21 mos old

This has been a pretty fun month for Tyler. Aside from having all of his new Christmas toys to play with, his Uncle Justin has been staying with us for the last 3 1/2 weeks and Tyler has gotten very close to him. 'Uncle' is usually the first thing he says when he wakes up in the morning and from his nap... it's really sweet. I know Justin has enjoyed this time with Tyler too and the past few weeks have been a small preview to what a great relationship those two will have over the years. I wish Justin was always this close by.

Let's see... I've been reminded this month that Tyler can NOT be trusted alone for two seconds (at least not in my bathroom!). We've had three incidents recently. Incident one: Tyler grabbed a black permanent marker and seriously went to town marking up the new tile in our master shower that Travis has been hard at work on. It took Tyler probably 10 seconds to put his artistic touches on the shower bench and it took Justin and I probably 30 minutes to scrub it clean using every chemical I have in the house. Incident two: Tyler decided to spray the mirror, sink, floor and himself with my hairspray. I don't even use hairspray, but it was left out from our attempts to get the marker off the tile. Uggg. Incident three: Tyler decided to give shaving a try after seeing his Daddy do it earlier in the day. I was actually in the bathroom with him (!) and turned my back for just a few seconds to start his bath water when he grabbed Travis' razor off the counter and attempted to shave! He ended up with two good cuts on his bottom lip and a pretty good scratch on his cheek. We obviously have to be more conscious of keeping things out of his reach. (Btw- he recovered fine from his shaving wounds)

He has added a couple of new shows to his TV watching: Barney & Friends and Thomas the Train, although we do limit how much he watches. If he had his choice, I think he'd watch Thomas all day! He went from having a strong interest in trains before Christmas to REALLY loving trains after receiving his Thomas stuff for Christmas to becoming OBSESSED with trains after I introduced him to the Thomas the Train cartoon. It's ALL he talks about. "Choo Choo" all day, even at 5:45AM! He always wants to watch choo choo, he wants to read his choo choo books, he plays with his choo choos, he's very aware of crossing over the choo choo tracks and he has an ear for the train that's a couple of miles away like you wouldn't believe! I usually can't even hear it until he points it out to me. Although it's pretty exhausting, it's still fun to see him take such an interest in something.

I think I will soon give up on trying to keep track of the words that Tyler is starting to say because he says so much now. He repeats something I say everyday or he will surprise me just by naming something. While I can remember, here are some of the new words he often uses: help, share, nice and not nice, no-no and stay towards Cooper, apple, strawberry, feet, mouth, pull, cat, home, diapee, and he will say the various bath toys he has: duck, fish and boat.

He is literally changing everyday into this little boy with spunk and attitude and I just can't believe how fast it is happening.

Our 'photo shoot' didn't go so well this time around. He was absolutely not in the mood to take pictures until he was able to take one with his Daddy. Yeah... yeah... that's sweet, but I had already gone crazy from trying to take 50 pictures prior to Travis coming to the rescue.









And for being a butt head and not indulging Mommy with tons of cute, smiling pictures- take this, Little T! haha. Mommy always gets the last laugh. ;-)

Tyler & Uncle

Tyler & Uncle Justin having fun at the park!



















And at the house~

Thumbs up

Uncle Justin taught Tyler how to do thumbs up and now it's thumbs up everywhere... and it's really cute!

Fun in the Tub

Just some silly fun in the tub and me continuing to try and catch some of Tyler's little words on video.





I asked for splashing and boy, did I get it. So much that I ended up having to shut the camera off and get him out of the tub because he thought it was hilarious to splash the water out on me along with everything else!

Visits from Grandparents

Since Justin is staying with us, my mom and dad came over to visit. My dad spent the day with us this past Saturday and my mom spent the day with us yesterday (although, we all know the real reason they came over was to see Tyler... sorry, Justin). ;-)

1/16














1/18

'Night Night'

When I walked into Tyler's room, I found him in his chair, curled up with a blanket and reading his book. It was way too cute!

National Championship Game

Here's Tyler showing some UT spirit during the National Championship Game. Unfortunately, as you probably know, UT lost the game and Travis was not very happy about it. At one point while UT was down, he picked up Tyler's sippy cup and threw it at the wall and yelled! Of course it was in a joking manner, but guess what Tyler does?? Yep, he picks up his sippy cup and throws it at the wall while yelling. haha! Boys and their football! On a happy note- today was the first time that I ever made homemade chili and it turned out really good! Justin was here as well and it got a double thumbs up from everyone! :-)








Remembering when we went to California to watch the Longhorns play at the Rosebowl. Jan. 1, 2005~






And then when they won the National Championship. Jan. 7, 2006~

Happy New Year!

Wow- it's 2010! CRAZY! We didn't do anything special, although I consider hanging out with my hubby and sweet baby pretty special. We only hung out together until about 11pm though and then Travis fell asleep while putting Tyler to bed and left me to ring in the New Year all.by.myself (despite my three attempts to try and wake him up). I've been giving him a pretty hard time about this. haha. It was still a fun evening. I watched the ball drop on TV, enjoyed a firework show in the freezing cold with Cooper and our neighbors and sipped champagne while watching a silly MTV show. Good times!

We have a lot of goals for the New Year. We are hoping to start saving my paychecks and try to learn to live on Travis' alone. We are going to try to become debt free of our credit cards. And, hopefully, if we can manage those things, by the end of the year, we will be in a position to purchase some type of income property with my brother or at least be in a financial position to start looking and then wait for a good deal. We still have several projects to wrap up on our house and I'm excited because Travis and I have both started the New Year motivated to get that done! After 3 1/2 years of not having a master shower, we FINALLY picked out tile for it and are about to finish that up. We just installed a beautiful bath vanity in our 1/2 bathroom and that room is finally complete and I've been painting and updating our master bath cabinets all week. So far, we're off to a really good start!

I hope 2010 brings us, as well as all of our family and friends a lot of happiness! Happy New Year!