Bring On the Snow!

Tamlin was driving me a bit batty this morning. He's a bundle of energy and being cooped up inside because of weather is NOT A GOOD IDEA. When he's tired of cars, cars, cars, buses, truck, and cars, he begins to run laps through the kitchen, dining room, family room.

This got old pretty quick.

But not old enough for me to get out the playdough...yet.

So, I decided to bundle us up and head outdoors. I laughed in the face of the chilly temperatures and the light falling snow, especially after having lived in Minnesota for five years.

Tam was packed into boots, snow pants, snow coat, mittens, and hat. I was fairly confident he would stay toasty, even if he did lose a bit of mobility.

We got outside and Tam just wanted to keep walking and walking, all the way around the block.

He was quite the trooper! A few times he wanted

to just sit down and rest / watch the world from people's sidewalks. Otherwise, he was all for tromping on his own...

Until we hit an icy stretch of sidewalk. About the third time he nearly lost his balance, he wanted to be carried. Not the best idea for the pregnant lady with a shifted center of gravity to carry the 30+ pound squirmy kid on icy cement. I humored him for about 30 steps. Luckily, he was then easily distracted by chunks of ice from a plowed driveway. After about 3 attempts to pick up said chunk of ice, he insisted I pick it up and carry it for him. We ended up with 4 ice hunks total that made it back to our doorstep.

Once home, Tam decided to see how is cars worked in the snow :-)

Then, with rosy cheeks, we headed inside to a bowl of chili and grilled cheese sandwiches made by the hubbs!

Names?

Well, the date is set for the 1st Tuesday of the new year as our time for our next ultrasound...You know, the BIG ONE. Our little peanut will hopefully be feeling randy and cooperate by flashing the goods so that we'll know if it is a boy or girl.

In preparation for learning this big news, Brian and I have begun tossing around our favorite names for little one number 2. We are also leaning toward this wee one taking my last name too. If it is a boy, perhaps utilizing Thomas as the middle name or have two middle names...Lots of time to decide yet.

Girls

Brianna

Eve or Eva

Iris

Irene

Joselyn

Lydia (The tattooed lady)

Moonbeam

River

Rose

Roselyn

Skye

Boys

Adair

Aspen

Cleatus

Elric

Finnegan

Jeb

Jude

Quercus

Ricky-ticky
River

Storm
Tiberius - First name James :-)

Tristen


Oh...and I've started to waddle already...I'm only 17 weeks.

Halloween 2010

This year the weather was great for Halloween...but unfortunately, Brian had to work most of the weekend. And, I still felt that Tam was on the young side to actually go trick-or-treating.

We still celebrated and had a good time. Recall that I grabbed Tam's dragon costume earlier this year at a yard sale, so no sewing for me. He still looked uber-cute; he even would give a quiet roar when asked what a dragon says. Tam didn't seem to mind wearing it all, even the head-hood.

On Friday, Tam and I went to our church for their family-friendly Halloween presentation. This was a nice way to celebrate the holiday without wandering around outside in the chill and it allowed us to interact with other little-ones. First up was pizza dinner and cupcakes. Tam LOVED the cupcakes. He proceeded to lick the icing off slowly while interspercing squeals of "yum, yum" before devouring the cake. After dinner, the high schoolers set up and ran games for the younger students to play. Everyone won little prizes or tickets for cupcakes at the games, so no hard feelings for any of the wee ones. Tam really liked playing with the duckpond (quack, quack), but I think he mostly liked playing in the water. He also enjoyed the bean-bag toss. For this game, the kids were supposed to stand a yard or so away from a giant jack-o-lantern face and toss the beanbags into the gaping month. Tam stood right next to the grin and dropped the bean-bags in...and then clapped excitedly! Oh-well. He ended the night by just running around everyone and saying "hi." I'm glad that he had a good time.

On Saturday, Tam and I headed over to the mall to windowshop for Christmas ideas before the stores opened...and to let Tam run around among all the mall-walkers. For this, Tam was sporting his Halloween shirt and I had on my home-made skeleton shirt. Oh-yeah...check this shirt out!

Yeah, that's the new peanut's skeleton on there too :-)

A fellow mom-to-be posted this freezer-paper stenciling as a last minute costume and I totally had to try it. Hey...this is probably the final chance I'll get to wear it.

Our neighborhood trick-or-treating was tonight, but we go NOBODY at our door. This may have been because our next-door neighbor kids had stopped over the night before to show costumes so we were mostly sans kids tonight.

Lastly, we have learned that Tam's very into kit-kat bars.

Child of the Corn

Tam and I went to a local apple orchard and played in the corn maze. The weather was a bit cooler, but we had some fresh warm doughnuts and cider to heat us up. The corn maze was huge, so we only hung out at the beginning instead of walking through the entire thing. (Wandering around among the corn for 40+ minutes with a toddler just didn't sound like a good idea.)

Tam seemed to have a blast running around outside and playing peek-a-boo between the corn stalks. Additionally, they had a watch-tower at the start so that let visitors look out over the field and try to "spot" their friends. This also held tons of appeal for a wee-one for a few reasons : 1 = stairs, 2 = jumping up and down while high up above everyone else, 3 = can see the cars on the road from there.

All the fresh air and running caused Tam to totally crash into a deep nap as soon as was settled into the car seat for the ride home.

A little plea...

A fellow mom-blogger posted this plea to the Almighty...and I can TOTALLY relate with this pregnancy. Luckily, my OB gave me some drugs that are helping to cause the nausea to subside...with the side-effect of more tiredness.

"Dear God:

If you make my constant nausea go away and restore my normal appetite, bringing an end to these past 6 weeks of misery, I promise I will be like a totally different person. I will do all the laundry and take over the dishes job from DH. I will clean the microwave! I will mop the tile floor instead of just vacuuming it. I will clean out the things at the back of the fridge, and start making a nice meal for DH each night. I will take stuff to the recycling center instead of letting it pile up on the porch. I promise I will not abuse my newfound appetite; I will eat lots of greens and fruits and whole wheat things. I promise I will start working on that research article I was going to write with all my free time. I will sleep at normal hours like a normal person and I will be pleasant to people. I'll be nicer to all Your children, including the Tea Partiers, even the ones who are really pushing my buttons lately. I will go to the gym and work out moderately for optimum health. I will finish all those little projects I've been meaning to finish, like organizing and culling the CD collection, recording all my thoughts on entering motherhood in my journal, and updating my World History [Biology for me] course outline for next term.

And most of all, I promise I will no longer be up at 3 am lying like a beached whale on my couch [making] trips to the fridge in the vain hope of finding something I feel like eating.

Love, your daughter"

Tam trying on new shoes

Tam's always good at making us smile. For the past month or so, he has been a bit fascinated with...shoes. He plays with mostly my shoes, but a few of Brian's as well. He particularly likes to place two DIFFERENT shoes on his feet and try to walk around the house. This is quite hilarious if he chooses a high-heel and a flat to wear. It might be time to start a "dress-up" trunk for him to paw through and play in.