hiking

One of my new year's resolutions was to do a better job of posting regularly on this blog. It's February 19. How am I doing??

At 22 months, Tate is becoming quite the little man. His growing vocabulary and budding grasp of the world around him is equal parts amazing and entertaining. Every day he makes us laugh with things like..."Mommy, you're a big boy!!" or "No sing, Mommy, shhhhh" (during an attempted lullaby) or holding up his hand and telling us "I'll be right back" and thinking he's about to walk out the front door by himself.

He can count to 10, mostly say his ABC's and is starting to learn his colors. He recognizes red the easiest and will randomly guess bee-you, green, wipe and yewow for the others. He has zero patience for tv commercials or traffic lights ("MOVE!!") or anything that involves waiting, but on the positive side, says "please" and "thank you", "bless you" if someone sneezes and will automatically give you a hug and say "I sorry" if he knows he's done something wrong.

He is very sweet-natured, extremely outgoing and wants to be friends with everybody....usually waving and saying "hi" and "bye" (loudly) to anyone we see in public. He's the sheriff of his class in school, making sure all of the other kids follow the rules and stay in line. "Case, get down!" or "AJ, no! Say sorry, hug!" or "No Parkar, Cooper's milk!" When I get him in the afternoons, he chats away about his day from the backseat and laughs to himself as he recounts the day's activities...most of it is incoherent, but I love that he enjoys school and has such a happy time with his friends and teachers.

He's a great helper around the house, too. He's good about picking up his toys, will put trash in the trashcan without being asked, and likes to help with sweeping, vacuuming and dusting. I'm hoping his helpful attitude continues once the baby arrives in just 6 short weeks! Speaking of, I should mention that we've changed the baby's name since I last posted. Keith and I grew tired of explaining the spelling/ pronunciation of Bayer and decided over the holidays to go with our other top option, Brady. So the official, final, Ireallymeanit name is James Brady Golden. (if you look back at my "What's in a Name" post, you'll notice I broke one of my own rules of using a name on the top 100 list. But since it's #93, I think we can let it slide)

So, I think that pretty much summarizes what we've been up to.

Now to finally get to the title of this post, here are a few pictures from our hiking adventure with Aunt Lindsey last weekend at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. Such a fun day!