Almost a year later

We finally got back out to the barn. Morgan was SO awesome. She fed Niso carrots, walked up to the corral with no fear, wandered around the farm and stomped in puddles with abandon. Oh, and squatted in the grass to go potty!

These are pictures from July 4th last year with Lynne, Mel, Liesl, Eva, Morgan, me and Charlie

These are from this year

Parent Neglect

This is what happens when Jim leaves Morgan to her own devices during lunch :)

Oh the Silly Faces!

She's discovered the pliablilty of her face!

Potty Progression

Now she's expecting baby to go potty and she's reading to her! This was from last Tuesday. Since then she's progressed from needing the timer every 30 minutes and an M&M for a reward each time to telling us when she's got to go and has a Star Chart - after 2 days of no accidents she gets to pick a prize!

Stop the Presses!

I was in the kitchen making coffee and came out to the living room to find Morgan sitting on the potty-chair announcing, "I made leh-loh (yellow) in the potty!" This is amazing why? She did not announce to me she had to go! She pulled down her pants and went all by herself!

Good Ol' Fashioned Wading Pool

It was Hot and Humid today - a perfect day for a swim. Moorhead has a handful of old fahioned wading pools scattered around the city. This afternoon Morgan and I met my friend Bambi with her daughters Annika(5) and Aubrey (17 months) at the pool and Morgan stretched again by getting in and out of the pool on her own. She did have an incident where her feet didn't keep pace with her upper body but she cought herself, got herself upright - so don't panic when you watch the clip, she came over to me right afer with a stunned look but no sputtering and no crying.

Bambi asked me when she saw M in her swimsuit what size she is now wearing: her rashguard top is 18-24 months and is a bit big, the bottoms are 6-12 months and only stay on because she's still wearing a swim diaper!

The BIG news though was that she told me while swimming that she had to go potty - so we hopped out and quickly walked to the bathroom where she made the 'potty go leh-loh' (yellow). Huzzah! She actually peed in 4 outside locations today: Menards (mama speed walk fromt he back of the store to the front and made it in time!), the Mall (got to use the family bathroom that has a tiny toddler toilet that she loved and could flush all be herself), the pool and McDonalds (this was more of a screaming match, she wanted to keep playing with Annika and Aubrey so it took awhile to get her to relax and let herslef go)! That's 3 days with no accidents!

Finally a warm summer day

What a relief - we actually had enough heat outside to play with the water table today. As you will see it quickly stopped being about the table and shifted to the dogs instead.

Teddy Bear Festival

Friday after a soggy, cold week, we finally could play outside. Every summer a collection of child agencies get together and throw the Teddy Bear Festival a free weekend of kid events. We met Julia, who Morgan now looks up to as a goddess, and played! It was so wonderful to see her stretch herself - no 'I can't' was heard (well, except for the the light suggestion that she try the slide). She loved the 'cherry tree' - a game we never quite figured out, but Morgan loved pushing the balls into every tree.

She got her face painted

and played bean-bag toss

First Gymnastics Class

Morgan had her first gymnastics class tonight. My head is reeling with everything that happened! She sat still criss-cross-applesauce when her teacher asked her; she held different 'friends' hands when asked to make the choo-choo train to walk to different events (nothin' like watchin' her walk away from me hand in hand with a little toe-head boy exactly her size!); she paid attention to Miss Angie's (teacher) demonstrations of what to do: spider swing (see pic), jumping over stars on the balance beam, somersaulting down an incline pad, and back rolling over barrel pad.

She was supposed to also crawl on the balance beam under arched hoops. She melted down on that one and actually stormed away from the area with slumping shoulders saying, "I can't, I can't!" Some of you already know that I am concerned about her fear of things. This behavior really gave me pause; compared to her classmates, who ran, jumped and tumbled with abandon, Morgan was/is terrified of everything - how is she Jim's and my child? I know we're not the most extreme adventure sportists, but we've both done some crazy things in our lives.

She did make it through class and was proud of herself, she even got a flower stamp! Hopefully next week will be better because she will be more used to the environment.

Rain, Rain...Oh go AWAY for gosh sake

What do you do when the power goes out YET AGAIN due to severe thunderstorms? Make a playhouse out of the Garden Supply box that came!

Well that took up an hour....Now What?

Agression Cookies

Thanks to Mary Beth we have a recipe for 'Agression Cookies' that help with texture issues. Melinda you'll get a kick out of this too - but there's no egg so we can eat the dough :)

In the first pic I was shwoing Morgan that it is OK to stick your fingers in the dough. But she never got to beyond poking her finger into the dough

She was proud of her self for getting 'dirty'. We're working on the difference between dirty and messy and that it's OK to be both. And when they're all baked the treat for sitting on the potty is a cookie!
The really funny thing is that she only ate 2 bites because she's not a sweet eater.

Oh the progression of Art

Yesterday was a cold dreary day so I pulled out fingerpaint for the first time. Morgan is such a neat freak and hates to get her hands dirty. Last Sunday she made Agression Cookis and today she painted. She did MUCH better with the paint. It works great to have a side of the fridge open for her 'easle'

So she's having fun painting...

Then having fun cleaning up...

She got her underpants so wet that I decided she should just play...




Who knew a 2 1/2 year old still fits in the kitchen sink

Oh heck with it - she's in the sink, just take a bath already...

Well that took care of our morning play time...

Big Day in Our House

Morgan is officially done at Pam's and home for a few weeks before starting at the Montessori School, so we are officially starting potty training and hoping for better results this go round! She's in her real underpants this time instead of diapers and timimg her. When we started before we had to keep her in diapers since daycare couldn't have her in anything else until she was totally trained (wierd!)

Jim also put her tricycle together today and it was ready for her when she got up from her nap. Unfortunately it's so rainy outside that she will have to ding-a-ling the bell in the living room for today.

School's Out for Summer - Sing with me!

Whew! I walked in to school Friday morning, it was a glorious blue sky, 70 degree morning and I was struck at the similarities of walking into the building for the first time last fall. How have 9 months already gone by?! Now I can get back into a schedule of posting Morgan's comings and goings.

We had another first today - First Symphony Concert! Again a cultural event with Elizabeth and Julia. Julia is quickly becoming an etheral being for Morgan. I'm pretty sure the same cannot be said for Julia, but she does a nice job being careful around Morgan. Anyway we all went to Trollwood Park to hear the FM Synphony play at the outdoor theater. Music was fantastic, Morgan even got into clapping at the right time :) and the weather was perfect 71 degrees with a cool breeze and fluffy white clouds flying by.

In Tech Camp

Fargo is out - but the lovely tech people offer a series of classes on varying tech issues. I am sitting in Any Monkey Can Blog. But I can't access my school blog so I thought I would practice a bit here! And just for giggles here's Morgan at the park with her daycare friends: