Hear Ye, Hear Ye…

Ok so I was going to try and write something clever in the whole medieval/renaissance form of writing but that was way too much of a hassle for what it’s worth.

We’ve been looking for ways to get out of the house and stumbled onto a medieval encampment at one of the local museums.  They had demonstrations, sword fights, medieval pipe music, etc.  It was really cool and it was such a beautiful day to be out walking around on the nice green grass.  Here’s some pictures of us enjoying the festivities…

Tyler, Mom, Grandma, and some swordsmen

Here’s a close up of the sword fighting – Medieval Ultimate Fighting Championship (with foam swords)

We found the perfect store for Dad …… look for it…

If you didn’t get the joke, I’ll give you a hint.  It has nothing to do with what’s beneath the sign.

Here’s a nice picture of the family on the rock retaining wall. 

Say what you will about Maryland, they do have some pretty country side.  We can’t wait to see it in the Fall.

One of the goals of the festival was to use the costumes and demonstrations to teach kids about how things were hundreds of years ago.  What I learned is that there’s a fine line between teaching your kids about history and encouraging them to be one of those weird-o’s at a medieval festival.  I guess we’ll find out if we left on time in about 20 years if Tyler ends up like this guy…

Aside from the medieval festival, we’re spending our time waiting for baby Reagan to make her big debut.  Everything’s in place now if we could just convince Reagan to cooperate.  All in good time, I suppose.  We got some way cute blankets from Ali and Thesha’s mom has been staying with us ever since we left the hospital a few weeks ago.  Sorry to everyone who was hoping to see her on Mother’s Day.  I know it’s pretty selfish, but it sure was nice to have her with us.  We went to a local restaurant called Mamie’s to celebrate.  Yes, we celebrated Mamie’s Day with Mamie at Mamie’s.  The Maryland Cream of Crab Soup was awesome.

Tyler’s been really good with all the arrangements for Reagan.  In addition to touching Thesha’s belly and saying “bebe” he now says “Wreee” when we try to get him to say Reagan (kind of like how Chadli said “Is Wrobby Thewre?”).  It’ll be interesting to see how he is with her when she arrives.  Thesha was talking to him the other day about holding his baby sister in his arms and he said “Uh oh.”  Uh oh in deed, little man.

Practice Round

It just wouldn’t be a pregnancy in our house if we didn’t have a couple challenges along the way.  For the past little while Thesha had been having some contractions, but last Wednesday they really started to intensify and get pretty regular.  The doctor told us to go ahead and go to the Maternity Triage center and they would evaluate things there.  Thankfully we have a couple in our ward (yes, we’re a ward now) who have a couple boys around Tyler’s age so they picked up Tyler and we headed out to the hospital for what we thought would be just a quick evaluation and some advice on how to get the contractions to subside.  Five days later, we finally came back home.

So we showed up at the hospital and started through all the same old procedures with the nurse.  Then, all the sudden, in walks the doctor and Thesha and I were both totally caught off guard by what we saw.  The doctor looked just like Chadli.  She had the same style of glasses, the same hair color (I don’t know if it’s the same brand, but it was the same color), similar personalities, about the same age, even similar hand gestures.   It was kind of crazy.  That is, until the doctor said, “Alright, let’s take a look.”  Then it just got really weird, really fast.  It’s one thing to have a stranger checking you out, but when the stranger looks like your sister-in-law, it just crosses the line, ya’ know.  Nothing personal Cha, but if someone that looked just like one of Travis’ sisters put on a rubber glove with KY jelly on it and started walking towards you’d probably be a little freaked out too.  Thankfully she was just the triage doctor and once she saw (and unfortunately felt) what was going on they sent us over to labor and delivery (just in case) where Thesha was then seen by her regular doctors.

Tyler was apparently having a pretty good time, but our friends, Brittany and Mike, could tell that he was missing his mom, dad, and home.  She told us that Mike came home and her two boys ran to the door yelling “Daddy” and Tyler followed them along thinking he was going to see his Daddy too.  When Mike walked in the door, it stopped him in his tracks and he got all sad and just hugged Brittany for a while.  He eventually warmed up to him, but things were just not right in his world.

