Home at Last

Well, we're back home from our 7 week road trip. It was great seeing family and friends, and now I am looking forward to settling down in North Carolina. I have a huge list of things to do, boring things, like finding a pediatrician, signing Mac up for daycare, scheduling the move. Blah, blah, blah, the list goes on and on.

Something happened tonight that really pulled at my heart. Mackenzie and I were taking the dog out when our neighbor was getting home from work. I didn't pay much attention to him since I was juggling the dog and Mac. As he walked up the drive way, Mackenzie about jumped out of my arms. She started yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" When I set her down she marched right across our yard and into their driveway, the neighbor was already inside, thank goodness. As I took her hand and walked her back to our house she started crying; she thought I was keeping her from seeing her Daddy! My heart ached and still does. How do I explain to a 16 month-old that her Dad is in Florida and we'll see him next month? I wanted to cry with her, tell her I understand how she feels and that it's okay to miss him. But since she has no concept of time or place, we did the next best thing-went inside and built a tower out of blocks.

Onto some Mackenzie happenings, a much more uplifting topic. Her new behaviors include...

1) Shaking her finger at mom, dad, or anyone when they do something she doesn't like. It started with her doing it to the dog and has now transferred over to us. The little girl next door got real close to Mac today and she started waving that finger around.

2) Anytime we are somewhere that she doesn't want to be, she starts saying "bye-bye" and heads for the door. She did this twice today, once at the housing office and again when we walked through the new house.

3) She literally asks for a cookie or "doodie" 25 times a day.

4) For some reason the rooster on the toy barn (not to be confused with our real barn) really irritates her.

5) Mackenzie will always yell "MA" when she is climbing on something. I don't know if she is proud or just wants to see my reaction.

A New Look

I've spent the past hour trying to update the look of our blog, it takes me a while to make decisions. It's not completely how I want it, but I have a feeling Mac will be waking up from her nap soon so I'm going to stop while I am ahead.

We dropped Nathan and his friend off at the airport this morning. It wasn't as emotional as I thought it would be since we're going to see each other in a few weeks for Thanksgiving. It seemed like every time I was about to cry Mackenzie was running away from us, climbing on something, yelling at the giant stuffed bear, or just being silly. Gotta love that girl. When Nathan entered the security line I told Mackenzie to wave good-bye to dad and she looked up at the 10 foot bear standing to the left of us and started to wave at it. Oh well, I tried.

One of Mackenzie's new tricks is going completely limp when she doesn't want to do something I want her to do. I noticed her doing this a few other times before today, but was hoping it was just a fluke....I was wrong. Give this girl a wide open space, like an airport, and she's off to explore. Whenever I tried to gently guide her back to our seats she would fall to the ground like a wet noodle. Thankfully she wasn't kicking and screaming, I'm sure she's saving that for later when we're in a really crowded mall.

The pictures were taken yesterday at the beach near our house. Cappy is a pretty lazy dog and will sleep about 95% of the day, but something gets into her at the beach and she's ready to play. She even wandered into the water a few times, tried to take a drink, and realized it was salty.

And the winner is....