18 months plus some other milestones

Well I let myself get way too behind on blogging and now I don't even know where to start. The task just seems to overwhelming at this point. There were a few milestones last week so I guess I will start there. Brennan and I celebrated our four year anniversary on the 19th. Hard to believe it has been four years. We got to celebrate in an extra special way with an ultrasound. Yes, if you haven't heard, we are having a baby. The due date is November 3rd and we just found out it's a boy! We are very excited. Tatum got to come to the ultrasound with us, but we regretted it when it ended up taking over an hour!

I'm pretty sure Tatum thinks "mommy's baby" is my belly button but oh well. :)

Here I am at 21 weeks. I feel like I am getting much bigger than I did with Tatum but I'm trying not to let it bother me. 

 My parents babysat Tatum that evening and we were able to go to Biaggi's for dinner and enjoy some dessert at the park. We also ran a few errands toddler-free, we sure know how to party.

 Tatum turned 18 months the next day. I can't believe we are already halfway through her second year of life! I love watching her grow and learn but at the same time I just want her to stop. There is a crazy mix of emotions revolving around children growing up. I've always heard parents say things along those lines, but I'm just barely beginning to get a feel for what they meant. We were in Mt. Vernon for her check up that day, which is probably just about her favorite place to be. Here she is taking Duke out, and looking especially cute I think.

Her appointment went well, in that she is a healthy, growing girl. But she hates the doctor's office! All it took was the doctor cleaning off his stethoscope to get Tatum to throw her arms around my neck, scream bloody murder and start trying to climb up me. I'm sure he loves when it's time for a Tatum check up. :) Her nurse is a good friend of my mom's and doesn't like that she has to be the bad guy and give Tatum shots. As she was leaving the room after the shot and saying bye to Tatum I asked Tatum to say goodbye to her. So between sobs Tatum let out the most pitiful sounding "mmmmmuah" and blew her a kiss. It was the funniest thing.

18 month stats:

Weight: 24 lbs (~70th percentile)
Height: 33 in (~90th percentile)
Head circumference: 47 cm

I don't really know what to say as far as an update goes. She does or says something new every day so I couldn't possibly list them all. She has started to pretend play, which is fun. She will sing "clean up, clean up" (just those two words) over and over again and is usually pretty good about cleaning up her toys or other messes she makes. She LOVES grandma and papa and nothing makes her more sad than having to say goodbye to them. When she wakes up in the morning I can usually hear her in her crib talking about grandma, papa and Caden. She is down to one nap and has been for awhile. It's finally starting to get close to two hours long. When we first cut back to one nap it was never more than 45 minutes. Not fun. For the last few weeks she has been obsessed with books. I realize this is a good thing but sometimes I get awfully tired of reading the same books over and over. Everything stops, and I mean everything, if she hears a train, an airplane or a dog. She is old enough for nursery at church! Yay! Too bad she won't go without us. :( We took her to the playground at the mall last week and Brennan commented that we could leave and she would be totally fine. She had no idea where we were and couldn't care less, but yet she freaks out when we take her to nursery. So bizarre. Oh well, hopefully eventually. She loves to swim but hates to get her hair washed in the tub. She loves most fruit and milk and that's where the list ends. She has not been much of an eater lately. She won't touch most vegetables with a ten foot pole. It can be quite frustrating but I try to remember it's probably just a phase. She loves going on bike rides, which is great because I love it too. There is so much more to say about this little girl but I will stop there. She is great and we love her death!

We'll end with a few photos of Tatum at 18 months.

She has enough hair for pigtails!....kind of. They are kind of interesting but I just couldn't resist.

 We had a photo shoot for her and that went over about as well as the doctor's office. But we did manage to get this cute one.

Brennan's big day!

When I met Brennan a little over four years ago he had just gotten home from his mission and was an assistant manager at Costa Vida, a very delicious restaurant. At that point he had given school some thought but had no real plans to attend college. He thought maybe he could work his way up into higher management of Costa Vida (or maybe Cold Stone, where he worked before his mission), maybe eventually own some himself. And I have no doubt that he would have succeeded. But it would have meant many years working many many crappy hours and he decided it wasn't what he wanted. So he started school the same semester I finished. For the last four years he has been a full time student (sometimes through the summers too), a part-time worker, a husband and for the last year a half a father. Pretty tall order. I'm sure there were times that he wondered why he hadn't stayed with his original plan, it certainly would have been the path of least resistance. The path he did take sure wasn't always easy. It was rough going at times but he made it. Last month he graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelors of Business Administration in Accounting. It was a big accomplishment and a big day from him. Way to go Brennan! Four years ago you changed your course and aimed for something different, something higher and you met your goal, good for you!

My parents came down to celebrate and attend the ceremony. Brennan got to choose the restaurant and despite my urging to pick some place a little fancier that we wouldn't normally go, he chose Buffalo Wild Wings. :) We did try something new there though, their fried pickles. They were really good!

Tatum sitting between her two favorites.

 Me with the man of the hour.

 At the arena. Where they didn't turn on any AC. It was an incredibly muggy day, quite miserable.

 Brennan with two of his greatest supporters and cheerleaders. We wouldn't have made it this far without you guys. Thanks mom and dad!

 He's the one shaking hands with the important looking fellow. Yeah, you can hardly see it.

 Some pictures with the Tater Tot in the back yard. I had to post this because his sleeve is hilarious.

 And I had to post this one because of Tatum's adorable grin. (Yes, it's a horrible shot of me.)

Here's a video of his name being called.

