June



June was pretty busy for us. We went to a couple Astros games with my parents. Tess found Mickey at the game and kept wanting to go back and see him. She is pretty enamored with Mickey right now. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse pretty much rules our TV when Tess is awake. We are in the process of trying to branch out.

Tess has full range of our house; she goes just about anywhere she wants to go. We moved Tess to a bigger car seat, and she found her old car seat in the dining room and decided to play in it. She had the best time playing in her old seat and as you can see from the picture she has completely out grown it.

 

Most mornings we play in the family room and watch TV till its nap time. She either plays with her iPad, puzzles, colors, or draws. Sometimes she does this with clothes or sometimes just a diaper.

 

This is the most time we spend at home because once she gets up from her nap we are usually out running errands or out spending time as a family.

One Saturday while Clayton was working, Tess and I ate McDonalds and then ran some errands. She is starting to dance and wiggle. It is pretty much the cutest thing ever.

We bought Tess a new Towel because she has so much hair now that she baby towels don’t soak up the water anymore. We found a Minnie Mouse one and she loves it. She carries it around with her even when it’s not bath time. She loves anything Mickey or Minnie related.

 

We went to Chick fil a one evening and I turned in her prize for an Ice Cream. She loves her Ice Cream just about as much as her Daddy. I think her and I were supposed to share it, I don’t think I got much. This is the story of my life right now, we are supposed to share and I end up having to buy my own.

 

 

Tess also celebrated her 2^nd birthday this month. She had to go and see the doctor that morning so before we stopped and got a special donut. She ate more of my donut holes and only ate the sprinkles off of her donut. We went to the doctor and she is still in the 25 percentile. We still have a small baby which is fine with us. She had to get one shot and got to pick out one sticker. We picked out some cookies to bring to Daycare and they sang Happy Birthday to her. We ate dinner with my family later that evening at Salt Grass. I think she had a pretty good 2^nd Birthday

 

 Tess was wearing one of Clayton’s hats and I wanted to take a picture of her. She has started to have some attitude about certain things and having her picture taken is one of those things. I wanted her picture taken so I showed her how to take her own picture and she took her very first selfie. I have to admit she took a good picture the first time, usually you have to take multiple shots to get a good one.

 

Roscoe came to visit us for the last weekend in June. Matt wet to visit a friend in Michigan and Tess was pretty excited to have another puppy stay with us. Roscoe is smaller than our puppies she he is just Tess’s size.  Roscoe is not use to all the madness of having a two year old so I think he was glad to go home at the end of the weekend.

 That same weekend Clayton was working a booth selling cozies at the Gay Pride Festival. It was hot a rainy so we didn’t stay long and Roscoe doesn’t like people so he was barking at everyone. We got there and walked around to find the booth, and then when we got there went to get some food and then left because it started raining. I had to run to the car when it started pouring while Diana held Tess and Lori held Roscoe. I dropped Diana and Lori off at the Astros game and Tess and I went home. Clayton said they had a pretty good turn out and almost sold out of cozies.

June was pretty busy for us. The summer only gets busier from here, next in July is Painting and a July 4^th Tournament and Vacation in Dallas.

It’s Been A While….

It’s been a while since my last post so this is going to be a long one. We have been busy and Tess usually keeps us busy. Back in the beginning of February the kids helped my parents pack up some of the non-necessity items in the house into a POD. My parents were putting the house on the market and needed to clean up some of the clutter they had acquired throughout the 20 years of living there. Tess went to Dallas for the weekend and we got a couple pictures of her playing with magnets on the fridge, she was also wearing an apron as she was helping nana out in the kitchen. I don’t know how much help she really was but I guess that’s why the magnets were brought out, a good distraction.

One day while Clayton was working the Braun girls went shopping at the outlet mall and Oma had to get Tess and outfit for every holiday coming up. Valentine’s Day, St, Patrick’s Day, and Easter were covered. It is hard to get a picture of Tess sitting still and looking at the camera, so these are the best shots of her holiday outfits so far this year.

 Tess has started to be a big help around the house, when she wants to be. If she thinks someone is doing something that she thinks she wants to do she will “help out”. One morning she noticed daddy was unloading the dishwasher and she needed to help. Later on when she realizes this job is not so awesome I don’t think she will be so eager to help out.

