Choo Choo, Tate is 2!

 

 That's right!  Our sweet, little, chocolatey-faced boy turned 2 last week!  It's hard to believe since he is still our "baby".  Tate is such a joy to have in our family!  He literally is the sweetest boy ever.  He's a fun, energetic boy who likes to run, laugh and play, but he still will let me cuddle him and nuzzle his cheeks from time to time.  

Some little known facts about Tate:

He has been since birth, and still is, extremely ticklish.  Today I could barely get his shirt buttoned on the top of his neck because he was laughing so hard!

  He loves, loves, loves lotion.  Every day when I'm getting ready, he stands on the toilet next to the bathroom sink and asks for some of my lotion so he can rub it on his cheeks.

He loves all things that have to do with cleaning.  He has a toy vacuum that he uses several times a day.  For Christmas he got a toy cleaning set (broom, mop, bucket, etc).  The way to keep him busy the longest is to give him a spray bottle with water, a washcloth and send him to clean to sliding glass door.  I'm hoping this lasts into his teenage years :)

He has an interesting way of getting down the stairs that is dangerous to anyone else on the staircase at the same time.  He lies on his stomach, straightens his arms and legs, and shoots down the stairs, feet first, like a little rocket.  He's almost knocked us over a few times!

He is very considerate of his older brother.  If I ever give Tate something (a snack, drink, or toy) he immediately lifts his other hand and says "Granty?", and then brings it to Grant. So sweet!

 I made him a Thomas cake for his birthday.  I know there is no pink related to Thomas the Train, but I didn't have any red.  Tate didn't seem to mind.

 Grant was a very helpful big brother and assisted Tate with the candles.

 Thank you to my Mom and Dad for Tate's favorite gift.  Hopefully he'll figure out how to ride this soon and be able to keep up with Grant on our walks.

Oh, and I did have another birthday in January.  Not quite the big 3-0, but pretty dang close.  Ryan usually makes me the Big Fat Chocolate Cake but I wasn't feeling all that chocolate this year.  This was a Toffee Caramel cake and it was really yummy.  I'll post the recipe on the food blog for anyone interested.

I felt somewhat spoiled this year because Ryan and I went out twice during the week of my birthday (thanks to restaurant week and birthday freebies).  And then on my actual birthday, friends watched my kids in the morning while I headed out to MJR (a totally awesome warehouse outlet that has tons of cute clothes for way cheap!) and got some great stuff.  Then, when I came back to pick up the kids, my friends had put together a surprise birthday lunch for me!  It was so nice and a lot of fun!  And I was actually surprised!

Christmas in Virginia

We had  a fun couple of weeks with my family in VA this Christmas.  All my siblings made it out this year so it was a fun, full house.  Here is a sampling of some of the fun things we did:

We ate and we ate and we ate.  And yes, it was all delicious!

We took a big family picture, outside in the freshly fallen snow.  Here's Tate in his picture get-up.

Did I say "freshly fallen snow"?  Ya, there was a huge, freak snowstorm.  Here is a sampling of  what my parent's backyard looks like with 13 inches of snow in it.  Chesapeake does not get snow, at least not much more than a dusting.  Supposedly it was the most snow Chesapeake has gotten since the 1800s.  We even experienced a power outage for a couple of hours and got to light every candle in the house. 

Before the snow storm, the kids enjoyed digging old toys out of the shed and playing outside.

The cousins had a great time playing together.  Grant and Mason were pretty much inseperable and Tate followed Maddy around like she was his long lost older sister.  Here they are in their cute Christmas pjs.

I tried to keep all the extra cake and cookies in check with a little exercise.  The boys were nice enough to keep me company.

Grant especially enjoyed our Christmas Eve tradition of reading the Christmas story, going for a "star walk" (we go for a quick walk at night to "look" for the new star), and come home for hot chocolate and donuts.

And of course, there was present opening.  This particular present caused Grant to yell, "OH MY GOSH!!!  IT'S A BATMAN HOUSE!!  LOOK!!!  BATMAN'S HOUSE!!"  That's the kind of reaction we were looking for.  Very gratifying!

Dear Santa

With all the Christmas fun we have been enjoying these past few weeks, one thing we had yet to do was write a letter to Santa.  I was the scribe as Grant dictated his letter to me:

Dear Santa,

I would like you to bring me:
a robot game for the computer,
a picture of me in a costume,
small weights that I can use to push up and do exercise,
(they always want to use my weights when I work out)
a batman place to play batman in,

a bigger lawnmower for Tate to mow the grass in the backyard,

and a Star Wars game like Mason has (his cousin).

