Maisie's second Christmas

Maisie's second Christmas was a lot of fun. We celebrated with Aaron's family in Iowa the weekend before.

First we opened presents at Grandma Jo's. Maisie got a lot of great books and toys, including this xylophone shaped like a crocodile. Isn't it cute? She likes playing with it, and we do too... Aaron has figured out how to play the chorus of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark" on it. He can also play a bit of "Ode to Joy" and almost all of "Good King Wenceslas." Not bad for a toy xylophone with six notes!

We also visited Grandpa Greg, Peg, and Katherine. As you can see they had many presents under their tree! Unfortunately we weren't able to stay long - we had to drive back so I could get to work the next day, and the weather channel was promising bad conditions. Unfortunately, their predictions were spot-on. It was clear as far as the Iowa-Minnesota border, but once we crossed that, it got really bad. We actually had to stop for the night in Owatonna, about 40 miles north of the border. It was hard to stop so close to home, but the driving conditions just were not safe.

We were fortunate enough to get a room, but had to wait for four hours (!) until it was ready. We put Maisie in her new Christmas jammies that she got from Santa, and read books in the lobby until the room was ready. Can you tell how tired she is in this picture? Once we got into the room, she went right to sleep!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Whew, sorry for the long break between posts! Maisie had a double ear infection, followed by an awful tummy bug, and between them her illnesses pretty well took the wind out of all our sails. But now we're all mostly feeling better, and are getting ready for Christmas!

Aaron got our tree up and decorated, with some help from Maisie. She's fairly interested in it, especially when we have the lights on. Between her and the cats, though, it's hard to keep any ornaments on the lower third of the tree. They just love to pull them off and play with them. So far, though, only one has been broken this season. So we're not doing too badly.

Our big adventure for today was heading to the Mall of America to see Santa. We arrived early, so the line wasn't too long - Santa's hours are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. (long day...), and we got there at 9:30 or so. It was quite cute, I think! She didn't really ask Santa for anything, but did like pointing out the roller coaster and other rides around the park.

All that, AND we managed to get some shopping done, too! It was a good, productive day.

Another favorite toy!

One of Maisie's favorite toys is this blue bouncy ball.

She thinks it's lots of fun to throw at us. She actually throws pretty accurately! We roll it back to her, so she can catch it and throw it back. She thinks it's lots of fun, and we do too.

We're pretty impressed by how accurately she can throw already, and I am fairly convinced that she is some sort of throwing genius! Not that I'm prejudiced or anything... :)

brunch

Today Aaron, Maisie and I went out for brunch at the Uptown Bar & Cafe.
Although Aaron and I have been there many times, it was Maisie's first time at the Uptown. It is a real Minneapolis landmark, having been around for many years. All sorts of bands have played there, and it is very popular for breakfast on the weekends. Fortunately, we only had a ten-minute wait... not bad! Maisie liked sitting next to a mirror and playing with the packets of jelly, and she really enjoyed her French toast.

After brunch, Aaron got a haircut while Maisie and I went shopping in uptown. I think we all had a very good time!

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.

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.