 

 

Clayton still plays indoor soccer during the year except for the summer when they get ready for the summer Olympics. We have been able to bring Tess to a couple of his early games this past season and at first she was a little unsure of the facility but she warmed up and enjoyed watching her daddy play and even ventured out and played with some of the other kids as well. She was a little tired the next day but she did well at the games and was able to watch her daddy do something he loves to do.

Tess is growing up a little too fast for me, in late February her hair was long enough for her first official ponytail. Her hair is so curly that if it was straight it would have been long enough a while ago but because of the curls it has to be longer. I don’t know when the next time we will get her hair cut, I had long hair growing up so I think we will keep the trend till it gets too long or she lets me know she wants it cut.

 

No matter if Clayton is at work or not I am the one that usually wakes up with Tess in the morning, it gives us some time in the morning to hangout, watch cartoons and be silly. I love that time with her. She loves to take pictures and she has gone through multiple phases where she is independent and then she wants to cuddle, sometimes in the same day. There was one weekend day, I think Clayton was at work and Tess and I were hanging out and she wanted to cuddle early on in the morning and then later on she has her purse with her and telling me bye. Every day with her is a new experience and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

 

 

 

Towards the end of spring break Mona and Kevin came down from Dallas to spend some time with little bit. Kevin turned the double nickel and I made him some cupcakes for the occasion. He was too quick the first time and blew out the candles before we could take any pictures. We relit the candles and made sure to get some action shots the second time. While they were in town we decided to go to Battleship Texas. We had planned on going on Saturday but there was rain in the forecast. That weekend there was a big celebration for the centennial celebration; the ship was commissioned in 1914 and is the last remaining dreadnought-style of battleship to serve in both World Wars. We went on Friday and it wasn’t too busy but it was really windy. Parts of the ship were not able to be seen because they were under construction and being repaired. We had the stroller for Tess so Clayton and his Dad toured more of the ship then Mona and I did. All in all it was a good day trip; we will probably go again when Tess is bigger. On our way back from the ship we stopped at a Dairy Queen and they had a ball pit. Tess took a quick dive into the pit and soon realized a ball pit is a lot like quick sand, the more you move the more you sink. Before we knew it all we could see was her head and a foot. She enjoyed it though; we had to use ice cream to get her out.

My brother rescued one of the cutest puppies around. He is I guess a toy schnauzer because he can fit under Toby and is basically full grown. Matt had to go out of town for the weekend so we dog sat. Roscoe and I got along just fine; he is still too much of a puppy for Clayton. In the evenings the dogs usually hang out with me on the couch, while Roscoe was at our house I had another dog hanging out with me.   

 We went to an indoor bounce house called Bouncing Bears for a friend’s daughter’s birthday party and Tess loved it there. She is still little and one of us has to do most of the activities with her but she doesn’t care. She laughed so hard and came home so exhausted that it was well worth it.

 

 

The next weekend we went up to Dallas for another birthday party. Tess had a lot of fun playing with family. We looked out in the yard and I noticed her leaning on the chair looking all smooth talking to Landon, she will eventually realize he is her cousin. They had a lot of fun running around the back yard until the big kids came out and stole the ball and started playing amongst themselves. Later that night I was looking for Toby and right about the time I was getting a little worried he popped his head up from under the blanket. He had buried himself under the blanket and was snug as a bug in a rug. O Toby…

 

 



 

When Daddy does eventually get up in the mornings Tess likes to play with him because he is usually a little more fun than mommy. This morning he was playing blocks with Tess and they built themselves a little tower until Tess knocked it down. She looks so big in this video, I think it was right around this moment that I realized, I have a toddler.

 

 

We have been waiting for the time that our little one would climb out of her crib; she had been showing some signs of climbing on things. Well one night she was acting out at dinner and she had to go to timeout in her crib, I put her in her crib and explained to her that she needed to think about how she was acting, fully expecting her to completely understand what I meant. As Clayton and I were finishing up our dinner we realized her cries were getting louder and louder. I went and got the monitor and low and behold our daughter was no longer in her crib, she had climbed out. Well she had I guess landed on her face and had the rug burn to prove it. We then started the long process of trying to find her converter kit which would convert her crib to a toddler bed, that process turned into us buying her a toddler bed.

