Some random thoughts

• I love watching Teresa play with her baby doll. You'll never convince me that gender roles aren't inherent. She's so tender and caring with her. She'll pat her back after diaper changes, and cradle her in her arms to share her milk with her. Every once in a while she'll stop pushing her stroller just to bend down and give her baby a kiss.

• We finally got our new furniture! Apparently when the store said 2-4 weeks until delivery they really meant 2-4 months, and when they said they'd be here between 9 and 1, they really meant sometime after 1. But, it's finally here, and we love it. It's sooooo much more comfortable than our old Craigslist stuff. Here's a picture of it right after delivery. We'll probably move them around a bit, but our plans for getting rid of our old stuff fell through, so we're a little crowded right now. I made some pillow covers to add some color, but the little one got chocolate on them, so they were in the wash.
  

• I've had the privilege of being sick for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's this year. Fun stuff. Here's where I make a plug for Breathe Right Nasal Strips. It's time you all knew about them too. They're pretty much the most amazing things ever invented. We first bought them waaayyy back when we first got married, because Marc had a little snoring problem. They didn't work for that at all, but a few months later when I was sick and stuffed up I decided to give them a try. Seriously, they're the best ever. I use the regular ones a lot when I'm pregnant, because I have trouble breathing at night occasionally, and this last round of being sick I used the Advanced strips, and they are pretty intense. There's seriously no way you can wear one of those and not be able to breathe. Next time you're sick or stuffed up, you should try some. (T's first order of business in the morning is to pull them off for me. Which I don't mind with the regular ones, but the advanced ones can be a little painful if you're not ready for someone to rip them off your tender nose/under eye skin).
  

• Marc and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary this last week. It was the first time we've been able to do so without someone throwing up. Marc was blessed with the stomach flu on our honeymoon, I was pregnant and sick the first anniversary, and last year we were both lucky enough to have the stomach flu for our anniversary. We were both feeling pretty good the morning of the 29th this year, so I was sure it would be Tressa throwing up this time. Luckily, we all made it through the day vomit free. Which is more than I can say for the 30th, unfortunately. We celebrated by eating some especially delicious Italian food, since we missed out on the stuff we had at our reception.

• I'm bummed about the lack of snow here. I know I spent all my winters in Utah complaining about the snow, but I was finally excited for it this year! It feels weird for it to be as cold as it is outside without snow on the ground.
  

• I'm excited for it to be 2011 already! That means only a little over a month until our new little girl gets here. This pregnancy has been about a thousand times less miserable than Tressa's, but I'm still ready to be done. When I was pregnant with T, I was totally terrified of labor. I pretty much thought it would be the worst thing that would ever happen to me. (It wasn't). My one solace was the idea that after doing it the first time I wouldn't have to be so worried about any subsequent babies we might have. I was wrong. I'm totally freaked out about giving birth again. Even more so this time, I think, because of how fast T was born. I'm really paranoid that I'll go into labor and not make it to the hospital in time to get an epidural.

• T has started doing more and more pretend play, and I love it. She pretends to be a kitty a lot recently. She'll come in our bedroom in the morning doing nothing but meowing. It's super cute. I can't believe how big she is already. She turned 19 months on our anniversary. I took her in for her 18 month check up last week, and she's 34 1/2 inches tall (in case you don't remember, she was 30 inches at 12 months, so that means she's put on 4 and a half inches in 7 months!) and weighs 28 lbs. She thinks she a big girl, too. We were at church one week and she was pointing out all the babies to me. She pointed to a little girl a few months older than herself and said 'baby'. So I asked if Teresa was a baby and she shook her head and said 'No!' very adamantly.
  

A big, long Christmas post

We had a nice, quiet Christmas this year. It was a little weird to not go home to Texas at all, but we still had fun. Christmas Eve we decided to head up to a 'Christmas Village' in Pennsylvania. It was about a two and a half hour drive, but it was supposed to be super amazing. Marc had brought home a brochure about it, and it had won an award as being the 'biggest display of Christmas lights in the world'.

Here's T before we left:






Waiting in line:


How T felt about it...


She was much happier once we released her from the stroller. She loved all the lights, and especially all the snowmen. She was not pleased to see the giant Santa.




They did have a ton of lights and cool displays, but it didn't quite live up to our expectations. Definitely not worth that long of a drive, but we still had fun. Now we know not to do it next year ;). We had planned to eat Christmas Eve dinner there, at the Country Kitchen the brochure claimed they had, but that turned out not to exist. We ended up eating gas station food on the way home instead. Very festive ;).

T was pretty excited to see the tree when she got up Christmas morning.



She totally knew what to do right away

Christmas1 from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

She ditched half way through that present because she realized she hadn't had her milk yet. You do NOT want to mess with this girl before she gets her morning milk fix (notice her unzipped pajamas? She refuses to have them zipped all the way up, as soon as we put them on at night she has to half unzip them)



Once she got some milk in her she was a little more enthusiastic

Christmas2 from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Christmas3 from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, after she opened her baby and stroller, she lost all interest in the other gifts and just took off, pushing them around the house. We were eventually able to lure her back to the tree to open the rest of her stuff



Christmas day we had some friends over for dinner. Teresa was a big help setting the table:





Until she decided she was needed elsewhere...







We hope you all had as Merry of a Christmas as we did!

Christmas cookies

Here are the videos of T decorating Christmas cookies! Yes, I know, we're on a bit of a video kick lately! I really didn't think she would be too interested, we tried decorating some cookies at our church Christmas party, but she wouldn't do anything but pick the candy off as I put it on. I thought she'd be able to handle the sprinkling, but that didn't go so well. She used about half a bottle on the first cookie. Half way through eating one she decided she needed to get in on the frosting action, and actually did a pretty good job. She didn't make too big of a mess, and she just kept frosting the same half of a cookie over and over.

Cookies from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Cookies2 from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Hmm...the second one is kinda boring. Oh well. ;)

A bunch of videos

Here are some videos of T. Don't feel obligated to watch them, I know four is a lot.

The first is her trying on Marc's shoes. I've been a little surprised at T's lack of interest in our shoes, since most kids like to clomp around in their parents shoes, and she loves to have us put her church shoes on all the time. She finally discovered the fun of wearing Mom and Dad's shoes this week, and does it all the time now. Just fyi, she picked her outfit herself.

Shoes from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

The first snow. She loved playing in it, and thought it was so fun and 'hot'. I felt bad that we had only gone out when there wasn't too much of it, so I spent a good half hour bundling her up this morning to go out in the deeper stuff before it melted, only for us to get outside and for her to plop herself down in the snow to cry. Who knows why it was so different today from yesterday.

Snow1 from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Snow2 from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

And her new jumping skills. She recently figured out how to jump with both feet off the ground, and has been incorporating it into her dancing all week.

Untitled from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

She's pretty much resigned herself to the idea of boots and coats now, she knows she has to have them to go outside. We're still working on the hats/hoods and gloves issue.

The difference of a year

We took T to sit on Santa's lap Monday. I knew she wasn't interested in doing it, but unfortunately for her, she doesn't get a lot of say in stuff like that ;). We'd already had a less than stellar experience with Santa at our ward Christmas party, and when we were in line at Bass Pro, she kept waving at Santa and telling him 'bye'. I tried to point out that all the children in front of us were smiling when they sat on his lap, but she wasn't willing to listen to logic. Anyway, here's her picture from this year - we couldn't skip the classic screaming-child-on-Santa's-lap picture:



(You'll probably want to click on it to really see the distress)
Santa looks totally uncomfortable, but he was super nice about it. He told us pretty much all the kids T's age react to him that way, I guess it's just the age.

And, just for some comparison, here she is with Santa last year. I can't believe how much bigger she is! And way less scared than this year...

Winter Wear

So, it turns out T is a true little Texan at heart. She has been hating on all things winter since it started getting cold. It makes me a little sad, because I'm actually excited for winter this year! She absolutely hates wearing outerwear. She struggles and wriggles and fights me off when I try to put a coat on her. It's been taking us about a half an hour to get her into a coat lately. Which is sad, because she has some really cute coats! She'll only willingly wear a sweater if it's not too heavy. Anything too fleecy or thick gets the same reaction as a coat.

And the cold weather has apparently caused her to lose her ability to walk. She just can't handle walking from the house to the car or vice versa if it's too cold outside. She just cries and stamps her feet until someone picks her up.

Thursday I decided it was finally time to get her some boots. We were at Target, so I found some cute snow boots and tried to put one on T's foot to make sure it fit (she inherited my big, wide feet, so shoe sizes are really hit or miss with her). Well. That was a huge mistake. She started screaming her head off, like someone was doing something terrible to her. I've seriously never heard her be that loud before. I was shocked no one came to investigate what was going on. She kept screaming until I got her regular shoe back on. I ended up just comparing the bottoms to her current shoes. Then Friday when I tried to put them on her feet so we could go outside she put up a really valiant struggle. Twenty minutes later, we finally got them on.

She is getting better at leaving her coat and shoes on once we actually get outside. Hopefully she's starting to make the connection that they help her stay warm.

Next up: hats. I almost tried one out at Wal-Mart Friday, but she started protesting as soon as I got it off the display. Maybe we'll tackle that one another day.

Anyway, here she is in her cute coat and boots. I'm sad she doesn't love them because I think she just looks so darn cute all wintered up!





I know this last one is blurry, but I just love her cute little expression here.

What does a Tiger say?

I've been trying to get T to perform for the camera for a while now, but she just gets distracted! Marc had more luck today. Here she is doing her animal sounds. Sorry about the TV noise in the background, I guess we should have turned that off first...

Animals from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Dancing T

Here's a little video of T dancing in the backyard.

Dancing T from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

I promise I do comb her hair occasionally.

Mostly about Marc

This post is mostly about Marc. But not completely, because I don't think I'm capable of blogging without at least mentioning Teresa. Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out to Marc for getting an Army Achievement Medal this week. He got it for "exceptionally outstanding achievement in having exceeded the course standard" and "being selected to the commandant's list". They also said that he is "representative of exactly the type of technically savvy soldier" they are looking for. Basically he got it for doing so awesome in his training in Florida. So, way to go Marc! I know his training was so hard, and he worked really hard at it, so I'm glad that he got some awesome recognition for it.



As for the rest of us, T is getting bigger and bigger, and adding more words to her vocabulary every day. It's fun to hear her start to make more sense when she is chattering now. We're working on saying her name, but no luck so far. Today at Target the cashier asked us if she was two or three! I know she's pretty tall, but I definitely don't think she looks like a three year old.

The pregnancy is going well still. I've started feeling super pregnant this past week. I took my glucose test last week. I actually really enjoyed it, because Marc had T, so I went alone to do it. It was nice to have an excuse to just sit and read a book for an hour with no little distractions! No gestational diabetes, but I am anemic. I wasn't too surprised by that at first, since I've always been borderline anemic, even not pregnant, but I actually am a little bummed, because we've been doing green smoothies for breakfast, so I'm definitely getting my share of dark, leafy greens. It does help explain why I've been extra tired (not just pregnant tired) lately. The carpal tunnel isn't too bad yet, mostly only after I do a lot of cleaning or typing. Or knitting, so that's out too. Over all, this pregnancy is still going waaaaayyyy better than T's.

I wanted to get some pics of T in her cute little Mr. Rogers sweater today, but she wouldn't come out of the closet long enough, so these will have to do. She loves to shut herself in here, and then pop out and say "Hiiiii!". Which I think is a little weird, because it's also the 'time-out' closet, and she definitely doesn't love it as much then.



But then when I was loading pics from the camera, I found these from last week. So, same outfit, different day. She loves to carry around any type of bag, she's such a girl.

Ultrasounds and puzzles

I went to the doctor up here for the first time this past week. I'm pretty excited that we get to use Johns Hopkins, I hear pretty good stuff about them. I'm seeing a group of doctors instead of having my own specific one, which I thought was a little weird at first, but I think I'm going to like it. The one I saw this week was not my favorite. She seemed like a good doctor, but we didn't especially 'click' personality wise. She seriously wouldn't let me finish a sentence or question before she would jump in with a response. Plus, she moved my due date. Not cool. She insisted that my first ultrasound in Florida put my due date as February 18th, instead of the 10th. This is not true. The 18th was the date we were working with based on my estimated LMP, which was always a really sketchy date. My first ultrasound at 11ish weeks was when the doctor changed the due date to the 10th. I tried telling her that, but she insisted that she saw the 18th written on the ultrasound, and then she launched in to a big discussion about how due dates based on ultrasound are less accurate as your pregnancy progresses. They gave me back my Florida medical records when I left, and I seriously couldn't find anything in there that indicated the 18th as my due date based on an ultrasound. But, whatever, she can say the 18th and I'll just correct her in my head ;). I guess the only thing it will really affect is that I won't be getting induced if the baby isn't here by the 10th. I know she could tell I was still skeptical, cause she straight up told me that if someone asked my due date, I should say the 18th. So, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I'm still measuring 27 weeks, which she said is because this baby will probably be huge like Teresa. Except Teresa never measured bigger than she was supposed to, so...we'll see.

Friday we went up to Baltimore for the ultrasound I should have had at around 20 weeks, which I missed because of all the moving stuff. I'm so, so glad Marc was able to go with me, because I would have hated having to drive there myself. The hospital was right downtown and traffic was crazy! There was so much construction and so many pedestrians everywhere, I was so glad I wasn't driving. Everything looks normal, she's still a girl (Seriously, I was about 5% worried they were going to say she was actually a boy), and her lips are perfectly formed, which was nice to find out. She had her back to us most of the time, so we got some good long looks at her spine. We saw her cute little face for a little while. I feel bad saying this, but this ultrasound was so much more interesting and exciting to me than any of Tressa's were. Marc and I were both surprised by how cute she looked in the 3D pictures, usually we think the 3D ones just look like little alien babies, I guess it's different when it's your own alien baby ;). She really didn't look anything like Teresa in the 3D picture, but I imagine she'll look way different 3 months from now. She weighs about 1 pound 12 ounces right now. It's crazy to me that she's still got another 7-8 pounds to go (if she's anything like T, anyway) in just a few more months. I thought about scanning the 3D pic they gave us, but the quality isn't that awesome, so I imagine a scan of it wouldn't really be much to look at.

And, to make up for my super long paragraphs above, here are some pictures of T! She loves these puzzles, and I love how long she can spend working on them. She can do the shapes one pretty easily now (she only has trouble with the pentagon shape, but once she gets that one she starts applauding herself) but the ones with animals are still pretty difficult for her. Anyway, this is a common sight in our living room:







(Sigh. Do you see her hair? This is what it looks like on days that aren't Sunday i.e. days I don't wet it down and style it. It's why I wish she would let me stick a hat on when we leave the house)

And some cute Sunday dress pictures...

The Halloween Post

I had big plans to actually make Teresa's costume for Halloween this year. That didn't happen, and I totally blame the move for that ;). Also, we ended up finding a cute butterfly outfit at the Children's Place for nine bucks, so I figured it was cheaper than any attempt I would make at doing something myself. The only problem? She hated it. Had a complete melt down every time we put it on. We skipped our ward trunk-or-treat activity mostly because T just couldn't even function once we put her costume on. She seriously couldn't even drink her milk without bursting in to tears, and if you know T, it takes a lot to distract her from milk.

Being the mean mom that I am, I made her put it on one more time so we could take some pictures. Even though we didn't get any cute smiley ones, we figured we still needed the pictures to remember for posterity, right?



She absolutely would not wear the little hat with her antenna's on it. There was just no way I was gonna be able to get it on her head for the pictures.




Sunday we just stuck some cat ears (from the $ spot at Target) on with her black top and tights she wore with her church outfit and gave her some whiskers. She was MUCH happier with this arrangement. Actually, she wasn't interested in wearing the ears until Marc took her trick or treating. They just went to the few neighbors we've met here and T thought it was great that they were giving her candy.

Her favorite part of Halloween was handing out candy to trick or treaters. She waved at them all as they walked up and blew them kisses as they left.

Sorry there are so many pictures, but I didn't feel like making a collage, so you just get them all :)

Coming home with her loot





Making a tough decision...








I love her little belly sticking out in this one


Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin patch and pumpkin fail

Since Marc has time off this week, we've been able to do lots of fun stuff together as a family. Yesterday we took Teresa to her first pumpkin patch. She loved getting to run around, and was super interested in the pumpkins. She kept pointing to some and chattering about them. Oh, if we only knew what she was saying! She was pretty irritated when she tried to pick one up and couldn't. She was NOT interested in the corn maze, we would get about two steps in and she would make a break for the exit. Maybe next year. Here are about a billion pictures of T with the pumpkins. Seriously, we took about 200 pictures, so this is WAY narrowed down :).





This was our view for most of the visit, actually. She was too preoccupied with all the pumpkin-ness to pay much attention to Mom and Dad.












We didn't buy a pumpkin there, of course, since they were $8 - $15, and Wal-Mart has them for 3 bucks, but we did get some yummy apple cider and local apples. T is a big fan of apples recently, so she was pleased with that.

When we got home, we were feeling all fall-y and wanted to make something with pumpkin. Our friend Lindsey made us a pumpkin roll a few years ago, and it was pretty much one of the best things we've ever eaten, so we decided to try and make one ourselves. I looked up a bunch of recipes online, and they all said it was much easier to make than it looks, so we figured we could do it. Yeah. It was pretty much an epic pumpkin fail. This is what it was supposed to look like:



This is what ours ended up looking like:



It was pretty sad. But, I think I know what we need to do differently, so maybe next time we will have more success. Besides, it still tasted the same, so I guess it wasn't a total loss.