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!

Fall fun

Today was a beautiful fall day. We got some much-needed yardwork done, including raking the front yard. Maisie really enjoyed playing in the leaves as Aaron and I raked and bagged.

Where's Maisie?
There she is!!



She had a lot of fun crawling through our leaf piles, as you can see. She pointed out to us all the airplanes as they passed overhead (saying "Dat! Dat!" and pointing), all the cars that drove by ("Dat!), and the pedestrians ("Dat!"). She also practiced her new walking skills, using the gutter downspout to balance. As you can see, that was also a really good time!


We got some much-needed yardwork done, and Maisie had a lot of fun while we did it! We just hope that next year, she can help us rake. Fingers crossed!

First birthday present

Hey, it's our 100th post! Thanks everyone for following along, and for your comments. They make blogging so fun!

In another milestone, Maisie got her first birthday present today, from her Grandma Jo.

It's this crazy toy schoolbus that she can push in front of her, which we knew she'd really enjoy. She really likes practicing walking, so this is a great toy for her. Plus it sings a catchy little song. What's not to love?

What we didn't figure on is how much she was going to love riding on it! Once we sat her on it and started pushing, we were off to the races!

We pushed her up and down the sidewalk until it was time to go in and eat supper. And when we took her in, she got mad - she did NOT want to stop playing!

Future scientist

This past week was a rough one. Maisie was at home three days, was diagnosed with an ear infection, and is now on antibiotics.

At the same time, she took her first steps! Yay! It happened a little too quickly to catch a picture of it, but hopefully soon we'll be able to post one.

Actually, we're hoping to be able to soon post pictures at all... our camera is being difficult and not wanting to talk to our computer. It makes this whole picture blog business quite difficult. So in the meantime, here's a picture from our visit to the Science Museum today!

Maisie loves to type, so we let her type our name on our Scientist badge. That's why we're "4eww."

We really took much better pictures while we were there, but they're trapped on the camera! So for now, you've got the silly photobooth group portrait.

The science museum was a ton of fun, by the way, and we ended up buying a family membership. Maisie especially enjoyed investigating the Hmong house, crawling around the Mississippi River exhibit, and looking at the bears. So watch this space for more science pictures in the future!

Blog action day!

Today is blog action day - when bloggers worldwide (webside!) unite to talk about the environment. To put you in the right mood, here's another cute picture of Maisie playing outside.

I wanted to say that one of the easiest things you can do to help preserve the environment is to switch your lightbulbs from regular incandescents to compact fluorescents. They are awesome... they last forever (less purchasing! less shipping! fewer materials used!) and use a teensy fraction of the energy that conventional incandescent bulbs do (less coal burned to power your lightbulbs!). All in all - it's an easy, small change to make for the good of the environment.

Happy blog action day!

Busy week!

Sorry about the long time between posts! Last week was crazy - my last day at my previous job was Wednesday, and I started at a new firm on Thursday. So far it looks like it's going to be a great fit, but the changes made our week pretty hectic!

We did manage to get outside and play yesterday, though.

It was an unexpectedly beautiful day, 60 degrees and sunny. Aaron did a lot of work yesterday outside, taking down the porch screens and cleaning out the gutters, while Maisie and I played in the yard. She really enjoyed it - there was a lot to see, touch, and hear! In this picture you can tell that she's talking about something... I don't know what, as she doesn't really have any intelligible words yet, but she speaks with real inflection and tone, so you can tell she means what she's saying!

She's aaaaaaaaaalmost walking now, too. She has a push-along walker toy, and yesterday out of the clear blue, she pulled up on it and started walking along, pushing it in front of her! She looks tremendously pleased with herself when she does that. It's so cute.

I'm glad she's not quite walking yet, though. I'm not ready for her not to be a baby!

Beat the heat, take 2

So today was crazy hot, again. Hello, it is October 7 in Minnesota! Why is it 80 degrees out and so grossly humid? Blech. Some folks were out enjoying the unseasonably warm weather - some actually ran the Twin Cities marathon today! - but we caved.

