One Little Speckled Boy

We thought Tate just had an angry heat rash last weekend. It was warm out. He'd been in his car seat and stroller a lot. It made sense. But then it didn't go away. It did get a little better for a couple days and then he woke up on Thursday looking like this. His whole body was covered with red raised bumps.

I took him into the doctor and she informed me that he is allergic to amoxicillin, the antibiotic we've been giving him for his ear infection. Great. So now he's taking a steroid and antihistimine for his allergic reaction.

It helps that he's been perfectly sweet all week. His skin looks so sad but it doesn't seem to bother him one bit. It's a little better today but still not gone. Poor little speckled boy.

Texas State Fair

Last weekend we went to Dallas. Glenn had a ticket to see the BYU vs. TCU game with some friends from Austin. I wanted to go to the state fair with some of my friends from Austin. The Jenkins were nice enough to put us up again, which made for some really good times, good conversations, and good food! (Thanks Liz and Sterling!) Tate had a blast playing with so many kids. (Molly, Lizzy, Tate, and Tori)Saturday morning we went to the fair. Glenn came for the first couple of hours before he had to be at the game. Our first stop was the petting zoo. As with everything at the fair it was over the top Texas style. This was no ordinary petting zoo. They had cows, goats, pigs, and tiny shetland ponies. But they also had camels, kangaroos, ostriches (which were really quite scary by the way. Its huge head would just suddenly dive violently at my hand holding the seeds. But who can pass up the chance to feed an ostrich?), a giraffe, and zebras. It was amazing! Tate had an ear infection last week and was kind of ornery all day. He still had a cough and started to get what we thought was heat rash all over his body (another story entirely). We just watched as it crept all the way up his face all day long. Poor kiddo was not at his best but we did our best to have fun anyway. Here's Glenn shading Tate from the sun. He was worried about little man.

A lot of things at the fair had me asking myself, "What person thought this up?" Like this enormous sculpture of UT and OU football players carved entirely from butter.

It was fun to spend time with some wonderful friends. We talked, wandered, and shared some great fried food, a Texas fair staple. They had fried everything: PB&J sandwiches, pickles, beer, s'mores pop tarts, club salad, margaritas, snickers bars. You name it and these folks deep fried it. We shared a piece of fried cheesecake and I must say it was delish.

We spent 5 hours there and still only saw about half of what this fair had to offer. I think we may go again next year. It was a fun little Texas culture event.

Play Dates

While in Utah we had several fabulous play dates. I went to the temple with Nanna and then she let us taker her out to lunch to a great little bistro in town.
Auntie Mallory drove down from Logan both weekends so we could do our long jogs together. It was SOOO nice not to have to get through those by myself! We did 9 miles the first Saturday and 8 the next. It was exhausting but so awesome. I felt pretty amazing the rest of the day knowing that I could make my body jog for 9 miles. I wish we could run our races together! It was so nice to have someone to talk to and endure with.
Cousin Mya came over one afternoon with paints to share with Tate. We went outside to paint on the sidewalk. Mya knew just what to do.

First the papers and then our feet got a brilliant treatment of Mya's artistry.

Tate was very content to find rocks in Nanna's garden and carry closed containers of paint around. I smushed his fingers in the wet paint once or twice but it distressed him so he mostly watched the mess unfold.

Mya and Tate got along famously at the beginning of our trip. Then Mya got a little tired of Tate's very physical affection. He just adores little Mya and wants to be constantly following her, copying her, and best of all hugging her. But since he outweighs her now and his hugs sometimes end with a tackle she learned really quickly that she wanted nothing to do with that! It got to be quite funny. Once or twice Mya would be crying about something else and then she'd really start to wail and we'd find out that Tate had gone over to her to try to comfort her with a hug and that definitely made it worse!

One afternoon we went to the Thanksgiving point Dinosaur Museum with Aubry, Mya, and Baby Sadie. It was a great time. There were lots of fun hands-on exhibits for the kids to touch and play with. The actual scientific concepts were definitely beyond their understanding but they loved to touch and throw things around and push all the buttons. Very cool.I love this picture of kiddo on his tip toes trying to figure out what is in there!

Mya and Tate climbing around a dino foot.

Mya's favorite part of the exhibit was this huge prehistoric turtle. She loves Crush from Finding Nemo so she calls every turtle Crush. This guy was huge Crush.

I tried to get Tate to play in the dirt at this cool erosion exhibit with sand and water but he was not alright with getting dirty on that particular day. Funny how he is dying to get messy directly after his bath or right before church or pretty much any other time I really don't want him to.