Thankfully on Friday night Thesha’s mom was able to fly in to take care of Tyler for us.  What a life saver!  Because the flight came in so late, I went over to pick him up and take him home on Saturday morning.  When I walked through the door Tyler just stood there for a second to make sure I was real.  Then he ran towards me but stopped just in front of me and just stared at me for a second.  I wasn’t sure if he was mad at me or what, but once he realized I was in fact his dad he gave me a big hug and just latched on as tight as he could.  When I tried to pull him away to change his clothes and get him ready to go he pulled me in closer and grabbed at my shirt so I wouldn’t put him down.  I felt bad that we had put him through all this, but I was glad to see that he wasn’t too mad at me.

Unfortunately the initial reception for Thesha wasn’t quite as satisfying.  To this day I still remember walking in to the hospital room where my dad was laying on the bed after he had hurt his eye.  I remember that it was him but that I was scared to death of him.  Tyler had this experience going to see Thesha.  As we walked towards the door we said, “Are you ready to see Mom?” and he excitedly replied, “Ma ma, Ma ma.” but just a few steps in to the room and he stopped dead in his tracks and demanded to be picked up and held.  As we walked towards Thesha’s bed he got the sad face with the pushed out lower lip and he pulled himself as close as he could to me.  It was soooo sad.  Thesha was so excited to see him but she understood why he was scared.  He eventually calmed down and was able to sit by her for a little while, but he never really warmed up to the idea that this was really his Ma ma.  Thankfully as we walked in the door at home today Thesha got the reaction she was hoping for.  He latched on to her as tight as he had latched on to me and just hugged her for about 5 minutes.  Finally, Mom and Dad were home and we could all be normal again.  It will be interesting to see how he reacts when it’s not a practice round but the real deal and now it’s Mom, Dad, and a new baby Reagan coming in the door.

Here’s a picture of Thesha and Tyler in the hospital room.  Notice that we had to distract Tyler with a cell phone for him to calm down and sit with Mom for a little while.

So, you’re probably wondering, “What’s the deal, then?  Is Reagan alright?”  She is doing fine.  Throughout the whole ordeal she looked just fine on all the monitors.  When it looked like things might be headed towards an early delivery, Dad suggested that maybe an ultrasound might help us know if she was well enough to be born without any problems.  At first the doctor said no, but then she came back and said that it might be a good idea to do one to make sure there was still plenty of amniotic fluid.  (Thanks for the suggestion, Dad!)  So for all our troubles, at least we got another ultrasound.  Thankfully Reagan was willing to cooperate this time as well so we could get a good picture of her.  In our prior ultrasound, she had her face buried in the placenta which made it hard to see her face.  As you can see from the picture below, she has a beautiful face (assuming there’s nothing freaky behind the umbilical cord that she’s holding over her right eye).

The technician performing the ultrasound also said that she could see that she would probably have a bit of hair as well.  It never ceases to amaze me that they can get images and information like this.

Getting a closer glimpse of our baby girl has us so excited to have her.  It just makes it that much more real when you see how developed they are and can start to put a face to the name and belly movements.  Of course, we still have a bunch of stuff we need to get, so hopefully she gives a little more time to prepare.  Not to mention poor Ali who is freaking out because she’s trying to make some blankets for us and what was supposed to be 6 weeks to be able to finish them seemed like it was going to shrink to 6 days or even 6 hours.   I doubt it will be 6 more weeks, but hopefully we have at least a couple more weeks to make all the final preparations.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

We’ve already had our practice round, so hopefully the next time things act up it will be for real.  At least now we know right where to go.  Although next time we may ask if there’s another doctor available that doesn’t look like one of our siblings.

It’s Really Real

Well, there’s really not that much to write about but since we skipped last week we figured we should probably at least write about something. 

