A fun day

Last Tuesday, Harvey and I made a trip out to Minot to see a friend that was in town. Wanna hear the crazy story of how I even met her? Try to keep up. An old roommate and really good friend of mine, Loni, married David, who is friends with Molly. I went to school in Savannah, GA. This one time I ran a half marathon on Tybee Island and Loni told me I should meet up with Molly because she was coming down from Atlanta (where she lives and works for the CDC). So I did briefly. And she was awesome and since then we have kept in touch. And Molly is from ND of all places. So instead of seeing her passing through Atlanta, I get to see her when she comes to visit her family!  She came out this time to run a beast of a race in Montana. She's a hard core runner - like 100 miler trail running type hard core. Woah. 

So anyway. I drove out to Minot and she and her sister and niece and mom and dad and Harv and I spent a couple hours at the zoo. That was the first time I had been there. Harvey seemed to enjoy himself. I didn't take too many pictures. 

Sometimes he was more excited about the bars than the animals. 

But he did watch a lot of the animals and it was cool. The weather was incredible! Could not have been more perfect. I feel like we are actually having a Fall! It's awesome!

After the zoo, we went to a Thai place in town. I've been wanting to eat there since we moved here but Tanner never wants too. So I was so excited when that was the pick. It did not disappoint and Harvey was really good the whole day really. Molly's parents are awesome too so it was just great all around. Totally worth the drive!

I got home about the time Tanner did and we decided to enjoy some family time on the golf course. We've actually gone quite a few times lately and it's great. Savoring the last moments of sunny warm weather. Harvey has been a rockstar too. Just loves hanging out on the grass and driving the golf cart and breathing the fresh golf air :)

I think it is so incredibly cute seeing that little body sitting out there. 

It's sad that these days are fast coming to a close. Trying to brace myself for winter...(it doesn't help).

7 months!

Time is just ticking away! I have lots of pictures and a few updates for this last month. I'd like to end on a high note, so I'll start with the most challenging thing. Just when I thought his sleeping habits couldn't get any worse, they have ;)  Oh my goodness he struggles. I don't know what to do about it either. I still don't know if I'm doing something wrong and if so, what it is and how to do it right. He just really has a hard time going to sleep. He fights naps, but bedtimes have gotten much more difficult as well. And he still wakes up several times a night - which for the most part I can deal with. Lately, he's been waking up often right after we put him to sleep and screaming - whether he's being held or not. And usually when he wakes up he'll eat and go right back to sleep - lately he's been not falling asleep and or waking up when I lay him back in his crib and crying for awhile. He wakes up really early too, so I've been bringing him in our bed then so he can lay and babble and then fall back asleep for a little while. I really miss when he'd wake up in his crib and I'd wake up to him cooing and talking to himself. So awesome. He has been a bad sleeper his whole life, I think. The more people I talk to the more I'm realizing he isn't the only kid like this, which helps, but I just want to know how I can help him be better and or know that this is not how it's going to be for the next 5 years. Ugh.  But normally he is just so darn happy. He is so cute and fun when he's not needing or fighting sleep! I still think he sleeps adorably when he does...

He also has lately started really fighting things he doesn't want - like getting in his car seat. It's quite hilarious to me. He arches his back and locks his legs straight and you can NOT get him to lay in his car seat. I had just fed him and he fell asleep on our trip home from Denver. I went to lay him back in his car seat and he started to do his thing, but then fell asleep, like the above picture. And stayed like that for a few minutes while I worked on buckling him in.

He does look so darn sweet when he sleeps. Why does he not realize sleep is AWESOME??
So yeah, he's also been tricky to change diapers and get dressed. He's started revolting against that and trying to flip over and he'll kick his legs so what should take 10 seconds to put pants on takes several minutes sometimes.

The babysitter thing seems to be figured out for now. My good friend Emily, who was doing it temporarily, has crazily offered to watch him, along with her other 3 young boys. She's a rockstar. And she sends me cute pictures of him. He seems to mostly do pretty good for her. I feel happy about it all.

I think one of my favorite things about this new age is the food thing. It is so fun watching him experience new tastes and watch him get better at using his hands at eating. He is actually EATING now. He would here and there last month but it's much more legit now. Taking bites of things and chewing and swallowing. And he seems to be a pretty good eater for now - as far as what he likes. He loves cucumbers still, and grapes. I gave him some pieces of my honey lime chicken enchiladas a couple weeks ago and he LOVED that. That was the first thing I had given him that he really went after for more and more. He loved apricots for the time we had those in the house. And he loved mango too. That was awesome.

He has 7 teeth officially. He's been holding at that number for a little bit. The first 7 seemed to come fast and furiously. He has started to get excited about peek a boo and patty cake this month. He likes pony boy as well. He giggles  at so many things. I LOVE it. He giggles when the dogs come around him. He giggles if other people are laughing. That is pretty entertaining. He actually gets some pretty good belly laughs going too, at random things. He loves being thrown in the air. He can stand by himself holding on to things. Not forever but for a good bit. No crawling yet. He loves the book I Love You Through and Through. We read that a lot before bed time. Obviously that routine isn't really making a whole lot of difference, but that is one book he consistently lets me read through. He's less interested in getting through books now though - he just likes to flip pages back and forth.

Here's some more random cuteness.

Screen shot of a snap chat when Tanner took him to the lake for a birthday party with some ward friends.

 

So serious.

That's better.

He still loves our fishies.

Gus is so good with him. And such a little cuddle bug.

Harvey is just so much fun. It amazes me every day how overwhelmingly in love with him I am. Now I'm starting to feel like time is moving too quickly. I love this age right now! If he could just learn to sleep, it would be absolutely perfect - theretofore, he probably won't, and that's ok.  We'll keep him anyway!

Denver Trifecta

Earlier last week, Tanner randomly mentioned we should go to Denver for the weekend. After some deliberating I succumbed and agreed to making the short but long trip :) Tanner's drive for going there was sports. Major league baseball, PGA tournament and NFL game all in the same weekend. Couldn't really tell a man no to that, now could I?

Two of Tanner's friends from work made the trip with us. We left after they got off work Friday night, which was much later than we were planning. I thought it might work out good because Harvey could just sleep the whole time. Uh - NOPE. He was AWFUL. He cried for probably at least half of the 11 hour drive. Oh it was painful. It was worse because I felt SO bad for the guys riding with us. No kids themselves and neither of them had been around babies much so they weren't even sort of immune. He's my own kid and I was ready to lose it. It certainly made us glad that we would be flying home for Christmas this year.

Tanner has a cousin that recently moved to Denver so we crashed at their place while the other guys stayed at one of their parent's house. This is what we had waiting for us in our room...

I'm retarded because I didn't get a picture of their family. Tracey is Tanner's cousin and her husband is Paul and they have a 15 year old son, Aaron. It was great staying with them! It was fun to get to know them better and we were so grateful to their obviously AWESOME hospitality!

We got a LITTLE sleep that morning (we rolled in at 5am). I took a little jog that morning. Driving into the huge city made me actually miss Williston for the first time in my life ;) I usually always want to be in a bigger city. The length of time to get from one place to another was extra annoying at 5 in the morning. But they lived kind of outside of town and the run made me not miss Williston. It was beautiful and quiet and there weren't huge trucks driving all over the place and I saw this...

There's a deer in there if you can't tell. It was cool. So anyway, after that we got to go see the jet the Paul flies for work. He is a pilot for an oil company and actually flies to and from North Dakota quite a bit.

Watchu lookin at!?

After that Paul treated us to lunch at The Perfect Landing - a cool little restaurant at the airport that has big windows where you can watch the planes take off and land. It was SUPER tasty. And Harvey had his first pickle, and didn't even squirm or make a face at all. It was awesome.

After we got home from lunch, we made a pit stop at Tracey's work (a hair salon) and I got a much needed trim and then it was off to BASEBALL. Rockies vs Padres. While we were parking we saw a guy with a Utah State shirt on, so I started talking to him. I asked what they were doing out in Denver and he said baseball, PGA and NFL. Apparently the trifecta was drawing a crowd larger than just us :)

It was beautiful weather. We had great seats. We ate yummy food. Tanner had a special dad moment, being with his son at his first MLB game. Overall it was a great time. Harvey was a big hit. There was a couple in front of us that kept turning around looking at him. And during one of the breaks, Tanner and Harv and I were dancing to Bon Jovi, living on a prayer, and we got on the jumbo-tron! I've never been on one and always felt anxiety about being on there. Luckily for me, I never was exciting enough just by myself. Harvey stole the show :)

 Harvey did good for the most part. It was a late night and he didn't get a good afternoon nap, but luckily he passed out for a decent chunk of time. Enough to keep him happy, at least.

Trevor and Jon from work (Jon's parent's came too - but you can't see them here)

The next morning we were up early getting ready for GOLF. It was the last day of the BMW championship with lots of big names. I've never been to one of these and over the last few years of being married to Tanner, I've really come to enjoy watching golf and learned a lot about a lot of the players, so I was actually really excited to be there and see them and be a part of the action.

There were tons of people there. It was crazy. Harvey had a small melt down early on but after that did pretty good. He got a short little nap. We camped out on hole 4 green for awhile and watched most of the big names play through. That was cool. Then we ended up following a golfer Tanner golfed with in high school - Danny Summerhays. He was golfing with Graham McDowell and Matt Kuchar (one of Tanner's fav's). They were definitely not in the lead, so hardly anyone was around so we got up close and personal. And Matt Kuchar even gave us a signed ball of his. Way sweet!

Daniel and Matt

Hole 4

You technically couldn't take pictures but Tanner is a rebel and snuck a few. It was weird being there and not hearing all the commentating and seeing all the shots like you do on tv. It was just like watching some normal people enjoy a round of golf. I liked it.

After that I dropped Tanner off at his friend's parents house so they could get their NFL on and I went and visited some friends we made up here, who moved to Denver about a year ago, the Lawson's. Harvey was awesome and cute and fun until we went to dinner and then he had a royal meltdown. So after dinner I ended up leaving to put him to bed and he SCREAMED his head off the whole half hour drive home. Awful. And then it was a pain to get him calmed down and finally to sleep. It's our fault really - keeping him out late and not letting him get his naps, etc. I felt bad for him. But it was fun to see our friends and Tanner had a great time at the game!

 

Then we headed out the next morning. Harvey was a pill again on the drive home.  We made plenty of stops and took our time which was nice but then also made for just a really long drive. Really glad we don't have another one of those in our immediate future. But also really glad we got to go. It was a fun weekend and I'm happy Tanner got to experience his first NFL game and soak up some good sporting events!