Taryn Update

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Since she turned 1, I have not been doing monthly updates on Taryn and her progress. But, now it's been a little while and I feel like she is in a big "development" time, so I kind of wanted to document this really fun, cute time in her life!

Taryn's vocabulary is starting to blossom. Just last week she started saying "up" "tickle tickle" and "cheese". Now we will say a word and she will immitate us and it actually sounds like what we said. Long gone are the days of her only saying "uh duh". Don't get me wrong, we still get a lot of lectures in gibberish, but she is starting to throw in some actual English.

By the way, she says "CHEESE" when we have the camera out. Thus all the tooth-y grins on all her pics lately. She also makes animal noises now. Or she thinks she does. They all come out sounding like "MOOOOOO". The other day Lee made a snorting pig sound and she has been trying hard to immitate that lately.

She has suddenly gotten much more picky about what she eats. She has decided she doesn't like bananas, which she used to love. Greenbeans are about the only veggie that she'll touch. She still isn't a fan of many meats and will only eat sausage, hotdogs and sometimes chicken. She will drink milk out of a bottle, but acts like it is poison out of a sippy cup. She will sometimes drink it out of a straw, but that is hit or miss. I know the bottle is a big no-no after the age of 1, but hey, we're working on it!

Taryn has all of her teeth in except for the two canines on her right side. She still loves her dolls and her new toy kitchen. Taryn is absolutely obsessed with books. She will bring you book after book after book. Each time, she brings one over, hands it to you, then says "up" so you pick her up and put her on her lap. You read that book and then she's off to get another one.

The other day Lee put his t-shirt on Taryn. It was hilarious because it looked like she was wearing a toddler-Snuggie.

Taryn loves to dance and "snap". If we turn on the music or she walks into a room where music is on, she immediately starts holding her hands like she is snapping and clicking her tongue (that is the sound for the snap) and dancing. Anytime I am on the ground, she quickly comes over and begins using me as a jungle gym. She also likes to pretend to do my hair. This mostly involves pulling my hair and tangling it.

Taryn is starting a new daycare in a couple weeks. I am excited for her to start. For the last year she has been in a home daycare which had kids from 0 to 5. The new place is a daycare center and she will be in a room with 10 1-year-olds. When we visited the place, she felt right at home and was ready to start playing. I don't think she had ever seen that many people her own size before. It was pretty adorable. Unfortunately, that meant we had to "break up" with our old daycare, which was really REALLY hard. But, I am really pumped for her new place. With all of her language development going on right now, I am anxious for her to be in a place that is more educational.

So that is the Taryn update for now!

Our new pet

Here are some pics of our new found friend. This little mother clucker has been seen and heard all over the yard. We even found 5 or 6 eggs under one of our bushes. This evening, all of the sudden, I heard some clucking that sounded awfully close. Turns out, in response to some of the bad weather, she has decided to take up residence on our porch. The cats are obsessed. And I think the chicken likes them as well. She's been strutting all over our porch furniture and has now made herself a spot for the night on the arm of our porch couch.

We have finally been contacted by the drunk driver's insurance people. Now we can get a few estimates on how much it will cost to fix up our damage and hopefully we'll be cut a check here soon... Until then, I am just hoping that the wild animals stay out of our man coop!

Pics from Lee's 30th

The Klemme's... A family that drinks together stays together. Although you won't get that kind of advice from those so called "therapists".
The bride-to-be and her maid of honor. Jamie needed a beer to take her mind off of those nuptials that are less than three weeks away!!

Johnny, Zach & Lee. We were trying to figure out what Zach was doing here. Our conclusion was that either he was trying to throw up a "WEST SIDE" gang sign or he had broken his finger earlier in the day and was happy to have finally drank away the pain.

SISTERS-IN-LAW!

BIG CHEERS FOR 30 YEARS!!

July 23rd, 2010 was Lee's 30th birthday! Hard to believe this crinkle-headed little baby is now in his THIRTIES. I know his family is having trouble believing that the baby of the family is THAT far from being a baby!

Friday night we went out to Harry's... Where else would we go? It is the same place that Leee celebrated his 21st birthday! I would venture to say that he drank quite a bit more on his 21st, but I wasn't there to witness it firsthand since I was only 20. BOO!

We had a great time with lots of old friends and some family. Lee's cousin Johnny, sister Sonia & brother Neil all made it out for the night. Randomly, the class of 2000 was having their class reunion this weekend, so we ran into a lot of folks from the grade below us. Lee even got harrassed by a couple ex-girlfriends.

As usually happens these days, Lee drank at the pace he could when he had a tolerance to back it up. So, he was "sleeping" in the car by about midnight.

And to top it all off, Saturday morning, he uttered these words: "I think I'm hungover." For anyone that knows Lee, this is a pretty huge deal. Even now, on day two, he's still napping it off. He's really jumping into this hangover thing with both feet!

Welcome to your thirties!! And RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE STILL IN YOUR TWENTIES!!! (I gotta live that up for the next 6 months!)

Buds

Taryn and Lee went to Columbian Park Zoo today. Lee was quite impressed by the zoo. It is by no means an extravagant zoo, but it is free, and you really can't complain about something that's free. I think it might be a little boring for older kids, but for kiddies up to about 4, it is perfectly enthralling.

Lee sent me this pic on my phone while I was at class. Taryn liked the baby goat... Until she realized that it was chewing on her shirt. Then she was ready for daddy to pick her up. ASAP.

I love this pic. It is like Taryn found a goat that is just her size.

This evening we went over to the county fair. I had some flashbacks to the scene in Joe Dirt when he was working at the carnival. We walked around and saw all the animals. Here is what we have determined about Taryn's preferences:
Likes: goats, rabbits
OK: cows (even the one that was MOO-ing loudly in her face), birds of all sorts
Dislikes: horses
I don't get it. I thought maybe it was the size of the horse, but she was totally fine with the ginormous cows. Hmmm.

Lee and I ate dinner there. He had the tenderloin and I had the BBQ pork. Delicious! We polished off the evening sharing an elephant ear. Mmmm. Sugar-covered-fried-dough.

Which Way to the Bar?

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As I mentioned in my last post, we spent the weekend at the lake. The region suffered some SEVERE storms, so the whole way home, Lee and I were checking out down trees and other random damage.

I have blogged before about our "man coop" in our yard. The coop is at the front edge of our property. Directly behind the coop is a large fence. The other side of the fence is our neighbor's back yard. It's kind of a weird setup. Anyway, our neighbor has a shed right there and he keeps some chickens in there. (Yes, we live in Indiana.)

My mom had stopped by our house to feed our cats for us and had texted me to say that the neighbor's shed had some damage from the storm. When I pulled into our driveway, I couldn't believe my eyes! "SOME DAMAGE" was that 3/4 of the shed was completely gone. No trace of any chickens. Rubble everywhere. Our fence was torn down. There was a hole, A HOLE, in the back of the man coop. OMG.

I was still trying to figure it all out. How did the storm do so much damage to just this little space, but nothing around it was touched. As I was pondering this, Lee pulled up and said "I'm pretty sure it was a car." And he was right.
About 5 houses down from our house is a restaurant/bar. It is a pretty high class place. Lee and I went there for my birthday last year and it was definitely not cheap! So, apparently, last night some dude was slightly over served and veered off the road, went through our neighbors yard (as you can see here) and slammed into our other neighbors chicken shed.

Here is the view that the driver would have seen. Although, I'm guessing the guy was seeing double. He literally made it ONE TENTH of a mile before he wrecked. That's pretty bad!

I had texted Lee to say that the coop was damaged and he just wrote back "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO". Unfortunately, it is true.

Look at all this rubble. Geez o pete! The neighbor was out when I was checking things out and I asked about his chickens. He said that he had found two of them, but the other two were missing. He said that he expected they were at the bottom of this pile of stuff. Poor chickens!

This is from the inside of our coop. We have been storing our new kitchen cabinets in there and I think one of them may have been damaged. This drunk dude is going to pay for that!

We have pieced together the story from our various neighbors. Everyone wants to chat about it! Apparently, the guy lives about eight tenths of a mile up the road in his mom's house (cool). As I said above, he didn't make it one tenth of a mile before he was off the road. He went all the way through one yard before smacking into the chicken shed. After the wreck, he ran. On foot. So... He left his car. Our neighbor immediately called the sherriff and gave him the license plate number. They went down and picked him up at his mom's house. Lee has lots of plans and dreams for how much money we might get to fix the coop. I'm guessing we're not going to get much and we're going to have to fight for it. The good news is, half of Lee's family is in the insurance biz, so we do have some good advice.

