Happy 3rd Birthday, Maegan!

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey helped us celebrate Maegan's birthday today. The show was great and we enjoyed the company of Grandma Denise & Grandpa Monte, Uncle Aaron, Aunt Jackie, and cousin Jaidyn at the circus. After the show, Uncle Isaac and Aunt Nicky joined us at our house for a clown cake and ice cream. Maegan's favorite parts of the circus were the elephants, the clowns, the acrobats, and the motorcycles. The motorcycle performance was amazing. You can read about the Torres Family on the Ringling.com site (see the Blue Circus of Dreams 136th edition). They ride 7 motorcycles around inside a 16 ft steel sphere...all at once! I had to cover my eyes and peek though my fingers.

Here's a picture of the cake Maegan and I made together. The mouth and eyebrows are made from pull-apart Twizzlers. The curly hair is made of colored Twizzlers spiraled up. We used gummy Lifesavers with Mike & Ikes for the eyes and nose and a couple of Mike & Ikes for color on the cheeks. Orange slice-shaped gum drops make the bow tie. Maegan kept wanting to eat all the candy while we were working on it, of course!


And here's Maegan blowing out her candles. She's wearing her new dress-up fairy princess outfit with her party hat (thanks, Grandma & Grandpa!).


Maegan requested party hats and balloons, so we made some party hats with construction paper and ribbons. Maegan colored the hats with markers. Here's a shot of Ethan in his hat with Uncle Aaron.

Dancing and Singing

Maegan loves to dance and she loves to sing. Here is a video clip from July of her doing both at the same time. She's only a little more coordinated than her mother. :) Note that she is standing on her tiptoes most of the time, which she does a lot, even when she is not dancing. In case you need translation, I can't help you with the words to the song because I think she made them up. However, I do know that after she stands up from falling down, she recovers by saying "CHEESE!" She's not used to us taking video of her, but she knows all about taking still pictures and saying cheese. Next she always says, "Let me see it!" since she's used to the digital camera and always wants to see the results. I need to take more video of her so she learns not to come running over to see the picture during the recording!


Last winter/spring Maegan could almost always be seen with her sparkly dancing shoes. She hasn't been wearing them much lately, maybe because they are almost the right size now and she can't slip them on as easily as when they were two sizes too big. Here is a picture I found of her from mid-March that shows her wearing her favorite shoes. Her cousin, Jaidyn, is reading to her on one of our moving/cleaning days at the new house. Maegan is holding her favorite Bunny in this picture, too.

Maegan doesn't just like to dance by herself. She enjoys it more when we join in. Her favorite dance is holding hands and going in circles, which makes us more dizzy than it does her. If she asks you to dance, you can't get away with just standing there--she will point and you and say "Dance!"

Maegan's "Friends"

Maegan has a LOT of stuffed animals. The largest, Big Brown Bear, sleeps with her every night. Since she has a full-sized bed, this isn't a problem and, in fact, he ends up functioning as a pillow quite often. Maegan will latch on to one friend or another for a week or two and then another one will become her companion for awhile. Of course, Bunny (formerly known as Bu-bu) is her most special "friend" and she never sleeps without him. In this picture, she has decided to play with all of her friends at once. She often will arrange them in a line along the floor from largest to smallest. Most of them have been named for whatever animal they are, like Big Brown Bear, Bunny, Leopard, etc. She has several rabbits, and she recently started calling one of them Kitty.

Digging

Maegan had fun on Labor Day digging in the dirt with Daddy. She was covered in grime, but showed her feminine side when she came in the house and immediately announced that she needed a bath!

Alphabet

One of Maegan's favorite songs now is the alphabet song. She can sing snatches of it but can't quite get the whole thing consecutively yet. We've been practicing letters together and found a fun website that she loves. She has been recognizing letters when we're out and about. The other day at the grocery store, she saw the 'm' in 'Pharmacy' and then saw the "big M" in 'Health Market'.

Maegan loves to read books with us. I take her to the library almost every week and we pick up 5 or 6 new books each time. She will even pick up a book with no pictures, especially a Bible, and pretends to read it. When we were taking Ethan to the hospital the first couple of weeks after he was born to have his blood tested for jaundice, she would sit in the waiting area and read the Bible out loud. The nurses at the desk up front thought it was cute. :)

Back in Business

Rather than try to catch up on 7 months of posting, I decided it would be best to start fresh and add in some of the old picture and stories when I can. So...here are a couple of pictures from last week when Maegan ran through the sprinkler in our back yard. This was this first time we had set it up for her and she loved it.

Here Maegan is modeling her hat and mittens. She also is wearing her favorite shirt. I have a cute video of her telling me what her shirt says. It sounds something like "Daddy wuvs me".

Maegan is enjoying the snow. She is a "die hard" and doesn't like to come in. Last weekend, I lured her in with the promise of some hot chocolate, which you see her enjoying in this picture.

Maegan is officially TWO!

Maegan loves to color. She has a certain way she likes to hold the crayon; she very deliberately places it between her pinky and ring fingers, usually in her left hand. Her favorite color (I think) is blue. If she doesn't know the answer to a color question, she always says it is blue. Yesterday, she said she saw a dog, and when I asked her what color it was, she said it was blue!

Maegan is a good mommy to her new baby. She enjoys taking her for walks with her baby stroller and feeding her in the high chair.

Independence

Maegan's new phrase is "I'll do it!" She wants to comb her own hair, brush her own teeth, buckle her own booster seat, and put the lid back on the water bottle herself. Her mom is letting her try and then helping her finish in most cases.

The weather is turning cooler here and she has of course grown out of most of the long pants she owns, and her old jacket barely zips over her belly. We went shopping and bought mostly size 4T, with footed pj's in 3T. The pants are too long, but I'm sure we won't have to roll them up for too much longer.

It has been raining for a couple of days and Maegan enjoyed wearing her pink boots to day care. She loved putting on her jacket and didn't want to take it off when she arrived at Tami's house for the day.

Mae's vocabulary is rapidly expanding. She knows a lot of animals and the noises they make (dog, cat, cow, chicken, horse, sheep, lion, and I think there are several I'm forgetting). She can sometimes count to three (and then say "blastoff!"), and she's learning her colors. Her favorite is blue and she wanted the blue "pony" in her hair the other day.

During our recent trips to Iowa and Arizona, we announced to our families that Maegan will become a big sister in April. She loves babies, but I don't think she understands the situation yet.