christmas round 2

we headed back to rockwall sunday morning to celebrate with grandma and grandpa and the rest of the hutson family. let's just say this child is well loved and was overly blessed with lots of fun things!

opening goodies from grandma and grandpa with daddy

 a football!

 a cool tractor book from betsy...the wheels turn and he loves it!

 more wrapping paper to tear into!

 bath toys!

 tanner was pretty wiped out after the full weekend. we had been saving chris and kristin's present to open with them that afternoon, but tanner was just done. so we took it home and i had it waiting for him the next morning. you think he was excited?!?! what a fun thing to discover first thing in the morning!

and that concludes round 1 and round 2 (well really it was 3 rounds but i'll have to add pictures from saturday morning when he opened his fun presents from gigi and pops once i get them from gigi since i had no camera)!

christmas round 1

man, it's been a busy last few weeks...and it's not slowing down until after tanner's first birthday (can't hardly believe it's almost here!). yes this week i've continued kicking myself for having a baby so close to christmas...i told myself never, never, never...and now here i am the week after christmas scrambling to put his party together (that's a whole other post!). why did i do this to poor tanner (and to me-again, my mom always made this look easy-well she really makes most everything about being a mom look easy, and let me tell you friends...it.is.not!). ok, enough side track...got to blog about christmas before the birthday!

it all started thursday the 16th (well really thursday night has nothing to do with a christmas celebration but i have to blog about it before i forget). tanner went to bed as normal but around 8:30 he woke up crying which is fairly uncommon. usually if this happens he'll cry for a minute and go right back to sleep. well the crying went on for a little bit and then i heard a "weird noise" from his room. i had a feeling i knew what the "weird noise" was...the ever-dreaded throw up, but either way, it was time for the little man to be checked on. and yes, my mommy instinct was correct...the tman had his first tummy bug and had puked in his crib. what do i do-immediately call for back up! so lance deals with the bed while i snuggle with the little guy, who proceeds to puke all over me 2 times. i think this means i am officially in the mom club now. silly us, think he's done, so i run to shower while lance gives tanner his second bath of the night and get him in his third pair of pjs for the night. well tman wasn't well quite yet and puke 2 more times...once on lance (who i was very proud of...he actually did less gagging with the puke than he does with the dirty diapers!). but by 10:30 the puking was over...thankfully!!...and he went back to bed. he was pretty wiped out the next day, but that was ok...we had PLENTY of laundry to do (oh yes, i think i went through 3 pairs of pajamas and tanner had managed to go through every pair he owns...not to mention the towels, sheets and burp rags) to keep us busy at home!

ok so really now on to christmas! thankfully the tummy bug passed quickly and we were able to head out to rockwall friday night for christmas with lance's parents and chris and kristin. tanner ended up crashing really before the fun began so i don't have any pictures from that night...or the next morning when he opened his presents because genius me left our memory card in the chip reader at HOME instead of in the camera. oops! i realized the next afternoon i had the point and shoot in the diaper bag...major save there! we woke up saturday morning and headed to arkansas to celebrate christmas with granddaddy.

tanner got a drum full of other fun instruments...he's loving beating on the drum and shaking the egg shakers!

 he quickly caught on to the idea of unwrapping his gifts!

 i was excited about aunt regina's gift...had been wanting to get something kid-friendly for the kitchen...something to occupy the kiddo while i try to cook dinner. of course i thought maybe this would prevent all of the dish towels from being strung across the kitchen floor since he'd be so busy playing with the fridge magnets. wishful thinking on my part (the towels are still all over the floor), but he does love playing with the magnets too!

 a fun helicopter from aunt connie and cole!

 granddaddy unwrapping his book from tanner

 tman chillaxin in granddaddy's chair...

 giving audrey some kisses...she's a trooper for loving the slobbery sugars!

that wraps up round 1...round 2 coming up next!

Please have snow and mistletoe...and presents under the tree

well i can't really control the snow part but i do love having all the presents wrapped and under the tree...makes me feel like my christmas decorations are complete! yesterday i worked on wrapping a few presents during nap time and when tanner woke up he decided he wanted to wrap some too.

this is FUN!

and i'm done! i'll let you finish up mom!

taking the ribbon with him!

our tree with all it's presents ready to go!

and apparently tanner worked on wrapping last night while i was at a fun ornament exchange party...i came home and found 2 new presents under the tree...tanner might have had a little help from his daddy. but i have to say i was pretty impressed...lance has some pretty good wrapping skills (and he must think i might try to peek...the present is WELL taped!)

and even a birthday present for me! and i bought this green paper specifically thinking it could be both christmas and birthday paper...red bow for christmas, white or pink or whatever color for birthdays throughout the year! way to go lance for not wrapping my birthday present in the red paper!

and in other news...we took tanner to visit santa this weekend (yes i know he had already met him, but i wasn't there...so he got to visit with him again!). he did good...then turned around and was fascinated by santa's beard...and then got a little uncertain, but by that point we'd already gotten a good pic! we will definitely be visiting this santa again...they made it SO easy! you "get in line" online-just give them your cell phone number and they text you an approx. wait time. then they keep you updated via text. so we hung out at home, got a text that it was our turn (we weren't quite ready...but it's great-you can text them back and tell them you need more time...even specify how much more time you need!). as we pulled into the parking lot, we got a text saying santa was ready for us so we walked right up...no waiting! LOVE it...so glad santa is turning high tech!

