How To Diaper A Monkey

Don't you know the Boogie did this all by herself. Think she'll be ready to change diapers when Baby comes along?

A Small Phillies Fan

Can you guess who dressed this child last night? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't her mother. We are having revival services this week. They start at seven each night and since I work until seven on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, on those nights My Man is responsible for getting himself and the Boogie to church. Last night was the first game of the World Series in which the Phillies whooped up on That Team and I guess My Man thought the Boogie should be appropriately dressed. Please note the black Mary Jane "church shoes" with the red socks that she must wear pulled up to her knees. No matter how nicely I fold her socks down, she always immediately must pull them up to her knees.

 

Isn't she just about the cutest Phillies fan you have ever seen? And she loves to watch baseball.

 

(Please ignore the fact that the player in this shot is from That Team. It was an unfortunate photographic accident.)

As I said before, Phillies whooped up on That Team last night! It was awesome. Cliff Lee pitched an incredible game. Go Phillies!

Baby!

Look what we got to see today!

Everything looked great and the ultrasound tech put me at almost 14 weeks, which was a good week further along than I'd thought, with an EDD of April 28. We will never be able to fully celebrate our anniversary. It will forever be overshadowed by births and birthdays! But that's okay. I can handle it. :)

Hearing the hearbeat and seeing the baby moving around, waving arms and legs, was so amazing. How incredible that this tiny person, only a few weeks old, is so developed! And I got to see! What an awesome technological age we live in.

I Was Wrong

We did have a regular swing for the Boogie when she was a baby. It was a used one that someone gave to us and never worked right. It would swing for about five minutes then stop and refuse to work again for a few days. So while we technically did have one, it was pretty much useless. I hope this swing works better than that one did.

Last night on the way to church the Boogie suddenly held her hand to her chest and asked, "Is that my skomach?" She kept asking over and over. It made me laugh.

I had a wonderful day off yesterday. After lunch the Boogie and I went for a walk and finished up in the backyard at 52 so she could play for a bit. The weather was beautiful! You couldn't ask for a more lovely fall day. And I didn't take a single picture ... oh well!

So Sorry, Dodgers

10-4. Ouch. At least I taught the Boogie to say "Go Jodgers!"

Now for the next series I will definitely be rooting for the Phillies, especially if they play against That Team from New York.

Today is Thursday. I love Thursdays. I get to stay home! There are two cousins here right now playing with the Boogie. Actually the cousins are playing and the Boogie is whining and crying. It's supposed to reach a balmy 77 degrees so we'll be heading outside at some point. The trees in the neighborhood are starting to turn wonderful colors. The one right outside our living room is fading to yellow, and the one outside our bedroom will soon be yellow, orange, and red. Despite fall being a precursor to winter, I do like the colors! I also like apple cider. Mmmm, I think I need to do some grocery shopping ...

Yesterday the Boogie informed me sadly that she was in "gweat twouble." I'm pretty sure she said it because when she is struggling with something I will ask her, "Are you having trouble? Do you need some help?" She's a funny kid.

She also thinks the word is "snuggy" instead of "snuggly." I think she got that from seeing commercials for the Snuggie, the "blanket with sleeves."

She loves to wrap up in a blanket and tells us delightedly that she is "nice and snuggy!"

There is a local church in our area that does a children's toys and clothes swap twice a year. It is a wonderful ministry and lots and lots of people participate in donating as well as acquiring! There are childrens clothes in all sizes, shoes, coats, toys, books, puzzle, games, cribs, strollers, pack'n'plays -- you name it, it's probably there. I've gone a couple of times and always come home with lots of clothes for the Boogie. I went to the fall swap the other night and instead of heading right to the clothes tables when the doors opened, I made my way over to the baby gear and look what I got! (Hint: it's not the small boy.)

I am thrilled! We didn't have a swing for the Boogie and I really regretted it. We did borrow a small travel swing from SIL1 which was nice for taking back and forth to work when the Boogie was very small and went with me, but she never liked it. A full-sized swing was on my must-have list for this baby. I don't know yet if it works because I need to get batteries, but it was free! If it doesn't work all it cost me was my time. Well, time and batteries!

Modeling Compound

The Boogie has been introduced to Play Doh.  I am one of those people who does not want to have anything to do with Play Doh. I remember how fun it was when I was a kid. I loved playing with it when I was a kid. I hate cleaning it up now. I was the mean babysitter who never suggested it, tried to distract from it if it was asked for, and if pressured into allowing the kids to play with it would only allow it rooms with no carpet. Now I'm the mean mom who only lets my kid play with it while she's sitting in her high chair ... in the dining room with no carpet. But no matter, she was completely absorbed and played for a long time last night.

Please note that she thinks it is called potato. Ocean, lotion, Play Doh, potato ...

Tomorrow is HE's second birthday so tonight after church lots of family went to her house for food, cake, and gifts. When the candles were lit on her cupcake and we began to sing, her little face lit up. When she started opening gifts much hilarity ensued. Four cousins were itching to "help" her open her presents. One of her gifts was a set of two baby doll bottles. HE loves baby doll bottles. She calls them "baby cups." Once she opened them she was not much interested in anything else! It was a noisy and fun party and there was lots of good food.

This afternoon My Man was trying to figure how much time out of every day the Boogie spends talking and singing. That child never stops except for when she is sleeping or watching tv. We figured that she sleeps for about 12 hours out of 24; she spends over an hour each day eating, but manages to talk, sing, or hum during at least half of that; factor in about an hour of quiet tv time and that leaves us with roughly ten hours a day of Boogie verbalizing. Thankfully a good part of that is not addressed to any one person -- she spends a lot of time talking and singing to herself or making up conversations between any two objects she may have in her hands. When she was a baby she babbled all the time (and I mean all. the. time.) Even when she was very small she could hum recognizable tunes. As she got a little older she sang and talked gibberish nonstop. Perfect strangers would comment on it and warn me, "You are going to be in for it when she gets older!" Looks like they are going to be right ...

I've been feeling really well this past week. It's nice not to feel sick at any random time. Soon I'll have to start taking belly pictures since I am already popping out.

The Phillies have made it to the NLCS. They are playing the Dodgers. For as long as I can remember, my mom's dad has been a Dodgers fan. I can remember him watching Dodgers games on tv with the sound turned down while listening to the game on the radio when I was a little girl. Because I loved my Papaw, I loved the Dodgers too. So I can't root for the Phillies this series. I just can't do it. They are playing game 3 right now. Phillies are in the lead two games to one because they stomped all over the Dodgers tonight, 11-0. Ouch.Oh well. There will be at least one more game, so go Dodgers!

Feels Nice

The Boogie has been doing very well in her Big Girl Bed. She has learned that she is not permitted to get out of the BGB once she is in it for the night. From time to time she feels it necessary to push that envelope a little bit, but for the most part she stays in bed after we put her there. When she wakes up in the morning she is very cautious about leaving her room -- I finally realized it's because she thinks she's not supposed to get out of bed! The two-year-old mind has a difficult time reasoning the difference between getting up at night and getting up in the morning. Yesterday morning I was sitting on the couch when she woke up. I heard her door open and looked down the hall to see just her head poking out the doorway. She saw me and waved. I waved back. "Honey," she whispered loudly, "I wanna wake up."

While I was sitting at the computer yesterday afternoon she climbed up behind me in the chair and began to rub my back. "Feels nice, honey?" she asked repeatedly. "Feels nice?"
"Oh, yes, that feels so nice!" I said. After a bit she got down and went over to the bookshelves where I keep her hair things and hairbrush. "I wanna brusher hair," she said. I found a different brush for her and she climbed back up in the chair and started brushing my hair. "Looks pretty!" she said delightedly. What a girlie-girl. :)

She plays so nicely by herself these days. Any two objects she can get her hands on have conversations with the Boogie providing the dialogue in different tones of voice. At this moment it is wooden magnet shapes. High voice: "Hello, gramma!"
Normal voice: "Hello, kiddo."
High voice: "What you doing?"
Normal voice: "I playing wif blocks."

She does really well picking up her toys, too, if I give her specific instructions about which ones to put away. Every now and then she'll pick up something all of her own accord.

We are half-heartedly potty-training. She loves to sit on her little potty and look at books. She knows she gets one M&M if she produces something. The other day she jumped up exclaiming, "Honey, honey, I go potty! I go potty!" Oddly enough the little puddle formed an "O" in the bottom of the seat. "Look!" she said excitedly, "a letter!" 

The last couple of days she has spent a lot of time with her cousins. Yesterday while I worked she was at 52 with all the rest of the cousins. Later she went grocery shopping with her grandparents and was so exhausted she fell asleep in the shopping cart on a bag of apples.

How come she never does that for me?

"Dere's A Baby In Here"

We talk about the new baby with the Boogie, but she doesn't seem to understand at all. I truly haven't expected her to, but I still talk about it. I ask her where the baby is, and I pat my stomach and say "Here's the baby!" We talked about it a little bit tonight. She said something about a baby sister, and that was about the extent of our conversation.

When it was time for bed we went through the usual routine of praying with her, kisses, locating burpies and her cup, and tucking her in. As I was getting ready to leave she said, "Dere's a baby in here." Thinking one of her baby dolls had made it's way into her bed, I turned back to her and asked, "What?"
"Dere's a baby in here," she repeated. She was patting her own stomach. "Dere's a baby in here, in da tummy."

I know it's something most small children do, but it's so cute when it's my own small child saying it! :)

What Not To Wear

When it's October, no matter how balmy and warm it may seem, it is not okay to dress in lightweight, summery clothes and flip flops. Please trust me on this. I learned it the hard way today. Okay, well, not exactly the HARD way since I didn't exactly freeze or anything, but it was just too chilly for summery clothes and flip flops today. Layers, people. October calls for layers. I'll remember that tomorrow.

Speaking of clothes, tonight I went through all of the Boogie's wearables and put away too-small and summery things and pulled out warm winter things. Gracious, that child has a lot of clothes. I mean, a LOT OF CLOTHES. She has 23 dresses and jumpers, just to give you an idea. That's just the stuff in her closet. Her dresser is stuffed full of shirts, sweaters, pants, skirts, p.j.s, undershirts, socks, tights, etc. We will need to move to a bigger place just to have room to store everything she's outgrown. I told My Man that perhaps Baby should be a girl so we can use all of the old clothes and not have to find places to store boy baby clothes ...

We had a nice day today. We did some shopping and found some cute little-girl sheets for the Big Girl Bed. The Boogie was delighted to go to sleep on flowers and butterflies tonight.

This past week was my first week back at the front desk as receptionist at work. I like working the desk. It's fun to get to talk with people all afternoon!

My Man is washing dishes. It is 11:00 pm. He has washed dishes so many times this week -- I think I've only had to do it once or twice! Amazing. What a great guy. Truly, I am so thankful to God for giving me such a wonderful husband!

Big Girl Bed

The Boogie did so well in a regular bed at the hotel that when we came home My Man took apart her crib and we put her in her Big Girl Bed. The first night was actually just the mattress on the floor since we didn't have enough slats to support the mattress on the bed frame. She did pretty well the first night -- I think she only got up 3 or 4 times before falling asleep. Having the mattress on the floor made me feel comfortable that if she rolled off in her sleep she wouldn't have far to go.

 

The next day My Man cut more slats and we set up the bed itself. This bed is part of a set that my mom's parents bought for her when she was little. She passed it on to me and now the Boogie gets it! There is a dresser with a mirror (that I'm using), a nightstand (that is on My Man's side of our bed), and a desk (which is holding up the very computer I am writing this on.) Eventually the Boogie will get all of the furniture.

 

Taking the crib apart and replacing it with a bigger bed meant that some things were displaced and the furniture in her room needed to be rearranged. This is how it looks right now (and I do mean RIGHT NOW since I just snapped these photos about ten minutes ago -- HE is here this morning and as long as both girls are happy and content I don't care how many books and toys are strewn about.)

 

 

 

We are hoping to acquire a different dresser soon -- it's taller and narrower than the one she has now so that should free up some more wall space. There are three bins full of out-grown clothes that fit perfectly beneath her crib so I have to find somewhere else to put them now. Meanwhile we stack two of them right next to the bed at night in case the Boogie tries to roll off. Having just the mattress on slats instead of a box spring makes it the perfect height for her to climb on and off.

 

When I used to look at her sleeping in her crib I would think that she looked so big. Now seeing her curled up on a regular mattress I think she looks so small! That's okay with me -- she is growing so fast and learning so much. It makes me sad that my baby is just not a baby anymore. Good thing I'm getting another one!

A Trip To The Shore

I've been remiss in posting lately. My Man has been home all week which has been lovely. During his furlough last month he helped his dad build the new deck at 52, so he was gone most of those days. This week has been more of a "vacation" for him.

On Tuesday we packed up the car and headed south. After driving for a little more than an hour we discovered the hard way that the Boogie gets car sick when she can only see out a side window. A stop at McDonald's gave us a chance to clean her up and eat some lunch. Our afternoon was spent at the Cape May Zoo -- it is a very nice zoo and admission is free. The Boogie loved seeing all the animals!

Snowy owl

Llamas and alpacas

These turtles sunning themselves cracked me up

These tortoises were enormous!

After the zoo we drove to Wildwood and checked into our hotel. We had a fabulous view from our room! The Boogie was excited about the "lotion", as she called the ocean. We corrected her for a while then gave up.

We had a suite with a living area, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The boardwalk was very quiet and hardly anything was open.

While the Boogie was enthralled with the "lotion" from a distance, she was less than enthusiastic about it up close.

I made the mistake of letting her get her feet wet right away instead of having her play in the sand for a while. She did not like her shoes to get wet and sandy. She didn't like to take her shoes off and have her feet touch the sand. She didn't like the waves. I took off my own sandals and waded -- she kept trying to bring them to me and asked repeatedly to "go in da car." The longer we stayed the more upset she got until she looked like this!

So we gave up on playing on the beach and went back to our room where she was perfectly content -- excited, even -- to view the "lotion" from the safety of our balcony. We found a local pizza place for dinner and had some great pizza. The Boogie slept in a regular bed for the first time -- we surrounded her with chairs so she couldn't roll off.

The next morning we woke up early so we could watch the sunrise. It was a little overcast but still really beautiful!

I feel compelled to confess that after watching the sun come up we crawled back into bed for another hour. :)

We kept the door to the balcony open all the time and we had a little visitor during breakfast.

I kept chasing him out but he was persistent! We didn't feed him but he must have known we had Cheerios.

After we checked out we walked down the boardwalk for a little bit. There truly was hardly anything open, but we passed several people running and on bicycles. The double-seater surreys looked so fun -- we decided that the next time we go we'll rent one.

We drove down to Cape May Point State Park where lots and lots of people were birdwatching!

They were very still and quiet and we felt like our presence would be disturbing, so we checked out some of the other things at the park. There is a beautiful old lighthouse.

The beach there was amazing!

We walked out to a World War 2 bunker -- it was a lot farther than it looked! Of course we couldn't push the stroller over the sand but the Boogie was a trooper and walked all the way out and back again.

We didn't want to pay for all of us to go up in the lighthouse since we would have had to CARRY the Boogie up all those stairs, so we settled for some pictures.

By then it was lunchtime and we were getting hungry, so we drove around Cape May for a while (there are some amazing houses there! I'm going back someday to explore.) We found a pancake house where the Boogie got hold of the camera.

This one is my favorite. It tickles me that she thought to take a picture of under the table.

We took the scenic route home (read "we forgot to change the GPS so it sent us the toll-free route") and in one small town I noticed these houses. There are three of them exactly alike, except the one in the middle is a different color.

Not really your traditional tract housing, is it?

We had a really wonderful and relaxing time. It was the perfect way to celebrate My Man's birthday!