Last Friday we were sitting around the table and Thesha went to get up and bumped her now prominent belly on my chair.  After a quick, “uhh, that hurt.” she made her way to the kitchen but bumped her belly again this time on the countertop.  We both kind of chuckled at the realization that she’s really 8 months pregnant and that means Reagan’s bigger than what you expect.  The funniest part, however, was that Thesha gets an email each Sunday from Pregnancy.com that talks about what’s going on with the baby and what to expect.  Sure enough it said “you may be bumping your stomach on chairs and countertops.”  The email couldn’t have been more timely had they known Thesha personally.

The other realization we’ve had to deal with is that our little boy isn’t a baby anymore but is in fact a little boy.  Those of you with little boys can probably guess what it was that tipped us off.  We went to the park and he was running and playing and it was a great time.  We went back home and I had him sitting on my lap and found myself turning away from him because he smelled like a smelly little boy.  Gone are the days of snuggling up with him and smelling the unique smell of baby powder, milk, and baby spit up.  Now if you snuggle up and take a big whiff, you’ll be the one puking on his shirt instead of the other way around.  Thankfully it won’t be too much longer and we’ll have another little one to snuggle and smell.

In addition to smelling bad, Tyler’s been such a big boy lately.  He’s watched the Leap Frog “Letter Factory” video… oh, about a million times, and he’s starting to learn his letters.  We got him a wooden puzzle with all the letters and he’ll pick up the W and say “wuh, wuh, wuh.”  Or he’ll pick up the H and say “huh, huh, huh.”  When he picked up the B and said “boob” I got a dirty look from Thesha and we spent the afternoon singing “the B says buh” to correct his pronunciation.  (Just joking, by the way.  Relax.)

The last thing for this week is just a quick little story.  If you look back a few blog posts ago you’ll see the video of Tyler meowing.  We were in Target the other day looking at stuff for Reagan and Tyler started meowing.  I looked around and there were some little girl shoes with a Hello Kitty on them and Tyler was meowing back to the Hello Kitty shoes.  It was hilarious. 

Happy Easter!

Oh what a difference a little sun and warm weather can make in one’s disposition.  I got off work a little early on Friday so we stopped off at the local Wendy’s (which was dangerously close to the Waffle House, but we figured it was worth taking a chance) and got some dinner and went to the local park to have a little dinner picnic.  It was so nice.  The park is right on the Chesapeake so there were people fishing and boaters coming in and out of the harbor area.  It was warm enough to play but not so hot that we got uncomfortable.  We all had a really good time and followed it up with a Orange Cream frozen custard that confirmed to all of us that Spring had sprung.

Here’s some pictures of our Friday night at the park.

With Spring officially here, we were really looking forward to Easter.  We weren’t really sure if Tyler would go along with the whole egg hunt thing, but he was totally in to it.  Part of me wonders how much of it was just the clean genes he inherited from his mother coming out – after all for him it was just a cleaning activity except with Mom & Dad cheering him on with each egg that he put in a basket. 

We bought a basket that looks like a football and plastic eggs that looked like little footballs, basketballs, baseballs, and soccer balls.  We figured even if he didn’t like the whole egg hunt stuff at least he’d have something that looked like another toy.  Here’s some Easter morning pictures:

Aside from parks and holidays, things are continuing to go well with Thesha and Reagan.  Thesha’s 31 weeks now so not much time left.  We’ve been trying to get Tyler used to the idea that he’s going to have a baby sister soon so we’ve been teaching him that the “baby” is in ma ma’s tummy.  He’ll place his hand on her tummy now and say “bebe.”  It’s adorable, or at least it was until I was sitting on the couch watching TV and he put his hand on my stomach and said “bebe.” No, buddy, that’s what the doctor calls a little bit of a weight problem.  On top of that he’ll put his hand on Thesha’s other lady lumps and say “bebe” too.  I don’t know if that should be considered a compliment or what.  For everyone who’s been asking for more pictures of us, here’s a picture of Thesha and the “bebe.”

