Night-night babies (and mommy)

Reagan loves baby dolls. She carries them around, gives them bottles, and is just super nuturing with them. Her favorite thing to do is to play "night-night babies". She covers her babies up with blankets (or dish towels) to tuck them in. Each baby needs to be multiple towels/blankets and their heads are always covered!

The other day, I was washing the dishes. Reagan kept pounding on my legs saying "down mommy. night-night mommy." Finally, I layed down on the floor. This is what happened.

Presents, presents, and more presents!

I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday! We got to spend a lot of time with family and we enjoyed Santa's visit. Presents were a HUGE hit for Reagan. On Christmas morning, she was totally shocked to see the presents beneath the tree. Of course, we had to open them immediately. She had a blast! As she ripped the paper, she said "trash". Then we she got to the gift, she was so excited. She clapped when she openned her cabbage patch doll!

The Christmas Tree on Christmas morning. Looks like someone was a good girl!!

Not a good photo of mommy, but I like that you can see Reagan saying "trash" as she tears the paper.

Checking on the new gifts.

Of course, presents didn't stop on Christmas morning. We had more gifts at Grammar and Gramper's house.

Also, Christmas marks another milestone for Reagan. She is now 18 months old!

Enjoying every moment

Reagan and mommy have been home together all week. We have been enjoying every moment of playtime! I thought I would share some of Reagan's favorite things:

Reagan loves to play "night-night babies". She uses dish towels and baby blankets to cover up her dolls and stuffed animals all around the house. She uses our entire drawer of dish towels and demands more when they are all gone! She always insists that the baby's head be covered up. Its entired body will be exposed, but its head will have 5 blankets on it! Hopefully she will outgrow this phase before we have another baby... it could be dangerous!

Reagan loves to look for birds (tweet-tweets) and squirrels out the window. She will stare and stare saying "tweet-tweet-tweet". Too bad its winter time, the birds aren't around very often anymore! She will be thrilled when spring comes back.

Reagan repeats (or tries to) everything you say. Its adorable. We have definitely been sensoring what we say! She never forgets anything either. Last week, Boone was in the trash can and when we got home there was trash everywhere. We yelled at him and told him he was a bad boy. Everyday, Reagan recaps the situation and tells us "Boone- bad boy. Trash. No trash."

We are definitely the luckiest parents in the world. She is definitely going to make our holiday season bright!

Old toy, same fun

We got Reagan a doorway jumper when she was like 8ish months old. She loved it! She would jump and walk around in it every day. We let a friend borrow it. It was returned on Saturday. Typical of me, I put it on the couch instead of putting it away. Reagan demanded that we put it up in the doorway. I didn't think she would actually want in it or care to play with it. I was definitely wrong!! She still loves it just as much as she did 10 months ago!

The holidays are approaching...

Grammar asked me to take some holiday photos of Reagan. Here are some highlights:

As all children know, boxes are the best toys! Reagan and I helped Grammar and Gramper put up their new Christmas tree.

Uncle Max was making her laugh. :) Chasing the dog is always good entertainment!

I cannot believe it is almost Christmas! It just seems like time is going way too quickly. I am definitely ready for this week to be over- the kids at school know break is approaching so they are acting like maniacs. I can only handle so much 7 year old drama!! I am so thankful that I will spending the next two weeks home with my little girl! Nic will be super busy at work, but after the new year he should be able to relax. So here's to succesfully completing the next 3 days of school! I can do it!

Getting naked

Reagan's new skill is dressing (or undressing) herself! She is always unzipping everything to take it off. She loves to help put her shirt on and is pretty good at taking it off. We are definitely just waiting for the day when we go in her room and she will be completely naked! It definitely won't be long.

Christmas ornaments

Not surprisingly, Reagan loves the Christmas ornaments. I decided that it would be too annoying to keep yelling "no" everytime she wanted to touch the tree. Therefore, we just put the ornaments she could touch down low. We explained how to touch the tree gently and showed her how to turn on the lights (its a foot button not a wall plug). She loves the ones with bells and photos. There has just been one ornament we had to actually put away...

Grammar likes to give us a "theme" ornament each year, to summarize the events of the year. In 2007, she created a little stork ornament since we were expecting Reagan. Reagan loved to carry it around and actually suck on the super hard plastic pacis.

