Goodbye Big D, Hello Big A

Well, today is our last day in Big D - we are excited to see our Daddy/Husband soon - the movers arrived there today with most of our stuff - long story short - the came with a 30' trailer that we told them not to bring because we have too much stuff - they brought it anyway - and low and behold, our stuff did not fit!!! So they are coming back next week to get the rest of our furniture & boxes - gotta love movers.

Austin & I leave the KKG Chateau in the morning and hope to make it to Big A in one day - but we will only drive as far as we can and then we will rest if we need to, and if it takes 3 days, so be it.

Austin has started waving and saying "bye-bye" now - it is the cutest thing - but he has not yet figured out when to do it, so you ask him to wave bye-bye and he does it a bit later. Like last night at dinner with our friend Sandra, he was flirting with her and a little girl at another table, so I said can you wave at her, and he did not. He then turned around, faced the empty tables behind us and waved up a storm - so needless to say, we are working on the whole waving thing!!

Hope all is well with you all and new pictures are on the way! Bye-bye Big D!

Normalcy

We have finally begun to feel a bit "normal" again - the KKG Chateau where we have been staying has apparently put a sleeper hold on Austin, so he sleeps through the night every night!! He is now officially a walking little dude - at daycare they said he hardly crawls at all anymore, he just teeters around walking like a big kid. It is funny to watch him walk as he kind of looks like a gorilla walking over to pounce on his next victim - he holds his hands in the air on each side of him and then walks with his legs spread wide and has a goofy little grin on his face - it is pretty darn cute!! We are eager to show our daddy how well we can walk. He has also started pointing at everything and saying "buh" and/or "bip" which alternately means - sky, car, construction, bird, Uncle Scott, picture, carpet, wall, ......

Alas, I still cannot post new pictures, so another old one will have to do - but soon we will be in Atlanta and can post pictures again!

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of our little dude - he thinks he is the cutest!

Have a great weekend - we will be running around getting things done during our last weekend in Big D

Too Perfect for Words

Last night we checked into Chateau KKG and I think Austin might have finally remembered what it was like to sleep like a baby!! He went to bed at 9:30pm and did not wake up until I went in and got him at like 7:15am!!! Now that my friends has not happened since we moved out of our house into the hotel a mere 6 weeks ago!!!!!!!!!!! Thus his momma feels like a new person. We will be forever indepted to the KKG family!

When I went in to get Austin out of bed this morning, he was in his typical pose, so I will use this old picture as my pic for today - he loves to "hide" from the mornings - this is from our house a few months ago - you can tell that sometimes you just have to bury your head to face the day ahead of you.

Hope your day is as great as ours will be!!!!

Madison & her brother

We are now back in Dallas and had just the most wonderful weekend with Grandad T, et al. I have tried to post more pictures but it is just not working, so I will again use some older ones. There are some of you out there who have wondered why I used Austin and Maddie as my blog address, but never seem to include Maddie in my posts or pictures, so here is a picture of Maddie, taken by her Uncle Kevin. Madison is currently living with Eric's parents in Atlanta and I miss her TERRIBLY!!!! Isn't she a cutie?!?!

Anywho, here is another picture of AC as well. We move into my girlfriend's house tonight and will get to play with her son some as well before they leave on vacation. It will be like we are in college again, but this time with husbands and kids...

Becoming a Republican

Whew, too much to write, therefore we will just have a photo-journal.

When we first got here we went by to see Great-Grandmom H - she is my mom's mom and we had lots of fun playing with her drum and showing her how we know how to walk.

In this picture we are showing Grandad and Lynn how we know how to walk... but wait there's more

We then went to a baseball game with our Uncle Scott, Aunt Natalie, Cousin Carter, Grandad and Lynn - we saw lots of fun things..

and then...we got a haircut - we went in as a long haired hippie boy and came out as a Republican..

Much more to come later - hope you have had a great weekend!

Refreshed & Mobile

It is amazing how much better you feel after you have a day to just relax and hang out with your kiddo. Austin & I had a fun day yesterday and are getting ready to go see Grandad T for the weekend. Austin has gotten so caught up in the excitement of getting to see his Grandad that he has officially started walking! He was taking a few steps to me or to an object (bed, table, etc.) and then kind of diving towards the object, but yesterday he stood up in the floor and took about 6 or 7 steps and walked on over to a stationary bicycle and then turned around and clapped for himself - obviously declaring that he was a walking machine and proud of it!! So, next time you see the little dude he will walk on over and say hi instead of crawling or being carried by his mom. But, this also means that life as I have known it just got even harder!!! This is a picture from his first steps walking with the support of his toy - but now note that there will no longer be a toy necessary - YIPPEE!!

And just a picture to make you laugh!! This was from a few months ago right after his bath with dada.

This will hopefully be the last of the "old" pictures and the future ones will be "present-day."

Blooming July

Well, we (Austin & I) must say that we had the best night of sleep last night that we have had in almost a month!! We "checked into" Chateau E yesterday to pet-sit for my co-worker and I can honestly say I had forgotten what it felt like to sleep in a real house - too excellent for words! We are there through Friday when we go to my dad's house for the weekend - which will mean new pictures will be posted as we will use Grandad T's computer. This is a picture of Grandad T and his grandsons from his 60th birthday back in April. Time flies when you are having fun!!

Austin had to take his bath in the kitchen sink last night so I have some super cute pictures of him washing dishes in his bath water - can't wait to put those up for all to see - I am such a multi-tasker!!

Anywho, someone's Dad sent someone's Mom some flowers today that made her office beautiful!! We miss our Dada!

Have a Happy 4th of July!!

Vagabonds

We officially moved into our car today - mind you, a Jeep Liberty gets smaller and smaller feeling the more stuff you pile in - but it is going to be okay - we start house/pet sitting today, so we will take out some stuff in each location, and then of course load it back into the car a few days later.... what does not kill me will make me stronger?!?

In order to provide some photo entertainment, I am posting a cute pic of the little man and his dad from way back in November... ya gotta love being a boy!!

Play Date

Well, Aunt Farya came into town to see AC for one last visit before we move to Atlanta, and it was absolutely perfect. Farya is a Child Life Specialist and during her visit we were talking about a conference she had just attended where one of the presentations was about a book describing developmental stages in toddlerhood. The book by Touch Points, talks about how children when they are about to reach a developmental milestone will typically experience a disruption to their "normal" routines, i.e. sleep, etc. WELL .... just a bit later, our little man STOOD UP on his own, independently, and then picked up a heavy little toy box and stood there by himself for at least 20 seconds. People, this is HUGE!! Then just to reinterate how smart & correct Farya was, he returned to sleeping through the night IN HIS CRIB!! He slept from 10 pm to 6 am in the crib, by himself - this is the first time since we moved into the hotel, a mere 24 nights ago! Typically, he would wake up after a few hours in the crib and only go back to sleep if he was in bed with Mom & Dad.

So, pretty much, if you need help understanding your child, don't call a pediatrician, call a Child Life Specialist!

These are some pictures of him playing with Farya, in one he is "lazyily" turning the pages of his book with his toes, because using his hands is so overrated. Note that by using his toes to turn the pages, he is proving his genetic link to Aunt Net (inside family joke.) And in the other photo he is showing just how much he loved getting to play with his Aunt Farya.

Hope you all have a great Sunday, we are going to partially move out of the hotel today - so the next posts will have to be pictureless, but we will still keep you updated on our going-abouts.