Our Week:: June 8-14

Meghan woke up from her nap feeling a little "out of it" - it had obviously been a good nap as one of her pigtails had moved up on her head :) 

A little bit of water seemed to be just what she needed....after this she was back to her normal self.

Meghan continues to love her tutu and her bibs. She often will wear them both. This picture just cracks me up!

It's been a big week of becoming a big girl. She now enjoys drinking from this "trainer" open top cup. She's getting very good at remembering to tip it and is able to get lots of water out. She looks so ridiculously cute as she does it, too.

Meghan loves "coaching" Mama. When I put her down for a nap she will point at the things in order saying "that" - point to pacifier, point to Charlotte (stuffed bear), point to white noise machine, point to crib. This day I caught a picture of her coaching me about where to find her vitamins. She loves taking her gummy bear vitamins in the afternoon!

After we got home from the grocery store, Meghan walked around carrying the two empty grocery bags for at least 30 minutes. As she was doing it she just kept saying "bye bye. bye bye, Mama."

Another big girl moment at dinner this week was the introduction of the fork. For the first bite, I stabbed the piece of chicken nugget, put it in her mouth, and helped her hold her mouth shut to remove the food. The second bite, I stabbed the food and she did the rest. She took over from there eating 5 chicken nuggets! She was having so much fun that she ate 3-4 more nuggets than usual!

Meghan started using the kitchen to actually play pretend cooking this week.  She would open the door, slide in a dish of foods, shut the door, wait a bit, open it up and remove the food. It was so cute to watch her! Completely wrapped up in her own little world! It makes me aware that she is watching EVERYTHING that I do - even when I don't realize it - what a huge calling motherhood is!

She put the day's favorite toys on the bed and slid it out to where Mama was. Then puppy got to wear bracelets :) Everybody in this house wears bracelets!

We went to IKEA on Friday afternoon. Last time we were there, she was cuddled up in a little ball on my chest in the carrier. On Friday, she sat in the cart through the store and then walked with Mama through the warehouse part. She enjoyed pushing the cart a lot! Oh my, she's getting so big so fast....

One of the things I purchased at IKEA was a small hand broom and dust pan for her. She loved it and cuddled it through the store and loved playing with it when we got home. She has started showing an interest in helping out around the house and I want to provide her with the tools to be able to do so....hopefully soon she will be able to clean up little messes that she makes :) With as fast as she's learned to help with laundry tasks, I think it's totally possible!

Saturday morning she woke up asking for her boots. So, she was styling - even so early in the morning!

The kid is obsessed with her dad's shoes! She loves playing with them and carrying them all over the house. Cole got some cute pictures of her!

And lastly, the cross stitch this week. I've gotten a bit more done since this picture was taken on Friday night - but it's super wrinkly and hard to tell, so it'll be in next week's picture :)

Our Week :: June 1-7

This week we pulled out the foam letter puzzles and spelled Meghan's name in the entryway. There are some perks to having a Mama who used to be a teacher :) She enjoyed crawling back and forth on the letters and having me tell her what they were.

She also enjoyed walking around with a lightbulb box that Daddy gave her to play with. Speaking of walking....she is now officially a walker! She can and does walk all over the house! Yay!

She loaded all of her farm animals into the bus and was upset with me when I wouldn't let her drive the bus into the garage. So, she took them all over the first floor dropping them off in various locations - I have no idea how she learned what buses do!

She is way into pegging games recently. This one has different shaped and sized pieces - when I gave her a piece she would try to put it on, if it didn't work I would ask her "where's the hole?", she would find the hole, place it in her palm and then put the piece on. It worked every time! By the third or fourth time we got this game out this week, she was completing that process independently!

She is starting to show herself to like glitz and glam! This morning, I went to her room to get her up and the first thing she asked me for was her "boots" - she wanted to wear her sparkly boots!

This week her two doggies got all sorts of love! They got to take their naps in the bed sometimes - and she added bracelets to the corners for them.

I got out my letter factory toy and the letters in her name for her to play with. We only used the letter "M" - she enjoyed hearing it sing the "M Song" and the ABC song.

I got this book to fill shipping on Amazon and she has LOVED reading it! I've read that sometimes cloth diapered babies potty train earlier than other kiddos and so I figure we can't start talking about it too soon.