Then she started to throw fits because she could not take the pacis off of the ornament. She is yelling "cicis off mommy". So we changed the subject and removed this ornament from the tree. :)

Never enough pretties

As they always say, a girl can never wear too much jewelry.

Reagan LOVES necklaces and jewerly of any kind. She calls them pretties and is always trying to get into my jewelry box. Aunt Hally is nice enough to let us play with all these pretties. I wonder where Aunt Hally got them all?! ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

What a wonderful day filled with delicious food and the company of family. I definitely have so many things to be thankful for! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. :)

Home Makeover: After photos

I present you the (still old) IMPROVED flooring!! Enjoy the beauty of the new frieze biscotti carpet. Thank you Lowe's. :)

Home Makeover: Before photos

Today we say a final farwell to the hideous greenish carpet that covers our living and dining rooms. We have been waiting for this moment for way too long!! The stairwell and spare bedroom are also getting a makeover. The cat and I are hiding in the bedroom as the carpet guys are pounding away.

I will post the exciting after pictures sometime later today! :)

All better

Diet (and an update)

The only thing Reagan ate today was boogers. Literally.

The poor girl is sick AGAIN. I feel like we have some new illness every 2 weeks. Last week, she got an awful cough and actually couldn't breathe because of it. She has an inhaler, but we haven't needed in since last Monday. Well then last night, we didn't sleep at all. She coughed the whole night. She has had a 102-104 fever all day. She was so miserable. She just wanted to be held. So the two of us cuddled and napped all day. I am really hoping its not the flu.

Having a sick baby sucks.

::UPDATE::

Nic took Reagan to the doctor this morning. She has an ear infection in both ears. Poor girl! No wonder she is so miserable! Luckily, ear infections can be fixed with antibiotics. Now I am just hoping the cough will be on its way out the door too.

Pumpkins

Sometimes I am a good blogger, posting many frequent updates. Sometimes, I am not. I never posted our pumpkin carving experience. Reagan loved it! We definitely don't have to worry about her have any sensory issues. She happily scooped the goo out. However, she wanted to pick one seed out at a time and she was putting the goo back into the pumpkin. It wasn't the most efficient way, but we all had a great time!

I have been much better about updating my facebook account with photos. If you want to see more, you can just click here.

Toddler shots

I am always amazed what a "toddler" Reagan is now! She is always tinking around with her toys (and other non-toys). She spends forever moving her dolls from place to place. Another favorite activity is seen here:

Reagan loves to write and draw! She always seems to find pens (who knows from where). When she finds one, she will get a paper, and then sit down to write. This time, her monkey was helping her!

Thank you!

I just wanted to say thank you for all the hugs, prayers, and support you have given us. We are so grateful to have so many wonderful people in our lives. I do appreciate you sending us well wishes.

I will say, today I am doing much better. I think it will take some time to be "normal" again. I will just take it one day at a time. For now, I will just keep squeezing my little chickadee and enjoying every moment with my family.

An emotional post

I don't really know why, but I really feel like I need to post this. Maybe it will help me to just "say" it all outloud. I am not a secret keeper.

On October 1st we were very thrilled to find out that we were pregnant again! We were greatly looking forward to having another summer baby (due June 14th). Soon after we found out, I started having terrible nightmares. I called the doctor and asked for an ultrasound. I was hoping it would ease my mind and the nightmares would go away. Last Friday, we went for our first ultrasound. By my calculations, I was 6 weeks and 4 days. We were anticipating that we would see (maybe hear) a heartbeat. However, that was not the case. At the ultrasound, we did not see a baby. However, the doctor was optomistic after seeing a great gestational sac and a perfect yolk sac. They just assumed I was not as far along as orginally thought. So trying to think positive, we scheduled another ultrasound. Yesterday afternoon, we went back to the doctor. Unfortunately, the news we received was not good. The baby had not grown and there was no heartbeat. We were overwhelmed and obviously devastated. Since I was not having any pain, cramping, bleeding, or any other indication of a miscarriage, they scheduled a D&C for this morning.

