One week ago today, Sept. 18 was Jon’s 30th birthday. I wanted to do something really fun, special and unexpected for him so about two months ago I began planning his surprise. Jon has a life-goal attending a game at every one of our country’s Major League Ballparks. He has already been to several so my list to choose from was not long, especially those that were not on the West Coast. I decided on The Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, OH. It is just a four hour drive from Knoxville and so I began planning our two-night getaway. I lined up hotel reservations, tickets to the game (on his birthday night), childcare for our girls (a huge thank you is due to my in-laws from driving to Knoxville and babysitting, dog sitting and house sitting for us for the entire weekend!), and even dinner reservations for the first night in Cinci.
Jon’s co-workers were a major help in clearing his schedule on Thursday afternoon and then even setting up a fake 3-hour meeting that what he thought “tied him up” for the entire afternoon. I showed up at his office with the car ready and bags packed and informed him that he was not having a 3-hour meeting but instead we were leaving town! He was completely and totally surprised! It was so, so fun! We had a great time seeing the sights of Cinci, eating some great food and of course, attending a ballgame! I love you babe! Happy 30th birthday!
Outside Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse, where we ate dinner
Greenup Cafe. Where we ate breakfast both mornings. Probably the highlight of the trip for me.
Inside the Greenup Cafe. So cool!
At the game. I made it through the entire game without being bored! I ate a hot dog, curly fries and some of Jon's peanuts. Yum, Yum!
One-day-old
One-year-old
Jon and I were as shocked as everyone else to see our 9lb. 7 oz. baby girl with a head full of dark hair! Now our beautiful second daughter, Hope Katherine, is in the 50% in weight and height and has a head full of light blonde hair! Love it! We had a great first birthday party with Hope and both sets of her grandparents, as well as some other family members. We ate spaghetti for dinner (Hope’s favorite) and then watched her plunge into her monkey cake and eat until I was afraid she would wake up in the middle of the night throwing up cake and icing! She loved it!
I was happy for Hope to destroy the birthday cake I spent hours baking and decorating!
Ready for a bath!
The ride-on toy was one of her bday gifts. She LOVES it!
I am thinking it has been over a month since I last wrote and not due to our lives being boring… quite the opposite! Hope did start full-out crawling although she prefers to stick one leg out and push off with one foot and then the other knee. She gets around regardless of how she does it. She also made her first attempt at the stairs. She made it up the first three before she fell back (yes, I was there behind her to catch her). She has only gone back over to the staircase one other time since then. I am wondering if she might have some of big sister’s cautious tendencies… or she is just so laid back that she doesn’t care. She tried the stairs once, figured there was nothing so great about them and therefore hasn’t adventured back over to try to master them.
Annie has been playing hard. She loves to play with Hope, still loves to dress-up, help me in the kitchen, dance, sing the list goes on. One evening she and I were in the playroom upstairs watching something on TV and I left the room for about 5 minutes to put some laundry away that I had just finished folding. When I came back in the room I found her completely crashed on the couch. This has never happened in the history of Annie Teague… she does not fall asleep much of anywhere except for the occasional car ride after an exhausting day or her bed of course. I was shocked! So sweet!
I bought our second Knoxville Zoo membership a few weeks ago and we have already been twice. It is a really great zoo and they have a special exhibit right now called “Wee Play Zoo”. Annie especially loves playing “Vet Doctor” as she calls it. She really does have such a caring spirit. Maybe she will be a doctor or nurse of some kind one day!
We can’t leave out the first day of preschool this school year. The four-year-old class is much more structured than her class last year and Annie is thriving in it! She loves all the activities they do and came home the first day last week telling me how when her teacher “rings the bell, all eyes are to be on her and we put our hand in the air.” Is she a little mini-me rule-follower or what? She has loved meeting new friends and looks forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays each week.
Hope is still eating pretty much anything I put in front of her. Unfortunately she has pushed away some green beans lately, but I guess one food out of pretty much anything else isn’t too bad. One of her new favorites is spaghetti. Let me assure you she goes straight to the bathtub after a spaghetti dinner for sure!
And finally, after many phone conversations, two trips to LaFollette, TN (a one hour drive from our house), several helpful and generous friends, a borrowed trailer, hours of tear-down and reassembly and a good chunk o’ change, we are now the proud owners of a wooden playset! I love Craigslist and have purchased and sold several things through this wonderful website. A few nights ago I jumped on looking at dining tables and randomly decided to type in “wooden playset”. A guy had just listed his one-year-old playset that day and was asking less than 1/3 of his purchase price from Lowes. I showed it to Jon and he decided to call and the rest is history. We really are excited about this. Annie has been playing on it by herself for hours the past couple of days, and that in itself is a blessing. I can see her playing on it from all of my downstairs windows and love the thought of being able to have playdates here on pretty days and not have to clean my house before people come over! We are so thankful!
Hope loves hummus. This video isn’t necessarily action packed, but it is sweet. I love my family!
The Teagues and the Rows
We felt so blessed to be invited to spend part of the weekend with our friends, the Rows, at their lake house. I told Jon that I don’t think I have felt as relaxed as I was during the 24-hour period we were there than I have been since Hope was born (almost 11 months ago). I didn’t have to cook a single meal, think about laundry or even entertain Annie. The Row boys were so sweet to play with our girls. Brandon even got the “privilege” of helping Annie rehearse for her big dance recital for all the adults. I spent time soaking up some sun, watching Annie on her first boat ride, eating good food and even literally “watched the cows come home” from a farm across the lake. The sun totally wiped us all out today and the girls were asleep in bed by 7:45pm. I am not too far behind them! Thank you Row family!
Just call her "Sailor Annie"!
A princess wave from the canoe. Classic Annie!
Ben gets a sweet hug from his new bud, Hope.
Our sweet Hope is now 10 and a half months old and although she is the fastest army crawler I have ever seen, she has yet to figure out the traditional crawling stance on hands and knees. To be honest, I am not really encouraging it as we have not had to put gates on our stairs, locks on the cabinets or even lower her crib yet… that is until today! Hope typically sings and plays in her crib for a while when she wakes up from a nap and this morning was no different. But when I went into her room this morning to pick her up, this is how she greeted me…
Look at that smile! She was so proud. Although she has been sitting up since she was 6 months, this is the first time I have known her to go from lying down position to sitting on her own. Time to lower the crib!
Annie had a friend over to play yesterday and just five minutes after sweet Kaitlyn and her momma and brother left I sat down to feed Hope in a rocking chair beside Annie and I noticed Annie’s breathing was very rhythmic and sure enough she had fallen asleep on the couch. This has never happened before and the fact that she still had a dress-up outfit on I had to snap a picture. She only slept about twenty minutes but it was so sweet.
My birthday was on the 4th and for my birthday gift my youngest brother, Peter, called me and offered to cook our family dinner one night. He just graduated from the University of Tennessee Culinary School in May and I am so proud of him. He made grilled chicken quesadillas and they were great! It was really fun to watch him chop and prepare all the ingredients, just like the experts on TV. He was so fast with the knife and smooth… totally professional! My parents gave me a Boos wooden cutting board for my birthday this year and Pete definitely broke it in well. He was super embarrased that I took his picture while he was cooking but I told him I had to document this very proud moment for myself. We love you Pete. Thank you!
Annie got this play kitchen for Christmas when she was two-years-old (that was a year and a half ago) and has just never really gotten crazy about it. I can probably count on both hands the number of times she has played with it unless she has had a friend over and he or she asked to play with it. Annie takes after me and is totally not an independent person. She does NOT like to play by herself. She has a great imagination and is way more creative than I am but she just does not thrive playing alone. Our playroom is upstairs but because I spend the majority of the day downstairs, Annie does not frequent the playroom unless it is during the 30 minutes of the day that I MAKE her play alone.
So in hopes to get her to play with this more often and also to encourage her playing on her own more often we brought the kitchen downstairs. I am not a fan of big toys (or even very many little toys) in my family room, but I am learning that I have to let go of trying to keep my house picture perfect and just embrace the fact that I have two little kiddos who need and want to play! My dream is that as Hope stands and walks she will want to play with Annie and the kitchen too. Annie has already asked if she can watch Rachel Ray and pretend to make what she is making at the same time as Rachel. Yes, she knows and loves Rachel, Paula and Giada. Funny! Weird thing is that I don’t even watch Food Network all that often!
