It's Official...

Life is about to change drastically...

In fact, the shopping has already begun. I can hardly contain myself!

{Not So} Tiny Dancer.

This is so Luke right now. He loves to do what he calls his "Silly Dance" and make us laugh. The only thing funnier than this is when his daddy joins in, but I'm not allowed to put that on the internet!

Slippin' & Slidin'

A few quick pics from our vacation at the mountain house, courtesy of my sis-in-law (thanks!). The Stinker loved his first slip and slide...Can you tell?

I just can't get enough of those dimples. Good grief, I love him.

What We've Been Up to This Summer...

(Please excuse my horrible camera phone pictures...)

We made a summer list this year.

Little did I know that potty training + weeks of extreme heat + nauseous, pregnant mommy = not much accomplished on our list.

Our Stinker was sooooo excited to wear big boy underpants for the first time.

Thankfully, potty training was one thing we did accomplish!!

We got some army guys and had some serious battles.

We stole and idea from Pinterest and raced marbles.

We did some chores around the house.

We beat the heat with big, yummy snow cones!

We watched fireworks for the first time ever on the Fourth of July.

We worked on our spelling. Luke did his name all by himself and was so proud. I then helped him with the order of Mommy and Daddy's names, but he found all the letters himself.

We welcomed our friend, Whitney, to Indy and are so glad she lives here now!

We conquered our fear of merry-go-rounds at the zoo!

We tackled the Hot Wheels exhibit at the Children's Museum.

We improved our swimming skills in Tampa at Aunt Carol and Uncle Johnny's house.

We (he) got really good at peeing outside.

We decided to be brave and try peanut butter on something besides apples. It was a hit!

We fought off lots of bad guys.

We've had an awesome summer!

How about you?

Our Valentine.

As most of you have probably already heard, we are expecting!!

The second Tatum Tot is due February 13, 2013, but I am fully expecting him or her to be late. I'm hedging my bets since Luke was a week late and it was TORTURE. We are very excited, but are just kind of trying to get through the exhausted/nauseous stage at this point. I have been one worthless human being lately, but I am praying that it will start getting better soon. I am 12 weeks along as of this week, so we'll see!

Luke is excited, but doesn't really get it yet. He was so funny when I told him that he was going to be a big brother. I want to do a post about our conversation, because it was too cute. At first all he kept saying was, "I don't want to be a big brother. I just want to be a big kid." He doesn't seem to be saying that as much anymore, but there is no telling what he'll say next. You never know with him. The other day I told him that I needed to eat and so did the baby. He immediately said, "Are you gonna take da baby out??" I'm sure he'll keep us on our toes. I'll keep y'all posted!

Father's Day!

Yesterday at church, Luke made Daddy a few gifts for Father's Day.

He decorated him a very cool tie. You can't really see that he colored it a bit, but you can see 2 of the 3 lovely sequins that he added so Daddy could have a little bling on his big day.

 The Stinker was very pleased with it and even wore it for a while at home.

He also gave Daddy a special award for "Best Dad". According to Luke, Daddy deserves the accolade because Daddy shoots him. We laughed and laughed at this because it so sums up the super hero/bad guys vs. good guys stage that Luke is in right now.

Apparently Daddy is currently in the same stage, too.

We sure do love you, Daddy!! 

Thanks for being the best Daddy a boy could ever have!

An Artist for a Day...

Luke is not a crafty kind of dude. He will ask to color or paint occasionally, and I will spend 5 minutes getting out all the supplies, setting out the paint, paint brushes, water, markers, crayons, and coloring books. Then he will proceed to paint for 1.4 seconds, color about 3 small lines on 3 different coloring book pages, freak out multiple times when he gets marker on his fingers, and then decide all he wants to do is sharpen the eraser side of pencils in the electric pencil sharpener. It is maddening.

So you can imagine my utter shock and awe when I came home from running errands a few weeks ago to find that Luke had drawn actual pictures on the chalkboard while I was gone. He hardly ever colors on the chalkboard, but for some reason Luke decided to show us that day what he is capable of. Phil tells me that Luke said to him, "Daddy, I'm gonna draw you some pictures," and just started drawing. Phil wasn't really paying attention, but when Luke called him to come see, Phil was totally surprised to find actually drawings. He asked Luke to tell him what he had drawn, and Luke pointed to each drawing and explained what it was. Phil labeled them so that I could see everything when I got home.

Upper left: Daddy

Upper right: Lemon (as in the bad-guy lemon cars in the movie Cars 2)

Lower right: Tree with a falling acorn...notice that he drew the ground, too!
(The star was done by me and was part of the "Luke is 3!" sign for his birthday)

 I can not describe to you how amazing these drawings are to us. It's not that we think Luke's art is any better than any other 3 year old's art. In fact, there are probably lots of 3 year olds who have been drawing faces and shapes for ages now. It's just that this was so totally out of the blue for Luke. He had never done more than uninterestedly scribble a few lines here and there before moving on to something else entirely. Suddenly he was drawing shapes and faces and falling acorns??? What?

When I came home and freaked out over what a great job he had done and how much I loved it, he could not have been prouder. I took pictures and gave him hugs and kisses and did everything I could to let him know how awesome it was. 

He has since to do anything like it again. He's back to disinterested scribbles and sharpening pencil erasers. Now I am wondering if it wasn't just a practical joke that he and Daddy pulled on Mommy for funsies. 

 

Oh well.  At least I have the pictures and the memories!

The Sugar Plum Fairy

I have been sooooo remiss in announcing the arrival of the newest member of our Tatum clan. I can only blame the forever-running-behind-ness and overall slacking-on-the-job treatment of my blog lately. So sorry!  Nevertheless, we are THRILLED to have a new baby girl in the family and can not wait to meet her. Her name is Hailey Anna Wade, and she is the daughter of Joanna (Phil's sister) and Brian Wade. She lives in New York, so we haven't met her yet, but I keep up with her every move through her mommy's blog.

She was nicknamed "Sugar Plum Fairy" in the womb, and I think she kind of looks like she could be just that in this sweet little picture.

 Beautiful baby girl.

I LOVE these two pictures of her looking at her Daddy. 

She's got him wrapped around her finger already!

What a sweet little face!

Here she is with her awesome Mommy. They went through a whole lot to get her here, and we are so grateful that God protected them during labor and delivery. 

We love you girls!

The Party.

The Big Man was super excited about his birthday party this year. He asked just about every day for two weeks if his birthday party was that day. I had planned on having the party at a really fun park not far from our house, and Luke thought that was so cool. Unfortunately the weather was the pits (once again), so we were relocated to the house. Thankfully the Stinker didn't seem to care or even notice.

 

Once it was party time, he was thrilled to have his friends come to "Yuke's house".

I let Luke choose what kind of party he wanted this year. 

He chose cars and trucks.

 Other than requesting the cars and trucks theme, the ONLY other thing he requested for his party was a chocolate cake. The kid is a chocoholic like his mama.

He was so tickled to have cars on his cake.

After eating cake, it was time to open presents. This Captain America mask was one of the first things he opened. He wore it for the rest of the party.

Even while opening his other presents...

...and while playing outside (after it warmed up a little and stopped raining).

He was still wearing it many hours later at dinner time...

...and when he finally took it off, it was only to practice some of his super hero moves.


My big 3 year old!

I still can't believe he is 3 already. Where did the time go? It has been the best 3 years of our lives, and we love this precious boy with ever ounce of our hearts!

TEXAS!!

Luke recently got to take his first trip to visit my little brother and sister in Forth Worth. He had never been there, and none of us had met our sweet Miss Macy yet, so when Phil had to go to Dallas for work, we tagged along. It was a blast!

I mean, is she not the cutest little punkin you have ever seen? And her personality makes her even more adorable. She is a doll baby, content to just be around people and soooo mild mannered. I would have taken her home with me in a heartbeat. I am totally in love with her.

At first Luke wasn't too interested in Macy, but little by little he warmed up. By the end of the trip he was giving "Baby Macy" kisses and hugs all the time. He was on constant pacie patrol, making sure she always had her pacifier nearby. He loved that her car seat was right next to his in the car and talked to her and kept her updated at all times during our car rides. He really was a good big cousin to her and I couldn't have been more pleased.

This phone picture is the only one I have of the two of us, but I got lots of good quality time with my sweet Macers.

Luke was a big help with Uncle Ben and Aunt Abbi's other kiddos-- the dogs, Gunner and Maddie. He had the best time helping give them a bath. 

This picture sums up this stage of Luke's life so well. He was uber excited about playing with the hose and in the water and was yelling, "DA NA NA NAAAAH!!!" like a super hero at this point. He is all about super heroes and bad guys and fighting (friendly, no contact, spastic, just for fun fighting) and is constantly doing hilarious things like this these days. I am so glad I caught him in the act.

Seriously. Uncle Ben's hose and all its switches and sprays may have been one of the best things in Texas.


And it got even better when Uncle Ben showed him how to hold the hose like a fire fighter.

We tried so hard to get a good picture of these three.

Luke wouldn't cooperate.

The closest he got to looking at the camera was when he decided to show off his "bad guy hands". Are you scared? You should be scared.

Aunt Abbi gave Luke a fun fishing game, and he challenged Uncle Ben to a few fishing duels. It was serious business.

He paused long enough to take a picture with Flipper, but still refused to look at the camera.

 

He got to show off his latest baseball skills. He can hit without the tee!

Most of his time, though, was spent doing what he does best.

On Saturday we went to the Stockyards to watch a cattle drive. How cool are these longhorns?

Luke tried to convince us to buy some souvenirs. Nice try, bud.

We did pay a friendly cowboy clown for some balloon swords for the Stinker. Looks like we might need to pay for some self defense lessons to go with them.

Luckily our Big Man did regain his composure a little later and dutifully defended his family from the longhorns.

Anne and I had a quick photo op.

Then I hopped in front of traffic to take this pic of the fam.

We were all sad to have to leave Texas and can't wait to go again!