Children Grow Up When You're Not Looking

When I was growing up, my mom had a sign in our kitchen that said, "There will be years for cleaning and cooking, for children grow up while you're not looking." 

As a child, I'm sure I didn't pay much attention to it.  I think the only reason I remember it is because it hung above the toaster and so I would read it while waiting on my bread to toast. 

Now, I understand every single word of it.  Children really do grow up when you're not looking!  I look at Tucker Bug sometimes and I am blown away at how big he is already!  Where did my baby go?  No, I mean really, where?  and when?  It just happens so fast.  Wes and I were laying in bed the other night talking before we went to sleep.  Somehow, our conversation turned to silly things that we did or that happened years and years ago (like the time our sophomore year in college that my computer crashed and I lost an entire 21 page business proposal for my business class at Transy, at 2:00 am!  And, yes, it was due the next day!).  After reliving a few good and maybe not-so-good times, I asked, "Can you believe we have an almost 2-year-old son and a daughter on the way?"  How is that possible?  Some days it seems like yesterday that I was in a panic because of that lost paper and as a result stayed up all day, skipped my first class, and re-wrote the entire thing from scratch (and actually produced a much better paper, I might add!).  Most days, I don't feel much older than that naive 19-year-old.  Other days, it seems like a life time ago and I feel much (MUCH) older lol!  Anyway, the point is, time flies.  Add a child in the mix, and it moves at the speed of light! 
 

Tucker is at an age, and maybe it's just his personality and not really his age, but he likes to be played with.  Now, don't get me wrong, he can definitely sit and play independently, but he enjoys being played with so much more!  I hear the words, "Mommy, up!" and "Come on, Mommy!" all. day. long.  Even when I am already playing with him.  He and I can be sitting on the floor, playing trucks and he will get an idea in his head of something else he wants to do and I hear, "Mommy, up!"  And keep in mind two things:  1) The attention span of a toddler isn't very long.  Which means we had probably only been sitting on the floor for 3 minutes.  And 2) Sitting on the floor to only get up again and repeat the whole process every 3 minutes isn't necessarily the easiest task for a 31 week pregnant woman!  

Knowing that "Mommy, up!" and "Come on, Mommy!" really mean, "Mommy, please play with me!" and "Mommy! I'm so excited!  Come see what I found/did!"  make it really hard to resist following his commands.  My son wants to play with me!  How can I say no to that?  And believe me, when there are dishes piling up in the sink and I've just started to unload the dishwasher, or I barely started eating my breakfast, or whatever other household chore I happen to be trying to accomplish at the minute, gets interrupted by those phrases, my instincts are to say, "Tucker, Mommy's busy right now.  You go play." but then I am reminded of the sign that resided in our kitchen for so many years. 

There really WILL be YEARS for cleaning and cooking, for children REALLY DO grow up when you're not looking.  So, I want to look as often and as long as I can :)

And as I just wrote those two lines above, tears welled up in my eyes.  Not only because my baby boy will be turning into a young man one day and it will seem all too soon, but also because in less than a few short months, Tucker's baby sister will be here and there will be times that I will HAVE to tell him that Mommy's busy, and that breaks my heart....

Until then, I'm enjoying playing trucks, hide 'n seek, chase, building towers of blocks that get knocked down by a boy and his garbage truck, shooting hoops, fixing toy airplanes with toy tools, pushing trains around a track, playing catch, finger painting, reading books, listening to Tucker read me books, eating toy food, wrestling......

And I'm sure to keep my eyes on that little booger that's doing all that growing while Mommy's not looking!

Tucker at 9 months :)

21 Months

1.  You're real into what belongs to who.  It's always "Daddy's car," "Tucker's choo choo train," "Mommy's shoes," etc.

2.  You are trying to actually dribble your basketball.

3.  You love Special K Fruit & Yogurt cereal.  Of course, you pick out all the yogurt pieces and then wonder why there's nothing but the flakes left by the time the box is half empty.  Mommy is seriously considering writing Special K a letter asking them to PLEASE put more of the yogurt bites in their cereal!  It would make many of Mommy's mornings go a lot more smoothly.

4.  You prefer to sit in your booster seat over the high chair.

5.  When a picture or video is snapped you say, "I wanna see!"

6.  You're getting good at guiding your trains around the track, but you still get frustrated when they come off.

7.  You say, "Thank you" and "Excuse me" without prompting (not every time of course), and when you do it melts Mommy's heart!  The other day, you fell on a tricycle at your friends' Caden and Charlie's house.  When we got home Mommy was cleaning up your boo boo and you looked at me and said, "Thank you Mommy."  My. Heart. Melted.

8.  You love to wash your hands and want to be in the bathroom all by yourself when you do it.  So independent. 

9.  You still L-O-V-E cars, trucks, trains, buses, tractors, helicopters, and airplanes.  I would say trucks are your favorite.

10.  And balls.

11.  You are so sweet.  You will come up to Daddy and Mommy at the most random times and hug and kiss us.  I hope you never stop doing that ;)

12.  You know how to unlock Daddy and Mommy's iPhones.

13.  Before bed you always ask for the "Bus Book" and the "Daddy Book". 

14.  The "Bus Book" is a book of four short nursery rhyme songs that starts with The Wheels on the Bus.  In the book, The Hokey Pokey comes right after Row Row Your Boat.  Anytime you sing or Mommy and Daddy sing Row Row Your Boat you immediately follow up with The Hokey Pokey.  I think you just think it's the ending to Row Row Your Boat!

15.  You love chapstick, but it sounds like "chap poop" when you say it!

16.  You love soup, any kind of soup.

17.  When I ask you want you want to eat, you always say, "Chicken rice!"

18.  You're real into colors.  You know all of the basic colors and always say what color things are.  It's never just "my car" but "my orange/white/blue/yellow/ect. car."  The other day we were in the car and I pointed out a "Big truck" to you.  You corrected me with, "Mommy no! WHITE truck!"  (Really?!  Correcting Mommy already!?)

19.  You want to pick out your clothes in the morning.  I'll have an outfit picked out and you'll demand your "yellow truck shirt" or "baseball shirt."  Last Sunday you wore a pair of khaki shorts with the shirt to one of your pajamas because that was the shirt you insisted on wearing.  I expected this stage would come, but thought I had at least another year!

20.  I would say hide'n'seek is still your favorite game.  Anyone who comes to visit has to play hide'n'seek with Tucker!

21.  You're understanding turn taking which is helping with the very difficult concept of sharing.


I absolutely cannot believe my Baby Bear will be 2 years old in 3 very short months [tear!]......
How in the world did things go by so fast?

Mommy & Daddy love you Tucker Bug!!!!

Kidnapped

Is there anything better than great friends?  I mean, seriously!  I am so blessed to be surrounded by some amazing girls that I am truly lucky to call friends.  Girls that know just what you need, just when you need it.  Girls that don't take "No that's okay" for an answer because they've been there, done that.  Girls that I look up to.

KATIE GAITHER is one of those girls and I love her for it!  This morning I get a text from her that says, "Bring Tucker to play for awhile and you go home :)".  After texting back and forth for a while, it was evident that she met it and was not taking "No" for an answer.  Katie, Chris, and their two boys who I LOVE, Caden and Charlie, live at the end of our little street (which Wes and I LOVE!).  So, Tucker and I headed that way, only to be greeted by Katie running towards us to meet us. 

It was really funny, the whole scene.  Tucker LOVES Katie and all the Gaither's (he talks about Caden all.the.time!).  He sees her and yells, "Hi Katie!!!" and starts running towards her.  When they meet up, Katie swoops him up, says she'll text me when I can come get him and to not come before then, and starts running back towards her house with Tucker in her arms.  And don't think for one minute that Tucker was thrown off by this.  He just yelled, "Bye Mommy!" because he knew he was going in the direction of all the fun!

Besides being a great friend, Katie is an amazing mother!  Her boys adore her, her house is always clean, and she always has lunch planned like the night before!  Not to mention, she can simultaneously respond to an email from our pastor, change a diaper, kiss a boo boo, and stop a fight before it happens!  Super woman, really :)

Thanks, Katie!  And, my house thanks you because it's about to get a swift cleaning :).
I totally owe you one (well, several really!)!
Love ya!

Here's my kidnapped boy only moments before the incident:

Tucker's Big Boy Bed

Okay, I have been so hesitant to write this post for fear of jinxing us.....  So, before you read any further, knock on wood with me and when you are done reading, pray for us!

Tucker has been sleeping in his big boy bed!  He's been taking naps in it since Friday (5 days now) and sleeping in it at night for 4 nights now!  I am still in shock.  First of all, I'm in shock at the fact that my baby is even big enough to have a big boy bed, let alone to be sleeping in it!  Secondly, I'm in complete and utter shock at how incredibly smooth this transition has been!  I keep thinking this is the honeymoon phase and the bad stuff is yet to come....  (That's where the wood-knocking and prayers come in!) 

We bought Tucker's big boy bed out of necessity.  We are at the point where we need to get a move on with his little sister's room.  I needed the changing table/dresser combo over in her room which met a new dresser for Tucker.  I wanted to get the bed and dresser as a set, so we did with the intention of having his big boy bed in his room along with a borrowed crib for him to sleep in until he was ready to make the switch.  I thought this would be happening MONTHS from now! 

He was so excited about his new big boy bed (mainly because of the bedding covered in cars and trucks :)).  The day after it was delivered, I was changing Tucker's diaper in preparation for nap time.  He said, "Night night big boy bed!"  I asked him, "You want to go night night in your big boy bed?" to which he replied, "Yes."  I admit, in my head I thought, "Okay, I'll put you in, but as soon as I walk out, you're gonna be at the door begging to come out."  We had been reiterating to him that he could not get down from his bed without the help of Mommy or Daddy, even though it is clearly low enough for him to do so independently.  Anytime we put him in the bed to play or anything, we always told him we had to help him down.  We even "practiced" him being in his room by himself and calling for us to come get him when he was ready to get down.  Again, at this point we had only had the bed a day so I'm not even sure how much Tucker got out of our little "practice session".... 

So....for nap that day I put him in his big boy bed and placed pillows on either side of him (we hadn't even bought the side rails we planned to buy yet!), and walked out of his room.  I ran to get the monitor so I could see what he would do next.  To my surprise, he stayed in the bed!  He rolled around for about 10-15 minutes, occasionally sitting up and talking to himself, and then was asleep!  Just like he does when he's in his crib!  Seriously, I was in shock.  I'm telling you all, I had been expecting the worse.  You just hear so many horror stories about this transition.  I was so excited to see what he would do when he woke up that his 3 hour nap felt like an eternity.  But, again to my surprise, when he got up, he fussed a little and called for me.  He never even tried to get out of bed.

That was day one, and we are on day 5 for naps and day 4 for sleeping in it all night.  He has done just as wonderfully every single time.  He has never tried to get up, not even the time he didn't feel like going down for bed time and threw a complete fit in bed including throwing all four pillows to the floor.  Every time he has woken up, he has stayed in the bed until either Wes or myself goes in his room and "help" him down.  (PLEASE knock on wood!) 

Am I crazy to get my hopes up and think it might actually stay this way????  Could Wes and I really be this lucky????  Oh my goodness, I hope and pray that a complete different post isn't in my near (or not so distant) future!

Here is a picture of my sleeping babe only minutes ago.  He fell asleep reading one of his favorite books "I am a Bunny."

(Did you knock on wood???)

The Perfect End to the Perfect Daddy Day :)

Words cannot began to convey how very much I love these two boys!  :)

Beating the Heat

Let's face it folks, it has been H-O-T lately!  Some days, too hot to even go outdoors (at least for a 30 week pregnant gal!).  And that is H-A-R-D when you've got a lad who wants to do nothing other than play outside all day long!  The drop in humidity today was awesome!  The timing couldn't have been better because Daddy took off work to hang out with T-Bug and I today.  I love when Wes takes a random day off work because it usually means we don't have anything planned and can just do whatever we feel like!  Normally, our weekends are so jam packed that we don't get many days like today. 

So, how did we beat the heat today?  We ventured to a near by splash park and playground.  Tucker had so much fun!  At first he wasn't sure about running through the tunnels of water and fountains shooting up from the ground, but it didn't take long before he was running all around, screaming with excitement! 

 



"I'm gonna get you, Mommy!"  (Notice the hot guy in the background?!)

 

 Then he decided it was so much fun that he wanted Mommy to experience it.  "Come on, Mommy!"  "Okay, Tucker!"  :)

 I think he enjoyed this bridge on the playground more than the water!

And the slide was so much fun that he wanted Daddy to go down too! 

Happy Monday y'all!  :)

Happy 7th Anniversary!!!

On July 3rd, Wes and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary! We were in Florida at the time and thanks to some awesome friends, we got to celebrate with a rare date that involved a wonderful, slowly-eaten meal with real conversation (though much of it centered around Tucker :) ), and capped it off with a banana split and a stroll down the beach (where we witnessed a marriage proposal!).

So, in honor of our 7 years as a very happily married couple, here are 7 things about Wes and I that you may or may not already know:

1. We were high school sweethearts. We started dating the summer after our sophomore year. And not one of those on-again/off-again couples, we never broke up all through high school or through college until we were married after we both graduated college.

2. In high school, we were both nominated for the "Most Talented" superlative. (I'm still a little bitter over the fact that we didn't get "Cutest Couple". Ok, I'm just kidding, I don't even know if that was a category lol!)

3.  The first gift Wes gave me was the North Star.  Yeah, kinda corny but way sweet, right??

4.  Even after all these years (15!) we still love to just hang out with each other and can have a conversation for hours (given there's not many opportunities to talk that long without being interrupted by our beautiful 21 month old!). 

5.  We get each other cards for every occasion and even no occasion at all.  And we always write in our cards.  I don't mean a simple "I love you, Love Tiff."  I mean a sweet note that's at least 200 characters.  (Okay, so I made the 200 character part up!)

6.  We still make each other laugh, I mean real belly laughter that has you running to the bathroom.  (Well, maybe I'm the one running to the bathroom these days ;)).

7.  I asked Wes to give me a fun fact about us and he said, "We like to take naps."  There you have it folks!


And just for the entertainment of any loyal readers as well as my children who will hopefully one day read back through this blog, here are a couple pics from Wes and I at prom our senior year.  (Please excuse the poor quality, these are actually pictures of old pictures I came across.) 

I am so lucky and so blessed to be married to my best friend!  Thank you, Wes, for being such an amazing husband, and an even more amazing father!  Thank you for loving me the way that you do, unconditionally and un-ending!  I look forward to our next 7, and the next 7, and the next 7, and the next 7, and........
 
I love you more than you could ever know!!!
Love, Me :)

Baby Girl Keene

I have this fear that my daughter will think she's not as loved as her older brother due to the lack of posts while she's snuggled in Mommy's belly.  That is not the case at all!  Her Daddy and I very much love her!  Probably even more than we loved Tucker at this point simply because Tucker has shown us what it means to be "Daddy" and "Mommy" and the love that we are able to have for our children.  I just hope she understands how busy her big brother keeps Mommy and how much less time I have for blogging now than I did when he was in my belly.  (Not to mention how much more tired I am this time around!)

I cannot express how excited we are to be having a daughter!  Tucker is going to be such a good big brother, so protective of his baby sister, I already know it.  That makes my heart smile :) 

A GIRL!  That's right, I haven't even given her a post announcing that she is in fact a SHE :). 

Already, at 29 weeks in utero, this is what I know about Baby Girl Keene (who does in fact have a name, but that has to be a post in and of itself....I have to at least give her that!  Remember, this was Tucker's.)

* She is a mover.  Busy.  Active.  There is not a time of day that she doesn't move.  And when she moves, she moves.  Not a little jab to remind me that she's there (not that my over-sized belly would let me forget anyway), but rolls and jabs and kicks and more rolls and jabs and kicks.  I read that if you want to count kicks you should count at least 10 per hour.  I did this one day and had 10 movements within the first 3 minutes! 

*  She gets the hic-cups.  Tucker never did this.  She gets them pretty regularly.

*  She loves sweets.  I have a huge craving for sweets, it has to be because she loves them so much, right? ;)

* She is a night owl.  She moves what seems like all night long, and considering she moves at all hours of the day too, I'm not sure when she sleeps!  I'm hoping this isn't a sign that she will be one that survives on very little sleep!  Please, Baby Girl, PLEASE like to sleep!

*  She likes attention.  She made herself known way early and in a BIG way.  I think I said this in a previous post, but I started showing with her WAY earlier than I did with Tucker.  And not just a little bit like "Is that girl preggers or did she just eat a Thanksgiving dinner?" but in a "Please don't have your baby in my check out lane!" kind of way.  (Yes, a lovely cashier at Target said that to me, and I think I was all of 25 weeks or so along.  Gggrrrrr!)

*  She LOVES Daddy and Tucker!  She always moves when she hears them playing!  She just can't wait to join in on all the fun!

*  Even as much as she likes attention, she can be shy.  When I tell someone she's moving and they put their hand on my belly, she will stop.  I like to think that she's extra smart and can tell that's someone else's hand and is playing a little trick ;)

*  She is happy and likes to smile :).  We have a shot from our ultrasound to prove it.

*She already has her Daddy wrapped around her little finger.  Oh my goodness, this little princess is going to be spoiled by her Daddy, that is for sure.  He can't even talk about her without getting this huge grin on his face (of course, he gets the same silly grin when he talks about Tucker too!).  Mommy can't wait to watch their father-daughter relationship form!

*  I asked Daddy to give me something about her and he said, "She's strong-willed because when she's supposed to be sleeping, she's not."  For some reason, I think she will undoubtedly be strong willed.  She'll get that one from her Mommy, and that will be something that turns Mommy's hair grey..... 

* She is SO loved! 

Baby Girl,

You already hold such a special place in our little family.  And a very special place in Daddy and Mommy's hearts!  We are so anxious to meet you and hold you and snuggle you and spoil you!  Even your big brother is excited (well, sort of!).  It's amazing how much we can love someone so small that we haven't even laid eyes on yet, but we do!  We love you to the moon and back times infinity!!!

Love,

Your Mommy

xoxoxo

Funny Thursday :)

I have so many posts, many long over due.... but I have to share this funny little thing real quick with y'all, and mainly because I want to 'journal' about some of the funny little things that Tucker (and eventually his sister) are bound to say over the years.

Last night, we were all three in the basement.  Tucker was playing with one of his (gazillion) trucks on the couch, running it along the back side of the couch.  Wes and I weren't too far away and were talking about how much time I would be taking off work once the baby arrives.  Tucker seemed in his own little world, interested in what he was doing with his truck and making 'truck noises.'  In our conversation, I said something that involved "....six weeks...."  Immediately, Tucker jumped in with, "I want 6 weeks!"  Wes and I died laughing!  Obviously he doesn't know what '6 weeks' is, which is why he wanted it!  I'm telling you, he hears EVERYTHING!  This boy does not miss a thing.  A little scary, isn't it?! 

Yup, he's one funny boy, and this Mama LOVES him!!!  :)

I'm sure there will be many more things that come out of his mouth that are much more funnier than that, and I'm sure you all have heard some way more funnier things from your little ones, but I just had to share that one :)

And if there is anyone that still stops by this forgotten blog now and then, leave a comment with your most recent thing said by your little one that left you in tears!   I would love to hear it!  :)

Wordless Wednesday -- "Sweet Dreams"