Beautiful Chattanooga

Vincent and I took Wyatt and Thorn on a walk to a waterfall on Lookout Mountain yesterday. The weather was perfect and the creek was full of water. This is an unusual site in Chattanooga because we have not had rain in so long. Recently we have been getting a ton of rain so all the waterfalls are so pretty. Wyatt loved his backpack ride and looked so cute riding on daddy's back.

Wyatt's first Christmas

Wyatt had a great first Christmas. My parents came to Chattanooga for Wyatt's first christmas. On X-mas day we decided not to cook, so my parents, Vincent's parents, Vincent's grandmother, and Vincent's uncle all went to the Bluff View restaurant to eat. Dinner was great and it was also wonderful to have both sets of grandparents there. Wyatt racked up on the gifts thanks to my mom and my sister. Vincent and I really did not buy the baby anything because he does not even know what Christmas is but next year he will definately get presents from his parents. He really loved the toys my sister got him. Everything was just great for Wyatt's first Christmas and as an added perk he was so wonderful at the restaurant.

1st Santa pictures

Last night Vincent and I went to get Wyatt's picture taken with Santa. Wyatt is a bit shy and nervous around all new people so I did not know how sitting on Santa's lap would go over. He did great!! There were no tears. He did not smile but at least he looked at the camera. I think the picture turned out great.

Wyatt on the move

Wyatt is almost 9 months old and he is really wanting to walk. He has not shown much interest in crawling but he does want me to spend most of my day holding his hands while he walks around the house, restaurant, climbing gym, etc. I really enjoy walking him except it is hurting my back, therefore I got him a walker.We have all hard wood floors so we just roll the rugs back and let him go. He does love the walker but he really prefers me or anyone to walk him around the house. He wants to go up to everything with knobs and play with them. He just smiles and talks the entire time he is walking. Thorn is not use to seeing him in the walking position without an excersaucer holding him in so she is having a hard time with this. I wonder if she thinks he is a little animal b/c he is small and he sounds like an animal (deep thoughts from Becky). Wyatt has not learned to pull himself up yet but he does have pretty good balance. I know he will be so excited when he can get around. Without mommy and daddy he just rolls to get to where he wants to go. I keep trying to teach him to crawl (not really I just put him on his belly) but he just either flips to his back or raises his chest high off the ground and flails his legs around. Oh well as my mom always says he will crawl and walk when he gets ready. As for now I will be his balancer. Oh yeah I also put some pictures of him looking at himself in the mirror. Just like a man he already thinks he is pretty good looking. Everytime he sees himself he just smiles so big.

I was tagged

I was tagged by Amy to put up my 4th picture in my 4th folder. This is the picture that I got. Vincent, me, Wyatt, and Thorn were going on one of our first hikes as a new family. I am sure that Wyatt was probably about 4 months old. He was so chunky back then. Here is the photo. I tag

Lindy Carr

Paige Varner

Morgan Holt

Mindy Madewell

1st Thanksgiving

This was Wyatt's first Thanksgiving. My mom and dad came from Memphis to celebrate with us. We had a great time. Not only was this Wyatt's first Thanksgiving but it was also our first Thanksgiving to cook at our house. Vincent cooked the turkey and my mom and I made sweet potato casserole,dressing, green beans, green bean casserole, rolls, and chocolate pie. Everything turned out pretty good but all of us agreed that when you have Thanksgiving at someone else's house. It is just great when you don't have to do so much of the cooking. Oh well if my parents would not have come we would have had Thanksgiving with just Vincent,me, Wyatt, and Thorn so we were so happy, for more than one reason, that my parents came. Since Vincent works in the medical field all of our holidays will be here because he only has the holiday off. You really can't travel when you just have one day. That is just fine with me because Wyatt is pretty difficult in the car and I really would like most of his 1st's to be here. Oh yeah Wyatt did get sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving (baby food). Besides Thanksgiving activities Vincent and my dad kept Wyatt so mom and I could go shopping on black friday which was so fun. We also went out to lunch. Mom and dad kept Wyatt on Friday night so that Vincent and I could go out. We had a great time. Any how I do not have that much to say about the baby because he pretty much did the same old Wyatt things on Thanksgiving. However he got overly excited my parents were here and he almost refused to take a morning nap. Oh well.

