Walking Girl

The other night we took a walk to the ice cream store. OK, it was really to McDonald's to get ice cream, but it sounds so much more quaint that we walked to the ice cream store. Maggie dutifully rode in her stroller on the way there with her play fork in one hand and spoon in the other.

We sat outside at said ice cream store, ate our ice cream and enjoyed the beautiful weather. It all of a sudden occurred to Maggie "hey, I can walk now" and she walked down the sidewalk and turned the corner as if she was going home. We followed her...and followed her...and followed her and she in fact did walk all the way home. She was on a mission. She would not hold my hand, would not go in her stroller, would not let me carry her. She was determined to walk as far as her little legs would take her. All the while with her fork in one hand and spoon in the other.

I love the little Frankenstein walk. I'm always amazed when she gets somewhere without falling. I love the fact that she is my little shadow now. I will get up to bring something to the kitchen and turn around to find her at my feet. She doesn't want to be picked up, just wants to follow you where you are going. And I love the fact that she knows what she wants when she wants it. Last night, she started walking upstairs around 6:30 looking for me obviously trying to tell me it was time for her to go to bed. She walked to her books in her room, picked out the one she wanted, we sat down and read it, I sang to her and put her to bed with her fork and spoon.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if she has let go of the fork and spoon. When she woke up this morning she was still holding them and she carried them all the way to daycare. We'll have to see if they made it home.

Post Da Da Day Wrap Up

Maggie and I had a tough time this year coming up with a Father's Day gift for Erik. What do you get a Dad who doesn't want anything? (Worth noting - in sharp contrast, she has a Mom who wants everything - example...I want to plan a trip to Capri, Italy just so I can get some handmade sandals like Giada De Laurentiis').

So Father's Day gifts have to be a bit more on the creative side. And since her Dad is the creative one...this equation is not adding up. For the most part we did pretty well - if by pretty well you mean it's the thought that counts.

Since the thought of going to a place like Old Navy and buying Erik another blue and white striped button down shirt bored me to tears. SIDE NOTE: This is a running joke with us, if you look in his closet at the button down shirts, they are all variations of blues and whites in either checks, stripes or plaids - yet everytime he picks out a shirt and shows it to me for my opinion it is yet ANOTHER version of this same shirt! Each time I give him the "are you kidding me" look and he proceeds to explain how it is different than the 50 other blue and white shirts in that it is {insert pathetic explanation here}. He's worse than a woman.

So back to the topic at hand. I tried to think of what would be most meaningful to Erik without being cliche (no framed pictures, #1 Dad shirts - unless of course it had a blue and white pattern -, ties, etc.). And it occurred to me that for years he has been trying (jokingly I hope???) to get me to wear one of his high school soccer jerseys, jackets, etc. Of course I laugh hysterically at the thought of wearing one of these not only because they would actually be too SMALL for me (Erik was a 98 pound duckling) but...because...they...are...Slippery Rock High School jerseys. Let's let go of the past dear. So I thought - how cool would it be for him if Maggie wore one? So that was idea #1

Then, since he makes us dinner most nights I decided we would make him breakfast. The Norman Rockwell moment flashed before me - Daddy wakes up to Maggie and me singing "For he's a jolly good fellow" (ok - scratch that - I hate that song. Unless of course Fred and Barney are singing it then it's ok. It seems like a very popular Flintstone's song) while feeding him his breakfast like his little Greek goddesses. So that was idea #2

Card shopping for Erik is always a challenge because he hates Hallmark moments. Anything too sappy is frowned upon and I swear he even shakes the cards that I give him for money. So when I saw the 'record your own message' card that also sang "Hey Daddy-O" I thought it was the perfect mix of sentimental with a bit of a Pulp Fiction twist. Maggie would record her excited Da Da! sound and then the Daddy-O song would play. That was idea #3.

So let's recap the events of the day:

Maggie and I wake up and sneak downstairs to make breakfast. I failed to recognize at the time of planning that making breakfast with a 1 year old is like an ad for Bad Idea Jeans. You can't just put a 1 year old in her high chair with a plethora of puffs in front of her and not expect her to whine. So I ended up holding her the entire time while making breakfast. And I'm pretty sure there is not a chapter on Making Bacon While Holding Your Toddler in any child rearing book so I had to leave my crying child in the high chair while I did this. Between holding her in one arm most of the time and listening to her cry the rest, the French Toast came out burnt, the eggs were way too salty and the bacon just tasted off. Erik ate everything but the eggs...whatta guy.

STRIKE 1

After eating breakfast we go upstairs to get dressed and I put Maggie in one of Erik's old jerseys. But of course it is huge on her and it keeps falling off of her shoulders, she can't walk because she trips on it, she can't crawl because her arms get caught in it and she's just plain frustrated. So Daddy sees her for a brief second in it gives her the old "look at you" that Dad's say when they aren't really that interested, we change her and move on to the rest of the day.

STRIKE 2

The week prior to Father's Day I tried recording Maggie's message on the card over and over and over. Maggie recorded perfect DA DA's! at least 10 times but the &*$#ing card would not save the recording which required me to go BACK to the Hallmark store and exchange it for a working card. I swear, if there is a way to return something I will most certainly find it. So Sunday morning I am trying to get Maggie to record her greeting on the card without waking Daddy up. And of course each time I hit the record button she says "MA MA!"...NO Honey...say DA DA!! "MA MA?"...NO DA DA...MA MA? (you get the point). Finally I get one DA out of her after a 3 second silence and the recording is perfect (if by perfect you mean good enough). Daddy opens the card and hears silence and closes it. After I instructed him to leave it open for a while, he heard the finished product and loved it. The best part of the whole thing is Maggie's reaction to it. She'll say DA along with her recording and dance to Hey Daddy-O with the biggest smile on her face.

We nearly had a strike with this one but Maggie redeemed us with her excitement.

So we didn't strike out but we didn't have a home run either. Overall it was a nice day with a family picnic to top it all off (and somehow Maggie getting a trip to the toy store).

Happy Father's Day DA! Love, Maggie. Get used to many more fiasco-filled days ahead.

Monumental Achievements

It's official...I'm calling it...time of walk: 13 months, 2 weeks.


Although Maggie has been taking steps here and there for weeks now, this week she has changed her primary mode of transportation to walking. She has an interesting walking style, not unlike most toddlers, where she marches and is fairly unsteady, while holding her arms up by her head, huge grin on her face and screeching the entire time. It's as if she cannot contain her happiness and all she knows how to do is screech.

She is also talking more than ever too. I can't say I get a word of it since it sounds like she's speaking Mandarin but she'll say something and look at you like she's waiting for a response and unfortunately most of the time I got nothing. I do a lot of "yeah, that's right..." and so on. So in addition to Da Da, Ball and Buh-Bye, according Erik yesterday she said "Baby" when she saw the baby on her yogurt container and lost her mind and said "Ma Ma" everytime a picture of me came up on our digital frame. OK, maybe she didn't actually lose her mind, but she did have a reaction which is more than I've gotten from her in 13 months. I never thought a 1 year old could affect my self esteem so much.

I wish I could freeze these moments, I just can't imagine it getting any better than this. Maybe I'll just run around the house and screech to release my excitement.

She's a Dancer

About a month ago we noticed Maggie had an interesting dancing style. She'll hear a song with the right beat and she'll hold onto whatever is closest to her, crouch down and shake her booty. I have to say it's about the funniest thing I have ever seen.

The first time I saw her do it I looked at Erik and didn't need to say anything. He knew what I was thinking...Chris Rock said it best in his HBO special “You got to keep her off the pole!” I have to admit, as much as it makes me laugh, it's a little disturbing to see your one year old dancing that way.

Over the past month, she has perfected her dancing skills and seems to know the right dance for the right song. We were over Aunt Jen and Uncle Bruce's one night and a certain rap song came on and she did this shake her booty dance in perfect rhythm. At dinner the other night, Van Halen's 'Panama' came on and she shook her head back and forth like a rocker, I'm pretty sure while doing the "devil horns", and she could not contain herself when "Living on a Prayer" came on later that night. Last night she was lying on her stomach on the floor and a song came on that "moved" her. Rather than stand up and dance she continued to lay there just bobbing her head up and down and wiggling her body. She invented her own version of the worm I am very proud to say.

So as happy as I am that she seems to love music, I'm trying to think of good dancer role models and I'm having a hard time...Britney Spears? Paula Abdul? Cheryl Burke? Uhhh...no... Ellen Degeneres? That works.

Attachment issues

Ever since Babycenter told me that my baby may start becoming attached to a certain object I have become mildly obsessed with this. I don't know why, maybe because I had a blanket I could not sleep without when I was young, but I want Maggie to become attached to something.

When she was about 5 months old I thought it was her stuffed bunny so I brought it to daycare to put in her crib and hopefully help her with napping. I swore we would need to buy 2 more of them just in case one went missing but I soon found out that she did not care about that bunny, it ended up in her basket at daycare and she never missed it.

