Happier times

We've had a rough week around here - Maisie's been sick with an awful tummy bug. I'll spare you the details, but will say that Aaron's spring break has not been the relaxing and productive week off from school that he'd planned. Instead, he's been home with a sick, cranky toddler every day. Neither he nor I has gotten sick, which is a minor miracle. We've been washing our hands a lot.

Instead, I'll share some pictures of happier times: last Sunday!

Auntie Laura had tickets to the Wild game Sunday afternoon, so Dylan came over to our house! We had fun with Dylan, and Auntie Laura had fun at the game, which the Wild won. Woo!

Sunday was a pretty nice day, so Aaron and the kids and I walked up to our nearby elementary school, which has some fun playground equipment.

There is one little set there that's just right for little ones - there's a little slide, and stairs that Maisie could navigate on her own. I have no idea how many times she and Dylan went down that slide, but we were at the park for a good 45 minutes, until they got cold and actually asked to go home! I kept trying to get a picture that would actually catch Maisie's face, but she wouldn't stop moving long enough - she'd just say "cheese!" as she ran past me to go down the slide again.

There was some equipment at the playground for bigger kids too - monkey bars and a big curly slide - but Dylan was very sweet about playing on the little slide that Maisie could handle.

He was particularly impressed that the playground is surfaced with cut up old tires, not wood, so nobody had to worry about getting splinters if they fell!

Pucker up!

Happy Friday, and happy first day of Spring!

Here's a kiss for you, from Maisie!

Editing to add another pic... both of these are from Auntie Laura's somewhat amazing cell phone camera. My phone never takes such good photos! Here's Maisie, as a rockstar.

Spring!

This weekend we went down to Iowa to visit Aaron's parents. We had a great time staying at Grandma Jo's house, and playing at the park with Grandpa Greg! But it was a long drive back today.

We got back to beautiful weather and melting snow. We were tired of sitting after the long drive, so we decided to go for a walk. We had Maisie put on some rain boots that my mom got her last year, and a good thing we did - she immediately found a huge puddle in front of our house and started running up and down the sidewalk, splashing her way through the puddle!

We said "Maisie, don't you want to go for a walk?" She replied "No walk, stay here!" So she splashed and splashed in this gigantic puddle to her heart's content, while we chatted with the neighbors. The water was pretty deep - up past her ankles - and she had some good splashing going, enough so that her pants got soaked!

Eventually she got cold and tired, and wanted to take a warm bath (smart girl) so we went inside. She had so much water in her boots that Aaron had to wring her socks out in the sink!

Some solo parenting time

As you probably know, Aaron's in school right now. This semester he's had a class that meets on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. This week was the last week of it. Yay!

This Friday, Maisie and I hit a favorite coffee shop/restaurant, Anodyne, for dinner. I had a beautiful large decaf latte and a yummy croque monsieur sandwich. Maisie had eaten dinner at home, so she stuck with ice cream. They serve Sebastian Joe's, a local ice cream, at Anodyne. Maisie chose a flavor called Pavarotti, banana ice cream with chocolate chips. She really enjoyed it!

Anodyne is really fun for us because it has a little kid-friendly area in the back, with a bucket of toys and a rocking chair that's just Maisie's size. While we were there two guys came and started setting up microphones and music stands right in front of us. Maisie was intrigued by the activity, and they were really nice about it - one let her strum his guitar, and the other gave her a yellow egg-shaped shaker to play with while we were there. The next morning I asked her to tell Aaron about what she saw at the restaurant. She told him there were animals there - monkeys, that were swinging upside down. She has a vivid imagination. No mention of the musicians, though.

Then on Saturday morning, Dylan came over and the three of us went to the Children's Museum.

One of Maisie's favorite books is Mo Willem's Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. If you haven't read it, it's hilarious - basically, the premise is that the bus driver has left briefly and has asked you to watch his bus while he's gone. He says, "remember, don't let the pigeon drive the bus!" Then the pigeon begs, pleads, cajoles, and throw fits trying to get you to say that yes, he can drive the bus. Maisie always says "I drive the bus!!" when we read it together. So I was not surprised that she really loved taking a turn behind the wheel!

Can't you just hear bus driver Maisie? "Exact change only, bud!"

crafty crayons

Maisie loves to color, and we've somehow picked up a ton of crayons here and there. This has also meant that we have a ton of broken little crayon ends and stubs around the house.

We decided to melt them down and make new crayons with them! I picked up this silicon mold pretty cheaply at the craft store. Maisie helped me put the little crayon pieces into the molds, and then we baked it for about 15 minutes at 200 degrees. When I took it out, the crayons were all soupy and they didn't look too hot when they dried... the undersides were all one color, and I worried that maybe they'd just be a mottled brown. But as you can see, when we popped them out, they looked great!

Maisie even tried to take a bite of the pink and red one before she realized that no, they really are crayons, not cookies. Oddly, they're not great for coloring, but they look neat. And I don't have little crayon odds and ends all over the house any longer!

A la peanut butter sandwiches!

Not too much new to report on over here, so this may be a somewhat boring post, albeit with cute pictures.

Today Maisie had peanut butter toast for lunch. She says she likes peanut butter sandwiches, but what she really likes is to lick the peanut butter off, leaving soggy toast behind.

Well, soggy toast, and peanut buttery noses!

And peanut buttery hair, and chins, and cheeks...

After lunch this afternoon, we went swimming at the YWCA, which Maisie loves. I love it too - it feels so good to get in the pool! We played in the water for a long time. When we got home, we were all pretty tired, so instead of cooking we had Chinese takeout for supper. Maisie enjoyed chicken fried rice, and got her first fortune cookie.

Her fortune was so apt, I took a picture to make sure that we remembered it. I think it's right on; wouldn't you agree?

sleepy

A quick post: we had a busy, fun, BUSY! weekend with play dates, birthday parties, and lots of good times. But it didn't leave a lot of time for picture-taking and blogging.

Even naps got short shrift. Maisie didn't blink for the camera - she's fast asleep here. On Saturday we ran to Target to pick up a birthday present for our friend who turned 3. Even though she'd had a nap already, and Target is maybe 10 minutes away, by the time we got there she was completely asleep! We tried to wake her up but she wasn't having it, so Aaron carried her the whole time. She woke up when we got home, and was pretty confused. "Target?" "No sweetie, we already went to Target. We're home now." "Waah! Target!!"

happy (almost) Valentine's day!

Maisie's daycare is having a Valentine's Day party tomorrow, so tonight we made cupcakes!

It was a pretty easy process as cupcakes go - we used a boxed mix, instead of making them from scratch. Aaron added the ingredients while Maisie mixed, then she put the paper cups in the muffin tin and I filled them. After they baked and cooled, I frosted them, and then she decorated them with sprinkles.

The box said it made 24 cupcakes but it was wrong, or else perhaps our cupcakes were larger than intended. Anyway, we only got 16 cupcakes! And we need 15 to send to daycare. We let Maisie eat the one extra, like the selfless, giving parents that we are. But there's still a lot of frosting left, and she's in bed, and Aaron is out of the house, spending time with friends tonight. Now I just need to find something to put it on...

Happy birthday Bryce!

Today we traveled up north to help celebrate the third birthday of my cousin Saara's little boy, Bryce!

Bryce's birthday party was held at the Lake Superior Zoo, in Duluth. We got there a little late, just as he was opening his presents. So Maisie stood and watched with my mom and with my uncle Bob, Bryce's grandpa.

After presents, there was cake, of course.

After all, what's a third birthday party without cake?

You might not be able to tell, but that's Dylan sitting next to Maisie! Among other things we missed by arriving late, we missed out on face painting. Dylan was a cheetah. (Clearly, right?)

After the party and a walk around the zoo on a beautiful day, we went to hang out with the family back at Saara and Brent's place just outside Cloquet. They have a beautiful house out in the country, where they have (among other things) chickens!

Maisie got to get her first truly farm-fresh egg. It lasted about 10 minutes in her possession, but that's okay, there were plenty more where that one came from!

After checking out the chickens and breaking her egg, it was time to play outside. She declined a snowmobile ride, but had fun building a snowman and decorating it with colored water, shoveling, and especially throwing snowballs.

Dylan, Bryce and Maisie all threw snowballs at my cousin Dave, in town from California with his wife Ali, who threw the snowballs back at them. I joined them outside to find Maisie yelling "I get you, Dave!!" and giggling like crazy. It was hilarious!

And in Maisie's case, Dave would usually just hand the snowballs back to her.

drumroll please...

It's a girl!

A poll, and two year old fashion

Maisie is convinced that we're going to have a boy. If you ask her about the baby in mommy's tummy, she says "I have a brother! Baby boy!!" She's so certain about this that our daycare provider asked me if we'd found out the baby's sex early, because Maisie had been talking all day about her baby brother.

