Think Fast!

Last night we had dinner at Grandma Berthold's house. Not that we needed it, but we had brownies for dessert. We knew that Megan was able to reach for things but the second the brownie was put in front of Mark, her little hand grabbed it and pulled it to her. She had a hold of the brownie so fast it was comical. I guess we'll have to really pay attention from now on. But really can you blame her; it was a chocolate AND peanut butter brownie! I'll say it again, she is truly my daughter.

Just working on my abs...

So Megan's latest thing that she does is working on her abs. When she is awake she likes to stand up (so learning to sit might take awhile) If I put her down on the ground she will lift her head and her feet as her way of telling me she wants me to lift her up to stand. She will hold her feet and head up for a long time, I think the longest has been for about 20 seconds. She does this all day long so now I have just started saying that she is working on her abs. I don't know if other babies do this but from the reactions of other people who have seen this, I think Megan might be the only baby who does this.

Here is a better angle of Megan's ab workout. So anyone with babies, did any of your children do this?

Happy Birthday Grandma Schutte!!!

Just wanted to say "Happy Birthday Grandma" I hope you wanted snow for your birthday because you got it! Oh wait your in Florida, never mind. I wish I could give you a hug, I'll just have to give you extra hugs when you get back to Michigan!
Since I can't give you a hug, will you settle for a cheesy smile???
I hope you don't mind I ate some of your birthday cake. And by "birthday cake" I really mean I ate a nice yummy bowl of rice cereal.

Happy Birthday Grandma, I hope you have fun even though you just got back from a cruise!

Love you,

Megan, Mark and Jana

What is so funny?

Ok let me explain this video; Megan is very fascinated with Baron. She loves to watching him walk and play. Baron has huge ears and when he shakes his head from side to side his ears flap and make a loud noise. Megan laughs whenever Baron "flaps" his ears. So in this video I was sitting on the floor playing with Megan before her bath and Baron was sitting by us. I thought he was close enough that if I blew on his ears he would "flap" them. Megan was cracking up at me just blowing and trying to get Baron to flap his ears. And of course Mark had to grab the camera, me looking fabulous in my freakishly large "Cancer Sucks" sweatshirt (why is it that whenever there is a picture of me I never have make-up on??? Oh yeah it's because I'm a mom and don't have time). Hope you laugh a little.

Sleepy Bulldog

This week has been very cold, so Megan and I have been lazy, because we can't go outside and we live in Adrian so there is nothing to do. Grandma Berthold had a "girls weekend" with her friends so Megan and I joined the girls.

This picture is of Megan sleeping in a chair at Grandma's during girls weekend. If I put he in the cradle over there, Rudy (a big golden retriever) will lick her to death. Soon she will be too big for the chair but we'll deal with that later. Speaking of "getting too big" Megan's wardrobe is getting kind of repetitive these days. She is slooowly growing out of her 0-3 month clothes (yes you read that correctly she is still in 0-3 month clothes at 5 months old) So I have been repeating her clothes so sorry if these pictures look the same, but I promise they are taken on different days.

Hey, I'm Five Months Old!!!

Here is Megan's five month picture with her elephant. The last month has been so much fun and filled with a lot of "firsts" Every month has been exciting but this month Megan really became interactive. This month Megan has learned to do the following things:

• She can reach and grab for objects
• She is slowly getting the hang of eating rice cereal
• She is learning to sip out of a sippy cup (still no luck with a bottle)
• She rubs her eyes when she is tired
• She has learned how to pet Baron
• She can stand for as long as Mom and Dad will support her
• She can smile back when someone smiles at her
• She jibber jabbers non-stop

We are working on trying to sit without support, but we still have a ways to go. She has also become very interested in whatever Baron is doing. She will twist and turn until she can see Baron, which is fun when I am trying to feed her cereal!

Look at that sweet adorable face! With our trip to Florida Megan has checked off a lot of "firsts" which include:

• first time on a plane
• first time in a pool
• first time sleeping some place other then her bed
• first time in the sand at the beach
• first time with her feet in the ocean (the gulf)
• first time eating solid food
• first time drinking water

I'm still waiting to add "first time sleeping through the night" but until that happens we will continue to love our precious little baby girl.

Four Month Photo

Three Month Photo

Two Month Photo

One Month Photo

Dad to the Rescue!!!

