Updates

It's been a busy summer here for the Tuten's! We moved from Charleston to Greenville, SC in mid-May. Thad started a new job at GHS and I transfered with my same company from Charleston, working out of our Greenville office.

Just before the movers delivered the contents of our Charleston house, we found out we were expecting baby #2! SHE is due January 3rd! That's right we found out this past week that we are having another girl. We are excited for Anna Claire to have a sister. Thad says he is going to get a male dog. Haha!

Anna Claire is a busy, busy 18 month old. She learns a new word every day and her accent is cracking us up. She is a great baby and actually seems more and more like a little girl everyday. A friend told me the other day that she would really seem older to me once baby #2 arrives. I took her to have her picture made this past weekend, I've posted a couple here, it's the only reason people read this blog anyway:)

I know, I know

I know I'm such a tease, I said I was going to post pictures of Anna Claire's birthday. I had the best of intentions. I hope one day to become a better, more frequent blogger. I need to figure out a time that works for me to write and have access to T's laptop where we download all our pictures. Maybe someday.

In the meantime, I'll re-direct you to my friend, Jen's, blog, http://imanolagirl.blogspot.com/ She is doing some awesome give aways this week to celebrate her one year blog birthday, yay for first birthdays! I love her blog, she makes me want to plan a visit to NOLA and believe me, we will one day and I'm going to have her plan it and tell me where to go and where to eat! Mom friends, you have to check out her post from today on her friend's clothes(Nola Tots). So cute!

Be back soon!

This time last year...

This time last year, I was very pregnant.

All we did know at this time last year was:

1) we were having a girl

2) she was breech and efforts to turn her were not successful

3) she had a lot of hair (seen from ultrasound).

We didn't know:

1) her name (although we had a short list)

2) what we were really in for

3) how much we could possibly love another human being.

In 3 days we celebrate the one year birthday of our sweet Anna Claire. We can't wait! Party pics posted after the big event.

Merry Christmas (late) and Happy New Year!

It's hard to believe that 2009 has come to a close, the year our sweet Anna Claire was born. She's growing and changing just about as fast it feels like the year went. It seems like not so long ago we were on our way to the hospital for our scheduled C-Section. We have Christmas and New Year's behind us, so the planning moves onto the first birthday party! I love planning a party and know this one will be extra special and fun.

I'm posting some pictures of Anna Claire from Christmas and some in the days following. If you think the quality of pictures looks better, they do, I got an awesome new camera for Christmas!

Anna Claire and "Da Da" on Christmas Day.

Santa brought Anna Claire this cute lion that she can either push or ride. She hates to ride, she only wants to push. You can see the determination in her eyes in this one, needless to say, the lion was big hit.

Such an active, happy girl!

We're back!

I'm sure we have lost some blog followers considering I haven't updated this in months. Oh well, I won't make excuses, I'll just post some cute pictures of Anna Claire and a short video of her crawling, eh, scooting and hope you'll forgive me :)

She is growing more and more everyday and is starting to copy stuff we do. It's really cute! She was a pink bunny for Halloween and charmed everyone at my office Halloween party. She was smiling and "talking" and just being the happy baby that she is! It's hard to believe she'll be 9 months old next week (Nov. 13).

A trip to the beach and July 4th

The last month, for the Tuten's, has been busy. In mid-June we took a week long vacay in North Myrtle Beach with my (Meredith) family. Anna Claire was entertained and loved all week long. She got to experience the beach, ocean and pool, all for the first time. She wasn't too sure about the ocean at first, but eventually enjoyed having her feet in water. She loved the pool and seemed to enjoy it the most. It was fun to be able to spend time with everyone. Aunt Nat and Uncle Hunter hadn't seen Anna Claire since her first week and Uncle Nick had never seen her in person, so it was fun for everyone to see how much she had grown.

July 4th Thad was able to manage a day off in between two very long days at the hospital. This is a long month, on-call every fourth night! We were both sick with bad colds, so we didn't do much on the 4th except to go to a cook out for a couple of hours before we were carried away by mosquitos. While being right on the water in Charleston for fireworks sounds like fun, you forget that mosquitos the size of large children are there too, not even the bug spray could keep them at bay.

Here are some of our favorite pictures of our girl over the last month:

June

For those of you who have been asking me to please post some new pictures of Anna Claire, here you go. I promise I'll try to do better!

I started back to work in mid-May, we made the transition successfully. Anna Claire does well with her sitter, and when I pick her up she's happy, fed and usually rested. She's not always in the same outfit she was in when I dropped her off, but that really has nothing to do with the sitter, but more to do with Miss Anna Claire! I still hate dropping her off every morning, a friend told me that I would get used to it, but didn't mean I would like it, I would say that's pretty accurate.

Anna Claire is growing like a weed. She goes for her 4 month check up tomorrow, and I'm excited to see her growth. She is more aware of us and especially loves her daddy, I'll post some pictures of them together below. She is getting stronger and can sit up pretty good (not quite on her own) and almost hold that head up without bobbling.

Since I last posted Thad celebrated a birthday. We went to dinner, but Anna Claire had a melt down before we could finish our food, actually, I think I only got one bite of mine come to think of it. Thad shocked me when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said a nice fountain pen....so that's what he got, a really fancy one that is retracable, apparently with as much writing as you do as a resident people take notice of what you use to write with and he got several compliments on it the first day he used it.

Here are some pictures of our baby girl from the last month. I've got to figure out how to edit some of them so she doesn't have red eye.

Jasmine still likes to snuggle with us and Anna Claire.

We pulled out the Bumbo and little Missy thought she was big stuff! She got so tickled, it was so cute!