My fear of Christmas

I was dreading the arrival of Christmas. Wait, let me give you a little background first.

Before Megan was born, we had an entire ROOM that we didn't use for anything at all. We intended from the start that it would be our future child's room. So when we were pregnant, the formerly empty room found a life all its own.

Of course, then along came Megan. Her stuff soon filled her room...and the rest of the house. We feel totally maxed out on space here in our condo on the prairie. And, as anyone with kids knows, as they go through ages and stages, they get lots of new stuff and there is lots of stuff that is no longer age-appropriate.

That brings me to my dread of the impeding holiday of lots of new stuff. I just couldn't see where it would go. Megan is an only child and an only grandchild with very doting family members who love her very much. You can see where I'm going with this.

Then my mom came to visit and basically saved the day. She helped us go through a bunch of stuff and decide what to keep, what to toss and what to prepare to sell in a rummage sale in the spring. When it came right down to it, a lot of the stuff we decided we didn't need was stuff that we had long before Megan. There were entire closets full of things we had moved in with that we had never used in 5+ years! We kept the momentum after she left and cleared out even more stuff.

Now that we're on a roll with parting with things and there's actually a little room to spare around here, I am breathing a little easier when I look at the mountain of gifts under our Christmas tree...and those are just from the Arizona family! I don't begrudge the generosity of my family, I embrace it for the joy it will bring my daughter...and for the feeling I'll get next time we purge our stuff!

Megan catches Frosty in his counting error

We've been Tivo-ing holiday specials for Megan all month and watching one every few days. Tonight's installment is the original Frosty the Snowman.

When Frosty comes to life the second time, he tries counting to ten, but misses a few numbers. Megan, always on the ball, said, "Hey! That's not right!"

Looking back

Like lots of parents, we've got hours and hours of video footage of our daughter. (Don't even get me started on the sheer number of photos we have.) We just bought a wire that allows us to move it from film to the computer. Todd's been working on getting it all onto the computer.

We've been spending the past few hours watching Megan grow up. It's hard to remember now all those moments that we thought we'd never forget. Thank goodness took the time to record them! (Todd admits that he thought I was being quite obnoxious at the time, but he's loving reliving the moments.)

One of my favorite clips was her first smiles and giggles. She's been a ham forever!

We seem to have a lot of footage of her dancing. Now she dances all the time. When she is excited about something, we'll say, for example, "Let's see your grandma's coming to visit tomorrow dance!" or "Let's see your fruit snacks dance!" and she'll do her own interpretive dance moves. But looking back, she's been dancing since before she could sit up by herself.

And she's always been chatty. Even those first images of her when she was only a few weeks old, she was chatting up a storm. We're watching a clip now of her from this time last year. She was already using 3-5 word phrases like, "Mimi want to see hockey!" and "Love you, Daddy!"

What a girl. :)

Who ya gonna call?

We're on a family adventure to the lovely city of Grand Forks, North Dakota this weekend. It all started with a 12 hour (5 p.m.-5 a.m.) train ride from Columbus, WI to NoDak. Yikes. It didn't go to terribly, but I was asleep, or at least in and out of sleep, well before Megan was. One overnight train ride should be all it take to convince anyone to shell out the extra money for a sleeper cabin on a train.

But I digress...

Megan is a pumpkin for Halloween this year. The same costume she wore last year fits her much better this year. She was a big hit at the hockey team morning skate today with her pumpkin belly. We're planning to go trick-or-treating at the UND football stadium this evening and then to the hockey game in costume tonight.

As we were cruising lovely Grand Forks after lunch, the theme song from Ghostbusters came on the radio. Little did I know that it is apparently a big hit with the kids at the babysitter's house. Megan was bopping away in her carseat. We were singing, "Who ya gonna call?" and she would respond, "GHOSTBUSTERS!"

The song was ending just as we pulled into the parking lot of the hotel. As Todd turned off the car, he asked Megan one last time who she was going to call. Without a moment of hesitation, she enthusiastically shouted, "OBAMA!"

So there you go. Who would have thought the theme from Ghostbusters would make a good campaign song?

Olive madness

We're enjoying a nice Friday dinner at Roman Candle Pizza (well worth the drive IMO) and we asked for some olives for Megan to munch on.

The result: About 100 olive slices that our girl won't stop devouring. Oh, wait, she's slowing down now. Maybe there'll be some room for pizza.

Picture to come.

"I want to HEAR Obama"

OK, so this is my first post. I've been chided before, but being called out in blog form finally got me going.

Our little girl is turning out to be quite interested in politics. Well, just presidential politics so far. Well, just Obama so far. But it's pretty funny seeing her reaction when she sees Obama in print or on TV. She'll yell out, "OBAMA!" A couple of times when she's seen him on the computer, she's said, "I want to hear Obama!" I'm naturally wary of politicians, but he's got some sort of charm that obviously carries through to all ages.

And we've finally figured out Obama's plan to take over the world: Win over the toddlers. We heard someone else mention that they've seen kids act the same way. Yeah, they can't vote now, but 15 to 20 years from now, it's going to be all Obama.

Even McCain's negative ads with video of Obama are positives in the eyes of a 2-year-old. Might want to think again about those.

Catching up

Todd mentioned the other day that "we" should update the blog. I guess that's the royal we since my alleged co-contributer has yet to submit any posts to this blog. Oh well. :)

Allow me to reintroduce you to our daughter. Megan is such a big girl now. She has a huge vocabulary and uses it at every opportunity to express her opinions. She remembers everything. She loves to sing, dance, eat vegetables and socialize.

She is currently obsessed with all things princess. She's seen Sleeping Beauty two or three times, but she's got nearly the whole story memorized. She loves to waltz with daddy, her dolls or just by herself singing, "I know you, I walked to you once upon a dream!" (I know the words are actually "I walked WITH you," but Megan insists that it should be TO.) She has the Disney figurines from the movie and likes to take them with us wherever we go in an M&Ms gift bag.

One of the things she likes to do outside is "pull the deads." I taught her how to pull the dead flowers off of the perennials in our garden. Now she feels the need to do so whenever she passes a flower bed. If it is a flower like marigolds, she scatters the seeds from the deads very deliberately around the driveway.

She is still a big sleeper. She naps for several hours every afternoon and 10-12 hours a night. She must know how much her mommy and daddy like their sleep.

She is also a very friendly girl. She engages people in public and always has a smile. She is not usually shy with adults, but warms up more slowly with other kids (especially if they are particularly loud or active).

She is girl to the core. She wants to wear her purple tutu or a dress nearly every day. She likes to keep her toenails painted and is very patient to have her hair done each day. We have to coax her to get dirty or messy in play or in eating.

I'll update more soon...honest. :)