On having a two year old...

Can Tucker really be two years old? And is there a kid alive who likes and wants treats more than him? Can one child get any more satisfaction from one cookie than this little man??? And can one child be ANY more cute?

(His faces are all Ben, and boy does he have a TON of them! But I like to think that he got his smarts from me! ) :)

So, I have a two year old. Its a little crazy. I have some things to catch up on in the blogging world, but I will start with the fact that my child has been on this earth for two whole years now!!! I can't believe it! I feel like I really did just bring him home from the hospital all swaddled tightly (that was the last time that ever happened to him) with his big cheeks poking out (which he still has-luckily). We have loved every minute of having him in our home and in our lives. (OK, not every minute, like the time that he puked all over his crib in the middle of the night and I had to bathe him, change him, change the sheets, bathe myself, all the while running on 1.5 hours of sleep...but other than that, its been pretty close!) :) Anyway... Tucker is sweet and smart and so so so cute. He is hilarious and makes me laugh every day. I have loved being able to learn with him all the new and exciting things this world has to offer. We as old folks tend to forget the magic and excitement that is ours to enjoy daily while living on this earth! He has been our constant reminder to cherish every minute of our time together. (Why is that so hard to remember sometimes?) Anyway...he truly makes me always want to always be the best. And I have to be, he picks up on stuff so fast, I always have to be careful about what I say and do. And although he is getting to a stage where he wants to do everything on his own and be independent and is kind of a stinker sometimes, we just absolutely adore him and are SOOO thankful for him. He just talks and talks and talks to me all day says the funniest things! Here are some of his most recent Tuckerisms...

The other day Ben and I were laying on the floor in our living room on this big huge fluffy pillow my mom made us, just watching TV and Tucker was just playing around. Tucker comes over in between us, puts one hand on me and one hand on Ben and like leaned on us, and said, 'Hi friends!'. It was really funny.
He is always saying 'Hi guys' and 'Hi friends' and 'bye guys' and everyone is his friend. He is not shy at all and loves to involved in everything and everyone. Ben and I can not talk to each other in the car, he will say our names over and over and over until he is a part of our conversation. He will come up to me when I'm talking to one of my friends or something, and say 'mama, I want to talk' or, 'I want to talk with you' or, 'Tuckers turn to talk?'

Also...I don't know if this is normal or not for a boy Tuckers age, but he likes boobies. (and I'm always thinking to myself, 'wow, it starts this young, huh?') I didn't even breast feed him, so I'm not sure exactly where it comes from. It may have started because when he does say the word boobies, I usually tell him not to say it or not to talk like that so it like intrigues him to just say it even more. Anyway...I was changing my clothes to go to the gym the other day. I was in the bathroom putting on deodorant in my purple sports bra and Tucker comes around the corner and into the bathroom like to tell me something. He looked up and stopped dead in his tracks. He was just staring at me and said, really enthusiastically, 'COOL!' and so I asked him what was cool, and he said, 'Cool Boobies Mama!' It was hilarious!
Anyway, Happy Birthday Tucker!
We love you and are so grateful for you! You are so sweet and loving and are the best share-er, and such a good little singer and so happy and fun, and you make mommy and daddy very proud!
We also had an awesome birthday party for him, but I'm trying to pace myself here...so that will come soon-and with pictures! :) I also have to post about Thanksgiving and the weekend we were adopted by the Enloe family! :) Oh, and the awesome photo shoot I did the other day, and....

Guess who got haircuts today...

What is better than going to the salon to get your hair cut, be pampered and beautified???

Having your hair stylist come to your house to do it!!! Thanks to Jenna, I was able to do just that! Stay at home in my pj's and not have to worry about getting someone to watch Tucker... it was great! You see, she just recently quit her job at the salon she was working at, to go back to school, which means that she now comes to your home to cut hair! I love it! She's fabulous, totally affordable, the sweetest thing in the world; so if you're in Spokane and need to get your hair cut, let me know and I'll give you her number!

We had a little photo shoot! :)

I won't tarnish Jenna's reputation by claiming it was her who cut Tuckers hair. It was I! I was motivated by my own hair cut to do something about that shag that was beginning to grow on Tuckers head. I whipped out the clippers (which I have very little experience with) and just went to town. My first shave of the clippers I decided to do right down the middle front of his hair! Brilliant, right? It was then that I realized that it was a lot shorter than I had expected, but the damage was already done and I couldn't do anything about it! It was at about this point:

where I started getting a little nervous.

I miss his long locks, although it didn't turn out AS bad as I thought it was going to! :)

Fall Leaves, Vampires, Chuck E Cheese and my husband, the Logger...

First of all, have I told you my husband is a logger??? Him and his friend Jason went up to the mountains last weekend for the day and cut down trees for firewood this winter. I feel kind of like a pioneer!(Even though I didn't do anything) :) They seriously cut down the trees themselves and chopped them up and brought them home. He worked hard from 6am-6pm. I was impressed. I have been trying my hand at being a mountain woman myself and have been chopping the kindling. I'm pretty proud of my logger husband! :)

There is nothing like warming our home with the blaze of a nice fire!

We have been loving it! (We have also been loving not having to use our oil supply since the fireplace is a little bit less expensive to run!) :)

Since I'm on the subject of how wonderful my husband is, he also installed this new fence for me (OK, us). :) He has only done the front of the house, where our wooden fence was practically falling over. The plan is to do the two sides next summer. Little by little we will get our new fence up! :) He surprised me with this Pickett top fence in the front. (which is my favorite and I love! ) I have such a great husband!!! Thanks Ben!

I also went to a Twilight book party! My friend Christy put it on and she did a fabulous job. I have read the twilight books, and have to tell you that I'm not the biggest fan. Let me take that back, I liked the books. I thought it was a fun read. I really liked the first book, after that they didn't really do much for me. And the fourth book, I hated. Well, let me take that back. I didn't hate the fourth book, I liked the story of her not knowing what was inside of her, etc... I H-A-T-E-D the ending! I do like to do all the fun things that have to do with the books though. Because so many of my friends are so into them, I think they're fun! So anyway.... back to the party! It was awesome. EVERYTHING was twilight. Christy changed out all of the picture frames in her house to Twilight photos, the cake was twilight, people were dressed like vampires (for the most part). We watched MJ's music video thriller (for the ware wolf effect), she had the twilight soundtrack. EVERYTHING was thought out and it was such a fun party! Thanks Christy!

My brother and sister-in-law and nephew came in town so we had a little early b-day party with our family for Tucker. (his b-day is the 24th of November) We went to Chuck-E-Cheese and they had so much fun. Since my mother went overboard with the picture taking (like she usually does) I put the Chuck-E-Cheese pictures into a collage. Tucker has a gazillion different faces and is so much fun to watch. He is so animated! I tried to get most of them into the collage. He mainly just had fun playing with his G&G and aunts and uncles and cousin!

And how could I not put in pictures of us playing in the fall leaves. We have no trees in our yard, so we don't have to worry about the fall foliage. (thank goodness!) :) I think its beautiful but its not always my favorite to clean up! In my parents yard, on the other hand, the leaves are like 3 feet deep. We went up to my parents house and helped my mom blow the leaves. We also had a lot of fun playing in them!

I took the leaf blower and chased Tucker with it. I'm not sure he liked it too much! :)

Lately, when he gets scared of something, or he's afraid he's in trouble, he covers his eyes like this. I'm not sure where he got this, since I NEVER do this! :) (read: I always do this when I'm scared!) It's just really funny to see that he's picked up on it!

Tuckers friend, Owen came over to play the other day. And that's really what we've been up to lately. Just hanging out at home, playing with our friends, and sitting in front of that fire as much as we can! Its been pretty dark and rainy and cold up here lately. Can it already be summertime again, please?

Time Flies...

I'm a little behind on my blogging and have been meaning to catch up...Believe it or not, we have been up to more than just Halloween festivities these past few weeks. And since I use blogging as my excuse for not scrap booking or journal writing, I just want to add this post before I forget it! :) I don't know why I always feel like I'm so busy...I only have one child, I can't even imagine how it will be when we have more!!! Anyway... The first major news about these past few weeks is:

We are now a Ba-Ba free home!!!

YEAH! I stopped giving him bottles at around a year, and just went down to one at nap time and one at bed time. I would just put water in them, so I figured it was ok, and that slowly I would wean him of them completely. It wasn't happening. Every time I tried he wouldn't sleep and it was this big ordeal, so I would just cave and give him his ba-ba. Through out the year I've also been switching it up with sippy cups. Well, at the beginning of October, I finally had enough. I was sick of those dang ba-ba's. He's always been the kind of kid whose been ok with things, as long as he doesn't feel like I'm trying to pull a fast one on him. Like, if I talk to him and let him be a part of things, he'll do anything. So, one day I told him that the ba-ba's are going bye-bye! That he was a big boy and that he could help me throw them away and he was so excited about being a big-boy that he chucked them all in himself! I also did that so that if he ever asked for one, I could say, 'remember, we threw them in the garbage because you're a big-boy!' Anyway, it was quite a big moment for our big-boy! And he hasn't even thought about them since! I don't know why I waited this long! Although he seemed to finally be ready and that was A-OK with me!

Tuckers friend, Carter also had his 2nd birthday party! I can't believe that these kids are already turning 2!!! It was at Jump and bounce and of course, they had a blast! Tucker is still a little hesitant to go down the big slides by himself, but he has a great time in the toddler area. Here's the birthday boy. (I tried to get a picture of all three of them. They were so cute together. But of course, by the time I got my camera, it looked more like this:)

Happy Birthday Carter! And thanks Sharlene!

Tucker has always been such a daddy's boy. He loves his da-da! We took him to his first movie in the theatre for FHE one night. (the Garland Theatre was playing Wall-E) We stopped by Ben's work to pick him up for the movie and Tucker had to ride on the 'back-hoe' they have at Ben's work. Anything that is tractor like or back-hoe like, he calls a 'back-hoe'. Like father, like son. These two boys, I tell you what...

Here we are at the Theatre. (before the movie began) Tucker actually did pretty good. I had a good sized bag of Halloween candy and drinks and popcorn to keep him occupied. He keeps on talking about the robot movie that he went to with da-da. (even though I was there too!) :)

He also loves 'helping' daddy with whatever he's doing. We had something wrong with the vents in our house, so Ben had to take them off and do something, who knows. Tucker was right there with him the whole time. He loves feeling like a big boy!

They also went and played in the leaves at our friends house one Saturday afternoon. (It was mommy's time to get things done sans Tucker, so I wasn't there.) I tried to convince Ben to take the camera, but he wouldn't. We both knew he wouldn't actually take any pictures, so whats the point, right? I did get this picture of them before they left:

By they way, if you are loving Tuckers hat, it was hand knit just for him by my good friend, Sadie! There's a link to her etsy store 'So What Baby Butt..." on my sidebar. Or you can click here Thanks Sadie!

Just some other random pictures from the past few weeks....

Have I told you how much Tucker loves bath time??? Well, he does! And he is a messy boy, so he usually always is in need of one! :)

His favorite part of his brand new markers? Playing with the lids...

Tucker is getting to such a fun stage. He's also been growing into a new schedule, you know how they do that every now and then. At night time (without his ba-ba) I usually just read him a book and then we sing for a while, well, now instead of me singing to him, the other night he just said to me, 'babee buga and rub my back'. He wanted me to put him in his crib and rub his back and sing baby beluga to him. So for the past few weeks thats what we've been doing and he loves it. He goes right to bed. The only problem with it is that I don't really know the tune to 'baby beluga' I know the words because we have the book, but I'm not familiar with the song. Oh well, he seems to like it! :)

I also love it when he tries to formulate sentences, and I am always amazed at how much he really does know! We watched CNN all night on Tuesday night and then most of the day on Wednesday. On Wednesday night he just popped up and said 'O-o-o-Bama!' (he had probably been hearing it all day on TV) and I said, he's going to be our new President and then he said, 'Pes-dent Bama' and then they were showing a clip of some people cheering from the night before after they had found out he won. And Tucker (all the while playing with his cars) doesn't even look up at me or anything, but says, ' Happy Bir-day Partee Bama' It was really funny!