 When Clayton and I bought our house we knew that eventually we would redo the kitchen, well that time has come. We bit the bullet and replaced the countertops and backsplash. We had really good cabinets but the countertop and backsplash did not work well with the color that was originally selected. We shopped around and went with a smaller place that we had bought our bathroom tile from. Since we were only changing the countertops and backsplash it was a pretty quick process. The countertops were installed in one day and the backsplash took an afternoon and the next morning. I hate change but after it was complete I am happy with the end result.

While I get ready for bed I usually take a look at the monitor and see how Tess is doing, this one particular night she reminded me a lot of her daddy. She was completely sprawled out on her back taking up as much room in her crib as possible. Her daddy tries to do this in our bed, there are nights that I will wake up in the middle of the night and I will be sharing my pillow with Clayton. Clayton is usually all over the bed at night, it is sometimes very interesting where he ends up.

  

Tess has always loved her bread. We have tried to keep the bread till she has eaten more of her meal so that she doesn’t fill up on bread and then not want to eat what we are having for dinner. Eventually she will have a love hate relationship with bread as all women do but I will let her find that out on her own and let her enjoy it while she can.

  

We went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse one night when Mona and Kevin were in town and our waitress was really slow. Tess was getting restless so Mona and I took her up to the front and she played on the saddle that is used when you go there for your birthday. She had a good time waiting for Clayton and Kevin to pay the bill.

  

Tess has been around our puppies since the day she was brought home from the hospital. Our two pups have been extra careful around her and Lexi has pretty protective the first couple of months. She is now getting to the age that playing with them is starting to get fun. We will randomly see her pet them, lay on them, or try to play with them. She has been stealing their balls for a while and bringing them back to us to throw but she just started throwing them the balls herself. The dogs tend to look at us because they don’t go very far but they give in eventually and play with her. Eventually she is going to be the only one giving them attention.

 

As Tess is getting older she is having more and more of an opinion. She sometimes likes to pick out her outfits or her shoes or decides she wants to wear her shoes with her jammies. Instead of fighting with her I usually will let her have her way unless the outfit is ridiculous. We will see how long this lasts. So far she is ok in the outfit department, but I am not positive it’s always going to be this easy.

As summer has come so has the rain, my mom bought her a rain coat and the first day it was pouring outside I got the coat out and tried to put it on her, well she was not pumped about putting it on. So I didn’t force it and I opened the front door and she saw the rain and reached back and all of a sudden wanted the coat. She has worn it a couple of times and will probably wear it more throughout the summer.

Speaking of things coming with summer, June bugs, at first Tess didn’t want anything to do with them. Then she started wanting to stomp on anything that looked like a June bug. One morning she saw an acorn and thought it was a June bug and looked at me and was basically asking permission to stomp on it. I basically thought to myself as I am taking this video, o your father would be so proud, and he thought it was hilarious. Thankfully there are no more June Bugs for my princess to stomp.
 

Well my baby is no longer a baby. We finally broke down and bought her a big girl Minnie toddler bed. What breaks my heart the most is the fact that she loves it. She has done great. We have only found her on the floor once and it was after one of the big thunderstorms we had one night. We didn’t even hear her get up; I just looked at the camera in the morning and saw her asleep on the floor. I have to admit now that I don’t have a baby anymore, I officially have a toddler.

  

Well that is my very long but much needed update on our busy life. I will leave you with the most up to date family picture and this will be the last Harris Family Picture in the old Braun Family Home.

 

Holiday Season

Well our Holiday season started off with Thanksgiving at the Braun house. No-one took any pictures but most of the Braun’s were there and we had a good last Thanksgiving in the house I spent most of my life in. My parents are building a new house and next year Thanksgiving will be in the new house. The next day we got ready and after Tess’s morning nap headed to Lampasas where Clayton’s great aunt and uncle live. There were only a couple of us going this year so we all got to stay at the house. Tess met her first big dog, Maggie is a lab mix and Tess was her first little human to meet also. Tess loved all the open space and enjoyed her time outside, she would get upset if someone was outside and she was not invited to join them. She was able to climb on the mower and tractor and had tons of fun. We had a fun weekend out in the country.

 

Our first cold snap rolled through before Christmas and Clayton and I decided to give Tess one of her presents early. We bought her Legos in a Wagon. She likes the Legos and Daddy and she played on the floor for a little while. She loves it when he gets on the floor with her, she jumps all over him and sometimes you have to brace yourself because you have no clue what exactly she is going to do. We also bought a new tree this year; since she gets into everything we bought a little tree so we would have some Christmas spirit in the house. No ornaments but it did what it could for its size.