Well, we haven't found out yet, but we're going to - Monday morning! So if you have a guess, leave it in the comments. Maisie, Dylan, and Aaron think boy; my sister thinks girl; I have no feeling about it one way or the other. I'll post the results tomorrow and we'll see who's a good guesser!

A few posts ago I showed you what happens when Maisie picks her hat. Well, recently she has started getting very vocal about her entire outfits.

Yesterday she insisted on wearing a shirt with polka dots in primary colors, along with pink and red striped pants and a hot pink hat that I made for her. We tried to convince her to wear a different shirt (she loves those pants), but no dice. She got a lot of smiles at the zoo.

Today, we went to the children's museum.

Maisie wore the same pants with her pumpkin hat and a red striped dress. Her outfit was only slightly less crazy looking.

I feel like if we really wanted to, we could get Maisie to wear less flamboyant outfits. Maybe we could buy all matching clothes, or something. But I feel like as long as she's dressed appropriately for the weather outside, we're okay. And honestly, I kind of love how colorful and bright her clothes are - I feel like it matches her personality!

Conversations with Maisie

Maisie's language skills are exploding, and every day she surprises us with new words in new combinations. Today, for instance, we were at my mom's house. We asked Maisie if she wanted to go home to play with our kitties (my mom's cats aren't too playful). She replied, "Go home play my kitty!" Okay! She's only recently begun stringing together five-word sentences so this was great!

She still comes out with some stumpers, though. Yesterday Aaron and I were in the living room, and Maisie was playing in her room. We heard some somewhat alarming thumpy noises. So like the lazy parents we are, instead of getting up to see what was going on, Aaron said "Maisie? What are you doing?" She said, "Door!" He said, "I need you to tell me what you're doing in a sentence." She replied, "Nine ten sandwich."

Uh, okay. (It turns out she was pulling books off her bookshelf...)

Unrelated cute pic of Maisie curling up to read one of those books. Because that story was too funny not to share, and every post needs a pic.

And, what's better on a snowy January day than curling up with a good book?

This is what happens...

when you let your toddler dress herself.

"Maisie, it's cold outside. You need to wear a hat. Go choose a hat, and then we can go." So, she chose a hat! My fault for not being more specific about what kind of a hat, I guess.

She did get lots of compliments on it, though!

A visit from a new friend

Earlier this week, Maisie and I had a visit from our new friend, Emi!

She and her mommy Liza came to visit us. Maisie was really good about sharing her toys with Em (we put away her special toys first, because she is two, after all... "good about sharing" is relative). She also loved that she and Emi both had pumpkin hats!

When Maisie had to go to bed, she gave both Liza and Emi hugs, and asked if Emi could lay down in her bed with her. Sorry sweetie... Emi has to stay with her mommy!

Tonight we had dinner with Bethany and baby Trixie. Maisie kept asking if we were seeing Emi again. It was very sweet to see what an impression Emi made on Maisie! Hopefully we'll see her again relatively soon.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! Wishing peace and good health for you and yours in 2009.

It was very cold outside today, and Maisie got a little stir-crazy staying inside the house. So she made what she called a "slide" in the living room out of a chair, pillow, and blanket.

She stood at the top, announced "I bounce!!," and jumped down, bouncing off the pillows onto the floor. Rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat.

At first it made me kind of nervous, to see her bouncing around like crazy like that!

But after she did it a few times, I realized that she wasn't going to hurt herself. It's a low chair, and a big pillow.

Bounce, bounce, bounce!

The other thing that I realized, is that we need to get out of the house more on these cold weekends.

Sledding!

Maisie was really excited on Christmas morning - Santa brought her a sled!

We have a little hill in our backyard that had a fresh coat of snow on it, so we bundled up and headed right out there! Maisie didn't want to go down the hill by herself, so I rode with her.

Unfortunately, it was pretty cold, so the snow was really powdery. It would've been great for skiing, but it wasn't too great for sledding. We went down the hill okay, but as soon as we hit the bottom of the hill, we sank right in to the snow.

Maisie and I both fell out of the sled into the snow! I thought it was pretty funny, but Maisie wasn't too amused.

She needed some hugs and reassurance before she was willing to get back on the sled! But she did, and she enjoyed it, briefly. It was pretty cold out. We were probably only out there for about 15 minutes.

When we went inside, we had some hot chocolate. And she really enjoyed that!

A Christmas surprise

Hi all! We've been so busy celebrating over here that we haven't had time to update. Maisie's had so many Christmases, I think she thinks we're celebrating Hannukah. We started with Aaron's family celebration in Iowa, continued with my family on Christmas Eve, and wrapped it up at home on Christmas day. Of course, we're going to holiday parties today and tomorrow too, so the celebrations just continue.

