This past weekend we got Tegan her first bed, the latest step in the ongoing Great Room Swap. Mike set it up last night, and Tegan is utterly thrilled. While she most likely won’t be sleeping in it for a good long while, (she’s very content sleeping next to Mom) Everett is happy to keep it warm for her until she’s ready. In the meantime, she keeps disappearing into the room to climb on and off, on and off, all with a proud, happy smile on her face.
My summer so far has not been an overwhelmingly relaxing one. There are stresses, and I haven’t slept in several weeks. Pictures like this though, remind me that I’m at least succeeding in seeing to it that the kids have a happy and carefree summer. For that, I am so thankful.
Though she’s walking (walking!) in this picture, I have a one-year-old who, as of late, requires being in my arms for 98% of the day, and within touching vicinity the other 2%. Which is fine… admittedly tiring, but fine. If that’s what she needs then I’m happy to give it to her. It just means that things like blogging (and oh, say, peeing) are currently taking a backseat.
Thankfully, I can share some of the excitement of this past weekend in pictures alone.
Second time up at bat:
Coming into home after his amazing HOME RUN! That’s his coach waiting for his high-five
The game ball he won for not only the home run, but also an incredible stop, taking a line drive off the chin, and shaking off an injured finger to finish out the game:
Proud boy.
We all wondered if she’d be toothless past age one, but she just got it in under the wire. These two beautiful pearly whites emerged about a week ago.
(Please disregard the food all over her face)
Filed under Tegan
One year ago at this time I was in the hospital, staring in awe at my 9 pound baby girl, all wide-eyed and chubby-cheeked. Our fourth baby, Tegan, was so highly anticipated that I did something I never said I’d do: I had an elective induction. Past due, and in non-productive labor for over a week, my body told me it was done. When my OB suggested we go ahead and help nature along, I barely wavered. I was so very excited to meet my baby!!
I will never forget the way I felt when we went into the hospital – promptly at 6:45 AM thank you very much. Excited, nervous, and ready. So completely and totally ready. We hadn’t found out the gender, a fact that the nurse found unbelievable, but having found out with all three boys (and knowing that this would be our last) we wanted to be surprised. And what a perfect, beautiful surpise she was!! I will remember that feeling for the rest of my life, that moment when they turned her over, that moment of suspension when we still didn’t know if we had another boy or a little girl, a Gavin or a Tegan. Oh how I wished we’d let the boys be a surprise as well!
Everyone always comments on how happy we must be that we “finally had a girl” after three boys. The stone cold truth is that we are happy that we have TEGAN. Boy or girl, it wouldn’t have mattered. But now that we know her, and from the moment we met her, we couldn’t imagine a more perfect addition. God knew exactly the baby to entrust in our care (just as he did the first three times!) and we couldn’t imagine life, or our family, without her.
So to you Tegan, on your first birthday….
I thank God for blessing us with you one year ago
I thank God for your big green eyes, and your huge, happy smile
I thank God for your sweet little voice, your deep belly laughs, and your ever-present sense of adventure
I thank God for your soft, curly hair, and the waterfall of ponytail on top of your head
I thank God for your chubby legs, and your puffy feet, and your squishy cheeks
I thank God for the way you adore your brothers, the way you dote on your daddy, the way you snuggle up to me at the end of the day
I thank God for the way you wave, and say hi, and scrunch up your entire body when you’re excited
I thank God that I get to know, one last time, how beautiful and perfect it is to nurse a baby – who’s fast becoming a toddler – and know that it is something special that only the two of us share.
We love you princess, more than you’ll ever know.
Filed under Tegan
Has it been only 9 days since my last blog? What a full and eventful 9 days it’s been.
First, I’m sad to report that we lost the praying mantises. 🙁 We still don’t know what went wrong, but every last one of them had died by the time 3 days had passed.
On a brighter note, on Friday we released our butterflies. It actually took some coaxing to get them out of their habitat (I think I was envisioning them just gratefully bursting forth as soon as it was opened) but they eventually found their wings – and their freedom – among the bushes in our backyard.
In other animal news, Paxton’s leopard frog tadpoles are still doing well, but Everett’s tadpole is… off. We can’t yet tell if he is dying or if he has just slowed way down because he is a critcal stage of his transition. I’ve been following the instructions, feeding him regularly (but not too regularly), keeping his water cloudy (but not too cloudy) etc. I guess all we can do now is wait.
We actually haven’t had a lot of time to think about butterflies and tadpoles lately anyway, because we’ve been busy visiting! Our good friends Doug and Erika were here for five days and we had such a great time. We hadn’t seen each other in six months so we had lots to catch up, necessitating lots of busy days and late nights… and in one case, staying up till 4 in the morning playing Wii, PS2 and baking cookies.
Our first order of business was going geocaching. We’d been wanting to do it forever, and were happy to finally have an excuse to go, and some willing cohorts to go with us. For the uniformed, geocaching is like a big treasure hunt game. You plug in some coordinates into a GPS, hunt for the cache – which is filled with little trinkets – sign the log book, take something & leave something, and re-hide it for the next person. It was a blast and it is now officially our new favorite family hobby. We can’t wait to go out and do it again.
We also went to the Phoenix Children’s Museum for the second time, and it was every bit as fun as the first.
Last, but most definitely not least, we celebrated both Spencer and Tegan’s birthdays in one big party on Saturday. Tegan loved spending time with her grandparents and aunt and uncle, and she had a blast opening her presents
But the highlight for Tegan, in traditional Tegan style, had to be eating and enjoying her first ever birthday cake. I have to note again, for the people who have not yet heard me say it, that the lamb cake was made from the very same cake mold that made my first birthday cake 34 years ago. I was so very excited to make it for my own daughter, and what made it even more special was learning from my Mom that she too had a lamb cake for her first birthday. Three generations of little lambs! She commented that my grandmother – who passed away 5 years ago and whom I still dearly miss – would be tickled to know that Tegan had a lamb cake too… and I know that she was.
Spencer loved his cake too
and his presents
and having a real life police officer to show him how to use his new fingerprinting kit
All in all, it was a great day, and a great week… with great family, and great friends.
I'm Jen... the shy, lost girl from the east coast who married at nineteen and eventually found herself - four kids later - in the middle of the desert. I like chocolate. You can read more about me here.
