Little Things Mallory Is Up To

The other night i was trying to get Mallory to use a fork when eating her dinner. She picked it up with her hand anyway and looked at me for my reaction and said "It'll be OK Mom."

Tonight, Mallory pushed on my stomach really hard when trying to go around me. I asked her to be more careful and she said "I'm sorry momma." This is the first time she has ever said "I'm sorry." Before she would say I'm sorry with a hug and a kiss. So precious.

Lately Mallory has been obsessed with taking temperatures. She was taking my temperature under one arm and then said, "Turn around Momma, need other side." Almost every night she has to take her baby doll's temperature. First under the arm.

Then on the head.
She has also been really into her phone lately. I will ask her to be a "happy helper" and put something away and she will get her phone really quick and say, "I can't, I talkin' to Granma (or Daddy)."

She also likes to hold her baby and say, "The baby sad." When you ask her why she says, "She bonkered head."

My favorite thing she has recently started doing when we get home from school is "let's cuddles." She loves sitting on the porch swing and cuddling.

Her latest sayings also include "not a good idea" and "bad choice."

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The Circus

Eric had to study for finals so I took Mallory to the Circus. We didn't get tickets ahead of time so we just showed up and while we were waiting in line, some circus man just gave us free tickets. Bonus! We got inside and Mallory didn't really know what to think of all the clowns and music so at first she just sat there looking down at everything going on.Then she saw the elephants and got really excited. I saw an elephant pee for the first time. I have never seen a flow like that before!

She really liked the tigers and kept saying "roar."

She wasn't too interested in anything that wasn't an animal. But I took a few pictures anyway. You weren't supposed to have a camera so I had to take them without a flash, hence the quality.

Then at intermission we went and stood in line to ride the elephant. Yes, it was a rip off, but Mallory couldn't stop talking about the elephants ears hitting her foot the rest of the day.
Unfortunately it was just the two of us, so this was the best picture of her riding an elephant I could get.

She also enjoyed putting every chair down that was around us (pretty empty up on the third tier - but they were still good/free seats).

Since we didn't pay for tickets, I broke down and got her a flashing wand like every kid around her had.

I thought this was so cheesy, but one of the clowns proposed during the show. His line was "Even though I clown around most of the time, will you marry me?" It must take a special person to marry a circus clown.

Mallory did enjoy the show, but we left a little early because it was well past her nap time. The teachers at school said she kept telling her friends she rode an elephant, so I guess that in itself made the trip worth it.

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28 Weeks!

I missed week 27 so here is week 28. I couldn't really tell how big my belly has been getting so I've started measuring my circumference. At 26 weeks I was 36 inches, this week I was 37.5. I have gained 18.5lbs to date. I am still getting sick at night, but only really bad once or twice a week. I have been testing my blood sugar after I eat so I can make sure I don't have gestational diabetes.

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Critters

The people before us left this odd wreath thing, but the other day we went outside and there were five little baby birds in the tiny nest you can see on top.

Here are the little fuzz balls.

Also, the plant on the left that was already in the garden, that I didn't know if it was a weed or not, has started to come alive.

Here is what it looks like now. If you take a close look though, something is eating it - and my flowers!! I am not sure what the critter is, but I'm pretty sure it lives under the back porch.

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Big Girl Bed

We started the big girl bed on Monday. It's on the floor right next to our bed. There is a pillow against the wall and a bed rail because within an hour she hit her head on the wall and then she rolled off the bed. Surprisingly she didn't wake up. The first night went great. She slept from 10-6:45. The only downside to this is that we were playing this music for her that made it sound like you were in a tropical rain forest - so neither one of us could sleep. As you can imagine, the transition being that easy was too good to be true.

Night two, ended up with me sleeping on the floor next to her - which does wonders for your back when you are 7 months pregnant. She woke up twice and then was up at 5:30 for good.

The third night the same thing, only this time I was in the bed with her. Normally I would not have sacrificed myself by trying to sleep both of us on this bed below, but Eric had a final the next morning and I didn't want to keep him up with her crying.

The fourth night was another awesome night. She slept from 9:30-5:45. We even put the music closer to her so that with the fan on, only she can hear it. Can someone please explain to me why this isn't consistent?? Nothing has changed from one night to the next.

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Our Newest Discovery

Since we had to park really far away from the festival, we ended up discovering this awesome little park on our walk there.

This is just one side.

Here is the other.

This slide was a little weird. It was about 8 inches higher the platform. It was really hard for both of us to get down it.