 

Clayton put her in the empty wagon after she had dumped out all the Legos, big mistake. She didn’t want to get out. He pulled and pushed her around for a little bit and then we played the clean-up game and she put her Legos in the wagon so she couldn’t get in it anymore

 

Anadarko always has a Children’s Holiday party and Santa and Mrs. Claus come and take pictures. You bring an unwrapped toy to benefit a different charity each year. Last year we went but Tess was only 6 months old so she didn’t really know what was going on, this year she knew what was going on. Tess and I went upstairs to drop off the gift while Clayton waited in the Santa line. Right when we got out of the elevator she saw Frosty which scared the crap out of her, well Frosty could tell he was not wanted so he moved on and we could drop off our gift and pick up a gift bag which included a bear and from the pictures you can tell she didn’t want to put the bear down. Well we got to Santa and we had some Stranger Danger so I had to get in the picture with her.  It turned out ok, just hopefully one day she will get on Santa’s lap for the picture taking.

Clayton had Christmas off this year so our plan was to spend it in Dallas, which meant we had to do Christmas with the Braun’s early. My parents bought Tess a table and chairs which she loves; she eats all her meals at home at her table. Matt had brought back a bunch of stuff back from Thailand and Diana bought her all kinds of clothes. She didn’t understand the whole present thing but she did understand the tissue paper thing. She loved picking the tissue paper up out of the bags and then moving on to something else. My mom also got Tess a name puzzle; my daughter has acquired her mother’s love for puzzles. It’s a little ridiculous.

 

I had to work on the 23^rd but after work we headed to Dallas to spend Christmas with the Harris family. We had a lot of fun and saw a lot of family. Every day we were there we did something or saw someone; we needed a vacation when we got back. On Christmas eve we were supposed to see Grandpa Conn and Vicki but that didn’t work out so we stayed at home and Granny and Paw Paw came over to see Tess and eat Chinese food. It was the calm before the storm. Tess got up early the next morning and was ready to open presents. Granny and Paw Paw came back over to open presents with us. Tess again really doesn’t get this whole present thing, we all tried to get her to open things but she just wasn’t into it. I tried to open her stocking with her but she would get one thing and stick with it and then Mona tried to get her to open her Bouncy Horse and she kinda just looked at it. So we let her do her own thing and I opened most of her presents.

 

Tess got on her Bouncy Horse and bounced for a little bit but it went downhill very fast when she tried to get off. She fell forward and has yet to get back on her horse. She brings it out like she is going to get on it but she will then just leave it alone. So who knows? 

We had breakfast and Tess went down for her nap. After lunch we went to the park to run out some energy, it was cold and cloudy but other than that a nice day. She went on the swings and down the slides and I think we ended up on the big kid side of the playground but she loved it. The next day we hung out with the cousins and she ate some pie with her Paw Paw Kevin. We had a fun time but needed to get home and back into our daily routine.

Tess got a Plane from her Great Grandparents but was deathly afraid of it on Christmas and would not get anywhere near it. Well when we got home and she saw Mom looking ridiculous riding it around she decided that it can’t be that bad. She rode it around for a little bit but I don’t think she is convinced that it is not scary.

This year has been pretty cold in Houston so we have done a lot of hanging out in the house. It has been pretty much torture for Tess. She wants to go outside and then when she gets out there she realizes it’s pretty cold and that she wants to be inside where it’s warm. It’s a lot of Mommy please entertain me since we can’t go outside. We try to go outside every day that the temperature is reasonable outside.

 

We had to get out of the house on one of the cold weekends so we went to the boat show. One of the exhibits was a boat that kids were building and you could put your name in to win the boat. I thought Tess would be too small to try it but they said that Clayton could help her and she could do it. So they had to drill a hole and then screw in a screw. I think the noise that the drill made while screwing in the screw scared her a little bit but other than that she did a good job.

 

Like I said early Houston has been cold this winter and we have had a couple of Ice days. Well Tess and I were home one Tuesday, Daddy had to go to work and keep the city safe. We actually got some sleet/Ice stick around for most of the day. Then the other day on the way to work it started snowing. Every once in a while this happens and Houston doesn’t know what to do but it feels like we haven’t been this cold in a long time.

