Merry Christmas...

from our house




to yours!

Splish! Splash! Tyler loves taking a bath!

Now that Tyler can sit up, he's loving taking baths and splashing.
Forget the toys, the water is where it's at!
(If you look closely, you can see beads of water on him from his splashing.)





Here is the "make-shift Speedo" version.

"Tooth and Nail(s)"

Quite often Sunday morning finds me in front of the TV watching the Mormon Tabernacle's weekly "Morning and the Spoken Word" program and wrestling with Tyler to cut his sharp little fingernails.

This morning was no exception. There we were listening to the Christmas program--me with a death grip on Tyler's little hand and him squirming to get free--when all of a sudden I was BITTEN on my hand!

Unbeknownst to me, Tyler's first tooth had sprouted through his gum. And it did what teeth do best--bite!



Although the above picture doesn't show his tooth, it does show how he scrunches his little nose up sometimes when he smiles.

Cause and Effect

Cause:

A delicious blend of rice cereal and peaches.



Effect:

Christmas Concert

This past week has been busy as I've helped the 4th graders get ready for their Christmas concert. I love this time of year in the elementary schools. There's just so much energy and excitement. And there's nothing like the sound of 125 children singing Christmas songs. I wish I had a little video snippet for you to hear, but I don't. Here's a picture of (most) of the kids (with their parents' heads in the way. I just couldn't get back far enough to get all of the kids sans parent heads.)

Christmas Treats

I got the idea of decorating baby formula containers from here. So I started washing and keeping Tyler's old containers. I didn't decorate them as cute as Stephanie did in her blog, but keep in mind that I was dealing with a limited amount of Christmas paper in my possession to go with the gold lids, (plus I'm just not as crafty as Stephanie).



So once the cans were decorated, I was faced with the dilemma of what to put in them. Depending on the day and week, the cans got filled with caramel popcorn...



pumpkin cookies...



or Rice Crispy treats and sugar cookies.

Ta-da!

Tyler has accomplished two more things this week.

One-he can sit by himself now.

(I couldn't decide which picture I liked the best, so here's all 3 of them.)





Two-He goes to sleep at night on his own now.

(I don't have an actual picture to document this accomplishment, so I'll insert a "file photo." Tyler was 18 days old in this picture.)

Thanksgiving

We went to visit Darrell's family in California for Thanksgiving and had such a great time. Alas, I forgot to take our camera, but thanks to Darrell's mom, we have a record of our fabulous days in sunny California.

Of course, the main star of the weekend was Tyler. (It's sad but true that parents take back seats to the cuter, smaller ones. But we're OK with that, really.) Here is Tyler with his aunt Brenda, cousin David and cousin Jeff.




Darrell's grandma Nellie just loves this little guy.



We had a YUMMY Thanksgiving dinner at Brenda and Steve's house.




We missed not having Brenda and Steve's son Matthew with us, but we got to talk to him on the phone. He is in the Coast Guard. I tried to copy a photo of him from another site, but it wouldn't work. So just imagine a handsome Coast Guard guy with a big heart and a great personality.

We're so grateful Tyler got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa.




Tyler loved, loved, LOVED the exersaucer.



The weather was so nice while we were there and we took advantage of it by going for walks...



which put Tyler to sleep.



Darrell has such a great smile, but it is very elusive when it comes to pictures. So, here we finally got one of Darrell's great smile, but only with me tickling him. (Sigh!)



Thanks again, Carol and Wayne, for such a great time. We can't wait to go back soon! We love you!

Happiness

Happiness is hanging a 3rd stocking this year.



Happiness is decorating the tree Saturday night with Darrell while holding Tyler in one arm because he REFUSED to be on the floor. And then sitting as a family in front of the tree and having Tyler fall asleep in my arms.



Happiness is watching the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional on TV with my family and having my cute husband surprise me by bringing me a cup of hot chocolate.



Happiness is FINALLY having snow to go along with my Christmas music.



Life is Good!

Bouncy Crawler Boy

Tyler is adding to his ability to "Move it! Move it!"

He loves jumping in the jumper. (I think he secretly likes a change from being stuck on the floor.)



After mastering rolling on the floor (which got him around, but not necessarily where he wanted to go), Tyler has found a new way to pinpoint his target. He is perfecting the Army Crawl. He throws one arm out in front of him, scrunches up his knees and propels himself forward. He's actually getting quite fast.



