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September 25 - Megan is talking more and now has 7 teeth. She clearly says yep and shakes her head no. She is very cuddly when she is awake, but unlike Evan doesn’t really want to cuddle in bed. Aside from teething, she sleeps pretty well. Bedtime is still easy, but she does wake up at least once at night. Her hair is getting really long and hangs in her face most of the time. I put it up at home, but she pulls it out at day care.

Evan is finally settling into the new school year at preschool. We had a hard transition for several huge reasons. His best friend, Gaurang, moved away at the end of July. Then a few weeks later his preschool teacher gave her notice so she could go back to school herself. They didn’t have another teacher to take over full time, so Evan has one teacher 3 days and a different one for 2. A bunch of kids started in the class in September and they switch back to a curriculum. He thrives on routine and this was not routine. He acted out with really huge temper tantrums at school and home. He also started wetting the bed after many, many dry months.

Thankfully, he is getting settled and our joyful, fun kiddo is back. He does still have temper tantrums, but they are smaller and he calms himself down pretty well.

He is extremely creative and tells us amazing stories. He loves to do art and can sound out most words. Sometimes he reads books from memory, but he reads cereal boxes and street signs. Eric spelled out George this morning and Evan knew what he said.

He is taking swimming lessons right now and will hopefully take gymnastics next session. He is very high energy, so we try to keep him active.

August 26—Megan is still amazingly easy to put to bed at night, most of the time. She knows the routine and usually plays along. One of her favorite parts is brushing her teeth. She loves to do it herself and I usually sing to her about it, which she loves. Getting her to let go of the toothbrush was a challenge, until I tried letting her rinse it herself. I think she likes that part the best.

Megan is very opinionated and she really likes shoe—everybody’s shoes. We went shoe shopping recently and I found a pair of sneakers that worked and fit her, but then we walked by a pair of Mary Jane style play shoes and she reached out for them. There was a pair in her size, so she tried them on. They fit and she insisted. How does a 14 month old insist, ummm, lots of whining and grabbing for the box. They served the purpose, so we bought them. She insisted on wearing them down for her nap and when one fell off, she cried and held it up over her head until I checked on why she was crying. Sigh—I guess she is going to be a girly girl. What am I going to do?

Evan and Eric went to the Red Sox game a couple of weeks ago. Evan had a great time. They went early to watch batting practice, but there wasn’t anything to watch. They still went up on the Green Monster and Evan yelled down to the field as though the non-existent players would hear him and hit a ball for him. Eric said it was very entertaining. There was a balloon animal maker and a bunch of other things going on. The ice cream and cotton candy were both a big hit, but Evan only ate the bun and fixings on his hot dog. He didn’t watch much of the game and slept on Eric’s lap for a few innings. He had a great time.

July 27—Eric came to a realization a week or so ago that he could try teaching Megan to sleep on her own during naptime on Fridays. Then we realized that we could try putting Megan down before Evan and move his bedtime routine out to the living room to give her time to get to sleep and then have him sneak into bed like a spy. Suddenly, both kids are in bed asleep by 8 pm. Honestly, I wonder what our problem was before this.

June 11- Megan is one today! She is so amazing. In the past few weeks she has really gotten the hang of walking and has progressed to running. She does fall down a lot more than before, but can really move.

She is very good at expressing when she doesn't want something. She shakes her head no in response to a direct question. If she means yes, she just doesn't shake her head. She can say several words: mama, dada, uh-oh, ow, up, down. She chatters a lot, so she may be saying more words that we don't understand. She knows the sign for milk, but also uses it when she wants anything. I asked her if I could give her a kiss today and she leaned over, so I could reach her.

I took a half day yesterday to take Evan to a gymnastics class and I took Megan to the nursing mom group. Unfortunately, it was during nap time and she was cranky. She yelled the whole time and just wanted to run around the room and sit on other baby's blankets and play with their toys. I left early so we wouldn't be too much of a distraction.

Evan is a fantastic big brother. The kids were cuddling in bed with me this morning and I told Evan that I had to go take a shower. He told me that he would take care of Megan and promptly snuggled up with her. He was not happy that I had to take her back to her crib, but if she decided to crawl off the bed, he would not be able to stop her.

