For your enjoyment:
Carter singing (and stuffing his face full of gumdrops)
AND
Cylie, with some wonderful bantering.
If these aren’t playing well on your computer, just uncheck the “HD” button while it’s playing to scale things down a bit.
Seeing how it’s nearing the end of 2009, now is a pretty good time for look back over the year. This is especially true since our blogging efforts have been spotty at best and don’t really portray the “action” of 2009.
-- Cindy --
Cindy’s great, and Cindy keeps busy. 2009 started off with a baby in the belly. With Cylie on the way, Cindy retired from the workforce (recession helped that decision along quite nicely), and became a full-time Mommy. That is, until June, when she decided to head back to school to pursue Dental Hygiene, as well. And, in full Cindy-awesomeness, she whipped out a 4.0 her first term.
September brought fall classes and little Cylie. Turns out that a new baby, classes, calling in the Primary Presidency, and a super-active 2 year old is a bit much. So, classes were put on hold till January. Thanks to Chris’ flexible work schedule, they both can do classes and take turns with Carter and Cylie, so daycare isn’t an issue at the moment.
-- Chris --
Chris looooooooooves having his picture taken, as illustrated above. 2009 was a busy one, for sure. Full-time work, full-time school is crazy enough, but Chris was called to serve in his ward’s bishopric in June which brought just a little more “busy” to his life. He loves his calling and the chance to serve others, even if it does mean being gone 8-10 hours each Sunday.
Bachelor’s degree is all but finished up for Chris in Information Systems Management, and given the terrific state of the economy right now, he’ll just keep on with school and start his M.B.A. shortly. Along with school, Chris is working on a handful of IT certifications; CCNA, MCSE, and maybe even his CISSP (If you understand those acronyms, terrific). It’s slow-going, but he should get his CCNA next month.
-- Carter --
Here is Carter eating M&Ms and perusing the Toys’R’Us Christmas ad. This is a rare moment where he his sitting calmly enough to catch a picture of him. Still managed to get his tongue out though.
2009 saw huge things for Carter. For starters, he turned two. Swimming lessons, trips to the park, and running around the house at every opportunity did little quench his insatiable appetite for being active.
He rode on a plane twice; once to visit Grandma and Grandpa Cannon and again to visit Grandma and Grandpa Burkman. This year, Carter gave up pacifiers, moved in to his big-boy bed and became a big brother, which he is terrific at.
Turns out he has a built-in big-brother gene that has him looking out for his little sister at every opportunity. He shares his toys with her (for now), holds her, lets us know when she’s crying (even if we’re holding her), and pretty much wants to kiss and love on her whenever possible and sometimes when it’s not possible.
All in all, he’s a happy boy and loves to make others laugh.
-- Cylie --
Cylie’s 3 months old today. It’s amazing to see the differences between her and Carter already. She doesn’t cry much as she’s found it much more effective to just yell when she wants something. She’s talking a bit already, and while Mom and Dad understand everything she’s saying, others may claim it’s just babbling.
Aside from a brief bout of baby acne, Cylie is healthy, strong, and nice and chunky; just the way a baby should be. She sleeps well, eats constantly and is a joy to be around.
It's Christmas Eve! Finals are done, and preparations for Christmas day are nearly complete. Next up- holiday blog update time! Complete with Cylie talking, Carter singing, and year-in-review goodness. Just not right this minute.
Having two kids is hard.
Christmas catch-up blog and pictures coming soon; once finals are done.
Here’s a picture to tide you over- if you’re still checking this.
We’re home now, and getting ready for our first official night with two kids. Carter’s already in bed and sound asleep. Cylie, however, is livin’ it up by sitting in Grandma’s lap dead to the world, (she just enjoyed her 300th meal of the day).
Being new parents again is awesome and we’re both still a bit smitten with it.
And how couldn’t we be happy parents with these two kids?
Cylie Ann Burkman was born today at 2:12am. She weighed in at 9 lbs, 1 oz. and is 20 inches long.
Cindy’s doing great. Cylie’s doing great. I’m doing great, too, but I’m tired. So, here’s a few pictures. G’night!
Carter had his first visit to the zoo a month or so ago. Did he like it? I think this sums it up:
Yup, he loved it. We did, too. Hogle Zoo may not be our favorite zoo of all time, but it was well worth the afternoon visit.
