Cheese Face

Like most people, when taking my child's picture, we tell him "Say cheese" repeatedly. As he has gotten older, 'cheese' has become one of his best words, since it is one of his favorite foods. Initially this was quite helpful during picture taking. For instance our last professional photos went easier then usual, because he saw the photographer's camera and continually said cheese, perfect. However, as his vocabulary is growing and he is more and more proud of his ability to pronounce things, his 'cheese' has gotten slightly over exaggerated, bordering on aggressive, every time the camera comes out. Here are the results of his cheese face.

And that's the phase we are in right now, cheese face photos. I wish you could hear him say it, with what appears to be a slight under bite. It kind of has made me paranoid that he will always have an under bite, but really it is just noticeable when he says cheese or is yelling daddy. I am banking on it resolving itself once all his teeth are fully in. Also hoping he will go back to a normal cheese face soon, or I'm going to have to think of a different word to say for pictures!

Happy Cardinals Opening Day 2012...kind of

I probably should have posted this in the morning, when everyone was still super excited about opening day. However, I had to work today, so after the Cardinals terrible loss, to their arch rival Cubs, people might not be so excited. That being said opening day is known here as a St. Louis holiday. Since I was at work today I didn't get to see my favorite tradition of the opening day traditions, "the ponies running" a.k.a the Budweiser Clydesdale running around the track at Busch Stadium. This celebrates the start of the season here in St. Louis, to the sound track of the Budweiser song "Here Comes the King." The ponies only run on opening day and at post season games, however you can watch this youtube video to see them running on opening day in 2007. I don't even know if they were out and about today because there was a three hour rain delay and I'm sure they weren't bringing Clydesdale's out to run around the muddy track after that.

Last week the world series trophy was at Zach's work so we all got dressed up in our Cardinal apparel for the first time this season, to go see the trophy. Zach and I ended up in the exact same outfit, not on purpose, but we looked like a pretty adorable little family. For unknown reasons Zane decided that he would actually wear his Cardinals hat that day, something he has never done before, and boy did he look cute. After our thirty seconds of looking at the trophy we headed out to play on some CAT machines. Zane got to climb on, and in, a few different machines, which he thoroughly enjoyed. We got actual printed pictures from Zach's work so the picture of us with the trophy is a scanned version, via my old printer, so please excuse the fuzziness. They gave us about eight copies of the picture though, so we are all set.

There is nothing like driving a CAT machine.

 Happy Opening Day, it's a terribly, painfully, long season boys, we will win the next one. GO CARDS.

Lesson Learned

As is always the case, the Lord works in mysterious ways. At the end of last week I was exhausted and terribly frustrated with motherhood in general. I couldn't figure out why my son wouldn't behave, like I know he can. He fought all his naps and night time, sometimes for hours on end, hit, threw fits, and frankly I was at a loss for what to do next. It was making me unhappy in all aspects of my life, when usually motherhood is the thing that I turn to to brighten my day, keep me grounded, and keep me happy.

So after a busy weekend, full of family and celebrations, with little time to think about my previous frustrations, I headed to work on Monday missing my little boy. This is where the mysterious ways kick in. Though it breaks my heart to leave Zane, every morning I go to work, it always makes me a better mother on the days that I am home. This is due to many reasons, first of all a day or two away from my little man and I am going crazy to see his smiling face and feel his little arms hugging my neck. However, this week the Lord put some glaring examples of just how blessed I truly am and just how trivial my mothering concerns really are, in my face. I took care critically ill children, with amazing families, with little hope of recovery. I saw families grasping at straws for good news and praying for a miracle to save their babies. These aren't always the kids I take care of. Sometimes I have a simple pneumonia, RSV, or stomach bug, nothing life threatening. But not this week, this week I fought back tears on a number of occasions, read the blog of a family that's child has a rare genetic disorder that is going to be fatal, and realized that I had nothing to be stressed out about.

If my child is sleepy I will put him in his bed. If he has been up for hours and is still running around happy and playing, without throwing fits, let him play until he starts to rub his little eyes and brings me his blanket. A schedule is nice for me, but isn't worth a fight. We will stay outside as long as he wants, he can play with the random piles of dirt and sticks, with as many outfit changes as it takes. If eight o'clock passes and he isn't asleep, I will take a deep breathe, and cuddle on, soaking up the sweet smell of his little baby head. If my house is a mess and we have sandwiches for dinner every night, so be it, as long as we are happy and healthy. I will pray each day for the families I meet and pray that I am never in their shoes. I will continue to start each day with gratitude for all we have, for the miracle that is my son's life, and never forget that the struggles and heartache we have been through have made us who we are today.

