First Friends

This is Tennyson and his very first friend, Emma. They were born only a few days apart.

They met when Emma was still in the hospital. You can tell how excited Tennyson was to meet his first friend. He could barely contain his joy. Emma told us that she remembers when he came to visit in the hospital. You just don't forget things like that, I guess.

And this is the last play date we had with them before we all left Utah and had to go our separate ways for graduate school.

We were sad we weren't going to be able to see them as often. We were only going to be able to see them when we both happened to be in the same place at the same time. We are lucky that this happens occasionally.

Like Tennyson's first Christmas, when we were all visiting home during the same time. It was the first time they really were old enough to play together.

It's been a while since we've seen them. We've just missed each other a few times, and we were very excited that we were both going to be around when I made a trip out to New Hampshire.

Tennyson and his first friend picked up right where they left off.

At one point, they both found matching bears and sat down together to watch a movie. 

Later, they tried to give the yellow bear a bath. And at one point they ran in the room holding a spoke from the banister. We tried to keep them outside for a bit to try to save the house from total destruction. But it was still soggy from all the rain, and Tennyson was being a ball hog.

So we went back inside, and they went back to jumping off furniture.

The two had so much fun together.

And it was sad to say goodbye.

But they will be able to play together again in just a few short months.

We love friends. And there isn't anything quite as sweet as first friends.

Five Months

Another month has gone by, and Maggie has grown up even more.

She's reaching the age where her personality is really starting to come out, and I love watching her grow. 

She's turning into a little spit fire. We are going to be in trouble when she gets older. She has started scooting forward in the past month, and I get the feeling that soon it is going to be impossible to get her to stay put. She screams to get your attention. Then once she has it, she just giggles. When she gets excited, her legs and arms start pumping around at a million miles an hour, and she gets upset when she occasionally smacks herself right in the face.

She is also quite the little diva at this point. She refuses to let anyone but her mom feed her, although she does seem to be getting better at letting others take over. I hope that soon she'll be happy no matter who is handing her the bottle. She has to sleep with a binky and her bunny. She prefers not being held while she is eating. She likes to tell us exactly what position she wants to be in. Her favorite position is on her belly; her least favorite position is sitting up.

She has started showing a real interest in food lately. If I am holding her and eating at the same time, I have to constantly stop her from stealing whatever it is I have. We've started handing her bits of food to experiment with and just pulled out the high chair the other day. She still gets 100% of her meals from mom, but she is having a blast playing around with the food we give her.

She is a chunk right now. I didn't think it was possible, but she's even more of a roly poly than her brother ever was. I don't think she could fit another roll onto that body of hers if she tried. She is in size 4 diapers and is in her 9 month clothes. We've been stocking up on 12 month clothes lately because I don't think it is going to be long until we have to push her up into yet another size.

Maggie likes toys that crinkle. She loves her exersaucers (something her brother never got into, and in retrospect, I really wish he would have, because they make life amazingly easier). She adores her brother, and he gets more giggles out of her than any of us do.

I can't believe in one more month, she'll have been with us for half a year. I can't imagine life without her. Or life without her smiles.

Appa

(confession: i actually wrote this post a long time ago. but apparently instead of publishing it, i saved it as a draft. the kids have sucked my brain away.)

A couple weeks ago, Mike's dad came out to visit. 

It was wonderful having him around. Tennyson took to him so quick, and woke up every morning asking to see Appa. 

We tried to go on an outing once a day. 

Not anything too big or exciting. Just something around town.

The zoo was a natural choice. 

It's one of Tennyson's favorite places in the whole wide world.

(i'm obsessed with this picture.)

(he's signing bird.)

We took the afternoon Mike was home (yes, "the", he's a busy guy) to go to the cider mill. They don't have apple picking this year, so they were giving train rides around the orchard instead.

Tennyson would have loved to pick apples. Have I ever mentioned that every single apple we bring into this house is bruised up pretty bad because they are Tennyson's favorite toys? Yeah. He's quirky like that.

And to be honest, we couldn't be that sad that there was no apple picking, because we really just go there for the cider and donuts anyway. I love fall in Michigan.

(he climbed up this giant dirt hill and then got stuck because he was too scared to go back down.)

(he's signing "maggie" because he wanted her off the bench.)

But I think the train ride was a fair alternative. He seemed to enjoy throwing the hay onto Appa. And riding the "choo choo".

We also spent some time showing Mike's dad around town. We went to the local farmer's market, to a cool pet store, and brought him some food from our favorite chinese place.

It was a lot of fun having him around. We wish we got to see the Fiske side more often. 

Four Months

It's crazy how time can go so fast and so slow at the same time.

Like, somehow I can't believe she is already four months old.

But it is strange to try to remember life without her.

Our MJ is chunking out quite nicely. We weighed her on a veggie scale at the farmer's market the other day and she is just over 16 pounds. We just started putting her in her 6-9 month clothes because her 3-6 were getting just a tiny bit tight.

Recently, she's really fallen in love with her bunny, Mr. Darcy. I'm trying to wean her off the swaddle. It isn't working very well, and I've lost so much sleep I'm about ready to wrap her up again, but she sure does love holding her little bunny to go to sleep. I don't blame her. He really is the cuddliest bunny around.

She's been munching on solid foods lately, too. You already saw she had pear. The other night I put some banana in a mesh feeder and she devoured it. So far, I'm really liking baby-led weaning, and I don't miss the stress or the mess of purees.

(she looks so angry!)

Miss Maggie can now sit on her own for a couple seconds at a time.

She still loves us to hold her so she can stand.

She's playing with her toys.

She's absolutely in love with being on her tummy.

She's still a good napper, and an okay sleeper at night (although with this business about the swaddle, that's kind of gone to the wind lately).

She's not a fan of baths.
She is a fan of being naked.

I love this age, because you can really start to guess what kind of kid they are going to turn out to be. But at the same time, you know that it is completely a guess, and they'll still surprise you in the long run. Like we knew Tennyson would be a quirky one, but even we couldn't guess just how quirky he'd get.

Right now, we are guessing she is going to be a little fireball. And she is going to run us ragged. She has so much energy balled up in that little four month body of hers, I can only imagine what's going to happen when she turns two. Let's just pray we are wrong.

First Foods

This week, Maggie got to eat her first real food.

We were at the farmer's market on Wednesday night, and I decided it'd be fun to give her a pear. So we bought one, and on Sunday, she got to try it.

She was enthusiastic about the venture.

And she was hungry.

I'm basically doing my own version of baby-led weaning with her, something I ended up stumbling upon after Tennyson rejected all purees, and fell in love with, which means I didn't need to puree the pear. I just gave it to her to gum on as a sample. We did have a bit mashed up for her to try, but since she still hasn't lost her tongue thrust reflex, it just came right back out of her mouth. 

(I love those baby blues.)

Maggie was actually a big fan of the pear. But also a little unsure of what in the world it was. But also really enjoying it. But also wondering why it wasn't milk. The faces kids make when first trying out foods have to be some of my favorites. Have you ever watched YouTube videos of babies trying lemons for the first time? If you haven't, you should.

Eventually, she just wanted to grab it and shove it all in her mouth. Which is pretty much what she wants to do with anything and everything.

But I wouldn't let her do it by herself. I'm such a mean mom. I know it. One day, I'll invest in a mesh feeder, and she can gnaw on food to her heart's content. But I don't have one right now, and I'm not brushed up on my infant Heimlich, and I'd prefer to not have a choking baby. Just a personal preference.

For some reason, she didn't understand that. And she was just sad when we took the food away. Like, extremely sad.

But also extremely cute. Sometimes you just have to snap pictures of sad babies instead of comforting them.