a few more pics

Yesterday tanner got a fun surprise from my uncle mark...a texas ranger's baseball cap! i love it...and he look super cute wearing it! he even tried wearing it backwards like his daddy! thanks uncle mark!

again, poppa can get you to give me a big smile for the camera EVERY time! he's helped me take everyone's favorite pictures so far!

trying it out backwards...not sure what to think

and then i had to include this one-this is our life right now...slobber everywhere!!! he is a drooling and spit bubble blowing machine (it's cute now...hopefully he outgrows this because blowing spit won't be so cute in a couple of years!)

and then a couple of pictures of tanner with his puppy dogs. lately he has really started noticing dakota and gizmo and has started reaching out to "pet" them. and dakota and gizmo have started wanting to play with tanner too...they're always nearby! yesterday tanner was playing on his mat and gizmo decided he wanted to snuggle up for some mat time too! and dakota loves playing with his daddy and tanner...he always wants to be a part of the action!

Weekend Wrap Up-Exhaustion

Our weekend can be summed up in one word…EXHAUSTED! Thursday night Tanner decided he wanted to have a party in his crib from 3 – 5:30 AM…he was wide awake…I finally tried to rock him back to sleep and what happened? Oh I fell asleep rocking him in his chair and when I woke up (thinking he had to surely be asleep) he was laying there staring at me-eyes WIDE open! I even tried having a slumber party on the floor with him-he just didn’t want to close those eyes!

Despite being exhausted we made a trip out to Rockwall for lunch with Gigi and Pops and Kristin, Anna and Audrey which was super fun and a good change of scenery for this tired momma. And Tanner's cousins are always ready to play with him!!! Kristin is going to have LOTS of help with baby #3!

Friday night was better but then Saturday night rolled around. Party in Tanner’s crib again…from 2 – 4:30 AM. UGH! Needless to say we were dragging Sunday and pretty much did nothing. Even poor Tanner was just crabby all day from being tired! Who knows…maybe it’s his teeth. At this point I’m grasping at straws and willing to try anything to get him to sleep!

I do think (knock on wood) we’re getting the naps down-they’re still super short (as in usually not longer than 45 minutes) but we’re making progress in that I can sing him a song and then put him in his crib wide awake and he puts himself to sleep with minimal crying! I actually just peeked my head in to check on him for his morning nap because it was quiet and I thought he was asleep…and as I peeked my head over his crib he was staring right back at me with his thumb in his mouth and holding onto one of his burp rags…I’m sure he was thinking, “mom, I’m trying to rest here…what do you want?!?!” Oops! And yes, it seems like he’s somewhat attached to sleeping with a burp cloth…I know, not the most glamorous thing for him to get attached to (I mean wouldn’t he rather carry around a cute stuffed animal or a nice, silky lovey with his name on it?!?!), but hey-at this point I don’t care…if it helps him sleep I’ll get over the fact that it’s a boring old burp cloth.

So…that’s our exciting weekend. We did venture out to Babies R Us to get Tanner an exersaucer…we told him it was his half birthday present just a week early! And of course we took pictures-I mean what else is there to do when you’re sleep deprived and hanging around the house all day?!?! Enjoy!

My favorite bath toy is the cup...forget the actual toys!

This one is hilarious to me! Tanner and Lance together=trouble!

Playing airplane with daddy

Watching the world cup in mommy and daddy's bed

My new toy!

Happy Father's Day!!!

Grant got home from Africa Sunday, so we got to celebrate Father's Day with my whole family. It was great to have 3 generations of dads at dinner-Poppa, my dad and now Lance for his first Father’s Day. I am one lucky girl to have such a great dad…and grandpa too! And of course my baby's daddy is pretty special too! My dad-know aka Ipop...I have lots of fun memories from growing up…family bike rides, hospital rounds with dad, Dairy Queen runs with dad, playing Prince of Persia on the computer until mom would make us quit to go to bed (I’m still upset he saw the movie without me!), going early with him to help set up at church…just to name a few. And lots more fun memories to be made now with him as a grandpa with Tanner…he was even a trooper and tackled bath time yesterday after a MASSIVE blow out! One of my favorite pics of me and dad...and then of course Tanner with Ipop! I love you dad...thanks for setting such a great example and always loving me so well!

And of course we are super lucky to have Poppa so close! He comes and loves on our puppies and Tanner several times a week and I love it! He’s also quite handy and helps with lots of my “honey-do” or “Poppa-do” things. And he’s one of the best at getting a great big smile out of Tanner…Tanner always looks forward to playing with his Poppa after his morning nap!

