beaters

ahhh yes holiday cooking and licking beaters. and no gram there are no raw eggs involved.

haircut

we pulled the trigger and gave donovan a haircut. i was not looking forward to cutting his baby curls, but even i was beginning to feel like he was looking a bit shaggy. it just so happens that donovan's nanny angela pulled her strings to get us vip treatment. her daughter cuts hair and offered to come to our house to give his first haircut.

i was braced for donovan to not enjoy the experience, but i was not prepared for it to be traumatic for me. i just hated to see him upset over something that was based on pure vanity....and my own vanity at that. he sat in dan's lap until he got frantic enough to yell for "ma-ma". then he sat in my lap until he realized that he was also going to have to have his haircut in my lap in which case he began yelling for buck to rescue him. heartbreak.

betsy, donovan's hairdresser, was kind enough to bring him a special cape and a special comb. she was able to keep her cool and continue cutting despite donovan's breakdown. her confidence certainly helped me keep my cool.

now that it is over i cannot keep my eyes off my little boy and his precious new cut. he is going to have to get pretty shaggy for me to be able to put him through it again, but he looks precious :)

the murphysteins visit santa

dan and i are lazy when it comes to visit santa. we neglected to let donovan even get a peek at santa last year. our philosophy last year was when he asks to see santa we will dress him up and stand in line....until then we assume he does not want to go.

this year donovan has become interested in santa. he loves the phenomenon of which santa always seems to be on a fire truck, and he loves to say "ho ho ho" whenever he sees beards or santa hats. feeling in the christmas spirit dan and i trucked down to one of the local santa spots to snap a picture with donovan for a christmas card. we were the 5th people in line so it was awesome....until we got up to the price sheet that was placed outside of the room that you go into to see santa. needless to say we opted out. donovan forgot his money and in our goal of teaching financial responsibility we left. we headed over to the sports bar next door and spent our money on lunch. maybe next year?

we did get to see singing bears...for free....a big christmas tree....for free......and a deer made of sticks....for free :)

thanksgiving 2011

another great thanksgiving here at the murphy house. we stuck with the tradition of hosting thanksgiving at our house. dan fries the turkey, honey baked does the ham and i focus on delegating the fixins'. and it went off without a hitch again this year....and for that we are thankful.

our nephew brian has moved from ny to sc in the past few months so he was able to come to thanksgiving at our house. he helped us entertain donovan ....as if donovan did not have enough help with that.

we kicked of christmas that weekend by decorating the inside and the outside. it is a way for dan and me to take full advantage of our house guests before they leave. dan only had to cover the house and bushes in lights 2 times due to lights burning out.

peppers

we are still getting a few peppers in our little garden and donovan has taken a liking to them.

weekend in burnsville

i got behind on my blogging and forgot to post pics from a weekend visit donovan and i had in burnsville. it was at the end of september so the leaves were just beginning to fall and it was the first cold snap that had come through. so with apple picking and a trip to throw rocks in the river it felt like the first of fall.

angela

i thought this was a great picture of angela with the boys. she is sitting calm and and perfectly coifed...
and the boys are both caught in motion:)

this post has been a long time coming, but i have been behind my game in the blogger world. for the first year of donovan's life we were lucky enough that my mom came down and took care of donovan for us 2 days a week. because i work 3 days a week, we had the third day covered by different people that were wonderful but could not commit to long term with donovan. so, after over a year of travel for my mom and running out of options with sitters the decision was made to hire a nanny for 3 days a week.

the process of finding childcare is a doozey. i was told about some websites that help you find childcare and was so freaked out by the thought of them that i refused to look at them.....until my patchwork system of childcare began to stress me out more than the idea of finding a sitter online. and so the interview process began.

the first lady i interviewed i realized was a bit of a wildcard based on her profile, but i did not want to ignore the possibility of a fantastic nanny! she had lots of experience working in preschools, was a mother, played mrs. clause during christmas and played a clown the other times of the year. now i know you are thinking "really megan"?....i was just keeping my options open. we realized this would probably not be the best fit when she arrived to the interview driving a clown car and telling her story of just getting a ticket on the way to the interview. so i guess that means you don't have a clean driving record?? during the interview we focused solely on her family trauma.

second interview......a really nice lady. not driving a clown car, and says her driving record is clean. i am thinking things are already looking up! one of the things dan and i wanted out of a sitter, since donovan would not be in a full time setting with other kids, was for the nanny to take him to activities outside of the house. when i asked this lady about taking him places she said, "i love to go to bj's" (which is a wholesale grocery store for those of you that do not know). when i asked if she had any questions she said, "so you are not like a helicopter mom are you? i find it is really hard to be a sitter for those helicopter moms."

third interview......her profile says she was a stay at home mom and her kids are now grown. she has a master's in counseling (that got my attention!) and only wants part time work. things looked really promising so far. in the interview i found that she had grown up in wilkesboro (love a girl that knows the country!), went to mars hill college, worked in counseling before kids, son had reflux, and that is just the beginning of things that we had in common. dan and i had wanted to do at least 4 interviews, but when we went over this prospect we could not find any red flags and felt like we needed to jump on it.

angela became our nanny in mid-august, and she is wonderful! donovan loves her. it is the best feeling for me to say, "ok mama is going to work. give me a kiss goodbye." and then to hear donovan say, "bye-bye mama" as he goes over to angela, or as donovan calls her "anlaa". angela likes to be outside as much as donovan so they go to parks and take lots of walks. she takes him to his gymboree classes and to the children's museum. they also have been known to pick up some groceries for mama and check out the goods at steinmart. angela's mother lives with her and will come over with angela sometimes. donovan is use to gram bringing her entourage so he loves the extra attention! another plus with angela, she loves buck and buck loves her. dan and i totally lucked out because she also keeps donovan for us when we have date nights. i knew we had made the right decision when i came home one night and donovan's stuffed animals were all dressed in his clothes and shoes.....i just love a sense of humor!