Matt, Stacey, and Ben Uhrig

Last week, on Friday - Ben and I along with my mom, took a trip into NYC to watch my youngest brother Matt compete in the Gotham Cup. The Gotham Cup is an indoor track event among Division I, II, and III schools. Matt pole vaults and high jumps for Johns Hopkins.

Ben loves the city...all of the comotion from tons of buses, taxis, big buildings - its super stimulating. Matt knew my mom was going in - but didn't know Ben and I would be tagging along. We really enjoyed surprising him! The Gotham Cup was held in the Armory in Harlem accross the street from Columbia Presbyterian. Its a beautiful facility. The best part is all of the seating is in the rafters - so we positioned ourselves right in front of the Pole Valut event - where we were eye level with the jumpers. There was so much to see. High Jumping, Pole Vaulting, Shot Put, Relay Races, Triple Jump and more! It was a great day!

Posted in: on Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at at Wednesday, January 17, 2007 0 comments  

We had our friend Issac LeBlanc (3 y.o.) visiting with us today. Ben and Issac had a ton of fun and clearly have very similar interests. They were hooked on trains, legos, and pancakes during the morning and then we took advantage of the awesome weather by going on a nature walk....a perfect day! We hope to see Issac and his parents Jeremy and Karen again soon!

Posted in: on Saturday, January 06, 2007 at at Saturday, January 06, 2007 0 comments  

So the last time we posted....Ben jumped out of his crib for the 1st time. Well, at this point, the kid can hurdle the railing in .05 seconds flat - olympic record! Thursday night he climbed out 60 times between 8:30 - 10pm. So...

We've removed ALL of the items from his book shelf, have removed the shelves and will bolt it to the wall tomorrow. We have taken the crib railing down and have converted Ben's crib into a day bed. In addition, there is now a gate at his door so if he does get up - he can't roam aimlessly around the house. He took his 1st nap / rest today for 1 hour in his new BIG BOY bed. And suprisingly it went well. He never napped. However, without complaint - he stayed in his room, sometimes in the bed, other times not but at least he took his first "rest time" in his room by reading books in his new big boy bed!

We just put him down at 8pm and Stacey laid in bed with him reading books, said goodnight, closed the gate and we will wait it out. So far so good...not a peep....Fingers crossed!

Posted in: on at at Saturday, January 06, 2007 0 comments  

Apparently Ben does!

So - its New Years Day night and Ben is back to his usual routine. Quiet dinner with mom and dad, playing with trains, reading some books, taking a bath, more books, milk, and bed. Normal right? Sure - that's what we thought too. We go downstairs to take care of business. Matt does the dishes (shocker!) and Stacey works on the annual family photo album. And then we hear it...

The footsteps of someone upstairs~ What the heck??!!!?? First it was a THUMP. Then is was foot steps. And then....as clear as day - Daddy? I'm out! Our child has officially learned how to get out of the crib.

Oh Good God! So we run upstairs and there he is. Innocent. Smirking.

"Hi. How are you?" our child says so plainly - like - hey i've done this a gazillion times before. "Ben, what are you doing?".
"I climbed out of my crib", he says smiling ear to ear!

Ok - think. What do we do? So we talked.

"Ben, I see you can get out of your crib."
"Listen, tomorrow we will take the side of your crib off. But tonight, you need to stay in the crib."

We go downstairs. We watch the video montior. There he goes again! He's doing it again!

We run upstairs.

"Ben, honey - we need you to stay in tonight".

The first true threat of our parenting careers comes out of my mouth...

"Ben, we need you to be a good listener. You need to stay in your crib. If you don't stay in your crib...we will have to take your trains away. Daddy will bring them to work with him if you get out of your crib one more time."

Well, its been about 10 minutes, and he's sitting in his crib - but hasn't gotten out again....hopefully "the threat" has worked.

Truly - it took everything we had in us - not to LAUGH as it was really kind of funny.....

Ah the trials and tribulations of a 2 year old. Now -someone has to tell us how to take that darn siderail down!

UPDATE:
Its now 10pm. It took Ben quite some time to settle down. I'm sure his adrenline was racing with thoughts of "wow - NOW i can climb out of my crib!!!". At any rate: after about 20 minutes of silence we heard the following conversation come out of Ben's crib....as we watched him standing at the crib railing (on the video monitor)...

"Mommy said don't get out of crib".

***PAUSE***

"Maybe I'll get out of crib"

***LONG PAUSE***

"Trouble"

Out of the mouths of babes....to be continued we're sure. Stay tuned...

Posted in: on Monday, January 01, 2007 at at Monday, January 01, 2007 0 comments  

Happy New Year! We hope for peace in this new year and wish everyone a prosperous 2007!

To kick off the New Year we happily spent time with our favorite peeps - The Johnson-McCormick family! Heather, Braydon, Kyle and Owen came to our house for dinner and some playtime before heading to a First Night Celebration in Morristown. What a blast! We took the boys to a brass ensemble. All 3 were entranced by the trumpets and trombones! The could barely contain their excitement when they heard the music!

We then headed to "The Green" and enjoyed the lights and action. We then headed back to the Headquarters where clowns were making balloon characters (Note: we now know Ben DOES NOT like clowns!). We headed out around 9:00 (right before the fireworks) as Ben was clearly beat!

Posted in: on at at Monday, January 01, 2007 0 comments  

Long story short - about 5 years ago, while shopping at the Mall we "bumped" into another couple while checking out ties at Brooks Brothers. (OK - actually the other couple was having a hard time picking out a tie, Stacey overheard the conversation and made a suggestion and then we walked out of the store). After leaving - the guy from the store approached us at the Verizon store. He said "I hope you don't think this is weird, but we are new to the area and you 2 seem like a nice couple. would you like to grab dinner some time?". Hmmm....when someone random approaches you in a mall and asks you out to dinner - it may seem weird - but in this situation - it didn't at all. Some how we knew in our minds - this was a cool couple - someone that we would like to spend time with. We come to find out - we live 5 minutes apart and have quite a bit in common.

Over the years we came to call Heather and Braydon Johnson-McCormick 2 of our closest friends. Though they later moved to PA we still remain closely connected. About 3 years ago - when we decided to move forward with adopting a child we wanted to share this special news with them. We arranged for dinner and couldn't wait to tell them our BIG NEWS! So - we meet and THEY say - we have BIG NEWS. We laugh - so do we! Ends up BOTH families are getting together to tell eachother we are BOTH ADOPTING!!! You can imagine our thrill, excitement and pure estonishment to find out that 2 of our closest friends will be experiencing an adoption journey at the same time as us. So exciting! Though our journeys were very different (our adoption through Korea, theirs through Haiti) it was extremely comforting knowing we could share our ups and downs with someone who would truly understand. In addition, it was nice knowing another mixed / inter-racial family as this too is a life changing decision (to raise children of other ethnic backgrounds from your own).

Though we have called The Johnson-McCormicks some of our closest of friends over the past 5 years - we have come to find that Ben (2) , Kyle and Owen (2.5) also consider themselves close friends. The 3 boys clearly have a very special bond and love eachother very much. We feel extremely blessed that fate brought our families together.

Posted in: on at at Monday, January 01, 2007 0 comments