I have also been really amazed at his imagination lately. The other day I was changing his diaper in his room and he covered his eyes and said, 'A witch com-in' and I said, 'oh no, what are you going to do?' and he said, 'no no no witch, she nice witch.'

And then just today we were going to play group at the church and Tucker always calls it 'playing with kids' whenever we go and play with our friends. And he just started screaming and laughing and I asked him what he was laughing at and he said he's 'goin' to play with kids in the tree-house.' I didn't even know he knew what a tree house was, but apparently he does. Ok, just one more so I don't forget it:

The other day he was eating dinner and a piece of cheese fell on the ground, well I picked it back up and put it on his plate and he just looked at me and said, 'Dats Gross!' :) I was dying! I am always amazed at the things he picks up on and says and does! Can he just stay like this forever, please??? :)

Don't forget to VOTE today...

I did!

(photo taken last week)

Oh and PS... HAPPY BIRTHDAY COOKIE!!!

The curse of the big head...

Tucker is a big boy... we all know that. He was born big and has pretty much always been in the 75-95% for height and weight AND head circumference. (He is, however beginning to thin out and is definitely more in the 'normal' size range of what a 2 year old should be.)

You can imagine my disappointment when, as a new mother, was so excited on Christmas day to put him in his brand new Christmas hat only to find that it wouldn't fit over his huge noggin'. I thought for sure a size 0-3 month hat would fit my one months old head. Not so. Placing it on the top of his head had to do for the picture. (He had also already spit up all over his cute Christmas outfit by the time this picture was taken. Therefore, PJ's were his outfit for the majority of Christmas day. But that's ok, because that's what I wore for most of Christmas day as well, so it was all good!)

Jump ahead to Halloween 2008. I find a cute little spider costume. Size 2T. Perfect for my 2 year old toddler! Not so. Once again, the curse of the big head works her magic and we have a headless spider for Halloween.

This is about all we could do to get it to stay balanced for a picture even. I don't think he would have worn the hat anyway, so it turned out all good! :)

But we love that big ol' noggin'!

Halloween week adventures...

I love Halloween. I've always loved Halloween, but this year absolutely wore me out! I got home last night (Friday) and seriously passed out! I was SO glad to see the week come to and end. I will definitely miss some of the Halloween traditions that we started this year, but there are also a lot of things I won't miss...I will miss the constant excuse to eat as much candy as I want. I won't miss having a two year old that is on a constant sugar high (and not in a good way). I will miss going to the pumpkin patch. I won't miss Tuckers sticky fingers either leaving sticky messes everywhere or getting stuck in my hair. BUT, that being said, since Tucker was able to actually appreciate all the fun things that go along with Halloween this year, I decided to make it a week long celebration. (I had to) I tried to do a fun activity with Tucker (and Ben too, when he could) everyday this week.

Monday: carmeled apples. Anyone who knows Tucker or has read this blog before knows that Tucker LOVES carmeled apples. We decided to make some of our own. Uncle Nathan helped Tucker make his. This is how the decorating went:

One candy for the apple...

One candy for Tucker...

Tucker and Nathan enjoying their apples. Tucker and I shared ours and Angie and Ben didn't make one, so it was just the two apples. Tucker was quite thrilled. Notice how he has to use both hands just to hold it, it was pretty funny watching him eat it! He would bobble it around because it was too heavy. :)

Tuesday: chocolate pretzel rods. YUMMY! My mom gave this kit to make the cutest and yummiest chocolate covered pretzel rods. We made them for our friends and family...and still managed to eat quite a few ourselves! :)

Tucker enjoying his masterpiece...

