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!

Too Cute Tuesday: Memorial Day Fun Photos

I made the mistake of taking Megan outside to my parents' patio during our Memorial Day get-together.  Thus the following set of pictures - Enjoy!

You have no idea how many times that watering can had to get filled up...

 

Happy, now that she has a bucket full of water...

 

But there's always room for a little more water...

 

Pickle buddies...

Everyone loves stroller naps.  All played out...

 

The Other GGBG

My Grandma confessed to me that when she saw the title of one of my recent blog posts, GGBG, she thought it was going to be a dedication to her: Great-Grandma Beverly Gennrich

Well Grandma, this one is for you!  First of all, thank you for being one of my biggest fans of our family blog.  It's fun sharing our photos and stories with you and Grandpa and I am so proud of you for being about to pull up the site on your own computer.  I remember when you didn't even know what a mouse was and kept trying to pet it!  You were the one that got me hooked on garage sales.  Remember when I slept over at your place during the summers when I helped you and Texie cater and you and I would go on those wild goose chases for the garage sales?

Here are a few other things that Great-Grandma Gennrich said and did this Memorial Day weekend that I will remember forever:

Megan was giving kisses to everyone and everytime we brought her give Great-Grandma kisses she would put her tongue out - almost to lick her cheek.  Great-Grandma said, "It's because I'm old and well-seasoned.  I must taste good!"

Playing 500, Great-Grandma raised her partner Brian's bid from 7 Hearts to 8 Hearts.  She got the giggles as she was picking up the blinds because she couldn't believe she raised him with only having a single heart in her hand!  One of her silliest 500 moves ever!

Lastly, while we were all playing Megan's game of "try on my sunglasses" (you know, the light pink ones with the fake diamonds all the way around the rims), it was finally Great-Grandma's time to try them on.  She put them on and immediately exclaimed, "Look at me!  I am Lady Gaga!"  I am just impressed that she knew who Lady Gaga was - I guess that's what you get when you watch American Idol!

Grandma, we love you!  Thanks for being YOU!

Too Cute Tuesday

GGBG

Yesterday, John, Megan, my mom and I headed south to Gustavus for a spring GGBG event.  (That stands for Greater Gustavus Bassoon Guild in case you're not familiar.)  My college bassoon teacher, Dr. Pesavento - a.k.a. AP - is retiring after this year so a grand GGBG event was in order.  I was proud to be one of the 14 bassoonists playing for the chapel service creating such glorious music.  There were seven current students, one high schooler and six alumni with graduation years ranging from '04-'83.  It was nice to see others that I had played with in my college years and other GGBG events plus meet the current students who I hope to play with again in the future.

Megan at 14 Months

Time for another Megan update.  Our little girl has been in our lives for 14 months now.  Each day is an adventure and always something new.  Here is what she's been up to:

I mentioned last month that Megan was working on her molars.  We now have all four molars plus her top two eye teeth!  That's six new teeth since she turned one year old- Not bad!

Megan is slowly starting to eat better (as long as we mix up her options frequently).  In fact, just recently she has started eating noodles with sauce on them!  Hooray for flavor.  Her favorite veggies are green beans and continues to spit out carrots.  She has really enjoyed the times when I let her feed herself a plate of mashed potatoes or cup of yogurt (which is primarily on bath nights for obvious reasons).  Megan is so cute when we sit down for family dinners because as she sees the table set with food and as we scoot her high chair close to the table, her immediate response is to fold her hands. 

I've made several  trips to Target and the grocery store lately with just Megan.  We had a couple times where she would not sit in the cart so I took her out and she helped push the cart for me from down below.  I just had to make sure we were going in the right direction.  Occasionally, she would stop to look at things like balls and try to put packages of napkins in the cart, but for the most part it was a fun experience.  It also works well for me to simply carry her and let her push from my level too. 

After our first Hoppers softball game, Megan surprised us by blowing us kisses.  She blew kisses the entire way home and even makes the Mmmm-wah! sound when doing them. 

For a long time we had trusted Megan completely on the stairs.  However, recently she is trying to go down the stairs like a big girl.  She will sit at the top of the steps with her arms out waiting for Mommy to hold her hands and help her step.  I liked it when she could go down on her own but I love that she is trying out new things and also knows to wait for our help.  We say "step" for every step down that we take and Megan is so proud of herself when we reach the bottom.