Everytime she holds onto a toy for more than a millisecond I hold out hope that this is the attachment I've been waiting for only to see her throw it in a basket in total disregard. I also used to think she had to have a certain kind of binky (mainly because they just looked nicer to me) but I have recently found out that she could care less what it looks like...it can be the Steelers binky, the tiny infant one, whatever, as long as she can suck on it, she's happy.

My child is not attached to anything. I should be happy with this right? That makes her low maintenance, an easy going, go with the flow type of kid right?

I have been conducting a little experiment over the last month though and I think I might have found an attachment. When I put her to sleep I put a green blanket in her crib that she likes to cuddle up to and usually have a hand-knitted blanket hanging over the side. Every morning the 2nd blanket ends up in her crib and she uses one as a pillow and one that she hugs. Now of course I'm stressed that we'll lose one of these blankets. We better find a back up pronto!

On a different subject, Maggie showed me who was boss at The Cheesecake Factory last night. She was holding her sippy cup precariously over the side of her high chair so I tried to take it from her to avoid her dropping it on the floor for the 87th time. She bellowed a blood curdling scream and ripped it from my hand (this scream is fairly new and is awful) so I let go. She then dropped the sippy cup on the floor and looks me right in the eye and says "UHHHH-OHHHH". Her future teenage years flashed right in front of my eyes in that moment.

Technicially speaking...

Like many couples these days, Erik and I had trouble getting pregnant. As in 8 years of trouble.

I clearly remember the day in 1998 when we were driving down Wadsworth Blvd in Denver and we said to each other "let's try to get pregnant" and we both agreed it was the best idea in the world and assumed that 9 months later we would be blessed with a bundle of joy. We told our family and friends - we're trying to have a baby!, I stopped drinking "just in case" I was pregnant, we did everything right...talk about naive. Month after month we discovered we were in fact NOT pregnant and saw all of our friends having 1, 2, 3 kids and we were still trying. We used to joke "you guys are going to have your 2nd before we have our 1st - ha ha ha!!!" Such jokesters we were. To make a very long story short since anyone who reads this blog knows the boring details, suffice it to say we had many procedures and tests in the 8 years of trying to conceive.

So imagine how shocked we were when, in 2006, I actually GOT and STAYED pregnant.

Now we are faced with the questions - do we tell Maggie how she came to be or just let it go since probably most of her friends as she gets older will have similar stories. Does she need to know that Mommy and Daddy weren't even in the same room when it happened? Does she need to know that she was sort of named after the Maggiano's bag that Daddy dropped off his sample in (TMI?)? Yes, we like to say it was after her Great Grandmother Margaret but secretly we know...

Considering my reason for writing this blog in the first place was so one day I could give it to Maggie as a gift that she would hopefully appreciate, I think I have made my decision to tell her where babies come from (in her case). In her version of the story the stork will be played by Dr. Cook. 'When Mommy and Daddy love each other very much' will be replaced with "Daddy went to the doctor's office very early in the morning and then had to get to work before Mommy showed up..." and the part where we talk about how surprised we were to find out we were pregnant will be described more like "Dr. Cook told us we could take a test on July 27th so of course we took one on July 25th..."

So her story is a little more technical than most but the end result is the same - in fact I believe it is a bit sweeter. Maggie is our little miracle baby. Yes, I complain about the fact that she has very little patience and gets frustrated very easily but for all we know, it was that feisty spirit of hers is how she blessed us with her presence 96 months later.

Girls Weekend

Marilou came into town from Denver to visit us for Memorial Day weekend. Maggie immediately reached out for her to pick her up as soon as she met her as if she thought she had finally found her real mother. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, Maggie looks more like Marilou than either Erik or me. It was the beginning of a good weekend since I didn't have to worry about getting Maggie to warm up to our guest.

As soon as Erik heard Marilou was coming to town he decided it was a girl's weekend and he needed to turn up the testosterone. So he drank beer and watched a movie in the basement Friday night, drank beer and watched hockey on Saturday and drank beer and went to the horse races on Sunday. I'm not sure why he doesn't want to hear about all of the gossip from our days of working together 5 years ago for the 10th time. Who wouldn't enjoy that?

On Saturday just the girls went to DC and had a nearly perfect day. Looking back we could have made it more perfect by letting Maggie play a little rather than getting her up from a nap, putting her in a carseat, putting her in a stroller and expecting her to be happy all day long. Poor thing was fed puffs all day long to keep her happy when all she really wanted to do was play in the grass. But regardless it was a beautiful day outside and Maggie was 90% good. The other 10% I would be unhappy too.

We were all sad to see Marilou leave on Sunday and Maggie cried real tears all the way home. Sorry honey, maybe you can go on Maury Povich someday to find out if she IS your mother. For now you're stuck with your brown hair/brown-eyed parents.