Thank you!

Grant

Not sure where a lot of those came from, but at least he knows what he wants.  I had to work a little harder to find out what Tate wanted.

Me:  Tate, what do you want to ask Santa for Christmas?

Tate: Ummm, fries?!

Me:  You want fries for Christmas?

Tate: Yeah!

Me:  Do you want anything else for Christmas?

Tate: Ummm, fries?!

Me:  Fries it is.

Dear Santa,

I would like:

fries.

Thank you!

Tate

This Monday we had a fun FHE and acted out part of the Christmas story.  The boys and Ryan dressed up as shepherds and tended their sheep while I got baby Jesus set up in a manger upstairs.  We turned off a lot of the light to set the mood.  I came down as an angel and told them about Jesus being born and how they could follow a star (my flashlight) to go see him.

They followed the star upstairs to find Jesus and we sat and sang Christmas songs and talked about Jesus being born and the real meaning of Christmas.  The boys really liked it, they've wanted to go find Jesus everyday since.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.  Some of the highlights include:

incredible food

being with family and friends

starting Black Friday shopping at 5:30am and scoring some great deals

did I mention pie...

playing a roudy game of Pit

getting to sleep in

going to see Inception (finally)

and the fact that I got the stomach flu starting Saturday night (so I didn't have to miss any of the good eating)

Run for fun? What the h... kind of fun is that?!

 High five if you can name what movie the title line is from.  I, like many others, do run for fun and I find it especially fun running in a race.  Especially a cool race where you get to run through the countryside and they give everyone a shirt, socks and running hat instead of a useless medal that ends up collecting dust in a closet somewhere.  So how lucky for me that I found a race that does just that! 

A couple of weekends ago we headed up north for the Stomp the Grapes 1/2 marathon and despite the 30 degree weather we had a great time. I also felt surprisingly good during the race.  I figured the freezing weather and the hilly course (Columbus having absolutely no hills to train on) would make it a long, slow run, but I was able to run it faster than the last half I ran in May!  In the end I think it comes down to having a really good playlist on your iPod to listen to.

 Ryan got these shots of me at the finish.  He was the real hero of the day, chasing cold, whiny kids around so I could have some fun, competitive mommy time.

1:39:19 ended up being my final race time.  It's funny Ryan caught it exactly in this picture.  Another reason this race is cool: I finished first in my age group so they gave me a fleece blanket.  Sure it's a deep purple color (not my favorite), but at least it's useful.  The boys' favorite part of day was getting to ride the "b-bus" in the words of Tate.  The starting line and finish line of the race were in different places so they shuttled the runners & spectators to and fro.  Hence the opening picture of the boys enjoying their first ride on a real, live school bus.  I remember school buses having walls that were more than a 1/4 inch thick, though.  Budget cuts, I guess.

Of Cheerful Lads & Broken Arms

Almost a week ago, I started noticing that occasionally Tate would give a small whine whenever we held onto his arm a certain way.  I didn't think much of it, because it was only occasionally, and otherwise he was acting completely normal.   I finally mentioned it to Ryan, who, after some arm probing realized that Tate whined the most when he touched his outer forearm (the distal ulna for all you anatomy people out there).  This was on Saturday, so we decided we would just take him to the doctor on Monday, because Tate didn't act like anything was wrong, as long as no one grabbed hold of his right wrist.   

So, this morning I took him to the doctor, who also thought it most likely was not broken, since Tate did not act in pain and there was no bruising, etc.  But he sent us for x-rays just in case.  Sure enough, his arm was broken (a transverse fracture--i.e.all the way through the bone!).  We were asked several times, how?  Therein lies the mystery. I don't think most parents can even count all the times their kid has fallen or ran into something.  It apparently didn't bother Tate enough for him to make a fuss about it either.

Come to find out there is a surprisingly large number of colors you can choose for a cast, but I went for a nice solid blue.  Tate was a champ the whole time.  But I guess I should have figured that, since he's been running around with a broken arm for a week, maybe more, acting like all is well.  When there's playing to be had, who has time to fuss over a broken bone?

Joining the Private Club

I've been thinking about moving the blog to a private setting for awhile, so I figured I better get a move on it.  I'll switch it next week sometime, so if you would like an invitation and don't think I have your email you can leave a comment with your email address and I'll delete it after I get it. 

Grant was keeping watch for Ryan while he changed the oil.