Happy New Year!

Let Anderson be the last to welcome you into 2010!

2009- A Year In Review

People always say things like "this year just flew by!" But 2009 really did go by so fast, at least for us. Maybe that's just what happens when you get old. I'm sure you are probably thinking, "Old? Give me a break!" But, I'm already starting to forget things, like my age for example. In the past month or so, I've been asked how old I was on two separate occasions. My answers: 23 & 25. How old am I really? : 24.

Anyways, all that aside, we have had a wonderful, busy, life changing year.

*Curtis completed 2 semesters of school (with superb grades!); Majoring in Computer Information Technology. We are hoping he can finish a year from now!


*We welcomed little Anderson Carter into our lives April 15th. He is now 8 1/2 months and such a joy. We love him A LOT...if you can't already tell by the hundreds of pictures of him on the blog.

*We moved into a bigger apartment. That makes 5 moves since we've been married.

*We enjoyed visiting family in GA and AL twice for 4th of July and Thanksgiving. We love our families!

*We visited family in UT as well while taking my little sis. to BYU!

*We celebrated 2 great years of marriage.

*Anderson has had a lot of milestones in the past couple weeks...crawling, 4 teeth, and standing on his own, to name a few! We're pretty sure he'll be walking really soon.

Here are a few pictures of our goings and comings:

At the Children's Museum in Atlanta

Riding the dinosaur at the park by Carl & Court's house. We love that park.

"WAAAHOOOO!!!" Uncle Ryan is so much fun!

Here we are trying to get a cousin picture...that's pretty hard to do!

Who needs presents when you can have boxes?

Anderson is such a fast learner...way ahead of his time. We've already got him into piano lessons:

...And dance lessons:

I guess it's time to move his mattress down, he finally figured out how to pull up in there and will yell for us until we come get him.

"I don't think I like this!" (Standing all by himself).

It snowed! For about 1 hour...all well, it was beautiful while it lasted!

Anderson's first Christmas was great! Santa brought him this awesome Sing-a-long Stage...he LOVES it! He's a rock star already.

He was showered with presents from both sets of grand parents, his great grandma, his aunts and uncles, and his great aunt. He loves them all, thank you everyone!

What a schmoozer!

He loves these little balls. Probably because they make his teeth feel better. Two little teeth on the top decided to arrive as an unwanted Christmas present for Anderson. He had a pretty rough time with it. The weird thing is that they aren't his "2 front teeth"... they are little side fangs. We now have a vampire on our hands.

All tuckered out after all that unwrapping!

We made it!

This has been a week of accomplishments in this Haynie household.
On the 15th, Anderson turned 7 months old!
I asked him if he felt any older, he just said "Da Da Da Da."
We are proud to report that he can now get in the "plank position."
He gets on his hands and knees constantly, but so far has only succeeded in moving one knee forward.
His Grandma A bought these teething crackers to keep him busy while we were eating dinner.
Here are his thoughts on that:

"Whoah! What did you just put in my mouth?"
"Do I like it? Hmmm...let me think..."

"This is the best day of my life!!! I love this stuff!"
(Notice the extreme mess that is all over him...it was also all over the floor.)

In other news:
We just celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary!
We started out the day with some yummy pancakes.
Check out Curt's beautiful artwork:
(It says I heart you, incase you can't tell! :) )

Curtis planned a great evening out for us.
Grandma A put baby to bed while we went out on the town in downtown Raleigh.
We left the apartment and I found the car full of a beautifully wrapped bag of gifts and a bouquet of flowers!
He made reservations at a very nice restaurant downtown.
It was very yummy!
We then just spent some time walking around and finding fun places to take pictures of ourselves.

He looks like he's straight out of Singin' in the Rain!

They just renovated an entire section of downtown Raleigh and there are so many cool things now. This is a random wall with a bunch of lights on it.

Look closely. Can you find Curtis in this picture?
He is using his powers to make the water rise out of the fountain!

You can find some pretty interesting people on the streets of Raleigh...

And here we go...walking forward in our lives together...

It seems like we have been married a lot longer than 2 years.
We have enjoyed pretty much every moment of it... :)
In lieu of the season, we are so thankful that we have each other and little Anderson.
We are definitely blessed to have such a great marriage and family!

Anderson has survived 7 months of life, and we have survived 2 great years of marriage...and now we look forward to our futures together!

Finally!

(I can't figure out how to get my font working correctly bc there is a baby in my lap trying to eat a USB cord as I post this)
I know it's been a while...we've been a little busy with school, work, the appearance of a little tooth, and the appearance of another little tooth. This teething process is just so much fun, let me tell you! The little dude looks so darn cute with the 2 little teeth poking out, though. Unfortunately for me, along with teeth and solid foods comes less dependence on mommy! Ande has taken it upon himself to ween from breastfeeding. I thought I would be jumping for joy when this happened, but I'm so sad! Luckily, he is still totally and completely a "mama's boy." For now.

His Daddy, however, never fails to make him laugh and give him a good time. Especially in the bath!
"Rock and Roll!"

Baby Mozart?

And here we are, the long awaited Halloween pictures! We of course think Ande is the cutest Tigger of all time, so we took him to the ward Trunk or Treat basically just to show him off. Once there, we found Ande was one of several cute little Tiggers and we ended up feeling a little out of place. What is there to do at a Trunk or Treat when your kid can't walk or eat candy?


We also took Ande to a pumpkin patch on Friday before Halloween. All the good pumpkins were already taken, the only ones left had a bunch of warts all over them. We decided to have a photo shoot with Ande anyways.
It started out good...
Until he realized there were leaves on the ground all around him. For some reason Ande thinks leaves are delicious because this is not the first time that he has ingested one, or two.

Once we tried to pry the leaves out of his cheeks and fingers, the rest of the pictures ended up like this:

On Halloween we took Ande Trick or Treating, but only to his Grandparent's and then his Great Granny's houses. We sat him on their porches, rang the door bell, and then we hid. They thought it was pretty funny when they opened the door and little Tigger was all they saw!

I'm a BIG kid now!

The weather has started to cool off a little bit, so we have been taking advantage of the new park in town. Anderson can't really utilize the facilities, like the other kids, but he's one swinging fool!


"Who's back there? Who's pushing this thing?"

"I've got my safety goggles, let's get this thing movin'!"

"WEEEEEEEEE!!!"

"This swing is plaaaayed!"

For Curtis' birthday, we got some burgers and a milkshake from Cook-out and then had a picnic at the park. We found some friends from church there and had to keep Anderson from riding off with their cool tricycle!

"Where's the throttle on this bad boy?"

"Excuse me, coming through!"

"Dad, I think it's time to start shaving with you!"

It's a little dark, but I think you'll be able to see this!


"Who's going to run the next 5k with me?"

168 Days Down...

Eternity more to go!!! Anderson is coming up on 6 months in October!
The leaves are changing and so is he.
He is learning and doing new things every day!

Here he is on his 5 month bday with a nice little bracelet...

His shirt is soaked through with slobber.

And his diaper is peaking out of his pants, haha.

MMMmmm...TOES!

Here we are breaking the rules...the doc said to wait until 6 months for the rice cereal. Here he is at 5 months trying it out for the first time:

Not much made it into the tummy.

This is day 2, after adding bananas, he had a much more pleasant experience! Now, he can't get enough! Maybe we should have started with green beans in the cereal...we may have created a sugar addict already.


GAME TIME!

Along with Fall comes game season! We went to a Railhawks soccer game, gotta start him early! He's also sporting his NC State Wolfpack shirt and his stunna' shades!

~Ande playing hide and seek!

(There will be more videos to come!)

Proof!...

...That Anderson is the funniest little kid!