Football Season!

It's the last Monday in August; I am so ready to say goodbye to this hot, hot month. I keep having to remind myself that it's not going to get cool next week just because it's September. *sigh*.

We're tired of playing inside. Look, he's staring longingly out at the backyard:



Oooh, he looks so sad.







Don't worry, he cheered up pretty quickly. We can have fun inside, too.



My aunt Mary Ann and uncle Doran were in town this weekend so we went out to my parents to see them. She taught Andrew how to do the chicken dance and it might just be the cutest thing I've ever seen. I'm going to have to get it on video soon.

He's got a surprising amount of rhythm. :)

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I'm playing in two fantasy football leagues this year. I've had a bit of success at FF the last couple of years, but I've never won. I'm sure this is my year!

We've played with the same people for the last three years in one of our leagues, but I also decided to set up a family league this year, and it is full of people who've never played fantasy football before....it could be a disaster. :)

I've been wondering about how we're going to watch football this season. Last season Andrew was still taking two naps a day, and I could usually watch the Cowboys during naptime. But Andrew's awake a lot now. And he makes quite a bit of noise and never sits still. Let's hope he's a Cowboys fan!

meaganmusing.com

I finally decided to buy my own domain name. Did you know you can own a domain for only $10 a year?

So now you can find me at www.meaganmusing.com. You can also still get here from www.meagansmusings.blogspot.com if you forget.

(I decided it was easier to drop the two s's going forward. I've always been a little confused about it myself.)

If you follow me in a reader like Google Reader you'll need to update your feed*. You can click on the button over on the right hand side of the blog under Subscribe To to choose your reader and make it super easy.

(*ETA: Apparently the feed is the same. No need to update your reader. Sorry for the confusion! But, please, still subscribe!)

(And if you don't use Google Reader you totally should. It makes reading blogs so, so easy. You can see all your blogs' updates right there in one window. Give it a try!)

I'm excited about my new name!

Let me know if you have any questions.

We're Back

Well, I enjoyed that nice little blogging break to end the summer. I hadn't really planned on it, but then we decided to do some landscape work in our backyard and things just got crazy around here.

We were dog sitting for my parents' darling Shih Tzu, Wrigley, while all of this was going on and clearly the dogs couldn't go out in the backyard so there was a bit of chaos in the house for a few days.

But they're finished now, and we're thrilled with the results. Wrigley has gone home and left a sad, sleepy Fenway behind. Andrew is napping right now, and my house is quieter than it's been in over a week.

So I thought I'd get a few recent pictures up here on the blog.









Andrew is so absolutely adorable right now I just can't get over it. He's starting to say a lot more; he's gotten really good at communicating with us. He's of course still wild and crazy, but he's also so sweet and smiley.

He'll often stop what he's doing and come give me a hug and a kiss. He'll bring me a book and put it right in my hand to ask me to sit and read with him. He doesn't sit for long, but it's nice when he does.

It's not all fun and games though. He's definitely gotten more opinionated and we're going to have to start official time-outs soon. I've tried it a few times already, but I don't have any place to put him where he'll stay. So he comes running back to me and laughs when I put him back in the corner again. He thinks it's a game, so that's bad.

We'll be working on that soon. I'd always thought 18 mos would start our official time-outs so I've got a few weeks left before I'm going to tackle it head on.

And on a totally different note I've been doing the Couch-to-5k running program this summer. I didn't exactly start from the couch, but I also haven't been able to run a full 5k (without stopping to walk) since before Andrew was born.

I'm currently on the last week and am supposed to be able to run for 30 minutes straight tomorrow. Thank goodness for my treadmill because there is NO WAY I'd be able to do this outside right now. It's 106 degrees this afternoon and will drop down to a balmy 95 by about 8 o'clock tonight. So I'm thankful for indoor running!

Fall, come quickly before we melt!

Summer Musings

I can't believe our summer is already coming to a close. Now, it will still be hot here for a sweet forever, but stores are running back-to-school sales and the Cowboys have played their first preseason game. (My calendar has always revolved around football games. :))

Anyway, we only have one week left at our summer Mother's Day Out. Now I'm trying to work out our fall schedule with Gymboree, our new MDO program two days a week, music class and MOPS. That sure seems like a lot going on.

And my sister will have her baby in October! So she'll be on maternity leave for a couple of months which means I'll really have to pick it up at work. I think my fall is going to be busy!



I may have mentioned a time or twenty that Andrew is one heck of a climber. When he first started climbing on to our coffee table I would immediately grab him and put him back on the floor. But our den is his main play area and he was climbing up there about ten times a day. So I caved.

Now I take his picture up there.



Many times throughout the day Andrew will walk up to me and put a book in my hand. He loves his books!



We've had such a fun, fun summer. Last summer was fun, too, but it's easier on me to have a 16 month old rather than a four month old. We've spent lots of time in the pool out at my parents, we've played and played in the backyard water table and hose and we've been on lots of walks around the neighborhood.

It's funny to compare this summer to last. Last summer Andrew was still a newborn and he woke up three times a night and nursed 10 times a day. It's so, so much easier to have a 16 month old who is almost weaned and sleeps for 12 hours a night!

But last summer was special in its own way. I grew up a lot last summer, learning that Andrew's needs always came before anything else. On family lake weekends I had to go to bed at 10pm when everyone else was still up playing games because I'd have to be up to feed the baby at 1am, and again at 5am and 7am.

We were not on time for a single event last summer because I could never anticipate how long it would take us all to get out of the house. (Or how long it would take for me to find something to wear that didn't look two sizes too small!)

And we pretty much quit going out to dinner, which is one of my most favorite things to do.

At the time I felt like I was missing out on stuff and making these huge sacrifices. But really I was just doing what had to be done - working my way through the new-mom phase in life. And now it's kind of a big blur and seems like it wasn't really that hard. I mean, I didn't even have to keep him from walking on my kitchen counters last summer!

I was talking about all this with my mom yesterday, which is what prompted this summer retrospective. As I mentioned earlier, my sister is going to have her first baby in October, and I am so, so excited for her. Pretty soon she'll be the one having to go to bed early and wake up in the middle of the night for months on end. (Oh, I pray he's a sleeper!)

And I hope she too will look back next year and think, sure, those newborn months weren't that bad; in fact, they were absolutely wonderful.

Dancing Shoes

Here is a fun video of Andrew dancing to Brian's guitar playing the other night.

I have a few things to say about it before you watch:

-Sorry about the messy room.
-Sorry about the horrible, horrible videography skills. Apparently being a pseudo-photographer does not lead to good video making.
-Brian wants you to know that his guitar was really out of tune.
-Isn't Andrew just darling? He totally makes up for all that other stuff. :)

Dance Dance

Rather than read books before bed tonight, Brian decided to play his guitar for Andrew. He sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Andrew went crazy.

He danced all over his room. He bounced up and down, clapped his hands, swayed side to side and spun around in circles. He was so happy and full of joy!

It made my heart dance. :)