Gettin' Crafty

Megan and I fill our days with lots of different activities. This week we got arts and crafty with some seasonal cutouts and glitter glue. I cut out some fall leaf shapes and Christmas shapes and Megan and I decorated them with glitter glue. Megan really got into it and got very excited about the glitter. She calls it "skoosh" (translation: squish) because she has to squeeze the glue out of the tube. Skooshing turned into finger painting, and then before I knew it, she had skooshed glitter all over her arms, legs and tummy. She was a very shiny baby! Smart mom that I sometimes am, I had the foresight to declare craft time a diaper only activity. Even though I only buy washable craft supplies, glitter still comes off the skin easier than off pants.

I have to admit, I had fun "skooshing" too! Here's a picture of our craftiness:

And here are two that Megan decorated that I really like. She picked the glitter colors and skooshed all by herself!

It's Not a Moose, It's a Reindeer!

I completely forgot that I had taken these pictures until I saw them on the camera today! Last weekend, one of my favorite stores in Durham, Morgan Imports, held a Christmas open house. Santa was there and they had homemade doughnuts. And to be totally honest, we probably went for the free doughnuts more than anything else, but ended up seeing some really neat stuff. And yes, the doughnuts were awesome!

Megan enjoyed the store, too. They had all kinds of unique Christmas ornaments on the trees, and Megan picked out a cute little metal orange owl ornament for our tree. She also found a fun, cheap little paper toy which she had a lot of fun with, but it has since been eaten by one of the dogs. I suspect Mocha, who wasn't looking too innocent that day and has a history of eating paper products.

Anyway, Morgan's had a big reindeer set up for photo ops. Megan wasn't wild about being on the reindeer, but did enjoy poking around his nose and checking out his antlers.

On the way out we ducked into the children's corner where Megan fell in love with every toy and stuffed animal she saw! She had fun telling us what each animal was and giving them pets, hugs, and kisses.

Round Two

I've thought a lot over that last few weeks what to title this post. I've considered, Our Big News (sounds kind of generic), Brian & Stacy Plus One More (but do I really want to liken our family to Jon and Kate?), or It's Not a Baby Bump, It's Too Many Roast Beef Sandwiches! (that's probably the most accurate of them all) ...but whatever I call this post, it all boils down to yes, we're having another baby!!

I'm 14 weeks now - officially in the 2nd trimester. We had an OB appointment this morning and heard the little whooshing heartbeat. I'm so glad to be out of the first trimester which I'll briefly recap: I ate, puked, slept, woke up, puked, ate, and puked some more. In the early weeks potatoes were my friend, so much so that I fully expected to see this on the monitor at our 8-week ultrasound:

Fortunately, our "proof of life" photos showed the standard little tadpole-baby:

Our next doctor's appointment is Dec 15. This will be the big 19-week ultrasound and we should find out the sex of the baby then. Our due date is May 11, 2010. So then we'll have a 2 year old and a newborn! I'm sure Megan doesn't grasp the concept of what all the new baby will entail, (though she does tell me that babies sleep) but I did sit her down and show her the pictures of the baby from the ultrasound and told her that the baby was in mommy's tummy. She then lifted up my shirt, pointed to my tummy, waved, and said, "baby." And if we ask her where the baby is, she'll point to my tummy.

I guess that's all the new baby news for now. In Megan-world, she's talking non-stop and learning new words every second it seems. She's started counting (she's got a handle on 1-4 and 5 on a good day) and she's singing. Mostly she sings her ABCs. A through G sound pretty good and the rest of it is a bunch of Cs and Es, but she's getting the tune down. It's really adorable and she's so proud of her counting and singing. Brian says I need to get videos of this, so I'll work on it. She wants to do everything by herself, too. Independence is great, but it leads to a lot of frustration. But other than that, things are good! Here's a picture of Megan couch-surfing:

We'll keep you all posted on the pregnancy!

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween! Megan was a pumpkin for Halloween this year. She loved her costume and didn't want to take it off! We went to a Halloween party at Aunt Beth's work in Raleigh on Thursday night (where we also got to see Unc-Kenny). Megan had a blast. She made "friends" with a girl in a green monster suit, and wanted to follow her around. Megan didn't really want to get too close to the "monter" as Megan called her, so we kind of stalked her from a distance. She really liked all the games, especially the ball toss. She liked this game so much that she tried to run off with the green buckets! The mummy-wrap contest at the end of the night really caught Megan's attention, too, and she kept saying "mummy" on the way home. She also became a big fan of orange and green Jell-O.

On Saturday, she dressed up again, and we went out after dinner to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood. We put Megan in the wagon with the top off so she wouldn't have to walk (or rather, so we wouldn't have to carry her), and she had a great view of all the people out - and there were a bunch! Megan particularly liked a girl dressed as Minnie Mouse. Megan even went up a few driveways and said some version of "trick-or-treat" or "happy halloween" and scored some candy in her pumpkin bucket. On the ride home, she tried to eat her candy, wrapper and all, and she repeatedly said, "candy! yummy!" Until this Halloween, I didn't even know she knew what candy was!

I've got say, she is one cute little pumpkin (and not just because she's my little pumpkin)!!

Dancing to Elmo

Megan is a dancing machine! And she's addicted to Elmo. So add them together and you get something like this...

Little Jumper

Can you tell that little Megan loves to jump? Maybe it's time to enroll her in a gymnastics class!

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

What happened to the nice fall weather? The cold temps and rainy weather may have me wanting to hibernate on the couch under a blanket, but not Megan. Despite the 40-something degree temp this morning, she still wanted to go out and play after breakfast. So we bundled up and went out. The cold didn't slow her down one bit - but it did turn her nose red!

Earlier this week, we welcomed fall by breaking out some warmer clothes and going "pine cone picking" in the woods.