The finished products: spiders, pumpkins, a finger, a mummy and some bats.

Wednesday we got a special treat from Grandma and Grandpa Pyper in Alabama. Tucker was so excited to have a package and have some treats to open up. Thanks G&G!

Ben's favorite part of the package...

Tuckers favorite part of the package (the candy of course!)...

The end result after Tucker put the entire package of M&M's in his mouth...

Thursday: Cupcakes! Our ward had a Trunk or Treat on Friday, so in preparation, I made these adorable cupcakes. (once again, thanks to my mom who loves to shower us with fun little gifts for EVERY holiday. ie...the cute Halloween cupcake holders and ghost candies!) :) I think they turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself!

Friday: Finally, the big day arrives. Here is what our schedule looked like on Friday:

8:00- Candy for Breakfast

9:00- Trick or Treating at the local High-School, U-Hi (my Alma mater). We went with our friends, Cherie & Carly. We didn't even plan their outfits together, but they were a bee and a spider, and were soooo cute together. (Tucker still had bed head)

We even ran into our favorite U-Hi Cheerleader, Madison! :)

Walking back to the car, Tucker and Carly held hands the whole way....it was so cute! :) If they do ever get married, this is so going in their wedding announcement! :) Right, Cherie???

10:00-Candy for a mid-morning snack

12:00-More candy for lunch

2:00- Get Tucker down for a nap, finish decorating cupcakes, run around like a mad woman getting things together for the ward trunk or treat...give Tucker more candy to keep him occupied while I get the stuff done.
4:00- Drop off Tucker at my moms house so I can get to the church early to help decorate. And so he can do some trick or treating with my mom in their neighborhood to get more candy!

4:30-5:00- Stand outside the church building with other activities committee members waiting for someone to show up with the keys!!!

5:00-6:00-Decorate like a madwoman and start sweating profusely even before the carnival/trunk or treat begins!

6:00-The party starts!

So Ben and I were both recently released from YM/YW and were both called to be on the activities committee. It has been fun so far. This is our first activity that we have been a part of. And boy was it an activity. We had a: Spook Alley (mini-(non) scary haunted house for the little ones), a fishing for candy booth, a pumpkin toss booth, a really cool backdrop where people could get their pictures taken, a doughnut on a string contest booth, a pumpkin carving contest, a chili-cook off, and of course, the trunk or treat to end the night! It was a lot of fun, and a lot of work!

Tucker thoroughly enjoyed the doughnut on a string contest...

I think we have a winner here, people...

Here he is totally entranced by this moving head in the spook alley...

So, Ben was the MC for the night, and I think that everyone was really jealous that I had the best looking, 80's aerobics instructor, husband there! Wouldn't you agree??? The funny thing about that outfit is that he found it all in my parents laundry room. My parents used to be really into working out, and at one point in their lives, like in the late 70's and 80's actually wore all of these clothes (minus the wig). My favorites are the black Reebok high-tops that I can totally remember my dad wearing! :) Oh, and the purple spandex with black paint brush marks on them!

Me and my friend, Lexie were the grand Marshall's of the costume parade... (I was a witch, but ditched my hat like after 5 minutes into the night.)

And here are all three of us, in all of our Halloween glory! I don't know why we decided to take this picture at the very end of the day before we were going home... we all look so lovely! :)

Our cute little spider... (I'll explain later why he doesn't have his spider eyes hat on in any of the pictures.)

Giving candy out at the trunk or treat, with our friends.... by the way, I think that trunk or treats are like the perfect Halloween evening. You get to spend time with your friends and family and people you trust and still get to get a TON of candy!!! perfection.

Don't be jealous...

By the end of the night, our little spider was ready for bed!!! I took a picture of us right before bed in his cute little Halloween pj's last year, so I had to do it again this year! I think that I might make it a tradition...

OK, so if you're still reading this, Thank-You because you must be a good friend... If not, I totally understand. We had a great Halloween and I hope that you all did too! Can't wait until next year, I've got to start planning....