Cruising, crawling, climbing, and crashing

Due to the immense popularity of this blog not a month goes by without getting at least one inquiry as to what Morgan is doing now (thanks Mom). In order to answer that request, and the many more I'm sure to get, this entry is dedicated to showcasing Morgan's latest escapades.

First, I'm sure many of you know by now that Morgan is an expert crawler. She spends most of her days crawling behind the bookcase, chasing Colby, or exploring. While it is still her second preferred method of traveling (first is obviously hanging upside down with Daddy), she has now taken quite a liking to cruising. Now when she crawls it is usually to the next piece of furniture she can find where she is able to stand up and use to cruise around the room. Actually the wall works just as good. Lately she enjoys showing off by doing the one-handed cruise with the free hand used for pointing, waving, or swatting at Colby. We keep saying that any day now Morgan is going to let go with that other hand and start walking. Of course we started saying that about 2 months ago. But seriously, any day now...

Morgan is also becoming quite the accomplished climber (get that harness ready, Uncle Taylor). And of course with 4 flights of stairs in our house she has ample opportunities to practice. Occasionally she'll climb up one step just to show off to everyone that she can. But she has also been known to climb up an entire flight of stairs. Just the other day she climbed up the stairs into our bedroom all by herself but I think that was just because she recently discovered the toilet paper in the bathroom and the joys in unraveling the entire roll. Morgan has also started making the climb up into her favorite chair. Of course once she makes it up she doesn't always figure out she then has to turn around to sit down so it usually ends with Morgan standing and jumping in it until she points to me to get her down. Morgan is an expert climber-upper - it's the down part we haven't quite figured out yet.

She is becoming quite the little talker. We've expanded her vocabulary to hi, bye, ma, dada, dog, Colby, ball, duck, cup, baby, and of course her absolute favorite word to say - Curt. She is so talented, she can sometimes have an entire conversation saying nothing but Curt. She does know everyone else's names as well - of course the proper Morgan pronunciation for all of them is Curt. So thanks to cousin Curt for having an easy and fun name to say. We've also been working with Morgan on where things are. She knows where Mr. Fan, light, plant, plate, Elmo, Colby, and her belly are. We're still working on the other body parts. Right now she's pointing to everyone else's nose but her own.

Finally, we decided we'd get a head start on things and get Morgan signed up for class - a tumbling play class. Morgan is signed up for the summer session over at My Gym - a little tumbling play area for kids. We went there once for our friend Elizabeth's birthday party and had a lot of fun. So Morgan is going twice a week and meeting new friends and doing all sorts of fun activities. We actually had our first class on Saturday so stay tuned for more updates on that.

So as you can see Morgan is quite the busy little lady and we are doing our very best just to keep up. One thing I have finally found time to do is update our video section. I'm sure you all have noticed we have not have new video postings in quite a while. Well that has all changed today as there are about 4 new videos staring Morgan for you to take a look at. Including this one, which as you can clearly see, properly demonstrates all of Morgan's latest talents.

Happy Daddy Day!

For your amusement

Pat and I love amusement parks. We usually go to at least one every year. I think Pat even used to be a member of that roller coaster fan group - you know the group that rides every roller coaster in every amusement park all over the world. And I of course have a long history of attending theme parks with my family and various school groups. We can usually do just about all the rides except I have found I no longer have any sort of tolerance for the spiny rides. Pat primarily will stick to the roller coasters but of course when he does he must be sitting in the very front row no matter how long the wait. I can see his point - some roller coasters, such as the Big Bad Wolf and the Alpengeist are an absolute must from the front row. Yup, we usually do OK except for one notable exception.

About three years ago now we tagged along with Pat's family for the day at Kings Dominion as his dad was doing one of his music trips there and got us all tickets. We wandered away from the rest of the group, thoroughly prepared to brave the lines and hit all the rides. Except strangely enough neither Pat nor I felt like riding any of the rides there. I do remember going on the Eiffel tower and I think we might have done one other one but we mainly walked around passing everything by. Until we found ourselves in the kid's section where we planted ourselves on a bench and watched all the little kids and their parents enjoy the rides. And there you have, my friends, the exact moment when we both realized we were more than ready to start our family.

So fast forward three years to this -



Let's hope she likes riding the roller coasters as much as she likes driving cars.

Swimming with the sharks

This past week has certainly been quite the parenting experience. I'm sure we would have gone through this eventually. Frankly I'm shocked we made it for as long as we did before this happened. Yes, just a rite of passage that everyone at some point has to face and deal with. And when you do you either sink or swim. Of course I am speaking of the catastrophic event of everyone in the household getting sick at the exact same time. So, did we sink or did we swim?

Before we answer that question I guess I should share exactly what we were dealing with since we all had something different. Last Friday we took Morgan to an open house at our local My Gym to see what it was like before getting her signed up for a class. The place was jammed packed and not a lot of room for Morgan to get down and explore. Not that she wanted to anyway since she is currently going through a very clingy/separation anxiety phase. But of course that immediately changed as soon as the special guest arrived. Note to self: make sure every single outing always involves a personal appearance by Elmo... or any costumed character for that moment. The moment Elmo arrived Morgan got down on the floor and very clearly navigated her way through the crowd and planted herself right in front of Elmo so of course he naturally had to give her a big hug and high five. She had fun and I'm sure we'll be signing her up for their summer session however the very next day we noticed she had a bit of goop oozing from one of her eyes. That continued for the next couple of days eventually moving over to the other eye before finally disappearing altogether. Luckily she didn't seem too bothered by it but there was definitely a bit of extra holding and cuddling to help her cope with it.

Meanwhile Pat was struggling with a bit of a sore throat and some nose issues which may or may not have been related to allergies. I know he had a couple of rough nights during the week but other then some extra coughing he seemed to have gotten off the easiest of the three of us. Of course I on the other hand ended up with the high fever, the aches, the chills, the major sore throat, the stuffy nose, the hacking bouts of coughing, and the lost voice. None of which did I think gave the slightest bit of a reason to see a doctor until I suddenly lost my hearing out of my left ear on Friday night. The nice doctor asked me if I always had very little space between my tonsils and was the inside of my ear always purple and red. Luckily those antibiotics will cure just about anything.

Like I said I'm sure this was bound to happen sooner or later but I have to say I think we managed things pretty well. Now what happens when we all come down with the flu? Well that might be a different story to tell. But for now we swam.

Here comes Morgan... there goes Morgan

Morgan is cruising. A lot. She no longer wants to crawl. Which is slightly annoying since she can't officially walk yet. So right now she's just moving from furniture to legs to toys to cabinets, etc. Until she gets to the bottom of the stairs which she then proceeds to climb up. Yes, Morgan can climb up stairs. So we'll climb up the stairs and hang out in her room for a little bit until it's nap/bed time. And of course when we go in to retrieve her from said nap/bed time we are naturally greeted with a little lady standing up peering over the side of her bed with a big smile on her face waiting for one of us to pop in. Yes, Morgan is getting herself up in a standing position by herself. Notice though that I did not say Morgan is standing up by herself... that part we're still working on. We have gotten her down to only using one hand to hold on to something but she's still a little hesitant to let go with that other hand. Of course on the few occasions we've managed to trick her into letting go she's actually done quite well at balancing herself for a good 5 seconds or so. But at the rate she's going I have no doubt she'll be running laps around the house before the week is up.