One of his conquered quests: the boing-y door stop.






By using his new skills, he was able to follow me to another room today.
(Heaven help me!)

Facebook

So, last week I signed up on Facebook. I'd heard about it, but wasn't sure if it was like MySpace (which kinda has a bad rap). Well, after Darrell signed up and told me about how he was able to be in touch with some friends from our old singles ward, I thought I'd give it a try.

And now I'm totally loving Facebook. Not only have I been able to be in touch with "recent friends," I've also been able to find out what's happening in the lives of high school friends, college friends and mission friends. Perhaps my best "find" out of this whole thing is being in touch with many of my old fourth graders. It's so weird to see them all grown up. At least 3 are married, one has a baby and tons of them are in their last year or two of high school or they're already in college. Perhaps the thing that does my heart the most good is to see that my 4th graders are just as good as adults as they were as kids. They love the gospel and they're making great choices in their lives. I love it!

So, for those of you still not signed up on Facebook, go ahead give it a try. I think you can just go to Facebook.com to sign up. Or just e-mail me and I will send you an invitation to be my friend and you'll get signed up from there. You just never know what friends from the past will "show up" again in your life.

What's Tyler Up To?

What's life like for a 6-month old?

Well, on one not-so-distant day, you would have found Tyler...

playing with anything left on the floor in his reach



eating




laughing and reaching for the camera



playing with his activity blanket



sleeping



razzing




entertaining himself while Mom tried to get stuff done



playing with the plastic thingy that Mom gave to him so he wouldn't grab her scrapbooking papers



screeching



making a mess and playing in it



kicking anything he could



and being a happy boy



As Darrell says, "It sure is tiring being cute all day!"

Pee-Pee Teepees

One day during my pregnancy with Tyler, Darrell and I went to Motherhood Maternity to buy some maternity nylons or something like that. As we were waiting to be checked out we came across these pee-pee teepees. The packaging said "Pee-pee teepees for the sprinkling wee-wee." We didn't buy them at the time, but we laughed every time we thought about them.

Well, the more we thought about them, and the more we heard stories about "sprinkling wee-wees" on little boys, the more we thought about actually getting some. So, next time we were in Motherhood Maternity we purchased a set of our very own.

Fast forward to when Tyler was born. Much to our relief (or was it disappointment???), we found out we didn't really need the pee-pee teepees. Tyler rarely sprinkled during diaper changes, and the occasional time he did, well, it wasn't really that big of deal.

Well, I sure could have used a pee-pee teepee this morning at 4:45 a.m. Tyler woke up crying so I got a bottle for him and decided to change his diaper so he wouldn't soak his jammies and bedding. Let's just say that before I could even think about grabbing one of those dusty pee-pee teepees, Tyler had sprinkled on the wall, his clothes, the changing table, the laundry hamper and his hair (at least he missed his eyes). I just grabbed the closest thing nearby--a burp rag--and covered the little sprinkler up. And as you can imagine, cleaning up pee-pee in the "wee" hours of the morning really isn't all that fun. Aaahhh!!! Life with a sprinkling wee-wee!

Fabulous Fall Weather

The last couple of weeks we've had beautiful weather. Two weeks ago it was in the low 70's most of the week and this week was just a little cooler. It was perfect temperature to take Tyler for walks in the warm fall afternoons and enjoy the beautiful fall leaves. (I tried to get a picture of Tyler with the changing leaves, but I didn't realize the place I stopped to take a picture had a crappy yard, so I've tried to crop the picture to take out the crappy yard and now the whole picture looks silly. I'd go get another picture, but now almost all of the leaves have fallen. So just imagine that this picture is of Tyler beneath a tree with green, yellow and bright red leaves. As you can see, it really wasn't that important to Tyler because he was enjoying some zzzzzz's. Sigh!)



This weekend Darrell and Tyler spent some time out in the back yard listening to the BYU game on the radio.



Then Darrell took Tyler for a walk and he came back fast asleep.

Halloween

Tyler was un-BEE-lievingly cute in his first Halloween costume!





I took him trick-or-treating to a whopping 2 houses.



Earlier in the day Tyler enjoyed playing with the Halloween baskets.





Here's Tyler being very patient while Mom plays a "trick" on him.