May 29-Megan finally has teeth. I think the first one popped through last Friday and she got a second on last night. She is walking very well and is very frustrated when we try to contain her. She is communicating pretty well, including shaking her head no when she does not want something we are offering her. She is eating better, but still hates anything on a spoon. She is very independent, thank you very much.

We have been pretty busy, as usual. Last weekend, Eric and I got to go out alone for a whole day. My friend Cathy got married down in Connecticut , so we dropped the kids off with my Dad and Sharon. They took the kids to the zoo for the day. They had a great time until Evan was done. He still has big tantrums when he is tired or hungry.

We got to see a bunch of my high school friends at the wedding, Cathy, Beth, Nicki, Heather, and Nate. It was a really fun wedding and the location was stunning. We went to a local children's museum the next day with Beth and her almost 2 year old, Natalie. Megan and Natalie had a great time playing near each other and Evan and Eric had fun with all of the make believe activities. My favorite part was the pet hedgehog they had.

Eric and Jeremy are on their way to Toronto right now to go to the Red Sox games for the weekend. I hope I can keep the kids occupied for the whole weekend without going crazy...

Just after Evan went to bed tonight, he called out that he needed Mommy to come in and give him a hug and a kiss. (If you're saying "awww" right now, don't be fooled. Evan uses this every night recently as a way of delaying going to sleep. In this case, he had already gotten a hug and a kiss from Mommy.)

I had to go in there and explain to Evan that Mommy couldn't come in right now because she was occupied feeding Megan. I said she'd be in when she was done, and I asked if that was okay. Evan, lying down on his bed, shook his head. I asked again, and he shook his head again. I was surprised, so I asked, "Why is that not okay?"

Evan sat up smiling knowingly. "You thought I was shaking my head. But when you're lying down, you have to shake your head like this," he shook it side to side again, "to make it go up and down. Up and down means 'yes'."

I had to laugh, and so did Meliss when I told her. But it was perfectly logical.

4/20/2009 Evan was trash talking Eric this weekend...Eric was telling Megan how pretty her eyes were and Evan said that Eric's eyes were boring (because they are brown.) I said that Daddy's eyes aren't boring, they are sparkly and twinkly. Evan said, nope they are boring and that Knit Knots would like them. (Knit Knots is on one of the shows that Evan watches. He is the boring guy who likes all things boring and cardboard color is his favorite.)

April 16-Megan took her first real steps on April 14. She had been shifting her weight between both legs for the past week or so, but she took a couple of steps on Tuesday. She has been standing on her own and cruising for a few weeks. She doesn't know that she can walk yet, but we are in real trouble when she figures it out. She can not be distracted when she wants to go someplace. When Eric takes Evan to brush his teeth, Megan monster crawls toward the bathroom over and over. I usually have to barricade the hallway.

At the moment, Megan does not want to eat anything on a spoon. She loves Cheerios and puffs and we discovered some freeze-dried yogurt bites that she will eat. Sometimes she will eat soft fruit, like pears or cut up apples, but seems to really hate bananas. I am getting a little frustrated, since Evan used to eat anything and everything. I just keep trying out new foods and new presentations. The doctor wasn't too worried about it, but recommended a vitamin with iron, since she won't eat iron enriched baby cereal. She likes toast cut into strips, because she can feed herself. She still has a completely toothless grin.

Evan is quite logical. When Eric told him that he didn't think Evan could have a freeze-dried yogurt thing that Megan was eating, Evan told him that I sometime let him have some. Eric said that he didn't know, so Evan suggested that Eric go and ask me if it was ok. Cheeky. He amazes us with something different every day. His preschool teacher told me that he tells her about his dreams every day after nap time. They usually involve Evan being chased.

Going back to March-we had Megan's christening. Eric's sister Karin and brother-in-law, Gene, are her godparents. They traveled in with Boden the night before. Kristi also flew in. Eric's parents and sister Debbie and my dad and Sharon were also there. Our friends Jessi and Serge brought Alyssa and Nathan and Jeremy and Danielle also came down.

We had several things to celebrate. On Friday night we got together for Debbie's birthday (not sure if I can say which one, but she is the baby of the family, so it was less than 33.) On Sunday, we had the christening and also got together for Boden's 3^rd birthday. It was really nice to see everyone, especially for all happy reasons. While Karin and Gene were in town, we went to the Children's museum again. We took Gene and Boden there when they were in town for Christmas, but it is a really big museum, so we knew that it would be a fun place to go again.