And it was Lance’s first Father’s Day. It has been so great watching him be a dad to T-man. Tanner loves him to death…he’s always good at getting Tanner to smile and laugh! He's always ready to play with Tanner...they have tummy time together and Tanner loves sitting with his daddy on the couch watching sports. Tanner has already learned that his dad can be a sucker sometimes and that he's always ready to play (Tanner is learning early that he can take advantage of that…he definitely works it to his advantage!). Lance loves to get Tanner out of his bed and let him watch basketball or the world cup or sportcenter with him. I guess it’s male bonding…and of course Tanner instantly is happy! Lance is a great daddy and works hard every day so I can stay home with Tanner. I can’t wait for the fun adventures Lance and Tanner will have together as Tanner gets bigger...fishing, boat rides, camping in the backyard, bike rides, golfing and lots of lots of espn watching. Just a few of the many sweet Tanner and daddy pics we have from the last 6 months...it's pretty obvious that Tanner is all smiles with daddy!

Weekend Getaway

For an anniversary present, my parents told us they were sending us to a hotel for a night and keeping Tanner. Wahoo! I really think they just wanted a night with him to themselves so sending us away as a present was a great cover up…but hey, I’ll take it!

So Lance and I “escaped” around lunchtime on Saturday and decided to try a placed I’d been wanting to try-Zoes Kitchen. It was yummy…we’ll definitely be going back! I got the pita pizza and Lance got chicken roll ups-there’s lot of other things on the menu I want to try too!

And then off to downtown Grapevine to look at all the cute shops. We got Tanner a new book to add to his collection and other than that, we just browsed. It was HOT…so we grabbed a cookie and hit up Sonic for some vanilla Dr Peppers and then headed to the hotel.  My parents had gotten us a room at the Gaylord and we thought we’d go swimming. Well…let’s just say the pools weren’t made to accommodate all the hotel guests…and most of them had decided to spend the afternoon at the pool. It was crawling with people…there was literally nowhere to sit and the pool was full of people. So we scratched that idea…just didn’t seem like fun anymore. So we just relaxed in the room-I read a great book my mom had given me-highly recommend it-When Crickets Cry-awesome! Finished it Sunday night (when every minute of sleep is valuable you know it’s a good book if it kept me up til 11 reading!). And of course golf was on so Lance watched that. Our room had a great view looking over Lake Grapevine. And this is the only picture I took of us...before we headed to the pool...

For dinner, we headed to a yummy Hibachi restaurant. I had great intentions of taking pictures…but then forgot and didn’t want to mess with the camera. We grabbed 2 slices of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory and took them back to the hotel with us…and spent the rest of the night vegging…watching tv and reading and really doing nothing. It was fabulous!!!

We both tried to sleep in on Sunday-although those internal alarm clocks that Tanner has set made it a little hard. I was wide awake around 6 am but stayed in bed dozing until around 9ish. I haven’t been in bed past 7:30 in over 6 months-heaven!!! We tried to go to one of Lance’s favorite spots for breakfast but the wait looked insane-people were standing around everywhere-even outside and it was hot! So we skipped that idea and hit up Starbucks…my chai was super yummy-hadn’t had one of those in a while. Then it was time to head home to see T-man. We definitely missed him…I told Lance it was even a little sad that we didn’t have to feed him at 10 p.m. but the “break” was definitely nice! Made getting up with him last night at 3:30 a.m. totally worth it…I just told myself he had missed me and was wanting to hang out (although I told him he could just go back to sleep and we could hang out all day long-starting sometime around 7:30 a.m.)

Thanks mom and dad (aka Grammy and Ipop) for taking such good care of Tanner and letting us escape for a night! He had lots of fun…and loved ALL the walks you took! They even sent us pictures of all the fun they were having! You wore him out...he didn't wake up til after 8 am this morning!!!

new discoveries every day

tanner has discovered both his thumb and his tongue this week. yesterday i was trying to finish up dinner and needed just a few minutes of quiet...so Praise Baby to the rescue!!! love those dvds...and the quiet amazement that they warrant from t-man. i peek around the corner to check on him as i haven't heard a peep from him...and this is what i find. watching his movie and sucking away, content as could be. and then after i put him to bed last night i went in to check on him...and the thumb was right back in his mouth! i think we're gonna have a thumb sucker!

he has also discovered his tongue...we have spit bubbles galore in our house right now! and his tongue is sticking out of his mouth at least half the day...right now it's cute...eventually he's going to have to learn it's not very nice to stick your tongue out at people!

Here we go!!!

well i’ve decided to start blogging…ok well i guess that’s pretty obvious if you’re here and reading this. lance kept telling me that if i was going to keep reading everyone else’s, i should start one of my own…so here we go! i’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about…between juggling tanner, lance and the crazy dogs, there’s bound to be something entertaining going on most days.

stay tuned…