Happy 6 month Birthday!!! ( I know, we are all surprised!)

(...including Miss Lily)

Somehow Lily managed to sneak her 6 month birthday on us today. I can't believe it. In fact I can't believe it so much that a tiny crazy hormonal part of me wants another baby. Of course this is never going to happen, so don't worry. This age seems to be the turning point for a lot of developmental changes. She is a squirmy wormy baby. She wants to get into everything her brother is in. She used to hate being put on her tummy and now that is the only place she wants to be. I am somewhat convinced she might skip crawling and start walking first. She is ready to go! She has been severely cranky this week because she is teething. She also has been getting really fussy when she is not where she wants to be or isn't seeing what she wants to see or when she isn't playing with what she wants or...well, anything that is not on her agenda she will let you know by screaming bloody murder and then once she gets it everything is fine. Like nothing happened. Sometimes it scares me because she sounds like something is hurting her or there is something seriously wrong. Morgan never screamed the way she does. She screams so hard she turns purple, I kid you not! I have a feeling we are in for some fun with her. :)

Today also means we are embarking once again on the soft food adventure. In preparation last week I started Morgan out on his booster seat at the table (which he loves) and deep cleaned the highchair so it is all ready for Lily. Today I got out the food processor and made some peas and tonight we are going to give it a whirl with her and see what she thinks. We will post a video later.

I have to also include a couple cute sibling stories too...

This morning when we were all cuddling in bed Morgan grabbed Lily's hand and made it wave and he kept saying "Bye! Bye!". Not sure if he was hinting at she needs to leave or the fact Steve was getting ready to go to work. He also held her hands and made them clap. So cute!

During one of Lily's major freakouts I left her in the living room for a few minutes so that I could get a second to rest and Morgan followed me in the bedroom and shut the door. You could tell he was agitated from all the crying too. Poor guy.

This afternoon, I put Lily in her crib upstairs and Morgan pushed one of our stools up to the crib and he grabbed a puppet and did a puppet show for her along side of the crib rail. It was freaking adorable. Wow. I wish I had the video camera to catch it. Oh well, I am sure there will be lots more to come.

Mini-Haircut...

Monday morning I couldn't take one more minute of Morgan's hair in his eyes so I set him up on a chair in the bathroom, handed over a coveted toy he doesn't get to play with much and then busted out the scissors. He was extremely well behaved and I cut his bangs just as a friend suggested and I think they came out not half bad! My only problem is once I get going I can't stop. It reminded me of the time I reallly really wanted a Bonsai tree and Steve finally got me one for Christmas many years ago. I then spent two hours cutting this poor little tree to almost nothing and it later died. =D

In this case I managed to hold back and stopped myself almost just in time of over doing it. My main goal was to get it out of his eyes without it looking like a straight cut across his face. I wanted it to look natural.

This was the only picture I could get of it. He was having a serious discussion on the Giraffe phone at the time...

"Ooh Jealousy"

I have had Natalie Merchant's song 'Jealousy' stuck in my brain for a couple days due to Morgan's new found feelings of what is his is his and what is anybody elses is his too! Phew...

Poor little guy is extremely jealous of Lily. If we dare give Lily any of his toys to look at he runs up and tries to take it away from her. This behavior is even more distinct if we try to read to Lily or show her a book. We encourage him to share with her or join in on the reading time and when he does we highly praise him for it. I don't think being negative about this right now will do much good, in fact I think it will escalate problems so we are going to take it easy for now until his verbal communication skills grow.

This morning the most adorable little sequence of events occured while we were all cuddling in bed after Steve left for work. I had them both lined up on the pillows with the covers over all of us and Lily's binky fell out.  She looked at Morgan and saw he had one of her binkies (only because we couldn't find his) and so she reached over and snatched it out of his mouth and put it in hers. This is probably the worst thing you could do to Morgan first thing in the morning. He is unfortunately very attached to the binky at this point. Amazingly all he did was furrow his eyebrows, reach over to Lily and grab it back out of her mouth and plopped it right back into his. Lily looked back at him without missing a beat and snatched it right back. Let this scenario repeat about 2 more times and then I felt bad so I found her lost binky and gave it to her. After they both had their binkies and everything was right in the world again, well as right as it can be for a toddler with a baby sister, Morgan reached over and patted her hand and she grabbed it and studied it just like she does ours. Morgan was so sweet and let her examine it thoroughly until she was done, they even held hands for a bit. I hope these are the sweet innocent moments I remember later in life. I cherish them so much when I am privileged to witness them right before my very eyes.

For the most part Lily seems to be like one of the dogs that Morgan occasionally pays attention to during his self absorbed playing. He will go up to her, pat her on the head and if she cries he will try to give her a binky or find a bottle and try to give it to her too. (Oh my melting heart..) It's just been the past week that he really has started acknowledging her as an actual person and not just any person, but one that he has to compete for attention with and protect his toys from. Of course like in my story above there is also this very tender side where he will come up and offer his toys to her or even kiss her on her mouth or hug her or...yeah.

I would say a good 90% of Lily's day is spent watching Morgan. He is free live-in entertainment for her. If he is in the room that is all she cares about. It is so funny. She gets so excited when he runs around screeching and chattering. Today Lily laughed out loud at something he did and he saw her laugh and it made him laugh right back at her.

I guess this is just the beginning. If I start to think too far ahead I start to panic a little. Soon she will be walking and talking and they will be sharing their childhood with one another which inlcudes fighting, sharing, love, discipline, etc. It's very hard to wrap my head around all of it and wonder how am I going to handle this huge responsibility to ensure that later in life they will be friends and close siblings and not alienated from one another. Ugh. This is when I remind myself to stick with the present and trust that everything will work out.

On a different note, have I mentioned I am in love with the upstairs?! Every day is filled with so much fun now. If Morgan had his way we would never go downstairs for anything! I feel incredibly thankful and blessed for my amazing family and home.

Randomness...

Eskimo Kiss

"Look what I can do!"

Love

Going to the Zoo, zoo, ZOO!

I think I adjusted it so you don't have to have an account to comment. If one of you want to try and let me know if it works that would be great!

Saturday we took Morgan and Lily to Woodland Park Zoo for their first time. What a craZy experience it is with kids. Not like how I remember it being. We could only see a few exhibits and play in the Zoomazium toddler area before Morgan was done and exhausted. Steve and I will not be doing the Zoo again unless we have help. We each had a baby to take care of so I was unable to take hardly any pictures and missed Morgan seeing a lot of the animals because I had to stay with Lily. The Zoo was packed which didn't help things either. The worse part of the Zoo were all the crappy parents that infiltrated the place. It's sort of scary to see what people are doing to the next generation emotionally. I am probably somewhat of an extremist when it comes to gentle/positive parenting, but seriously yelling at a tiny toddler that is already hysterically crying isn't going to help the situation, just an FYI. Ugh. I saw three kinds of parenting while at the Zoo. There was the overwhelmed and angry parent, the parent that didn't parent, and then the involved loving parent. The third was sadly few and far between. I guess I should just try and block all the people out and enjoy our visit, but it's hard. I am still trying to figure out how to handle things and be a good parent myself so it's interesting to see other parents in action (or not). I like to see what works and what doesn't. Next time we go to the Zoo I would like to go during the week to avoid the crowds and bring both Grandmas.

On the positive side of things Morgan had a great time! He really wanted to just run around and do his own thing. He is so independent. He loved the play parts of the Zoo the best. There was this kid sized cave he ran around in and he was yelling and chattering so loud it was echoing out and it was hilarious. Many people found this amusing. We have some of it on video we will post later. Their is also a toddler play place called the Zoomazium. He wasn't too impressed with it, but he had fun. We went and saw the barnyard animals, the Flamingos, theTigers, the Monkeys, the Elephants, and we saw a Giraffe but I don't think he saw it because it was too far away. We realized half way through we needed to pick out the exhibits with bigger more active animals he could actually pinpoint out. We went to the bug exhibit which was a waste of time. Lily enjoyed the whole experience too, she looked in complete wonderment the whole time and was very happy.  I actually want to go again, but this time to Point Defiance and with a couple helpers. I spent my summers as a kid going there and I like it much better than Woodland Park.

Here are some pictures for better or worse...

This is when we got to the Zoo, Morgan had just woken up.

This is how we found Lily when we got there. :)

Zoo cave

Flamingo Ghosts...

Zoomazium Kid door(very popular!)

This is in the Zoomazium. Morgan was stamping and was very serious about it.

I love this Tiger, it totally looks like it is thinking, "Nah, nah, nan-nah na!" =P Actually he is probably thinking something much worse.

Furry tree

Elephants!

More Elephants!

and Elephant.

We took a break in the field by the Carousel. Lily is so beautiful!

The weekend update

Saturday it was so beautiful out we packed the kids up and did a little shopping and then tried going to Mukilteo beach, but after 5 or 6 times around the jam-packed parking lot we gave up and headed back to Marysville and went to Jennings Park. Morgan ran around with Steve while Lily eagerly watched all the action from the stroller. Morgan is so friendly he just goes right up to strangers like everyone is there to see him.

