Quickly approaching 18 months

Where has time gone?

We are still without a computer, and well life is busy with a toddler. So these posts have become few and far between. I wanted to write more so that we could remember Tripp right in the moment. Time passes so quickly and while I love that he is now a toddler, I am sad that he is definitely no longer a baby.  

He confidently walks into his classroom every morning excited to see his teachers and friends. This makes my heart happy, knowing he is happy going to school everyday. New words emerge daily and a occasionally he will stop and listen to the TV as if he is finally understanding what is being said. He loves to play chase and he loves to climb! Oh how he loves to climb. He is so proud when he summits a piece of furniture or playground equipment. 

He also loves to kiss mommy's belly. It is often the first thing he does in the morning and totally makes our heart melt. He is all ready a great big brother. I can't wait for him to meet Connelly in a few months.

We are also in full on imitation mode.  He imitates everything. Brushing hair, brushing his teeth, using the remote or cell phone. It is adorable and incredible how quickly they learn new skills.  He is a sponge. Oh how you bring so much joy to our life! 

 

Here are some stats:

Words: dada, momma, nana, more, milk, ball, quack, hi, bye, andit (bandit), yes

Weight: 27lbs

Height: 32 inches

Size: 18-24 months/ 2t

Food: everything! The only food group you are somewhat picky about is fruit, but you absolutely love blueberries and raspberries.

Loves: cars, trucks, balls, bandit, wrestling with dad, hugs and kisses, music, dinosaurs, trash, the book froggie gets dressed, being outside, being dad's shadow, and animal noises. 

Dislikes: being made to do something that you don't want to do. Such as sitting down during circle time at school. 

We hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas! 

MIA

Man, we have been missing for a while. I have lots to catch you up on! There have been plenty of firsts happening around here lately, from visits to the children museum to crawling and pulling up, lots of progress has been made lately. I'll be posting about our visit to the Children's Museum in Greenville and meeting one of Tripp's girlfriends, Kennedy in another post.

Our computer recently crapped out, which means I have a camera stocked full of pictures waiting to be uploaded. In time we will get back to being technically savvy, for now we are surviving with an iPad and one iPhone (my phone crapped out last week, and I've yet to replace it). I'm bad about communicating/answering/texting with my phone anyways, so I haven't really missed not having one, and my husband doesn't think I really need to replace it, since I never use it...lol. I love the iPad, so I am sure if I graduated to the iPhone I would be all about it, but for now I live in the land of the dinosaurs with an old broken flip phone.

Moving on, the Trippster has us on our toes at all times between crawling (hands and knees now) to pulling up ALL the time. It is fun and busy at the same time. Mainly because his favorite things to grab are power cords and he likes eying to stand and crawl in the bathtub...fun times. In addition to saying "mama" and "dada" he is also beginning to say "no." No surprise there, since it is currently the main word used in our house. We are in trouble!

In other exciting news...Tripp made the jump from the 75th percentile to the 95th percentile in height! We have one excited Dad in our house! Looks like those Mayfield genes are coming through!

Time is flying by, and with our busy schedules over the next two months, his first birthday is going to here before we know it! We are supposed to be starting swim lessons this week, so we are looking forward to that adventure!

Here are some recent pictures, we had on our phone. Wishing eve one the best!

Happy Easter!

We hope everyone is enjoying their Easter with family and friends.  We have had a great Sunday celebrating the fact that Christ is alive!! :-) Can't help but smile at that. 

We started the morning out at church with my parents and Kenny's dad.  We missed Nana for sure! So sad she had to work today, but glad we got to see her last weekend at Easter pictures. After church we went on hunt to find a place to have lunch.  Our favorite spots were closed, so we ended up have some fine Mexican cuisine.  Not exactly what we had in mind, we were looking forward to a meat and three, but it satisfied.  Tripp was totally into eating a full adult serving of rice and beans!

We snapped a few photos before the grandparents hit the road to head back home.  It was a short visit, but a wonderful one!  I am just now realizing that we posed in front of a gas station.....oops!

We are laying low this afternoon, Tripp is practicing his army crawl and Kenny and I are realizing how much busier life is about to get! Power cords are a real motivator! Yikes!

On another note, we want to wish our friend Betsy a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!  Hope you have the best birthday ever friend.  Wish we could be with you to celebrate. :-)

Hope everyone has a great week! Happy Easter everyone!!

7 months!

Our baby is not so little anymore. He is officially 7 months old and is fitting into 9 and 12 month clothes. I feel like all I do after every batch of laundry is pack up clothes. I am sure most parents feel this way. They grow so fast!

He is rolling all over the place and sitting up on his own for longer periods of time each day. He loves food, I'm not sure there is anything he has refused to eat yet. He is very interested in our food and drinks and pretends to fuss when we don't let him have some. He is also very interested in technology. Tv, iPad, cell phone, etc. he is all about trying to get his hands on our gadgets. I foresee time limits on all these items in the future!

Last night he gave us the first signs of waving. We have been practicing this with him, and while he didn't pick his arm up to wave, he started scrunching his fingers together when we would wave and say "Hi Tripp."

We are signing up for swim lessons this week! Posts to follow. I am sure it will be an adventure!

Here are some pictures. Sorry the quality is so bad, I haven't busted out the nice camera in a while. The last picture is from last week. We stayed home sick on Friday. He looks pitiful, but I added it just to show what a MOOSE he has turned into! Don't worry we are on the mend now!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is Kenny's birthday! He is the big 2-8 today!

We are celebrating tonight with dinner at his favorite restaurant in Anderson, Sullivan's. We typically don't go out on his birthday due to this other holiday.... We try to avoid the holiday crowds. This year he requested to go out, and we were so happy to get dinner reservations!

Happy Birthday!! We love you, and are so very thankful for you! You are the best!

I tried to get a picture of Tripp holding a birthday sign, by he was more interested in trying to crumple the paper. Here are some photos of the attempt.

Happy Birthday Kennedy!

We are so very excited to welcome a new friend to the world!

Kennedy Ryan Turner was born today at 3:20 pm. Weighing 7 lbs 12oz.


We can't wait for future play dates and vacations together.


Congratulations Ryan and Katie! Kennedy is so blessed to have you two as her parents!

1/2 Birthday!

Oh my goodness where has time gone? Half a year has passed all ready? I can't believe it! Time definitely goes by too fast. It seems as though milestones are flying by, and moving up to the pre-toddler class is on the horizon. Pre-toddler? I am definitely not ready for that, and find myself secretly hoping he will be a late crawler to further delay that moment.

Infancy passes in a blink. While I am SO excited to play at the park and introduce play dough, paint, the slide, all things "toddler". I am so sad to think the days are numbered where he is a baby! I am trying hard to cherish each moment, even the occasional early morning wake ups.

Enough of mommy babble. Let's move onto what the little man has accomplished in the last two months!

Tripp is rolling all over the place. He flips back to front and front to back. It is obvious that this doesn't satisfy his desire to be on the move, but he hasn't quite figured out how to get those knees up under himself. He sits for short periods of time on his own without any support, and sits for extended periods of time with support. We are finally putting some toys to use! He enjoys grabbing toys out of his bin and passing the from hand to hand.

When he gets really excited he gets a little spastic. His feet go wild, arms flail all about, and he is usually babbling something. Currently he gets the most excited for veggies at dinner time. He loves them! Solid food was introduced a few weeks ago and he is totally digging it.

So far he has tried: peas, squash, sweet potato, avocado, pears, apples, banana, and peaches. He tolerates fruit. By tolerate, I mean I sneak in bites between whichever vegetable he is eating, he shears and starts to fuss if we give him too many bites of fruit in a row. I am so happy he loves his veggies!

Some other things Tripp loves are: dancing in his bouncer, getting tossed in the air by dad, sports center, and Bandit.