The 4th of July came and went… so did most of the summer. I went on a blogging strike hoping to “motivate” my wonderful wife to post a little more on here. I’m going to have to chalk that up in the loss column cause this site has been dead empty for quite a while.
To Cindy’s credit though, she’s almost 8 months pregnant with a two year-old running crazy through the house all day and recently started classes again (biology and chemistry. yikes!) so she doesn’t really have an abundance of free time these days.
I however, have no excuse. No classes this summer and only work has me less-than excited to start school again at the end of the month, but it’s made for a lovely summer so far. Lovely, but apparently not the blog-worthy type of loveliness.
Stepping back to last month:
The 4th of July brought family gatherings, parades, picnics and fireworks. Carter’s participated in these before, but this is the first year he actually seemed to understand and love what was going on.
The parade was a magical wonderland for carter. Streams of people banging drums, trucks and cars with loud sirens and lights, plus colorful floats/balloons on wheels. What else could an almost two-year-old ask for? 
Fireworks were that evening and Carter was awe-struck and talked about them for days (in the way that Carter talks about things… usually a handful of one word descriptions. Gets the point across though.)
I’m not in school at the moment, and I couldn’t be happier about taking the summer off to recharge since this fall is gonna be busy with school, work and a new baby in the home.
With that being said, life hasn’t seemed to slow down. Cindy is now 22 weeks along with our little girl, Carter is almost 2 with every wonderful and terrible thing that comes along with that and, lucky me, I had major surgery on my ear about a month ago and the recovery time has been painfully slow (I should get complete hearing back in a few more weeks, they say). Combine all that together, and for some reason, the hours seem to slip away.
I have been able to steal a moment to change the blog layout to something more… summery (summeresque? summerish?). I’ve started on getting our family website set up, too. (http://www.burkmans.com)
You may notice that the blog address is different now. If you follow us at all, feel free update bookmarks, RSS feeds, what have you, to http://blog.burkmans.com. In the next month or so, I’ll have more content up to the website so you can have one more option in your internet browsing day.
As summer routines get put into place, I’ll have more time to blog, and more time to bug Cindy to blog, which I’m excited about- it’s fun to reread old posts and relive a moment or two from the past.
In the meantime, as Sam, Lori, and Addie (my brother and family), just relocated from Provo to Redmond, WA, here’s a picture I took a few days before they left at the park of the two cousins.
What’s happened in the last, uh… 5 weeks? Well, enough noteworthy moments to encourage procrastination of any blog updates. So, rather than try to blog about every update individually, here’s a list instead:
Easter came and went. We had an Easter dinner with my brother, sister and their families. Tried my hand at baking a ham for the first time… turned out pretty good. Carter participated in his first Easter Egg hunt at Thanksgiving Point. 100s of 1-3 year old kids and parents running through a field picking up plastic eggs. It was scary and felt like a stampede. Carter liked it though, even if it was rainy and gross out.
4 posts in January led to nothing in February. But, that’s just what happens when life gets crazy, and last month was just that. Cindy is full-on 1st trimester pregnant, which is playing out similar to her pregnancy with Carter. Unfortunately, this means nausea and morning sickness all day.
We went to our primary care physician and we were told that there’s actually medicine to help with this. Cindy went on zofran and, sure enough, it worked just like it was supposed to, curbing her nausea almost immediately and allowing life to continue at a somewhat normal pace.
The other crazy part of the month was Cindy and Carter heading off to visit her parents in California for a couple weeks. I seriously underestimated how long 13 days is when you’re home alone with only work, school and a couple of cats to keep you company. I survived the ordeal, but only barely. They had a great time and took lots of pictures; none of which I’ve uploaded yet, so I’ll leave Cindy to blog about that some other day.
Aside from that, it’s business as usual. I’m still working and going to school, and Cindy is at the house all day with Carter; running the show here at home. It’s been working great so far and we’re definitely lucky that this is even an option for us at the moment.
Carter is 19 months (still blows my mind when I stop to think about it) and starting to talk more. Multi-word sentences? Not so much. But he understands what we say and he even listens and helps out whenever we ask him to. Will this last? Who knows, but we’re taking full advantage of it.
