Up! Up! Up!

Morgen loves her big purple snowsuit, and the blue boots she inherited from "Roro." But Saturday, when we went outside to play, she lasted about five seconds in the backyard before insisting on being carried. Nothing changed her mind, not even watching mommy make a snow angel. Morgen doesn't like the snow. Doesn't like the way it sticks to her mitts. Doesn't like the way it comes up the sides of her boots. Maybe next year she'll be jumping into snowdrifts and tossing snowballs around. This year it's all about being carried and waving at the camera.

Those who do and those who don't.

Every morning Gavin and I corner the child, interrupting her very important toddler business. One of us (usually Gavin) holds her down while the other (usually me) wrestles with her locks. She then admires herself in the mirror for a few minutes, and sometimes likes what she sees enough to do a little happy wiggle. But even if she doesn't like it, Morgen doesn't really mind. I think it's because she knows that she's only a few hours away from school, where one of her teachers has been improving upon our efforts. Seriously. Every day, Morgen is bound to come back from daycare sporting a superior style. Today, she left the house with something similar to the picture on the left, but she came home with two tiny french braids neatly tucked behind her ears. I have to admit, this rankles a bit, especially since we considered this morning's effort such an improvement over our usual (see below, our version of the Cindy Lou Who "do"). I'm not sure which of Morgen's teachers has been giving her these fancy upgrades, because I've never been there to see it happen, but I have a theory...and I wonder how she gets the kid to sit still long enough to do it? It's yet another reason for the awe I feel when I think about the people who help us raise our daughter.

Introducing ...

Just in case the antics of one little Hammel were not enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, the producers of this blog (i.e. Jess and I) are proud to officially announce for your blogging pleasure that our third season, which commences around the end of March/beginning of April will feature ... a brand new cast member! Currently, this yet-to-be-named addition to the Lovett Hammel cast is about 10.5 inches and 3/4 of a pound, but we are certain she - the sonographer was about 90% certain about the sex - will grow considerably over the next few months. And as you can see, despite her small size, she is already extremely photogenic.

We are sure you are all as excited as we are to see what this latest plot twist will mean for our little drama, and we, the producers, will do our best to keep you informed. In the meantime, don't touch that mouse!

Slide, Snack, Santa

Perhaps we'll wait another year or so before returning to Toronto's Santa Claus Parade. If we wait until the mighty Morgen is older, she can join the hoards of children reclaiming the normally traffic-clogged Bloor Street with chalk drawings and pick-up street hockey. As it was, Morgen spent the pre-parade hour playing in a nearby park with her Grandpa and Daddy while Mommy and Grandma guarded her front row seat. Waiting for the parade to begin, Morgen fussed a bit, snacked a bit, and toddled around the curb in front of the spectators a bit. Five minutes into the thing she asked for a blankie and fell asleep in my arms. Twenty two marching bands crashed and honked by us, 1500 clowns threw candy, people dressed as giant skunks, dogs, butterflies, princes and princesses processed along the street, and still she slept. Until the big man arrived. Then, she smiled and waved...after all, the girl has got her priorities straight.

Peepers

Look at these eyes.

Perfect for seeing things way up high.

Like the "Moooo, mama, mooo!"

More to love

Morgen is growing more independent every day. And at the same time, she's becoming more attached to a certain toy that, until recently, we've called her 'transitional object'. The thing is, "Leona the Lion," called "Kitty" or "lllllllllullllluhluh" by Morgen isn't so transitional these days. Once only important at bedtime and naptime, Leona is now more of an ubiquitous buddy. I suppose it's better than Morgen's former fixation on my fuzzy pink pyjamas. For one thing, Leona is far more fetching. But the lion is getting a bit...grimey. Even a surreptitious wash this past weekend couldn't remove the stains and other signs of a toddler's love. Anyone out there (besides my brother) still have their comfort toy or blankie hidden away somewhere?

Science Centre!

Saturday was a banner day for Morgen. We went to the grocery store, where Morgen learned all about bagging up the groceries. We came home, where she helped us take everything out again. Grandma and Grandpa showed up just around snack time, and then after a nap, we all squished into the car for a trip to the Science Centre.

What to say about the KidsPark at the Science Centre? Morgen loved it, for a start. There are frogs, building blocks, ramps for balls to roll down, a house that is "under construction" where the kids can fill in the insulation and tiles using foam blocks, and then, just when Morgen thought she'd seen it all, she found the pretend grocery store - bigger than our living room, and stocked with empty cans, boxes, bottles, plastic fruits and veggies, and checkouts with tills that ding and belts that beep.

We spent a long time at this improved, child-friendly 'grocery store' before taking Morgen home. She was so sleepy in the car that she could hardly keep her eyes open. After a few tired requests for her "Kitty" (her sleep buddy, a fuzzy pink lion), she allowed herself to fall asleep.

And when she woke up, it was Hallowe'en. Can a day get any better?

Busy bug goes boo

Last Hallowe'en, Morgen was a pumpkin, and enjoyed a little whirl around the front yard before happily going to bed. Gavin and I enjoyed treating the hundreds of children in costumes who paraded by our front door. This year, Morgen joined the parade. High Park has never seen a busier bug.

Grandma and Grandpa Lovett warm up the cameras as our bug hits the pavement. Note the very stylish candy bag from MN Grandma in action...

I love Hallowe'en - it makes Toronto feel like a small town. The neighbours chat and say hello, strangers tell you where they live and how old their kids are, and those same kids are allowed to run and play in the streets. Not to mention the bit about taking candy from strangers. What could be better? Except for taking candy from...er, collected by...the baby, that is. That's pretty fun too. Aside from my big baby lady bug, favourite costumes from last night included a teenaged baker, a pre-teen midnight fairy, and a little tiger cub who had just learned to walk.

The bug in her natural habitat.

Sleepy, sitting bug (rarely seen).

Yesterday was full of excitement - more pictures and stories to come. Happy Hallowe'en everyone!

Throwing her weight around

When Morgen is bored with her toys (more normal than not, these days), she runs over to the nearest parent, makes a pretend scream that sounds like a quiet "Aaaaaah!", and pushes the person until they give in and "fall over." She then rolls off us, pulls at our shirt, and says "Up! Up!" We used to get kisses from Morgen when we fell over, but now she simply demands to do it again. If you want her to really giggle, you have to pretend to almost fall over, but then correct yourself at the last minute...Is this the sort of story that you have to be there for? Sorry. Sometimes I wonder if she's terrorizing the kids at daycare with this game. Hopefully her teachers will let me know if she starts randomly screaming and pushing her friends around...

Pumpkin Love

You might have noticed that we're posting a bit less than usual these days. We're finding ourselves a bit overwhelmed by nothing in particular, and one specific thing which will be the subject of a future post.

This week we arrived back from the holiday to a house empty of groceries, with a few hours in which to finish a grant application, prepare a celebratory dinner for some newly married friends, complete various scholarly/student activities, and convince the cat that we haven't abandoned him despite all appearances. It doesn't sound like a long list of duties, when I see the list typed out so simply, but circumstances conspired against me - I locked my keys in the car the morning of the party, loosing precious grant-writing and food-preparation time...a doctor's appointment spiralled into a three-hour odyssey for no good reason (and no bad reason either)...I fell asleep over a six-chapter reading assignment instead of reading it - and before I knew it the week was over, I was describing the week as "stupid, stupid, stupid week" and I still hadn't posted to say: Happy Thanksgiving. Turkzilla is dead. Long live Turkzilla.

Here are a few pictures from our weekend away with the Lovetts and two of our adopted cousins from the Heffernan-Gugel family.

One of these pumpkins is priceless. Can you guess which one?

And, if filling a bucket with toys is fun, moving pumpkins from one barrel to another is even better. If you look closely, you can see the extreme satisfaction on Morgen's face...

But nothing compares to having company in the bath. Note: this picture has been modified to preserve a certain gentleman's modesty.

Helloooo, is anybody there?

Why eat it when you have important calls to place? From french fries (er, I mean potatoes, that's right...potatoes...) to buns, it all becomes a telephone at the dinner table. Do you think she's attempting to get some decent takeout? When we ask her who she's talking to, she pushes the "buttons," and replies "Gramma," or "Grandpa," or sometimes her favourite caregiver at daycare. She knows it's pretty funny....and if we're lucky she'll eat part of the phone when the conversation is over.

Morgen and Daddy

Last weekend, enjoying pancakes and sausages at the Apple Butter and Cheese Festival, Morgen sat with her daddy while I ate and snapped pictures...she was a sleepy girl. We've been having some interrupted nights and early early mornings. But I'm beginning to understand that life is just like that when you have a toddler. Last year Morgen was small enough to be carried around the festival in her baby carrier. It was so cold that she needed her wool pumpkin hat and booties (you can see the pictures in this previous post)...this year she wanted to walk about herself as much as possible, and tore off her snail hat after just a few minutes in her stroller. What a difference in just a short little while.

Balloons

After months of watching her point to balloons in window displays and various favourite books, we let Morgen have her very first helium-filled balloon last weekend. And within about five minutes, it flew mysteriously into the sky, up, up and away ("bye loon, bye loon"). A passer-by remarked that she was very good-natured not to scream or cry about it, but I noticed that Morgen seemed a bit jaded and less pleased with balloons in general after that.

Morgen's very second helium-filled balloon (pictured here), didn't cost me anything but the shame of being the oldest one in a line of very little girls. Morgen accepted balloon number two, but she didn't seem to love it as much as she had the first...when it started to deflate the next day, I waited until no one was looking and then quietly put the thing out of its misery. Morgen didn't ask where the balloon went - perhaps she thought it went "up up up" to join its sibling on an airy adventure.

Variations on a Theme

Stuff in chairs, other people's hats, and self in stuff with stuff. Another few days in Morgen's life, minus the horrible teething for blog readers, of course...still, our cup mostly runs over with good things. And so do our chairs, and baskets, etc. Those teeth can't be very many days from making an appearance now...hopefully.

Tower of Learning

So it turns out that filling containers with her toys is only one of Morgen's new pastimes. She has also discovered the joys of book-stacking, an activity that she now takes part in at least once every day. On occasion we can even get her to stop and read one of the books, but mostly they are just piled one on top of the other on top of the other....

The Container Game

Sometimes all you need to entertain a 15 month old is an empty container and an assortment of random toys. See for yourself, Morgen's latest obsession:

How to Climb a Tree

Get one Grandma. Be really nice to her in front of your parents. The rest sort of takes care of itself.

Saturday in the Park with Rowan

I'll just blatantly benefit from our friends' blog by directing you to this recent posting. It was a great day, and nice to see that fun times and soccer balls do make for fast friends. (For those who aren't sure it's worth it: if you click on the link, you'll see a video of Morgen and her Grandma Lovett playing with her friend in High Park.)

Sedentary Lifestyle

I sometimes wonder if we model too much sitting for Morgen, as she really is obsessed with it. Lately she's taken to putting a stuffed animal or block onto her little blue booster chair, and then trying to pile on top of it - perhaps in order to sit on the toy's lap? Or, to share her chair with the toy? I refuse to believe, as Gavin does, that she's trying to "crush" her beloved objects. But who knows, she is her father's daughter, and they do have some similarities when it comes to destruction and general mayhem. The yellow block in this picture has just been squished out from under the child as a result of her developing (but still very advanced) sitting skills.

Giraffe-in-the-Box

A few days ago, Morgen went to a birthday party for one of her friends - and what a party it was. Complete with fancy baby-safe animal-themed party hats, balloons, a ball "pool" and a wonderful array of child-friendly goodies to eat, it was a party I'll remember for quite some time. Morgen had the pleasure of coming from daycare (where she basically runs around in circles all day playing with things that she picks up along the way until she drops whatever it is for the next toy) to this party, where she was able to run nonstop for another two hours, with only brief pauses to eat little bits of broccoli, pastina, and chicken. And, she came away with a very cute giraffe hat, which she rediscovered this weekend, right before she discovered that she likes to sit in boxes.

This morning, her love of containers continued to manifest itself. Showing more dedication to one task than I've ever seen before, Morgen transferred all her rattles, little balls, and teething toys from one box into another. She was very pleased with herself when the operation was complete. I wonder if she'll put the toys back again?

(Sorry that the below pic is blurry - Morgen is clapping very quickly to congratulate herself for managing to fit her bum into the box. Since she spent about twenty minutes climbing in and out of it, also very quickly, this was the best shot I could capture.)

A Tale of Two Adventures

This weekend was Jessica and my fifth wedding anniversary, and to celebrate, we decided to drop Morgen off with Jessica's parents and have our first overnight getaway since she was born. We stayed at a very nice B & B (the same one we stayed at on our wedding night), which had a lovely little flower garden outside and a bar next door that featured live country music.

We had a great time. As you can see from the video, however, Morgen had at least as much fun as we did:

Morgen, meet the Muskokas

Morgen had a taste of the good life this past weekend, when we were invited to visit friends at their family cottage on a lake near Gravenhurst.

In between sleeps and snacks, Morgen had huge amounts of fun. There was squealing, there were giggly games of chase, there were beach balls, and large Muskoka chairs...there were boats, and songs to sing, and cherries to eat, and a little girl to play with and learn from and and and. It was all very exciting, especially Sunday morning when she woke up to find her friend STILL there! And to still be where the boats are! It was too cute for words. Oh, one last and: and Morgen put her feet in a lake for the first time in her life, thanks to her kind host who didn't mind getting into the very cold water. She loved it.

Our little girl was so tired on the drive home that she fell asleep in the car and snoozed for about two hours - about twice as long as usual these days. That was nice for mommy and daddy too.

Two for Today

...so that's why they call it a "push 'n' ride." I kept thinking that it should be called "push OR ride," but now I stand corrected.

Personal Value

On our daily subway rides as we head in to the campus daycare, Morgen likes to make friends.

"She's quite the flirt" said a nicely dressed young man in a pink shirt this morning. As we pulled into the next station, I turned the stroller so she could smile and bat her eyelashes at him without having to look around the centre pole. He smiled and flirted back.

And then something new happened. A little boy hopped on the subway, sat down right next to me, and proceeded to munch on his watermelon bits, pretending not to look at Morgen but really staring at her as often as he could.

Morgen dropped the nice looking pink-shirted man in order to size up her newest neighbour. He wasn't as obliging when it came to waving back, smiling, or playing, but he was still more interesting than anyone else on the train. She burbled at him, wriggling in her stroller and whining a bit at me.

"What is she saying?" He asked me. Somehow he knew that she was a little girl, even though she was wearing brown and green this morning. I told him that I thought she was saying hello and wishing she could get out of her stroller to run around a bit.

He showed me his Thomas the Tank Engine snack cup, he told me his name in an undertone. He asked his father to read him a book (father said: "I can't read the book - no one else wants to listen to the words." Definitely didn't win any daddy points that way, but maybe he'd already read the book ten times this morning), and then the little boy said "Was I like that Daddy?"

Daddy said "Like what? There is a lot of 'that' there." I look at the Daddy, but the Daddy is mostly not looking at me.

The little boy thought about it before saying "Was I a baby like that?"

Daddy said "Probably. But maybe a bit bigger."

"Yeah," said the little boy. I looked up at the daddy again and smiled.

Daddy wasn't very friendly - no exchange of knowing parental smiles, just a bit of an odd look in my direction followed by an exasperated smirk and an attempt to return to the neutral expression that is the burden of most commuters on the Toronto Transit Comission. When we started to leave, the little boy said "bye" and the Daddy gave me that weird look again before getting out of the way so I could roll the stroller to the exit. Morgen waved at the train it as it pulled away - she'd never done that before, although she had made lots of adult friends on previous trips.

Arriving at daycare, I helped Morgen to settle in, or tried to. She is still very clingy in the morning, and it breaks my heart every time I have to walk away when she is crying and struggling to get back to her mommy. Still, if I stay and indulge our mutual clingy-ness, it just seems to make it worse.

Crossing the street outside of the daycare, I noticed something scratching my shoulder underneath my backpack strap. I looked down, and that is how I know my quality and worth this morning:

"Old Navy. Size M/M $12.50."

It's not a pricey place, but it isn't the cheapest thing you can find there either. Not a steal, but definitely a deal. I'll take me.

Playgrounds: good. Sand: bad.

As Gavin has mentioned, Morgen loves to walk these days. She is a busy, busy person, and sometimes her newfound freedom of movement makes her less than satisfied with being inside. So, we grabbed our coats and got our hats, left our kitty on the doorstep, and directed her little feet to the playground near our street.

7:00 a.m. is a wonderful time to be in the playground - Morgen loved it, but our plan to have her run around and blow off steam backfired a bit. We forgot how difficult sand is to walk upon. After several faceplants, Morgen decided it was better just to be carried in the direction of her pointy finger. It was pretty funny, if a bit more tiring for Mom and Dad than originally planned.

Oh, and: Happy belated Canada Day, Canada. We dressed Morgen in red just for you. America: sorry. We only had pink in the clean laundry pile.

Two minutes in the life

Life as we know it is over. Last week sometime, Morgen suddenly decided that enough was enough. It was time for her to strike out on her own. And so she simply started walking. And walking. And walking. Here is a clip of her newfound skills in action:

Not Exactly Blue Suede

There are certain events in every person's life that stand out as milestones: the first day of school, a first kiss, going off to college, the birth of a child. Well, today Morgen reached one. Maybe it isn't quite as momentous as some of those just listed, but then again, who are we to say that becoming the proud owner of a pair of green, yellow and pink Mary Janes isn't significant. Yes, today Morgen experienced her first shoe shopping trip! It was quite an event, consisting of about fifteen minutes of intense discussion with a sales clerk regarding the selection of a pair of shoes that will last, at most, for approximately 2 months. Morgen, of course, had a grand time, since mostly she was allowed to run around the store in various different shoes - still holding onto Daddy's finger; she's not quite ready to fly solo yet - while Mommy and the sales clerk studied her reaction. All in all, a successful, if somewhat expensive, outing. And we even got an answer to the question that I know has been needling readers of our blog for some time now: what exactly is that girl's shoe size? Well, the wait is over. Morgen is currently size ... (drum roll) ... 4! Ta da!