Megan's vocalization continues to get better and better.  She still babbles a lot but is starting to put more syllables with objects.  Her most recent are "dog" and "cat".  While sounding just like "da" and "ca" we know what she is meaning because she uses her pointer finger to point at either a dog or cat as she talks.  A lot of other animals also get called dog and cat for the time being but that will come.  Great-Grandpa Gennrich should be proud because Megan has also just started to say her version of the German "Ach".  Although she is trying to say the "G" sound it is coming out as "Ach".  She's possibly trying to make the "G" sound for the end of "dog"?

Lastly, a few cute Megan stories to close out the month:
In our master closet I have a box of random papers and knick-knacks that are still waiting to find homes.  Megan is aware of this box and often goes straight for it when she needs something new to play with.  Yesterday morning as I was getting dressed for church she came in and started pulling objects out until she got to a Gopher bobble-head figure.  She looked at it, pushed the head several times to watch it bobble and then nodded in approval.  It was as if she was saying, "Yep, this'll do."

One thing that Megan is really liking at home are the couple step stools that we have.  When John is home with her, she will always carry a big white stepper from her nursery into our bedroom so she can try to climb up onto the bed.  She also takes my collapsible kitchen stepper over to John's recliner so she can climb up to be with Daddy.  Today Megan had some stepstool fun at Grandma and Grandpa Lewis' place.  She carried a stepstool from their nursery over to the baby gate at the top of the stairs with hopes to climb over it.  Needless-to-say, Grandma Lewis was quick to put those stools away for now!

John's New Wheels

 

John and I broke down last week and bought a car to replace the Explorer.  We were enjoying not having a car payment, but with the price of gas rising the way it has been, we figured we'd rather spend the extra money driving and going towards a better vehicle.  We ended up getting a 2007 Toyota Prius.  The color is seaside pearl- a beautiful blue!  The Prius is a small family car but it is plenty roomy inside for what we need it for right now.  It is also a hybrid car, meaning that it runs on both gas and battery (primarily battery for in town driving) and its fuel efficiency is around 45 mpg!  We feel we got a good price for the car, being the sought-after car that it is.  John is really enjoying driving it and it will primarily be his vehicle since he has the longer commute. 

On a side note, if you know anyone who wants a '98 Ford Explorer just let us know!

Daddy's 31st Birthday and Mommy's 2nd Mother's Day

The Wednesday before last, John celebrated birthday number 31.  Even though it was on a Wednesday night, meaning he had to work - and work late, he still had a good day.  The night before his b-day, our softball team played it's first game (ok, scrimmage) and it was nice to get out and have some fun.  I baked some Monster cookies for John to bring in to work for his birthday and they were a hit.  That evening during John's lunch break we had a nice dinner at his parents' place and we had a stuffed shells/spaghetti dinner followed up with chocolate cake!  We had a very nice time and we were surprised that Megan actually ate some of the noodles with sauce on them!  For gifts, John received a bat and gear bag for softball this summer, DQ gift card, a new lunch box, some mini squirt guns, a mini video recorder and some other stuff.  Thank you!

A couple days later was my Mother's Day weekend!  John worked on Saturday but Megan and I had a great girl's day together.  First we garage saled, went to the park and then strollered to the grocery store.  That wore Megan out so much that she crashed on the way home and took a really long nap before it was time to load up into the car and head up to Michael & Becca's for a Mother's Day barbeque.  It was nice to have a night off from cook we had great company.

On Sunday, John, Megan and I went to the Minnesota Zoo with Kristin, Patrick and Alexa (and about 1/4 of the rest of the families in Minnesota...). Moms got in free that weekend and John and Patrick used a free pass we got from the library. It made for a fun and cheap outing even though it was crowded and a bit chilly and rainy. I think the girls enjoyed it but will enjoy it more and more as they get older since most of the animals were pretty far away. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our outing.


Megan rode many miles up on Daddy's shoulders!

I love you, Mommy!

Alexa loved the whoosh of the water into the tidepool.

These sea horses look like they are growing leaves!

Megan says... "A dog?"

That stroller looks familiar...

Taking a quick run outside during the break in the weather.

Now, this is one big aquarium!