Thursday morning, Margot woke up around 6:30, that's after sleeping over 10 hours straight...in her own bed....in her own room...BY HERSELF!!  Do you realize, this hasn't happened in oh, I don't know, 10 months at least!  And did I mention she didn't wake up during the night AT ALL?!  It must have been the Turkey fairy sprinkling some of his sleeping dust on her, or something.  Do you know how nice it is to get 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep?  Well of course you do!  You don't have kids, or they're already grown and out of the house, or you've trained them or drugged them to go to sleep!  Our child just loves us sooo much, she wants to see us at all hours of the night.  I mean, who can blame her, right?  I think we're pretty cool.

Oh, so back to Thanksgiving.  We got up, did our usual; had breakfast, watched Baby Signing Time ("BST") and a couple episodes of Pingu, which, if you have never heard of, is a Swiss stop-motion claymated television series.  We came across it on Netflix one day, and Margot absolutely loves it.  So much so that she walks up to us with multiple remote controls in her hand and says "Peen" which is Pingu in Margoteese.  If I say, oh you want  BST (knowing darn good and well she doesn't) and put that on and then set the remotes down, she'll promptly pick them back up and hand then to me and say "Peen" until I turn it on for her. 

While she was watching her shows, I started on the 3 pies, well technically one cheesecake and two pies, for later in the day.  After I got the pumpkin cheesecake in the oven I tortured Margot and eventually Robbie with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  It's not Thanksgiving without the parade yo!  Nap time for the kid and pecan pie and key lime pie making time for me. 

All the pies are done, kid is awake, parents are showered and somewhat presentable, and off to my parents house we went.  From there it went like this.  Hung out in kitchen and chatted, started prepping green bean casserole, Margot appears hungry, gave her a piece of baby corn (she seemed to like it), started cooking green beans for said casserole, gave Margot a slice of bread, she eats a couple of bites and starts screaming, switch off, Robbie continues cooking while I try to console a very unhappy child, diaper change, very, VERY unhappy child now, turn on Pingu, ahhh, that calms her down some, eats more of her bread and water and seems to be better, back to the kitchen to finish helping get everything prepared, time to eat, pie time, very sleepy child, home by 6:45, Margot asleep by 7, I'm asleep by 9:45.

Although she had a minor meltdown, I think Margot enjoyed her second Thanksgiving (first one actually getting to eat some of the yummy food).  Now it's time to start preparing her for the Christmas Holiday.  This morning it was by watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and by taking her out shopping!  Ho, ho, ho!

Here is Margot greeting the elephants. She did this with almost every animal she saw.

Yesterday we took Margot on her first trip to the NC Zoo. It was perfect weather to be outside and the drive there was really beautiful. It seems to be the peak time for the leaves to be changing so there were vibrant reds, yellows and oranges. We started our zoo journey in North America where we got to see a polar bear, sea lions, puffins (Margot's favorite as they were swimming around under water and POP out they came) and some bears just to name a few. Margot made sure to greet all of the animals with a smile, wave and a "hi" or two or five.

Then it was off to Africa. There were definitely more interesting (in my opinion) animals in that part of the zoo. Our first stop was to see the gorillas. There was one large male near the glass so Margot got a good look at him. He was sleeping the majority of the time, so he wasn't too exciting for her. Then it was off to the Grasslands to see the elephants, rhinos, ostriches and antelope. Well, that's what was supposed to be there. I guess technically they were all out there, but the rhinos were way out in the field in a fenced in area. What gives! Luckily the elephants wanted to be seen. We got to see three of them pretty close up. There was an older lady that was in a wheelchair eating crackers at the exhibit as well. The biggest elephant decided to poop while we were there, and the lady said to someone "he just took a pound dump". Um, actually it was way more than a pound lady!

Next we headed over to see the giraffes and zebras. We had just walked up when three giraffes went running by being chased by a zebra. Apparently the giraffes were somewhere the zebras didn't want them to be. A fourth giraffe came up shortly after and let out a very loud fart. Not often you get to say you heard a giraffe toot, that's for sure!

Finally it was off to check out the lion and then the chimpanzees. The lion was laying near the back of the exhibit so we didn't stay there long. The chimps on the other hand were very active. There were three of them right up against the glass playing with each other. I sat there for a while while they were wrestling. Robbie had Margot down a little bit from me, and apparently she didn't like them at all. She wasn't a fan of being so close to them. I'm not sure what about them scared her, but she wasn't thrilled.

After about 3.5 hours, we were ready to head home. We had seen everything and we were running out of daylight. All in all, we had a great time at the zoo. I look forward to taking many more trips there with Margot. She's destined to love animals like her Mom does!

Two major things have happened this week in the Player household. First off I have stopped breastfeeding Margot. She'd only been nursing once in the morning when she woke up and that was getting shorter and shorter, so I figured this was as good a time as any to wean her. Frankly, I really didn't do anything, just stopped offering it and she didn't protest. It went a lot smoother than I thought it would. I also think we were both ready. I don't feel nearly as guilty/sad as I thought I would. I'm just proud of us both for sticking with it for 15.5 months. That's a heck of a lot longer than a lot of people do it.

The second big piece of news is we got Margot her big girl bed! She's been sleeping with us since she was about 6 months old and we decided that it was time to try to put her in her own bed in her own room. The mattress was delivered on Monday morning, just in time for her morning nap. She went down with no protesting. It was great! The nights are still a little bit of a pain because she is still waking up a couple of times, which is what she did even when in the bed with us. Now the only thing is that I actually have to get up to stumble across the house to give her the pacifier instead of just rolling over. We don't know when she'll realize that it's ok to go back to sleep when you wake up without seeing your parents. Hopefully it'll be sooner than later. I don't know what the heck we'll do when she sleeps the whole night through. Ahhh, sleep, glorious sleep. I'm looking forward to that night!