Morgan & Erin Dahl

Beginning of holidays photos

Morgan moves to a toddler bed, attends her first Holiday festival of the season (Pentagon Row), and visits Grandma and Grandpa Wetzel for Thanksgiving (where she gets to see her only cousin, Caroline).

Spelling her name

As Morgan and I were getting ready for her bath tonight I asked her what letters I would need to spell her name. (We have some letters that stick to the wall in the bath and I usually spell her name out for her.)

Here is the response I got.

M-O-R-A-N-pause(thinking)-R-A.

Me: We already said R and A.

Her: Oh.

So I ask again and start putting the letters up as she says them.  And we crank right through it. M-O-R-G-A-N.

At lunch today she was on a big “M spells Morgan! M spells Mommy! And milk!” kick.

Bowling

We took Morgan bowling with folks from the neighborhood on Sunday.  The young crew was going to range in age from about 20 months to about 5 or so. (Basically it was the same group of kids that got together for Halloween.) So we didn’t really know if Morgan would get into it. We thought she might just be sitting back in watching the kids bowl.  But oh no…

Morgan loved it.  Absolutely loved it. They had the bumpers up and ramps available so the kids could put the ball on a ramp and let it rip. Morgan got a super light ball and just bowled and bowled.  I had to keep an eye on her to keep her from throwing a ball while the pins were resetting.  And I couldn’t get her to break for lunch, not even for pizza. She would push the ball down the ramp.  She would occasionally watch it go all the way to the pins and would get excited when some fell down.  But more often than not she would just turn and run back to the ball return and wait for the ball to come back.  By the end she was getting tired, so she would rest on the ball return box and when she felt the ball coming (they kind of thump) she would perk up and wait for the ball to come out of the chute.  It never got more than 6 inches before she picked it up to make her way back to the lane. And by the very end she decided she was done with the ramp and wanted to bowl herself.  This usually required an extra push of the ball from Jim, but she loved it.

Halloween

Morgan got to trick-or-treat twice — once in her daycare’s office building, and again on Halloween night (a much worse photo op, due to lighting and all).

Of course, she unfortunately can only eat about 5% of the candy she collected (cross-contamination w/nuts). However, she doesn’t seem to care in that she doesn’t really know what candy is, so seemed to believe that collecting candy in a bag was an exciting end unto itself.

A few comments on some of the shots:
* A lot of our neighbors with kids gathered before the event, hence the group shot of the kids (Morgan, the only one who wouldn’t get on the couch, lurking in back)
* After her nap, Morgan was very reticent to put on her costume or go outside. Only when I noticed some neighbors outside in costumes, and got her talking to them through her bedroom window, did she warm up to the idea of putting on a costume and joining them.
* Morgan was supposed to help me carve the pumpkin, but she slept until 5pm, so just helped light it instead.

On to a toddler bed

Two nights ago Morgan was asking me to lift her in and out of the crib so she could put her lambie to sleep (this was just play, not near her nap or bedtime). So we decided to take the front piece off the crib and put on the toddler rail yesterday. We did it in the morning, so the first sleeping stint was the afternoon nap.

Everything was fine, she went down for a nap, no problem. I often hear of kids who then wake up in toddler beds and still call for their parents to come get them out of bed. Not Morgan. When she woke up she came running down the hallway upstairs (I heard her, Jim did not), ran up to the rail overlooking the family room, and said “HI DADDY!” Jim practically jumped out of his chair.

This morning she was up in the hallway at 5:30.  I did get her to go back to bed until about 6:15, so that was good.

Idioms and People (me in particular) Being Wrong

This weekend Morgan started telling her dad to ‘keep an eye on it.’ She wanted him to watch over her toy while she was in the bathroom.

She has also gotten quite attached to the knowledge that I can be wrong about things. “You’se wrong Mommy. You’se wrong.” has become a fairly common refrain. Sometimes I’m not wrong, there is just some confusion in the tense. “You are going to go to the playground.” “You’se wrong Mommy. I’m not at the playground.” And sometimes I’m just wrong. This morning Morgan was sitting and I wanted her to lay on her back. We were at daycare and I said “Sit down Morgan.” And she said “You’se wrong Mommy. I’m sitting.” For what it is worth, she delights in the idea that I can be wrong about things.

Cox Farms Fall Festivals

Morgan got not one, but two Fall trips to Cox Farms this year.

She went in early October for a friend’s birthday party, and again in late October with her school.

It’s interesting, it being one of the first things she’s now done three times, each a year apart, how different each of the three trips was. (Fall 08 visit, Fall 09 visit)