Megan!

Happy 2nd birthday to Megan! It's crazy to believe she is already 2. Time has certainly flown by.

Megan has been very busy lately. She is developing all sorts of new skills. A few weekends ago, she demonstrated the following to U for the first time: unlocking windows, locking dead bolts, opening the pantry, climbing on the changing table and opening a shampoo bottle (she enjoys eating it or putting it on her hair). Needless to say, it was quite an adventuresome weekend. She definitely is watching what we do and imitating us. It is fun to see her learn.

Megan likes climbing. She will climb bookshelves, toilets and couches. She moves stools and chairs to where she wants and then she will climb and get the desired item. This certainly keeps things interesting in the kitchen! She also likes climbing on play structures outside. This is fine as long as she has a spotter there to catch her if she falls. The other day, she was climbing one of those ladders that curves (the rungs are vertical at the bottom and horizontal at the top). The rungs are pretty far apart and she ended up falling. Thankfully she has a really good grip (she caught a rung as she fell) and U was right there, otherwise we may have had a pretty hurt little girl. I figured she wouldn't try it again since it seemed to scare her but a few minutes later, she was back over there climbing up again. Megan has also decided that the preferred way to climb up and down stairs is to walk, not crawl. When she's going up stairs, she likes to not hold onto anything. Going down, she likes holding onto a hand.

Megan has started doing creative playing and it is so much fun!!! She will make food that she then brings to us to eat. She likes playing pretend puppy. It's so funny to see her down on her hands and knees crawling around. We are trying to teach her not to lick. She loves playing mommy with her baby doll. What a loved doll, too. She gets swaddled and put down for naps. She gets to eat all sorts of things. Basically anything that is remotely like a bottle will serve as such and anything that isn't an acceptable bottle can be food. Her baby gets played with a lot, too. Since this often involves being stuffed in pitchers or put upside down in bins, it's probably too early for her to start babysitting, but give her a few years and she will be great!

She loves all things soft and cuddly. She's often carrying around multiple blankets with a baby, Spunky or both in them. Sometimes there's so much stuff that it is hard to see Megan! She will also make little nests with blankets and towels and then put toys in them.

Megan with a few blankets, Spunky and her baby.

She still loves playing with Duplos. If you look closely, you can see that she is stacking them upside down (connectors are down). This was her preferred way of building with them for quite awhile. She will now stack them either way.

Megan has started potty training. She let us know she was ready by indicating when she needed to go potty. We started the process a little over a month ago and she now goes potty almost every time we take her to the bathroom. She is very proud of this. She still goes in her diaper in between potty trips (which are many), so we're not ready to say bye to diapers quite yet but we're glad to see her progressing in this way. She has even gone poop a number of times on the potty. If she doesn't poop on the potty, she immediately lets us know when she has pooped so that we can change her. At least that is what we hope she does because if she doesn't, it may mean she's gone to the bathroom and taken off the poopy diaper herself. Which can be pretty messy! One funny story: one time I was taking Matthew to the potty and had left the gate open for Megan to come if she wanted (she had just gone potty).  However, she decided to use an alternate toilet: the laundry basket. I guess the good news is that she wanted to bring it to the bathroom to empty in the toilet. That was just a long ways away! And of course it was laundry day.

Megan is talking more and more all the time. She will often talk in sentences to us. She looks very intent and it is apparent that she has something to say. Alas, we don't understand a word of it. Thankfully, she also uses a lot of signs and some words which we do understand. Between signs, words and pointing, she is usually pretty good at communicating what she wants. Here is her current vocabulary:

• spoken words: mama, Sarah, Matthew, uh oh, good, hot, monkey sound, cow sound, pig sound, dinosaur sound, hi
• signed words: thank you, no, all done, eat, milk, potty, bath, water, baby, sad, wash hands, I love you(!), banana, bread, book, brush teeth
• spoken and signed words: please, yes, shoes, daddy, more, hat

A few other random facts about Megan: she still loves playing peekaboo and comes up with all sorts of variations. She is trying to jump. She will focus really hard, bend her knees and then quickly extend them. Now she just needs to figure out how to get her feet off of the ground. Megan loves to read. She brings us books to read her a lot and loves having the same book read over and over again. She also enjoys looking at books herself.

Megan loves talking to people on the phone. In fact, some of the words she speaks are spoken primarily on the phone.

Our happy girl

Megan loves baths. We were trying to get a picture of her hair with a mohawk, but if fell down too quickly.

Megan loves pulling her shirt over her head. Here are a few variations of it.

Megan decorated her hair with kale. Yum!