Work

 I've really surprised myself at how much I'm enjoying my job.  Going into it I was a little hesitant because I've never worked with anyone in special education but come to find out I absolutely LOVE it, and don't think I'm too bad at it either.  Thankfully I have the patience for it, I enjoy every little learning opportunity that comes along where we have to stop and Sam (the girl I'm working with) has to figure something out and then when she does it creates this wonderful feeling like "Yes!  You got it!"  Even one of the girls at the daycare asked me, away from Sam, "how do you do it everyday?!"  She said "Sam's a great girl but I just don't think I could do what you do!"  I think I kick myself a little harder each day for not sticking with my teaching degree but I wouldn't change anything because if I hadn't taken the path that I did I may not be where I am today.

And of course spending my days with Korbyn isn't too bad either :)  She is definitely the life of the party!  Even today her teacher said "if we had all Korbyns in here we would be so entertained all day!"  I love this picture because it looks like she's wanting to help out and feed the little baby.  But don't be fooled, she just wanted to poke the bag inside the bottle because it felt funny and made a noise.  Sam and I also take the older ones for a daily walk.  They absolutely love it!  I just can't wait for it to stay cooler during the day so we can go a little bit longer and I'm not sweating like crazy when we come back inside.

Busy body

 I can hardly keep up with this girl!  If and when I do get a couple of hours at home by myself I take advantage of it and use that time to get things done around the house, I should probably do absolutely nothing...but who has time for that?!  When I walk in the door I feel like a chicken with my head cut off because every direction I look there's something that needs to be picked up or put away.  And I feel like I'm constantly walking behind Korbyn and cleaning up.  She'll find anything to keep herself entertained.  The girl has plenty of toys laying out, but she could care less about toys.  She's so curious about everything and wants to figure it out on her own. 

I call my purse a black hole because EVERYTHING ends up in there.  When I do clean it out I'll find things in there that I completely forgot I had!  So she absolutely loves to go through that that thing.

 The other morning as we were getting ready to go to school I changed the toilet paper roll and tossed the old one that had about two more sheets on it into the trash, or so I thought.  When I come back into the bathroom it looks like a little puppy had gotten a hold of it!  The roll was empty but had a couple of sheets and she peeled them off and decided to tear them up into tiny little pieces and try to eat them.  And she was only in there for a minute!  Well the next morning I come in and she's standing up next to the toilet paper hitting it and making it roll and it was all over the ground!  I'm thinking we're going to definitely get a small Christmas tree this year and put it on a table out of her reach ;)

 But she's so stinkin cute that I could never get mad at her!!!

Videos

As often as I can I'll leave Korbyn at daycare and have Colton pick her up at 5 so I can go home and get some things done, it's far and few between but helps out so much.  Wednesday he was able to get her and five o'clock rolls around and I get a call from Colton asking me where the car seat was!  I usually leave it in the office at the daycare but it had completely slipped my mind and I had to end up coming back into town to pick her up.  But I guess it was a blessing in disguise because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get these videos :)

The first one is of Korbyn discovering her shadow.  I turned around to look at her because she got quiet and hurried to get my phone out to capture it, don't worry I wasn't looking through the lens while I was videoing her, I was watching the road!  And I apologize for not turning the radio down before I started filming, we like to jam out ;)

The second one is of her playing "where's Korbyn?"  As you can see she gets the concept but her skill is a little off.  But we know what she's doing.

Pictures from game

 I downloaded these from my email off of my phone, sorry they're kind of tiny!

Gotta love her

 A couple of weeks ago Colton fished in the API tournament.  It's pretty big and they even had around 40 teams this year.  I was surprised since the lake they chose to fish on was dangerously low.  The night before the tournament they throw a little party and have an auction etc. out at the lake.  After we ate Korbyn was getting a little restless because she couldn't crawl around on the ground and play so I had to keep her occupied.  She really doesn't stay interested in "toys."  In fact if you look in my purse or her diaper bag you'll find things like clothespins, empty snuff cans, or anything that I can grab that can fit in her hand and won't be dangerous.  So I gave her my bag that I keep in my purse for my chap stick, lip gloss, and odds and ends that I might need.  Fortunately that kept her very interested for quite some time.  I showed her that it unzipped and she kept pulling everything out and sticking everything in her mouth.  We were all laughing at her because she would constantly put my chap stick in her mouth and suck on it and then just have it hanging out of her mouth!