The kids have been pretty sick all month, starting the month with a virus that caused a low fever for the first week. (Eric had a fever for a week in February.) When we went to Florida we had to keep the kids separated from Lily and Shawn, since Kelly couldn't afford to be exposed to a fever so close to her due date (March 28.) Since I hadn't been sick and might, I didn't hold Christa's 6 week old, Juliet. I didn't hear that anyone else got sick, so I think our precautions paid off, but Evan and Lily were very confused about not sharing their toys.

Megan is standing up holding two blocks right now. She can squat down and stand back up. She started cruising on furniture this weekend and she can walk while holding onto our hands. If she isn't standing, she is crawling very fast after Daddy or Evan or Mommy, whoever is furthest away from her. She can't be distracted. We pick her up and put her in another room and she crawls right back. When Eric had a late meeting and I had to put Evan to bed alone, I put Megan in her crib and she stood right up and started to chew on the top rail of the crib. Oh, right-still no teeth...

Evan wants Megan to play with him, but isn't fond of her playing with his toys. He has started having dreams on a regular basis. Sometimes they are bad dreams based on the book from the night before. For example in GO Dog GO, there is a big blue dog that is in a house and a little red dog out of a house. He dreamed that the blue dog wouldn't let the little red dog into the house. He also has a very vivid imagination and tells me all about the cloud animals he sees. His fondest wish every day is for Eric to tell him a story. Evan provides the premise (usually whatever toy or food is in front of him) and then corrects Eric on the details throughout the story. The other night he told Eric a story about Pete looking for Minnie, but he couldn't find her. He gave up because he is not a Red Sox. (If you ask Evan the Red Sox never give up.)

March 22- March started out in a very sad way. My grandma, Milly, died on March 2. She was such an amazing woman and we are so sad that she is gone. She was always feisty and sharp as a tack, even at 89. We traveled to Florida to say goodbye and went through her photo albums when we were there. She loved to travel and loved the beach. Her pictures were full of smiling friends, parties, family, and even a few pictures of Milly on a camel. I have so many wonderful memories of visiting her through the years and Evan had a lot of fun the few times we got together. I am very sad that she didn't get to meet Megan.

February 28- Megan pulled herself up to standing on the couch for the first time today. She was trying to get to Evan, her favorite little person. She has been crawling up a storm for the past few weeks. As soon as she realized that she could move around, she was off. Evan is very happy to tell people that Megan can get around now, but when she heads for his toys he is less than impressed.

Evan has become quite a fun big kid. He loves helping me cook and loves to do art projects. Yesterday he insisted on painting his hand blue. We made him stamp the painted hands on a piece of paper. I don't really know what he wanted to do with the painted hand in the first place. In a weird twist, I wouldn't let him do it until after he took a bath. We spent the day running errands and went to a furniture store that has liquid fireworks (a coordinated fountain, light, and music display.) On the way home he had a nap and woke up with a gushing nose bleed, so he needed to be cleaned up.

On Thursday, Evan performed in his first ever school show. Below, you can watch Evan's preschool class perform the song "Where is Thumbkin?". As far as I am concerned (WARNING! WARNING! Severe Parental Bias Incident In Progress!) Evan was the star of the show, smiling and bopping to the music. Take a look at the video and see if you agree. Melissa and I are very proud of the great job Evan did.

February 6, 2009 Yesterday, Evan had a little show at preschool. His class sang "Where is Thumbkin?" My little character was the most animated kid in the bunch, bopping along to the music and jumping up and down at the end when the teacher told them that they could bring their parents back to the room for ice cream. Eric was there with the video camera and hopefully the video will go up on the site.

Megan crawled for the first time this morning. She has been scooching backward for a few weeks and going from sitting to the typical crawling position for over a week. This morning, she actually moved forward in a crawl. We are in trouble now. Every time she has made progress toward moving, she has been trying to get Evan's toys.

Evan is still a big fan of Megan and loves to make her laugh. She watches him constantly and laughs at him a lot. She loves to grab his hair or watch him jump up and down. Evan is a great helper refilling my water bottle or getting the pacifier for Megan. He does not like it when she keeps him up at night, but I don't blame him...

January 10, 2009 Happy New Year! It has been a wild and crazy few weeks and we are all either sick or coming down with a cold after all of the excitement.

Megan is taking the cold the worst right now, but is her usual cheerful self despite it. We are not getting much sleep because she keeps coughing herself awake. At our last doctor appointment she had moved from 50% to 30% on the growth chart. I did a little looking around on the web and am not really sure there is a big problem, the chart is based on an average and most babies are formula fed by 6 months (and gain weight faster), so nursed babies tend to fall off of the average after 6 months. That said, we are still stepping up her solid food intake. Of course, with the cold she doesn't want to eat solids and will only nurse sitting up. So far she is eating rice, barley, and oatmeal, butternut squash, apples, pears, and bananas. We have more veggies and yogurt to try soon.

Megan has been doing sign language for Milk for several weeks. I am not actually sure when she started, but I realized that when she was getting hungry she would open and close both of her hands. The sign for milk is one hand squeezing closed like milking a cow. I am going to have to look up more words for her and start showing her more often. She also now lifts up her arms to be picked up. It melts my heart.

Evan is even more of a mimic and an entertainer. He quotes all of the poems in his books and sings little songs all the time. He has very clear ideas and opinions. He also adores his little sister and keeps her entertained every morning before we leave for the day. He has a great imagination and makes all of his toys talk with different voices. He is as active as ever and we are always looking for active indoor games because it is so cold outside. Hopefully it will be a little warmer tomorrow, since it is supposed to snow 6-9 inches tonight. I hope it is good snowman snow.

Well, for the past two weeks we have been visiting a lot of family. My dad and Sharon came up to spend Christmas with us. We had a great time and Evan loved getting to show off his toys. We went to Eric's mom's house many times over the next week and a half, since almost all of the family was in town.

We loved hanging out with his mom, dad, grandma, sisters Kristi and Debbie, Kristi's boyfriend Matt, Karin's image on webcam from Qatar, Karin's husband Gene and 2 ¾ year old Boden. Evan and Boden are 10 months apart, but they were not really interested in playing together. They did play next to each other and fought over toys, but it was nice to have them together again. Boden pretty much ignored Megan. I bet she will be following him around next time they get together. We also got a chance to take Gene and Boden to the Children's museum and got to play outside in the snow with Boden, who had never seen snow before.

December 21- It is snowing, a lot. It started at 1 on Friday and has almost snowed nonstop for 48 hours. I think it did stop late last night, but we have over a foot now. It is dry fluffy snow, so shovelling isn't bad, but it is not good for making snowmen. Snow angels work pretty well.

We went out yesterday to get pictures of the two kids in the snow, but then I brought Megan inside while Evan and Eric shovelled. Today, Evan and I went for a long walk and then played in the snow. Evan helped me clean off the cars about 2 hours ago and they have over an inch of new snow on top. When it is all done, we will take a picture of the table on the back deck to show how deep it is.

Luckily we don't really have to be anywhere, but we are not done Christmas shopping. The snow is very pretty and we decided to put up the fake Christmas tree, since we couldn't go out to buy a live tree. It actually looks pretty good and Evan had a great time decorating it. We put a few packages under it and it looks very festive. We also cut out paper snowflakes and hung them on the window. It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

December 15 As some of you may have heard we had a "wicked" storm last week. Actually, we were spared, but the rain ice line was within a mile of our house. We had a few branches down across the street, but that pine tree sheds branches in any windy storm. I had a vacation day and took the kids to the mall to get Megan's 6 months pictures taken. I was blissfully unaware of the issues until the people at Sears portrait came in late because they each had no power. Both of them live in the same town we live in, but on the iced side.

After the pictures, we drove to a different mall to take pictures with Santa and as usual, had no wait at all to see the big man himself. (I would tell you what mall, but I don't want to have to wait next year.) I think a line might have been a little helpful to get Evan over his concerns about taking pictures with Santa. He kept saying that he wasn't the Santa he liked. I don't know what Santa Evan likes, but this one was really cool. Megan was not concerned at all and a bribe of a candy cane cheered Evan right up. By the end of it, he offered Santa a candy cane, too.

