A face only a Mother could love...

If so, then it is a face I'm proud to love. I think he is completly adorable! His grin is just too cute, but then again I am his mother so I'm probably biased.

Naptime

Yesterday, Tyler was kind of fighting his naptime. I could hear him in there playing after 45 minutes of being put down. When it finally quieted down, I sneaked in to see what was going on and I found him conked out with a book laying beside him. Remind you of anyone, Mom? The picture below is from naptime today. Don't they look like little angels when they are sleeping.

Wedding Reception

This is a picture of Uncle Bubba with baby Deke. Tyler has so much fun with him. He's makes a great Uncle and I think that my boys are going to think he's so cool.

This past weekend we traveled to Ottawa to attend the reception for my Uncle Ricky. He married Dawn on Friday and they had the reception on Sunday. (Top picture is one of the happy couple) It was great to see some of my family that I don't get to see too often. They had a DJ there and Tyler and my niece Destiny had a lot of fun dancing to the music. I kept having to drag Ty away from the very big and very loud speakers. I was so worried about his hearing.

While we were there Tyler blew into an ashtray and got ash in his eye. Fortunatly it wasn't hot ash, but we ended up stopping at Tomah ER anyway. He was still complaining about it on the trip home and it seemed to really be bothering him. We called the on-call peditrician in Winona and he recommeded that we stop at the nearest ER. We had to wait an hour there and finally got in to see the doctor around 9:30 pm. Tyler was such a trooper. He willing laid down for the nurse so she could flush his eye and when she would stop to let him get a big hug from Daddy, he would lie down again to get it flushed again. He faced the flusher 4 or 5 times without a fight even though he would cry every time they did it. They would stop so he could get some hugs from Daddy and then do it again. I was so proud of him. He's such a brave kid.

Playgroup

These pictures are from last week's playgroup. Tyler has so much fun playing with Kaia. We're really going to miss the Loos family when they move.

Smarty Pants Tyler

Tyler is turning into such a smart kid. We've been trying to do more choices for him so he cooperates a little better. For example, I'll ask him if he'd rather put his shirt on first or his pants on first. I thought it was working really well as he was cooperating better. But my little boy caught on to this a little too well. We were at the store and he was holding two footballs. He wanted me to hold one and I didn't want to, so he looks at me and asks me if I'd rather hold this one or that one.

Then yesterday after Joel leaves for work, Tyler was pretty upset and crying. He comes over to me, lays his head on my knee and through his tears asks for juice and tells me that it will make him feel better and make him stop crying. Then later that afternoon after his nap, we make cookies together and I let him eat one then. There really is nothing better than a warm cookie. He is helping me put the rest of the cookies on a plate, but he kept two of them in his hands. I reminded him that he could only have one cookie and he had already eaten it so he needed to put those two on the plate. He tells me they are for his friends.

The things he says just cracks me up and he is catching on to so many things. Joel and I need to be very careful with what we say and do as we could very well see it displayed in public which could be very embarassing.

Oh, one last thing he told me yesterday was that I was a Patriot (football fan) and he was a Packer. You darn Packers turned my own son against me. He then kept going through the house saying "Go Packers!" The little traitor.

Sporting News

Tyler is such a little athlete! He even prefers to read Sporting News over a story book. He sees this magazine and wants us to read it to him.

We tried to get some good pictures of Tyler and Deke together. Tyler gets a kick out of holding him.

Apple Orchard

Friday morning we went on a field trip to the Ferguson's Apple Orchard. It was chilly, damp, and overall pretty miserable weather, but we still had fun. We got to go on a wagon ride up into the orchard and pick an apple from a tree and eat it. That was a lot of fun.

The bottom picture is a picture of Tyler's friends from daycare. Ethan, Lillanna, and Tyler would pick a tractor out of a group of tractors and only share it among themselves. It was pretty funny. Ethan would bring it over and give it to Tyler and then Tyler would ride it for a little bit and then give it to Lillanna. These three are very close in age. Ethan is only a month older than Ty and Lillanna is 3 days older than him. Ethan just had a baby brother last week and Lillanna will become a big sister in February so they'll have even more in common and more to complain about to each other once they're all older siblings.

Golf

Last Friday evening, we took Tyler to play putt putt. He loved it as we knew he would. The club was a little long for him. Joel must not have seen the small clubs when he chose one for Tyler. I saw them when I went out to nurse Deacon in the van, but by that time they were on the 17th hole. He managed to make it work anyway and played pretty well. I can't wait to take him again and get him the right sized club and see how he does.

Garage Sale Finds

I love going to garage sales. The season for garage sales is almost over up here. Most of the toys that Tyler has are from garage sales and all of the clothes that I bought Deke and Ty came from garage sales as well. It's just so cheap. Some of my favorite things to buy at garage sales are books. Tyler loves to get new books and as soon as we get home, he'll have me read them all to him. Here is one of the things we found on our excursion last Saturday. It's a digger that he can ride on. He loves diggers and tractors and this one was only $5.00.

Here are a few cute pictures of Deacon. He's starting to smile now and he has the best smile. He has dimples on both sides of his cheeks. He is too cute and I love to see that big grin. I couldn't seem to catch it on camera, but I caught a little one and you can just see his dimple in the bottom one.

Playing around

Here are some pictures of us just playing around. In the top picture, Deacon was taking one of his many 15 minute naps that he takes. In the next picture, you can see that Deke has woken up and Tyler is lining up his cars in a car train. He loves doing this. In the last two pictures, Tyler is dressing up as a pirate. As soon as he put the eyepatch on, he said "Arrgggh". I think the boys will be pirates for Halloween this year.
Oh, and of course I had to try out the pirate costume as well.

Dentist Appt

Tyler had his first Dentist appt today. He did really good and I got a lot of compliments on how well-behaved he was. Which is good seeing as I was completly stressed out. I made the mistake of thinking that I could handle my rambanticous 2 1/2 year old and my 5 1/2 week old sons by myself. I was counting on Deacon going to sleep in the car, but I'm thinking that Tyler must have had a chat with Deke on his sleeping habits because Deacon has suddenly decided that it is not cool to sleep. Therefore, he was wide awake when we got there and hungry. I had brought a bottle, but turns out it is not so easy to bottle feed a baby, keep an eye on Tyler, and fill out all the forms I had to fill out. When we finally got to the back area for Tyler to get his teeth cleaned, Deke was still fussy and hungry and Tyler wanted me to hold his hand. I felt like I was being torn in two and I would have loved it if somebody had come up and offered to hold Deacon for me so I could be there for Tyler. I ended up holding the bottle under my chin so I had one hand free to hold Tyler's. Lesson learned, I'll never attempt this again by myself. Good thing Tyler was on his best behavior.

Boat Trip

My Uncle John and Aunt Polly own a houseboat and they were kind enough to take us out on it Sunday evening. We had a great barbecue and then were treated to a beautiful sunset. Tyler really enjoyed the boat trip.

On Monday when we left Tyler got to go on a four wheeler ride which he loved. While there my brother drives a big rig and he took Tyler for a quick trip on it as well. I forgot my camera for that trip so I didn't get any pictures. I was so mad about that. He loved the big truck. At first he was a little nervous, but after he got over that he had so much fun. Uncle Bubba even let him honk the horn which just made his day!

Ottawa Trip

This weekend we went to Ottawa to visit my family down there. We had a lot of fun. Tyler and Destiny played very well together. Aunt Lou was a fantastic hostess. She made a fabulous breakfast for us in the morning and she even babysat both Tyler and Deke so Joel and I could go out for a few hours one evening. I'll have to repay the favor if I can ever talk her and Bubba into coming up to visit me.