She is such a goober.  She just has such a personality that I am constantly laughing at her, in fact the other morning I was joking with Colton that she may not have the best body (I was just teasing because she's so fat!) but she'll definitely have the best personality around!  She's also started this new thing where if you say "wheeeere's Korbyn?!"  She'll try to put her hands over her eyes and then moves them like playing peek-a-boo, but what she actually does is just slap herself on the side of the face and then gives you a big smile like "here I am!"  I'm going to try and get a video of it because it is the most funniest thing I've ever seen.  In fact I was changing her diaper the other day and she kept doing it over and over again and laughing at herself that I was in tears laughing so hard!  And she also tries to moo like a cow.  My mom and I try to go walking every evening with Korbyn and the dogs in tow.  We pass several cows on our walks and she'll point to them and moo but with her mouth closed, she'll get it.

I just like this picture because this is what she looks like immediately after she wakes up :)  So sleepy eyed but so full of energy!

Firsts

Korbyn has had quite a few firsts in the past couple of weeks.

The most exciting one is her first tooth!!!  She FINALLY has a tooth poking through.  She's 10 months and I didn't think she would ever get any teeth, even the girl that I'm working with always joked that we're going to have to get her some dentures.  I think that explains why she was being such a clingy, needy baby last week.  I thought it was just because she was getting attached to me being in her classroom all the time!  I noticed it Saturday when I was wiping her down after she ate lunch and when I was wiping her mouth and saw it and said "Oh my gosh you have a tooth!"  It was a weird feeling, my little girl is growing up WAY too fast.  I called Colton and told him and he said "what?!  A real tooth?"  Ever since it poked through she has been completely fine, even in her classroom.  So really her first tooth experience wasn't bad at all, I just hope all the others are that easy.

The second one is her first baseball game.  Us, my mom and dad and my brothers and their families all got together labor day weekend and went to watch a Round Rock Express game.  It was so fun and Korbyn did awesome, and thankfully it wasn't too hot.  We sat on the first base line and we knew the sun was going to be right in our eyes but it was only bad for a little bit when it was setting.  I was a nervous wreck the entire time though.  ALL the foul balls were always headed our way!  I think it was the second pitch when a foul came bee line towards us and actually hit someone literally two rows down and a few seats from us!  They were ok though :)  Naturally my eyes couldn't be on the ball the entire time because I was watching Korbyn so every time I would see everyone's head look up into the sky and hear "watch out!" I tried to cover her as much as I could and would just grit my teeth hoping it wouldn't hit us.  Next time we'll have to sit in a safer spot, but it did keep us on our toes.  If my mom would ever email me the picture that she took of us I'll post it :)

The third one is not so good, she got her first spanking!  Ok, it wasn't a real "spanking" but it's the closest she's ever gotten to one.  We don't really spank or hit her on the hand...yet.  I'm totally for spanking your child when it's appropriate, but I think you have to be careful not to overdue the little smacks because then it's not a big deal when they really need it (in my opinion).  I've started taking a bath with Korbyn in the evening just because it's so much easier.  Before I would always give her a bath, put her to bed and then get in the shower and go to bed myself, well HELLO!  She likes to play with her toys a lot in the tub so when I'm done bathing the both of us I'll get out and dry off and get dressed and I let her play for those few minutes and then I get her out etc.  Well here lately she's been standing up in the bathtub and hanging on to the side.  I'm all for her standing up but not in that bathtub, that's just a disaster waiting to happen.  So she would do it and I would walk over to her and set her back down and tell her "no" and then walk away. Well I expected her to do it a lot more before she realized what I wanted her to do, but I didn't expect her to do what she actually does.  If I'm not looking directly at her she'll slowly stand up with a huge smile on her face and just wait for me to look at her, and if I don't look at her right away the little turd will slap her hand on the tub to get my attention!  And she does this without taking her eyes off of me!  So after telling her "no" and then turning around trying not to laugh probably ten times within a minute I went over told her no and gave her a little smack on her butt, set her down and she just looked up at me and smiled and continued to do it again!  I hope and pray that she is not one of the 15% of kids (I read it in a book somewhere) who are born to defy all the rules given to them and push their boundaries all of the time.  She will definitely be a handful, I have no doubt in my mind about that, but as a parent you just want your kids to listen and do what you say the first time and every time after that...haha!  I know I'm dreaming :)

Daddy's new truck...my new nightmare!

