Walking and Talking!!!

I am a camcorder slacker. We took our video camera all the way to the Caymans and didn't turn it on ONCE. Both my grandmother and my mother are excellent videographers, but I seem to be missing the gene. I hadn't even recharged the camera since we got home from the trip over a month and a half ago until this week. I feel like I have been a slacker capturing Corbie's babyhood on video, so I decided that before I put the camera back up on the shelf I would ask her to say a few of the words she knows (sorry my floor is so dirty! yuck.):

Today the kids were outside playing on their swing set and I decided to once again see if I could convince Corbie to try and take a step or two. She has been standing really well for quite a while, but just refused to take more than half a step on her own before she would just plop down and crawl to wherever she was trying to go. Today she decided she would give this walking thing a try! She was doing really well in the backyard, so I ran around to the front where Preston was working on his honey-do list and made him grab the camera. Of course, as soon as the camera was on her Corbie immediately forgot how to walk, but after a few false starts she had a couple of good tries. So, for your viewing enjoyment, here are a few of Corbie's first shaky attempts at taking multiple steps (so exciting!)

Now I just need to figure out how to chase two babies at once....

Big Boy Now

Yesterday was Dax's 2nd birthday! I can't believe how much my baby boy has grown up this year! Here he is on his 1st birthday:
And here he is on his 2nd birthday!Wow, that bear is getting small FAST! It is getting harder and harder for me to pretend that Dax is still a baby, especially since he is over 3 feet tall and over 30 pounds. It is getting harder to fit him on my lap, but we still make it work.

He has learned so much this last year, he amazes me. He had his doctors appointment today and the doctor was impressed with how well he was talking and making multiple-word sentences and phrases. He was mostly talking about having a sucker: "Mommy sucka now peez? Have it?" (repeated over and over). But as soon as the doctor tried to start up a conversation with him, Dax quickly reverted to his current favorite word. Here is approximately how the conversation went:

Doctor: Can I look in your eyes now with my little flashlight?
Dax: No.
Doctor: Okay, can I look in your mouth instead?
Dax: No.
Doctor: How about your ears?
Dax: No.
Doctor: Do you want to hold this stick? (tongue depressor)
Dax: No.
Doctor: How about two sticks?
Dax: No.
Doctor: Is that all you say?
Dax: No.
Doctor: Do you like candy?
Dax. No.......Candy? Candy peez?

The doctor called it "negativism," and said it is pretty common in toddlers. Dax definitely has it. He LOVES to say No.

We are having a Daxton Birthday/Memorial Day party with our families on Monday, so we decided to take the kids to Chuck-E-Cheese on Dax's actual birthday. I was wondering if Dax would be to little to like it, but both Dax and Arden LOVED it. Here is Dax looking through the window up in the play land:Dax loved the pizza, the play land, the singing mouse, and of course, the rides and games. His favorite game was Whack-a-Mole, where it is actually the object of the game to HIT THINGS with a big mallet and no one even puts you in timeout! So fun!!!! Look at the smile:After we ran out of tokens and cashed in all of our tickets for fabulous prizes like teeny dumdum suckers and stickers, we headed home to have some cake:

He had a hard time blowing out the candle. He was making loud blowing sounds, but no air was actually making it to the candle. So cute! We finally had to help him out a little. He is so dang sweet. I am so proud of my little big man and I so thankful that I get to have the amazing privilege of being his mom. I love this crazy kid like CRAZY.

Bring on the "terrible twos!"

$100 well spent

I haven't taken very many pictures since we got home from our trip. Not too much out-of-the ordinary stuff has been going on. But since most of my life is made up of ordinary things, I wanted to put a few pictures on here of some ordinary things, since I know that in a year or two they won't be so ordinary anymore:

Here is Arden during "nap time." She often dresses herself up in all of her princess jewelry, but this was the first time I noticed her doing it to Slobberears, her lamb (the lamb's name is Slobberears because Arden used to slobber all over her ears when she was a baby). The lamb has a necklace, a crown, a bracelet...even earrings!

Corbie is at the stage where she loves to help empty the dishwasher. Arden and Dax used to love it too when they were her age. Corbie especially loves emptying out the silverware and handing them to me one by one:

These last few shots are of the kids playing on the new swing set we bought. We looked at some of the big sets ones at Costco and Home Depot, but then I measured our backyard and we decided we better start out with something smaller! So we spent a little over $100 on an old-school metal swing set/slide combo and the kids LOVE IT. Here is Arden on the slide:

Here is Dax...he bravely went down the slide by himself the first few times ("SELF!" he told me), but the slide is pretty fast and after he landed on his bum a couple of times he told me "CATCH YOU!" I don't mind because every time after I catch him he gives me a hug. :)

That kid is ALWAYS talking. I can't get him to smile for the camera because he is too busy saying "Mommy! Camwa! Pit-cha!"

Corbie loves the slide too. We have to hold on to her hands all the way down, but she giggles and squeals all the way. I ordered her a toddler swing, but unfortunately it hasn't come in yet, but she likes to just watch the other two running and sliding and swinging while holding on to one of the posts:Here are the swings....

A hundred bucks well spent.

Piggies!

It is a momentous occasion at the Zaugg house! With the aid of a little hair product and the teeniest elastics I can find, I can now officially create TWO pigtails, consisting of about 4 hairs each, on Corbie's little head!!! WAHOO!!

Those little piggies aren't always easy to see, but they are there! Her sister Arden didn't achieve this feat until she was almost two years old, so Corbie is ahead of the game.

She actually likes getting her hair done (so far) and usually lets the pigtails stay in for at least a few minutes before she pulls them out.

Arden saw me taking pictures of Corbie and wanted to practice her photography skills too. Here is one she took of me, engaged in the OH-so-glamorous activity of clipping Corbie's teeny toenails (Don't I look thrilled?)
I think Daxton is feeling a little left out...he has asked to have "pretties" in his hair a couple of times this week. Of course I would NEVER allow my son to wear such things...at least I would not keep photographic evidence of it. :-)

I Hope These Fish Are Tough....

We have been back from our trip for a couple of weeks now, and I guess Preston was feeling sad that he didn't get to look at fish every day anymore. So, one day last week he came home from a what I thought was a routine trip to the store with two goldfish and related goldfish paraphernalia. Preston argued that they only cost 13 cents each. The kids were really excited about the fish, and love to stare at them. Corbie loved to point at them and say "ISHHHH!"

On the second morning of their stay with us, I let Arden feed them, making sure she only put in a small amount of food since our fish aren't very big and can't eat much. About an hour later, I was getting Corbie's shoes since it was my turn to carpool to preschool. Apparently Daxton thought the fish could use some more food, so he climbed up on a chair and gave them a second helping of breakfast....a BIG second helping:

Yeah, he emptied the ENTIRE container of food into the bowl. All of that brownish reddish stuff in the picture (on the top of the water and on the bottom) is fish flakes. Poor little fishies, it was like they were swimming in a fish-food snowglobe. I frantically scooped them out of their bowl with a little cup (since Preston didn't buy a net), getting lovely-smelling fish flakes all over my hand and wrist in the process. I plopped them in a cup and quickly rinsed out their disgusting bowl and washed off their rocks with fresh water a few times. I was running late by now, so I quickly treated some new water and plopped the stunned fish back into the bowl. They miraculously survived. The fish are now living on top of a 6 foot tall bookshelf, where Dax has no hope of reaching them. Preston says it defeats the purpose of getting the fish for the kids since they are up where the kids can't really see them, but at least they are safe up there....for now.

Cayman Part 3

And here we go again....I swear I am going to finish blogging our trip this time. (I know this is way more detail than anyone except me will ever want to read, but I know I will forget it if I don't write it down)

The day after the turtle farm we headed back to Rum Point in the morning. We got there pretty early since Dax was up at 6 a.m. again and had the place to ourselves for a while, which was amazing. The rest of the family drifted over a little later and my sister Amanda took some pictures for me because I am such a picture taking slacker.

