Thanksgiving in Needham

We began our Thanksgiving holiday by traveling to Needham on Sunday to celebrate with my dad's side of the family. My grandmother(known as GranDottie to John Turner) prepared a delicious meal and we had a wonderful time visiting with family. My grandfather even got to leave the nursing home for the day and eat dinner with us.

John Turner with GranDottie

Gran with all of her babies

My sister and her beautiful family

Goofing off with Daddy at usual

Hmmm, what shall I do?

Thanksgiving picture with Mommy

Thanksgiving picture with Daddy

We are so thankful for our wonderful family!

Halloween

We had a wonderful Halloween! Our little scarecrow had the time of his life! He seemed to enjoy being dressed up! We couldn't believe that he left his hat on the whole night! My parents and my sister and her family came over to spend Halloween with us. Our neighborhood is VERY BUSY on Halloween night so we put Carly and John Turner in the wagon, which made for a much better trip around the neighborhood. John Turner just talked and talked all night as we trick or treated. We don't know what he was saying, but he seemed to be having a blast! His favorite thing to do was to dig pieces of chocolate out of his pumpkin and try to eat through the paper to get to the chocolate! He did end up getting a package of M & M's opened! LOL! He was so hyped up that he stayed up until after 9:00 last night! That is VERY unusual for our little scarecrow! Here are a few pictures that show how we spent our Halloween!

13 Months

Our big boy is now 13 months old! He is busy, busy ,busy!!! Here are few things that he has been up to!

• John Turner still loves spending time with Oliver. Oliver still loves spending time with him. Here are a couple of pictures of them playing together this week.

He LOVES telephones!! He will play with a phone for hours! He loves pressing the buttons and pretending to talk on it!

He will blow sweet kisses to anyone!

He enjoys playing in his house. He rings the doorbell, checks the mail, turns the light on, etc...

His language has really developed since he has had his surgery. He is beginning to talk up a storm! Here are a few things that he is saying these days:

• momma
• dada
• car-car(for his cousin, Carly)
• nana(for bananas-which he still LOVES to eat)
• nigh-nigh(when it is time to go to bed)
• no-no-no(which is something he hears very often these days)
• uh-oh
• He also knows where several of his body parts are. He will point to them when asked.
• He also enjoys looking at photos and pointing to people he knows when you ask him where they are.
• He will also roll his arm around when you say "Roll Tide"

This is John Turner carrying on a conversation with his frog. I have no idea what he was telling him!

He loves this push car. He pushes it everywhere! He also loves to blow its horn over and over again!

Here is our cool dude riding around the neighborhood in his wagon. He has now decided it is more fun to push the wagon himself rather than ride in it!

Loving My New Cousin

Carlton left last week for a duck and pheasant hunting trip in North Dakota. Since he was going to be gone for 10 days, I talked my mom into coming and spending the week with us. I didn't have to beg her too much! She always jumps at the chance to spend some time with John Turner. It was so much fun to have her here for the week. On Thursday night we got a special treat. Aunt Ha-Ha, Car-Car and Brooks came and spent the night with us. We had the best time!! John Turner even started saying Car-Car! It is the cutest thing you have ever heard. He just follows her around and says Car-Car and points to her! John Turner decided to give baby Brooks some love! He just loves both of his cousins so much!




Look, Mommy! There's a baby in my room!


Giving Brooks some love!

A Visit to the Pumpkin Patch

We took John Turner to visit the pumpkin patch last weekend. He had so much fun! Here are a few of the the fun things that we did while we were there. The picture above is him with the pumpkin he chose to take home!

Here are a few of the fun things we got to do while at the pumpkin patch!

• We took him around in his wagon which was a great idea. He always gets exctied when he gets in his wagon
  

• He was very intrigued by all of the animals there. He saw goats, pigs, rabbits, turkey, ponies, and even a reindeer. We will be going back there at Christmas to see the reindeer and his elves!
  

• He enjoyed going through the hay maze with his Daddy. They even made it through without cheating! LOL!

• He also got to ride on this train that was pulled by a 4-wheeler.
  

• To get to the pumpkin patch we got to go on a hayride! He was amazed by the tractor!
  

• He thought this was just one big snack!! LOL!
  
  

** Thanks to my friend, Christi, for making John Turner this cute outfit to wear to the pumpkin patch! He was the cutest little pumpkin there!!

Surgery

We took John Turner to visit Dr. Reed, a Pediatric ENT, last week in Jackson. After talking with Dr. Reed, we decided to go ahead and let him perform a frenulectomy on John Turner now while he is young and before any problems start to occur. We had to check in at the hospital at 6:45 on Monday morning. That meant we had to leave Meridian at 4:30 a.m.!! We woke John Turner up and let him just wear his pajamas to Jackson. The picture above is of him when we were about to get in the car. He was an angel the whole ride over!

We checked in about 6:45 and had to just sit in a waiting room for a while. Then the nurse called us back to get John Turner's blood pressure, weight, etc.. He DID NOT like this part! We were then put in a room and were told to put John Turner in his hospital gown. This was another thing he didn't care for. They gave him some Versed(happy juice). This made him feel a lot better! After a short while they came and took us for his surgery. He went back with doctors and nurses without a cry! The procedure only took about 10 or 15 minutes. Dr. Reed came out and told us everything went great! He said he was glad we went ahead and did the procedure because when he started doing this be could see that his tongue was practically stuck to the bottom of his mouth. This would have caused problems with speech in the future. He had to put three stitches in the area.

Since they only gave him a little gas, he was awake right after his surgery. They would only let one of us go back in the recovery room at a time. You know that Mama had to go first!! When I got back to recovery he was in a rocking chair with a pretty nurse sipping on some apple juice! We had to go back to our room for a few minutes and then we were free to go home.

John Turner slept most of the way home. He had a little pain yesterday, but the pain seems to better today. He is also drooling like crazy! He is trying to figure out what this new thing is in his mouth that he has never been able to move around before! We are thankful that this is over and that everything went well!


This is in the waiting room--We were trying hard to keep him entertained--He hadn't eaten or drank anything since the afternoon before!


This is John Turner getting his hospital gown on.


Mommy loving on him before they took him off for surgery!

Waiting on the nurses and doctors to come and get me

This is after surgery--The best thing about the day was getting this cup of apple juice!

Lamar Homecoming Game

On our way to watch the Raiders play!!

Last night was Homecoming at Lamar. John Turner wanted to go because he knew there would be beautiful girls all dressed up in sparkly dresses and jewelry!! He especially loved spending time with Caroline and Rivers. He thought they were both so gorgeous out there on that ball field at halftime!

Lamar not only won, but they won BIG! They are undefeated and hopefully playoff bound! John Turner is really getting the hang of this football game stuff. He always has so much fun at the games!