Get a move on

In addition to all of the holiday festivities this month, Maisie has been a busy girl. She's learning new skills every day. Maisie has quickly moved from the army crawl you saw on video a week or two back to full on hands and knees crawling. Here's our mover and shaker:

And from there has progressed to learning how to navigate the two stairs between our den and kitchen. She's gotten pretty good going up, but hasn't quite figured out going down (and still gives mom and dad a heart attack when she decides to stop mid way and sit up!)

Her new-found mobility has required some changes on our part as well. Getting ready for work in the morning used to be easy...just put Maisie in the middle of our bed with a couple of toys and you were good to go. No longer - she'd be off the bed in no time. But, we've found a solution. Check out our upstairs "playpen":

Finally, Maisie has perfected the art of standing up in her crib. If she doesn't want to go to sleep, you put her down and before you can even get out of the room shes up at the rail crying. Luckily this doesn't happen too often. A nice perk of this development is that its really fun to be greeted by her smiling face in the mornings.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

I know what you're thinking, it will snow in Houston when pigs fly....well OINK OINK!

Of course, since this a once every 3-4 years event, we had to get out and document it (particularly, since it was Maisie's first snow) I know all our friends in the cold, cold north will laugh at the few flakes you see in our hair and on our coats. But for Houston this was big news - it actually accumulated on roofs and lawns!

For this special occasion, we had to pull out the "heavy" clothes for Maisie. Yay fleece! (and thanks to Meredith for the awesome skullcap!)

Now that we're all bundled up, here we are out in snow...

Naughty or nice?

Judging by the number of presents, it's fair to say that Santa (or I should say ALL of Maisie's grandparents, aunts and uncles) think she has been a very good girl this year! We feel very lucky to have had such a wonderful first Christmas with her.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Once she was on the mend from the ear infection, we celebrated at Grandma Lois' house. Maisie had a blast with all of her new toys. Here she is in her new hat. :)

In particular she's a big fan of her "big girl" Disney princess chair...and can't wait bring it to watch Dad at some lacrosse games next season.
Then we went out to Conroe to celebrate with PaPa and Grammy.

Maisie seems to have her priorities in order - who needs to open presents when you can climb on them??

But when she finally started opening presents, she obviously enjoyed it...in fact, she wanted to savor every bit of them, and seemed especially fond of eating the wrapping paper. Here she is just before a two-fisted bite.

Merry Christmas to all!!!

Under the weather

Its bound to happen to every baby at some point, but we were hoping to put it off as long as possible. I guess eight months is a pretty good run before getting sick for the first time.

We knew something was wrong on Tuesday night when she cried and cried and didn't want to go to sleep. On Wednesday Maisie woke up with a fever and you could just tell she didn't feel well. We got her into the doctor's office who promptly confirmed our guess that she had an ear infection. And right in time for Christmas eve, poor thing.

We've got her on antibiotics and Tylenol and now, 2 days later, she's almost back to her normal happy self. As you can see from the pictures below, she just felt awful.

Daddy is pouting on Maisie's behalf

All wrapped up with mom and watching daddy grill (not exactly your typical Christmas eve dinner, but you make do)


Up next - the Christmas post!

Happy Chanukah!!

Well, the count down of "first" holidays continues...this time its Chanukah!

Maisie has celebrated in style. On the first night, we had our friends Mitch and Dawn and 4 month old Sophie over. We fried up some laktes (including a minor incident where the paper towels soaking up the oil caught on fire) and lit the candles.


On the second night, Maisie helped mom light the candles.

Maisie also opened her first present. What an adventure that was...first she had to taste the card, then try to eat the bow, and finally rip the paper.
Of course, Mandy had to get in on the action too...
But it was all worth it - when she got to her first new toy this holiday season. (Thank you Aunt Jeri!)

Happy Chanukah to all!

Tupperware and army crawls

Maisie clearly has a toy of choice these days, and it's....Tupperware! Pots and pans run a close 2nd, in case you were wondering.

Here she is in action, navigating her way across the living room floor.

Sorry for the poor video quality - I took this with my cell phone.

--Brian

Maisie and Santa

For my first post on this blog, I present Maisie and Santa!

Just so everyone knows, Michele did all of the actual work here - she took Maisie to her work holiday party last weekend while I was in class, and got her to pose for this picture. Apparently Maisie was fascinated with Santa's beard, which is why he's holding her hand, to keep her from grabbing it.

But, I also need to let everyone know that Michele is in Napa this weekend with her girlfriends from business school, drinking wine and reliving her pre-motherhood glory days. No, I'm not jealous at all. ;)

By the way - this guy is the coolest Santa ever. Check out his expression - he's obviously done this a time or two...

Mad Maisie

Maisie is usually so good-natured, people often say they've never seen her cry. We rush to assure them that when she gets mad - she definitely lets us know it. (I'm not sure why exactly people want to see a baby cry, but they do. We parents, on the other hand, spend all day trying to avoid it) Well, here is proof - Maisie gets mad and she crys...