The Saturday before we left we went to Hogle Zoo with Nanna, Cody and Aubry and their girls, and Aunt Mallo too. It was so great to go with so many of us. There were tons of hands to grab, feed, and lift up the kids and also some of my favorite grown ups to talk to along the way. Here's Tate trying on Auntie Mallo's stylin' sunglasses in the car.

We had been at the zoo less than 10 minutes when Tate split his little forehead open. He was running to tell Uncle Cody about the monkeys he'd seen and he just biffed it. It was an awful sound hearing his head smack right into the asphalt. He was screaming and I picked him up and just waited to see where the blood was going to flow from. His head? His mouth? His nose? It took several seconds and then blood just started pouring down his face from a nice little cut in his forehead. Poor boy. I'm really lucky Aubry was there because I do not handle blood well. Especially my little babe's. I had a hard time looking at my little boy's forehead giving me a deep open smile. She ran to the first aid station and got Tate patched up really fast. He was completely fine after just a few minutes. I, however, kept a pretty good grip on him the rest of the trip. Here he is with Auntie Mallo sporting his own little rhino horn.

Aunties Aubry and Mallo holding Mya and Tate at the Rhino enclosure.

The highlight of the trip was definitely the tigers. We caught them in a very frisky mood. There were 3 or 4 tigers right near the windows and two of them kept wrestling with each other. They's get on their haunches then bat at each other with their huge paws then stand up and just tackle each other to the ground over and over. It was amazing. They are such huge, powerful creatures and it was stunning to see them up close like that. Tate kept saying, "Tigers, wrestle again!"

It's funny to hear things that I tell Tate come out of his mouth. I'm constantly telling him not to drink the bath water because it's yucky. Then this tiger gets in the water right in front of us at the zoo and starts drinking the water. Tate told him, "Tiger, no. Don't drink it. It's yucky!"

Tate, me, Aub and Mya watching the giraffes.

Sweet little Mya, obviously contemplating something very serious.
The zoo party. Aubry, Tate and I, Cody and Mom.

Now that I actually put write it all out I realize how much of what I do these days, and especially the special kid things I do with Tate are all about animals. I guess it's good because he loves animals right now. I just hadn't realized how many animal themed adventures we have!

Thanks for all the fun play dates family! Let's do it again really really soon.

While Daddy's Away...

Glenn went to work in Pennsylvania for two weeks so Tate and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity for a quick trip to Utah to visit family. Who wants to stay home alone? Not us! I'm so so glad that we took off while Glenn was away so we didn't sit here lonely and bored without him. We had a great trip and spent tons of time with some of our favorite people.

I may have to break it into a couple of posts because I took a ridiculous amount of pictures.

First Grandpa spent some time trying to brainwash Tate by showing him all of his dead animals. Up close. We have a running joke that Dad is going to get Glenn and Tate to be hunters like the rest of the boys in my family. I'm not for this, which makes the teasing all the more fun for my Dad.

This was their latest kill. They got back from a hunt the day after we flew in and Tate couldn't get enough of this dead deer head...much to his mother's dismay. He kept going to the garage door and asking to, "See a deer pease".

And some of the other spoils of the hunting garage...

Dad had to get a picture of Tate with "Bevo's Horns" for Glenn.

Next up was a trip to Cabellas. It's a huge hunting/fishing store and it has tons of dead animals and a huge fish tank. Kenzie kept telling Tate that he needed to see Cabellas, so then Tate started saying it too and asking us to take him to Cabellas. So we eventually all caved.
Tate and Mya playing some sort of shooting arcade. Oh dear. Notice the tongue stuck out in concentration.One afternoon Kenzie, Tate, and I headed over to Thanksgiving point to check out their petting zoo. Tate had a great time petting and feeding all the animals.

He was stoked at first that we got to feed the animals. A few of the bigger animals made him a little nervous. Seeing their huge heads coming at his little hand kinda freaked him out after a while and then he just wanted to watch them and left the feeding to Auntie Kenzie.

Tate got to go on his first pony rides! He never busted out a full grin, and seemed to be concentrating very hard on what was happening. He kept saying, "I ride Bullseye" (Woody's horse from Toy Story).

But we knew he loved it when he started sobbing when it was time to get off.

This might be my favorite picture of the day. Auntie Kenzie is just so sweet to Tate and he adores her. It was fun to have a little outing just the three of us.

