All Grown Up

Apparently, despite her diminutive appearance, the largely padded diaper, and the occasional presence of a pacifier, Mia is no longer a baby. She has turned into a full fledged "Little Kid". She eats at her own little table instead of a high chair or booster seat. She knows enough words to mostly let you know what she wants....and has enough attitude to FULLY let you know when she wants it. And today, she got to just go outside and play. Now, we take her outside and let her run around some, but this was different. This was following her two older cousins out into the yard to be a kid. Sure, she was still under supervision, but it wasn't really needed and it certainly wasn't noticed by her. She was by far more concerned with what her cousin Allyson and the dogs were doing than anything Meggan or I were up to. I know this is all normal and I'm sure her grandparents enjoyed watching it. However, I'm just not sure I like it. Dads need to be needed too, you know.

Christmas....part 3

I just got done loading the car to head out for our third edition of Christmas this year. I'm not sure Mia is really picking up on the Christ part of the equation yet, but she is really getting good at opening presents...so, there's that.

The little things

If you know how to enjoy eating dinner and lounging on the couch more than Amelia .... my hat is off to you...

Feeling blue

So, what do you do once Mia goes to bed the night after you were laid up with a fever and cough?....Well, apparently if you can't just sit around any longer, you help your wife change your dining room from tan to a blue-ish gray...



(paint still wet)

White Christmas

Here is a mixture of pictures of Christmas day and our subsequent snowy Sunday. I'd say the final picture in the set perfectly describes how to spend a quiet Christmas afternoon.

Christmas Eve

Unfortunately, I have been sick as a dog today, so there won't be too much of a Christmas update tonight. That said, here are two pictures that basically defined our Christmas Eve...

Mia had a great night and despite her cough, was ready for Santa Claus to show...



Meggan and I felt like the kitchen we bought would require a little assembly...like snapping 3 or 4 pieces together...yeeeahh, that didn't work out so well...

Big Visitor

I'd like to give a big thank you to the fire department for volunteering their time and resources so the children could get a surprise visit from a very special person...



While Mia wasn't sure what to make of the situation, Sophie knows exactly who Santa is and was desperately trying to make sure she got an opportunity to pass along her Christmas list.

Aquarium Fun

4 is sooo overrated anyways...

Due to seemingly chronic allergy problems, we often give Mia an inhaler treatment right before bedtime. As expected, this would not qualify as a spa treatment for her. So, we have had to resort to negotiations of only doing each treatment for 5 seconds. Occasionally, counting off the seconds can take her mind off things. Usually, I assume she is tuning us out completely. However, during tonight's bedtime treatments, we got to see that maybe she is paying more attention than we give her credit for... (sorry for how dark the videos are, but hey, it was bedtime)

Aquarium

The night got away from me tonight, so I'll have to post more aquarium photos tomorrow. For now, here is a picture of Mia checking out the big fish swimming over our heads...

Heads Up

This is what happens when a mom gets too excited about letting her daughter see the penguins up close...

Loot

You know you have a good problem when you received so much loot from the 1st of your 3 Christmas celebrations that you get frustrated trying to carry it...

Time Away

We are visiting family this weekend for the first of three Christmases this year...well, the overwhelmingly commercial part of Christmas anyways. I'll try to post pictures as Internet access is available.

Night Owls

It's almost 3am and we are still awake. I wish I could say it is because we are having the greatest party known to man. Instead, all I can tell you is Amelia hasn't stopped coughing for about 4 hours now. We've tried steam, honey, water, soup, saline spray, everything else we can think of not named cough syrup. It has had little to no impact. Luckily, she seems to feel fine other than the cough....However, I'm not so sure how fine Meggan and I are going to feel at work tomorrow.

Santa came early

Thanks to us deciding to re-acquire the rights to a large portion of our living room previously dominated by Mia's toys, we were forced to ask Santa Claus to come early this year. With no designated area left to play in, she had become very tough to entertain. Luckily for us, Mia has been a good girl this year and Santa was able to free up enough time to make a stop and deliver an activity table...

Plenty of room for her "lellows"...


A nice comfy seat for her baby...


Is this the face of a girl happy to have her table? ....Uhh, yes..

Attention Shoppers

Yes, Amelia is thoroughly enjoying Christmas shopping... and she has even figured out the fact that all the things we are buying are for her.

Match Maker

For Meggan's birthday, Amelia and Sophie bought her an IPad. So far, it has definitely lived up to the hype. I'm still not 100% sure exactly what productive things we will use it for. However, we've had a great time playing with all the non-productive apps. One positive that has emerged is it seems like it will be a great learning tool for Amelia. Here she is completely dominating a game of Memory (which she kinda sorta understands....a tiny bit)...

Shhhh, the bish are sleeping

We took Amelia to the zoo last night. Of course, by "zoo", I mean Petsmart. This is one of the finest ways to spend a Saturday night. While there weren't many dogs still roaming the aisles at that time of evening, we were able to see all the kitties and all the "bish". Now, as much as Amelia loved the kittens (including a rat she kept calling a "kitty"), she REALLY loves fish. She will walk from tank to tank pointing at all of them and moving her mouth in a fish motion. Every once in a while, we talk about getting her a fish....then we decide it is soooooo much easier just to take her to the zoo.

Amelia telling us SHHHH because the kitten is sleeping...


She found awake...


Bish, bish, bish....

Backfire

Well, you may recall that we had to get rid of our coffee table some time ago because young Mia kept hitting her head on it and thus, it was a general danger to her much desired safety. Recently, we found a solution to our problem in the form of a leather ottoman. It's big, it's soft, it's perfect for our dilemma...even if Mia hits her head on it, it won't hurt a bit. However, they delivered it to the house today and within the first hour of Mia being around it, this is what she did (sorry for the poorly lit cell phone pic).....



There is NO WAY dancing and jumping on top of the ottoman can qualify as "safe".

Christmas is all around us

Tonight was Mia's Christmas concert put on by her daycare. I tried to get video of the event in case she really surprised me and put on a performance. She...did...not. On a positive note, she didn't cry either. She basically just sat in the group and looked around. I will put the little video I do have up on the blog when I get the opportunity. For now, here are a few pictures of the pretty girl on her big night...

Thanks

In honor of Urban Meyer stepping down as Head Coach of UF today...

Well, we've been told

Tonight, when the theme song for Elmo's World came on TV, my 21 month-old daughter turned to her parents, put one finger over her lips and told us to shhhhhh. Yes, we were silenced in favor of Elmo. This is getting out of hand.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

when it is as cold as it is now....there is no better place to turn than to your dad's fuzzy Gator slippers...

Last year, I wrote a post called The Dichotomy of You. In that post I said to Mia "You are who I live to protect...Yet, you are to whom I have to teach life's hard lessons". This, of course, means I want her to learn about life without having to experience the bad that is often the finest teacher. Recently, I've been giving thought to what I want for Mia in her life and I've really been struggling with a very related thought...I want her to have every opportunity available to her, yet in some perverse way I'm worried that she'll end up taking advantage of opportunities that frankly scare the crap out of me. A brief example of this is I want Mia to grow to be a confident, self assured person who isn't afraid to take on the world...However, I reeeeeealllly don't know what I'm going to do when she says "Dad, I want to go to school in London". Actually, I have a pretty good idea what I'm going to do. I'm probably going to crap my pants and try to have her mother talk some sense into her...or me. At this point, I really can't even think of the next iteration of this scenario where she actually saves up her own money and says "Dad, I'm going to school in London. My flight leaves Thursday". Somewhere inside I know I am trying to have my proverbial cake and eat it too. I also know that I'll never do anything to hold Mia back from her life just because of my fatherly fears. But, damn, that doesn't mean I'm not going to worry about her.

Oh Christmas Tree...

Tonight, we put up the second Christmas tree of Amelia's life. Naturally, the last one didn't really count. So, for all intents and purposes, this is her first tree. While we did most of the heavy lifting, she did do her best to help.


Amelia sizing up the situation...



She decided she wanted her baby to touch all the ornaments as well...



What's a tree without a Gator ornament?

Normal, right?

I don't want to come across as lazy or unloving, but I was wondering if anyone had any objections to me hooking up one of these on Mia's crib so she doesn't have to wake me up to get her a drink at night when she is having her coughing spells...



Yeah, they're for hamsters. So what?? Don't judge me.

Pushing through

I have to give Amelia credit. She has been a trooper the last few weeks. I wouldn't really say she is sick, but she has been dealing with a runny nose and bad cough for about 3 weeks now. So, she has woken up throughout the night all during that time unable to stop hacking up a lung. On top of that, she damaged the nail bed on multiple fingers by sucking on them too hard. This has left the damaged fingernails a lovely shade of death. So, when she probably felt smoker's lung, a snot mustache, and crypt-keeper fingers were enough, she got a small rash on her face the other day while we were eating lunch. Luckily, that went away after an hour or so. Unluckily, that seems to mean it was an allergy of some kind. All that said, Amelia has not turned into a fussy mess during any point in time. So, for that, I commend her. I'm pretty sure her training at being sick as an infant has prepared her to tough it out when things aren't going her way...plus, she's doing a lot better with the cough-affected sleep than her mother and I are.