A Little Less Girlie

Yep, it is time to get a little less girlie here at Babe Watch. No, Megan is still as girlie as ever, but we are getting ready to welcome her new baby BROTHER! That's right, Mr. Stork will be bringing us a baby boy come March (check out the second stork with a blue bundle above - huh? pretty clever, eh? No need to tell me that the green and purple is still lame - Mac is doing a good job of covering that all by himself).

Some of you may have heard me mention that I was hoping this one would be a girl, too, but that was just the pregnancy hormones making me delusional. We are very excited to be expecting a boy and most of all just very happy that by all indications this is a very healthy baby.

For today's preschool session, the parents were encouraged to dress their children up in their Halloween costumes. You all know Pam, she jumped at the chance to put someone in a costume! Out of the 11 kids in class today, only 2 wore full-fledged costumes. Meg was the clown pictured above, and Keaton was a race car driver. Other kids wore orange shirts and such, but none were in costume. I was a little surprised.

The clown costume that Meg is wearing has a long history. The story is very similar to the one about the outfit that Megan, and Pam, and Pam's siblings all wore home from the hospital. When I was two years old, I wore this clown costume for Halloween--as did my two sisters when they were two, and probably some of my cousins when they were two. My mom still displays the pictures of her three kids wearing this costume for their 2-year-old Halloween. Megan isn't 2 yet, but we thought that this Halloween was the right one for her to wear the costume--she still has room to grow into it, maybe we'll get two years out of it.

The Empress' New Clothes

We decided that megan couldn't wait for Christmas. She needed some new clothes badly. Her Nana brought her one outfit when she visited last weekend, but that wasn't nearly enough. So on Saturday morning, we loaded the fam into the Corolla and headed up to Woodburn. We stopped by Hank and Scout's soccer game first; we watched them kick the ball around and chatted with Jenn and Jeremy and his parents. Then we headed over to the outlet mall. All three of us needed clothes, but Megan was definitely the big winner. Here she is modelling one of her new outfits.

Click

Last night we watched Click. We hadn't ever intended to see this movie, but savvy-shopper Mac noticed that this "guaranteed-in-stock" movie wasn't in stock at Blockbuster last week. He was immediately struck with the urge to see this movie, and his request garnered a free coupon for a later rental.

Like Spanglish, Click is an Adam Sandler movie that doesn't fit his stereotype. In fact, both Mac and I said we'd classify this movie as a drama rather than a comedy. Too bad, since I really wanted a light-hearted movie after viewing four hours of kick-ass women in Kill Bill the previous two nights.

Click wasn't a great movie and I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but it had a theme that I have found myself milling over for the past twelve hours or so. The not so subtle message of Click is to enjoy the present, to live for the moment, to stop chasing the pot of gold and instead just enjoy the rainbow.

After the movie was over, I tried to explain to Mac that this was the exact reason I like to go look at Megan sleeping - every night. But in reality, I have always been a look-ahead kind of person. I find myself counting down to big events and even small ones, like Friday. I didn't care for pregnancy, but partly I think that was because I was more focused on what was to come. I eagerly anticipated the end of high school, of college, of med school, of residency. My school life was broken up into little well-defined chunks of time and it was easy to set my sights on the finish line.

But I think the reason I haven't yet forgotten this forgettable movie, is that I have come to see the next big chapter in my life as retirement and this seems a little too far in the future to start counting down. Certainly, there are many things between now and retirement to look forward to: vacations, holidays, having another child, our children starting school - but what I seem to really want to focus on is getting to the end of something. In Click, Adam Sandler wants to get on to the next big thing so badly, that his life fast-forwards to his deathbed.

So, don't go out and rent the movie, but rather go out and play with your kids, (or admire them in their sleep), walk in the garden, or be happy just sitting where you are, and I'll try to do the same.

Arts&Crafts

Megan helped daddy make a spider hat at preschool today--but it wouldn't fit on daddy's head so she gets to keep it.

New Game

Megan's new favorite game is "Seek." She really means "Hide and Seek," but she can't really say the whole name yet. Here she is hiding in the sideboard in the dining room. This is by far her favorite hiding spot and I frequently find her in there even when we're not playing the game.

I've been meaning to write an entry about being a male in a predominantly female world, but I haven't quite figured out how to conquer such a ground breaking story. Stay tuned.

Quick Visit

This past weekend, my mom and sister came up from L.A. to visit us (mostly Megan though). They arrived on Friday morning and left on Sunday afternoon so it was a really short visit. We spent most of Friday afternoon lounging around waiting for the cable guy to show up, but Saturday we headed off to Bauman Farms to play around in the pumpkin patch and work our way through the hay maze. We went last year too, but Megan was too young to enjoy it. This year, however she loved it. She went down lots of tube slides, climbed through many hay tunnels, and enjoyed a ride down the zip line swing with mom.

Megan didn't really want to put her head through the sheep hole though.

She finally did it after a little bit of coaxing and a demonstration by mom

Fall means Fun in School

This fall, Meg and I are busy, busy, busy. We've got something planned at least three days a week from now until Christmas. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we've enrolled in Megan's favorite YMCA Parent/Child swim class. We follow that up with a jaunt over to the South Salem TIP (Tot Indoor Playpark). But the highlight of Meg's week is Wednesday morning. We spend 2 hours at a cooperative preschool where we sing and dance (two of my FAVORITE activities), learn to share, and generally get our hands dirty with glue, paint, playdough and a host of other artsy things. Here's a picture of megan showing off her first glitter and glue project.

Sentences

Up until now the only complete sentence Megan has used is "I loves you." But that all changed today when she burst out with two new sentences: "I like shovel" (we were in the sandbox) and "I need it." The latter sentence has quickly found it's way onto Megan's list of frequent phrases.

Sunny Sunday

Sunday we made up for the frivolous Saturday with a lot of hard work outside.

I cut back all the irises and a few other plants (4 wheelbarrows to the burn pile!), winterized the greenhouse, planted 50 daffodil bulbs, put in the steps to Megan's slide (minus the one step I used in the greenhouse), got Mac to build a coldframe (thanks M!) and planted it up with lettuce seeds. Megan did lots of "helping" too.

As you can see, using the "barrow" is very serious work.

In other exciting news, Megan's hair is just about ponytail length - Hurray! The pony tail will hopefully be the answer to her mophead, if we can only stop her from pulling those rubberbands out.

Is that little girl my baby??

Boo!

This weekend I was on call. Because of that, I had nothing scheduled other than a couple of hours in the hospital Saturday morning. This had the potential to be the most productive weekend in a long time and the weather couldn't be better either. So what pressing jobs did I get done on Saturday? I decorated the porch for Halloween, of course.

Mac laughed at me all day long. "I can't believe this is what you are doing today! I never thought you'd do this for Halloween."

"Oh, you just wait till Christmas!" I warned him.