The other hilarious thing Tyler’s been cracking us up with lately is his sigh of disappointment.  I don’t know where he picked it up, but we’ll tell him no or take something away from him and he’ll say “Ahhh.”  It’s all nasally like “Ahhh, man.”  It’s so hard to keep a straight face when he pulls that one out.  It would be great to get a little video of it, but I’m sure he would only say it when the camera wasn’t rolling.

Well, hopefully everyone had a nice Easter.  Ours was very different but still very enjoyable.  Now we’re just looking forward to Spring and Summer East Coast activities which I’m sure we’ll be blogging about soon.

Anyone for some investment advice?

There’s an episode of Seinfeld where George decides to go against his natural instincts because his natural instincts have always steered him wrong.  To prove the point he walks up to a pretty lady at the diner and says something like, “Hi, my name is George.  I’m bald, I’m unemployed, and I live with my parents.”  Instead of the “Get lost” reaction his natural instincts told him he should expect, the woman is intrigued and introduces herself right back.

That’s kind of the way I feel about my investments lately.  Well, at least one investment – our house in Roy.  The good news is that it has finally sold.  We sent in all the paperwork over the weekend so it is officially a done deal.  Normally this would have been cause for a celebration dinner or something, but unfortunately any extra money we had got sent in with the closing papers.  My natural instincts have always said that if you buy a house then turn around and sell it after almost 4 years then you should probably make at least a little money off it.  Well, unfortunately like George our natural instincts failed us on this one.  It’s been kind of a hard pill to swallow, but the thing we keep having to remind ourselves is that at least from now on we’ll only have to make one housing payment a month.   So if you want some investment advice, just let me know.  I’ll tell you what I think you should do and as long as you do the exact opposite you should be just fine. :)

In other news, we’ve had a couple chances to use the web cam lately and it has been a lot of fun.  We weren’t really sure how much of a response we’d get from Tyler, but he has been hamming it up for everyone.  That little kid has so much energy now, it’s getting hard to try and keep up with him.  And he’s strong enough now that if he wants down you have to really hold on to him tight or he’ll squirm his way out of your grip and take off like a lightning bolt.    It’ll be nice to have another little one that we can just hold and snuggle with again.  Just 2 1/2 more months!  Now if we could just get a few more webcams in Utah, we could show Reagan off to everyone when she makes her debut. hint…hint…

A few little stories

So, nothing major has happened over the past couple weeks – not that eating at the Waffle House was anything major, but at least it made for a good story. Consequently, here are just a few quick stories of things that have happened recently.

We went to the Ordnance Museum at my work a couple Saturdays ago. If you’ve ever watched a History Channel documentary about a war and they showed the types of guns, rifles, or cannons used during that war then you’ve probably seen the stuff they have in the museum. The museum is actually getting ready to move to Virginia as part of the BRAC moves, so we wanted to make sure we got in to see it before it left. It was really interesting for me and Thesha, but for Tyler it was just a new place to run around. With all the cold weather, this was probably only the second or third time since we’ve moved here that he was able to get out and run around. There was one area of the museum where they had put up a clear plastic wall to keep kids out or something. Tyler was running around and slammed right into the clear plastic. It was hilarious. I tried to snap a quick picture with him flat on his back wondering what the heck had just happened, but this was the soonest I could get the shot off. If you look close maybe you can see his face print on the plastic.

No need to fear, after a slight whimper he was up and running around again. Unfortunately the clear plastic wasn’t the only inanimate object that assaulted him there. When he was running around outside he stumbled into a big rock. He wasn’t going to take that one lying down, however, so he started to yell at the rock and told it “Na, na” (Tyler for No, no).

Yes, Tyler is learning all kinds of new words and noises. The other day I was walking out to the car to head out to work and noticed I had a flat tire. Thesha and Tyler came out on to the balcony to ask if everything was ok and when I yelled up to them that I had a flat tire, Tyler’s immediate response was “Uh ooohhhh.” It’s one thing to say stuff like that, but when he uses it in the exact right context it just makes me laugh.

