- So a few days ago I was trying to translate popular songs into kid songs which I DO NOT do very well. Why is it that I can sing every word when the song is playing, but can’t remember anything acapella? Anyway, I was singing the Beatles “Hey Jude”, but singing “Hey Boo” to Tyler. So now, when I sing that first line, Tyler will say/sing back “Hey Boo”. It is the cutest thing EVER! Chris and I both love it and sing it to him all the time just to hear him repeat us…

- We signed up Tyler for a music class. We got in a great deal where the class was half off because the were not filled up. Tyler loves music and I have felt bad because I don’t feel I do very much to expand on that. And I am sure Tyler is pretty bored with “Isty Bitsy Spider”. We will get a whole songbook and CDs for the home and car. My other friends did the class this week and had very positive things to say about it. I can’t wait!!

- Throwing the food. If you need a clue that Tyler is done with eating, just wait for all the food to start going over the edge. Some days, instead of signing “all done”, he prefers to play and empty his tray this way. It drives me crazy to be honest, but I am glad that we have dogs, so I don’t really have to clean up the floor - they do that part.

- Sesame Street Clubhouse fun. So Chris has a bunch of his old toys and a few have been gems with Tyler. Specifically the Bristle blocks and the Sesame Street Clubhouse. He loves to take the little characters and put them down the slide, inside the house, or through the little see-saw door in the roof. This is the first toy I have seem engage Tyler’s attention for a good 10 minutes. This is the kind of toy I have been looking for. It has so many features for him to explore and some that he will also grow into. I will have to post a pic soon.

- So Tyler points at me and says “ma ma” now. Granted in a situation where he just wants me, he reverts to “daddy”, but it is coming. Yes, I am getting excited - I like hearing “ma ma”…. He was also calling my Dad “pa pa” yesterday. Since my Dad is going to be with us for a week, I have a feeling he will have that down soon.

My last day of work. In 4 hours I walk out on the workforce for a while. There won’t be any fanfare here at work which is fine by me. I would rather spend the day posting some blogs, sending a few emails and just having the day pass as normally as any other.

It is surreal to some degree as I have held some sort of job since I was 16 years old. I perceive a lot of my woth through my job and staying at home always had me concerned that I might be sabotaging my ability to return to the workforce and get a good job.

I realize now that instead of a hinderance, I need to empower myself. I need to look at all of the life lessons that I am learning everyday and skills that will translate well back into the workplace and life in general. It really has to do about confidence in myself and my abilities. Just having to train someone else to do my job has been a confidence booster and I realize just how much I know and how much I am able to contribute to an orgnanization due to me broad range of skills.

I have been so blessed in my life and am further blessed with the ability to even have this choice and I husband who supports it. He was so sweet this morning as he said he was really excited for me and thought I would have a lot of fun with Tyler and that hopefully the good days will outweigh the bad ones. And I think they will. I love this age because we can have so many adventures together.

I still plan to blog as much as possible. So many things happen everyday and if I don’t capture them here, I have this fear they will be lost forever. Some things are small and so easily forgotten.

Well, TGIF. Next week I am terming my “project work week” because if you saw all the appointments on my calendar, you would not call it a “week off”. I have managed to schedule in a massage and pedicture though, so I am taking a little “me” time. OK, enough about me, I need to post some Tyler updates…

What Blew Through This Morning

What a crazy morning weather-wise!! I kept waiting for us to lose electricity since the lights were blinking so much. In a short amount of time our street was flooded. It was thundering and lightening like crazy. When it thundered we would say “boom!” to Tyler, so he started saying “boom” when it would thunder. It was pretty cute!

Okay, that may sound a little dire, but when you spend a majority of your time outside with your child, it can make like life a little hairy. Especially if you have a child standing at the door constantly asking to go outside…and not understanding why the dogs get to go, but he can’t.

I have it easy right now since Tyler is still in daycare for part of the day. However, it doesn’t take long for him to get bored in the house, so I am usually calling other mamas trying to figure out a rain-out plan for the afternoon. Right now, we are all trading houses, so our babies can have some new scenery.

It is so hard because Tyler is not yet at that age where he wants to spend time building blocks or playing intently with toy sets. He more or less wants to explore and practice all his new skills. And after exploring the house a few times, he is done.

I am really looking forward to trying more arts and crafts will Tyler. I expect it will take some time for him to get into them, but I plan to spend more time introducing him to that stuff when I am at home. Once he is older and can play imagination games, that will help to. We could always spend our afternoon having an indoor picnic and campout….

