November - December 2009: How quickly the weather changes, From being out in the garden and playing with butterflies at the end of October, to snow storm in December. This is a relatively small and light gallery, since we spent almost three weeks on the Gulf Coast Tour. We'll post those photos in a separate gallery soonish. Also missing from this gallery is the Christmas related photos. Those and the New years ones will also be in a separate gallery. We do have for you Halloween photos and other photos around the house when we're not travelling.

Megan's speaking more words these days, and almost putting together sentences. She's getting quick at putting together 10-15 piece jigsaw puzzles. Is intensily interested in bugs, and frogs still.

September-October 2009: It's been a busy last couple of months, as you may recall, we were in Utah at the end of the last photo gallery, and we pick up there as well for this one, we were in Utah for the Test firing of DM-1 the first Test motor for the Ares-I rocket in development at ATK. They scrubbed the test with just 20 seconds left on the clock. Disappointed we salvaged the day by going to Golden Spike National Historic Site, and then we had dinner in Malad, Idaho. (Megan's 24th State). Julie and Megan also spent a day at the Tree House Children’s Museum in Ogden, and had a great time. Megan also unfortunately fell ill during the trip and we made a visit to the local ER, where we were promptly and satisfactorily treated despite being or because it was 4 AM.

1 week after Utah, we went to Northern California. Megan's Uncle, Billie was marrying April in Sonoma, CA. Prior to the wedding, we visited Muir Woods National Monument, and Benziger Family Winery which is next to the Jack London Historical State Park.

Megan was the flower girl , and she did wonderfully, as did Poppy, April's Niece and co-flower girl. Megan played alot with her plastic lizards, and did not like to be interuptted to get her photo taken.

After the Wedding we went to Point Reyes National Seashore, and then 3 nights in Yosemite National Park. The Big Oak Flats Fire had just been up under control, and we got to see first hand what freshly burned forest looks like. Megan was able to complete the activites for a Jr. Ranger Badge at Yosemite National Park.

After Yosemite, we spent 1 night in Oakland, and met up with Winston's college roommate and friend. Mike, Jessine and Eric.

Back home things were more mundance with yardwork, artwork and shopping. Oh Megan used chopsticks to eat with!

Megan's 22.7 lbs and is just under 33" tall.

July-August 2009: It's been a busy summer, first Da Gou Po (Megan's Great Aunt Sue-Lee) visited Houston, and Megan went to Aurora's Birthday Party. We went to both the Houston Museum of Natural Science (to see the Terra Cotta Warriors) and the Houston Zoo (to meet Filmmaker Allison Argo, who made the PBS Nature Documentary on Frogs: the Thin Green Line). We flew to Grand Rapids, Michigan to attend Peggy and Brady's Wedding Celebration at the Frederik Meijer Sculpture Park and Gardens, and visited the John Ball Zoo while we were there. We then turned around and flew to Salt Lake City for Dad's work, and stayed in Ogden, Utah. (Most of that trip will be in the next gallery, but photos from Antelope Island State Park are in the this one. In between Megan has spend time playing the backyard in the sandbox, working in the garden, and playing with waterpillar. Also playing inside, painting, constructing and learning about plants and animals. Megan is better at handling living creatures like insects, reptiles and amphibians, she doesn't crush or squeeze them to much. As of September 1st, she's 2 ft 9.5 inches tall, and weighs 22.25 lbs

Ken Burns’ Documentary Movie on the National Parks starts airing on PBS this Sunday. They’ve provided a widget to map the national parks visited. Here then is Megan’s Current map. Click on the arrows to scroll through the badges. Click on “Get & Share” to make your own. To follow up, here are photos of Megan at these national parks.

                   

May-June 2009: Megan turned two in the middle of this gallery, but we've excluded those pictures, as we've previously posted them already. Most of the photos below are from trips to one of four places:

1. Moody Gardens, we went here for their Earth Day 2009 celebration and visited the Aquarium Pyramid and the newly reopened Rainforest Pyramid (that had suffered from Hurricane Ike). Megan enjoyed looking at all the fish and penguins in the Aquarium, and the frogs in the Rainforest.

2. Virginia: Once again, Winston had a business trip to NASA Langley, in Virginia, so Julie and Megan got to visit the Virginia Living Museum. We also visited the Yorktown Battlefield, part of the Colonial National Historical Park. Enroute back via the Philadelphia Airport, we visited both airport play areas "The Aviation Play Stations" as they're called. More photos, not necessarily Megan centric have also been previously posted.

3.Mercer Arboretum, When Megan's Ah-Gong and Ah-Ma visited we took a trip up to the gardens to see the plants and flowers. It had been just over a year since we last went up there and filmed Megan's protowalking skills.

4. We went to Chmielewski's blueberry farm to pick our own blueberries. We had a lot of fun going through the bushes and finding the ripe blue fruit.

Megan's taken to playing in the Kitchen sink while Mom's doing the dishes. and we've started raising crickets to feed the Mediterranean Geckos we've caught.

Megan's taken to bobbing her whole body up and down to indicate "Yes", while the basic head shake is "No". Megan is about 2' 8" tall and weighs around 22 lbs.

May 23rd, 2009 (and surrounding days) We celebrated Megan's 2nd Birthday which fell on a Memorial Day weekend this year, and had a small party. Megan's paternal grandparents (Ah-Gong and Ah-Ma) were able to visit from Connecticut. The Knoll's (Amanada and Tyler) as well as the Lopez's (Pedro, Martha and Aylin) attended as well. The next evening Megan's Great Uncle and Aunt (Er-Shu Gong, and Er-Sen Po) with 2nd cousin once removed Robert came over. Megan also received a steady stream of presents from Family and Friends from afar. Here then are the photos from the party and the unwrapping of presents. Don't forget that you can leave Megan a 2nd birthday wish.

January February 2009 - Megan continues to grow and explore, point and touch but still not talk. She’s signing a bit more now, adding Tree, Dog, Book and Cat to her signing vocabuary. She’ll talk to her self and have conversations with her toys and food and bugs, well pretty much everything she interacts with. Occasionally we’ll hear what sounds like words like “day” or “turtle” or “ice” but it’s not repeated.

On the manual manipulation front, she’s getting better at solving puzzles and playing with lacing toys. She rotates the pieces to get them to fit, and is good at putting two halves together. She likes pulling her pull toys around downstairs, many a evening can be found us doing laps around the kitchen island pulling a dog, a caterpillar, a snail and a helicopter. Megan is also very adept at playing with Tinkertoys and Lego Duplo.

For Christmas Megan’s Xiao Gu, (Aunt Peggy) got Megan a set of Ed Emberley drawing books, and Megan’s taken up art using stencils and pencils and markers and crayons and finger paint

We went on several local excursions. We went to the Houston Zoo on Dec 29, 2008 and Megan enjoyed look at the fish, frogs, giraffe and elephants. On Dec 30th, we went for a walk to a local park, Frankie Carter Randolph Park, and wandering onto the nature trail via a short cut, (this by the way is where we went wrong) We managed to complete the loop, but not without scrambling over and around fallen trees that haven’t been cleared since Hurricane Ike.

In February, Winston’s Best friend Roger and wife Michele (who’s an artist, check out her work) can to visit on their cross country jaunt. They brought their ferrets, and Megan enjoyed playing with Habibi. We also spent an afternoon at the Bay Area Park.

We celebrated Valentine’s day by exchanging presents and going out to Olive Garden for lunch. Daddy had a lot of work relating to a “Flow Control Valve” and actually went to Florida just before I turned 21 months old.

We’ve been using the Wii Fit to store Megan’s weight. At the end of February Megan was 31” tall and weighed 19.4 lbs.

Megan is into stuffed animals and figures, like other kids might be into dolls. She points out there body parts, eyes, ears, mouth, feet, etc. She will try to move their arms and legs if possible, (lego giraffe and zookeepers for example).