Colton and I purchased a new Dodge back in July and we've only been driving it for about three weeks now.  This whole process has been a complete nightmare!

We have been talking about getting a new truck for over a year now and we finally bit the bullet and did it.  We went to Stanley-Lynd in Cameron on a Saturday and in a matter of hours had signed our life away, at least that's what it felt like.  We didn't want to go overboard with payments but Colton is VERY precise in what he wants (hmmmm...I wonder who else is like that in our little family?) so our options were pretty limited.  Then as we had exhausted their inventory and were about to order a truck, they said that they had just gotten a new truck in but it was at the very back and nobody really knew anything about it.  So Colton, me, Korbyn and our salesman trek to the back to look at this truck.  It was exactly what Colton had been looking for!  Except this one had been extremely vandalized.  It happened when it came off the train from the Chrysler factory.  Someone had damaged this thing pretty bad and of course I had my reservations about it.  There were key marks ALL over it, a cab light was busted, the visor was broken and even the ignition was completely taken out so we couldn't even test drive it!  But Colton was in love.  The salesman walked away for a little bit and let us look at it and talk about it.  I told Colton the ONLY way we were buying this truck is if they gave us a major discount off the sticker.  And they did, which allowed Colton to put on the brush guard, new tires, have the windows tinted and install key less entry.  So we signed all the papers and we didn't take it home with us because they were going to put all those things on it and re-paint it and get it looking like new again.  When we were about to leave I asked the manager when he thinks they'll have it all ready for us to come and pick it up and he told me "oh, no more than a week."  HA!

So a week goes by and no call.  We call the dealership to ask if it was ready and they said no, it will be the next day.  So we wait around all day planning on going and getting the truck and we call before we leave and they said oh no, it's not ready yet.  By this point I'm getting a little irritated.  I don't care if it takes two weeks, but at least call us and let us know what's going on, we shouldn't be the ones calling.  My mind gets a little foggy at this point because this had happened several more times (weeks) before they say it's finally ready to come pick up.  I go to Cameron to pick it up by myself and of course am super excited because I want to see the final product.  I show up and they bring it around front and I look outside and I say "uh, I hope that's not our truck."  The brush guard was nowhere to be seen!  Mind you we've already paid for all of these things!  So our salesman goes and looks over the paperwork to double check that they didn't forget to put it in there and he comes back and apologizes and says that he just completely forgot to tell the service department to put it on.  Fine. I made a quick call to Colton and he of course wanted me to bring the truck back anyway and just said that we would do it next week.  As I'm getting into the truck I notice about a 6 inch scratch in the driver's door.  I pointed it out to the salesman and he said he would get it taken care of when we brought it back.  When I got it back to our house Colton wanted to go drive it and he noticed that the keys didn't fit right in the ignition and when you pull them out the truck continues to run!!!

I called them and had it scheduled for the next Friday to have the brush guard, the scratch and the ignition all fixed.  On two separate occasions I had asked if it would be ready that same afternoon because I unexpectedly had Korbyn with me (she got a fever the previous afternoon at daycare!) and I wanted to know if it was going to take longer than a couple of hours that I would just drop it off and take a loaner back home.  They reassured me TWICE that it would be done that afternoon.  So I get there and make ourselves at home because I'm expecting it to at least be a few hours.  Thankfully Korbyn was great and right around the time she was getting fussy the manager walked in.  I was thinking "oh thank goodness, they're done."  Well he came in and said they don't have the part to fix the ignition so he's going to get me a loaner to take home and walked out. So I called Colton and he said to just bring the truck home (both of these times were on a Friday so he wanted his truck on the weekend). 

