Twenty Five Years Old

Eat the soft cake
open shiny boxes of gifts
birth days remember


So that is my very bad Haiku in celebration of DAVE'S BIRTHDAY. Another type of Poemish thing for Dave
D- droll
A- altruistic
V-vivacious
E- energetic

Truly a helpful, supportive, empowering husband, Dave helps out in anyway he can. I spent the weekend writing a long, difficult paper and Dave spent the weekend looking after Corrina, playing, changing diapers, bathing, feeding, loving, caring. He did not complain or bother me to finish so he could do the things he wanted to get done. He gives time and love in every way he can. A special guy and a Best Friend! He has been endlessly patient with at least 2, if not three therapy and doctor appointments a week. He shows his love in so many ways to his daughter, through simple things, and more difficult things like being up for 3 hours at night with her when she is sick and scared.
I love Dave!

I have not been doing too many updates on me or dave because nothing really changes. He works his butt off at church to do as much as he possibly can in one week for the people and families we worship with, and I attend classes and write lots and lots of papers.

But Corrina: might have a surgery appointment for May 1st. It is not booked as of yet but that date is available. She has a CT scan, for which she will be sedated, coming up next week. She has a doctor appointment this week, and another one next week for her vaccinations. Sometime in the next month she will also have an mri in preparation for her surgery; she will also need sedation for that process. There is always a small risk when toddlers are sedated, but the risk is no more than a drive in a motor vehicle. None the less these appointments keep a baby very busy, will probably be scary for her (and me too, i am so bad with medical procedures), and stressful. Please be praying along with us for her, that she will be given strength and good health (she has had a cold/ear infection on and off since January), the ability she needs to navigate through her days and be understood as she tries to communicate her needs, and continued joy in her life (as she really is such a happy baby!).

Corrina and Dave went for Corrina's first Outside walk, on the sidewalk, with rubber boots, through puddles. It was so very cute to see. Dave will tell you that she took about 4 steps and stopped to play with/in a puddle for about 10 minutes. Dave coaxed her along, until she stepped into another puddle to play with leaves and sticks! All in all she really enjoyed her walk outside and we can't wait for the weather to get better and better!




Candace made a very beautiful dress for Corrina out of the same material that our baby sling was made in, and we just LOVE IT:

New to the World

Welcome to the earth little Samuel H. Naus (what a nice looking name!). Susan and Dave birthed their baby boy with love and a lot of energy. They have a really great birth story to share on their blog. Although it was intense I get a feeling of underlying peace and trust as they worked to bring Samuel into the world. He arrived just this morning (March 20th), at 5am. Next year on his birthday he will be able to eat the first blooms of tulips in his mamma's garden.

Praying for you Naus's. Happy Resting!!!

Go see pictures!!!

I am uploading pictures now, so once they are on the computer i will probably remember what i was thinking of posting about.

Dave is sleeping. Corrina is sleeping. I have some time to read and research for my family counselling paper that is due one week from today. I have done very well on all my paper thus far, and have also learned a lot while writing them so i have no reason for worry about this upcoming paper. But, i do have a major reading assignment due 2 days after this fairly large paper, as well as another paper due that same day. This puts me severely behind. So while before you may have been thinking "everyone needs a little internet break, especially when the paper isn't due for a week", you are now probably thinking "Janie, get your butt in gear, you have a huge amount of reading and writing to accomplish!" Yes, i am thinking this too, but you see, i started looking at crafty blogs- this one especially is fun and has a number of great links- while i was waiting for Corrina to fall asleep. I did not want to start my reading with the thought of having to stop every few minutes to help her settle down (which, she has really been having a hard time with. Any thoughts? Is this because she is older and can stay up later, or maybe she needs her morning nap decreased so her afternoon nap, which is now at about 4pm, is taken earlier... i am out of ideas... but i know we are having trouble and restless nights.. something is wrong.. but do i have drive or time to fix it? nope) so i started looking at blogs. now i am stuck.

Oh, the pictures are ready now!
How can you resist this alluring face? I certainly can't:





I bought a little bag of coffee for a friend the other day, and i could not resist picking up a bag of coffee for my french press. With all the reading and studying going on in this house coffee has become a new part of my routine. I bought starbucks, breakfast blend. I have NEVER bought expensive coffee for at home; it is delicious! Lots of frothed milk tops the cup off. I discovered, because we had no milk one day, that skim milk powdered milk makes the best frothy foam, and I can hardly tell the difference in taste. That's my secret for you!

I have been re-learning how to play guitar (it's not like riding a bike, you can lose it! But it is rather quick to pick up again, especially when you only know 10 chords in the first place!) and Corrina thinks it is a dandy new toy for her to fiddle with. So, up on the lap she comes for some strumming fun. I like that she can feel the vibrations; i can't wait until she hears the music that goes with the movements! (note: look at how long she is! She already comes up to the top of my hip when standing!) I think I actually resemble my brother in this picture. Do you think so??

Narrative Family Therapy here i come!

I Did This

If you look closely in the picture you can see that this window is broken. A piece has fallen out and sits between the two-pane window. Well, the piece actually did not fall out. The window was mostly frozen open, and as my 'technique' has worked on other windows in the house I applied my skills to this window. I gently tapped where the glass met the metal frame, as i applied a little pressure at the same time in hopes of moving the window forward. This didn't worked, as you have guessed, and i pushed my hand through the window. I only had a small gash on my wrist and there was only a little blood coming out of my body. This was about a month ago though and by now i have a scar, but i only just called the landlord today about having the window fixed. He said they would take care of it in spring. Lucky we have two window panes else we would have a cold baby room!