We spent the day indoors, in air conditioning.

We might be weather wimps, but we were cool and comfortable weather wimps!

The forecast for tomorrow: high of 61. Ahhhhhh.

Swingin!

Today was probably one of the last warm days of 2007 here in Minneapolis. Did I say warm? I mean hot! It got up to 85, plus it's been raining all week so it was really humid as well. We coped with the weather by going to a nearby neighborhood park.

Maisie tried out the swings for the first time, and she loved it!

We helped her down the slide a few times, and she didn't seem to enjoy that quite as much as she did the swings. She did like crawling around in the sand that surrounded the swingset.

I don't think I noted her 11th month birthday! She's getting more mobile and interactive every day. At 11 months, she says "mama" and "dada," though without a lot of meaning to them. She is very interested in airplanes, and looks up to find them when she hears them going over... even if we're inside, and she ends up staring at the ceiling. She is almost exclusively eating regular table food now, with only the occasional puree. Maisie has two teeth - bottom front - the top front two are just about in, but not quite yet, and are causing her lots of problems. She isn't quite walking yet, but is working really hard on it. And - knock on wood - she regularly sleeps through the night!

Opinionated baby!

Maisie has lately been growing very... opinionated. And vocal. She used to be very tractable, but lately, if she doesn't want to do something, she'll let you know in no uncertain terms. For instance, tonight when we were driving, she did NOT want to be in her carseat. She screeched at the top of her lungs all the way from Target to home.

This has become especially true during diaper changes, for some reason. As soon as we put her down on the changing table, she starts screaming and kicking. She hates it!

The only way to keep her calm is to give her a toy, or a bottle, to distract her. It'll work for a few minutes. But as you can probably tell from the look in her eyes... it won't last.

I'm not sure if she's just an opinionated baby, or if this is a glimpse of the toddlerhood ahead of us.

Book shopping

We all knew that Maisie likes books. But today she discovered the joys of book shopping.

We went to BookSmart today, a great new & used book store in uptown Minneapolis. Maisie first browsed in the Food/Food Writing section, showing some interest particularly in Anthony Bourdain. She then moved on to music. She tried to read the copy of Heavy Metal you can see in this picture, but it was shrink-wrapped so she couldn't open it.

We stopped her when she got to first editions & collectables, though!

Skoal Vikings!

Okay, it's been a week since we last posted on here. This week has been very busy, so we haven't had a lot of time to take cute pictures of Maisie! Plus, she's going through a growth spurt that's causing her to sleep all the time. Seriously, she goes to bed at like 6:15 pm and sleeps until 6:30 am, and then takes three naps during the day. When she is done with this growth spurt she is going to be three feet tall. But in the mean time, there's not much time to take pictures of her.

We've also got a super busy weekend coming up, and I don't know how much picture-taking will happen. So to tide you over, here's a picture from last weekend.

I think this picture is hilarious, although Aaron thinks we both look really annoyed. Maisie looks like she is saying "Come on and take the picture already, Dad!!" You can really see how blue Maisie's eyes are, and how long her hair is getting.

As you can see, I'm wearing my Vikings jersey! This weekend the Vikings are playing the Packers at home, and Aaron's friend Emily is taking me to the game! I am SO exited; it's a huge rivalry and it's always a really good game.

We can't wait to see you, Emily!

Dinnertime smiles

Maisie really enjoyed herself at dinner tonight, as you can see!

She enjoyed a tasty meal of edamame and blueberries. Yum yum! Maisie is generally a very good eater, and hasn't rejected many foods that we've offered her. But she especially likes meals where she can feed herself - so much so that when we give her yogurt or purees, we have to make sure she has cheerios, or else she'll grab the spoon and wave it all around. She hasn't really figured out how to use utensils yet. So in that respect as well, the blueberries and edamame were a real hit!