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Here is Arden, my beach baby. She would stay in the water all day (as long as she has her floaters of course):

Corbie and Preston playing on the beach:

Corbie and me "walking" around the beach. She still doesn't want to walk on her own yet, but loves walking around with someone's help.

We had a fun morning of swimming and snorkeling, and I even saw a lionfish right under the pier. We had lunch at the restaurant right on the beach there (MY FAVORITE). I think I ate my weight in Mahi Mahi on this trip. After lunch, we headed to the blue house back for a quick nap. Corbie and Dax were tired from playing at the beach, but we didn't have time for a nice long nap. As it was, we had to hustle back to Rum Point so that we didn't miss our catamaran to the Stingray Sandbar. I really enjoyed the trip out to the sandbar, it is so beautiful!The water is just an amazing color out there that brings joy to my heart. Arden, Preston, Dax and I climbed down to the back of the boat and dangled our feet in the water...it was so clear we could see all the way to the bottom. Arden thought every rock she saw was a turtle...it was hilarious. We climbed back up and sat along the side, and Corbie loved looking over the side and chewing on the rope (obviously). It must have been salty or something.

Our first stop was out by the "Cayman wall" where we went snorkeling. Preston and I took turns so someone could stay on the boat with the kids. The reef out there is so beautiful, and I swam with a huge school of purple tangs (no camera, sorry). Amanda's camera goes underwater too, so here is a picture of hers showing some of the coral out there:Next we loaded back up and headed to the Sandbar. The kids LOVED it. Dax was excited to touch the stingrays, and even Corbie reached right out to touch one.

I even caught one all by myself (well, my sister Val herded her towards me and then I picked her up): Yay, Me! I held her for a while so everyone could pet her, and then gave her a kiss (it is supposed to be good luck) and let her go. I guess the stingrays heard about the good luck kissing too:Awwww! Besides stingrays, we saw a puffer fish and some conches hanging around too. Corbie wasn't afraid to touch the conch in its shell, but Arden didn't want to. (the conch is by someone's foot on the left):

We all had such a good time, and here are my sisters and me and Corbie on the ride back:

The kids were EXHAUSTED. So the next day we just hung around the blue house pretty much the whole entire day, splashing and reading and relaxing and making sure everyone got their naps. Daxton actually fell asleep while eating lunch at the table, poor tired boy.

There was a lot of art on the walls at the blue house, most of it including pictures of tropical fish or birds or turtles. Corbie LOVED it. She actually learned two new words on this trip, mostly from making us all walk her around the house so she could look at all of the art. She learned to say fish ("ISHHH!") and bird ("BOOHDEE!").

Thursday, it was back to Rum Point in the morning. These are about the only pictures I can get of Dax these days (him running away as fast as he can): Arden is much more cooperative:
We had lunch at the beach again, and then after naps we took a drive over to the East Side and took a walk down one of the beaches there. The beach was a little rocky, and there were thousands of seashells and coral washed up on the beach. Arden and Dax had a great time looking for things to pick up. Preston carted back a bag full of Arden's treasures (shells, rocks, etc.) to the blue house, which we later used to throw into the sparkly water when Arden wasn't looking. ;) Here is us with my sister Amanda and her husband Matt, taking a break on a covered bench:

The next day was scuba day! My parents stayed home with the kids (thanks!!!) and the rest of us headed over the 7-mile beach to meet our guides. It was a small boat, and luckily we were the only ones on the trip. Here we are on the boat and ready to go:
And here is a picture Matt took of Amanda and me and our guide. Preston and Matt had to get back on the boat because they both suck their air so fast, and Amanda and I got to go back down and look around some more (Amanda is in the back, our guide is the lowest and I am the other one):

We went on two dives. My sister Val had a hard time equalizing the pressure in her ears on the first dive, but she did great on the second one. We saw a couple of turtles, two HUGE lobsters, thousands and thousands of fish including a very large puffer fish, an old anchor from a Spanish galleon and some stingrays and even a cuttlefish. It had been a long time since I had been diving, and I had a great time (except for that minute or two when I thought Val was lost).

The next day was our last full day so we decided to cram it as full as we could. First, we drove back into Georgetown and took a ride on a semi-sub. If you have ever been to Disneyland, you know what this is. It is pretty much a boat, but with windows below the waterline so you can look out and see the fish. The adults had seen lots of fish snorkeling, but here was the kids' chance. Here is Daxton, who yelled "HEWWO FISHIES!" pretty constantly through the whole trip:

Corbie thought it was great. She had her pointer-finger out the whole time. Look at these wide-open baby eyes:

Another fun thing was that once we were out away from shore a little way, they let us snorkel from the boat. The kids loved watching everyone snorkel through the windows. Here is Daxton on the inside, looking at a snorkeling Preston who swam down to say hello:

After we got back to shore, we grabbed some lunch and headed up to Cemetery Beach to have another snorkel. There is excellent snorkeling there, but you have to swim a little way out to get to it. I saw a flounder, more stingrays, a barracuda, some rainbow parrotfish, and another, smaller school of tangs. Preston decided to chase them a little:

Snorkeling is so much fun! And, everyone is so attractive while doing it, right Manda and Mom?

After we dried off a little, the girls (and Matt!) headed into town for a little more shopping:We headed out to Kaibo Grill for our last dinner on the island. The food was good, but there were a few too many intoxicated tourists there for my taste :).

The next day was the day we had to head home. Before we left, I got the kids dressed in actual clothes for a change and took them out in the backyard to try and get some pictures. They weren't too cooperative, but between Amanda and me we got a couple of good shots. Here are some of my favorites:

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We sadly packed up our stuff and headed to the airport. We flew to Atlanta with some grouchy kids, and had a LONG layover in Atlanta, which was made even longer by a flight delay. Dax was in the mood to run around, so I ran that kid all over the airport. I think he must have jogged at least a mile, which in toddler miles is like a marathon. He was so tired, and starting to melt down. Preston held him in his lap and made him hold still for just a minute, and he was OUT. He fell asleep before we boarded, but did not wake up until we got off the plane in SLC. I was holding Corbie, and she cried a bit while we waited for our turn to take off, but by the time we were airborne she was asleep too, and Arden followed soon after. I was so relieved....for about 45 minutes. Then my legs started falling asleep. But if I shifted my position even the teeniest bit, Corbie started to cry. So the next 4 hours or so were pretty much torture as I tried to hold as still as I could without actually starting to cry from the pain from holding still. Nooooo fun. We landed just after midnight, and waited (and waited and waited) for our bags. Our amazing friend Nate picked us up (THANKS!!!!) and we got home and put everyone in their own beds and asleep again around 2 a.m.

And Dax was up at 6 :)

It was an amazing vacation!!! The kids really missed having everyone around, especially the first couple of days. Each morning, Dax would ask "BUGGA, ANNIE WENT?!?!" which means ("Wherever did Grandpa and Grandma go?") and Arden keeps asking me how many more days until we can go back.

Hopefully it won't be too long!!

Cayman Part 2

And the story (finally) continues...

Grand Cayman is a popular stop for cruise ships. I checked online before we left so we could be sure not to go into Georgetown on a day when there were a lot of cruise ships in port. It was good that I checked because on some days there were up to 5 ships in port on a single day, holding over 10,000 people. That probably doubles the population of the entire island! Anyway, Monday had only one ship in port, so we decided to head to Georgetown and do a little shopping and have lunch.

One thing that you quickly notice about Grand Cayman is that there are chickens wandering around EVERYWHERE. At the beach. Along the side of the road. Right outside of shops. I even saw one in a palm tree. But while shopping in Georgetown I saw a chicken that had chosen a very questionable place to hang out:


Maybe he misunderstood the sign? Anyway....


