Mommy's little blues musician

Maisie's singing the Bedtime Blues!

Well, it's 7:00, and I have to go to bed
Yeah, it's 7:00, my dada says to go to bed
But when I get up at 5:30
You'll wish I'd stayed up instead

Got my bear and my blankie, it's time to go to sleep
Mama read me "Good Night Moon," now it's time to go to sleep
Pretty soon I will be dreaming
I won't even make a peep

Morning comes early, it'll be a brand new day
Yeah, morning comes early, and it is on its way
Gonna get a lot of sleep, yeah
And tomorrow, play all day!

Another hot weekend

This weekend, the weather was really hot! We were outside a little, but not too much.

This weekend Chris, Kim and Nika were in town! On Saturday, we joined them at a park in Eden Prairie, where they were celebrating Kim's niece Reese's second birthday. Maisie had lots of fun playing with the bigger kids, going on the swings, and of course, going down all the slides.

I didn't manage to get any pictures of her with Nika, or with Chris and Kim. So Chris and Kim... if you have some, send them to me please!

They had some great climbing structures at this park. It was a lot of fun for Maisie to be able to get up so high!


Today we had brunch with Chris, Kim and Nika which was fun and super yummy. Then in the afternoon, we did an art project. (This is actually an idea we stole from Chris and Nika!)

One of the things Maisie loves to do is paint. So we bought some kid's paints - they're washable, which is really important, as you'll see. And then we picked up some plain wood picture frames at IKEA, 3 for $1.99. We put down some newspaper and let Maisie go to town, painting the frames. Presto, cheap and fun personalized picture frames!

She used the foam brush I gave her a little bit, but really preferred her hands. See, as it turns out, Maisie is less interested in the paintING than she is in the paint itself! She really enjoyed squishing it in her hands and looking at the way the different colors combined. She kept saying "more purple! more!" I had to put the purple jar away, or she would've had me pour out the whole thing. But I managed to save some for next time.

They grow up so fast.

Target? Sounds great.

I can think of a couple of things I need at Target. Let me just make sure I have everything here... let's see, I have cell phone, wallet, paci, crayons... now where did I put my keys? I could've sworn they were in here somewhere.

Okay, there they are. Let me just get my board book... I'm ready to go!

Shotgun!

My do it!

We went for a walk a few weeks ago, and took some pictures...

We were going to the nearby park, and Maisie got tired of riding in the stroller.

She decided that she needed to push. Because it's too tall for her, Aaron showed her how to pull it down so that it only rides on the two back wheels, and the handles are at her level.

It was a lot of fun for her, although the stroller was somewhat awkward and hard to control.

She does a pretty good job controlling the stroller, considering how much bigger than her it is! Look at her smile: doesn't she look proud of herself?

Camping!

This weekend, we went on Maisie's first camping trip! It was pretty cush camping - our friend Rebecca's parents have a lodge in northern Wisconsin, where we stayed, so we had indoor plumbing and wifi and satellite TV - all the amenties, in the great north woods.

It was a lot of fun!

Here, Maisie is suited up for her first boat ride. We went for a short trip in a paddleboat, which she quite enjoyed, and then in a canoe, which she haaaaaaaated. She had a meltdown in the middle of the lake, and screamed "Out! Out!!" until we got back to shore. Poor Aaron had to paddle us back in by himself while I kept her from leaping out of the canoe!

But of course, the highlight of a camping trip is spending time with your friends. For Maisie, this meant playing with Rebecca's daughter Sophia, who's about six months older than Maisie is.

They had a LOT of fun together.

They discovered some plastic margarita glasses that were great fun to play with (until one got broken, then the glasses had to take a time out); they spent a lot of time playing outside in the playhouse, on the slide, and in the toy car; and they went for walks with Sophia's Grandma Sue. I don't have many pictures of all their outdoor activities, because they were so busy, they didn't want to stop to let anyone take a picture!


Inside, they read books, tried on Grandma Sue's hats, colored, and pretended to cook eggies and vanilla cookies.

Because they were so busy, they also ate voraciously! They had cheese pizza and grapes for dinner on Saturday night, with ice cream bars for dessert. (The grownups had grilled walleye.)

Maisie enjoyed it so much that when we got home, she asked for pizza for dinner again tonight! Ah, a girl after my own heart. But she got carsick on the ride home, so no pizza tonight for Maisie.

We had so much fun camping with our friends! The weather was perfect, the food was good, and the company couldn't be beat. The whole way home, Maisie kept asking "See Fia? See Fia?" Soon, kiddo, we promise! It was also neat to see how many changes we having coming up in the next 6 months. Sophia has so many more words than Maisie does, and is quite the little chatterbox! I can't wait to hear everything that Maisie will have to say.

We can't wait to do it again!

Strawberries

On Sunday, my mom and I took Maisie to the St. Paul farmer's market. She was kind of squirmy and not enjoying riding in the stroller, so I bought some strawberries and started feeding them to her...

She was shortly covered head to toe in strawberry. And when I say "head to toe," I'm not exaggerating. She had red streaks in her hair from the berries!

It actually looked pretty cute, and if I'd seen it in college, I probably would've followed suit myself!