Tschüß Rob & Liza!

Our friends Rob and Liza moved to Dortmund, Germany yesterday.

This picture (taken by Aaron's sister Clare!) is of us reading at their wedding last month. Maisie had a bit of stage fright, and urped all down my right side as soon as we got to the front of the church. Oops! But nobody else seemed to notice, and aside from that, I thought our reading went quite well. It was a lovely wedding (and a rocking reception).

Their move isn't permanent (at this time), but just for the school year - Liza is a teacher, and she got an offer for a position at a brand new English-language school. It's a great opportunity, and we are quite happy for them, although it was really hard to say goodbye. So we will just say "tschüß" instead!

Good luck, Rob and Liza! We miss you, and we are looking forward to hearing all about your German adventures. We demand stories in person when you get back, and until then, we will read your blog!

Activity table

What a difference nine months makes, hey? Maisie has gone from that teeny, helpless little newborn to this big girl with a full head of hair who crawls all over, feeds herself, and pulls up to standing!

Her current favorite toy is the activity table in this picture, which our friends Laura, Jason, and Oliver loaned her. Oliver was born in February 2006 and really enjoyed playing with it for a while, but he's since outgrown it. They were nice enough to loan it to Maisie! She really enjoys it... it's exactly the right height for her to pull up on, lean against, and play with. It has fun spinny parts, a squeaky thing, and flippy parts, and even a little embedded mirror. She's chewing on a big orange lego-like block that came with the table. Aaron and I especially appreciate that it's not electronic - no annoying blinky lights or tinny music!

Thanks, Laura & Jason & Oliver!

Nearly 9 months ago...

My mom took this picture of Maisie.

You can see all the monitors on her. Her left hand is wrapped up in gauze because she had to have an IV in. And you can't really tell, but she was in a big plastic bubble isolette. I never saw her in it - by the time I'd recovered from the C section enough that they could bring me down to the nursery, she was breathing room air.

We're in the time between 9 months from my due date and Maisie's actual 9 month birthday. This one seems like a pretty big milestone to me; soon Maisie will have been out in the world for as long, and then longer, than I was pregnant with her. As we approach that day I'm thinking a lot about my pregnancy, labor and delivery, remembering what it was like, the good and the bad.

As I recall, these ten days between due date and birth date were some really long days.

Happy birthday Gramma J and Grandpa Greg!

Maisie's Gramma J and Grandpa Greg both celebrated birthdays yesterday! We weren't able to see Grandpa Greg, but we did go out to dinner with Gramma J, Laura and Dylan.

Maisie had fun seeing everyone, and sharing our food. She ate some of Dylan's chicken strips and one of my mom's sweet potato fries. As you can see here, she also ate a green onion from Laura's plate.

She really enjoyed chewing and sucking on it, which surprised us all. Really, an onion? But she seemed to like it. She sure was stinky when we got her home, though!

A lovely weekend

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day, so we went and hiked a little bit around one of the more beautiful parts of Minneapolis, Minnehaha Falls.

It's the waterfall you can see in the background here, and it's a ten minute drive from home if you hit all red lights. The trails are really well kept up by the city, so it wasn't really technically difficult or anything and we didn't go very far. We did cover a lot of vertical ground, though - we started up by the head of the falls, went across on the footbridge and then all the way down to the river, then down a ways and back up.

The day was perfect - 82 degrees, sunny, but not humid and no rain in sight. The falls area was packed! There were lots of families with strollers, who stayed up by the top, and lots of bigger kids splashing around in the (very shallow) river at the bottom. People were having fun and enjoying the weather and the beautiful scenery. It was one of those days that I really love Minneapolis.

Even though the backpack Maisie was in distributed her weight really well, it was a lot of stairs to climb. Aaron was pretty pooped by the time we got back to the top! Up by the falls is a nice seafood restaurant called Sea Salt, so we stopped there after our little hike. I had grilled fish tacos and a beer, Aaron had a catfish po boy and a soda, and Maisie had little pieces of my fish (which she really enjoyed) and a bottle. Then we went home and all took a nap!

So big!

Wow, it's been a week since our last post! Sorry about the delay... computer problems have kept us offline, and Maisie's been keeping us busy too of course.

New skills she's picked up over the last week include for-real crawling - she used to just do an army crawl along the ground, but now she gets her tummy up - and pulling up to standing.

As you can see, she's enjoying her new skills! But between the new mobility and the pulling up, we've had to really get in gear with childproofing. It's amazing to me just how soon it seems we'll be chasing after her as she runs after the cats, because it really doesn't seem all that long ago that we were celebrating her newfound ability to roll over. Time flies like an arrow... and fruit flies like a banana!

8 months old.

Maisie turned eight months old yesterday! It was actually kind of a difficult day, as you may be able to tell from this picture (taken today)...

Eight months marked Maisie's first injury: she got in the way of a thrown toy fire truck at daycare. At urgent care, the doctor said that the eye was fine and the cut didn't need stitches. So no lasting harm, although I think she'll have quite the shiner. The doctor also proclaimed her to be "feisty" as she screamed and wiggled the entire time he was checking her eye, cleaning the cut, and putting some goopy stuff on it to stick the sides together. It took the doctor holding her head, me holding her arms, and a nurse holding her eye open to get the exam done. Maisie wasn't hurt - she stopped crying the minute I could pick her up - just angry at being held down!

Today is the Fourth of July. We have plans to go to a nearby park that has a wading pool with my sister and Dylan, and then grill for dinner over at their house. It should be fun!