From Morgan's Mouth

Morgan often makes us laugh. Here are a few of the recent favorites.

"Mommy I saved you a gorilla bar"

We were eating lunch and Morgan kept pulling at her pants. Finally she announced "Mommy, my butt's cracked!"

While eating breakfast with my brother Chris and his kids she informed them that "Mommy is in milking Samantha."

Morgan called Dave a "poopy party" meaning party pooper.

While I was cleaning up after lunch Morgan and Adrienne were playing "night night" in the living room. I heard Morgan giving Adrienne these instructions. "Shut your eyes. Open your nose holes. And zip your mouth."

Morgan's 4th birthday

So here it is ... Morgan's birthday post. I've only been working on it for 2 weeks now. :)

Morgan turned 4 on November 8th. She is now quick to tell you she is 4. She seems to believe this is a life changing birthday. The other day she was laying out some rules for Adrienne as she often does. I reminded her that she is not Adrienne's mom. She quickly responded "but ... I'm 4 years old!"

Here is our little beauty with her daddy when she was only 3 days old. It's hard to believe she started out this small.
I let Morgan pick out her plates and napkins for her party. Usually this would mean I would let her have some input, but I would also try to influence her choice. I have a hard time "letting go". This year was different. It had to be different. We had too much going on to spend time looking all over for the perfect party supplies. So my Mom went to the store with Morgan. They came home with the princess theme. I wasn't surprised. Are you? She also decided she wanted a castle cake. So a castle cake is what she got. Of course it had to be purple, with lots of sprinkles. This year she even helped me. Her job was to put the sprinkles on the turrets. She also ate frosting and chocolate, also very important jobs. :)

So we had a great time with our family that was able to come to help us celebrate. For a few hours the house was crazy with all the cousins. We loved it!




On her actual birthday she gave herself a nice goose egg. We got some new office furniture so the room is set up a little different. After supper she tore around the corner full speed ahead through the dark office and smashed her head off the bookshelf. Instant goose egg! So we spent the next 30 minutes trying to hold frozen peas on her head. Not an easy task. Dora on DVR helped. She is doing fine now and loves to tell the story.

Morgan and Adrienne, (and Samantha) helped me make cookies to take to preschool as Morgan's special birthday treat. They turned out really well considering I was holding Samantha most of the time and kept loosing track of my count as I was putting in the ingredients. :) I was a little concerned. Dave, the realist, reminded me that I was making cookies for preschoolers.

So what can I say about Miss Magoo at 4 years old.

• She loves Preschool, Kindermusik, Sunday School and Team Kids and knows what activity she gets to do on what day.
• She always starts the day asking "What are we doing today?"
• She comes to our room every morning all dressed for the day. Usually does a good job. However sometimes I need to do a little tweaking of the outfit if we are heading out in public. :)
• Morgan loves anything spinney, shiny or sparkly and especially likes to wear dresses and skirts.
• She has a very natural "mother" quality. This is usually a huge help to me as I juggle caring for 3 girls. However we are working with her on the boundaries of this. She often wants to "take care" of everyone. Even when it isn't necessary.
• Morgan really enjoys books. She loves to be read to and also reads to Adrienne. I think she gets her crazy memory from Dave because she is able to remember key phrases from the books and what part of the story goes with each page. She is quick to correct us when we are reading if we miss a word.
• Morgan and Adrienne play together almost all day long. Most of the time this goes really well. Morgan is very patient with Adrienne and is a great leader in their many pretending games. The most popular themes are zoo, pet store, picnic, boat and of course dress up.
• New situations and large groups of people are very intimidating to Morgan. It takes her some time and observation before feeling comfortable.
• Morgan's favorite: color - purple, place to go - Grandma's house, food - pancakes or dessert.
• If you ask Morgan what she wants to be when she grows up she will tell you "I want to take care of the animals in the zoo."
• Morgan's preschool teacher described her as " a sweet, thoughtful little girl who comes to school interested in learning and eager to share her thoughts and ideas."

I love my little girl and am excited to see what the future holds for her!

Trick or Treat

We had a great time trick or treating with the girls! Dave and I both really get a kick out of the whole process. We had the costumes out a few times before the actual event and every time the girls had a blast with all the different parts of the costumes. So I guess part of the fun is watching them have so much fun. Then of course they are so stinkin' cute all dressed up. :) I didn't put Samantha in a costume this year, but next year she will get her chance to be in on the action. I didn't have enough time or energy to think of something cute to put her in. It ended up being pretty cold so she was bundled up in her car seat the whole night.

Here are our cuties - ready to make their rounds.

Adrienne caught on to the game right away. She was pretty excited that all these people were giving her candy. She kept showing us her goods.

I thought the difference in the two girls was interesting. Adrienne was old enough to know what was going on, yet not old enough to be shy about taking the candy. Morgan obviously understood the idea and was excited about the candy. However she was also old enough to be shy and some times embarrassed to take the candy at our neighbors. She was especially shy when the kids were the ones handing out the candy. I realize Morgan and Adrienne's personalities are very different. So who knows how much is age and how much is personality.

Anyway...

Adrienne just started saying "no". The way she says it cracks me up. She says it with a tone of "are you crazy". So you can get a taste of it in the video.

After going around our neighborhood we packed up everyone in the van and made our rounds to our family here in Goshen. The crazy thing is that the girls did all this trick or treating, holding their buckets of candy and didn't ask to eat any until the very end of the night! So of course they had a healthy bedtime snack of chocolate.

Fresh Air

Samantha and I were able to go for a walk the other day for the first time. It felt SO nice! The girls have been able to play outside some with mom. Samantha and I always stayed inside. Either it was too cold, or I just was too tired - opting to take a nap instead.

It really is refreshing to be outside on a beautiful fall day!