After the ceremony we had ice cream sundaes at our place with my sister and her family. And at the family dinner the next night my mom made a cake for Macy's birthday and Brennan's graduation. :) He also got a fancy new phone he has been dying for so I hope he felt adequately celebrated. :)

Really, I am incredibly proud of him and this accomplishment. When I was in college I was just single old me. He had a lot more to juggle and he did it. Congratulations Brennan! Three degrees down, one more to go!

swimming

It wasn't unbearably hot in Arizona while we were there, we picked a good time to go. But we still went swimming many an afternoon. The water was a bit chilly for some of us, but Tatum and Jade didn't mind most of the time. And I ended up with a lot fewer pictures of our swimming adventures than I would have liked. I didn't even get one picture of Tatum in the life jacket. It was hilarious. She loved jumping off the steps while she had it on. You could tell it gave her a funny feeling because she would do this nervous laugh every time.

Even with a pool in the backyard, swimming is kind of a lot of work. Getting everyone changed and ready to go. Getting all the toys and things you need. Having a newly potty trained toddler who has to go back in to go potty very frequently. A bee who seems intent on following you everywhere you go. A fearless toddler who ends up under the water, unable to get up, much more often than you would like. Cleaning up all the leaves that got in the pool the windy day before. Almost getting crypto sporidium when that newly potty trained toddler's mother ignores her pleas to go potty and she poops in the pool. (Haha, just picturing that still makes me laugh, Mara. "Everybody out of the pool!!") It really was a bit exhausting but worth it. I guess? :) It really was fun, I definitely enjoyed myself.

 Tatum loved this thing, maybe even more than the life jacket. She would float around for quite a long time.

 Sometimes Jade did complain about the cold...

 The water was definitely too cold for this little lady. She didn't like it one bit. But she was happy to watch us all from the safety of her bumbo. :)

 Mara with her two cute girls.

And I think I'll wrap up my Arizona posts with one last picture.

Mara asleep on the couch, mid-conversation, at like 10:30. I just had to get proof of how tired we were by the end of the week. We were definitely fitting in more than we do in our boring old every day lives. And the kids were definitely sleeping less. By the last couple of nights Mara and I would try to stay up and talk for a bit but we would take turns falling asleep which made it kind of hard. One time Mara asked me a question and before I even got a chance to answer, she was asleep. We were tired. But I think that's evidence of a great trip, right? Thanks Mara and Ben, for letting us come and hang out! Can't wait to see you guys again!

Arizona part 2

The Arizona fun continued on Friday with a trip to the Phoenix zoo. It was a beautiful day and we successfully wore out the kids (and ourselves) walking around the zoo. The coolest feature about this zoo, in my opinion, are the splash pads. What a great idea. Kids get hot and tired walking around checking out all the animals and the splash pads provide a great way to take a break and cool off.

Here are the pictures documenting our zoo fun, in no particular order (I'm feeling lazy today).

Me and Tatum in front of the elephants. She was getting a little grumpy at this point.

Exploring a tunnel.

Jade and Grandma.

Another neat part of the zoo is the "petting zoo". I think calling it a zoo is a bit presumptuous since there are only goats there, but it was still a lot of fun for the girls. And yes we dressed them in matching outfits that day, pretty cute if I do say so myself. I was surprised we didn't get any twin comments since Tatum is nearly the same size as Jade.

Riding some horses.

Hey it's Mara and I in the same picture, a miracle!

Apparently brushing this goat was hilarious. :)

Mara is clearly enjoying this moment with her daughter. ;)

The coolest exhibit is definitely the monkeys. You get to walk through it so you can see them super close. They are the tiniest things. Grandma is supposed to be posing for a picture with the girls, but Jade didn't want to, Tatum was looking for a monkey, and mom is horrible at looking at the camera for more than a split second so this was the result.

Where is it?

There's one of the monkeys, right in the center.

Jade and Tatum got to ride the carousel.

After the carousel it was splash pad time. Unfortunately we went to the zoo on a Friday close to the end of the school year so there were a ton of a field trips and the zoo was fairly crowded. But you noticed it most at the splash pad. The girls were still able to enjoy it though.

Gotta love that smile.

 I wish we had captured the look on her face from the front but you get the idea.

 They were kind of chickens so I started to force them through it. Don't worry, they liked it. :)

 Hard to tell if she was crying or laughing/squealing.

Our day at the zoo was great! (Even if we couldn't even look at the stingrays without tickets, totally lame.)

After the kids took naps Mara made some yummy popsicles in her fancy new popsicle maker. Tatum was nice enough to "help" her.

 And Jade devoured them. I can't blame her, they were pretty yummy.

 Tatum wasn't so sure. She is kind of a texture freak and had never had a popsicle before.

 Proof that Tatum and Ella played together. They will be friends too. :)

On Saturday we got breakfast at T.C. Eggington's. This was top on my list of things to do after Mara and Ben took Brennan and I there last fall. They have the best honey roasted wheat germ pancakes. I'm telling you, so dang good. After breakfast I got my hair cut and we went to a couple of stores. Somehow I managed to not take a single photo all day on Saturday.

Sunday the fun continued with church in the morning, games in the afternoon and some delicious dinner. And then Monday we just hung out around the house in the morning, got an early lunch at Smash Burger and then we flew out early in the afternoon. It all went by so fast!

This was from our last day. Tatum loved to sit in the bumbo, silly girl.

Sunday morning we tried desperately to get a picture of the three girls looking cute for church but that didn't go so well, surprise surprise. This one makes me laugh though.

Tatum definitely didn't get enough sleep Saturday night. She fell asleep sitting up during Sacrament meeting. Unheard of. And don't worry I didn't take the picture until after the meeting. :)

Mom had a little sing along with the girls at the piano Sunday afternoon.

Here's a link to a little video of Jade and Tatum dancing during lunch on our last day. I can't get it to load on here for some reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n0AvWJj77E&feature=youtu.be