 

and just in case there was ever a question who tanner looks like...um it's totally uncle grant!

(notice the beard...yup, there's the red that everyone always asks about!)

today's discovery

it feels like tanner "discovers" a new trick almost every day right now. today he decided that sitting and playing in the kitchen isn't quite fun enough. so this morning while i was trying to cook dinner tanner discovered that he can just open up the cabinet and use the shelves to pull up. so much more fun! and yes, cooking dinner happens a lot of days in the morning... i've discovered that trying to cook dinner during the late afternoon with a tired kiddo does not work! so this morning dinner was ready before 8 am...kinda crazy!

 hmmm...maybe we should bake something?!?! here, i'll get out ALL the fun-shaped pans for you mom!

tanner also remembered that we were out of napkins on the kitchen table so he was so helpful and pulled some ALL of them out for me! he also thought we needed a little "snow" in the kitchen so he quickly shredded a few of those napkins!

after making some snow, he crawled to the pots cabinet to explore. when he stood up, i just started laughing...he had a big piece of napkin stuck square on his bottom.

and this last picture is just too sweet not to post. poppa comes over for "tanner time" once a week while i go to work (my very part-time job...working 3-5 hours a week for a friend as her personal assistant-it's great!). tanner always has tons of fun playing with poppa. today was not the best nap day so i warned poppa that he might get tired and want another nap before i came home. i walked in to find tanner snuggled up and SOUND asleep with poppa...he was one tired boy! playing with poppa wore him out!

tanner the tornado

tanner's new nickname is tanner-the-tornado. wow...he can make a mess in no time!

just in the course of the afternoon (like in just a couple of hours)...

living room-

all the dvds, wii controllers, etc OUT of the cabinet

his bedroom-

stuffed animals, clothes, blocks, burp rags, lotion, wipes (upside down), 

humidifier moved behind the door (in 3 different pieces), 

sound machine unplugged and upside down...

and this is after i had put up 2 or 3 blankets that he had pulled out from the drawer under his crib

the front room/play room-

yup, this is just one corner-just picture an explosion of toys

the kitchen-

tanner has officially claimed the bottom drawer...

and the towels that used to be housed there, and any plastic spoon he might find, 

and any containers he can make noise with...

and ALL 100 cookie cutters...this is the only way i can keep him away from 

the dogs water bowl and even attempt to make something for dinner

yup, pretty much every room in the house-minus the bathroom.

but he has just discovered that he can pull up on the toilet-gross i know-trying to prevent this as much as possible-and then he can reach the toilet paper roll. so yes, the tornado has hit the bathroom too! 

i have a feeling that this tornado is only going to gain strength as he gets more mobile and starts walking! scary!

it's the most wonderful time of the year!

friday night taylor called to see if she and brian could borrow tanner on saturday. some friends of theirs from brian's office throw a big christmas party every year geared for kiddos. they thought it'd be much more fun with a kid, so they needed tanner to go along. 

sure thing...as long as you take pictures! 

so tanner met santa for the first time...

and

loved

him... 

 watching santa

 eating uncle brian's sweatshirt...with lights-lots of entertainment!

he even got to bring home a super cute party favor...

and in other news, we are slowly but surely recovering from our christmas tree mishap. unfortunately the home depot lance went to didn't have any "good" ones. so they checked and said the other home depot close to us had the one tree he wanted in stock...actually they had 11! so super husband headed to home depot #2. what home depot #1 failed to mention was that home depot #2 closed at 9 pm (remember he left the house at 9...home depot #1 didn't close until 10)...so clearly home depot #2 was closed. um why does the same store close at different times?!?!

so the next day tanner and i ventured out to get a tree. yup, having an 11 month old helping you pick your tree changes things. last time we bought a tree i remember dragging lance to every store that sold them to make sure we saw all our options-we needed the prettiest tree for the best price! haha! not so much this time. we went to garden ridge (yes, only one store), saw 3 trees that were approximately the right height, quickly ruled out the one that was $200+ (um that's a little crazy to me), and decided either of the other two would be just fine-whichever one i could find first among all the boxes and boxes of trees was the one we were taking home.

got home, pulled it out of the box and got it put up and plugged in (yes all the lights worked)! then tanner decided he wasn't really interested in helping put up the tree and really just wanted to be held. so our tree sat in our living room totally unfluffed and looking kinda sad for a week.

but sunday we made a little more progress-tree was fluffed and decorated! i did discover that our tree topper doesn't really like our new tree. it refuses to cooperate-it was super floppy and crooked and fell of twice. so it's been retired. once i get some ribbon and make a bow to go on top, the tree will be officially finished.

tanner's first ornaments...courtesy of grammy. growing up we got a new ornament each year, so grammy decided tanner needed this tradition started too!

and even a few presents wrapped for underneath the tree