There are things in life worth crying over, I have seen my fair share of those, but I have to remember that most things in life are not worth stressing and crying over. Life goes on, lesson learned.

Twelve on the Twelfth

Today is the twelfth so it is time for my second installment of twelve on the twelfth. We didn't have any major plans for today, just the usual, Target trip, backyard playtime, trip to the park, naps, ect. here at home with Zane and I.  Today we went to play at Tilles Park on Hampton, which is one of my all time favorite parks near us. It has tons of play equipment, swings, lots of trees and green grass to explore and today there was the added bonus of a tractor mowing the grass, what more could you ask for. When we got home from the park we did a little texture play outside with some old cereal, then waited for Daddy to get home. After dinner Zane and Daddy found a cocoon that had fallen off a tree. It was obvious, by the rattling inside that he moth inside had died, do we used it as a learning opportunity and opened it up to see what was inside.

 Here is my collage for the day. I will explain the pictures top to bottom, left to right. The first picture is Daddy cutting open the cocoon, while Zane watched carefully.  Then there is Zane on a rocking grasshopper at the park. This was his favorite activity at the park today, right up until the point when the overly friendly four year old showed up and turned the grasshopper into his "trash truck." Then there is the bug carcass and Zane in texture play. The picture of Zane on the couch is a classic morning here for us, except usually he would still be in pj's except they had some pee on them this morning, so straight to daytime close he went. After couch cuddles Zane went to work in his kitchen, while I did the dishes. Then we headed outside for some morning playtime in the sand. Of course we had to swing at the park as well, always fun. The next picture is Zane with a block in his mouth which needs some explaining. After multiple trips to time out for not listening and not helping pick up his toys, Zane finally decided that he could only pick up his blocks if he put them in his mouth, then spit them into the box. It was pretty entertaining and got the job done. Zane spent a lot of time in the garage today, looking for Daddy, and hammering all of Daddy's tools. I took a picture of him at lunch because he ate better than he has in weeks. He ate all his tuna salad, a ton of green beans, and a cheese stick. Almost like a normal human being, but he was back to himself at dinner, eating hardly anything. Finally the bottom right picture is my pathetic attempt at getting a picture of Zane and I playing in his kitchen. At least I made it in the collage somewhere.

This is a great snap shot of a spring day here at the Korenaks. The day really ended with Zane getting a hair cut, using my new "How to cut a little boy's hair" tips from pinterest, but I didn't take any pictures of this event. I am happy to say that the tips really helped and I think his hair looks great, making him look even more like a little boy.

First Fishing Trip

This past weekend Zane accomplished a pretty big milestone in a little boy's life. Zane went on his first fishing trip with his daddy and and Grandpa, what a lucky boy. Grammi and I were there too, mainly acting as paparazzi, capturing  every adorable moment of Zane's first fish encounter.

The key to a good first fishing trip is going to a small pond that you know is well stocked with all sorts of little fish, willing to be caught. The second key, fully operational fishing poles. This is usually the hick up at the farm, but Grandpa Korenak had great fishing poles that didn't take all day to fix. It only took a few minutes for Papa to catch the first fish. Zane of course was excited to meet his new fish friend. He said hi, pet him, tried to stick his finger in the fishes mouth, and gave it pats before Papa threw it back in the pond. Daddy wasn't far behind with his first catch of an awfully cute little fish, just Zane's size. I think all together they got about five different fish, each one loved and closely examined by Zane before being thrown back in the pond. 

It had recently rained there so it was a little muddy around the pond and Zane did fall down into a bit of it on his way to see one of Papa's fish, but we just took that opportunity to learn the art of wiping your shoes off in the grass and using tree leaves as paper towels. While doing both of those things I couldn't help but think that usually those skills are used after stepping in cow poop, but luckily he got to learn that valuable skill with only mud, what a lucky boy. Zane also found a bent stick that he occasionally pretended to fish with, which was terribly cute. After the fishing was over Zane got to take a boat ride around the little pond with Papa and Daddy. Finally we had a big pine cone hunt, narrowly avoiding tons of poison ivy, before heading back up up the hill to clean up. 

The entire thing was beyond adorable and one of those moments where I couldn't help but feel a little sad at the thought that Zane won't ever get to go fishing with my dad. Dad would have loved an afternoon of fishing with Zane. Saturday morning Zane had also gotten to take his first tractor ride with Papa, which was another difficult milestone to watch and not be sad, thinking about Zane never having a tractor ride with my dad. However, we are truly blessed that Zane has another Grandpa who can take him to do all the fun farmtivities that he would have done with my dad.

When I was going through all my photos yesterday, trying to weed out a few pictures before uploading them to Picasa, I could not bring myself to delete any of these pictures, because each one was adorable in it's own way. So I made a little slide show of the most of the pictures I took so you can get a feel for just how cute the day was.

Ten on Tuesday

1. First of all I would like to wish a very happy Siblings Day to both of my siblings. You guys are fantastical and I love you dearly. Hope you had a great siblings day, even if you didn't know it was happening.

2. My mom's visit proved to not be as fun and entertaining as we had hoped, due to Zane deciding to go through a couple difficult phases all at once. Randomly he became unable to even come close to behaving himself in restaurants, fought naps toothe and nail, and wasn't his pleasant happy shopper so much as hitting me and throwing fits during even the shortest shopping trip. I don't like the term terrible twos, because terrible seems like way too strong of a term to call my own son. That being said strong willed twos and overly emotional twos seem to have hit us pretty hard.

3. Friday night we headed down to SEMO for the big Korenak family Easter celebration. We have driven home after I got off work numerous times and Zane has always slept on the ride home and then fell asleep rather easily once we got there. Friday Zane was having a blast on our ride home, feel asleep for maybe thirty minutes before we got there, then was up until 4AM once we got to Zach's parents house. Not the best start to our celebrations, but he did sleep well Saturday night and napped much better than expected. I will chalk that night up to a life lesson learned and we will drive home early Saturday morning from here on out.

4. The Easter celebration was a lot of fun and Zane had a blast playing with all his cousins and second cousins. The weather was beautiful and there were plenty of eggs to go around. Uncle Zach may have tried to start a riot with the twenty some odd kids that were waiting for the eggs to be hidden. There were chants of "we want eggs" and "let us out" led by Uncle Zach,  who had temporarily forgotten that he now also is acting in the role of a father, not just fun Uncle Zach. But I thoroughly enjoyed the possible over throwing of the egg hiders. Here are few highlights of the big day. I was trying to capture the craziness of twenty three kids running around, while most of their parents admittedly didn't know any of the other kids names or who they belonged to.

Here is the riot forming in the shed.

 And the hunt is on

 I love this picture because if you look closely Zane is trying to give his egg to his second cousin, Keaten (I am only mostly sure that is his name) who was born the day after Zane. So cute on so many levels.

 Here is the whole crew in one of those pictures where you can't see anyone's face, but the pure number of people is pretty impressive. I have to say Zane sticks out just a bit in this crowd of dark hair dark eyed people. Also I couldn't tell you half of these people's names, but they were all very lovely and had cute kids.

5. Just about the time that I think that maybe I will let Zane drive or ride on an ATV of any sort, go cart, small motorized vehicle ect, the Lord makes it very clear that this is probably a terrible decision. He does this by giving me a patient with a terrible brain injury or skull fracture received courtesy of some sort of ATV accident. Sorry Zaney it's not looking good for you and the go carts, I love your little blonde, beautiful head/brain waaaayyy too much.

6. I almost forgotten our Easter family photo. It actually turned out pretty cute. Zane was rocking a Mexican wedding shirt, a la Great Grandpa Dotter, Grandpa Blakley, and Uncle Able. He looks like such a cute little old man. Zach almost didn't wear a bow tie to mass, but I politely asked him "What does Jesus have to do to get you to wear a bow tie? Is dying for your sins and rising from the dead not enough?" Nothing like a little Catholic guilt on Easter morning.

7. Zaney also enjoyed his Easter basket, though I'm pretty sure he had no idea what was going on or why we were randomly trying to get him excited about candy, dinosaurs, and trains when he had just woken up. I didn't realize that he had pee all over his pants until I looked at the pictures. Classic, not my best parenting moment, but oh well.

8. Yesterday I received my free baby trees from the Arbor day foundation. I guess they weren't free, I did donate $20 to the cause of planting new trees. Of course I was mainly trying to get my mother to love me more by taking up her cause of planting trees every chance I get. Now I realize I have no where to plant them. I think we have decided that Zach will give them to his parents when he meets them for lunch Thursday. Hopefully they can plant them on their farm somewhere and they will thrive down in the wetlands of SEMO. Thought about trying to send them to mom's but I thought if they didn't die in the mail they would surely die in the hundred degree temperatures this summer.

9. Mom and I did have a pretty successful trip to the train museum, though it was surprisingly cold. Yes, it was chilly two days after it was in the eighties. We got to have a private train ride, ran around in a few different trains, and the highlight of the day, Grandma B bought Zane his own conductor hat. Here is he saying "lets go" and fist pumping on the train.

