My little reader - UPDATED

Meg is such a little reader. She loves books! Most of the time it's the same book over and over and over, but every now and then we get a change. She'll find one, bring it to us, and help turn the pages. It's so cute when she laughs and points throughout the story. The other night, I read this book to her - again - but at the end...it just melted me! She did this on her own!

Megan's First Christmas

Christmas Eve

We went over to Cousin Susan's house (in our own neighborhood) for a Christmas Eve family get-together. Megan got to meet her little Cousin Steve, who was supposed to be born after her but instead came 3 weeks before her! They played, pointed, and laughed at each other. Cute!

Wrapping Helper

Not only did I have a great shopping helper, but I also had a great (un)wrapping helper. I'd wrap, she'd unwrap Daddy's present.

The gift that keeps on giving...

I'm busy, emotional (Meg's 1st Christmas), and just plain exhausted, but I thought I'd warn you...
Watch out, world! Megan and Daddy gave me a wonderful Christmas present this morning. I got a 2G card for my camera! To put the importance of that in perspective, I used to be able to take 134 pictures on my card before having to "dump" it. NOW, I can take 640 pictures before it's full. Whoa...A family member suggested that perhaps maybe I didn't need a larger card; it was probably okay that I had "limits" to my digital photo capabilities. HA! I still have limits - only they're larger!!!!! Grandma and Grandpa also gave me my own Photo Printer! Now I can take and print pictures. I'm set!
Please continue holding. I'll update the few days leading up to Christmas and Meg's 1st Christmas tomorrow!

Straw!

Megan learned how to drink out of a straw today. First, she sampled my smoothie and experienced 'brain freeze' we think. This evening, she tasted lemonade...(yes, I sound like an idiot in the background, but we had been playing a game earlier that I'd ask her if she liked it and wanted more.)

Poor deprived child

Poor Megan doesn't have a Christmas Tree at home because we don't want to have to upright it 10 times a day. Before shaming us, please know it is for her own safety....from the tree and me! She is NON-STOP, busy-body lately! Tonight Grandma and Grandpa let Meg touch, pull, swing, fling, and chew on their tree and ornaments. Within a minute I pulled a pine needle from the depths of her cheeks; within 5 minutes she was flinging ornaments around the living room. And like good grandparents do, they just encouraged her to play.

Bored?

A working friend of mine asked me if I get ever get bored being a housewife/stay-at-home mom. I asked to clarify, "Like bored of being one or bored during the day?" Bored during the day. Hmmmm...isn't that an oxymoron? Bored housewife? Sheesh. I've never been busier in my life! If I am not chasing, feeding, cleaning, changing, reading to, playing with, rocking, consoling, etc Megan than I am folding laundry, doing dishes, Swiffering the house, cooking a meal, etc. And those are just the things that popped into my head first! No way am I bored. But thanks for asking!

Early Christmas

Show off

We were watching Sunday Night Football, but the real show was in our own living room. Meg wouldn't settle down to go to sleep, so we let her play around for about an hour. She got just plain goofy after a while. The video is long, but towards the end she shows off some serious walking skills.

Megan's Mom

Since I work part-time at home with a new company, they are putting together a presentation to introduce the new people (that work elsewhere) to the current office staff. They asked me for a brief description of my current company, position, and title, plus a picture. It was easy to grant the first request. Current position = stay-at-home-mom. Current title = Megan's mom. Good luck with the second request! The last picture we have of just me was taken in the delivery room, so we got the camera out to take a picture of Mommy....with Megan, of course! But I wouldn't have it any other way.

I just love this girl! I can't even describe it. People ask if I'm glad I quit teaching to stay home with her. Without a doubt. No question about it. 100% the right thing for me to do. For the record, I'm concerned about working part-time. I don't want anything to take me away from Megan. The only good thing about it is that I work mostly when she's asleep or with her Daddy. She'll barely even notice! Plus, it's very temporary. May...then no more (hopefully). In the mean time I'll practice saying, "No." Megan can help me since she says "no-no" at least 100 times a day.

To borrow a line from Dr. Laura, that I never even considered coming from my mouth, "I am my kid's mom!"

Lovin' the tunnel

Gran has a neat tunnel for the grandkids to crawl through. We weren't quite sure what Megan would think of it, but after I got in and crawled around she actually tried it. The only concept she couldn't quite understand was that she couldn't stand up. She'd crawl forward, then try to stand up; repeat. Over and over and over. You'd see her go forward, then a head push up on the fabric.

Can't take me ANYWHERE

For those of you who already know what an idiot I can be, this will come as no surprise...

We went to story time at the Library again today. While we were waiting for it to start (yes, we were actually there early), we sat at a table to read board books. There was a little shelf thing full of board books that was in the middle of the room. I'd moved it before, so I reached out to pull it closer to us - and I BROKE IT! The books came falling out everywhere! I was about to blame it on Megan (not really), but the librarian was staring right at me when I did it. Crap. She came over and lectured me about how I shouldn't touch the fixtures, and I could've squashed a kid. I pulled my camera out of my diaper bag to take a picture, and she said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I carry my camera around with me for the sole purpose of taking pictures of stupid things I do." I apologized for breaking the table, told her I knew better, cleaned up the books, smiled, etc, but it didn't do much good. She was still huffy and puffy with me. Moral of the story - I shouldn't be early to anything.

Poor Santa

Another night of torture for Meg. We went with our friends, the Rogers, to visit Santa and everything was just fine until I handed her off. Holy cow. Meltdown. Santa was very sweet to her while he discussed her "list" (thank you Grandpa for writing it down before we got up there). Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Scott surprised us by showing up while we were in line. It was so nice to have help with her before, during, and after! After the meltdown, Grandpa got her calmed down, and they took off window shopping down the mall.

Visiting the Greats

Megan and Daddy went to visit the Great-Grandparents today! Meg played hard, gave lots of cheesy smiles, ate a banana snack, and ran all over the house. I sure missed my family!! It was quiet around here...too quiet, if that's even possible.

Mommy needs to THINK!

Reading books about raising kids and developmental stages usually does me more harm than good. Yet I keep reading them. Today I read that it would be a good idea to let Meg use a bowl and spoon. So we went shopping today, together, and carefully selected a new bowl (she chewed the packaging, therefore making the decision). I dished up her dinner - yogurt on the left; meat, potatoes, and bread on the right. I handed her the spoon, full well knowing that my genius of a kid could master the spoon on the first try.

Yep, you guessed it. The spoon hit the floor at about the same time the fingers hit the yogurt. She did an excellent job of getting quite a bit of yogurt to her mouth for just using her "dipsticks" (fingers). Check out the yogurt in the hair! Um, spoon and bowl won't be happening very often!

Looking at Lights

After pictures, we bundled the kids up and took a stroll through Gran and Papa's neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. Of course Megan can't get out of Gran's back door without snatching a flag out of the bucket for the road (sweet Gran doesn't seem to mind that her flags keep disappearing). The highlight of the trip for Megan was the American flag out of Christmas lights. Whoa...she was so excited! She pointed at it with her own little flag. She's such a nut! The older kids brought their toy hunting guns and shot all of the Christmas light deer we saw (and some we didn't see) along the way.

Christmas Photos

You might think I like torture with all of the recent situations I find myself in (carpet cleaning, driving to MS, family pictures, working, etc), but really, I don't! We did Christmas pictures with one set of cousins but still needed Christmas pictures with the other set. Imagine...after 5p.m. on a Saturday night...6 tired, hungry kids ages 2 and under forced into dress clothes...you with me now? Actually, they did remarkably well. We have 1 good picture out of 12. Not too shabby. The real show was the 8 adults making the noises and gestures to get the kids to all look in one direction! Even the kids look scared! Of course our little one had to ham it up later on for the camera!