One of Maisie's favorite gifts has been a Play-Do set from Auntie Laura and Dylan that came with pieces she could use to punch out letters and numbers. When we were playing with it, I wrote a message to Aaron.

Ha ha! Just kidding! That's not really how I told him.

Really, though, if all goes well Maisie will be a big sister this summer! I am 14 weeks pregnant today, and so far everything looks good. Our due date is June 27, though we'll be scheduling a C section, so actual baby arrival will probably be a week or so beforehand. We don't yet know the sex, but we're definitely planning on finding out.

We've started talking to Maisie about being a big sister. I'm not showing (too much) yet, though, so it's pretty abstract. She seems sort of enthusiastic when we talk about it, but I'm not sure how much she really understands. I think we're all in for some big changes this summer!

Crafty interlude 2

Poor Maisie is sick with a tummy bug! You don't want to see pictures of that. So instead, some recent crochet projects.

My friend Sarah and I decided to crochet scarves for the Special Olympics this year - they are trying to get enough handmade scarves to give one to each athlete and person traveling with the athlete.

They specified the yarn to use, but aside from that it's up to you... knit/crochet, any size/pattern, just as long as it's handmade.

These were my contributions! The last one with the flowers looks better on than it does spread out on the back of the couch.

We sent the scarves off yesterday, with congrats and good luck wishes to the athletes.

Recently my friend Bethany (Trixie's mama) gave me a huge box of yarn odds & ends that were her mother's. She thought I might like them for little crocheted projects and toys.

I used a bunch of the yarns, and made Trixie a Socktopus! I got the idea from a knit pattern I saw recently. I don't knit, so I just had to fake it, but I am pretty happy with the result. It was very cute!

Think healthy thoughts for us, and hopefully we'll have some cute new Maisie pics for you soon!

A visit to Santa

On Saturday, we braved the crowds at the Mall of America to go visit Santa (and get some Christmas shopping done).

Maisie got all dressed up in her Christmas dress, and off we went. We'd been talking up Santa for a while, figuring it might freak her out a little bit. So we told her all about how nice he is, and will ask what she wants for Christmas.

(She has Christmas and birthdays kind of confused right now - I think it's the presents thing. So when you ask her anything about Christmas, she usually says "Two!!")

We waited in line and pointed out all the little kids sitting on Santa's lap. She started to get excited, but then when it was our turn - no dice. She wouldn't let me put her down - I couldn't have peeled her off my neck for love or money. So we ended up with an unexpected family picture! I'll try to scan it at work tomorrow so I can share it here. It turned out pretty well, considering that neither Aaron nor I planned on having our picture taken that day. We're not nearly as dressed up as Maisie.

After that whole thing, we all needed some lunch.

We went to the Rainforest Cafe, which Maisie appreciates because of all the fishtanks, and the huge animatronic gorillas. We were seated next to the rainy part of the rainforest, which she thought was pretty cool, as you can see.

After lunch and a bit of shopping, it was time to head for home.

We were walking back through the Nickelodeon-themed amusement park, when who (or what?) did we see but Uniqua from Backyardigans! Maisie loves, loves, loves that show, and Uniqua in particular. Maisie ran up at first, but when Uniqua tried to say hi, she got scared. I really thought it was going to be the Santa situation all over again.

But with some help from Aaron, Maisie pulled it together enough to say hi and get a high five from Uniqua. She talked about that the whole way home - we could hear her in the back seat, quietly saying "Nika. Me! Five! Dada Nika five!"

It was really sweet.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Aaron and I are really excited about Christmas this year, because Maisie is finally old enough to start understanding what's going on. She's not quite there yet, but she got the hang of birthdays really quickly, so I think she'll catch on fast.

She loves to see the beautiful lights outside when we're driving, and was thrilled when we said we could have actual lights! on a tree! in our house!!

She had a lot of fun helping us decorate the tree, and trying to keep the cats from knocking down the low-hanging ornaments that she put on. She didn't really understand that our Christmas stockings are decorative, not functional, but she'll figure that one out soon enough!

She also got to have her first encounter of the year with Santa! She, Dylan, my friend Brian and I went to the zoo, where we were surprised to see Santa. Dylan didn't want to say hi, but Maisie was intrigued by the gifts he was offering.

She was not interested in hanging around so I could get a picture, though! Oh well, thanks Santa for trying.