bully

So...our daughter is a little bit of a bully.  It's true. We hung out with our friends Allison and Austin a couple of times this week and Tatum showed her true colors.  She hasn't really been around other babies very much, just other kids.  Austin is about 3 months younger than her and she went for the attack several times.  She managed to grab his face, pull his hair and steal his toys and she tried to get his binky any time she could. Unfortunately I'm new at this whole mothering a mobile child thing so it caught me by surprise several times.  Next time she won't get away with such viciousness! :)

Really though, it's just a lot of fun to see her with other little kids. I can't believe how much she is changing all the time.  Just today she pulled herself from sitting to standing about 5 times.  It was pretty impressive, I must say.

Here's the proof of the hair pulling. Poor Austin.  Luckily he is super chill so he didn't complain too much about Tatum the bully and her inattentive mother.

Haha, look, Tatum is evening looking up at Allison while she does it, like "just try to stop me". Little punk.

playing with daddy

Brennan will love me for posting this, no doubt. :) The other day, he started to mimic whatever Tatum was doing and she seemed to find it hilarious. I couldn't help but pull out the video camera.  Enjoy!

decorating

My house is still a long ways from what I'd like it to eventually be, but I have been trying to make some decorating improvements.  After vacation I finally got around to finishing a craft of Tatum's name I had started a couple of months ago.  I got the inspiration for how to decorate the letters from my friend Jessica's crafting blog. I painted the letters brown and then just kept putting off doing anything else to them.  But it was so quick and easy and I love the way it turned out.

For the solid dots I just used the end of a sponge paintbrush and for the open circles I used a piece of paper rolled up and taped.  It goes great in her room. I originally pictured it going on one of the blue walls but after I finished it, hanging 5 separate letters and trying to get them level and all that did not sound appealing. So for now it's on the shelf, where it fits perfectly.  Eventually I would still like to move it. I am thinking about just getting a piece of wood, putting a fancy edge on it with a router, painting it pink, put the letters on that and then hanging it as one piece. We'll see how many months it takes me to get that done. :)

The other project I finally finished was the hallway at the top of our stairs.  It as always been really blank and blah so I finally got a set of frames for it months and months ago.  Then for Mother's Day I got a wall hanging that I thought I would put with the frames. A month or more after that I finally got around to hanging the frames.  They hung empty for several weeks and then I finally got pictures printed for them.  Even such a simple project seems to take me forever. But it makes a huge difference! The whole room just feels homier.

Yay for Rachel actually accomplishing a couple of things on her to-do list!

Saturday in Nauvoo

On Saturday we hopped in the car with my parents and headed to Nauvoo.  My parents had a shift at the temple so we took up the offer for a free ride so that we could go to the temple too.  It makes for a long day since we have to wait for their shift to get over before heading home, but it's not too bad. I am so glad they have the temple arrival center in Nauvoo so we can have a nice, comfortable, air-conditioned place to hang out in with Tatum while we wait for each other.

After Brennan and I both got done we walked around the grounds of the temple with Tatum, found some shade and snapped some pictures of course. (We also did a lot of reminiscing about photos taken there 3 years ago after our wedding. It was fun to remember.)

This one makes me laugh.

A very squinty attempt at a family photo.

We went down to the Mississippi thinking we might put Tatum's feet in the water. Unfortunately it was a swampy, muddy mess so we just took a picture and called it good. :)

 

Next we headed to the park to do some swinging.  With the first big swing we always get a big smile out of Tatum. I tried to catch it on camera but I think I mostly missed it.

The real swings right by the baby swing were amazingly low to the ground. Brennan braved them and only smacked his feet on the ground once, sending his sandals flying. I'm not really sure why they are so low. I guess they must be for little kids?  Even so, it would be a pain to push your little toddler in a swing that low to the ground so I'm not sure I understand.  

Tatum kept her boxer stance the whole time she was swinging.

                                                     

 We did a pretty good job of finding things to do.  Besides the park, the river, and the temple, we also went to a few shops and we hung out in the shade for a bit while Tatum took a nap.  But I always start to get antsy for about the last hour we have to wait.  And I always hold onto a hope that they will get done early.  So we parked ourselves in front of the temple for the last hour, just waiting.  Brennan took a picture for a family from Chicago, but the dad was from England and the mom was from Austria.  We talked to them for a bit and I walked away from that conversation lamenting the fact that I don't get to hear those sweet accents all the time.  Why can't I sound that cool?! Then we continued to wait. I watched Tatum attack Brennan.  And I enjoyed every minute of it. haha.

 My parents did finally come out, just not early, which was fine. And we headed home.  The drive back was nice, Tatum was great and there was lots of good conversation to be had.  It was a long, hot, sticky day but well worth it. Being in and even around the temple felt great.

7 months

Tatum is 7 months old today! Where does time go? Seriously, it is crazy how old she is getting.  I don't have any stats since it's not an appointment month, but trust me, she's bigger. :) But here are the facts I do have about Tatum at 7 months:

-Still no teeth.
-Wants to crawl but can't quite figure it out.  She gets on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, but then she will just lay down and do an army crawl. She can get around though.
-Pulls herself up on things. Usually just to her knees but she has pulled herself onto her feet once or twice.
-Sometimes she loves solids, sometimes she wants nothing to do with them. Depends on the day.
-We are still rocking her to sleep, unless it takes longer than 5 minutes.  Then she has to cry it out. (If anyone out there has any advice for a wussy mom who has a hard time committing to letting her cry it out, let me know!)
-She is getting better at sleeping again.  Just wakes up once or twice.
-Loves to attack my face.  It is seriously the weirdest thing. We need to capture it on camera so I can show you.  Strange.
-Loves to play in front of the sliding glass door so she can look outside.
-Loves her bath.
-Hates getting dressed.
-If you don't change her poopy diapers IMMEDIATELY, the mess gets squeezed right up her back. Pretty awesome.
-She rode in a shopping cart, sitting up in the little kid seat, for the first time yesterday. She thought she was pretty cool.
-She loves to be outside.
-She seems to be pretty indifferent about going for bike rides. I was hoping the speed would make her giggle or something.
-She has a little bit of stranger danger. Sometimes it's better if I stay in sight, but other times that just makes it so much worse.
-Recently Tatum has figured out how to pull down on her crib bumper and look through the railing toward the door. It always makes me laugh when I come in to get her and she is staring out at me.
-She is obsessed with power cords. If I leave the room for 5 seconds, she will find the computer cord no matter what.

And now for the overload of pictures.

Practicing her crawling stance.

 Just a cute one.

 Playing by the sliding door...

 ...and she's pretty happy about it.

 Climbing on dad.

 I tried to get a picture of the crib thing, but my camera was on the wrong setting...

 ...and changing it took too long so she got real mad.

 Her 7 month birthday photos. I really do have a plan for all these white onesie pictures I take every month.  We will see if it ever happens.

 Someone was not in the mood to have her picture taken this morning.

And lastly a video that sort of shows her new army crawl.

It has been a good 7 months. :)

gross face

When we started feeding Tatum solids we thought for sure we would get some really good gross faces from her.  We were ready and waiting with our camera and our video camera in hand, only to be disappointed. She just gobbled up the peas and never acted surprised or shocked at all. Well a few weeks ago I started giving her a sippy cup with some water in it after she ate so she could practice drinking out of it. Peas? Those are fine, nothing she can't handle.  But water? According to Tatum that stuff's nasty! Just kidding, she has gotten used to it now and is more than happy to drink some.  (Although North Liberty water is pretty nasty, so I can't say that I blamed her for not liking it.) But I did manage to get a few shots of her "gross face".  It was funny because she would make that face and then want more, over and over.

Looking all grown up in her high chair, holding her own cup.

 Nasty.

 What are you giving me mom?!

Gotta love the fun faces and reactions of babies. Keeps life entertaining. :)

spitting

Lately Tatum likes to play with her tongue a lot.  She always sticks it out just a bit and then curls it up at the end. Typically it is accompanied by lots of spitting.  I tried to get it on camera the other day because she does it so frequently, it's pretty funny, and I don't want to forget.  These are the best I got.

rafting pictures

You know how I said we went rafting in Idaho? I finally got the pictures to prove it.

Tatum in her sweet flotation....thing. Pretty cute, I'd say.

The kid raft. and yes that included Rich, Nathan and Caleb. :)

Rich decided to jump in the water and then it became a game of who would cave to the peer pressure and the chant of their name.  Brennan and Ben ended up jumping in too.  As well as lots of the kids.  All of the Cardon men (dad, Caleb, Nathan) were too wussy for it.

I just like this picture because I think the water looks cool.

We stopped on a little island of sorts for awhile. 

And here is the waterfall we were supposed to play in but our raft failed to make it.

That's it. :) Just wanted to share the pictures.

Heritage Days

This last weekend was my hometown's annual fair, Heritage Days.  We headed down on Saturday to check it out.  Every year I think Heritage Days gets more disappointing. Probably a combination of that fact that I'm not a little kid anymore so it's not quite as impressive and also it just gets more and more pathetic every year.  It just seems like it gets less fun, family-oriented, and kid-friendly and more just about giving people an opportunity to get drunk. But still, we went.

We got there just in time for the parade so we headed over to watch that and got to visit with Gretchen. It rained a little that afternoon so we just hung out at my parents' empty house and let Tatum take a nap. But we had to make it uptown for the Lumberjack Show.  This was new this year and I was curious.  It was actually pretty entertaining.  It was three guys, one was the announcer and the other two would compete to see who could do different lumberjack-ish things the fastest.  It was clearly rigged but still entertaining. The chainsaws they used were pretty loud but Tatum didn't seem to be bothered by it so that was good.

At some point during the show, the announcer lumberjack gave himself 2 minutes to make a carving out of a log using only a chainsaw.  He told the crowd at the beginning that he was going to do that at some point and then he would give it away to someone.  As soon as Rich heard that he knew he needed to be as loud as possible during the whole show so he would be noticed.  And that he was. :) The lumberjack ended up making a little chair, that looks like a head with a face and hair when it is upside down. Then he chose 4 people to come up and compete for the chair, and of course he picked Rich.  First Rich had to act like Paul Bunyan and yell "Timber!".  He managed to beat his first competitor out with his yell, complete with beating his chest even.  Then it was time for a dance off between him and Beth Young, a girl I went to high school with.  I won't even try to tell you about it, I'll let the video speak for itself.

Surprisingly enough, those sweet moves won him the chair. :) They also caused the embarrassment of his wife and three kids haha.  Rich's ability to not care what people think and to not get embarrassed is commendable, I wish I was a little more like that.

Here's Tatum on the prized chair. We couldn't get her to look up to save our lives. It was like she was trying to figure out what she was on.

After the show they did a lumberjack sports camp and Caden was able to try running on a log in the water. Kelbie was able to meet the lumberjacks and get her picture taken with them. She may have decided she wants to marry a lumberjack one day, I'm not sure. ;)

After the lumberjack show we were able to hit up the Bingo tent which is always a Heritage Days favorite. We met Gretchen and Andy there and Gretchen was kind enough to share some of her luck and we actually won for once! So did Gretchen, of course.  I don't think I have ever played Bingo with her when she hasn't won. :) Tatum was quite popular in the Bingo tent. My old superintendent (who I'm sure didn't remember me) even held her while he walked around monitoring the game.  She patted her hands on his bald head and pulled his glasses off his face.  No big deal.

We got some yummy gyros for dinner and then headed over to Gretchen's house to hang out for awhile and Tatum was able to show them just how crazy and hyper she can be.  Despite Heritage Days not being quite as cool as I remember, it was still a fun day!

chubby cheeks

Just wanted to share this cute picture I got of Tatum sleeping on our bed one morning on vacation.  It's a pretty cute pose and you've got to love those chubby cheeks of hers!

the rest of our trip

And our trip continues....

Wednesday was the 4th of July and we headed over to Brennan's grandparent's house to celebrate with his grandparents, his dad and step mom, siblings, and some cousins and aunts. It was a beautiful afternoon and his grandma and grandpa have an awesome yard. It was a fun day spent visiting outside. We even got a few family pictures taken.

(I stole these first few pictures from facebook, so I'm sure the quality isn't great.)

Brennan with his siblings. (Quinton, Jentri, Callan, Brennan, Dustin)

Plus wives and kids.

Plus his dad and Jennifer and his step sisters, Abbey and Kellie.

Tatum hanging out with Kellie.

 Waiting for the FOOD!

 Ada showing off her chocolate-y face. :)

We took off before the fireworks since we figured Tatum probably wouldn't appreciate an up close show.  We headed back to Nathan's empty house and my parents ended up being there and you could see lots of the valley's fireworks from a park near his house. So we left Tatum with them and went to the park to enjoy a few shows.

Brennan was disappointed that we didn't see fireworks up close. And then I went to a church activity last night so we couldn't go to the Heritage Days fireworks either.  Poor guy.  I promised him Cornell's homecoming fireworks this fall...we'll see if I can manage to keep that promise. :)

On Thursday Brennan went to see the new Spiderman movie with Quinton and his dad and I headed to Salt Lake to spend some time with Caleb and his boys.  Then I met up with Brennan and his family at the bowling alley after dinner.  From there we headed to the Purple Turtle for some shakes.  Luckily enough my cousin, Alex, was able to meet us there.  We had been able to visit a little at grandpa's funeral but we were hoping to see him again before we left and this just worked out.

Tatum let him hold her even with that scary beard.

Friday we headed to Lagoon (Adventurland's equivalent for my Iowa readers) with Brennan's family.  We decided that everyone would have a better day if we didn't bring Tatum and my parents were kind enough to volunteer to keep her for the day. (The report is that she was a perfect angel.  Too bad she can't be that way at home for me. :))  Lagoon was a blast, thanks for taking us Rex and Jennifer!

The whole group at the end of the day. Minus Jentri, who had to leave early for work. And Jennifer's parents who had already left.

Saturday was our last day in Utah.  We finally got to see Brennan's mom and step dad who had been out of town.  We went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory-yum! (By the way, their chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake is amazing!) And then we went and checked out the new mall in downtown Salt Lake, City Creek. It was pretty neat.

Here is Melanie putting Tatum's toes in the fountain.

Then we headed to the cute little bookstore that Jentri works at.  Then they had to head home to watch the fights that Lester was kind enough to miss seeing live to come home early to see us. Thanks Lester!

We had dinner with Caleb's family and we all went swimming that night.  It was fun to see Gavin and Henry interact with Tatum. Usually we are together will all of the cousins so they are too busy playing. But when it was just Tatum they loved playing with her and showing off all their tricks.

Henry and Tatum.

Brennan, Henry, Wyatt                                                                                               Henry, Tatum, Wyatt

Papa and Tatum in the pool.

We left at 4 am the next day (Sunday) and got home around 12:30 am on Monday. Whew. What a trip.  It was a blast.  We got to see so many people that we care about, do lots of fun things, and we were sure to burn the candle at both ends.  I'm not sure if we have quite recovered yet, but we are getting there.