We’re baaacckkkk!! Do not give us a hard time. We’re not even sure there’s anyone checking this anymore.

It’s been so long now, that I can’t remember everything that has happened since I last blogged. Mallory is trying to talk more and more. She’s still along way from creating her first acceptance speech, but she is making progress. At least now, she tries to imitate you. She loves to say “dog”, even though it’s hard to distinguish from “da” (a.k.a. “dada”). But that’s okay. I am “mama” but only when she really, really wants something, and it’s hard to tell the difference between “mama” and “mine”. Yeah, she learned that one at daycare. Now, everything belongs to her. If you don’t believe it, just ask her.

She won’t say “more” or “eat”, but she will use the signs for those together to let us know she wants more food. This comes from an understanding that “more” doesn’t just apply to food anymore. But the cutest thing so far has to be “ah bah””¦which means “all done”. She loves to say that.

At one point, Kylie decided that she didn’t want to be called “kaka””¦mostly because Johnathan laughed at her being “poop”. Instead, we started calling her “lala”. Unfortunately, much to Kylie’s dismay, Mallory has learned her “k” sound before her “l” sound”¦so she is “kaka” anyway. ;) Ah, this too shall pass. I think Kylie is okay with it, as long as she calls her something. Also, she is trying to distinguish between “mama” and “mimi” and is doing well so far.

Kylie is starting to apply to colleges. She is taking an ACT prep class to help her get a couple more points when she takes it again. That will give her a state scholarship. I think she is applying to 5 schools. It’s exciting and scary at the same time ““ exciting for her, and scary for me. I’m just glad to see her get serious about it.

Last night, we went to her last band competition. They have one more this month, but she can’t go because it’s the same day as the ACT test”¦and her parental units have deemed that more important since she has to do all of her paperwork before the middle of November. I think she has mixed feelings. She seems to be all excited when band starts each year, but then she burns out about halfway through the season. They have a couple more football games, so she’s not completely done. But no more Saturday marathons. Maybe she’ll use that extra time to study math”¦yeah, right.

Sorry, folks. That’s all I have for today (gotta go make dinner). I have uploaded new pictures and videos for your viewing pleasure. There are some in Kylie’s folder as well as Mallory’s (14, 15 and 16 months). Wait till you see the “big girl” slide. Who says mommy’s not tackling her fears?

Let us know you’re still visiting. It’s easier to get motivated if we know someone cares. sniff, sniff

My mom came for a visit last week. She and Mallory had some great bonding time. Because Johnathan works near the airport, he retains the dubious honor of picking mom up at the airport. In the spirit of “dividing and conquering”, I asked them to pick Mallory up from daycare, while I ran a couple of errands. So mom got to see toddlers in their natural environment. Gotta tell ya – that is a fun sight. Then, I worked from home one day. Mom got to chase Mallory around while I attended conference calls. It was all she could do to keep little hands from banging on the office doors.

On Saturday, Kylie’s band had a mini-camp at the school. They take a break from 12:00 to 1:30. Parents come and set up tables of food so the kids walk around just taking whatever they want. It’s like one big tailgating event where everyone shares. It’s great. Mom was glad to be here for that. And Mallory had a blast. We have video of her running all over the place and playing with LaLa (a.k.a. “Kylie”). Those two had so much fun playing with the wagon and walking on the track.

Mallory is starting to pick up words now, slowly but surely. Good thing, because we go to the doctor tomorrow morning. She can say “hi”, “duck” and “dog”. I think she is trying to say “shoes” but it sounds nothing like “shoes”. (By the way, she is totally my daughter; she loves her shoes. Daddy is already starting a shoe fund for the teenage years.) She says some goobly gook sometimes and looks at you like, “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?” The word she uses most though is “up”. There’s no “p” sound at the end, but you absolutely know what she means because she stands at your feet, reaches her little arms up, opens her mouth wide and says, “U..U..U..U..U”¦” until you pick her up. Also, she is really starting to come along with her sign language. She can do “eat”, “more”, “milk””¦and “I want”, which is really just reaching out and squeezing her hands at everything”¦and saying “that”. ;) But the most fun one is something that mom taught her this weekend ““ “uh oh”. Now, when she drops something she says, “uh oh”. Last night, she dropped her fork. Of course, as usual, we just said, “You dropped it, you don’t get it back.” But then she said, “Uh oh.” Fun stuff. Johnathan relented and handed her the fork. But then she gave him the funniest look; my kingdom for a video camera that captures all. She cut her eyes at him as if to say “eat stuff”. I think she already knows that she has her daddy wrapped.

She can now show you her nose, ears, eyes and mouth. She can brush her hair and do her “frog face” for you. She can blow you kisses, give you kisses (with lots of slobber) and wave bye. Last night, she found her belly button while she was in the tub. I started teaching her “toes” and pointing out the difference between “nose”and “toes”. That one might take a little longer”¦but she kept pointing her toes at me to play with them. Who could resist that? We did “Little Piggies”. She would squeal with delight until we got to the little piggy that had roast beef”. . .maybe she’ll be a vegetarian.

There are so many things I am learning. I knew that Mallory would be a little person and have her own personality”¦but I was totally not expecting it at 14 months. She has the most impish little grin when she is about to do something that she knows you don’t want her to do. She tests me when I tell her not to do something”¦but she can already tell when I’m really serious. Johnathan got on to her last night for doing something”¦all it really took was a couple of words and a stern look. She cried. Hopefully, that means that punishment will be less necessary when she gets older. (Yes, I’ll hold on to that hope, thank you very much.) When he picked her up at daycare yesterday, her actions said, “Hey, dad. I’m really happy to see you, but I have these Goldfish crackers over here that I would like to finish before we leave. Thanks.” I don’t think it hurt his feelings too badly that she was having trouble prioritizing him over food”¦see, I told you she’s my daughter. ;)

A couple kind of funny stories to tell, but I’ll keep them short. Yesterday I was trying to get out of the house fairly quickly. I put Mallory’s juice cups in her bag and sat it by the back door for Angie. As I’m walking out the door, I see Mallory head over to the bag. I paused, because I wanted to make sure she didn’t get into something she shouldn’t be getting into, but laughed when she picked up the straps and put them over her shoulder, and the proceeded to carry/drag the bag behind her toward the front door. Just an example of the little stuff that she picks up on and then tries to immitate.

Then, this morning I get a call from Angie while I’m driving in. I’ve been having to get to work earlier lately (and sometimes stay later) so we haven’t been car pooling. She dropped Mallory off and while she was talking to Ms. Rita (Mallory’s teacher) she noticed that Mallory was walking around with a basketball. A few minutes later, she heard a big bonk, and turned around to see that Mallory had apparently fallen and bumped her head on the doorway that separates the “sleeping quarters” from the play area. At this point, any normal person would have expected screams to errupt, but Angie just asked Mallory if she was ok, and after a few grumbles (maybe it’s ok that she doesn’t have too many words right now), she got up and continued playing. I haven’t seen her yet, but Angie said she’ll probably have a place right in the middle of her forehead. I think we have reached the point where pictues will no longer be clear of blemishes.

BTW… her pictures came back. Just let us know when you are stopping by to see them. :)

The company that I work for, Willis, puts together a team to participate in the Heart Associations annual Heart Walk in Nashville. We are consistently second place (though currently third this year) in the team fundraising, which is great considering that the #1 team is from Vanderbilt and get’s a lot of big corporate donations.

Last year, Angie, Mom and I walked with Mallory and had a great time. I hope Kylie is able to come this year, but it’s September 27th, which is during Marching Band season. Our team lead at Willis has a daughter with DiGeorge Syndrome which has caused her even just in the last year to have a heart valve replaced. She was a trooper. If you are interested, you can see more about what she (and the family) went through on their blog at http://courtneyheart.blogspot.com/.

I’d like to ask you to consider sponsoring our walk this year. Donations of $25 or more can be given through the website below. If you would like to give less or mail a check, please feel free to send it to me and made payable to the American Heart Association. Anything you might give would be sincerely appreciated and will go directly to the AHA.

Here’s the link: Click here for my page

Here is a link to our team page:
Click here for the team page

Every once in a while I can guilt the man into a blog. Since it will probably be a few months before you hear from him again, I thought I would take a shot at it.
It’s amazing to me what can happen in a year. With everything that has happened in our lives in the three short years we have been married, you would think that I would have come to grips with it already. One friend said that we have fit 15 years into a 3-year marriage. Funny. I was just thinking the same thing…but in a good way (love you, honey). But I digress. Just one year ago, we had this little blob that ate, slept and pooped. That was pretty much it. She had a good set of lungs on her, even back then (maybe that should have been our first clue). Now, she is walking all over the place. She climbs up and down the stairs (supervised, of course). She picked up Kylie’s socks the other day and tried to put them on her feet. She tries to put shoes on….oh, and the bottom stair has become her seat. She walks up to it, turns around and backs up and sits down on it like a chair. It’s the cutest thing. She’s learning to walk backwards. And she is starting to show a lot of personality. She’s stubborn and a bit obstinate…who would have guessed?
The biggest problem we have is that she is basically refusing to communicate. All she says is “Da”. She can say other things, and does periodically, but she’s not consistent. She clearly knows what we are asking. For instance, I asked her if she wanted to eat. She practically ran to her high chair and held her hands up. But forget getting her to ask for it. We are working on it. We understand that as long as she is getting what she wants without asking for it, there is no incentive to ask for it…but at some point you have to give in and feed the child. There has been lots of screaming and gnashing of teeth…Mallory is screaming and Kylie is gnashing her teeth. She is at least pointing now.
Kylie is less than a month from starting her senior year. No college has been picked yet. She goes to band camp next week for the last time. I wonder if she thinks about this being her last time. There will be many of those this year. She doesn’t get very nostalgic, so it may not matter to her. I think this will be an interesting year filled with lots of excitement and growing pains.
For your viewing pleasure, I have uploaded lots of new pictures. There are some new ones in Kylie’s folder and Mallory’s 12 month folder. I have also created some new ones: Becky’s Wedding, 4th of July and Mallory – 13 Months. Hope you enjoy.

He’s gone. My big boy…My constant companion for the last 10 1/2 years is gone. For the last couple of months, Major had been limping on his left front leg. Now, I knew that the circulation in that leg had been bad for at least a year. When I clipped his nails, there was just something different about the nails on that paw. They were growing funny and were brittle. But he was old. This was a new experience for me. I’ve never had a dog get old. They have always either disappeared or been hit by a car. But my man lived a sheltered life. He had no choice but to get old. And with that came the knowledge that, at some point, I was going to have a very tough decision to make.
Three years ago, he was diagnosed with hip displaysia and arthritis in his back (they only gave him a year and half…shows what they know). So when the limping started, it was just one more thing. One more sign of how old my friend was getting. He had also gone blind in his right eye. When he would go down stairs, he would go at a slight angle, I assume, so he could see better. I was convinced about the blindness when he walked right through a house plant. Then, about two weeks ago, I was bringing him in from the backyard, and I noticed that the left leg was about twice it’s normal size. We watched it for a few days. It would go down some and then get really big again. We decided that it was a circulation problem and that we needed to schedule a time to take him in…but things were busy, as usual.
Last Tuesday night, 6/10, I went outside to let the boys in and I noticed that the left side of Major’s chest was huge. Our friend, Richard, looked at him and said he thought it was cancer. After everyone left that night, I laid down on the floor with him and just loved on him. I would blow in his ear to aggravate him. I would stop petting him so he would dig his nose under my hand to get it back on his head…just like the good old days. He acted like he felt fine. He just had a really hard time getting up from the floor. And he still had so much personality. At one point, Johnathan and I were sitting on the bed, while I bawled my eyes out. He got up, walked around the bed and stopped to look at us before laying back down. He just tilted his head to the side as if to say, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you looking at me like that?” So we struggled with whether we should just wait and see if it went down or if we needed to take him in on Wednesday. Of course, both of us had crazy schedules, but we decided that it was best for Major to take him in. We took him and dropped him off for the vet to run tests. It only took about an hour for the vet to call. It was cancer. The tumor was where his neck attached to his shoulder and was cutting off the circulation. It was fairly advanced. It was also in his eye (the blind one) so it was probably some sort of lymphoma. The vet was honest and said that there were treatments; however, due to Major’s age, he was not going to push me in that direction. I wouldn’t have put him through that anyway. So after much debate, many questions, and many, many tears, we made the decision not to bring him home.
When we finally got to see him at the vet, he was slightly sedated. They had already put an IV in his leg. Johnathan, Kylie and I were all there. We just sat and loved on him for about 30 minutes. Then, the technician asked if we were ready. “Ready as I’m ever gonna be.” They sedated him more so he was already asleep before they pushed the drugs. It was very peaceful, very fast. They left us alone with him. Sitting there with his lifeless body is forever etched in my mind. I’m glad that I was there for him, but I will never forget it. It still makes me cry. And somehow, it seems wrong to be able to take a life so easily…even if it is just a dog.
I remember the first time I ever saw him. My neighbor pulled him out of his coat…a surprise replacement for his predecessor that was hit by a car. He was only 5 weeks old. Tiny little thing. I had to crush up his food for him so he could eat. And he did not like to be touched… at all. He was never a needy dog. He liked attention…and occasionally, he demanded it. But for the most part, he was happy just to be in your presence. He got me through a divorce and a couple of other relationship breakups. He was the man of the house when I was single. He “tolerated” the new husband that took his spot in the bed. And periodically, he licked the face of my most precious creation. He let us put reindeer antlers on him at Christmas, and never did eat Cole, no matter how annoyed he was. And I swear to you the dog smiled. He will forever be my favorite dog and one of my best friends. I miss him.