Fall

I love Fall!  It is my favorite season, with spring being a close second.  I remember in kindergarten our teachers asked all of us kids to draw a picture of our favorite season.  Then we told everyone why and the pictures were hung up on the wall.  A good 75% of the pictures were of summer and 25% were of winter because kids said they loved to swim in the summer or they liked playing in the snow (funny because north carolina never got that much snow).  I was the only one who drew a picture of fall because I said I loved jumping in the big piles of leaves.  Living in NC we had a LOT of trees and my dad would rake up all the leaves in the yard and let us kids jump in the piles.  I loved it.  Plus all the leaves turn gorgeous colors.  I also love the crisp Fall air, apples, and getting to wear jeans and sweatshirts again.  I just love Fall.  I put up my fall decorations in the end of August because I was so ready for fall and so done with summer.

Tacy loves climbing these stairs because of the banister

Plus this year, Tacy is finally big enough to actually be able to pick out her own pumpkin and go trick-or-treating.  Halloween is so much more fun with a baby.  

watching Daddy's softball game

Tacy's third tooth finally cut through on Monday so now she has one top tooth.  Hopefully the rest of them start to come in soon.  We no longer cut up bananas for her but instead just let her bite the banana.  Keeps her happy because she doesn't have to wait and less dirty dishes.  We just have to rotate the banana around since it is just her two bottom teeth biting off the banana right now.  

cuddling with Daddy cause her teeth hurt

Tacy is also walking better.  She still prefers to crawl but she does try and walk more.  She will stand up and take a few steps.  Sometimes she will take a lot of steps and walk across half the room.  I'm working on getting a good walking video.

We bought an entertainment center at Ikea last week.  We went looking for doors to put on our bookshelf and got doors plus this center.  It has lots of boxes to put stuff in and so now we are much more organized looking and were able to get rid of one of our little bookshelves.  Now we actually have room for additional movies/books.  Thank goodness IKEA has such affordable furniture.  

Tacy loves pushing our IKEA boxes through the store

I really hate working nights.  Random I know, but it's so hard especially the days when Brad works all day and gets home with only 15-30 minutes before I have to leave.  I like actually spending time with my family and it's hard not getting as much of that.  Saturday I actually had the whole day off (no night shift) and it was so nice to play with Brad and Tacy.  Hopefully one of the Saturdays we can go up and drive the Alpine loop and see all the fall colors and the beautiful aspens.  One day I will be done with school, Brad will be done with school and we can be working decent hours and be able to spend some time together.  One day.  Not for a while if Brad gets into grad school next year (which we really hope he does).  Oh well, we take the time we can as a family and make it work.

Oh School

Well, i'm two and half weeks into school.  Already I have no motivation to read my text books.  When you are supposed to read 5 chapters of small print from a large boring text book before your class it's really hard to find the motivation/focus to do so.  Luckily I'm not the only one in my class who isn't reading.  We did have a math test (dosage calculations) that we have to pass 100% and only have 4 times to do it.  I passed it the first time.  Luckily I enjoy math.  From what I heard from the re-take today there was one question that stumped almost everyone.  My first big test is thursday.  I'm a little nervous because it is the first test so I'm not sure what to expect.  I do know that the 6 different instructors for Weber State (for the 6 different campuses) are all pooling together questions for the test.  So we will see how this goes.  With the minimal teaching we get I'm a little concerned.

talking to herself in the bathroom mirror

Other than school, Tacy is now 13 months old!  Crazy how time flies.  Some new things about Tacy:

She LOVES books!  Tacy loves to read books and she loves to give them to me to read.  It's so fun listening to her read to herself and fun that she is not trying to rip books apart anymore.

Tacy loves onions.  Seriously.  My father-in-law has a huge garden and he brought in a bucket of onions from it and put it on the kitchen floor.  Well Tacy was fascinated with this bucket.  She tried lifting it by it's handle, then she discovered the onions inside.  First she would just pull them out and start to peel them.  Then she took a bite out of one.  Pretty funny.  But yesterday, we went to Outback and got a free blooming onion.  When Tacy had quickly eaten all the bread, we gave her some of my french fries (which she LOVED, more then McDonald's fries) and then we tried some of the blooming onion.  She loved it.  She even ate pieces of the onions from Brad and my salads.  No funny faces she just kept reaching for more.

biting the onion from the bucket

We are still working on teaching her to say "Please".  Sometimes she manages to say something close to please.  We are working on other words too, like bird, bear, etc.  Brad and I were talking about her talking last night and realized part of her trouble with saying words is that she only has 2 bottom teeth.  We tried talking without touching our teeth and it does not work so well with many words.  But she does talk a lot and makes a lot of different sounds and noises so i'm sure she will get there.

Tacy loves playing the keyboard piano and will push it along the ground while playing it or will pick it up and then drop it somewhere else.

Tacy doesn't like to sit normal in carts

Tacy is taking steps now!  She took two steps in church last sunday to get to a 20 month-old holding a bag a pretzels.  Shocked both Brad and I.  She will only take a max of 3 steps before falling to her knees, but she is getting there.  She is getting more confident and trying to step more now then a week ago when we really had to bribe her to try and walk.  She does still love to smile at me, shake her head, and get down and crawl.

Tacy may not say "no" but she does love to shake her head.  Smart kid.  I shake my head when I tell her "no".

Tacy will now give me my phone when I have the screen off to turn it on.  She always wants it so I will turn the screen off and hand it to her.  She just hands it back and smiles and will only take it back when I turn the screen on.  She does know how to awake the tablet screen.  And she still has a ridiculous nak for getting to the internet.  And she can scroll through stuff really well.  She has fingers made for touch screens I swear.

Her hair is getting longer.  I put some of her hair in a pony tail for church and it looked so cute.  Unfortunately Tacy moves a lot and from crawling under and over people and under benches, her pony tail quickly came out.  Oh well.  She does not like having hats on her head, so putting pony tails in is a little tricky.  She also does not love to wear shoes, which is probably my fault because I love being barefoot and have let her be barefoot practically all summer.  Now that she is learning to walk I'm trying to enforce shoes to go outside and she will just sit down.  We are working on it.  Stubborn girl.

Brad is still plugging along at work and being a great Dad.  Fall softball started up and Tacy and I were able to go to his game last week.  It was fun to watch him and Tacy loved clapping with everyone and was pretty good at watching her Daddy bat each time.  I love Fall and am loving the cooler weather and sunflowers.  All my fall decorations have been up for 2 weeks now.  I keep wanting more decorations, but with Tacy it is hard to have enough places high enough up to hold stuff.