Tyler joins us at the big boy table

Well, well.  Look who’s joining us at the big boy table.  Tyler’s been doing a pretty good job of not throwing his food off the side of the tray so we went ahead and bought him a booster seat so he could join us at the table.  He really seemed to like the idea as you can see in the picture below.

Of course, we haven’t completely lost our minds.  We did cover his chair with an old towel and we bought a plastic sheet to go under his chair.  It’s a good thing we did, because Tyler made the most of his inaugural meal at the table.

 

If that’s not the look of a kid who’s mischievously enjoying himself then I don’t know what is. 

We’ll spare you the picture of him crying as we toweled him off after the meal.

Tyler Cookies

It really wasn’t that long ago that the Choate family was introduced to Thesha Cookies – basically just chocolate chip cookies that Thesha makes from scratch with one small difference…uh, they’re freakin’ delicious!  In fact, when we moved from Albuquerque back to Utah I was working with a lady I had worked with before and the first thing she said to me was “I remember you because you brought in those really good cookies.”  That was four years after I had brought them in to work before moving to Albuquerque.  Needless to say, everyone loves Thesha cookies. 

Well, now Thesha has begun to pass along the tradition and we all enjoyed Tyler Cookies for Super Bowl Sunday.

A little sugar…

Some chocolate chips…

Scoop them up…

And enjoy!!!!!

In other, non-cookie related news, Reagan has started to make her presence known to both me and Thesha now.  I felt a little kick a while ago, but the other day it was a definite bump, bump on the palm of my hand.  In fact, when I lifted my hand up you could even see the little rise in Thesha’s tummy where she was kicking, punching, or whatever.  It’s not quite to the point of ‘alien in the stomach’ movement, but there was definitely a little creature in there.  Just a few more months!

Amen

It’s funny what kids pick up over time.  For the past several weeks we’ve been working with Tyler on saying and pointing to his ears, nose, eyes, toes, etc.  He’s been doing pretty good but tonight he surprised us a bit by saying something we didn’t even realize we’d been teaching him.  We’ve been having him sit with us for family prayers before going to bed and we were just glad that he was finally sitting quietly and not squirming or crying while we hurried through the prayer.  Tonight, however, as Thesha and I said “Amen” and I let him get up to give Thesha a good night hug, he repeated “Amen” after us.  Ok so it sounded kind of like “Na-nen” but it was obvious what he was trying to say.  We just looked at each other and said, “Wow, I guess he’s learned how to say amen.”  It was so cute.

Tyler also had to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa Checketts today.  It was kind of sad, but he gave them both a long, long hug before going down for his nap as they got ready to head to the airport.  As if he wasn’t cute enough, he keeps doing these heart warming things that just make you melt inside.  He’s such a good kid.

Bones and Bless You’s

This week we have enjoyed having Mom & Chad in town. It was especially nice for Tyler to have so much attention. I don’t think he had a single minute over the last several days where he didn’t have someone looking at him encouraging his perpetual cuteness. It was really nice, but it’s going to make the next couple weeks a little tricky as we have to wean him off the spotlight. That’s a grandparent’s prerogative, though, right. As you can see from this picture, Tyler was so happy to see his Grandma … well that or he’s trying to give her a diaper to change.

During their visit we were able to visit the Concord Point Lighthouse and visit the parks surrounding the harbor in Havre de Grace, but unfortunately this isn’t really the optimum time for sightseeing in the rural areas of Maryland. In fact we have a book of things to go see and do in Maryland and the calendar of events section doesn’t even have a month of January listed. All the boats in the harbor were wrapped up for the winter and the museums were all closed so we relied on our imagination a lot. We tried to make the most of our time together, though. If nothing else, we made sure to get our fill of Maryland crab at Woody’s Crab House.

We also got a visit from Chad’s daughter Courtnie. It was really nice to see her again and spend some time together. Although we only had a day together, Courtnie left her mark on our family by teaching Tyler “Bones” or “Knuckles.” It’s cute enough to warrant a short video…

To make matters worse, Tyler was sick all week and Tag and Thesha got sick over the weekend. So most of our time was spent in doors plowing through Kleenex and saying “Bless you” every 10 minutes or so. Not exactly the most exciting way to spend a vacation, but it was at least a chance to spend some quality time together. If nothing else it gave us a chance to talk about all the things we want to do the next time they come out to visit – in the Spring, Summer, or Fall because obviously the Winter is not the best season for visiting Maryland. Something for the rest of you to consider when making your plans to visit us.

Merry Christmas!

Well, it wasn't a Christmas like we're used to, but at least it was a heck of a lot better than Thanksgiving was. We were still able to participate in some of our traditional Christmas traditions - most of which centered around food, of course. We had egg nog shakes, a ham for dinner, and a glass of orange juice before opening presents. We also opened up Christmas pajamas for Tyler on Christmas Eve and even found a toddler book about the birth of Christ to read before going to bed.

As anyone who's had kids can attest, the best part about Christmas was seeing how excited Tyler got with all the presents. We got him a big boy chair and he climbed right on it, turned around and just smiled and laughed like it was the coolest thing ever. Of course that was just the beginning. After we got him past the idea that wrapping paper or boxes were the coolest thing ever, he just laughed and played all day with the basketball hoop, DVDs, football, and tractor tunnels. We got to enjoy watching him and capturing the moments on our new camera. Here are some pictures of our Christmas activities.

And here's a fun little video of Tyler making his first baskets.

We hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas as well. Sorry we couldn't be there to enjoy it with you but rest assured that we're keeping as many of the Christmas traditions as we can alive and well out here in Maryland.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…

If we’ve learned anything about moving to a new state it is that you have to form your own opinions based on your own experiences.  When we came out for our house hunting trip, the realtors all told us that snow really isn’t that big of a deal around here.  Well tell that to the 20 or so inches that fell on our doorsteps last weekend. 

Here’s what our parking lot looked like:

Here’s what my poor motorcycle looked like (I can’t wait for a garage unit to open up):

All was not lost, however, since it gave us a chance to take Tyler out in the snow.  He wasn’t quite sure what to do with all the white cold stuff.  He just stood there at first and when Tag put him in the snow that was deeper than a couple inches the fun was officially over.  At least we got a cute picture of him:

Needless to say a pair of gloves have already been purchased for Tyler’s Christmas stocking. 

Speaking of which, we went out and almost finished up our Christmas shopping.  It should be a really good Christmas for Tyler as well as Tag & Thesha.  We’ll be sure to take lots of pictures for next week’s post.

In other news, we had our first doctor’s appointment since moving here for the new baby.  It was a little anti-climatic because they don’t do an ultrasound at every visit like they did at Circle of Life, but we at least got to hear the heartbeat.  Thankfully our next appointment (Jan 21st) will include the 3D ultrasound and give us chance to finally find out whether Tyler will get a little brother or sister.  We’ll be sure to keep you all informed.

Merry Christmas!

Serenity Now!

It's amazing what a couple of bedrooms and a few hundred square feet will do for one's demeanor. On Thursday we moved the stuff from the 1 bedroom apartment (700 sq. ft.) to the 3 bedroom apartment (1460 sq. ft.). Even though nothing else changed - we were still sleeping on a foam pad, we were still eating out, we still had most of our stuff in boxes, etc., it’s amazing what a difference it had on our attitudes. In fact, conditions were probably even worse that first night because we still hadn't moved the couch or the TV so there was no place to sit and nothing to do to relax. But like flipping a switch, Tyler now had room to play so he was happier, which meant Thesha didn't want to pull her hair out so she had a better attitude, which made me less of a jerk and I was actually nice to be around, which put Thesha in an even better mood, which meant we could sit and talk and laugh again (something that hadn't happened in a couple weeks). It was like a breath of fresh air. Then the rain let up long enough for us to be able to move in on Thursday and Friday which also improved our moods. Don't get me wrong, there are still some frustrations, but now we get frustrated and a little time goes by and we're laughing about it or we've at least moved on. It was so nice on Saturday to actually get Tyler's room set up and have at least one space that was completely unpacked and back to normal.

So now instead of constantly hearing "this sucks" at home we're constantly saying "little by little, it's coming together." By the way, whoever said "we can do anything for a few months" never had to try and stay in the microscopic apartment we were in for almost 3 weeks. Oh yeah, I think that was us. Well, we now know why they have to screen astronauts for their ability to spend extended time in a confined area. “The right stuff” obviously refers to their ability to not kill each other even though they’re living in a space the size of a closet.

In other news, we were finally able to make it to church yesterday which was another nice thing to check off the to-do list. We were happy to see that all of the auxiliary offices appeared to be filled, so we won't be called up immediately to anything crazy. It was a pretty small branch, though. When we pulled in there were only maybe 8 - 10 other cars in the parking lot. Even by the time we got to the sacrament there were maybe only about 75 people there. One of the sisters we were introduced to said it best when she said, "it's a nice little branch."

The best news, though, was that there was another couple about our same age (maybe a few years younger, but hard to tell) and they had a little boy that was only two weeks younger than Tyler. We hung out with them most of the time and the boys seemed to have fun together. They invited us to dinner next week and Thesha and Tyler to their semi-weekly play-date with some of the other parents/kids in the branch. So needless to say it was a pretty good experience. There were a lot of Utah transplants, which we expected, but a handful of people who have either been there a long time or are from there. It will be interesting to start getting to know people in the branch which we'll have another opportunity for this Saturday at the branch Christmas party. Normally we've only gone to those if we absolutely had to, but we're trying to be better about being proactive and friendly in our new surroundings.

The better-est news of all... we actually ate dinner at our own kitchen table last night. I know that doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but when you've been eating out for every meal except maybe a bowl of cereal in the morning a nice home cooked meal really put a smile on our faces. Then tonight for family night we moved the boxes out of the way and put up the Christmas tree and decorations. We even put on some Christmas music and drank some hot chocolate. The irony was that while we are finally starting to feel at home, the title of the CD that helped set the mood was titled “Home for the Holidays.” Go figure.

We’ll post some Christmas pictures of Tyler by the tree soon. We didn’t quite have it done by bed-time so it’ll have to wait until later.