Don't get me wrong we love the drop-n-roar dinosaur, except for one thing, there is no place to store the balls. The bottom of the dinosaur is open space but no one thought to use that area for storage. So today Mark fixed that! While I was fixing omelets, Mark and Megan sat down to make Mr. Dino a little more functional. All it took was a little Velcro and a little ribbon and our problem was solved. Mark secured one of the trap doors and now we can store the balls in there. All we have to do is take off the ribbon and all of the ball shoots will work.
Here is Megan just taking it all in. Mark is cutting the Velcro. At one point (I think you can see it in the other picture) Megan was chewing on the other end on the Velcro while Mark was cutting it. She will grab anything and put it in her mouth (like all babies)

Another fun filled week!

It has been a few days since I have posted anything but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. This week Megan has been a busy bee. We spent one day running errands, another day cooking at home and another day playing at Grandma's house. Megan learned how to make salsa and how to dice apples for homemade apple sauce. I put her in the front carrier and was able to make those two things with her attached to me. She was so fascinated watching me peel the apples with the peeler, then she wanted to help me dice the apples. Needless to say she never got the chance to help with that. Now I finally know why I have my freakishly long monkey arms...to cook in the kitchen while having a baby attached to me!

The picture above was taken at Grandma's house. We went over there because Grandma was making a slip cover for the couch and my Aunt Lynda came over to help. Megan needed to get out of the house so to Grandma's house we went! She thought it was fun being able to play on her "table". She even tried to roll from side to side while leaning on the cushion, that was funny to watch. Megan had fun playing, but Grandma didn't get too much accomplished on her slip cover. However, Grandma and Aunt Lynda were able to hold Megan almost all day without having her cry! For a long time Megan would cry the second Grandma Berthold would hold her, so today was a good day. And I don't know why all of the picture of Megan lately look like she is scared. Oh well, I guess they will just be pictures we will laugh at when she is older.

It's CHEX-MIX...and I helped!

Megan and I went over to Grandma Berthold's house to make some chex-mix and Megan wanted to help. I was picking out the bigger pieces of cereal from the crumbs, and she stared at what I was doing the whole time. She liked that she could see me playing with the cereal but she didn't like that she could get her fingers where my fingers were.
She watched me pour all of the different kinds of goodies into the bowls. She liked the big bagel chips in the green pot. She picked up 2 of them and moved them over to the other bowl. She knew that they were going to be mixed together so she was helping with the mixing! After playing with the goodies she moved on to crinkling the plastic bags inside the cereal boxes. She also tried her best to knock over the row of boxes, but we anchored them so they wouldn't fall.
To kill time while we waited for the chex-mix to cook/bake we read some of the new stories Grandma had at her house. This week Megan has really gotten into to "reading" books. She LOVES "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" If I had to bet, I would bet that "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" will be her all time favorite book. I already have it memorized, which is good because she won't let me turn any pages. I have said that once you become a mom you are automatically able to create songs off the top of your head, well I can also create "Gray Bear, Gray Bear" verses off the top of my head too! (We call Baron "Bear" for short and he is gray. He thought they were cute verses!)

Having fun with Megan

During these cold and blah days of a Michigan winter we sometimes get a little boring. I realized that it had been a few days since I took a picture of Megan (which is odd because I always have the camera) So this next post is what happened when I just started taking pictures one night before Megan went to bed.
This is just one of the funny faces Megan had during this photo shoot. She was just hamming it up when I was taking pictures. It got to the point that Mark and I were laughing out loud and Megan was just grinning from ear to ear thinking she was hilarious.
This was the view I had that started this whole photo session. She was playing with Mark on the floor and she leaned over to reach for something and she got stuck on Mark's leg. Looking at those legs how could I not take a picture!?! Yep, she will hate me when she is older for this picture but I'm a mom and it's my right to take funny photos.

Attack of the 50 Foot Dog!!!

Here is Baron being a little jealous of all the fun we were having with Megan. It just looks like he is 50 feet tall. We knew that Baron was going to be a good dog with Megan in the house but we are still impressed at how well he adjusted. Now that Megan has learned how to pet Baron, he is showing signs that he is going to be protective of her (not in a mean way but in a concerned way) He is never too far from her when we are tickling her or laughing with her.

Where is the Off Button?

Megan and I were still relaxing upstairs on Saturday morning (because she is eating every 2 hours day and night and I was tired) and Mark came downstairs to play some football on PS2 When we finally did come down Megan wanted to sit with Mark. Here she is trying to figure out what the controller does. I think she was trying to find the off button. She watches her dad playing football every Saturday morning and she thinks it is silly. Seriously, when he wins every game 100+ to 0 is it really fun to play anymore!?! I'm kidding I don't care if Mark plays I just like picking on him.

Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too...

Santa left me a new copy of Shel Silverstien's "Where the Sidewalk Ends" because he knew that I love all of the poems (the title of this post is a title of a poem) and here I am reading to Megan.
I think she is going to grow up loving this book just like I did. She likes to grab any book that I am reading to her.