This little miss broke her eighth tooth. Her favorite teether is pea pods straight from the garden. I gave her some to cook with in her kitchen and she just held it in her mouth.

On Friday, she brought me a pair of my socks that were on the floor saying "sock" and signing "help" - I put them on her and she started walking around saying "boots"! Apparently my socks make wonderful toddler boots.

The girl and I went to two garage sales on Friday and did very well. We are shopping ahead through size 5/6 (she currently wears 2T) to try to get the very best deals and favorite styles. The house we went to in the morning had tons of clothes made by the brands that fit our super-super skinny little miss well (she's only the 13th percentile in weight - perfectly healthy, but hard to put in pants!).  Here's what we got at the sale we went to in the morning:

I found two nice pairs of tennis shoes at the sale in the same size, so I showed them to her and let her pick which ones we bought. One pair was all white and the other was pink sparkly - she picked the pink sparkly immediately! She held onto them the rest of the time we were shopping!

Here she is looking through all of the clothes we found at the second sale we went to. She loved "swimming" in them :) Notice that she's wearing a purple tutu. There was a pair of jammies that came with a tutu. She saw it and HAD to have it! The jammies were super cute purple polka dotted, so I picked them up and she has been wearing the tutu everyday since. This girl is a girly girl, I tell you - and I don't know where she gets that from.

See....I told you, she loves the tutu! In this picture she's saying "oo-oo" (her version of uh-oh). She makes this super cute face while saying it ALL. THE. TIME. We kind of love it!!

And last, but not least, here is the progress on the cross-stitch this week. The moon is in an awkward stage with the middle completely missing - I plan to have that remedied by next week's picture :) 

Our Week :: May 25 - 31

The girl has been loving coloring pictures the past few weeks! She looks so big sitting up at the table - when did my baby turn into this child?

Nope! Seeing her stick her tongue out still hasn't gotten old - so proud of her! 

She loves "helping" me do laundry - it usually means that I get to chase half of the laundry down as it's spread all throughout the first floor. This week, she chose to focus on wearing Daddy's boxers rather than spreading the clothes throughout the room!

My peony charm came for my necklace - such a special way to remember the baby that we lost. Having this charm on my necklace feels so right. And gives me so much more of a sense of closure.

Meghan's main form of locomotion is quickly becoming walking on her feet! I purchased her some jelly sandals this week to wear when we go out - she LOVES them!

I made the girl some new bibs - they are much longer than her "baby" ones. She loves them and wants to play with them. Notice in the next picture that she's still wearing one and playing with the other two!

I started purchasing some things for her "tot school" curriculum - we plan to homeschool her and have started planning some fun "learning" activities for her during the week - she loves these times of focused play with Mama. I have recently sold a lot of curriculum from when I was teaching that were duplicates of things I had and have used that money to purchase some younger things for her to work on. When the farm math set arrived (farm play mat and farm animals in colors) showed up, she completely freaked out! We immediately HAD to get them out - she made their sounds, played with them on the mat, put them in and out of the container, and just played and smiled! They made her so very happy - and helps me feel even more excited about homeschooling her!!

She has been enjoying working on puzzles. She didn't get the pieces into place, but managed to match them to their pictures. She began clapping for herself and was so proud! The next day, she managed to get the sheep into the board by herself - again, more clapping and cheering!!

The switch happened in the middle of the week and went off without a problem - all baby bottles are gone for this girl! She drinks all of her milk from her big girl water bottle!! I am so proud of her! Now the only baby in the house who still takes a bottle is this one....and she gets given them with so much love!

She had a stuffed husky she was given by Mimsie and Papa before she was born who has been given so much love. So much love that a seam on his back tore and I'm not confident that my ability to repair it matches her ability to love it. So, we decided that it will look awesome sitting on a shelf and I would shop for another one for her - making sure that reviews said it could take lots of intense loving! I found a husky on Amazon and then I found a black lab by the same company which they had named "Cole" - since they were a much better price than I was expecting, I was able to order her both of them for less than I was expecting to pay for one.

They came while she was napping and I put them in her play room where her other husky had been missing for about a week. When she woke up and I put her in her playroom, she froze, looking at them, and smiled HUGE while saying "oof!" over and over. She finally walked to them, scooped them both up, and walked around cuddling both of them close to her. We needed to go run an errand about 15 minutes later and we decided she could take one with her. I held them both out for her to pick one, but over and over she just grabbed both at the same time. She finally ended up picking one when I set them on the floor in separate directions and she had to go get one of them first.

Needless to say, I think she likes her new dogs:

She has added the rooster, pig, and elephant (which I didn't remember to ask her) to her repertoire of animal noises. She doesn't do a great rooster for this video, but it and the pig both crack me up every time she does them! Animal sounds are such a fun way for toddlers to explore all that their voice can do!

I tried to get a good video of her signing, and I got her to do several for me, but then the man across the street started mowing....and that requires all of Meghan's attention.

And, last but not least, here's the progress on the cross stitch project this week. Yes, Mother Goose's head is the next thing I'm doing....if her being headless really bugs you, you can join the club with Cole ;)

Our Week :: May 18-24

This week was a difficult week - as I'm sure can be imagined - as our family dealt with the physical and emotional recovery from a miscarriage. Our sweet baby was loved and is missed; but as the days go by, God is re-instilling hope in our hearts. We tried to focus our minds on the "now" and watching our sweet girl grow rather than thinking to the past and our great loss. We know the next many weeks will be hard, but we are trusting God for the remarkable future he has for our family.

There are less pictures this week than typical. But it was a fun week with Daddy home (since his employer pays for a week of bereavement time after a miscarriage - we took advantage of the opportunity to be together!). 

Miss Meghan has been LOVING oatmeal again! Sometimes she likes to use her "dippers" to practice moving spoon-fed foods to her mouth. 

She also has been loving snap peas straight out of the garden - she was too busy munching to look up for the camera.

Mimsie gave her a purse last week when we went to Manhattan and one of her newest and most often played games is what I call for short "wear my purse and all of my bracelets, carry my phone and talk on it while walking all over the first floor." See.....

Yea, she's all girl sometimes!! (This morning she had forgotten the bracelets, but usually they are there in all of their glory!)

She loves the app "peek-a-boo barn" and has loved trying to make the sounds that the animal makes. Here she is trying them out with Daddy: 

The day we lost the baby, these peonies from my Grandma's house started to bloom. Their beauty has become a beacon of hope for me. They are just so beautiful! The close up is the flower that opened on Sunday May 17th. I was sad this week as I thought to the fact that I had nothing tangible from this baby - no pictures of my growing belly, no ultrasound pictures, nothing....and a thought occurred to me that the baby can and should be recognized on my wife/Mama charm necklace. I currently have a charm with our anniversary date on it and one with Meghan's name on it. This week I found a charm that is a blooming peony flower - the perfect charm to remember this baby with. I am excited to add it to my necklace. And to have a place in our lives where the memory of that sweet  baby is tangible.

I caught some video of Meghan with her purse and phone going "bye-bye" - which is what she frequently says while wearing her "bling".

She got a seventh tooth this week and is working on her eighth! In true-to-Mom fashion, her seventh tooth came in at least 45 degrees off center.....hoping this isn't a glimpse into what her adult teeth plan to be like!

With all the teething pain, there has often been some thing hanging out of her mouth while she bites on it for counter pressure. Yesterday it was a purple link as she walked around the first floor. And, yes! She is walking for long distances now. She still often will walk on her knees or crawl, but she can walk all over the first floor on her feet and is starting to discover that it is much faster than the other two forms of locomotion!

Turquoise is such a good color on her!

And lest anyone think that she keeps all of those beautiful bracelets to herself, her "woof" often gets to wear them as well!

Coloring has become a new favorite activity. Despite what this picture shows, she rarely colors with her left hand - it's usually the right one. She enjoys this activity immensely. She will make a few broad strokes and then make lots of little dots! 

And the last picture.....last Sunday we bought a cross-stitch kit for me to work on during the grieving and healing process. It's a birth sampler in hope of another child that we are believing God will give us. It's a HUGE project with SO MUCH shading. To keep me motivated and reminded that I am making progress, I plan to share a picture here each week of what I have accomplished. I realize that in the future I won't have as much time as I've had in the last week to work - life will get busy again and that will be a good thing - but here is the progress that I made this week. I am excited to watch this project grow as, hopefully, another baby begins growing and we are blessed with another little one to love and care for.