Steve made the ultimate naptime mistake with Morgan and put him to bed in only a diaper. Well, the diaper came off and Morgan fell asleep in the buff and wet the bed. Fortunately, I got a great photo of him sleeping naked and why wait 12 years to embarass him when I can do it now?! (ooooh also you can't see it that well but he is laying on his new, well new to him, sesame street sheets Steve had when he was a kid! Thank you Kathy!)

Lily at the park looking pretty!

This smile makes Steve laugh every time he sees it. I think it's a bit scary, but it's really the first grin we have ever gotten on camera. Thank you Lily!

Here she is watching all the kids on the playground. She was squaking so loud and kicking her arms and legs it was hard to take pictures. She wants to play sooo bad.

Sunday, Grandma Kathy came over and babysat so Steve and I could get out and have fun before my surgery on Tuesday. We went to the belt Sushi place again and it was soooo delicious. Avatar was sold out again at IMAX so instead we went to the Edmonds waterfront and poked around. It was stunning out so I convinced Steve to let me shoot the sunset from the Edmonds Fishing Pier. It was a spectacular sunset. I am not too impressed with any of my photos though. After that on our way home we drove past the GIANT PCC in Edmonds and had to make a stop there. It was like grocery heaven for vegetarians! We bought a bunch of deli stuff for dinner and lunches since our kitchen is still torn apart.

This heron scared me to death. We were walking back to the car and it was standing next to some bird sculptures and I thought it was a sculpture too until it ruffled its feathers and made me jump! We had already put away my tripod so it's not that great of quality due to low light. I tried to get the tripod out after I realized it was too low light, but the bugger flew away! Bad Bird! 

This photo should really be clicked on and seen in the large or original size on flickr. It's not meant to be viewed this small. Again, I am not that happy with the quality. I should have lowered the shutter speed some to make the water more smooth. I am not really into this kind of photography. I would rather be doing portraits or elaborate studio shots like movie stills.

Feet and stuff...

This morning I took Lily to the infant story time at the library and there were only three other babies there who were all 8 months old. Poor Lily just looked frustrated that she couldn't play. She seems mentally ready, but physically can't yet. The weirdest thing is there was no story. Not a single one. Instead the Librarian had us jumping, bending, walking, running, etc. It was way too much for my back right now which sucks because I thought this would be one thing I could do which is go to a library, sit down, and listen to a story with my kid. :P

After that My Mom and I went to Target and got a potty chair and a booster seat for Morgan. It should be quite interesting to see what he thinks of the potty chair. We also had to get him one of those cars he loved so much at the playtime yesterday. We found some for only $5 and they are very noisy with no off switch. I should have looked more careful. Typically I don't mind the noisemakers, but these ones have sirens on them and it is a little much after a half hour solid of a firetruck siren going very loudly.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to take a photo a day all year. Lots of people and photographers do it and refer to it as their 365. I have already failed miserably at it, but have allowed myself some slack considering my circumstances. Tonight I got my photo of the day of Morgan upstairs running around on the hardwood floor. He loves it up there. In fact he climbs up on the step to the door and says, "Up, Up", with his hands in the air signaling the door to be opened so he can get up there.

Here is photo 50 of 365....

Morgan Feet.




One last thing. I was in bed and around 6:20am I hear this conversation happen in the living room...

Steve (to Morgan): Today is Friday! Do you know what that means?

Morgan: No.

Steve: (Laughs) It means I don't have to go to work tomorrow!

Ok, I guess it was cuter in person. Morgan's little voice is the sweetest thing ever.



The night before last I was talking to Morgan and it went something like this...

Me: Will you stay my little baby boy forever and not grow up?

Morgan: No.

Me: (laughs, while my heart literally feels like it is breaking. ;)



/the end

Library Toddler Story time

Today My Mom, Morgan and I went to the Marysville Public Library Toddler Story time class. It was actually a lot of fun. Everyone there was very nice and the kids were almost all around 18 months old. The librarian started by singing songs with the group and then read books in between. My Mom took the active role during the class since my back is so bad and she did great! Morgan looked very intrigued by the whole show even though he was beyond tired. At the end of the class there is free play where we all take out our favorite toys we brought along to play with. We brought Morgan's magna doodle which was a big hit amongst all the toddlers. Someone brought cars that sped off if you rolled them backwards and Morgan was obsessed with them. He could care less about anything else except those cars. We are going to have to find some for him.

Here is my Mom and Morgan going around the circle getting ready to jump over a candlestick. :)

Here is Morgan with one of the speedy cars.

This was during the sing along part when they were clapping at one point.

Tomorrow, they have an infant story time class and I am going to take Miss Lily pad to it while my Mom reads to Morgan in the children's section of the Library. The infant class is every other week and the Toddler class is every week. I look forward to going more after my surgery and getting to know the other Moms and kids because it was really cool.