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Sugar Maple Festival and Parade

This weekend was Bellbrook's Sugar Maple Festival (not to be confused with Maple Sugar Festival). I was sadly disappointed that the festival was not filled with fresh maple syrup and maple candy, but nonetheless we had a good time. It was much colder than I thought it was going to be, so we spent most of the parade snuggling up to stay warm.

Mallory insisted she bring her car with us to watch the parade.

Which actually came in handy because we filled it with all the candy she picked up.

She got really excited for some of the stuff, but was really shy when people would wave. It probably didn't help that I woke her up after only a 20 minute nap to watch the parade.

She really liked the fire dog. This was surprising since she is afraid of the Easter Bunny, Santa Clause, etc.

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Time Outs Don't Work

I'm not sure how people get time outs to work...I now say "Mallory, please sit down and put your pants on or you will get a time out." Her response? "I'll go to time out." Then she proceeds to walk over to time out and sit there. Not only does she do this when I say it that way, but she does it when I ask her to do anything she doesn't feel like doing. "Mallory, please sit down so I can change your diaper." "No, I'll go to time out." She is definitely testing every limit and every ounce of patience I ever had (if I ever had any to begin with). She has become the child that when you say "Eat your food in the kitchen," they will put one toe onto the carpet in the living room just to see what you'll do. This has made eating at resturants that aren't fast food a real challenge. Isn't this stage supposed to be the "trying threes?"

This is her putting herself in time out for protesting going to sleep (and don't even ask about the outfit - as long as she isn't wearing her robe to school I don't argue about it anymore.)

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Boy on the Move!

This baby boy never stops moving!! So much that my belly jiggles all day and night and sometimes makes me sick with all the motion. It's hard to record your own belly so these aren't the greatest.

Here you can see him moving on the lower left side.

This one really shows how much it moves my whole belly when he is flipping around in there.

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26 weeks!

Well, this week has been a great supportive week from co-workers and family. My boss started off the day with, "are you sure you aren't having twins?" and this picture was supposed to have my head in it. Instead, I got the comment, "you really shouldn't take pictures after you've showered."
The evolution of cravings: ice chips, pop-tarts, lemonade, donut holes, tropical smoothies, chocolate peanut butter fudge rice ice cream, and Panera cinnamon rolls. Noticing a theme?

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Happy Gram and Animal Cracker Massacre

About once a month Mallory gets a Happy Gram from school. I wish I could find the others and post them so she can remember them, but with the move I have no idea if we even kept them. In all of them she is always a big helper. Last time her "helping" was telling the kids when they were doing something wrong. She also got kudos for not having to be told to use her fork and spoon at lunch instead of her fingers. Apparently that is a big step for her.

Eric thinks I've lost my mind, but when Mallory spilled the animal crackers I couldn't help but think of how all the broken legs made it look like a massacre.

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Water Time!

Mallory loves her new hat and swimsuit. She got really upset that we had to take it off to go inside because it was wet.

She was fascinated that there were little holes in the plastic eggs that the water would drip through.
I'm not sure what she was doing here but I thought it was a good picture.

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Videos from Easter

I showed Mallory how to play the recorder and she didn't realize the sound came from the recorder, not me.

Mallory on her Easter egg hunt.

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Mommy and Mallory's 1st Garden

There are a lot of little garden areas in the yard. When we went to the store to get strawberries to plant in our new Topsy Turvy, I got ambitious and thought a garden was something Mallory and I could do together. Mallory loves water so I figured it would give her something fun to help out with every day.

The before picture.

All ready to go outside.

She couldn't put her hat on right, so every time she'd put it on, she'd stumble over to me to fix her hat because she couldn't see.

She was really concerned about getting her gloves dirty.

I eventually talked her into helping me dig.

We planted our petunias and begonias first.

Then our french marigolds and the orange one's I'll have to look up because I can't remember.

The final garden. She was so dirty by the time we were done.

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Family Fun Day

Since Eric will be MIA for the rest of this month due to his trial and finals, we took the opportunity to enjoy the weather as a family before the chaos begins.

Mallory loves putting her table outside to eat, so we started with that.

Since the Master's was on, we thought we'd start teaching Mallory golf.

He even made sure she bent her legs a little bit.

She got so excited when she saw the ball go flying.

Then we moved onto soccer.

Unfortunately we live on a big hill that Mallory loved watching the ball roll down. We had her go get it this time.

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Tantrum of the Day

It all started when we got this new outfit. Mallory had to put in on right when we got home from dinner. This turned into a tantrum when we tried to take it off to give her a bath. Eventually we just took it off, bathed her, and put it right back on. She of course added the necklaces and

when I asked if she could take them off before she went to sleep I got the expression above. So dramatic. We ended up just taking off the necklaces after she fell asleep - which was the first thing she wanted the next morning.

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