National Body Challenge

Tomorrow, James and I are starting The Discovery Health National Body Challenge. It doesn't officially start until Jan 5, but we're starting a week early.

Our goals are as follows:
1. Exercise at least 30 minutes a day.
2. Eat healthy and stay within our calorie range for the day.
3. Drink at least 64oz of water a day.
4. Lose 10-15lbs each.

Since Corbin was born, I have lost 55lbs. I would like to lose 30 more. James also has 25-30lbs he would like to lose. So hopefully doing this challenge together will motivate us to start getting healthy and we'll continue with our goals after the 8 weeks is up.
I'll check in every Sunday with our stats for the previous week.

Potty Training

Corbin is now 2 years old. Apparently this is the age when we are supposed to start potty training. So for his birthday, we bought him a little blue potty. He really likes this thing. About a week before his second birthday, I started putting him on the potty every 2-2.5 hours. I don't push it, I ask if he wants to sit on his potty. Most of the time, he says yes. Sometimes, he says no. When he says no, I wait 10-15 minutes and ask again. Usually he's ready to sit at that point.
Corbin has to be completely naked when he sits on the potty. Most of the time, if he has a shirt on, he will tug at it and say "off! Off! Shirt off!" until we take it off. I'm not sure why he likes to potty naked, but if it gets him on the potty, well, it's fine with me.
We have been doing this for 12 days now. On Monday, after a bath, I put him on the potty. He usually has to tinkle after a bath, so I thought we might get lucky. And I was right. Not a minute after he sat down, he tinkled. We did the potty dance, he got an M&M, I updated facebook with the wonderful news, and we called everyone. Corbin had tinkled in the potty for the first time.
Personally I was hoping this was a major breakthrough and Corbin would never need another diaper. Yeah, right, but a mama can dream right?
This morning, I put him on the potty before he left to go out with James for the day. He was completely dry, but he often is at his 10am potty break. I wasn't getting my hopes up for a morning tinkle in the potty. Corbin surprised us though. James looked at me like I had 6 heads, when mid-sentence I started cheering for Corbin. He has tinkled in the potty again - this time with no help from an earlier bath. We were so proud.
Obviously, we still have a lot of work before he's totally potty trained, but I'm not worried about that. I'm just proud that, every once in a while, he's tinkling where he's supposed to tinkle. The look on his face when we're so excited for him and the way he yells "I pottied" is totally adorable and worth the hassle of putting him on the potty every 2 hours all day long.

Charmer

Lately Corbin has become quite the charmer. A good example of this is an exchange that takes me between him and I or him and James at least 10 times a day.
Corbin: "Mama" (or daddy)
Us: "yes?"
Corbin: "I love you"
Us: "I love you too buddy"
Corbin: "you too"

Tonight, we were sitting on the couch, watching cartoons, and winding down for bed. I looked over and he was sticking a straw in his ear. Never a good idea. I flipped the tv off and told him to look at me. Once I had his attention, I started to tell him (for the 700th time today) not to put things in his ears anymore. I got about 2 words in, when Corbin leaned up and kissed me square on the mouth. It was so cute and so funny, I almost forgot that I was supposed to be scolding him.
I'm pretty sure that was his goal.

hello

Since my sister started blogging last year, she has been on me to start a blog also. After putting it off for several months, I've decided to go ahead and start one. Since my family and most of my friends live 1000 miles away, I figure it will be a good way for everyone to keep up with our life.
We'll see how well I keep up with this.