Training

I'm still training for the half marathon. It's starting to get harder. More miles. Longer runs. Very very humid and sweaty. I miss my old neighborhood. It would have been easy to find long run courses there. This was what my old run looked like. Down paths and around parks. Lots of shade. Depending on the time of morning we got out we could see birds, squirrels, and bunnies. It was beautiful.

My neighborhood here is far less scenic. Busy streets, a couple of small neighborhoods and the freeway. We've seen some wildlife by the side of the road but I don't point it out to Tate unless I nudge it with my foot first, in case it happens to be dead already. I learned this lesson the hard way with a frog that appeared to be fine on our way out and was dead and covered with ants on our way back. I told Tate while we were jogging that we could stop and see it again on our way back home. When I saw how gross it was on the way back we just kept jogging past and he remembered all day that we didn't stop to see the frog again. Then there was a sad tiny turtle and the occasional uninitelligible mushes of gore...needless to say, it's not always a beautiful jog here.

My immediate neighborhood is less conducive to jogging long distances. It's so much easier to get Tate in the stroller and get my jog done with in the morning so we can play with Glenn at night but it is getting harder to do as my runs get longer. Basically there are two circles to run near my house and when you have to run them over and over in order to get the mileage in for my training schedule, it makes my already bored mind go nuts. Does anyone have some great running ipod music recommendations to keep my mind busy? There are so many family members who run do you have any suggestions for me at this point?

Well, those are my challenges, but overall I'm feeling good. I feel stronger and more confident in my training routine. This week it's a 4 mile run today, a 5 mile run on Wednesday, and an 8 mile long run on Saturday. Then cross training of some sort on Tuesday and Thursday. Those long runs are killer. I am feeling like the shorter distances are finally getting easier to knock off and now they're increasing too. Was I crazy to think I could run for 13 miles? Most days I feel like I can totally handle it. Some days I wonder.

Tate is a great sport to sit in the stroller and chill for increasingly long periods of time while I get my morning jog in. I usually let him listen to my ipod on my cool down. He loves it and as soon as I start walking he asks, "Music on?"

Then I carry him up the stairs to our apartment and let him listen to it while I stretch and stuff. The other day he just laid down and listened to the songs.

Speaking of the little man, here are a few more funny things he's done this week before I forget to record them:

- Tate was sitting in his high chair eating breakfast and talking to himself and I heard him say, "Tate, no. No TV ANYMORE." I tried not to laugh and then thought, is that really what I sound like to him?

- Tate kept asking me to see pictures of Mya on the computer while I was sitting at the desk the other day. I finally said, "Okay, we can look at pictures of Mya." I lifted him up on my lap and he whispered, "Oh I so happy!"

- Tate hugged me while I was cooking yesterday and then told himself, "Oh, so sweet."

- We're trying to work more with eating utensils. He's just shown no interest in them thus far so we figured we might as well avoid the mess for a little longer. Now, however, I figure we probably should encourage him to try. Thus far he's just used them to scrape and push things around, not actually try to get them in his mouth. Last night he pushed all his cheesy rice and broccoli off his plate and then picked up the sticky rice covered plate and put it on his head exclaiming, "It's a HAT!" Ah, so it will be a bath night eh Tate?

Mom, I singing!

Tate has just started to sing songs to himself. He really just repeats a couple of words or a phrase over and over but I think it's so sweet. He says little phrases from songs he hears on TV or songs I sing to him at nap and bed time and he says them really slow and drawn out. I love it. We haven't been able to get him to sing along with us yet when we are singing to him.

We went for a drive last Sunday and he was getting restless and ornery so Glenn and I started singing to him. Then we randomly stopped at the same word and Tate finished the phrase. We laughed so hard and kept doing it over and over. Then we tried to catch it on film.

Shop 'Til You Drop

This past Saturday I had a booth at the Shop Til You Drop Maketplace in Cypress. It's about 40 minutes from our place and it was an amazing show. There was a huge arena and adjacent conference room full of booths.
I paid the most money I'd ever paid for a booth at a fair but it looked like it was a good fair and it was very well advertised so I thought I'd take a chance. It was amazing. I made my booth fee back in the first hour and was really busy all day long. I kept having to move things around and refold things to make my table look full. I made three times what I've made at even my best craft fair thus far. Here's a picture of my little booth space.

People loved the cute pictures of my little nieces modeling my infant and toddler skirts.

It was so much fun! It was great to sit at my little booth and have people shop and tell me that they love the things I make. It was such a boost and so nice to know that if I find the right venue I can really make a good deal of money on my little "Tate's naptime" hobby.