experiment was liquid nitrogen ice cream, which was made every year on Mole Day. His probably would have been making circles out of rubbing alcohol on the desks and setting them on fire, very impressive. That being said you can imagine how fun it is for me to watch my son love to do experiments ( a.k.a. schmerments) during our, now daily, science time.

The whole thing started when I went on Pinterest to figure out a way to use all the candy canes that were lying around the house after Christmas. I found a candy cane experiment, that would take care of all the candy canes by dissolving them, both quickly and slowly, in water of varying temperatures. Perfect! Turns out Zane loved this experiment, as I mentioned in last weeks Ten on Tuesday. He loved talking about the differences in each jar, which one was hot, which one was "berry cold," which one was red or which one was pink, which one smelled like candy canes and which ones didn't. He noticed the differences in how quickly the red stripe went away and how quickly the candy canes melted. After we had done the initial instructions we went off coarse a little bit adding ice to things, stirring, and then leaving them out to watch them the rest of the evening to see how long it took them to disappear. We have since done this experiment again, using up all our candy canes!!!

After this Zane started asking me everyday if we could do a "schmerment." Of course I had to oblige and since then we have done several other things, all with varying degrees of success. To be clear there is no such thing as a failed experiment. Dad would want to be sure everyone knew that. The results might be different than what you think is going to happen, but that's science. He would also want everyone to know that "why" is NOT a scientific question, that there is no such thing as suction, and that up is the opposite the pull of gravity. I digress...

Here are the other experiments that we have done. I'm sure that all of these will sound familiar to people, but here is the list for when I forget later.

The Naked Egg Experiment: This, like a lot of our experiments, required patience, waiting for a couple days, watching to see what happened to the eggs shell.  Zane could definitely use some work on his patience so it was good and he did great. All you do is put an egg in a glass jar and cover it with vinegar. Initially nothing happens, hence the waiting, but by the next morning there are bubbles and cracks in the shell. Then the shell peals off and finally you have a rubbery feeling egg. We took the eggs out this evening and they did not disappoint. We did two jars, one with green food coloring, one without. This evening we cut open the green egg and it looked just like an egg inside but with more liquid (the vinegar, thanks to osmosis!)  We put the other egg back in the vinegar to show Daddy tomorrow night.

Zane described the egg as "feeling jumpy" which I thought was perfect.

Borax Crystals: This was all over pinterest but we apparently got a bad recipe because our crystals were not impressive/barely existent. The idea is you mix borax in water, put a pipe cleaner in it, let it sit for two days, pull it out and there are beautiful crystals. That wasn't the case in our experiment where we pulled out our pipe cleaners and they were just covered in goo. We left them in another day, but to no avail. I will have to try to find a different recipe, so not linking to the one I used here. Zane did enjoy watching the borax go from a liquid to a solid over the two days, but no "magic crystals" at the end. Maybe we needed a bigger jar or probably a better water to borax ratio.

Exploding Playdough: I was really excited about this one, but again, didn't turn out quite as we had hoped. For someone with two bachelor degrees in science I am not a great scientist. Our playdough didn't look anything like the dough in the pictures, but I followed the recipe, so who knows. It was more like slime, but stuck to your fingers. It was made with baking soda and did fizz a little when we put vinegar on it, but 'exploding' was a stretch. But more impressively it did make a volcano when we put it in a jar of vinegar, so still a success.

 When the dough didn't explode we opted for baking soda in a dish and dropping colored vinegar on it. We have done this before, but he had forgotten, it fizzes and it lots of fun.

 Here is the volcano we made with our goo put into the jar of vinegar.

Exploding Milk: This was fun and a great use for the milk we had that was out of date. It was just a couple drops of food coloring, dropped into milk, then touched with a magic wand (tooth pick with liquid dish soap on it). The food coloring spreads quickly (aka explodes) and mixes with the other colors making a very pretty mixture.

Zane has also come up with a couple of his own experiments since we have started having science time. Sunday night, during story time with Grandma, he decided he wanted to see if chickens would eat hot dogs. Yesterday morning they cut up hot dogs into little pieces and took them out to the chickens, who did indeed eat them. Our hypothesis was correct. This evening after the egg reveal he wanted to do something else and I was all out of ideas so he came up with his own. "We gonna put color in water, then make it cold, and then in the morning it break." So we have frozen four containers of water, each a different color, and with something different mixed in, sugar, salt, vinegar, and our control. In the morning we will see what has happened and then he thought maybe put them outside to see if they melt. Perfect science experiment.

It is so much fun to see his little mind work. He focuses very well on the experiments and comes up with all sorts of questions, observations, and ideas of other things we could do with them. Oh how I wish Dad was here to see all our science fun.

And He's Off

It's official, little Ro Baby can walk. No, this isn't his preferred way to get around, but he can take lots of steps, I think his current record is fifteen, walking across the living room. On Thursday night, between the hours of seven and eight Rowan figured out how to get from sitting to standing. He hadn't ever gotten close to doing this before, but in that hour he figured out that if he got his feet under him, went to downward dog, then pushed himself up, he could get to standing. After figuring that out he was off. He walks much better in the evening, which is surprising to me because that's when he is loopy tired, but maybe his guard is down in his tired state so he doesn't mind falling down, rolling all over the place. He is very tenacious, never getting discouraged by his many stumbles, tumbles, and the occasional push down. He crawls around a little bit, then gets back up. He tries to turn around when he is standing, when he should really just be sticking to straight line walking, but I applaud his confidence. He seems much too small to be walking, not just because he is only ten months old, but also because he is such an overall small boy. Here are your classic first step shots. I didn't have my camera handy on Thursday night when it all started, but took some the past couple days. All first step pictures look the same, little boys, in a wide stance, hands straight out, with the biggest, proudest smile on their face. From a baby to a toddler just like that. But really still just a baby!

 There is the stand up,

then the happiest face, squealing for glee, as he toddles towards me, "ma ma ma ma." Be still my heart!

 Of course there is often some unwanted help from big brother, but Rowan takes it all like a champ.

 "What mamma, I'm just walking. No big deal." So unbelievably cute.

For now his occasional bouts of walking are very cute and fun to celebrate. That being said I am growing increasingly nervous for when he is running around, chasing after big brother, being equally as crazy. I know those days are quickly approaching and I'm tired just thinking about it. Also, slightly concerned about big brother body slamming him to the ground from standing instead of sitting, but what can you do. Zane has been waiting for Rowan to walk since the day we brought him home, so you can imagine how excited he was when he saw Rowan walking. It was the best day ever, "HE CAN WALK MAMMA!!!" There was some disappointment when it turned out Rowan couldn't run and play with him yet. Not yet....soon! Lots of fun ahead.