Good Thing He's So Cute

 I had totally forgotten that Mindy took pictures at Korban's birthday party, and they were a wonderful surprise! The above photo is probably my absolute favorite picture ever. That kid is so stinking adorable. He's also a pain in the butt, but we'll get to that later.

 

Here's the picture of the smashcake. Korban didn't do much smashing, but he sure liked sucking the frosting off it. 

 I have a picture like this one. He really wasn't that mad about the mustache, he was really mad that we'd set his cake down in front of him, and then taken it away to light the candle.

 See, he's just fine.

 

 And here is our goofy family. I don't know why I look like that. Maybe I was trying to make a goofy face? See, now in the one below I look normal. Except for the mustache on my shoulder.

 

And here's the Carlson family photo. I think it may be the only one they have, and Eisley is being more cooperative than usual for picture taking. 

Here's our friends Braelyn, Sheridan and Mike

 And Lola, Gwen and Colby.

And Kevin and Kristal.

Don't you wish you had come to our mustache bash?

Now on to tell you why Korban is a pain in the butt. Well, for starters, he still doesn't sleep through the night. Not even close. He refuses to be consoled in the morning by me. Ben has to do it. Because Korban knows his daddy is sucker, and that Mommy will just put him back to bed when he throws a fit. He also knows how to scream to get his sister in trouble. He will take a toy and run away crying. I don't really fall for it anymore, but Daddy's still catching on. He also refuses to say Daddy. He calls Ben "Mama," he also calls me "mama," so it gets a little confusing as to which parent he really wants. He's also big enough now that he can give a little payback to the sister who used to knock him out of his carseat. And he's learning about not hitting.

He is still the most cuddly little guy ever, and loves to give kisses and hugs. He also will try to protect Kennady from the mean monster (Daddy) when they are playing. He is a fearless kid. It scares me. While Dustin was here, we went to a trampoline arena, with Dan, too. The kids both loved it. Korban thought it was the best thing he's ever done. There was one area where there was a foam pit and an 8 foot wall to jump off from into it. Dan jumped off, and turned around and motioned for Korban to jump to. Korban turned around, slid on his belly over the edge, held on with his his fingers, and then just let go. Kennady wouldn't go anywhere near it.

Kennady is getting a little frustrated with her new playmate. She came to me the other day, "Mom, Korban is annoying. I don't want a little brother anymore." "Uh, sorry, we can't really take him back, he's ours forever." "Can we flush him down the toilet?" After stifling my laughter, we had a talk about not flushing things down the toilet and how dangerous water is for babies.

Kennady has decided, first, that she wants to grow up and be big enough to go to school, and drive a car. She started by learning to make her own peanut butter sandwich. She was pretty proud of herself. And then she said she wanted to learn to write her name. We've been working on writing letters for awhile, but she's not shown a lot of interest in practicing them. So we sat down and she learned how to write her name, and spell it. She was pretty proud of that and had to call Daddy to tell him about both accomplishments. Today she came in and handed me a card she'd written her name on, without my help. At dinner, she randomly spelled her name for us (she'll do just about anything to stall eating dinner). So I guess she does retain some of this stuff.

She is really loving reading right now. Some of her favorite books, the Elephant and Piggie books, she can read by herself. I love those books. She also loves going to the library, so we constantly have new books to read. I've been reading her "big girl books" (you know the kind without pictures on every page) at naptime and bedtime. Yes, that's right, naptime. She loves reading her book so much that she takes a nap pretty much everyday to hear more of the story. We read Charlotte's Web first, and she loved it. I wasn't sure if she was paying attention or not, and it was hard to tell because she has the movie. I didn't care too much, because I like reading them to her. Then we started reading The Penderwicks. She really likes it, and seems to be following what's going on pretty well.

Kennady said that she wanted her name to be shorter, because spelling and writing Kennady takes too long. We said that she could shorten her name to a nickname, like Benjamin to Ben, and we could call her Kenna if she liked. We tried it out, and she said she didn't like it. She said she wanted her name to be Ben. Daddy said that was a boy's name. She said she wished she was a boy. We asked her why. "Because boys get to do all the fun things." "Like what? What do boys get to do that girls can't do?" "The dishes." Ben and I started busting up laughing. Why she thinks I don't do dishes, and that doing dishes is fun, is beyond me. She keeps calling Korban, "Korbo." Today it was "Korbo the cupcake maker." I asked why she was calling him that and she said, "Because when he gets bigger he is going to make me cupcakes whenever I want." Dream on, little one.