Carter got himself some new toys recently. One of which is a horse on a stick (thanks to Carter’s California trip and his new obsession with all things horses). He absolutely loves it:
And two more:
**(Click on any of these pictures to see the whole set. There’s some good ones in there.)
There’s video of him tearing up and down the hallway on his trusty steed, too, but I’m better off posting this now rather then hoping I find time to edit the video in a timely manner.
This hasn’t happened since June of last year… I don’t even know what to say. Does this mean we’re committed to our HUGE fan base (sarcasm included) to post once a week? Possibly. Will it happen? Yeah, I dunno either.
Two noteworthy events for the week. I’ll let you choose which one ranks higher.
First: It was off to Wal-Mart yesterday. That is not noteworthy, Wal-Mart visits happen all too often. I don’t care for Wal-Mart; never will. But man, it’s cheap. And it’s so close to our place. Usually it’s crowded, I can’t park anywhere, and the whole experience makes me a little more disappointed with the entire human race.
Yesterday though, there must have been something in the air, because parking was a cinch and that place was dead quiet. Cindy and Carter were with me, and Carter, as usual, insisted that we look at all the toy machines that beckon to little kids as we entered. He saw the grabby-arm-claw machine with little stuffed animals and proceeded to identify some of ‘em by pointing and grunting (he’s a genius, I know). I had a dollar on me and tried my luck. And wouldn’t you know, I landed Carter a new toy on the first try. Combine that with a $3.00 Cars book (he’s obsessed with Lightning McQueen) and this is how he felt about the whole trip:
Second: Aside from my extreme crane-toy skills, here is the other noteworthy event. Carter’s vocabulary is increasing, and we caught it on video. He’s bit grumpy, but the video is most definitely worth watching (and under a minute; you can handle that, right?)
YUP! How great is that?! I couldn’t be more excited, and Cindy feels the same way. Carter has no idea what’s going on, but he will soon enough and he’ll love it. End of September is what it looks like, but we’ll know more in a few weeks.
HOORAY!!
I have a junk load of pictures I need to upload, catalog and then toss into Flickr, but why upload pictures when videos are so much better?
First off, as Cindy mentioned, she has graduated from “working-at-a-job mom” to “stay-at-home mom”. Guess what? She’s really good at it. No surprise, but this house is functioning a thousand times better then when I tried to be in charge of cooking, cleaning and taking care of Carter.
Cindy’s got Carter doing fun things during the day, and his favorite past-time as of late is making COOKIES. In fact, “cookie” has replaced “ball” as the word of choice and when in doubt he’ll just call something a cookie.
Here’s Carter making cookies with Cindy:
We got him to make some animal sounds, too:
Lastly, and my personal favorite, is Carter’s bath time. I really think he only eats dinner because he knows he gets a bath afterwards. If life was just bath time, Carter would do just fine. With that in mind, during his bath tonight, we tried capturing his splash sessions and cannonballs, but ended up with this instead:
Yo Gabba Gabba taught him funny faces and he rather enjoys them from time to time. So do we.
Well, unfortunately the poor economy took it's toll on us, because the construction company I worked for ran out of work, and therefore, I no longer work there as of the end of December.
Although this isn't ideal for us, it has been kind of nice being able to get a taste of what it will be like to be a stay at home mom, which is such an awesome job.
I love being able to have more time and energy to work on our house, fixing healthy meals, budgeting and especially taking care of Carter. We have been having so much fun together. He's such a great kid. I appreciate him so much more now, and don't get frustrated with him as easily now. I'm really glad I've been able to have a little time to enjoy Carter at this age rather than have it fly by because I'm too busy and realize too late that his fun experiences went by unnoticed.
Also, this time has helped me not get so discouraged as a wife and mom. When I was working full time, I was always frustrated because I just couldn't do everything at 100% which made me a failure at everything. I kept telling myself I needed to find more time and more energy somehow. It had to be possible because so many people are successful. Of course, all this thinking ever did was cause me to get sick every few weeks, which would put me further behind my self-imposed perfection schedule and this cycle continued.
Well, even though I still stress a little at the need to find a new job, taking care of myself, my home and my family has finally become more doable.