We ended up not going Christmas tree hunting due to the storm. Instead, we had guests. Jeremy, Danielle, and their dog Cody came to escape the frozen north. They lost power Thursday night and got it back Sunday evening. It was nice to see them and hang out, but our house is much too small for extended visitors. Our kids wake up pretty early, too, so sleeping in was not an option for anyone. Evan loved it. He got to have a dog for a while and got to cuddle on the pull out bed with Danielle in the morning. Megan seemed to like Cody and he kept coming up and sniffing her.

Evan had a fun day on Saturday, starting with gymnastics. Then he ran errands with me and Megan. His gymnastics gym had an evening event to give parents time to Christmas shop. He didn't even look back when I dropped him off. He was so grownup. Eric picked him up at the end of the night and he didn't want to leave. On Sunday, Jeremy and Danielle took us out to lunch and then we went to a birthday party for one of Evan's preschool friends. It was at a bounce house, so he was able to burn off a lot of energy. The cake, ice cream, and juice recharged him at the end. Megan had a great time watching all of the kids running around like crazy.

Megan is doing a good job with baby cereal. She eats everything we give her. So far, she is only on rice cereal and oatmeal, but w are going to start her on barley on Friday. I am debating between sweet potato and butternut squash for her first veggie. She is very alert and loves to watch anything Evan or Eric can come up with. She still doesn't have any teeth, but I am ok with that. She is six months old now and truly cheerful.

November 30- What a whirlwind, family filled Thanksgiving we just had. On Thanksgiving day we drove early to my mom's cousin, Fran's house. When I was little we went to his mom and dad's house for Thanksgiving. It is really nice to get a chance to see everyone. My dad and Sharon drove up just after we got there, so we got to spend a little time with them.

Then we drove to Eric's mom's house for dinner. We had a very nice time and ate tons of turkey. I got Evan to eat a little bit of almost everything, but he would not sit at the table. Megan was pretty chill, as usual. She loved being held by her Grandma and Grandpa. She also just loved playing with her toys and watching grandma cooking dinner. Everything is fantastically interesting to her right now.

On Saturday we met Shawn, Kelly, and Lily in Quincy Market in Boston for a brisk walk around the city to visit the Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Public Garden , with a brief stop to see the ice skaters on the frog pond on the way. We took a bunch of pictures feeding real ducks and tried to get some family shots by the bridge. Then we walked back to Quincy Market for lunch at Wagamama. It is a London noodle bar that Kelly loved when she was on exchange to London . After carrying 3 kids around Boston , the parents were all tired, so we came back to our house to hang out and let the kids play. They mostly just wanted to play with whatever the other was holding, but they did ok. Megan was just happy to be held.

I think we got some good pictures. Eric is downstairs loading them now, so I am sure some of them will be posted soon. We tried to get a shot of all of the kids together, but they really wouldn't all cooperate at the same time.

November 23 - Megan is still teething, but nothing has broken through yet. We think that some of her desire to eat often is related, but she was asking to eat every 1 ½ or so at daycare, so they asked us to try her on solids, because she seemed really hungry. I had already bought some rice cereal, but hadn't started it yet. We started on November 13. She really didn't like the cereal, but we kept trying a little bit at a time and a week later, she started to grab the spoon and then she rolled the food around in her mouth and seemed to enjoy it. We need to pull out the highchair.

She does seem a little less hungry and has gone back to sleeping pretty well. I was able to convince her that 2 am isn't really snack time when I was right next to her to hold the pacifier in her mouth, but last night we tried her in the crib for the first time. She did wake Evan up a few times, since the crib is in his room. He is very happy to share his baby bed with his baby sister. He really loves to entertain her and is really trying to figure out how to play with her.

He is a little cranky today. He isn't mad at Megan for waking him up, he says that it is too bright in his room for him to get back to sleep now. I hope that we can convince him to take a nap today. His preschool teacher says that he is usually the first one asleep and the last to wake up, but he has not taken a nap for us in months (unless we are in the car at nap time.)

The weather has suddenly turned and we are in the middle of winter all of a sudden. It was about 5 yesterday with the windchill. The lake actually started to freeze yesterday. We haven't had snow yet, but parts of the state have. I like snow, but we got more than enough last year.