Last Saturday I set up the Colvinson Cafe and served my little family the BEST banana pancakes I have ever had or made. Yum! We had delicious coffee with frothed milk and a nice time dinning together in the morning. I always wanted to open a cafe and serve yummy treats and warming breakfasts. One day, maybe. For now i will just feed us! The beautiful flower plant on the table is from my friend Allison to bring me hope during a very stressful school time. I wasn't able to keep it alive though. It even had little flowers that looked like they would grow beautiful and tall. The worst part is i don't know what happened. Maybe the cats chewed on it (even though it was put on the counter at nights), or maybe i hurt it by watering it too soon. Happy flowers, sad death.

Corrina is learning to drink from real cups and she just loves it, though sometimes she gets a little carried away and dumps the entire little cup of water onto her face, down her neck and of course all over her outfit. Today in the bathtub, our favorite practice drinking place, she threw her water back, too quickly this time, and choked herself for a moment. Poor thing. Once the water had finished coughing the water out she sneezed about 10 times. I think the water made it up her nose too. Poor little gal. So that was the end of bathtime tonight as she wasn't very interested in remaining in the water that had just scared her.





Walking walking everywhere. She can make it across our house now, although she doesn't too often. We were having dinner with some friends last night and she walked the entire time. We had never seen her walk so much. They had a puppy, a big puppy, who was very excitable. I think Corrina just thought "Big cat!!" and enjoyed waving, poking, and giggling at him. Doggy liked jumping up at her, so he ended up outside!



Enjoy the movies

If you were wondering

Just in case you were wondering what Janie is doing with her day, she (I) will tell you! I am at home writing a paper for my intro to social work course. Good topic, lots of research, movie study of Losing Isaiah, but where to begin???

Nothing fantastically new in the world of Corrina. We were going through a check list of communication abilities for little ones in her age bracket and we found that she is doing great with all the skills a baby of her age usually has. That makes us very happy as it means that she isn't falling behind in other areas of life and most likely will pick up language quickly. I am getting more and more excited for the semester to end, for the operation to come around (we still do not have a date, but are getting closer to knowing), and for the summer and all the sounds it brings to come our way. Of course between now and then I have 5 very large research papers due, but in 5 weeks I will have finished my first semester back at school!

I have not been camera crazy lately thus this post is picture-less. Back to paper writing, or paper starting, which for me is the most difficult part!

Mario Galaxy!

(Not a Corrina Video)

mountians with white peaks

If you were to look deep inside Corrina's mouth you would see 4 big mountains, one on each side, with white peaks poking through the pink.

Yes, she is cutting 4 molars, all at once. Plus, she is also working on another 2 front teeth, one up top, and one down below. She is having some trouble sleeping, has cold symptoms (she also had an ear infection last week and is getting over that cold still), and all the other fun diaper related side effects of teething. But 4 teeth all at once.. that is crazy!!!! I am wishing i had one of those little 'net feeder bags' so i could give her some harder food and ice cube to gum on.

This is a picture of hearing aid time, during which she has to wear a toque so she doesn't pull her aids off. She does really well once we have the toque on her and she pretty much forgets about pulling at her ears! She loves to play with anything that shakes (i thought babies liked rattles when they were like 3 months!), so we bought her some big red maracas to shake about! It looks like she just pulled her pink sock off as well.

Today at our audiology appointment Corrina wore her hearing aids, and we were able to see her respond to very loud, low sounds. The exact numbers were 90 decibels with 250 Hz. Think lawn mower! It was so neat to see her still (she actually stopped what she was doing), think and then look for the clapping monkeys that come on after a sound. She didn't notice sounds at any other levels, like 80 and 500 or even 90 and 500, but we are so happy with the small responses we saw. She was also very happy after hearing the noise!

We are still working on walking and becoming more controlled at stopping, turning around, and bending down to pick toys up. We also learned to dance without music by bouncing up and down while standing! Pretty cute.

Corrina is pretty sure that socks go on her hands now. Yes, that's our fault! I thought it would be cute to put them on her hands, and she really enjoyed it. Now when we are putting them on her little feet (which she just loves to help with!), she often offers us her little fist. These are daddies socks, which work even better. We were spending some time bouncing on the bed here and making Finaggin puppets!

Funny incident tonight: Dave was bathing Corrina, and I was in the living room reading for school. I could hear her swishing the water all over the place and moving up and down, throwing toys around and having fun! Then i heard a different type of noise and i thought to myself "She sure is grunting in the tub, hmmmmm!" A few minutes later i hear "Janie, Come here quickly" I jump up and go the bathroom, and dave says "She pooed in the tub!" But then he points to the cat food dish, where Corrina has flung her little poo! This situation is unavoidable in my opinion. I have been waiting for the day when she would poo in the tub! Dave, who has been looking elsewhere, thus missed the whole pooing part and hucking of the poo also says "I hope she didn't put it in her mouth first" We checked and her mouth was red and white, just as it should be with no brown! Later, as i was getting Corrie's Pj's on dave comes into the room and announces "I just scooped a kernel of corn out of the bathrtb (sad face)." Ha ha! So funny! When i told dave that i had heard some different grunts than normal while he was bathing her he was pretty annoyed that i didn't tell him. I said "Hey, you were right there i was pretty sure you were hearing them too, and SEEING what was going on!"

She's a moving

Just a quick video!


She can master about 7 steps now!

-j, d, c