On Thanksgiving day, there was so much activity and so many people around, that Maisie didn't want to take a nap. Her patient parents let her cry for a bit hoping she'd tire out and fall asleep, but she was having nothing to do with it. So instead her Pop decided to take her for a walk. As you can tell from this picture - she's pissed ;) But, nothing that a walk in the stroller can't fix.

Busy Month

November has been a busy month, filled with lots of fun activities and many firsts and new skills for Maisie. Since my last posting Maisie has quickly moved from sitting up on her own, to crawling (well army style crawling anyway), to getting to a seated position on her own. All of this has been very exciting, but has brought with it a whole new set of challenges (e.g. you can't leave her in one place and expect her to be there when you look back 2 seconds later, she's chasing poor Mandy around the living room, and now everything in her line of sight is a toy including the stereo equipment and computer cables).

We've also had a busy month of visits with our families with Thanksgiving and all its accompanying celebrations. Maisie had her share of first Thanksgiving meals, including 3 Turkey dinners. She loved getting to see all of her family including grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.




Lots more pictures available here:

November 2008

Happy Halloween!

Of course no baby's blog would be complete without the gratuitously cute 1st Halloween costume photos. So, we won't deprive you. Originally I thought I was going to have to get a costume for the sole purpose of taking pictures of Maisie in it. Luckily, my playgroup came to the rescue and had a Halloween dress-up playgroup, so Maisie actually got to wear her costume twice.

And, drumroll please....here she is, our Lady Bug :)

And here is a link to all of the rest of the October photos:

October 2008

6 months

How time flies...It seems like just yesterday we were at the hospital, but Maisie is already 6 months old. She went in for her check up this week and passed with flying colors (not that there is much to pass, but she is healthy and that's all that matters).

Vital statistics:

Height 26.5 inches 75-90 percentile

Weight 16 lbs, 15 oz, 75th percentile

A few highlights from recent weeks:

Maisie is getting better at sitting up (I think I already sent this picture to practically everyone I know because I just thought it was way too cute)

Maisie hanging with Dad and PawPaw (do you see the resemblance? we are going to have to re-run that poll of who she looks like!)

MMM....water. Maisie has decided that drinking from everyone's water (or beverage of choice) glass if fun. But she's not very good at it and generally gets it everywhere.

Maisie and Nanna deep in conversation....they must be pondering the mysteries of the universe together..

Maisie and Grandma Lois...

Ike

For those of you who haven't heard, we had a BIG hurricane here in Houston. Ike came through Friday, September 12th. So, at just over 5 months old, Maisie has experienced her first hurricane. I don't think she'll remember much, especially since she slept through the entire thing! Brian and I were up on and off all night listening to the 80+ mph winds blow. We, like 95% of Houstonians, lost electricity. But, Maisie didn't seem to mind the lack of air-conditioning quite as much as we did. After 2 days without power, we rode out the next few days at Brian's mom's house. Some of those pictures are below:

"Auntie Brooke there's a hurricane coming!" Waiting for Ike

Hanging at Grandma Lois', waiting for our power to come back on
MMmmmm, water bottles, one of my favorite toys:

Making funny faces with mom:

We were some of the lucky ones - we got our power back after 4 days. Its now almost 2 weeks later and we have many friends who still don't have power. We also sustained some cosmetic damage to our house from a downed limb from our neighbors tree. Again we were lucky, since we have friends with trees through their roofs.

In other news, Maisie continues reaching new milestones. She can now move around quite a bit and turn over. She doesn't do it for us very often, but when I go to get her from her crib she is often in a completely different place than where I put her down - sometimes sleeping on her stomach instead of her back. She is also SOOOO close to sitting up by herself. She can balance in the sitting position for about 10 seconds before falling over, and tonight she even pulled herself up from a reclined position into a sitting position. It won't be long.
Finally, Maisie has had her first taste of real food. So far she's had rice cereal, apples, and sweet potatos. When we get a chance we'll edit and post her first bites.

Back in "The Port"

Maisie has already had a busy September and we are only 1 week in.

Possibly the biggest news is that Maisie has a new caregiver. Her nanny, Miriam, started 2 weeks ago. We are SOOOO lucky to have found Miriam - she's been a nanny for 18 years and is just great with Maisie. Many of you have heard the horrors of our problems getting Maisie to take a bottle. Well, Miriam has persevered and now has her taking 3 bottles - almost 20 oz a day. Its nice knowing that when I go back to work (ahhh! went to the office for the first time today) that Maisie is in good hands.

Here are Maisie and Miriam:


In addition, we have made another pilgrimage to Shreveport. This time for Aunt Julie's and Uncle Ken's wedding reception. Maisie continues to be a trooper in the car - sleeping for well over half the trip.

Here is Maisie and Dad all dressed up for the party:

And not so dressed up with Mom on the couch: