Too Cute Tuesday: Good Times at 15 Months

I had fun with this week's pictures.  Hope you enjoy!

And Meg Ran Away With The Dog

For our dinner last night, John and I just grilled hotdogs and ate outside.  I had a roast cooking in the oven, but with how humid it was last night we just weren’t in the mood for it.

Megan did a pretty good job of eating her dinner considering the outside distractions.  She ate most of her hotdog, bread, and some apples and oranges and then asked to be let down from her chair.  Daddy started offering her strawberries and she was signing “more” whenever she wanted another one.  (Megan just started signing “more” this weekend.  Her version is tapping one thumb against the palm of the opposite hand.  It should be the fingertips of both hands tapping each other.  Still very cute!)  Then she started whining really bad, pointing to the table and kept pushing the strawberries away.  I finally got her satisfied when I handed her the extra hotdog on the table – the one I had John grill for my lunch the next day.  Megan was maybe a little too satisfied because she gave us a really big grin, took a couple big bites of hotdog, and when I went to take the hotdog from her she took off running!  As soon as she got to the street I knew exactly where she was headed.  One of her favorite spots outside – then manhole cover in the middle of the street just as you enter our neighborhood.  She plopped her little bottom right in the middle of it and proceeded to eat my hotdog as she held it in her right hand and played with the small rocks with her left hand.

She loves this spot and throws a tantrum whenever we carry her back to our place. As soon as we put her down she beelines right back there.  We must have been quite the site last night, carrying Megan back our house and then chasing her back down the street, hotdog in hand.

Pucker-Up and Climbing Up

Megan had two new big accomplishments to show me when I came home from work today.  New kisses and more climbing.

Instead of giving big open-mouth kisses and tongue kisses, Megan is now starting to give pucker-up kisses.  We hadn't been working on that with her, but we had been working with her on putting the finger up to her lips and blowing the "shhh" sound as well as just blowing air through her lips.  Here is a picture of Megan giving Elmo a kiss.

The next new thing scares me a little.  Megan is now able to climb onto our dining room chairs!  Right before bedtime she pulled out the chair from the table, stepped on the bottom rung and hoisted herself right on up.  Then she turned around to sit, had me help her down and did it a few more times.  Megan wasn't done there...  The next time she climbed onto the chair, she continued right onto the tabletop.  That just goes to tell me that I really need to watch her and teach her that these chairs are not for climbing.  It will probably help if I don't put interesting things on the table because then she wouldn't have a reason to go up there.

Miss Directed

Last night John and Megan had a blast playing "Director".  It was a pretty simple game.  Megan would wave her drumsticks or pen or just her arms and Daddy would shake the egg shakers to the tempo she directed.

Megan's "podium" was her drumhead and she really liked directing from that spot.  She would direct from that spot for a while, throw down her drumsticks, go pick them up and head right back to the drumhead.

A Little Fun in the Flood

While the rest of us might be a little sick of the rainy weather lately, here is one little lady that couldn't be happier.  My parents took Megan walking on the path behind their house down to the park.  The path happened to be underwater and Megan took full advantage.  I was told she played out here for a good couple hours. 

Yes, Megan is drinking the flood water...

What a gooood place to take a break.

End of May Thru Mid-June Wrap-Up

I have a ton of Megan stuff to get up here on our site but I wanted to quickly catch you all up on a few other things that have been going on around the house.

First off, it was a sad event, but some sort of plague went through our aquarium and killed all of our fish in a matter of a couple days.  It was possibly the filter, heater, or just not the best routine upkeep.  Anyway, we decided that we are not going to continue with it and I have our 46-gallon bow front aquarium listed for sale on craigslist.  Hopefully we get a taker soon so Megan can have some extra room in her bedroom.  Don't worry, we will still keep the fishie theme in her nursery.

Our Mediacom contract came up, and after many phone calls to them resulting in no budge in pricing, we decided to switch carriers for our TV and internet.  We now are back with Dish Network for our television.  We contracted with Centurylink for internet and also got a home phone with the deal.  Our new home phone number is 952-442-five seven two three.  We still need to get a cordless phone for the house.  The one John had before isn't working and I'm hoping to score one on a garage sale.  If anyone has one they are willing to sell for cheap - please let me know!  Overall, I don't hope our switch will save us a little money - even if it doesn't, it's worth cancelling just out of spite.

Last week John and a group of management from Home Depot went down to Action Packed Sports in Jordan for an outing of paintball!  He had never played before but had a blast, with five big welts to show for it.  He said he didn't hit the most people but that was because the guns didn't shoot straight! 

Softball has been kind of iffy lately.  Our last two games have been either rained out or flooded out.  Hopefully the weather turns around and we can finish out the season.

Father's Day came and went and I had a ton of fun getting Daddy's presents together.  Of course, all of the Dads got a pail of ice cream but I also got to make them special photo cards from Megan.  Daddy even got a photo book of pictures of Megan and him.  It was very fun to make and I think it turned out well.  You can view the book here.

Megan at 15 Months

Our little Megan just doesn't stop growing up.  Another month has gone by, now three months past her birthday, meaning another doctor's visit and new stats.  We knew she was doing well but these numbers confirmed it. 

Weight - 26 lbs 3 ounces - 92%

Height - 31 inches - 70%

Head Circumference- 18 1/2 inches - 80%

At our last doctor's visit we were told that Megan needed to be off the bottle by 15 months and we got her off!  I actually found a Nuby brand cup that's called a Sport Sipper and she's been using that.  It's a longer cup with a silicone straw coming out of the top.  I picked that one since it looked like her bottle and she caught on to drinking out of it after a couple weeks.  We first did a lot of back and forth with her suckey and sipping but now she is taking longer swallows.  Next step is to wean her off of drinking so much milk at bedtime. 

This last month was a sleeping/bedtime nightmare, literally.... It might partly be due to us working on a different cup, resulting in me rocking her to sleep more than using the bottle as the sleep aide as before.  Getting Megan to bed and down for naps has definitely been a lot more work.  But getting her to bed at night is nothing compared to how she's been waking throughout the night.  She had been so good until we started the cup transition and more teeth came in.  I do think that I got her spoiled with all the cuddling and now need to break her of that.  There was one night where she woke up and would scream every time I tried to put her back in her crib.  We could lay on the floor together and she was fine, she would be fine in our bed but would scream when she got near her crib.  There were a lot of nights similar to this also making for a very crabby mommy.

Megan now has all 16 baby teeth so I'm hoping that part of our lives is through until the two year molars come in.  Hallelujah!  Eight teeth in three months is a bit much in my books but Megan is always a trooper.

Megan continues to be a jabber box.  Although she is not nearly excited to repeatedly say all the words she knows, she is gradually adding more.  We now catch her also trying to say "up", "bird" and "hello".  I think "hello" is her new favorite and she puts it to great use when talking on her telephones. 

Megan has really took on a liking to books.  Her favorites are basically anything that has big, bold pictures of animals or objects such as farm dictionaries, The Busy Spider, and The Busy Squirrel.  After she turns each page I ask her where her pointer is and I take her finger and see how many things I can point to on the pages before she turns the next page!  She really does a good job and will sometimes dig through an entire pile of books looking for a particular one. 

Favorite activities inside include: running with the corn popper toy, watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, climbing on her stepper up onto the couch, talking on her phones, flipping through books and helping Mommy in the kitchen.  We are also starting to try some action songs.  We began with The Hokey Pokey and putting our right foot in.  After just a times, all we have to do now is just say "the hokey pokey" and Megan will walk to the middle of the living room and start shaking her right foot!  We don't usually get lucky with the other limbs but you've got to start somewhere!  She is starting to point out her body parts when asked - belly button being her favorite.  She also gets a kick out of watching me do jumping jacks and will stand and bob along with me.  Cute!

Outside, Megan still enjoys the playground both for the steps, slides and now the pea rocks!  We don't have too many outside toys for her, but we get a big "oooooh" reaction when we blow her some bubbles.  She also likes to help us water the plants as well as play with her t-ball set. 

Well, I think this is a good enough summary for now.  I wanted to get this post out earlier, but I literally cannot even touch my cell phone or computer while Megan is awake and with all the bedtime drama lately I've just been too exhausted at night to do anything.  As more new things happen I would love to be able to document them right away .  Nothing seems to stay the same and it seems like Megan does something for a few days, gets really good at it and must get bored and moves on to the next thing.  So by time I get around to writing about it, she's past that stage already.  Oh well.... that's now it goes, I guess.

Water Baby

Rachel, my mom, John and I took Megan to the Lake Waconia Beach.  It was her first beach/lake experience.  She was a little apprehensive at first because the water was cold and there was a lot of noise since it was pretty windy out.  We started her off slowly and soon she was in the deep end with Auntie.

We also took advantage of the grills nearby and John cooked up some mean brats! We had a nice night out and hope to have many more there this summer.

Our Little Talker

I mentioned before that Megan has sure started jabbering since turning one.  And just in the last few weeks she is putting so many new syllables together making it very interesting at home!  Megan is always talking even if it just sounds like jibberish.  She is saying bye-bye, uh-oh, mama, mommy, dada, daddy, hi, baby, and dog all very clearly.  Just in the last couple days she's put a very firm "G" sound at the end of dog - kind of turning it into a two syllable word.  She also points to cats and birds and trys to give them a name as well as copying us when we say thank you and all done. 

It's nice that she is associating the words with objects and actions.  Today she was running circles around John's recliner when he was sitting in it and everytime she would come around from behind she would exclaim "Hi!". 

So exciting and I can't wait to hear what words she learns next!