This evening, I happened to glance out in our yard. I saw something move under one of our big bushes. A CHICKEN! And not just one, but BOTH chickens! They survived! Lee and I went out and tried to catch them to give them back to our neighbor. Those buggers are FAST! So, that was a failure. So, for now, we have two chickens running around our yard. The neighbor thinks they'll head back down to his yard tonight. I guess we'll see... If not, I guess we've got some new pets!

Loungin' at the Lake

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A couple months ago, Lee's brother Neil bought a lakehouse on Lake Freeman. This is the same lake that Lee's parents live on, and actually, the house is right across the lake from them! Neil needed some work done around the house, and his family was going to be out of town at Disney for the week, so he offered to pay Lee to do some work, AND let us use the house for the week/weekend. We took him up on the offer and had a little "stay-cation" for our family.
We spent some time each day in the lake. We would either take the pontoon up to the sandbar or else just swim out by the house. Taryn didn't like when a boat would go by and the water would get all choppy, but otherwise, she enjoyed the water. Once we found a decent life jacket for her, that is.

At the end of the hallway, there was a HUGE mirror. Taryn spent a lot of time playing and showing off for that baby in the mirror that looked strangely familiar. (P.S. Skirts are hilarious on little ones that have a belly. I love how her skirt sits low in the front to accomodate her stomach. Unfortunately it is not so cute on a 29-year old.)

We spent some time on the porch getting some sun. I think Taryn finally realized the purpose of sunglasses (besides just putting them on and taking them off for fun).

"Hmm, how do I seat four for dinner on this cooler-table?"

Taryn continued being a domestic goddess in a new location. She "helped" out in the kitchen and cleaned up the carpet. She swept the porch and even cleaned the shower. I actually cleaned more than I normally do on a vacation. Neil's family hasn't had the house for too long, and it came fully furnished. I have a pretty severe aversion to OTHER-PEOPLE-DIRT, so I kept wanting to clean random things. My own dirt is totally fine, as you can see around my house.

But, for the most part, we all got in some rest and relaxation.
On Saturday, my family came up for the day (and some stayed the night). We took the pontoon up to the sandbar and had a great time drinking in the water. Taryn entertained them all. That's what the only kid has to do! We talked, laughed, and ate a ton of food. We also watched one heckuva thunderstorm. It was hailing and the wind was pretty crazy. A few of my family members were out in the storm. Smart! I'm sure that didn't have anything to do with the beer we had drank. We realized the next day that a lot of trees had been knocked down and stuff.

At the end of the weekend, Lee and I went home with a TON of leftover food and even left quite a bit for Neil's family. I think we're all a little more tan, and Lee managed to get a lot of work done too. Even better to take a "vacation" and get paid for it!

At the end of it all, we came home to find the real excitement had been going down right in our front yard... New post for that!

Who Dat? Drew Breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

So, the other day my mom and grandma went grocery shopping and lo and behold... There is Drew Brees! I got a text from my mom saying "Drew Brees is at Meijer". Totally not fair since I was in Indianapolis at a lame-o teaching convention. I tried to get Lee to go out and get an autographed copy of his book, but he wasn't interested. Am I the only Brees fan around here? Geesh. My mom's friend did send me this picture though. He looks a lot smaller than he does during the football season. He better get back to bulking up. Football season is almost here (thank goodness!).

Baby? Or House?

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Yes, I am aware that is generally what my blog posts are about. I can't help it that my life is just that gosh darned exciting!
So... Lee painted the bathroom. It turned out a little more gold than it looked on the 1 inch x 2 inch piece of paper in Menards... It still looks pretty decent though. Goes well with the tile. Thank goodness. When I pick out a bad paint color, Lee NEVER lets me hear the end of it.

And here is an updated pic of the Taryn's closet. Exciting stuff. We have also bought the paint for Taryn's room. However, it somehow became my job to paint her entire room. This seems like a setup. Lee knows that I am a horrible painter. I don't have two things that being a good painter requires: 1) patience; 2) a steady hand. This should be interesting.