When the manager came back I asked him if we could just take our truck home and reschedule and he said "uh...I guess we could just do the brush guard and everything then too, ya that's fine."  I said "WHAT?!  I'm so pissed off right now I'm about to cry!"  Then I did.  I said "you mean to tell me that I've been sitting in this waiting room for three hours with my 9 month old and you have done NOTHING to the truck?!"  He just stood there and said a quiet "no."  I know it didn't take them three hours to realize they didn't have this part.  I was beyond mad and they knew it.  I went back into the waiting room and then they brought in the other manager and he apologized and said that they knew they didn't have this part to begin with and if he knew I was sitting in here he would have sent me home a long time ago.  Then he offered me three free oil changes for my trouble, whoop dee doo!  They sent me home in a loaner and said that I won't be needing to make any more trips out here (a 45 minute drive) that our dumb ass salesman would personally deliver it to our house like new.  HA!

A few days later they call and say they will be delivering it.  Well wouldn't you know the ignition still wasn't fixed.  So we had to reschedule again for him to come out and pick up the truck to get it fixed.  This time I told him I work 8-3 if he can just pick it up at work and could he have it back by 3?  He said absolutely, it will definitely be back by 3 that same afternoon.  So 2:30 rolls around and I still haven't heard anything.  I call asking if I should hang around if he was on his way or go home with the other loaner.  The receptionist said our salesman was out at the moment and I told her I just need to know if our truck is ready!  She transferred me to service and he said they didn't know what was wrong with it yet but they should know in about 30 minutes and they would call me back and let me know.  He came to pick up the truck at 9:45 a.m.!  3:00 comes and no call.  I call back madder than heck at this point.  I asked to speak to our salesman and she said "oh he's gone for the rest of the day can I take a message?" I said "let me just talk to a manager!"  A manager answers and I said "let me tell you one thing, I will NEVER be stepping foot inside your dealership again!  The way we've been treated has been ridiculous and I have several friends who have also said they will never be giving you any business, this has been a total nightmare!"  He apologized and said "well, Eric (our salesman) is in jail. He got pulled over for speeding in your truck because the tires weren't calibrated with the speedometer."  I said "ya, you have to go 5 under the speed limit because y'all wouldn't do it for us!"  He then said that he had a warrant out for his arrest so he got sent to jail and our truck almost got towed.  I don't think anyone can understand how mad I was, and the biggest part of it was I felt so disrespected!  Ok, so he went to jail.  Someone should have picked up the phone and said "Mrs. Coates, some things have changed and your truck won't be ready today but we'll let you know as soon as it it."  That's all I've been wanting!  I asked him when it will be ready and he said they ordered the part for it at 2 p.m and he doesn't know if it will be in tomorrow (Friday) or Monday.  I said "you know what, I want someone to bring back our truck this afternoon and when y'all know what you're doing and what needs to be fixed then come pick it up.

That last part all happened just last week!  In the meantime our bank had called and asked about the dealership if he could give them a call because they STILL hadn't paid off our old truck!!!  So we had to make two truck payments last month!  The ignition still isn't fixed and now I can't get a hold of anyone decent to talk to about it.  I've had people tell us we should sue them just for the crap they've put us through.  Lord knows we could use the money but I hate when people sue for stuff like that, I just keep saying "well, we just got the short end of the stick!"  But I will NEVER be a customer of that place again.

Bows and Bye-bye

 Korbyn finally has enough hair for a regular bow, yay!!!!!  They don't stay in very well because her hair is so fine and I'm struggling to get as much hair as I can in those things already.  I got a lot of criticism for putting bows on her pretty much every single day since she was born from some of my family and even strangers, I know they weren't trying to be rude or anything but now I just want to tell them all "see!  It paid off!"  I can put hats, bows, and sunglasses on this child and she will leave them on like it's nothing, she never messes with them.  I'm sure the day will come though where she screams every time she sees the hair brush and yanks her bows right out of that little red head of hers.

She has also mastered "bye-bye" over the weekend!  She could wave bye bye for a few months now but it was hit and miss.  Now all we have to do is say it and she automatically waves...at everything.

Mommy's new job

This is officially my second week into my new job and I LOVE it!  I had to go to the staff development week before school started with all of the teachers...that was so weird.  I was sitting with all of my old high school teachers all day and talking with them on a professional level and also seeing sides of them that I didn't know existed!  A lot of them have personalities haha!  This was also the first time that I had been in the new high school (amazing!).  The high school is brand new and they turned the old one which is connected into the middle school.  We had a break the first day and I was on the phone with Colton and I was just roaming around trying to get the layout of everything and I didn't even realize I was walking through the old high school!  Everything looks so different, which was to be expected, but it just felt SO weird being in there again.

