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.

Maryland

We finally made it to Maryland last week! Teresa did okay in the car, although after we got here she started putting up a huge fight whenever we would try to strap her in to her car seat. I guess she was worried we were gonna make her stay there all day again. It was actually a really nice drive from Florida to Maryland, and we were excited to stop in Atlanta to see some friends from BYU. T is thrilled with our backyard, she would spend all day out there if she could. (I'm thrilled that there is a fence, so I don't have to chase her the whole time). She's pretty funny to watch, we'll go outside and she'll just run in circles til she's exhausted. It rained all day Thursday and she just stood in front of the windows all day staring outside, poor girl.

The movers got here with our stuff on Friday, and we're starting to get unpacked and settled in a little. T was very excited to unpack her crib and toys, and especially her books. Our movers were really awesome, they totally contradicted all the horror stories I'd heard about moving with the Army. (They were so good I even forgave them for calling T a boy half the morning, and then finally having to ask me straight out if she was a boy or a girl. Umm, I promise I wouldn't dress my little boy in a bright purple flowered shirt and put him in pink shoes. Also, they knew she was a girl in Florida, so I'm not sure when that would have changed). They actually got here early both in Pensacola and Maryland. I felt a little bad making them haul all our boxes of books up the stairs, since they were both 60-ish. The packers were a whole different story from the movers, though. They literally just shoved all our stuff in to boxes. We unpacked our sheets and comforter, and they had just wadded it all up into a ball and crammed it in a box. We also learned pretty quick that they were very loose with their labeling. Just because they wrote 'clothes' on the box didn't mean there would actually be any clothing in it. At least it made unpacking a little more exciting, I guess, we never knew what we might get when we opened a box! While we were unpacking I realized that this is our 5th move (6th if you count the first time we moved in together right after our wedding)! We haven't even been married for three years yet! Marc has a 5 year stabilization clause with his job, which means we should only have to move every 5 years from here on out (assuming we stay in the Army, of course).

Maryland is totally different. The weather is actually very fall-y up here, we've been enjoying nice chilly mornings and evenings. And it is SO dry. Not to complain, since I did enough of that about the humidity in Florida, but I really didn't think it was supposed to be this much drier up here. We are all definitely feeling the adjustment. Poor T has little dry skin patches going on, and we are going through lotion like crazy. I'm sure we'll adjust eventually, though. Apparently people are supposed to be less friendly up here, too. That's seemed to be true so far, although I suppose it's not really fair to make that comparison since we're coming from Florida. I thought people in Texas were friendly, but when we got to Florida I was totally blown away by how nice and friendly everyone there was. So it's definitely a bit different here. Especially the drivers. They're definitely not afraid of tailgating here.

Oh, and just to make the post worth it, here are some pictures of T. These are from a rest stop in North Carolina. T was so excited to get out of the car for a while. We let her run around for about 40 minutes. She was not excited to get back in the car. She is really into her 'baby' right now, she has to have it with her, or at least within sight at all times. Being the smart mom that I am, I packed her baby away before the packers came so we would have it in the car with us. Then I promptly forgot where I had stashed it. Luckily, Wal-Mart had the same exact baby, but a different color (and luckily it was only 4 dollars) so T put up with that on the drive here. We found her original baby when we got here (tucked safely in the front pocket of her backpack, of course), so she immediately ditched the new baby for her old one.







The rest are from today, in her Halloween dress before church

Pointing out an airplane. It's her new thing.


The cable guy left this in our yard when he came to install the internet, and T has adopted it as her new yard toy. Our backyard has quite a slope to it, so she loves to push it and watch it roll down the hill and hit the fence.




Going into a spin...

Swinging

We took T to the little playground here in our complex last week. It's not too far of a walk, but we really don't go there very often. It's about as toddler-unfriendly as a playground could be. They only have regular swings, and everything else is all metal and rusty. Plus, there are about a billion stickers there. We seriously get at least seven every time we go. We do like that they are one of the few playgrounds to still have an oh-so-dangerous merry go round.

Anyway, I usually just sit T in my lap to swing, but last week she decided that was no longer good enough. I don't know if all 16 month olds are like this, but T is incredibly independent. She has no interest in getting help from us for just about anything anymore. So, since she was so insistent, we went ahead and let her try out the big kid swings on her own. It only took one time of letting go of the handles and falling off for her to figure it out.

And no, she doesn't wear the same clothes every day, these are from the same day we went to the zoo ;)



Doesn't she look so old in these pictures? Marc rudely told me she was almost two last week. Not cool. She's not even half way there yet!



She loves drinking from Marc's camelbak, her water intake has increased by about a thousand percent since she figured out how to use it.


I love this picture, too bad about all the shadows on her face!


In other news, we finally got our orders on Friday! I was totally shocked, because Marc was told that they had come in on Thursday, but they were incorrect so they had to send them back. I was fully expecting it to be another week at least before they got us the correct ones, so we were pleasantly surprised yesterday. The earliest we'll get movers here is Wednesday, but it could even be another 7-10 days before they come. Obviously Wednesday would be our preference, but I'm just so glad things are finally progressing with this move!