 I love this picture of tiny little Zane by the biggest train at the museum.

 Here we are by the huge wheels. 

10. Tonight it is suppose to frost/freeze here so I have covered up all my little plants with sheets. I am hoping that they don't freeze and die. They are all looking so good and not being eaten by anything. Turns out my neighbor has been shooting squirrels and probably bunnies with his blow gun. More power to him.

11. Speaking of neighbors I forgot to mention that when we got home from Easter fun Zane made a new friend with our neighbors nephew. Little Aiden is three and often visits Eddy, but is usually out in the back yard being watched by his Grandmother who doesn't speak English. Sunday Zane kept throwing the ball over the fence, in an attempt to start a game of catch. It took a little bit for Aiden to warm up, but by the end of our outside playtime they were jumping on the trampoline and repeatedly telling each other bye bye. I love it! Maybe Aiden can come to his birthday party this June. 

Ten on Tuesday

1. Mom arrived Sunday afternoon to freakishly hot St. Louis weather. Yesterday, April 2nd, it was 90 degrees with 50% humidity and felt like the middle of June. We were red faced and sweaty after only a few minutes at the park. What in the world is happening? Apparently I will get to use all the inside activities I found for the winter, this summer when it is a million degrees outside. I find this all very interesting since last year mom came to visit this exact same week and arrived in a snow storm. I just happened to look at my blog post from last year at this time and saw pictures of my daffadils covered in snow.

2. Our neighbors gave Zane their old sand table, which their kids had out grown, and he is loving it. He has a slew of new sand toys and all his little CAT machines are now being used to dig and play in the dirt, as they should be. Of course his favorite activity to do with his sand table is throwing the sand onto the ground. Play sand is cheap, right? We have yet to capture him in action, but I'm sure there will be plenty of sand covered pictures to come.

3. Zane and I have both finished our five day course of oral steriods and are both decreasing our Albuterol inhaler use. The Albuterol inhaler made Zane a complete crazy person, but I knew that was going to happen. His cough sounds much better as long as we don't let him run himself silly, which still occasionally ends in vomit. I feel a little better but my head is still very congested, so I can't hear, and I am still coughing but I think I am slowly improving.

4. Mr. Mopples has remained a huge hit at our house this week. Zane has even learned how to make appropriate chicken noises, which is rather funny. He also likes making Mopples fly, which involves throwing him around the room for extended periods of time. I can't really figure out if Mopples is a boy or a girl though. He/she looks like  a hen for the most part but then has the comb of a rooster. It remains a mystery.

5. Here are some adorable pictures of the week. Zane will occasionally tell me that he needs to go pee pee, which is always a blatant lie, but I humor him sometimes so he can sit on his Thomas potty seat. He always wants to read a magazine and last time I captured this classic shot of Zane checking out the Pottery Barn Easter catalog.

6. Our neighbors cut down a huge, beautiful, tree yesterday which I found kind of sad. It offered a lot of shade for our yard, which I will miss this bleeding hot summer, but also what is the big beautiful tree hurting? However, watching the whole process was pretty interesting. I have no idea how, at least some part of the tree, didn't fall through my kitchen roof, but they managed to keep most of it in their yard. There were random people walking on my roof at one point, which turns out is a terrifying way to wake up from a nap. Also, when the big trunk finally fell down mom and I were pretty sure there had been an earthquake.

7. Tomorrow is opening day for major league baseball and by some sort of terrible rip off the first game isn't being played at Busch Stadium. I was always told that if you win the world series, which the STL Cardinals did last year, you get to play the first game at your stadium. Some how this isn't happening this year, but whatever, I'm still excited for some Cardinals baseball. We will be celebrating the day by going to see the 2011 World Series trophy at Zach's work, before he heads out of town.

8. Here is my latest pinterest idea that I want to try outside soon. It seems like easiest idea and someone at work told me it worked out great. You tape three sides of a big painters tarp together, making a huge envelope, fill it with water, add bath toys and blue food coloring, then tape the last side down. The girl at work said her kids played with it all day and it didn't break until they poked holes in it at the end of the day. I think we will try this the next 90 degree day we have.

9. Zaney stayed home with mom today while I was saving lives and from the looks of things they had a great day, minus a few bumps and bruises which are par for the course. Here is Zaney after thoroughly enjoying Grandma B's mac and cheese. It doesn't look like any of it actually got on his little apron that he had on, of course they had made cookies earlier so he had his apron on still.

10. Tomorrow we will have more adventures with Ga-mama, hopefully the rain passes soon so maybe we could go see some Choo Choos. Happy Easter everyone!