We hit a few shops and then grabbed some lunch (seafood for me, of course) down by the water. We had seen all sorts of souvenir t-shirts, stuffed animals, and jewelry, but Arden wasn't interested in any of it. For some reason the only thing she wanted was some crayons where the wax was surrounded by wood so that they looked like sticks. What? We saw them in the first store we went into and she talked about them nonstop the rest of the shopping trip. I have no idea what these crayon sticks have to do with the Cayman islands. None. But they were cheap and I wasn't in the mood to argue with her about what her souvenir should be, so on the way back to the car Grandpa took her and Dax back to the shop we had seen them in and Arden had her authentic Cayman stick-crayons (and Dax had some too)...Grandpa is so nice!!!
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The kids had had about as much shopping as they could handle, so we decided to drive up to West Bay and visit the turtle farm at Boatswains Beach. My sister Val had visited the turtle farm when she had stopped at Grand Cayman on a cruise, and thought the kids might like it.


She was right...they loved it! It was pretty hot and VERY humid, but the kids had a great time looking at the BIG turtles...
...and the big blue iguanas that wandered around everywhere...

...and they especially loved the baby turtles! These little guys were sooo cute, and these were the only turtles at the farm that we are allowed to touch. I wanted to take one home and keep him in the bathtub! But since I had no room in my luggage, I decided against it. But it was all we could do to keep Dax from taking a swim with the little guys!

Arden had one little turtle that kept swimming right up to her so she could pet him.

And Corbie had the best time of anyone. She was just so excited about everything she saw. She was pointing and squealing constantly. She could have stayed there all day:

I loved to watch the kids, but unless you have kids with you, I would skip the turtle farm. It was kind of a bummer for me to think about how some of those cute baby turtles would be set free when they got bigger, but that others were destined to end up as turtle soup in local restaurants (sad!). After a while we were all pretty hot and tired, so we finally convinced the kids that it was time to head back to the blue house.

That night after dinner, we all headed out into the backyard in the dark. Valerie is the night owl of the family and had seen something amazing the previous night while out on the dock after the rest of us wussies had gone to bed. We were all excited to see it too. So, we grabbed handfuls of sand and a couple of coconuts and headed to the end of the dock.

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We all waited while Val threw a coconut up in the air. When the coconut hit the surface of the water, it lit up with thousands of sparkling, blue-green glow-in-the-dark droplets of water! And under the water, the startled fish darted away leaving streaks of light behind them. It looked just like underwater fireworks! It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

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It turns out our blue house was located on a bioluminescent lagoon! I had heard of the bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico, but I didn't know there was anything like it in the Caymans, let alone our own backyard.

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We spent the next couple of hours throwing handfuls of sand, rocks, seashells, etc. into the water and watching the light show. The rocks and seashells left light trails behind them all the way to the bottom, looking like shooting stars. The handfuls of sand looked like glittering fairy dust as they hit the water and slowly drifted down. We found some sticks and laid down on the dock and swirled them in the water. It was like having a sparkler on the 4th of July. We even splashed our feet in the water and watched the ripples sparkle and glow and slowly fade into the darkness. While we were playing, a kayak tour where people actually pay to paddle down the bioluminescent lagoon went by, and we learned from the guide that the light was coming from little creatures called dinoflagellates, or plankton. The light they emit is a defense mechanism of some kind, made in response to movement in the water. But for us, it was just MAGIC.

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I was tempted to get into my swimsuit and take a sparkly swim, but I was worried about the jellyfish (see previous post), so I didn't do it. We tried to take pictures or video of the glowing water, but none of the cameras we brought were able to capture it.

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Every night we would go out and play in the sparkling water before we went to bed. The moon was getting brighter each night of our trip, and on none of the nights after that first one did the water sparkle and glow quite as brightly. But it was still amazing. Val and I were on the dock one night, swirling our sticks in the water and watching the fish leave their little glowing trails. All of a sudden what we guess was a HUGE barracuda swam quickly under the deck, a gigantic streak of light swirling around and behind him. Our sticks came out of the water FAST.

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Playing in the bioluminescent lagoon in our backyard was the most unexpected and one of the most memorable experiences from this trip for me.

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Coming soon: Cayman Part 3: