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...