The Education of Taylor Bear

This week my sister brought a hairy individual to visit. Megan wasn't quite sure what to make of him, but she quickly decided that all that hair could only mean one thing -- he was a "Taylor Bear"


The Taylor Bear is an animal indigenous to the Wasatch Front and high Uintahs, but my sister seemed determined to domesticate him so we did our best to help out. We took them to the National Cathedral,


and later dressed him up in some of my nice clothes and took him to see the National Symphony play Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev at the Kennedy Center.


That's us in the upper left corner behind the orchestra, on the second row.


This is looking out from our seats. You won't see many pictures like this because it clearly states that there is no photography inside the concert hall. Good thing I didn't read that until after I took my pictures.


We even took him to some of our favorite restaurants. Here the Taylor Bear gave some kind of hand signal to rate his dinner.


He preferred eating with his hands in the fresh air outside, so we tried our favorite Peruvian rotisserie chicken and ate it outside of the Jefferson Memorial.


He seemed to enjoy the belly dancing at this Moroccan restaurant, but the Taylor Bear is notoriously near-sighted, and couldn't tell that there must not have been a lot of competition for this belly-dancing position


We rounded out the week by trying to inspire the Taylor Bear with a visit to Jefferson's home at Monticello.


He showed a great deal of interest in Jefferson's agricultural endeavors.


So did Megan. She chose to help the workers plant flowers rather than go on the tour.


On the days that I had to work, Crystal took the Taylor Bear to visit the National Art Gallery, the Holocaust Museum, The American History Museum, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and a host of other important cultural icons.

The Taylor Bear responded to all this culture by grilling up some meat in our backyard.


We were very glad to have visitors this week, and we had a lot of fun with Crystal and Taylor Bear. To see more of their adventures, click here, a post about it should be up soon.







BONUS: Here are a few more of our pictures from the week that didn't quite fit into my narrative. Back before I became a working man they probably would have been fodder for a second post, but now we're averaging one a week so I thought I'd better get them up. Here's Megan worn out after running all around the National Cathedral.


Here she is banging on a priceless antique organ once she got her second wind.


Megan LOVED having her Aunt Crystal here, and she borrowed everything Crystal had. Here she is carrying around Crytstal's purse.


Kim and I dressed up for the Kennedy Center.


This is the little plant that the workers at Monticello gave Megan for helping out (of course she didn't want me to take a picture of it, so she turned around.)


And here we are planting it in our backyard, now that the nice Spring weather seems like it is here to stay.


Finally, here is Megan making the most of the nice weather playing with her new sand and water table.

Maybe for my birthday!

For weeks, every time Megan has seen something in the store that interests her, she has said, "maybe for my birthday!"

She was pretty excited to get a big-girl bed, and we were glad to get her out of the crib before Henry takes it over so that she doesn't hold a grudge against him



Yesterday Kim threw a party for Megan. When we first sent out the invitations, I secretly thought to myself, "Only an hour? That's a pretty short party..." Well, I'm here to tell you that an hour was more than long enough. Since 2 and 3 year olds can't hold their focus for longer than it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings, we were still able to dance with balloons, eat marshmallows like fish, open presents, make crowns, blow out candles, go on a treasure hunt, eat donuts, make balloons stick to the wall, laugh, cry, fight, make friends and create an incredible mess.

Here are the culprits


Noah eating marshmallows like a fish


Spencer dancing with his balloon


Catherine playing with some of the treasure they found


Nathan trying to stick his grasshopper in my ear


Milan in mid-air


Ella contributing her hair to make the balloons "magic" enough to stick to the wall


Anderson getting ready to pull the New Year's eve pull-pop things that he so generously contributed to the festivities


And Queen Trouble herself, chomping down on her pink frosting birthday donut (which Kim finagled from the local grocery store. When they told her that they don't do pink frosting, Kim said, "You have donuts with white frosting, can't you just add some food coloring?" And indeed they could.)



And finally, the feeding frenzy:

A Lily and Thorns

Here they are, the long awaited pictures from the Philadelphia photo shoot.

It started out as most of our photo shoots do -- with a little reticence. There's the "closed eyes" shot


another capture of the "angry eyes" (but look at that porcelain skin and those long eyelashes)


the "staring off into the distance, or doing anything except smiling like you want me to" pose


But to Danica's credit, she finally got Megan to warm up


And pretty soon she was actually enjoying herself


(those smarties she's holding might have something to do with it)



She started to get a little tired of it all (and yes, she still sucks on her wrist)


so we revitalized her by dressing her up as a ballerina, which is a sure fire way to get her on her feet


You should have seen her in sacrament meeting doing pirouettes last week while Kim was home not feeling well. We were sitting on the first row of the overflow, and Megan garnered enough attention that when the Stake President started his talk he referred to how grateful he was to see young children enjoying themselves, and how we young parents didn't need to be embarrassed when our children acted up in church, because it was a big sacrifice to be there.





These are far and away the best pictures we've ever captured of Megan, and I love every one of them. They show her expressive eyes, overabundance of personality, her attitude and her beauty. If you haven't done so already, click on them and look a little closer at just how gorgeous my little girl is (they're pretty big files, so you may have to try more than once, and you'll have to scroll around. It's worth it.)


And here is the person responsible for all that beauty (and most of the attitude.) A lot of you have been requesting better photos of what Kim looks like pregnant, so here she is with 2 months to go.






We're very excited for Henry to join our family, and wonder (with a little trepidation) if he'll have as much personality as our daughter.

Thanks Danica for these fantastic shots. Check out more of her photography here.

I'm packing your angry eyes

Megan is in a music class once a week that I drop her off at, and today I got a call from her teacher saying Megan was having a hard time in class. She went on to say Megan was having a hard time participating, she went off on her own, and if she didn't want to do something she would "put her self in time out." The teacher told me, "When I tried to be firm with her she gave me this look like she hated me, and went and sat on the couch."

All I could think was I know that look. We captured just that look while we were taking photos the other day.


The teacher said she really enjoys Megan in class and she is a fun girl, but wanted to know if she could use her 3 F's of teaching; firm, fair, and friendly. I said please do or Megan will walk all over you, and she won't hate you, she is just testing everything. I do love my Megan. She makes me laugh and frustrates me at the same time.

P.S. Megan is doing a great job potty training. After the first day, she caught on and has been doing great ever since. Yay for Megan, and yay for mom not putting the diapers back on after that first day.

P.P.S. This is just one of the photos from Danica's session in Philadelphia, there's more to come...

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Since we're still not used to this whole 9 to 5 thing, we've been itching to break away for an adventure. We decided to take advantage of President's Day weekend and go visit our friends Zack and Danica up in Philadelphia. Zack is in his second year of dental school there, so we dropped by, made them cook for us and kicked them out of their king sized bed. It was nice.

So what is there to do in Philadelphia, you may ask? Well, in our short two and a half days there we went to see the Liberty Bell


Independence Hall (where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted and signed)


Valley Forge (this is the house that George Washington commandeered for the winter -- looks like he didn't have it quite as bad as his troops)


And of course, the Rocky statue (this is for you, James). Not surprisingly, Megan didn't want to participate in this picture.


The Rocky statue actually sits in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is the building with all of the steps that Rocky runs up in the first film. It was a spectacular art museum.


Of course we made sure to get a real Philly cheese steak. It turned out to not have much on it besides cheese and steak, but it was really flavorful.


Zack and Danica also took us to their favorite ice cream place out by valley forge that was INCREDIBLY good. I got the apple crisp on the left, and Kim got something on the right that must have been good because I never even got a bite.


Megan made a new friend named Carson who she called Jackson the whole time. Carson is 20 months old, and Megan did a great job of being a big sister.






Even though Megan is still officially potty-training (and admittedly uninterested in the history surrounding the founding of our country) she was really good...


...most of the time


Thanks Zack, Danica and Carson for letting us take over your house and your weekend. We had a great time.



P.S. Danica is a professional photographer, and we suckered her into taking some pictures of Megan for us, so stay tuned and we will post those soon.

What is wrong with diapers?

So after thinking and thinking, waiting for the right time (no vacations, no long drives coming up), reading all the potty training literature, asking everyone how they went about potty training, getting princess underwear, buying a little toilet (since the step stool we bought was just a little too short for her to reach our toilet), buying the soap that lights up and the special pink wipes, trying to decide on the best reward system, reading potty books to Megan, saying "poo" and "pee" without cringing -- I must say, what is so wrong with diapers? I was stuck in the house all day today just watching Megan like a hawk for any sign that she had to go, and when I finally couldn't take it any more and I answered my phone, tried to take a shower or make dinner she would have another accident on my hardwood floor.

Aarrgh!

All that said, we are still potty training tomorrow (I guess).


Megan was so excited about her new little toilet.


Here is Megan's reward for finally getting two little drops in the toilet. She was so excited to put her penny in her potty jar.