Bleh.

I have been out of the blogging mood this week, but I plan on taking lots of pictures of Tegan's first Halloween! So hopefully I'll be back in gear this weekend! Happy Halloween!!!!

Monkeyin' around.

I truly believe Tegan is part monkey. Perhaps a very small part, but part nonetheless. :) Okay, not monkey as in "hi, I live in trees and eat bananas" but more like "hi, I like to climb stairs and eat mushy bananas". Close enough. In just the past few weeks, Tegan has grown up sooo fast!! I started out holding her hands to pull her to stand up, then walk her around. 3 weeks ago she was still scooting on her belly. Now, she is pulling herself up every time she gets the chance. Just this morning, I walked in her room to get her up from her nap and she had stood up and pulled down every stuffed animal on her mobile. I suppose that's the end of that. I sit her down, she stands up. Constantly. When she holds my hands to walk, she practically runs. It's hilarious! Next time Charles is home I'll try to get a video of her doing it. She is trying to stand up without help, but hasn't mastered it yet. She Oh yeah, and this weekend she started crawling. Hands and knees crawling. Like a maniac. We put up the safety gate to keep her out of the kitchen, but then last night she climbed her first step. Wow the child is keeping me busy and it's only going to get worse! I'm so proud of her...she is such a curious and strong-willed baby. She still doesn't have her first tooth yet, but we can see a little tooth bud that hasn't popped through yet. No extra drooling, no fussing. Just a little white spot. It's been there about 2 weeks now. Hopefully it will come soon. She is saying "Dada" constantly, but has yet to attach the word with anything in particular. Of course, this makes no difference to Charles. He is ecstatic regardless. Charles has 2 weeks of his training done, 3 left to go. It has been pretty brutal so far, but he's hanging in there. He is working really really long days...about 3 am to 6 pm. From what he says, they don't stop physical training the entire day, and some nights they don't get to come home. No fun, but we're managing. The inside of his car looks like it was just pulled out of a swamp from all of the mud on him every day. I have a really cute video of Tegan that I keep trying to upload but I keep getting an error message. Grr!! I will try again another day. As for halloween, Aunt Sonya bought Tegan a monster costume that looks too cute on her. Katy- I'm sad her and Sam aren't trick-or-treating together!! They would be adorable!! Haha...matching monsters!

Other than that, I don't have a lot to update! But here are a few pictures!

Mmmm toes!!

See? Monkey in a banana suit.

The fun did not last very long...

My little baby is 8 months old...sniffle.

So sad. My "baby" will soon be a "toddler". And it happened faster than I could have possibly imagined. I feel like she suddenly grew up, all in about 3 weeks time. She can now stand by herself when she is holding onto something, and on two separate occasions I have walked in the room to find her standing up holding onto something, obviously with no help from anyone. What happened? I am beginning to wonder if she's going to start walking before she can crawl. Charles was walking at 7 months, which I think is just absurd and he was obviously just trying to show off to impress all of the little girl babies around. Pshh. Tegan has also begun to show that she has a very generous side... she picks up everything and hands it to Charles or me. Including taking her paci out of her mouth then handing it to me. This goes on for hours on end. Fun, really. But mostly, she's becoming very independent. She plays in the living room by herself for a while (I'm watching her of course!) then all of sudden I see her little peanut head pop up, something like this:
This usually means she's ready for me to play with her. She also likes to climb through the openings below the coffee table. Or try to yank the blinds down. Or eat the lotion bottles. Or pull the safety covers off the outlets and eat those. (Who invented those stupid things anyways?!) Or chew on the stairs. Or the rug, whichever is closer. Or the couch cushions for that matter. Everything that can come within 1 foot of her mouth is fair game.

I have tried to start her on Gerber 3rd foods, the chunkier foods which are supposed to teach her how to chew. This is in fact NOT happening. Anything with chunks is immediately expelled from her mouth. I haven't lost hope yet though. I think she'll come around...

Tegan and I went to the park the other day, since the weather was absolutely wonderful!! We sat on the park swing and watched the boats go by on the river. She loved it! And we got some cute pictures in the process.

Cheeky little grin...Watch out Michael Jordan, you may have some competition soon...

And my big girl standing up in her crib.

Bleh.

I have recently come to the conclusion that Chik-fil-A is, in fact, the devil. Reincarnated as cows. Why might you ask? Because this particular restaurant chain has been summoned to rid the world of my family. Charles and I in particular. Charles stopped by there 2 days ago to pick up some dinner, nothing out of the ordinary. Just some plain chicken strips, for both of us. This is the last thing to enter Charles' stomach for a full 24-hours. We ate dinner at approximately 6 pm. At around 8 pm, Charles leaves the living room to get ready for bed. He re-enters the living room about 30 min. later explaining why he took so long...the reason being that he has been getting acquainted with our toilet for the past 30 minutes. Puking. He proceeds to puke for the next 12 hours straight. I believe he tasted last week's pancake breakfast. I felt fine all night, which made it even stranger. (I must add that when I put Tegan to bed at 7:00, she had a bit of a runny nose. More on that later...) We deduced that it must have been his lunch, which they often say it usually takes about 12 hours for food poisoning to kick in. Sadly, I made his lunch that day. Anyways, at approximately 6 am, Charles asks me to take him to the hospital because he has still not stopped vomiting and feels as though he might die. I wake Tegan up (who now has a full blown cold) and we take a family trip to the Army hospital. Luckily, they are much more efficient at Emergency Room management than most hospitals, so we were in and out in just a couple hours. The diagnosis: food poisoning. Charles is allowed the day off work to rest, and that's just what he does. He does not get out of the bed from 9 am until about 4. When he finally eats, he keeps it down, along with subsequent meals, and is feeling much better today. Here is where we do NOT learn our lesson. There were leftovers remaining in the fridge. Hooray! I made Charles a bowl of grits, and here is how my thought process goes..."Charles is sick, so perhaps leftovers would be a good idea for me, that way I don't have to cook anything. It was obviously his lunch that made him sick, so I should be fine!" WRONG. I proceed to eat the delicious aforementioned chicken. I give Tegan a bath to try to help her cold and put her to bed. Then, I am struck with an ominous stomach cramp. Uh-ohhhhh. Yes indeed, it WAS the chicken strips. I then proceed to spend quality time with our toilet all night. So, in 3 days, Charles got sick, Tegan got sick, then I got sick. Luckily I am feeling better today as well after bonding with my bottle of Maalox. Tegan, on the other hand, still has the sniffles. But we're working on that. Pray for our bellies and Tegan's nose...