three quarters

today, maggie is three quarters of a year old.

she's a tiny (and by tiny, i mean not so tiny) little beast. which is why i've come to lovingly call her "maggie beast" whenever i see fit. 

she weighs 22 pounds, and is 27 inches long. short and fat, just like her brother was. only she's not slowing down. she's at the ninety ninth percentile for weight for height, and in danger of jumping right off the chart. 

and we aren't surprised because girl eats all day long. she wakes up and has some bottle, then a yogurt, and then another bottle before her nap, and then wakes up and has lunch, and finishes off with another bottle before her nap, and then wakes up and has a snack, and then dinner, and then finishes off the day with another bottle, with another bottle or two thrown in during the night. add on top of that the food she sneaks from tennyson's plate, and you can see why we aren't surprised we've got a chunk on our hands.

she's an active girl. she gets into just about everything. her favorite thing to do is to try to steal whatever toy tennyson is playing with. when that doesn't work out in her favor, she usually pitches a fit, and then runs off to play with the nearest vent. girl loves playing with vents. she's just started pulling up to stand on our furniture, and she's been trying to figure out how to cruise along, but it isn't working so well. usually she just tips over.

she's got six teeth now, in the oddest locations. three on bottom, three on top. the two middle for each, and then on the top, she's got the one to the right of middle, and on the bottom she has the one to the left of middle. they've come in the strangest order as well. she had three on bottom before any on top broke through, and then she broke through one of the middle and the one on the side on top before she got the other middle tooth. she just marches to the beat of her own drum.

and boy, does she ever light up my life. i call her my sidekick a lot, because that's exactly what she is. she likes to follow me around, and she likes me to hold her, but most the time she'll come around, ask me to hold her, and then about thirty seconds later, she'll want down and she'll disappear to play. and then she'll repeat the whole process. it's like she comes in to check in, make sure i know she still loves me, makes sure i don't need anything, and then when she's sure i'm doing okay, she's off again. 

we like her. i think we'll keep her around.

things

just things.
little things that occupy our days.

like the things tennyson loves most: mater and lightning mcqueen.

and the silly things these two do together. 

the everythings this girl eats.

and the occasional times they sleep at the same time so i can do my own things.

things can get a little messy around here.

and things don't always go our way.

all i know is i sure am glad i have these two little things around.

they make the gloomy winter days 

just a lot a bit brighter.

Resort

I feel like at the rate I'm going, I might finally be finished blogging our Christmas stuff by February.

But nonetheless, here is some more Christmas festivity.

Like I said previously, Mike's mom surprised us all with a three day stay at a resort in the mountains of New Hampshire. The location was absolutely fabulous!! And it just so happened that the day after we got there, we had a massive snowstorm, and it was a perfect time to be there.

The place was wonderful. There was a movie theater (where Tennyson ate his body weight in popcorn) and there was giant gingerbread house. Made out of real gingerbread. I always got a good laugh when Tennyson went to play at it, because looking at the outside, you could tell just how high the kids could reach, because all the candies up to a certain point were missing.

The on site restaurant had some wonderful food, and Maggie was a huge fan of the bread. It was whole grain, and we let her chow down for three days, and then were punished every diaper change after that.

For the most part, we all just hung out. We watched a couple movies, we played some pool and air hockey, we played games in our hotel rooms. One day we went out to play in the snow.

It was Tennyson's nightmare.

He didn't stop screaming the entire time we were outside. Which wasn't long because he refused to put gloves on his hands, and we didn't want him to die of frostbite while learning to enjoy the snow. Poor kid. The rest of the vacation he would look outside and turn around to us saying, quite distressed, "uh oh! the snow!"

But Maggie had an okay time.

She reminded me of A Christmas Story. You know, "I can't put down my arms!" and all that.

And before we brought the screaming child back inside, Mike and his brother had some good runs down the hill on the tubes.

