Crazy Month!

By the looks of Mallory in the above picture, one would think things at the Merriman house have been relaxing and low-key. Well, we have had some moments of downtime (mainly when Mallory is napping or in bed for the night!), but things have been quite busy over the last month. For starters, I completely forgot to post a Halloween update so I will do that here. But before going any further I just want to explain the picture above. If you look closely at the book that Mallory is holding, you will see a little girl sitting on Clifford's (the Big Red Dog) legs. For some reason, whenever she flips through this book and the dogs are nearby, she likes to "imitate" what she sees on the page with Oscar. Luckily, Oscar doesn't seem to mind but he will get up after a few minutes of being used as a canine chair.

For Halloween, we did the same thing we did last year, where we dressed Mallory up and took her over to our parents house for dinner and pictures. She still seems to young to go door-to-door, so next year should be a whole different ballgame. We went with the Bee costume and were able to keep the headpiece on long enough to get some "ok" pics:

With Winter approaching fast, we had to start getting Mallory used to wearing hats and gloves. This proved to be a little stressful since the first couple of times we tried to put them on her, she was not having it. We needed to nail this down because her school takes them out once a day in the playground as long as it isn't below 32 degrees. Luckily Nana and Papa Merriman  had better results when taking her to the mall on a couple of occasions. She put them on no problem and hasn't had a problem with them on to this date. Go figure!

Unfortunately over the last week, Mallory has been battling illness. It started last weekend with her stomach giving her some issues and then over the course of the week, she did not want to eat or drink much. The doctor checked her out and was 99% sure it is a viral infection. She said Mallory just needs to keep drinking fluids and eventually it should work itself out. As of today (Saturday), she is showing signs of improvement starting with a good breakfast, a decent lunch, and hopefully a substantial dinner.

Hopefully I will be able to get my act in gear and post some more frequent updates :) Thanksgiving next week!!