My Beautiful Girl

There are no words necessary...I don't think!

Megan Painting

Here is Megan painting, but she calls it "hand prints". For good reason.

Zoo Trip for Birthdays!

Megan's & Bethany's birthdays are 2 days apart. So we moms took them to the zoo to celebrate our girls turning 3.

Bethany is so darn funny! She HAD to bring her binoculars to the zoo so she could see the animals. That girls CRACKS me up!

The zoo has this river play area in the Children's part. It was pretty hot on Wed when we went, so we ended the day in the water.

Sleep

I've been wanting to write another post on sleep describing what "problems" look like for us. But, it's not an easy thing to explain. At all. Well, there's a website that we've followed since we started waiting for Megan. It's about all things China adoption. The author wrote a wonderful, very descriptive posting on sleep. Interestingly enough, her description of sleep problems for her daughter "GlitterGirl" are almost identical to what we deal with every night. Some nights are better than others, but right now we are definitely in a difficult time. You can read her post HERE.

And no, my idea hasn't worked all that well to get Megan to sleep overall. She will recite the "eat healfee, drink water and sleep good", but she's still having a tough time going to sleep.

A funny story

Yesterday we went to the zoo with friends to celebrate birthdays. On the way to the zoo, we got behind a truck with serious pollution problems. I said to Megan 'Boy that car is stinky!' What was her response? "I think it needs to go poop." I lost it. Since she hadn't napped, I had to pull it together VERY quickly or I would have had a crying little girl...but I'm still laughing as I think about it!

Birthday "Party"

We had very small gathering today in honor of Megan's 3rd birthday (which is Tuesday). I made these SUPER CUTE, super easy (albeit time consuming) cupcake flowers. The petals are mini marshmellows cut cross-wise, then dipped in sprinkles (or colored sugar). They were really yummy, too!

The cupcake experiment!

The soon-to-be birthday girl.
She did not get the bike (it was a hand-me down from the neighbor, but in very good condition), but she got the helmet & training wheels.

The pictures are deceiving, she is sitting on the bike while we push it (or it rolls down the hill that we live on). She does NOT push the pedals at all. We're working on it, though.

I can't believe she's going to be 3!! sniff, sniff

Sleeplessness Answer?

The verdict is still out...we just started it today...but in a very early moment of quiet before 5am, I'm fairly certain God gave me a great idea.

I've said for a very long time that Megan is afraid to go to sleep. I mean, she'll be almost ready to doze off, yet she will wiggle, clap her hands, kick her legs, sign mom & dad, whatever it takes NOT to fall asleep. It's been taking anywhere from 60-90 minutes every night. We've missed several naps, despite being absolutely exhausted. If there is one thing I KNOW about my sweet, precious daughter and sleep, it is that when we get into the cycle of not enough sleep, it is very difficult to get out of that cycle. Its vicious. And often feels never ending. She's been getting about 8-9 hours of not very restful sleep a night and many days refuses to nap. So, we are talking about a child who behaves absolutely horribly! Hitting, yelling, deviance, challenging and pushing all of my buttons.

We're back to waking up at 5am again. I so thought we were past this. But, she's getting her final 2 year molar (FINALLY!) so it could be contributing. Who knows. The other part is that she's yelling out more nights than not, at least once, if not every hour all night. By yelling out, I mean she'll thrash about, cry and yell something (typically, "Megan can do it" or "I need to go potty" or "Mommy do it" but her most common one "NO! NO! NO!"). It took me a few nights to realize she does this 100 percent in her sleep. One minute you think she's awake, the next minute she's snoring. Literally.

Okay, so back to the potential solution. I got this idea this morning...telling her that to grow big she needs to: eat healthy, drink water (another problem we have...not drinking!) and sleep. We've been talking about it all day. At nap time, she was asleep in 5 minutes. She hasn't done that for quite a while. So, tonight when it was time for her to go to bed with daddy, I said, "you need to sleep good tonight"...and she said "so I can grow!" So, maybe we've found the s1lver bullet? Boy do I hope so!!! Guess we'll find out in a few days!!

Growing & Stuff

I love this pic! It's at the park, Megan LOVES the park. The pic really shows her excited expression about being at the park.

One day last week, Megan didn't take a nap. My contingency plan when she has no nap is going to the zoo. We are members, so we can go for free. On this day, she was so excited about going to the zoo that she put her hat and sunglasses on as soon as I said we were going. She sat in the chair watching W0rd W0rld while I got everything together to go.

We made brownies together for the first time. As you can see...tasting the batter was a necessity!

Our friend's son turned 1, so we went to the party. She also decided not to nap this day so we really were not sure how it would go. But she did pretty gosh darn well. This is such a cute pic of daddy & Megan. She's wearing daddy's sunglasses.

She has started moving her chair away from the table before climbing in to eat. She likes to put her feet up on the chair...like such a big girl!

This was taken on Friday, I believe. She's gotten so big. She looks so grown up here. She's holding a specially painted hand print she did at school for me for Mother's Day.

A couple more things she does that I've noticed recently...and if I don't get them down on paper, I will completely forget!

• She JUST started opening doors. I've been waiting for the day...of course it makes life so much more interesting, but I'm glad we've finally accomplished this feat. She doesn't entirely remember that she can do it, so we're still somewhat "safe".
• She says "shepherd" instead of "special" more often than not. On occasion she'll get it right, but typically she doesn't. It's really too entirely cute!!!
• She also says "soldier" instead of "shoulder".
  
• To get her to motor, I often play the "I don't think she knows how" game, which she LOVES to prove me wrong and do it without drama! (Yay for me!) She's started saying it herself now "I don't think she knows how!" then she does say "oh! oh! oh! Wait! She DOES know how to do it." I guess that's what I must say? I honestly don't know. But she even does it when she's looking for something then finds it "Oh! Oh! Oh! Wait...here it is!" She's so gosh down smart!
• She's also started wanting to carry a purse like me. Of course, it's almost always empty. Details. Details. Most often it gets left in the car b/c she forgets about it, but sometimes it has to come with. Too cute.

That's all I've got!

Megan Update

Oh boy, it's been way too long since I wrote anything about what Megan's been up to lately. She seems to change every day. So, here's a quick list of things that I want to remember, one day:

• She's talking ALL THE TIME. Oh my gosh. She loves to run around the house making up words. Her favorite is one that sounds like Donkey Kong...but its more like shonkey dong. She also loves to add "dee" at the end of all of her words...mommy-dee, four-dee, no-dee, etc. It's just really too funny.
• Making up new sounds all the time
• She says "no, I don't think so" or "No, I don't" or just plain "NO!" to pretty much everything. If you ask her if she's cute, her response is "No. (pause) No, I'm not".
• She loves to say "You little stinker" and shakes her finger right by her mouth. I don't know where this came from. She also loves to say "stinky", but there's a southern twang to it and it sounds more like "st-Ankee".
• Another favorite word is "funky" (emphasis on the UN--fUNkee). We have no idea where that came from!!!
  
• She tells the dogs to "stop barking" and "come here. This way." (as she's attempting to herd them in a particular direction). She also loves to "play" with them. She goes to their toy basket, mutters something about what toy to play with, then tries to get them to play with her. She also loves to crawl in the dog crate with Dakota and shut the door. Dakota isn't so fond of this new playtime experience for Megan!
• She's waffling back and forth on whether she wants to nap or not. I think she's prefer not to, but she's still getting up so cotton-pickin' early she just can't make it without some nap. She's still getting up between 5:30 and 6:30am every day. She's going to sleep around 8pm, unless she doesn't nap.
• She can do 24 piece puzzles with very little guidance.
• She loves to do "hand prints" aka finger painting, except she does NOT paint, she just likes to put the paint on her hands and press (okay, really bang) her hands on the paper.
• I know we're a bit behind the curve, but she's now eating her cereal with milk.
• She loves to sit on the "big girl" chair (no booster), but she really just loves to push the envelope and stand (when she's not supposed to).
• She's doing all pottying by herself, but still wants us to go with her. She rarely has accidents now.
• She's spelling words like crazy. There are very few 3-letter words that she can't spell. It's nuts, actually.
• She's starting to follow with her finger the words in books that we are reading.
  
• She MUST climb into the car by herself. And she must get into her car seat by herself (and her time line, of course!).
• She sings the words to so many songs (Twinkle Little Star, Jesus Loves Me, Zaccheaus, and ABCs come to mind)
  

That's the best I can do right now...maybe I can come up with a few more in a few days.

It's the end of the semester, so things are really super crazy for me with 41 students each turning in 2 papers ranging from 4-9 pages each! Plus they have weekly discussion posting requirements that I get to read. Add to that I need to write my proposal for my dissertation by late May. The plan is to propose by mid-June and finish up over the summer and defend my dissertation in the fall. This would mean I graduate in December! Definitely do-able...assuming things don't come crashing down! I'm just trying to keep my head above water daily.

The move..I have mentioned that on here, right? The house is still for sale, the job hunt is still...hunting. Although, there is one lead that's got great possibilities. So, we'll just wait and see what happens with it all. I pretty much keep my nose in my work as I've got plenty there to keep me busy, that's for sure!