You can tell when Daddy is in charge...

Taryn livin' the high life.

She looks WAY too happy to be in a Miller High Life box... She clearly does not know how crappy that beer is.

Lil' Mommy

As someone who is by no stretch of the imagination a "domestic goddess", it is so funny to watch my "lil mommy". She loves pushing her stroller, carrying her purse and her baby. Multi-tasking! She feeds her baby a bottle and covers it with a blanket. She also loves wiping down the tables and scrubbing the carpet with a towel. She had fun all weekend sweeping the Klemme's deck with a broom. I can't wait until her "play cleaning" can morph into real live cleaning!


The only thing that concerns me is some of her parenting skills. (For example, the picture above where her baby is tangled up in a cell phone charger cord.) When she covers her baby with a blanket, she generally covers its face... Forcefully. She is quick to toss her baby down if something more interesting comes along. She also has a bit of a temper and will sometimes end up slamming her baby down on the coffee table. Sometimes I watch her and tell Lee we better not age too badly because someday Child Protective Services will be showing up with our grandkids.

Besides all things domestic, Taryn also loves books. Her favorite is Toes, Ears, Nose. Or whatever it is called. This is quite ironic since every time I read it I think of Michelle's friend Kathryn. After Michelle's baby shower, Kathryn read the book and managed to put a perverted tone to every page. Even after reading it too many times to count, I still think of that and chuckle. Lee and I will sit in the living room and she'll bring book after book over for us to read. Sometimes in the morning Lee will just start stacking them next to his chair.

I can only hope that the love of books, like the love of cleaning, sticks around for the long haul!

I'm a Rambler!

Not a Loyola Rambler like so many of my readers... I am an Attica Red Rambler. Attica Jr. Sr. High School is located in Attica, IN (duh). It is a small school that contains grades 7th-12th and still only has about 450 students (like 60 per grade). I will be teaching four Geometry classes and two remedial Algebra I classes. Our math department at Attica consists of three teachers and one of the other teachers is brand new out of college. We actually had a couple classes together at Purdue. The third teacher has been teaching for about 10 years, but only at Attica for the last 3. It is going to be rather nice having such a small, young department. Definitely gives us a lot of freedom! Attica is about 25 miles southwest of Lafayette, so the commute will only take about a 1/2 hour, which is awesome. The only thing I'm not super pumped about it the technology I have in my classroom... While I do have a few computers, the other technology consists of a tv from 1970 and an overhead projector. So... If anyone has any grants for technology that they know of... Feel free to send it my way!

I was so worried about finding a job in this horrible job market, I am so relieved... But, now I'm starting to worry about getting ready for the school year!!! August 16th will be here before we know it!

Lee, my mom, Taryn and I went over there today to arrange things. We rearranged the desks about 15 times and finally settled on my original design. I made some plans of things I want to bring (like some more shelves). And, I struck gold. I found all of the lesson plans for the teacher that had retired. Sweet! I definitely won't follow them to a tee, but it is definitely nice to have a starting point!

Taryn loved the classroom. She ran around and around the desks, threw some transparencies around, gnawed on a straight edge and danced on top of the desks. She also loved that the window went from ceiling to floor so she could look out. I'm sure she'll get many more chances to run around over the next year! It is just so strange to have my own classroom!!

Happy 4th of July

We had a rather busy 4th of July weekend. Friday we hosted a cookout for my family. It was planned a little bit last minute, but it came together nicely. Our yard is great for kids to run around in and our porch is decent to sit on. Lee sprayed for mosquitos and we had OFF on hand, so it was decent.

Saturday we went up to Lee's parents' house on the Lake. Zach & Elise joined us and we also had cameo visits from Jamie & Garret and our friend John and his family. It was a good time that was capped off with a late night boat ride and of course some beer. Zach was very disappointed because we only let him set off two of the "big" fireworks since the babies were sleeping. They were really loud!

Sunday we hung at the lake some before coming home to relax around the house. Today we drove over to my classroom to try and get some things arranged (more on that later). And tonight were swim lessons.

It was a great weekend, but now it is back to the grind... Boo!