I'm supposed to like this stuff!?!

Doesn't it look like Megan is scared to eat solid food? On January 1st we started the process of having Megan eat solid food. We started with very liquid rice cereal. The first attempt didn't go over to well. The next day when we tried she ate great for 2 different feedings. Then the following day she wanted no part in food. We will try again in a few days.

Here is a short video of Megan trying to figure out what solid food is. The good video is on our real camcorder so you can't really see her first reactions. It was funny, she just wrinkled her nose and pushed the food right out of her mouth. The doctor wasn't in a hurry but said we could start now with cereal if we wanted so we thought we would try. I should have waited a little longer because now as a breastfeeding mom I am paying for it. Since trying solid food Megan has spent the last 3 days nursing every 2 hours if not every 1 1/2 hours, day and night! I'm exhausted and I hope this phase ends soon.

Too Much Fun

After another trip to the pool Megan was exhausted! Everyone went to the pool the last day we were there for a lazy afternoon. Megan enjoyed playing in the water for about 45 minutes. Grandma was at the pool and said she would take Megan back to the house and I could continue to swim. I had about a half hour before Megan would need to be feed so I stayed and played. When I walked back to the house, this is how I found Megan. I know that I am always tired after a long swim and I think Megan felt the same way!

Conary and a coconut

While we were geocaching, Conary found a coconut and he wanted to use it. By 7:30 am the next day he was on the Internet looking for a recipe to use the coconut. After finding a recipe, Conary, Uncle Mark and Liam had to figure out how to open the coconut. They opened it quicker then I thought and here they are exploring the inside. That's Liam's hand reaching up to take a look.
By 9:00 am Conary was chopping pineapple, mango, lemons, limes, bananas and his coconut. Later he added a papaya to the mix. He chopped and cleaned everything himself and he was very careful to make sure Liam didn't get close to the knife. Before dinner Conary started his coconut sauce, his sister Kelsey wanted to help Conary with the recipe. He made sure to follow the recipe exactly. Notice he is reading the recipe in this picture.

With a little help from Uncle Jesper to use a vanilla bean, Conary started to boil his coconut sauce. The recipe was for grilled tropical fruit with coconut sauce, we decided to serve all of this over ice cream. It was good! Now how many 10 year olds do you know that would do all of this just because they found a coconut on the ground!?!


And to Conary...this recipe was delicious I can't wait to see you again so you can try another recipe with us.

Let's go "Geocaching"

What is Geocaching? pronounced geo-cash-ing
Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for GPS users. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the Internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.
In other words, it is a big treasure hunt and to find the map to the treasure you have to use a GPS.
We found it!!! This was our first cache and it only took us a 30 minutes trek into the woods to find it. Our family split into two teams and turned our geocaching into a small race. After finding this cache our luck went down hill. We were sent to areas that had turned into trash dumps and areas that were filled with bugs and snakes. So for our next hunt we will have to read more about the locations to make sure it will be a fun hunt.
Caila was the one to find this cache so she was the one who got to choose what item to take out of the box. We left a Canadian toonie in the box to share. At a different location we pick out a "geocoin" that is trying to make it's way around the USA. I'll will be hiding the coin somewhere in Adrian to add Michigan to the list of states the coin has been to. All of this information is tracked on the Internet. We are very new at geocaching so I'm not sure how much information I should be sharing, but I will tell you that this is a great game to get out of the house and stay active and fun for kids. For more information on this game go to, http://www.geocaching.com/ to learn and hopefully start your own team. We are the Ska-hoot-tee Searchers.

Girls Day at Fort Myers Beach

For Papa's birthday gift the guys (and Aunt Tracie) went deep sea fishing so the girls were left having to go on their own special outing. We chose to go to the beach to play in the sand and look for shells and shark's teeth. Because of the sun Megan spent a lot of time under the canopy in the shade with Grandma. This picture was snapped just before she took a nap.
While Megan was sleeping Aunt Lisa and I buried Crystal and Caila in the sand. They are so much fun to play with, I'm glad we got to have a day without the boys.
Megan loved feeling the sand on her feet! This is her first time stepping on the beach and it looks like she will be a beach baby. At one point we had her sitting in the sand and she was all smiles.
The first time in the Gulf of Mexico was a different story... I think the water was so cold and she was kind of shocked with the splashing of the waves. Then she realized there was a ocean behind her and she just wanted to stare at it. Between the waves and the reflection off the water I think she could have stared at it all day long. But we were in direct sunlight so we didn't stay out for long. If her skin is like mine it will burn quickly and I don't want to find out so sunblock and shade were our #1 priority.
We had to make this day extra special since Conary was fishing so the girls got to pick any kind of ice cream they wanted. What you can't see in this picture is the blue and white swirled ice cream that was over flowing from the cone. Needless to say with this huge amount of ice cream no one finished their cones but it was fun to watch them try. Blue ice cream was everywhere! Hope the girls had as much fun as I did.

Let's go to the Babcock Ranch!

Megan's ready to look for some alligators, pigs and cattle. We spent one morning taking a tour of The Babcock Ranch, a 90,000 acre wildlife preserve. We all got loaded up onto a "cage bus" and drove around looking at wildlife.
Here are our first visitors, wild pigs and piglets. You could see them from a far running to the bus because they knew they would get some corn to eat. They were adorable and the kids had lots of fun taking a ton of pictures of these pigs.
This cow didn't want the pigs to make pigs of themselves so he came to the bus for some corn too. At one point his head and neck were up the steps onto the bus. As he was making a pig of himself more cattle came running to the bus. I didn't know cows could run so fast, it was fun to see a dozen cows up close and personal.
They're back! At another stop along the trail, the piggies found us again. This time they brought some friends, in all we saw 3 big pigs, 2 medium pigs and 8 baby pigs. At one point along the trial we were stopped in front of the cougar cage and the pigs found us once again, but I noticed that the piglets stayed away from the cougar cage. There was no way they would have gotten hurt, but the mama pigs still kept her babies away from danger.
One baby alligator up close and personal! This little guy was about 18 inches long and we got to touch him (then we all sanitized our hands) He was cute. It was hard to see any big alligators because a water plant grew like crazy over the summer covering most of the viewing spots. When they did spot a big gator I was unable to see it because I had Megan sleeping in my arms, a sick Crystal sleeping on my thigh and Morgan sitting next to me because she was scared of seeing a gator. The ranch was a great place to visit with kids hopefully we'll all go back someday.

It's Pool Time!

Megan's first time in a pool. She wasn't quite sure what to think of the pool, but then again it could have been the hat she wasn't sure about. She is wearing her sun shirt that Crystal used to wear and her new swim shorts from Grandma, they take the place of a swim diaper and look cuter!
The water was a little cooler then her bath water and it's was really that warm outside plus she didn't sleep to well the night before, so all of that lead up to her being fussy after a short time in the pool. She still had fun but she let us know when she was done with pool time.
There's the smile I know and love! She was happy to be wrapped in her towel (a huge green M & M towel) I think her cousins used the green "frog" towel more then Megan did. Look at the palm trees in the background, nice backdrop from Christmas huh!?!
As the week went on we noticed that when Conary and Caila are in the pool they are under water the whole time. They come up for air then right back under the water, so they are half fish. With their pool at home they have practiced a lot and love being in the water. Here is Caila showing off her balancing act with Uncle Mark, do you think you could do that!?!

Christmas in Florida!!! Sunny, Warm, Florida!

Well Megan had her first plane trip down to Florida to see Grandma and Papa Schutte, Aunts, Uncles and her cousins. She was excellent on the flight. She cried for about 5 minutes while people were still boarding, then slept for over 2 hours. When she woke up she was happy and during the last 30 minutes she fussed a little as the plane was descending. But there were lots of other small kids on the plane so she blended in with other cries. In our row alone there were 6 adults and 3 kids under 16 months!
From left to right: Caila, Conary, Liam, Crystal, Morgan and Kelsey, all of them eagerly waiting to open gifts. The mound of gifts was about 6 feet away from the tree. Santa didn't forget about anyone! Notice that none of the gifts are open, that's how we were able to get everyone to look at the cameras.
Megan worked her way into the group picture, but I liked the first picture so that why I used it. Here is Morgan holding Megan, it's hard to get Megan to look at the camera when there were 18 people in a tiny room so this is the picture I have. Morgan did a great job holding Megan during all of the photo sessions.

Christmas Eve in Michigan

Megan's new rattle was in her stocking. There is a long story behind this rattle I hope she likes it!
This was wrapping paper from one of my gifts and Megan thought it was the best thing ever! It made the same crinkle sound some of her toys make. This was more entertaining then all the people and gifts.
I think the drop-n-roar dinosaur from Grandma and Grandpa was a hit! Megan watched Mark put it together and stared as all the balls went rolling in different directions. This toy was sold out last year and now I know why, Megan didn't where to look. The balls moved, the holes lit up, his head opens and it sings, hopefully this will be a hit for awhile.
Yes the picture is blurry but look at that happy face!