It was a nice three days. And I'll admit that I still mourn the loss of the beds. I wanted so desperately to look at the brand of sheets and blankets they had, but I didn't, and now my twenty dollar JC Penny sheets and ten dollar IKEA duvet just aren't cutting it for me. I guess I'll just have to go back some day.

Eight Months

Maggie Beast is 8 months old today.

And I call her a beast in the most loving, and most sincere way.

She's into everything lately. She sure keeps us on our toes.

I feel like Tennyson didn't prepare us enough for what was to come. Like, if his job was to slowly prep us for this, he failed miserably. We were much too content with our baby that never put anything in his mouth, or made a mess when he ate/played and we aren't sure what to do with his polar opposite.

It is because she's a Fiske. I'm not ready to raise a Fiske. They are all trouble makers, the lot of them.

What she's been up to lately:

-Crawling. Hence, the getting into everything.

-Trying to pull up to stand. This is a recent development, and has become somewhat of an obsession. We hear a lot of crying when she can't pull up. So we hear a lot of crying.

-Working on getting teeth #3 and #4. We are patiently waiting for them to break through. They are days away.

-Eating everything. Food, paper, plastic, whatever is laying around. She's not picky. One day we found a Beanie Baby tag in her diaper. We aren't over-exaggerating when we say everything.

-Chunking up. Still. Our at home scale puts her somewhere between 22 and 24 pounds. Depending on the day and how much she's eaten. We've started putting her in 18 month tops. Girl needs to slow down.

-Waving and clapping. Much to my joy.

-Almost sleeping through the night. Depending on teeth and how much she's eaten.

-Learning how to use a sippy cup.

-Chasing Tennyson around the house. We hear a lot of "No, Gigi!" because she's only ever interested in playing with the exact same toy he is playing with. In her defense, it's because he is typically playing with the iPad, or cars that make a lot of noise.

She still has a smile that could kill you, and cheeks that I just want to gobble up in one sitting. Her hair is starting to come in finally, and it's the perfect little shade of dirty blonde. Her eyes have become stunningly blue, and paired with her naturally rosy cheeks, she is just gorgeous. We love having her around.

christmas

(disclaimer: there are a lot more pictures to add here, and i will get around to adding them eventually. but if i don't post this before my pictures are up, it will be february before you even hear about my christmas. so for now, enjoy reading. and know that if you check back, eventually there will be pictures. although i can't guarantee how fast.)

christmas this year was fun. and eventful.

we spent it with mike's parents and siblings, and it was a blast to have everyone together.

christmas eve, we woke up early in the morning and got in a little bit of last last minute shopping.

and then we met all mike's siblings for some candlepin bowling. it's one of the greatest things about new hampshire, and one of my favorite things to do with tennyson at this point in life. i only wish we had one closer to us.

and then it was time to head to mike's parent's house for some christmas eve dinner. we did our traditional poppers, and all donned our hats for the meal. it was delicious. we all performed magic tricks for each other after the meal that we had gotten in our poppers. a couple of them were cool. the rest, well, they weren't as cool.

unfortunately, tennyson was a bit overwhelmed with all the commotion and went on a hunger strike for any and all food that wasn't mcdonalds. c'est la vie. he enjoyed his christmas eve dinner of french fries while watching his favorite movie. all in all, not a bad deal for him.

once the kids were in bed, we watched some old family movies that his brother pulled out the night before, and some of them moved us to tears (from laughing so hard).

around midnight, we woke the kids up to move them back to our hotel room. when we got to our room, tennyson seemed to know what was looming on the horizon, because he didn't want to go back to sleep. he saw mike stash the stockings under the tv and perked right up out of his bed and started crying because he wanted the "stuck".

luckily, he was tired enough that he quit the fight easily and went back to sleep.

and in the morning, we all got our "stuck".

then we got ready and headed back to grammy's house for some breakfast and to hang out until we opened presents that afternoon. and boy, was it hard for tennyson to wait until the afternoon.

and like usual, our kids were spoiled.

after presents were done, we all headed up north into the mountains for a special dinner and three day stay at a resort. but that's another post for another time.