We went to the hospital at 6:30am and were home around 10:30. Everything went well. We were so thankful that Grammar, Gramper, Aunt Hally have been keeping Reagan for us. Physically, I am doing fine. Emotionally, that is another story. It will just take some time.

As you may or may not know, this is my 3rd miscarriage. As a result, at my follow-up appointment the doctor will be ordering some testing. We will just check me for a hormonal imbalance, clotting disorder, or something else that could be causing an issue. After a few months, we will be ready to try again. But right now, we could use your love and prayers.

The watch dog and his assistant

I know I have mentioned before that Reagan and Boone are great friends. This one of their favorite activites. They both watch out the window whenever they can. When they see something they like; they both bark. Yes, I said they both bark. :)

hot vs cold

Reagan has known the word "hot" forever. Since then, everything has been hot. When you would give her an ice cube, she would tell you that is was hot. Until this week... now she says "brrr" if things are cold. When I take her pjs off to get her dressed in the morning, the poor girl shivers and says "brr".

I am very proud that my little girl is learning more every day!!

"She's perfect"

Reagan had her 15 month well check up on Friday. According to the doctor, "She's perfect!"

She is 22 lbs 11 oz and 31 inches tall! I think she is holding steady in the 50th percentile.

The doctor was super impressed that she has a 35+ word vocabulary. We made a list of all the words she says; it is pretty impressive!

I can not believe how grown-up she is. She loves to feed her baby dolls and is a dancing fool!

Our little buckeye

Adorable photos of our future OSU cheerleader, courtesy of Amy Starkey. :)

Reagan was hot, so we took her shirt off. Of course, soon we will have to teach her that it is not lady-like. Check out the naked belly playing the piano!

I wish buddha-bellies were as adorable on mommies as they are on babies.

My favorite things...

Reagan is growing up so quickly. I just can't believe how much she has grown and learned in the past 14 months. Being a mommy is truly amazing so I thought I would share some of my favorite Reagan-isms.

Reagan's new favorite thing is to feed her baby doll its bottle. She holds the baby in her arms and feeds it. After a few seconds, she will take a huge pretend drink from the bottle. Its adorable!

We filled our gumball machine will M&M's. It was not such a good idea. If Reagan sees it she says "mmmm... nem-a-nems... get some". So of course, who could resist?! We hide them behind the stereo speakers. After a few days, they were discovered and we had to hide them again. When Reagan found them yesterday, she almost leapt out of daddy's arms in excitement. It was hilarious. And of course, she had some more of her favorite nem-a-nems.

Reagan loves to be chased. She will run around the house giggling. She loves when Boone is the one doing the chasing.

Everything that Reagan is not supposed to have she calls "daddy's". Everything on tables, all cel l phones, sunglasses, etc. are all known as "daddy's".

Reagan can do all the motions to the Wiggles song "Joannie works with one hammer". She even does the fall asleep part at the end. Somehow, it makes the annoying song enjoyable!

Ok... enough for now... you know I could go on forever.

Wayne County Fair

The fall would not be complete without a trip to the Wayne County fair. My mouth starts watering at the thought of Lerch's donuts. So it was totally worth driving 1+ hour and battling the crowds for a delicious dozen sugar donuts. We thought Reagan would really enjoy the animals. However, since crowds make her nervous, she wasn't very interested. Here are some highlights:

The fair is definitely not complete without fresh lemonade! The thing you can't see is, Reagan's cup has a bunch of nasty fries in the bottom. It was ice, a lemon, and fries. Yummy.

A day at the lake

Reagan is such a water baby. However, last time we are at Grandpa Mark's, she was unsure about the waves in the lake. This time, she thought they were hilarious! We didn't even have time to put on her swimming suit. She was just having way too much fun! Of course, daddy was within arms reach the whole time.

Checking out the waves.
Heading into the water, which I thought was freezing. Of course, kids (and dads) don't care about that!
WHOA!!
Hanging out with cousin Maggie.
Reagan was sound asleep the entire way home! Aren't babies adorable when they sleep?!

Warming up

Reagan has always been weird about boys. She is definitely growing out of the phase. However, Uncle Max still causes some worry. I am sure that very soon, they will be great friends!!!

Playground action

Reagan is an outdoor baby! We are trying to enjoy every remaining moment of the nice weather. It's Ohio, you know it won't last long!!