Me and my Dog

Mama caught me today laying with Gilligan while eating an apple and watching Veggie Tales. We were having a grand old time just vegging out!

Mama has seen some other cute picture opportunities but has normally missed them because I am so on the go these days!

She tells me that the last one she REALLY wanted to get was when I was reading my dog book with Gilligan laying behind me. There was no camera in sight though and if she went downstairs she knew it was going to be ruined so she just enjoyed the moment.

Spinning

Daddy found a new trick to do with my bilibo! It is to SPIN ME REALLY FAST while I am sitting in it! I LOVE IT! Here is a picture of me mid spin!

GUESS WHAT I ATE...

....Spaghetti! I also ate Jello and a piece of Daddy's chicken yesterday and some of Mommy's bread! Slowly but surely I am starting to eat real food. Mama says she thinks I just need to master the fork a little better and I will take off in my eating. I do not really like to pick up my food unless it is crackers. Even fruit I would rather someone else feed it to me, but I will pick it up if it has skin on it. Why should I have to get all YUCKY!!

Better late than never (just wait for the 18 month pictures)

From Meredith Jane 1 year portrait

My Grandma Kat took me to a portrait studio for my 1 year birthday. My Mama and Daddy finally got around to uploading them. You can find more here.

Here I am excited and walking towards a ball -- one of my favorite toys to play with! (and my newest word!)

Here's a shout out to my Auntie Katie!

From Meredith Jane 16 - 18 Months

How's about that for a little bit of emo action?!

Don't get mad at me!

From Meredith Jane 16 - 18 Months

It isn't my fault I haven't posted in a while. My Mama and Daddy haven't uploaded the pictures off of the camera in a while. I'm just too cute to get mad at anyway ;)

So here I am learning how to walk a dog. I think it is much more fun when the leash is on Gilligan. If you don't believe me (since you can see I'm having a lot of fun now), just imagine a giggling toddler running around because a dog is dragging her by a leash. Then you might understand... it is a blast!

From Meredith Jane 16 - 18 Months

Words!

Just recently Meredith has really started "talking"! Her only intelligible word is dog or doggie but she has lots of words she and we know what she is saying! She says there/here you go, thank you, Mama, Daddy, uh oh(this one is also very easy to understand), baby, and boo. I am sure I am missing a few. These are on top of the signs she does. She signs mama, daddy, milk, baby (her only word she says and signs), please, ball, finished and bye bye. She also has her own signs for being wet (still working on actually getting to the potty before we have an accident), shakes her head for no and all done.

I am very excited to have her talking and communicating! I am finding that every day is an adventure in communication. She understands more and more all the time! What a fun time in Meredith's life!

Gearing up!

As we prepare for Baby #2 we are finding that there is little that we need and some things that we want. There is one thing though, that I have wanted for Timothy. I want a sling like carrier that works as well for him as my ring slings do for me. Timothy has never liked how a ring sling only sits on one shoulder. To day while out shopping, I happened to be looking at Target at the "non-traditional" baby items and noticed that many of them are on clearance. While this makes me sad because I have found so much benefit from baby wearing and cloth diapering and want others to gain the benefits too. It made me excited, because I was able to get Timothy a baby carrier that I believe will give him the benefits of baby wearing that we have enjoyed with Meredith even when the baby is little. I started wearing Meredith at about 3 months old with a ring sling (I wish I had known about sling eariler). Timothy started to wear Meredith at about 8 or 9 months old in a Mei Tai. From what he has said he has enjoyed wearing Meredith but would not likely wear the new baby till it was old enough to go into the Mei Tia, which would be when the baby could hold its head up on its own. We are also actively trying to think of ways that this baby can bond better with Timothy from the begining, what better way then baby wearing! Here is a picture of Timothy wearing one of Meredith's babies as a prop to check the fit of the carrier to see if I needed to get the bigger size. As I suppected the small fits him just fine!