My title is a "Job Coach" not a "coach" as the paper read!  We had to take a new staff picture that was going in the paper and once they got us lined up to take it they passed a little notepad around and told us to write our name and then our title.  I was one of the last one's to receive it and I looked at how everybody else had written theirs so I knew exactly how to write it.  Everyone had written it like, Abby Coates - Job Coach.  That's exactly how I wrote it and the goobers at the newspaper probably thought I was saying my job was a coach because in the paper it said, Abby Coates - coach.  I had so many people come up to me and telling me congratulations on my coaching position!  In fact after church on Sunday several people had come and asked me about it and I had to keep explaining the situation over and over that finally when people would say "hey Abby, congratulations on your new job as a coach" I would just smile and say "thanks!"

I'm working with a special needs girl one on one everyday.  She's very high functioning for her syndrome so she can have a conversation with anyone about anything and do almost everything.  My job is to teach her life and job skills.  So a lot of times I'll just have to direct her or help her with things but other than that she can hold her own.  We follow the school schedule so M-F, 8-3.  It's also nice because anytime the school has an early release or is closed so do we.  And if she has a dr's appointment or anything like that we also don't meet.  So thankfully the job is very low stress (exactly what I needed right now) and very flexible.  Right now we volunteer at the daycare where I used to be the director, which is actually how I got the job, and at the nursing home.

I'm going to be honest, I was extremely nervous about starting this job because I've never worked with special needs and I've always heard that either you can or you can't and there is no gray area.  But I'm really enjoying it!  And I was also nervous about going to the nursing home, now that we've gone I don't know why, but I think everyone kind of has a bad stigma about nursing homes.  In the nursing home we volunteer with the Alzheimer's wing.  We're only there for a couple of hours two days a week so we really only have time to help with a few things.  But they were cracking me up!  There's 13 residents in that wing and I already love each and every one of them.  At the daycare we spend the majority of our time in Korbyn's room of course.  The girl that I'm working with actually likes that room and next room so that's why we're in there a lot.  I know you're thinking it's because Korbyn's in there but I promise it's not!  It's just that those are the two youngest rooms so the kids aren't as rowdy and those are the only two rooms she really wants to go in, I just got lucky :)  I absolutely love spending time with Korbyn all day!  But I've noticed that as soon as she sees me walk in the room she flips on her "brat" switch.  Ok, so she isn't a brat but she's become SO attached to me in the past two weeks that I almost don't want to go in her room anymore.  Don't get me wrong, I love that my baby is attached to me but she just follows me around the room and cries when I don't pick her up, not all the time but I feel like I'm disrupting the room when she does that!  And I've also noticed that she doesn't like it when I'm holding another baby.  If she sees me with another kid she'll come crawling and fighting to get into my lap.  And at home she's become the same way.  She just wants me to hold her all the time!

I know a lot of it has to do with her age.  She's understanding who certain people are and what's going on and she's catching on pretty quick.  I've noticed a couple of other things that she does that really surprise me at how much she understands.  Any time she poops she comes crawling to me and will not leave me alone.  She doesn't cry, she just whines a little bit but is trying to get my attention.  I've learned that every time she does this to check her diaper and sure enough she has poop! (early potty trainee?!)  And when she gets hungry (usually when I'm standing in the kitchen making dinner) she comes and hugs my leg and cries until I give her something to eat.  Like I said, she amazes me every day.  I'm just glad that I get to work while spending time with her :)

In to everything!

 Now that Korbyn can crawl she is everywhere and in to everything.  Thankfully she is pretty self-entertaining and I just have to make sure where she is at all times.  She's already thrown a few toys in the toilet (now we close our lids), has had live bugs, sticks, stickers (YES, from outside!) in her mouth...this girl is exhausting.  She likes to play with anything that's not a toy.  In the morning when I'm getting ready I'll just throw things down from my makeup bag and it keeps her happy until I'm ready.  We have a basket on our coffee table where we keep our remotes and some other little things and she always wants to play in it.  Colton bought this string for something on his boat (it's not used) and she loves to play with it.  And yes she got that all around her by herself.

 At first she didn't see me take a picture of her, then she looked at me, and then she pounced on me when she realized what I was doing!