Nicaragua and New Teeth

This post is a little past due, but better late than never!

About two weeks ago, Papa Tigger and I left Tigger with G-Ma and G-Pa T and flew to Nicaragua to visit our friends Anna and Alonso. We were there for a long weekend and had a great time (because we had great tour guides!).

Our first excursion was to a still-active volcano. It was really smoky and windy!

Me and Papa Tigger at the volcano:

Me and Anna:

We also visited a cute town, Granada. They had some beautiful architecture; check out this grand church:

We also made time for the beach. Here we are chatting after Alonso went surfing.

The roads in Nicaragua are terrible! Here is Alonso's car after we arrived at the beach. It had recently rained and the only road leading to the beach was unpaved.

The beach we were at was on the Pacific coast, at San Juan del Sur. We stayed at a nice hotel with a beautiful view of the beach and coast!

From our room:

We also spent some time at the pool. Here's a fun shot of me and Papa Tigger. I'm hanging onto the edge because I couldn't touch the bottom!

One last stop was to a local pottery store, where we grabbed a few really nice pieces. The artist, Nestor, was in the store so Papa Tigger grabbed a picture with him.

Since this is Tigger's blog, I can't post this without SOME reference to him. So here's a picture of Tigger. While we were in Nicaragua, his second tooth came in!

Mug Shot

So, Papa Tigger and I are planning a little trip to Spain in a few months. We love to travel and we promised ourselves that we wouldn't change that once Tigger came. We've done some travel with him - long road trips to visit G-Ma and G-Pa T, trips to Texas to visit the fam, skiing (though we had help from G-Ma and G-Pa T) and camping. But we have yet to do a full-blown vacation just the three of us.

I decided conquering travel was like a bandaid - we just needed to rip it off! So we've planned a week in Spain over Labor Day. Western Europe is a fairly short trip from DC (7-8 hours), so we thought it was a good way to ease ourselves into it.

As part of the planning and preparation, I realized that we needed a passport for Tigger. To get a passport for a minor, everyone has to go in person. That's right - Tigger, me and Papa Tigger. I guess this is to prevent one parent from getting a passport and leaving the country with a kid. Luckily, Papa Tigger and I had a little free time in our schedules Friday morning so off we went to the post office (where they accept passport applications).

Of course, the first post office we went to informed us that the person who processes passports doesn't arrive until 10 am (despite the hours posted on the website as 9 am to 2 pm). Gotta love DC. So we swung by Ritz Camera, got some passport pictures and headed to another post office. Luckily, there was no line and we were in and out in 10 minutes.

At Ritz Camera, Tigger was so cute! He was enamored with his new surroundings and the stranger taking his picture. The picture taking set up was a stool with lights and a white background. So Papa Tigger and I plopped him on the stool, held him in place and crouched down so the Ritz employee could take his picture. He was so good! He looked right at her - though didn't smile much. Here is the resulting picture, which to me looks like a mug shot (hence the post title).

You'd think the wetness on his shirt was drool, but it's water. We've started giving Tigger sippy cups to start transitioning him away from the bottle. He was sucking on a sippy cup while in his stroller on the way there. There was a bit of spillage!

Messy (but Cute) Eater

Tigger surprised me tonight by being very adamant that he feed himself. This is pretty new - he's grabbed the spoon before, but tonight he felt pretty strongly about dealing with his food himself.

This first clip starts with me delighted that he can feed himself, but it quickly descends into chaos:




Then, I decide to give in to the chaos:

Tigger's Happy Face

For those that have met Tigger, you know he has been a very happy baby. However, this morning I was a little slow in preparing his breakfast, and was able to capture this special moment. For those on Facebook, please go here to add your favorite caption...

Toys, Mobiles and Car Seats

Tigger continues to grow and make us laugh every day! In fact, he'll be ONE YEAR OLD next month!! As an early birthday present, Meema sent him the VTech Sit and Stand walker. It's great because it lights up and makes noise (which Tigger loves!), so he can play with it sitting down. It's also a walker with wheels, so it'll help him as he learns to walk. Here he is playing with it for the first time:

Another cute thing he's been doing lately is pulling on his crib mobile. Papa Tigger dropped the crib mattress down to its lowest setting but unfortunately, that didn't help matters. Here is what I found yesterday morning in his crib:

It was still pretty early, so I took down the mobile, gave him a pacifier and tried to get a few more minutes of sleep. After a while, I heard him making noise and came in to find him itching to get out of his crib. He's starting to pull himself up by the railing, but hasn't fully stood up yet.

Later in the day, Papa Tigger tackled Tigger's new car seat. Since he was 19 pounds two months ago, we figured he's getting pretty close to the upper limit (22 pounds) of his infant car seat. Papa Tigger and I bought the Evenflo Triumph convertible car seat, which should get us through the next several years. We looked at the Britax Roundabout, which is a very popular brand, but the Evenflo was bigger (which seemed "safer" to us), was rated just as well by Consumer Reports and has an easier mechanism for tightening the straps. Tack on the fact that it was 30% cheaper than the Britax and we were sold.

Once installed, we put Tigger in it and set off to Virginia to run some errands. We think Tigger likes the seat. He sits upright a lot more and can actually see out the window now. Unfortunately, since it's so big, we can't see Tigger at all when we're sitting in the front seat. It's like he's disappeared behind this big massive wall! But soon enough he'll get too tall to be rear-facing (notice his feet already touching the seat?) and we'll have to flip him around to be front facing.

Bathing Laughter

This. Is. Funny. I love how my son likes the stuff I throw at him!

July 4th

Tigger enjoyed his first July 4th sleeping, which is more than we can say for Major. (Throughout the night, Major needed to jump up and check the house out after each bottle rocket...)

In the afternoon, the fam walked to the Mall to check out the hordes of tourists.


We took a break so the dog could catch his breath, and hung out for a picnic.

Oh, grass!
Our son, the future technophile...

We got out of there before the true masses showed up, and went to a neighbors for a BBQ. Unfortunately, no pics of that time though...

But alas, happy 4th!

New Toys for Tigger

As you may have guessed from all the posts, Tigger spends a lot of time playing. He's starting to figure things out and is becoming a handful! He likes pulling apart his play mat:

but we love him anyway!!

Given how much time he spends playing (it's a great life, huh?), Papa Tigger and I decided Tigger needed a few more toys. So Papa Tigger and I headed to Target and picked up a few new toys - a piano toy and ride-on firetruck. He really seems to like them!

In fact, the piano toy is helping him with his vocal skills!

I'm not sure who played harder, Tigger or Papa Tigger....