I absolutely love how he smiles at bandit. He laughs when we get home and let bandit out of his kennel. Bandit goes nuts and runs all around. It does not phase Tripp at all when bandit bumps into him or lays on him. In the past, I would FREAK out when Bandit would climb into Tripp's car seat with him. Now that Tripp is a little older, it is so sweet to see him curl up at his feet, and let Tripp pull on him. I am so glad that they both love each other so much!

Here are his stats from his doctor's appointment.

Weight: 18 lbs 3.7oz (60th percentile)
Height: 27 and 1/4 inches. (75th percentile)
Head circumference: 17 inches (50th percentile)

I have been slacking majorly on taking pictures, which is sad because he gives us huge gummy grins all the time. I promise to take some this weekend. For now, I leave you with one from our dance party last night....

Best Friends

Just hanging out with my best friend watching cartoons.....

Next Step

Our pastor consistently challenges us to each take our next step in our walk with Christ. For each individual those steps look different. Mine might be, and probably are, completely different than yours. A step could be to publicly get baptized or get involved with your church. It is what God has laid on your heart. It is a step that deepens your walk and relationship with Christ.

This past Sunday, our sermon was titled "2013 How to Have The Best Year Of Your Life." During the sermon Perry laid out some steps to having the best year of your life. For some, I am sure these particular steps have all ready been taken. For others, including myself, a few of my next steps were listed right in front of me. Some included reading the Bible everyday (it's hard to drift away from God when you are actively in his word daily, right?), tithing, getting involved, etc.

After the sermon, Kenny and I talked about what we felt our next steps were individually. We then laid them all out and made a commitment with God, each other, and ourselves to work on taking these next steps. We are excited and pumped!

We are thanking God for where we are currently, because 2012 was a pretty amazing year for us. Tripp is a pretty amazing gift from God. However, we also know that the best is yet to come and we are super excited about that!

So, I am writing this post to ask: What is your next step? Pray about it, and ask God to lay it on your heart if you don't know. I just want to encourage you to take your next step.

Oh and on a side note, 467 people met Jesus today at Newspring. How incredible is that? I am so excited that there will be that many more people in heaven one day! It blows my mind that at one church that many people received Christ. I cannot even wrap my head around how many people met Jesus yesterday across the world. I am truly in awe of God and his greatness when I think about that.

I hope everyone has an incredible day.

Hey!

Just hanging out. Actually playing with a toy. (Of course it is a Clemson toy)

Fun fact. Tripp told me this morning that he would be super excited to get some FSU toys for his birthday this summer. True story, I'm not lying. Besides our house could use some more garnet to balance out all the orange that consumes us. Just throwing that out there. We live in a tough area here people, filled with lots of orange. It's everywhere. EVERYWHERE!!! Sometimes we just need a little bit of garnet and gold. Can ya feel me?

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy Wednesday! We are happy over here, both our teams won their bowl games! Hip hip hooray.

Oh and don't mind the ironing board in the background. Occasionally I pull it out, try and convince myself to iron some clothes, then decide I would rather spend that time sleeping/eating/playing/pinning/doing ANYTHING other than iron. The board sits out for a few days...maybe even a week. Don't judge! Then I hide it along with all the clean wrinkled clothes and pretend there is nothing on my to do list. True story. Kenny will vouch, but he can't complain because he doesn't iron either. Thank goodness for wrinkle resistant clothes and dryers. My life is so much easier!

Oatmeal...

We tried something new this morning. There were cringes, shivers, and smiles. These seem to be typical responses as far as I can tell.

I am actually really excited to start different food combinations. I am pretty sure once we get to this point, we won't be able to shovel it in fast enough. We have to make sure there aren't any food allergies first, so the next several weeks will be solo fruits and veggies. Hopefully we will see more smiles and less cringes with each try.

 

 

We took a video, but I am having a hard time getting it to load for some reason. For now here are some pictures of the event!