Monthly Archives: January 2020

November 2019

Nov 17 – Davin is 22 months! He finally learned to say Lena this month! His words in order of learning them I believe are: Dada, Monkey, Puppy, Hi, Yummy-yummy, farm animal sounds, baby, beep-beep, Mommy, Nana & Papa (he facetimes my mom & stepdad a lot), up, & Lena! He has lots of attempted words (like Ba for Ball & Balloon, Boo for Book, nana for Banana, lola (for Granola), Flow-y for flower, Pumpky for pumpkin, wa-wa for water, etc.) He still loves playing with his kitchen set and play cooking, playing with his dolls (he likes to rock them and feed them), figured out the magnetic tiles, and likes building lego (megablock) towers. He loves all things trucks & cars & helicopters – lately his favorite book is Goodnight Construction Site, he loves playing in the front of the car… a little too much lol, and likes watching helicopters land and take off on YouTube. He loved getting in lots of construction trucks at Touch-a-Truck day at the Science Center and we got to see a helicopter land there… we might have been a little too close tho cause he still gets a bit worried when we are outside and it gets windy lol. We watch a few minutes of tv on my phone here and there to help with diapers/bedtime etc. Last month he loved Tarzan’s You’ll Be in My Heart (called it the baby song), Lion King’s Circle of Life & Hakuna Matata (he roars pretty cute lol), and Jungle Book’s Bare Necessities. This month he likes Pooh Bear clips, Wheels on the Bus, and Old McDonald (ie Ee-i-ee-i) He is usually very active and adventurous (taking off to the other side of the park and climbing everywhere) and is also a bit shy around new people or places. He is usually very happy and sweet and gives great hugs… and can also throw an impressive fit when he is grumpy after nap time or doesn’t want x (get dressed, get in the car, etc) :-/… Mommy is slightly traumatized once in a while but she is working on the arts of patience and brushing it off.

For Thanksgiving we spent 3 nights in Denver, CO with Ben’s older brother Matt & SIL Christina and their 3 girls (6, 9, & 11 – so grown up!). Ben’s younger brother also flew in from college in UT to join! Highs were eating yummy food (I didn’t have to cook anything but oatmeal for 3 days! Thanks Christina & Matt!), playing computer, board, & card games, and just talking and hanging out! Lows were having to wait 1-2 hrs for our rental car when we landed (they didn’t have the cars people reserved… grrr) – it was way past Davin’s bed time but he did pretty good and fell right asleep once in the car… but then for night 2 Davin freaked out about us leaving him for bed and figured out how to get out of the pack n play… took us 4 hrs to get him to bed… but then the rest of the naps&nights he did fine and stayed in the pack n play pretty good.

We got home Saturday night and suddenly December was here!

October 2019

Davin loved our local pumpkin patch, and it was fun running into a friend the 2nd time there!

He thought Cheekwood’s pumpkin house & Paw Parade was interesting:

He braved the bounce house with me at Tot Time’s Halloween party and I think he even liked being a monkey after a couple times of dressing up! The rest of us were a Lion, Lion Trainer, & Strong Man. Halloween day our neighborhood had a block party but it was the first super cold day so we just walked around the block once (I don’t think Ben was too sad he only got to wear his costume for a few minutes lol). And we did catch our neighbor’s tractor and hay ride a few days later when it was warmer!

We also went to the elementary Fall Festival, Sevier Park Halloween Dress Up(wore last yrs super costumes), and had a fun pumpkin carving play date:

And a few other random October pics:

Ben started teaching in October and so is even busier than normal with work! Normally he works about 50 hrs/wk but seems more like 60+ when he’s teaching. So we plan a weekend at a cabin in Copperhill, TN (in the Smokey’s by Chattanooga) in October before he started teaching and went again on Thanksgiving break to get some fun family time in!

And finally proof that mom got out without the kid:

Happy October!

 

September 2019

We checked out Percy Warner’s Nature Center… sorry if you don’t like Davin’s faces as much as me… this will probably be a boring blog lol

Below are a couple other pics from September… in August we cut out the bed time bottle (because if he saw the bottle before bath time then we weren’t doing bath lol), we offered milk in sippy cups but he only wants water in them. And in September (~20 months) we stopped the zipadee zip – because he was throwing a fit getting into it at night and he figured out how to unzip it lol… I was hoping he’d wear it forever and thus not learn to get out of the crib but he does love his soft blue blanket Aunt Christina made him!

2019 Family Pictures

19 pics for 2019? Lol the photographer gave me all 300 pics and it was hard narrowing them down! Next time we will have to bring a friend to see if we can get a less serious Davin lol… and you can tell he really loves his Dada … there was no chance of me getting a picture with just one of them! (Taken October 2019, Davin is 21 months old)


Cabin Fun

We decided to check out the Smokey Mountains for the first time and get some good family time in before Ben started teaching in mid-October. We spent 2 nights at a fun Airbnb cabin in Coppertown, TN (about 4 hrs from our house & 1 hr from Chatanooga). We enjoyed the hot tub and it was nice to be off the grid with no wifi or cell service!

We drove up Friday afternoon and Saturday we did a 3 mile hike to Turtletown Creek Falls (after getting a little lost trying to find it – I had saved the directions but not a great map and the directions had a wrong road name…thanks google lol). Ben did great carrying Davin!

Saturday night we did tin foil dinners and s’mores on the fire. Sunday morning we did a short hike at Ocoee (1996 Whitewater Olympics) and headed home! Normally Davin naps 1-4 so we timed the drives hoping he woiuld sleep in the car but no such luck… but no-nap Davin managed pretty well.

… And we liked it so much we went back again the first weekend of Thanksgiving Break (Vandy closes classes for the whole week! woot!)! No-nap Davin got a little cranky on the way there so we stopped at a Bass Pro-type store to get out some wiggles. Saturday was too rainy to hike and Davin seemed like he needed to get out of the cabin so we drove 1/2 hour to civilization and found a bounce house… but Davin of course refused to bounce …. at least he liked the giant Koala bear lol and he was very happy to go out to lunch. We did tin foil dinners on the stove but Ben managed to get a fire going for s’mores. Sunday morning if was cold but dry at least so we did a little hike at Ocoee again … and hallelujah! Davin finally fell asleep on the car ride home!