Jakeeno's

Tonight Aaron and I were talking about what to have for dinner. He said "can we just go to Jakeeno's? Or something else close?" I happen to love Jakeenos, so we went there.
Fortunately, Maisie loves it too! The light is a little low so the pic is a bit blurry, but she had a really good time at dinner tonight. Jakeeno's serves Italian, so she enjoyed garlic toast and various kinds of pastas. She also got to socialize with various other little children there with their families, as well as with the server.

She ate a lot of pasta and pieces of meatball. All in all, I think she had a good time and a good supper!

Fun in the car seat

One thing Maisie really likes about her new carseat is that she can reach her feet.

She loves to pull off her shoes and socks, wave them all around, and then throw them around the car. As you can see, she thinks it is hilarious!

Thanksgiving 2007

Happy Thanksgiving, all! Can Maisie pull you up a chair?

We celebrated Thanksgiving this year with Gramma J., Caroline, and Joe at Auntie Laura & Dylan's house. It was really lovely! Auntie Laura hosted and made most of the delicious food, but everyone brought something. I made the turkey for the first time, and it turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Maisie and Dylan weren't too interested in eating, and spent a lot of time playing while the grown-ups ate and visited.

Well, I should take that back... once Auntie Laura brought out the gingerbread house that she and Dylan made, he got very interested in eating!

His mom said he could have one piece of candy off the house. But Maisie is too little for jawbreakers, so he got to have her piece, too.

Science museum

Maisie is going through kind of a rough time right now with teething. It looks like she's getting three teeth on top all at the same time... yikes!

So whether it's due to the teething or for some other reason, she's kind of cranky these days, and we're not taking a lot of happy baby pictures. We do, though, have quite a few stored up that never got posted. This one is from our trip to the science museum last month.

As you can see, Maisie has a good strategy for future games of Risk: start at the southern tip of South America and move north, conquering as you go!

Curly locks

Sometimes people ask me if I think Maisie is going to have curly hair. I'm like, what do you mean, "going to"?

It's not always the easiest to tell from the front, but as you can see here, she definitely has inherited my and Aaron's curls!

This weekend Maisie said her first non-mama, dada, baba words: kitty, meow, and yogurt. I guess you can tell what is important and interesting to her!

Juice box!

Sorry about the lack of posts lately... my new job has been keeping me quite busy, and it's hard sometimes to remember to take pictures of our everyday routines and events. But here's a cute one from dinner tonight.

As you can see, dinner has become a far less messy event than it used to be. Maisie is really insistent on self-feeding, so we cut everything up into little bite-sized pieces and just let her have at it. The only exception is her daily breakfast of yogurt, and even then we have to give her a handful of cheerios so she can eat those herself - or else she'll have her fingers in the yogurt!

Maisie recently discovered the joy of juice boxes. Not only do they contain delicious, delicious juice, but they also have super fun straws! Yay juice boxes with straws! They are even more fun to play with than peas.

Car seat

For Maisie's birthday, we got her a new Big Girl carseat!

She'd been really hating the car for a while. Every time we put her in her rear-facing car seat, she'd scream and fight it. I hadn't been planning on turning her car seat around right at one year, but I thought it had to be better than constant crying every time we got into the car. And as you can see, she really likes her new forward-facing carseat!

It's made car trips much more pleasant for everyone.

Birthday fun!

Maisie celebrated her first birthday on Sunday!

Her birthday was actually Saturday, as I am sure most of you know. But Auntie Laura had to work on Saturday, so we had the party on Sunday... at Auntie Laura's house! As you can see, we had plenty of snacks including some beautiful cupcakes from A Baker's Wife, our very favorite local bakery.

Lots of people came to Maisie's party. We counted 30 people who came! I think that's pretty good for a first birthday party, don't you?

Here she is with her Grandma J! There were lots of people there.... it actually got a little overwhelming for her after a while.

She also celebrated with other family members including her Grandpa Greg and Peg, Auntie Laura and Dylan, and my Uncle Emil and Aunt Donna.

At one year, Maisie is a joy and the light of our lives. She is so funny - she loves to play peekaboo and be silly. She always makes us laugh. She is cruising and has taken her first steps, but is a great crawler and seems content to get around that way for the time being. She doesn't have any words yet but understands a lot - she can find noses, eyes, mouths, and hair if you ask her to! ("Where's mama's nose?") She is social and enjoys being around people, although it takes a bit for her to warm up to new people.

She is a great sleeper, and a good eater too with a healthy appetite, and none too picky. Basically, we have a great baby and cannot complain!

Here she is with our friends Christian and Susan.Yum yum, cars!

Our little pumpkin

BOO! Here's a belated picture from Halloween.

We're still dealing with some problems somewhere between the laptop and the camera... but hopefully we'll get them resolved soon.

In the meantime... today is Maisie's first birthday! We had a good day that included buying and installing a Big Girl forward-facing carseat and dinner at the Bad Waitress. Tomorrow we'll celebrate with lots of friends and family!