The Ella Report

I feel like we talk a lot about Maisie here, so I want to take a moment to get you up to date on Ella.

She's now completely recovered from her hospital stay. She's a fully healthy almost five month old baby, smiling and cooing and trying like crazy to be mobile!

Her big sister is one of her favorite people. Here, Maisie was running circles around Ella's bouncy chair singing DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! Ella was trying so hard to watch Maisie that she almost flipped out of her chair!

Maisie loves to give Ella hugs and kisses, and Ella loves that too. She gets a huge smile on her face every time Maisie gets up near her face to say hi and kiss her!

We love our Ella! And it seems like she's pretty fond of us, too.

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?

Winter's last gasp

Sorry, Maisie, it's not quite time for planting yet...

Although Spring has truly Sprung most places, here in the twin cities we still have snow on the ground thanks to a huge snowstorm on Monday. Already by Wednesday there's not much left - the high temps have been in the forties yesterday and today, so most of the roads and sidewalks are pretty clear. (And that's without even shoveling!)

But there's still some snow on the ground, especially in shady places like our yard.

The neat thing about this weather is that we can go play outside and run around in the snow without having to get too bundled up, because it's 42 degrees out!

But hopefully, this snowstorm really was this winter's swan song, and spring is on its way. It's been a long winter, and we can't wait to play outside some more. Maisie loves being outside - whenever we ask if she wants to go out, she runs for the door and says OUTS! OUTS!

We are really looking forward to this summer, and all the exploring we'll get to do now that Maisie is mobile and so interested in everything.

I want to ride a tricycle

Aaron has caught the "fever virus", so Maisie and I went over to Auntie Laura and Dylan's house tonight for dinner by ourselves while he napped.

Maisie likes most of Dylan's toys, but tonight she was especially captivated by Dylan's tricycle. Her legs aren't quite long enough yet to reach the pedals, so we all took turns pushing her around the house. Dylan showed us his new bicycle, which Maisie also wanted to try. But she is far too small for that!

We had a good time, as always - yummy food and fun toys! Thanks Auntie Laura and Dylan for having us over tonight!

Children's Museum - with a friend

Last Sunday we went to the Children's Museum with my college friend Wally and his son Jack. He and Maisie had a great time playing together, and Jack sweetly let Maisie eat a bunch of his crackers at snacktime.

I tried to get a picture of them playing together, but they had both figured out how to go up the slide. Nobody wanted to stand still for a picture!

Proof that she walks

Inspired by Lael's adorable video of Celia crawling... here is proof positive that Maisie walks like a champ.

It's also proof positive that our living room has been entirely taken over by toys, but that's another story...

enjoy! and check out those teeth!

A chilly day

The title of this post is a serious understatement. It was not just chilly today, it was (and is) downright cold. The high was negative 1, and wind chills never got above -10.

So as you might have guessed, we did not spend much time outside today! Aside from one trip to Target, we spent the day inside - much of it in the kitchen.

Aaron and I both cooked (me: chili in the crock-pot, him: garlic mashed potatoes, roasted butternut squash) while Maisie helpfully unpacked the cupboard where we keep the pots, pans, and tupperware.

The clothes in that picture got messed up, so after bath we changed her clothes. So this next picture really is from today, too, but in a different outfit. (This one also ended up getting changed; she's teething now, and the drool runs like a faucet.)

It's so funny! She likes to play peek-a-boo with her plastic plates. She pushes her face right up against the plate, and we can see her little tongue sticking out as she licks it. We laugh and laugh, and so does she!

Notice how well she's standing in this picture? She's really walking now! She walks everywhere, only returning to crawling when she is especially tired or frustrated.

Photo call

Yesterday we went over to my mom's apartment. I brought the camera in hopes of getting a cute picture of Maisie in front of her tree that we could use for a Christmas card. Instead, I got a bunch of pictures like this one.

Maisie was way too interested in all the decorations, and would not sit still!

I will keep trying to get a Christmasy pic of her... but if we send out store-bought cards, you'll know why.

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!

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!

What we've been up to.

Two things have been going on over here since I posted last.

First, it's been really hot. Like, really really extra super duper hot. And humid.

Second, Maisie is becoming mobile.

Put together, this means that she spends a lot of time army crawling, scooching, and working on pulling up - in her diaper.

You can probably tell that we have a lot of childproofing yet to do...