Another sound Tyler likes to make lately is his version of what a cat says. One of the gifts we got at the baby shower was a saucer that had a bunch of activities on it. One of the activities is a button with a Cat’s face on it and when you push it, it says “Cat, Gato, Meow.” I don’t know if that’s where he learned it, but the other day there was an episode of Super Why (PBS show for kids) on TV and they had to save the cats. Tyler was staring up at the screen and kept making a “meow” sound except it sounds more like a wolf howling than it does a cat. I tried to get a good howling video, but this is as good as I could get.

This is so cute when he really makes the meow sound. When the meow turns in to a howl, however, it’s freakin hilarious. The best, though, was when we were riding in the car the other day and the song Zombie from The Cranberries came on the radio and he just started howling away. Ok, so I can accept the idea that maybe The Cranberries wouldn’t make it on American Idol, but howling, really?

Tyler is also now officially in the nursery at church. We were kind of worried that he would have a hard time making the adjustment, but he only had a short time of uneasiness at first and then he settled right in. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was more on edge about him being in there then he was about being in nursery. For a year and a half I had said I couldn’t wait until he went in to the nursery so I could actually get something out of church again. As it turns out the only thing I did for two hours was wonder if everything was ok. That only lasted a little while, though, because now he seems to think that half way through the Sunday School lesson is the perfect time to poop. Yes, the feeling of “I can’t wait until he’s in the nursery” was only one stinky diaper away from coming back.

In non-Tyler related news, we celebrated Thesha’s 31st birthday today – actually a day early, but today worked out better for going out to dinner. I caught about 2 minutes of a morning talk show that came on after Tyler’s shows and it had Jessica Simpson talking about turning 30 and she said she was actually happy because now she was a young 30-something instead of an old 20-something. It’s pretty bad when you’re relying on the logic of Jessica Simpson to rationalize why it’s ok to get another year older, but I figure if she can figure it out then there’s no reason why we can’t feel good about being in our young 30’s. Plus everyone in our branch thought Thesha was in her mid 20’s, so she’s got nothing to worry about. Happy Birthday, Thesha!

Lastly, this should be the last blog post that we’ll have while we still have a house in Roy. We FINALLY sold our house and we’re scheduled to close on Thursday. Things didn’t exactly work out the way we would have hoped, but at least it’s finally going to be a done deal. Now if we could only find a 2,000 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bath house in Maryland for less than $300,000 we’d be set. Oh well, I guess we’ll just enjoy the razor thin walls of our “luxury” apartment for now.

Trying to fit in

Well, I (Tag) finally broke down and became an official resident of Maryland by getting my Maryland driver’s license.  It’s always hard to make the switch because now you know that the next time you show it to the security guard at the airport with an airline ticket to Baltimore that they could say, “Heading home?” and you’d have to say yes even if you don’t necessarily feel like this is home just yet.  For a driver’s license the picture turned out ok.  Of course there’s a heart on the license because I’m an organ donor and a crab because – well, you know.  : )

To celebrate our new-found residency, we got all gussied up in our semi-clean jeans and sweat shirts without holes and went to a fancy-schmancy dinner at the Waffle House for our Friday night on the town.  Why not, there’s still time to make another bad decision.  It was Thesha’s first time at the gas station bathroom turned restaurant, so it was quite an occasion.  In her words, “Up until now I just knew the Waffle House as a Larry the Cable Guy joke.”   It wasn’t until later that the “   affle House” punch line really started to sink in.  We figured, why not get the hash browns smothered and covered?  Grits, good.  Biscuits and gravy, great.  Diarrhea at 4:00 in the morning, well that’s just the icing on the cake.

Tyler seemed to enjoy it and was laughing and being a great little boy as always, but just so we didn’t stand out we did have to shout out “knock it off or I’ll beat your butt.”  After all, we’ve got a Maryland driver’s license we had better start fitting in.

Of course no one describes the Waffle House better than Jim Gaffigan, so I thought I’d share a favorite clip even if it means revealing the source of a few of my jokes.