No reason....

Just thought we'd share some recent pics of our T-Man.

Lacey's "Stinkies"

So, after explaining why we went with a flamingo theme for L's birthday, we forgot to include a picture of her with her best friends; she has a mama "didi" and a baby "didi". As you can see in this picture, L thought the mama didi's teeth needed to be brushed.

These stuffed animals are essentials for L to fall asleep and sometimes calm down after a tantrum. She lights up when she sees them and will sometimes stop what she's doing to go and find them if they're not in eye sight. It may be hard to believe, but we've washed these flamingo's on a weekly basis. Regardless, they always end up super dirty, but we'd never ever get rid of them and ironically we'll be sad the day L decides to give them up. Inevitable, but for now, we treasure them and what they mean to our little girl.

Lacey's 2!

I can't believe it. My baby is 2 years old! In most ways, the time has absolutely flown by. But in other ways, since I can hardly remember my life before her, I can't believe it has only been 2 years. We had her party yesterday. Lacey's Nana and Papa as well as her Aunt Heidi and her cousins Becky and Jacque were all there. We took Lacey to get professional pictures taken (the framed one on the wall is from that), then Dave decorated the Dining room with pictures of Lacey from the past 2 years. We also started a tradition this year. We decided to each right our kids a personalized, individual letter to them on every birthday. I wish we started last year, but oh well! We also decided to include the grandparents. I loved reading the letters from Dave and the Grandparents and I know Lacey will treasure these letters when she is older.

We decided to have a pink flamingo-themed party. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but we got pink flamingo balloons which we put everywhere, had a pink flamingo cake, flamingo streamers and had pink plates, plasticware, napkins and cups. We ordered party platters from Chik-Fil-A and everyone ate well! The reason why we chose a flamingo theme is because, since the age of 6 months, Lacey has been totally, completely, unabashedly attached to a pink flamingo stuffed animal. She sleeps with it, eats with it, travels in the car with it -- basically where Lacey is, so is here "Stinky", which is the name we gave it for obvious reasons. A couple months ago, she started calling it "Didi." Whatever the name, it is her best friend, so what better theme than a Didi theme.

We decided to make it a birthday weekend and Dave and I took Lacey to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. It was great and Lacey LOVED it -- especially the bubble tubes and the dolphin show.

This is just because I couldn't resist adding a picture of T to the blog -- and it was taken at her birthday party, so it sort of fits in!

Lacey opening gifts with her cousins. Dave's brother and family moved to Japan a few months ago, but used to live just 4 houses down, so we are used to having them at the family birthday gatherings. They were there in spirit and here is Lacey opening their gift. We love you, Lacey!

Mundane

By the way, I'm not using "mundane" in a negative sense; I know it can tend to have that connotation. But I set a goal at the beginning of the year to post a blog weekly on both our family website and my dietitian website (www.mypersonaldietitian.blogspot.com), but here I am contemplating what to write about and nothing is coming to me. And that is when I realized, we really had a quite mundane week. We worked, ran errands, took care of kids... that about sums it up? It's not that I have to have an exciting week; I was perfectly fine with how this week went, but it still brings me back to, what do I write about? So, I am admitting it straight out, I am simply writing to write. I set a goal, so I am following through. One thing that happened this week is that Tanner turned 7 months old yesterday. Admittedly, that's not a big birthday, but it's worth acknowledging, right? Every month mark is worth acknowledging the first year because they change so quickly -- too quickly! So, here's a picture of my T-man. He cut his bottom two teeth this week and you can just see the tops of the teeth peeking out of his gums. He's also getting up on all fours and just rocking back and forth -- the crawling will start soon and I'm not really excited about that. I kind of like this immobile stage. I quite enjoy the option of being able to sit him down on the bathroom mat with a toy so that I can take a shower and know that he will still be there when I get out of the shower. Oh well, there's no stopping him!

By the way.... Go Ravens! (Hey, if I can't have a winning baseball team in my Cubbies, I might as well have a winning football team!)

My Butterfly

I decided to take the kids to "Kids Club" today. Once a month at our local mall, they sponsor a "Kids Club" where they have singing and dancing for the kids -- and today they also had face painting:) It's a really rainy, icky day, so it was the perfect activity!

Christmas in Chicago

We recently returned from a 9-day trip to my hometown. We had a great time! Here are a few of the highlights........ We took the kids to the Dupage Children's Museum. Tanner was a little young for it, but Lacey had a blast!

The entire family was together for Christmas except for Ricky, who is serving a mission in southern Texas. There are 15 of us now and it was so fun to be together for the holidays!

Lacey loved playing with her cousin Jace!

And we all had a great time playing Rockband, which my sister Lindsay and family got for Christmas. We all took turns doing drums, guitar, etc. Here is Lacey taking her turn on lead vocals :) I also had a GREAT time visiting friends. I was able to see 5 of my friends from high school and Dave was able to visit with one of his friends from college. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!