Sunset Rock

Today Vincent and I got to go hiking with a couple of friends. We went to Sunset Rock which has a beautiful view of downtown Chattanooga. Wyatt went with us, so the hike was a quick one. He was a bit fussy today. We found out the reason for the fussiness once he had, what I like to call, an explosion in his diaper. Overall the hike was fun. It is always so much better to go on and go outside. Even with all the effort it takes, we always seem to love it once we are there.

Date night

Vincent's parents were kind enough to watch Wyatt for us to go on a date the other night. First we took Thorn and we went on a hike. Thorn did great but we did not push her to go too far. We were just excited to have her with us. This was a peaceful hike because we did not have the little prince in the backpack fussying everytime we stopped. I really enjoyed being with just Vincent and Thorn. We love taking the baby but at this time he only likes hiking for short periods. After our hike we went to dinner, which was also very peaceful. We had a great time together and once we got home the baby was already asleep so we got to spend a quiet evening together. The other pictures in this blog are of Wyatt petting his favorite sister Thorn. He loves when she will let him touch her. He even speaks to her in his own language. I am not kidding, he can be super mad and then she walks in the room and he begins talking in this really sweet voice to her and smiling at her. Crazy boy!!!

Trip to see Courtney

Last weekend I got to go to Dallas to visit my best friend Courtney. One of the major perks was that I got to go child free. Initially I was nervous and a bit sad to leave Wyatt but I had a great time once I got to Dallas. Vincent kept Wyatt while I was gone. I really do not know of many husbands that will volunteer to keep their 8 month old (who still wakes up in the middle of the night) so their wife can go and have fun with her friend. He really is always trying to trade off with me so that we can both still have a life outside of Wyatt. He really is just so great. I don't think I can say it enough. I really do not say it enough to him so Vincent if you are reading this you are great, thanks for keeping the little one over the weekend, and I love you so much. Well back to Dallas- as I was saying I got to see my BFF Courtney. We have been best friends since elementary school. She is now pregnant with her first baby girl. Little ? is due in March. Stephen, her husband, and Courtney are both small like Vincent and I so I bet they will have a little bitty baby like Wyatt. I would love if Wyatt would marry their little girl:). Anyhow Courtney and I had a great time. She looked absolutely beautiful and even though we live far apart whenever we get back together it is like no time has passed. We never have trouble making conversation. She really is so great in everyway. I wish we lived closer to eachother. She is like my second sister and I really miss her like I miss family members. Any way enough lovey stuff. While in Dallas I also got to see my friend Paige. We went to college together and I was in her wedding. She is great. She has the best little girl. She is 2 and she is just great. She was so quiet throughout church and at the restaurant afterwards even though she had gotten 3 hours less sleep than normal the night before. Paige you are blessed. I was so glad to see her and I hope to see her again very soon. I did not take many pictures and the majority of pictures are of Courtney and Stephen's sweet princess Layla. She is a 6 pound mixed dog. She is the sweetest. Here are the pictures. Oh yeah and thanks
Stephen for giving up Courtney for the weekend and also cooking us dinner.

Thorn

Over the past month Vincent and I have been worried about our sweet dog. There were a few things that concerned us that she was doing. First she could not seem to even walk a couple of miles without becoming extremely winded, 2nd her appetite had majorly decreased, and 3rd she was not wanting to be pet as much. At first we thought maybe it was because of old age. She is 10 and dobermans have a life span of 10-12 years but when she was not as interested in us petting her and her appetite decreased so much we took her to the vet. The doctor found that she had a huge uterus filled with pus. She had never been fixed because Vincent had thought he was going to breed her. The doctor told us that she needed to have surgery that day or there was a risk her uterus could rupture and kill her. Before the test the doctor did an EKG and Thorn was having some issues with her heart. The doctor thought maybe that was due to her majorly increased white blood cell count (I think it was supposed to be around 10,000 and Thorn's was 33,000). She had to stay overnight so the doctor could monitor her and then we got her home the next day. She initially seemed OK, for just just having surgery. However, 2 days post surgery she started panting and becoming extremely anxious. I thought the pain meds were not enough so I called and got them to up the dose. She had a hysterectomy (most women after this surgery get a huge amount of pain meds) and all our little baby got was 1 pill everyday and it was only like taking an advil. Crazy!!! Anyhow the pain was not the problem. In the middle of the night Thorn woke Vincent up and he she was very nervous. She was panting and not able to sit down. He felt her chest and he said her heartbeat was so fast you could not even count it. The next day she went back to the doctor and Vincent asked them to do another EKG. They did and amazingly the doctor did not even know how to read it. Luckily I have a super smart husband who read the EKG and told the doctor he was wrong. Of course not in a mean way but he was just protecting his dog and he does have to look at a lot of heart rythms for a living. The doctor told Vincent Thorn was in a certain type of rythm and he wanted to take her back and give her Atropine (which increased your heart rate). Vincent looked at the strip and noticed her heart beat was going super fast and thought to himself if he gives her that it will increase her heart so much it will kill her so he said no and that he wanted to put her on meds to slow her heart. He asked the doctor to put her on 2 different meds and the doctor agreed (which I am sure that he hated being wrong) and now our beautiful dog is doing much better. Her heart is still not normal but at least the meds are controlling her rythm and she is comfortable. She is even going on small walks with Vincent, Wyatt, and I. I have not cryed or felt as sad about anything since my mom got diagnosed with cancer. Of course I was much more worried and sad for my mom but Thorn, in our family, is almost human. She makes us so happy and she makes Wyatt happy. That entire month has made us appreciate every day we have with her. She is just so special and such a great animal. For those of you who have seen her but not met her I know you would think differently and for those who do not like animals (which is super crazy to me) I know you do not understand. For those of us who love our pets and have had an extremely sick pet I know you probably know exactly what I am talking about. I will apologize about the first picture. I put that picture on there without being able to see it very well and it is super blurry. In fact it looks as if Thorn does not have a head but she still does. This was one of her first hikes about 3 weeks after surgery.

Mom's visit

My mom drove down to see Wyatt, Vincent, Thorn and I this weekend. We had a great time! She did not get here untill Saturday morning so we just pretty much hung out with Wyatt once he woke up from his morning nap. Vincent grilled out hamburgers and we all ate lunch together. After lunch we just played around with the baby until Vincent got home from rock climbing and then he watched Wyatt while mom and I went shopping and out to dinner. We had a great time together. This is one of the first times that we have really spent an extended period of time together without the baby. On Sunday after church and Wyatt's nap we all went downtown to Coolidge Park to eat and take pictures. The trees are beautiful here right now so we wanted to catch the beauty in pictures. After lunch we came back home and played with
Wyatt untill nap time. Mom left after that. Only about a day and a half of mom time is not enough. Thanks for coming that far for such a short time. I really had a great time mom. For some reason my pictures will not come up on the post so I will try again tomorrow.

Sitting up like a big boy

Wyatt is doing really well with sitting up. He still can't sit himself up but if put in the sitting position he can stay that way. However, the other day I was not watching close enough and he did fall backwards and bump is head fairly hard. There was loud crying and many tears for about 2 minutes and then I showed him his sister Thorn and he started giggling and squealing at her. I think it is crazy how much he likes her. I wish the feeling was mutual from her. When Wyatt reaches out his hand to touch her she walks away. When he was newborn she would always lick him when he cried and try to ( I think) comfort him. Now that he is louder and more mobile she would rather not have anything to do with him. Sometimes when he is screaming I would rather not have anything to do with him either so I understand. The picture of him smiling so big was when he was looking at Thorn. I could not get both of them in the picture. He never smiles that big at humans.

The other day Vincent and I went hiking with some friends on the trails at Racoon Mountain. Wyatt is really starting to like riding in his backpack (but of course only for a few miles). He looks so cute riding on his daddy's back and I think Vincent likes it too.:) Also the other day Vincent took some pictures of Wyatt in front of a lantern. I think they turned out great (but every picture of my red headed baby is beautiful)!!