Daddy's girl

For the past 14 or so months now the majority of people who see Morgan usually say that she resembles me in some fashion. Not that I don't mind these comments since of course Morgan is pretty darn cute - and we also do have the same affinity for making silly faces - but since no mention has been made of her looking anything like Pat I feel like I must try and prove paternity here that Pat is actually Morgan's father. So for starters I offer you Exhibit A -


Here you can clearly see they both have perfectly mastered the squinty sun in your eyes facial expression.

Moving on to Exhibit B -


Ok seriously, this is pretty darn cute. Clearly they have been spending way too much time together during the day for both of them to be sporting the same pool hair and devilish grin.

Finally, Exhibit C -


I do believe without a doubt this absolutely proves Morgan is a daddy girl. And obviously daddy is loving every minute of it!

Happy birthday Gangi!

Swimming and showers

To celebrate Morgan's monumental achievement of officially taking her first steps we decided to enjoy a lazy (and hot) Sunday afternoon at the neighborhood pool. Morgan had swim lessons back when she was about 7 months old and actually does enjoy a refreshing dip by holding on to either me or Pat. Recently though we got her one of those little floaty tubes that she can swim in by herself. We tried it out for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Ever since then she has loved it so much she has started putting it on the living room floor and sitting in it. We can take the hint so we got on our swim suits, scooped on the sunscreen, and headed down the block... with floaty of course.


We've learned that with Morgan it's best to head in the big pool first rather than try to do the kiddie pool. The water was a tad bit cold but considering it was about 90 degrees out it sure did feel good.


Hey, I can see our house from here.


Watch out Michael Phelps!


After the pool we headed back home just in time for afternoon naps. When we all woke up we decided what better way to finish off a hot summer day then to fire up the grill for some hamburgers. Now, we don't watch the local news much ever since the switch over to digital cable as we only used to watch the news upstairs in our bedroom and we only have cable on the television in the living room. So unfortunately we missed the report about a massive freakish thunderstorm heading right towards us. Luckily we had a sense something was coming.


Morgan and I practiced making our best surprise faces while watching the storm clouds come in and trying not to get hit by lightening.


Then for about 15 minutes we got hammered with rain, wind, and hail. It seemed like just another average storm until the deck table and chairs started flying towards the railing. And then the ladder we had standing up outside fell over. And the grill started moving. And water started coming in underneath our closed sliding glass door. And the power went out. Now I should say that in the four years we have lived in our house the power has never gone out once due to the fact that the power lines are buried underground. So this was new. Morgan and I whipped out the flashlights. Of course it was still light out considering it was only about 6:30 but you get the general idea.


The rain eventually did stop and Pat fired the grill back up to finish making our hamburgers. After a quick dinner we did what any other logical person would do in a situation such as this - grabbed the camera and headed outside to survey the damage. It seems like many of our neighbors had the same idea and we quickly had a block party going on. Of course I'm sure things would have been a bit more jovial if not for the bit of destruction that seemed to only affect our small little neighborhood.


That was not our house, thankfully. We seemed to come away from this relatively unscathed. Our neighbor two doors down however came out of her house only to find a piece of someone's siding wedged into her garage door. And then of course there was quite a bit of tree damage.


Here's our neighbor's house. Amazingly with all the trees knocked down we didn't see a single car hit.


And then of course there was the text message from my sister with a picture of their tree down across their driveway. They also had a fun little neighborhood party as everyone came out with their chainsaws. We too had chainsaws going on... all night long.

After our family walk we decided to postpone bath time considering it would have been a bit difficult to do in the dark and did our best to get ready for bedtime. Of course wouldn't you know Morgan really wanted to stay up and make the most of her first blackout. By this time it was dark dark... good thing we still had about a million wedding candles left over.


At first we tried sitting and rocking in the chair for a bit to calm down...


That worked for about 5 minutes until we decided we'd much rather make silly faces by candlelight instead.


Or maybe that was us yawning which would make sense too considering by that point it was 10pm... two hours past Morgan's bedtime. We finally gave in and ended up having a party in our room complete with flashlights and more silly faces. Amazingly we did manage to fall asleep despite the aforementioned chainsaws and 85 degree heat and luckily the power did come back on at about 3:30am. And wouldn't you know it, today there is absolutely no sign of any damage done except of course for missing siding.

So all in all just a typical Sunday in July complete with a trip to the pool and a tornado. And there you go Mom - that's what's happening in Maryland.

Today is any day now

Morgan has an announcement. After months of crawling, cruising, and climbing Morgan has officially made the big leap into walking. She started practicing earlier in the week mainly by standing and immediately flopping over to her eventual destination. But starting today Morgan decided today was the day to actually take a few steps... before then flopping over. By the end of the day she had progressed to standing, clapping, and then doing a quick power walk over to Pat. Of course that naturally turned out to be a lot of fun and someone decided she would much rather practice walking then go to bed. Though I think us getting caught in the rain during our family walk also contributed to Morgan's giggle fit. Apparently rain drops on your legs is quite ticklish.

One small step

The big question on every one's mind lately is when will Morgan start walking. I don't even get a "hi, how are you" on the phone from Grandma and Grandpa anymore. Instead I get "is Morgan walking, what did we get in the mail?" For the past few months now Morgan has been cruising along every single piece of furniture we own. We thought she was getting close to letting go as soon as she started cruising one-handed. But it turns out she still likes having some contact with a concrete inanimate object... except of course when she's holding onto Colby and walking around him. Then we were thinking that maybe by taking her to My Gym and seeing the other kids walk around might inspire her to take that first step. So far I think it's just encouraged her to crawl faster. And of course recently we've been practicing with standing up alone but that really only works if we trick her into not realizing we've let go and it usually ends with her plopping down on her bottom after about 2-3 seconds.

So imagine my surprise when we're playing after dinner tonight and Morgan decides she's in an extra silly mood and wants to practice walking back and forth between me and Pat. First she takes one giant leap to the couch where Pat is sitting... of course, still holding on to my arm with one hand while reaching over to the couch with the other so that doesn't really count. Then it's time to turn around and walk back to me. She gets into position, surveys the scene, and prepares to make that first step. Except the big first step actually ended up being more of a forward lunge and resulted in a lot of silly giggles and smiles. Of course we had to repeat this several more times until the forward lunge turned into a backwards swoop. Ok so it wasn't an actual step but it was still pretty silly. And by the way, Morgan has the greatest laugh ever.

Happy birthday Uncle Scotty!

Looking good

One year ago Morgan was soaking up the rays and taking in the cool ocean air during her very first visit to the beach.


What a difference a year makes...

Little drummer girl

We've been saying for quite some time now that Morgan is incredibly gifted (and beautiful, smart, funny, etc). She knows what sheep says and almost cow and dog. She can wave hi and bye like a pro. She can clap and play peek-a-boo like nobody's business. And as of a couple of weeks ago she is climbing up and down stairs with lighting fast speed. And yes, any day now she is going to start running laps around the house. Seriously... any day now.

Today Morgan acquired a new talent that puts all of the above to shame.


Yes, Morgan is a musical prodigy... a genius if you will. She started out just focusing on the cymbals but as you can clearly see she has now advanced on to the snare, bass, and high hat. Her eye-hand coordination is spot on and her ability to lay down the beat is truly awe-inspiring. I fully expect Julliard or Peabody to be calling us any day now.

Here she is really feeling the music.


You'll have to talk to our manager and publicist for any additional copyrighted images or interviews.

A new milestone

For the past 14 months we have gone through our share of big firsts and grand milestones all while watching Morgan grow into the sweet and personable little lady she is today. We giggled at her first smile, gawked at the first roll over, and awed at her first time on the swing. Well we can now add another first to the list... the first time out. It appears that in addition to being all happy-go-lucky Morgan also enjoys testing the limits of what she can and can not do. And what she recently discovered that she can not do is stand up in the bathtub. I wouldn't mind so much, since she is standing up to reach the shower curtain to play peek-a-boo, but of course as I explained to her it is my job to say no sometimes. Actually I had to say no three times before finally putting an official end to bath time. We didn't do too bad though there was a tiny bit of fussiness during our one minute time out. Until of course daddy walked in and then there was a lot of jumping and laughing. So I guess you could say time out was a semi-success... especially since during tonight's bath time someone sat super nicely the entire time while eating her bath crayons. I guess we'll work on that next.