I had mentioned in an earlier post about the extra charge at the guesthouse we stayed at in Fredericksurg. And although that detail got my goat, I would still highly recommend their place. For a couple wanting a nice getaway, it would be perfect. You have the place all to yourself and for the price they offer an impressive amount of amenities - tons, and I mean tons of snacks, lovely bathrobes, tons of coffees and teas, and a lovely continental breakfast. And the sunsets you can watch from the property are georgous!!

Oh, and the heart-shape tub is not as cheesy as I thought it would be. I kind of “get it” now. Each person has a place to recline - makes so much sense!

So if a couple (sans baby) wanted to get away, this is a great place!

Oh, fogot to mention, there was no more vomiting after that night. He did have some mild diarrhea Friday, but that was about it. He is fine. We still have no idea what caused all of that, but are very relieved that it was short-lived.

…..some really good stuff on both ends with some crappy stuff in the middle

Ya know it is so easy to let crappy stuff overshadow what was otherwise a really nice weekend. Allow me to recap.

Saturday
Tyler woke up in a spectacular mood. We headed to Einstein’s and had a great breakfast. Tyler LOVES eggs and was chowing down most of my sandwich!! After that we headed to Fredericksburg. Tyler snagged a nap on the way up. We got to our guesthouse and were really pleased with the accomodations. We went to Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park to check out a nature trail there. At the park, there is a large pond with ducks swimming around. Tyler loved seeing real ducks (one of his favorite words)and later was saying “quack, quack”. It was so cute! The trail we took was ho-hum, but it was so great to be out. The park is adjacent to a small airport, so planes were constanly taking off. Tyler loved watching the planes - he kept saying “plane, plane”! In addition to construction sites, I think small airports would be another fun destination for him.

Then we headed into town for some ice cream and directions to a scenic drive we had biked last year. Chris and I both got ice cream cones and let Tyler have several tastes from both of our cones. He likes ice cream for sure! :-p We went to do the scenic drive and considering that we were in the car for like an hour - Tyler was a complete angel just smiling and being silly! We are so totally blessed to have a car baby. Chris hopefully got some good early bluebonnet shots and we enjoyed the drive. After that we listened to Texas lose their tourney game on the radio and headed back home. We watched a georgous sunset from our guesthouse.

Begin crappy part….
Three things comprised the crappy part:

1.) Because Tyler was 16 months old, they owners of the guesthouse informed us that they would have to charge a $25 extra person charge for Tyler. For whatever reason, that really angered me. Sadly not at the time, or I would have argued more about it. I plan to email them today about it. I don’t want to go into my arguments because I stewed about it for over a day and am done with that.

2.) It took a little over an hour for me to get Tyler to sleep that night. I guess he was just wired from his exciting day. That really wore me out. Still Chris and I enjoyed a bath and I had some tea before going to bed.

3.) We all had a terrible night’s sleep. I was stewing about #1, so that kept me up. Chris had trouble falling and staying asleep. And Tyler was pretty restless as well and at one point was up for about an hour. We all woke up tired that morning - you could just tell that none of us had gotten a decent night’s rest. Of course, I paid a premium for “deluxe” accomodations (and was now paying an extra $25) and that king-size bed hoping to net us all a fabulous night of rest. I learned my lesson on that one….

Sunday - Crapiness Redeemed
We got ourselves up and moving and headed out to Enchanted Rock. This time instead of going up to the top, we hiked around e-rock. Chris and I both agree that the scenery is way better this way. The weather was nothing short of amazing that morning. The temperature was cool and the breeze was brisk. It was nature’s coffee I tell you! We had a wonderful hike and Tyler enjoyed it was well (he hung out in the sling). Chris got shots of cactus flowers in bloom which he hadn’t encountered before, so he was pretty psyched. We enjoyed some lunch and headed home. Tyler crashed out pretty quickly.

At home
Chris got a few things done when we got hom and so did I. We had Tyler outside while Chris was washing the cars. Tyler loved the water and we are sure he will enjoy playing in the sprinklers this summer. We capped off the evening with a quick burger at Brentwood Tavern. Thankfully, Tyler went down pretty easily when the night was over.

All in all it was a really nice weekend. Tyler was an angel and we got to do a lot of fun things! He has been so smily and silly lately - his smiles keeps smiles on my face all day! Attitiude is everything and yesterday I realized that I really need to NOT let a few unpleasant things ruin what was otherwise a really good time for our family.