 

Well that was our Holiday season in a nutshell. Tess keeps growing and learning new things and sometimes she is too smart for her own good. She shows a lot of personality and both Clayton and I can see us in her, its pretty scary. I will leave you with the best family picture we will have for a while.

Lately...

A lot has happened in the last 6 months so be prepared for a long post. I was recently diagnosed as an epileptic and spent some time in the hospital and at home. I should have probably used that time to update the blog but I forgot and used the time to rest and be lazy.

Tess has grown so much in the past months that it is crazy. She loves to “read” her books. I put read in quotes because her version of reading is either flipping through the book at a very fast pace herself or getting you to turn the pages for her. Her pace is so fast that you can barely even see what the words are on the page. But at least she likes books; she loves to point at pictures and shout out her version of what animal or object they are. She is getting a lot better and is learning more words each day.

My dad taught Tess how to get down from the couch and she pretty much has perfected it and doesn’t need anyone’s help when she wants down. This scares me a little because she will sometimes try and use this technique while trying to climb down from our bed which is a lot taller than the couch and she doesn’t realize that she has more of a drop.

 

For the longest time Tess would only say Daddy, even if we asked her to say other words. She now has a pretty good vocabulary for her age but there are still times that she only says daddy, especially if he is at work.

 

During my time off we were able to go to a couple Astros games and even went to the Texas State Fair. My parents share season tickets to the Astros and Tess enjoys watching the other team score and even sometimes being able to sit in her own chair. It was pretty hot when we went to the State Fair so we thought if we stepped inside and watched the dog show it would be better, we were wrong it was hotter inside but she was a trooper and was content once the dogs came out and did tricks. Eventually we will have to teach her not all dogs are nice.

Also while I was in and out of Hospitals this year Tess had opportunities to stay with the grandparents more. My parents have stairs in their house and she loves going up and down the stairs. She thinks they are her personal playground. I am just glad we don’t have stairs because I would be constantly going up and down them.

Around Halloween we went with some friends to ZooBoo at the Houston Zoo. This was Tess’s first time at the Zoo and it started out a little cold but it ended up being a really nice day. Tess enjoyed the time she was able to walk around on her own; there were a lot of people so she was in the stroller most of the time. We took a picture on a bench and there was this cute little girl that was not ready to move on from taking pictures so she decided to stick around and take one with Olivia, the girls and I until she realized we were not her family and then she bolted. The girls were looking at her leave when we got a picture of just the 4 of us. Overall it was a good day and something we will probably do again in the future once she gets older.

 

We have a routine where she always carries her daycare bag that holds her cups every morning. She will walk out the door in the morning and then wait for someone to help her get down the big step and then she will walk to the car. it throws her off if she doesn's do her routine in the morning. One night after daycare we went and ate at Rudy’s and usually she wants to be with Mommy but this time she wanted to walk out with Daddy so I had to take a picture of Daddy and her walking out since it doesn’t happen very often.

 

We have a dog door and one of the times I was in the hospital we had a new animal join the family. When Clayton came home one day to check on the dogs we had 3 instead of  2. We had a dog I guess somehow get in the backyard and wonder into the dog door. She currently resides at our neighbor’s house and seems to like the new digs. It was funny because our neighbor Danny had been looking for a dog and this one just popped up, guess it was meant to be.

As Tess gets older she shows more and more of her personality, and we are starting to realize how much trouble we are in for. Most of the time she will do something and we will laugh at her and she will continue to do it. We have had to catch ourselves a couple of times because some of the behavior we don’t want to be repeated so we try real hard not to laugh and ignore her so she just drops it and it resolves itself. That doesn’t always work out how we want it to.

 

We have had a lot of time to hang out around the house. The weather has not always been the best on the weekends. We still try to venture out to get Tess out but it doesn’t always work out that well. She always seems to find something to get into around the house or someone to climb on. She has tuned into TV quite a bit, as much as I hate it she loves Sponge Bob Square Pants. You should see her face when it comes on. She knows the song and dances to it, until I try to get it on video and then she stops and stands completely still.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My parents are in the middle of buying a new house and at one of the model homes there were little kid homes in the back and it took Tess a little bit to warm up to them but after she did we couldn’t get her to come back inside. She loved looking out the windows and waving at the people that were coming outside. She really wasn’t too keen on sharing her house but I think that will come with time.

I will leave you with a picture Tess took of herself.