Catching up...

So it has been a bit since last post.  No excuses, just busy and little free time.  These pictures may be alittle out of order, but help explain all of the fun and random things that have been keeping this crew busy.

We got to celebrate my cousin Brian's son, Kane's, birthday with a fun party.  Not only was my friend Kimmy in town, but the weather was perfect for outside fun with family and friends.  Maeve was in her glory with new toy and plenty of people/kids to watch.  Brian & Jeanne have a great water table (which is why Maeve is stripped down to diaper in pics) and toy car that Maeve just LOVED!  I already have decided to buy a water table soon for her birthday present.  Even though her bday isn't until late August, she really just loved it and those two toys kept her entertained for a solid 3 hours.  I'm sold.   She had me amazed as she was able to move herself around the yard with her feet.  She is close to walking, but still... she easily scooted the car and herself at least 10 - 15 feet around the yard.  Love that silly smile - that's usually the smile I'm greeted with when I get home from work or pick her up at daycare.

 Maeve and her cousin Brady being silly.  They are about 7 months apart so kind of a big difference now in terms of playing together, but it won't be long before hopefully they are good buds like Brian & I were/are

  

 A couple people have asked me recently how daycare is going so I'll provide alittle update.  I can only speak to my experience and completely realize everyone has a different story.  So far, we are both really happy with our daycare.  There isn't a day that goes by that my heart breaks a little bit that I miss out on a large part of her day, but I realize working is my choice and what I do for myself and my family.  Right now the pros outweigh the cons yet I'll continue to reassess.  Maeve seriously loves school though which makes it much easier on us!  It was tough to tell in the beginning, but now that she is so expressive, I can tell how excited she gets when I'm getting her out of the car after we arrive in the morning.  She lights up once we are outside her door and she can peak through the window and usually see one of her teachers or kids in her class.  At the end of they day, I can usually hear her babbling away with one of her teachers when I approach the door and she just lights up when she sees me.  I think it's wonderful that they provide a notebook on her day with a little write-up and keeping me up to date on her naps, eating schedule, and even diaper changes.  All of the teachers are willing to answer questions and I love to see what the kids in her class are doing at certain ages.  It helps to prepare me for what's to come.  There are 3 kids that are within 2 months of Maeve.  Also, to make up for my lack of craftiness, her teachers do such fun projects with her on a daily/weeklly.  They use paint, bubbles, and a water table on hot days.  They take walks on every possible day and stay active by climbing through a tunnel.  There is always some music on and I love that all of the teachers know her name, even from other classrooms.  One particularly nice, young teacher calls her Maevealicious, which I think it super cute.  Here was the adorable gift they made for all of the dads for Father's Day... a glass beer mug with Maeve's picture on it (they even picked one with her hair styled as a mohawk because they know how much Ryan likes it that way).  It's filled with tissue paper, butterscotch candies, and cotton balls to make it look like beer.  So cute and unexpected.  In terms of illnesses, I don't feel like Maeve's sick all of the time.  She has gotten some colds, but no fevers so far, so thankful for that!  

As I think I've mentioned previously, my girlfriend from work, Stephanie, is super talented and crafty.  For my baby shower, she did two onesies with a green flag and  MTB.  If you know Stephanie, she bleeds M&T green.  Maeve finally fits in her onesies so I wanted to show off Stephanie's great work. 

 This past weekend, we had some visitors and running around to do.  Maeve is still taking about 2 naps a day, with sometimes a cat nap on her way home from school.  However on Saturday, she just refused to take a morning nap.  My friend Jeanne and Brady were out for a walk by the house right before lunch so we were hanging out with them and I could tell Maeve was finally getting tired.  So once they left we came in to eat and the girl was literally falling asleep sitting up in her chair while eating.  So we finished lunch early and I went to change her diaper quickly and put her up to bed and this is her passed out on floor.  She's NEVER done this before, but it was super cute.  No worries I did take her to her bed and didn't just leave her on the floor.

 Random sleepy-eyed picture from some morning before work.  She was eating some raspberries and oatmeal that morning.  We are continuing to experiment with food and she's doing great so far with trying new stuff and eating on her own with her hands.  Only things so far she's been avoiding have been a black bean/corn/zucchini mix and a chicken coconut curry so stronger flavors may been too strong for now.  She has formed a strong LOVE of cheese (not surprising since she is my daughter).  Tonight she ate almost an entire mozzarella cheese stick, about a 1/4 of a diced avocado, and some chicken soup stage 3 food. 

 Ahh, so we had a slug problem.  Slugs you ask?  Yes - I'll talk about something else other than my kid and food.  I may have mentioned this would be a random blog.  So Ryan is really doing a great job with our landscaping, however he had been noticing some holes in the leaves of a couple plants.  Based on his mom's (our resident gardening consultant) expertise we realized we had a slug problem.  Once you start look in the mulch, I could see a bunch of them hiding under the leaves.  We used an upside down frisbee filled with some beer (none of the good stuff of course!) and placed in the beds.  As you can see below, we've been able to catch about 100 slugs over a couple nights.  The smell or sugars in the beer attract the slugs and they just climb right in and drown themselves.  So gross looking, but the beer works so easy solution to a random problem.  You can see above the frisbee two more guys climbing over to it.

Last week at work I had an offsite with my department where we did a wine tour in the Lockport, NY area.  I never realized how many cute vineyards are so close to us.  Each place was so unique, ranging from country quaint feel to modern, upscale, "you'd think you were in Napa".  I was mixed on the wine, as some places were great, others not so much, but it really was a fun thing to do for a couple hours.  We stopped at 5 wineries to do some tastings.  I bought wine from 3 of the 5 based on the tastings.  Many specialize in sweet wines that I'm not a huge fan of, but I was able to try to drier red wines that really were good. It was a beautful day for alittle wine.

 Back to my kid... Our normal weekends include walks to Tim Hortons for coffee on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings.  We've had some beautiful weather lately so here is our big girl at the start of a walk. She's usually so quiet as she's taking everything in and too busy following every car and person that passes her by and watching all the trees and birds and squirrals. 

  Ryan usually pushes, which just provides more opportunities for me to snap pictures.   This was on our way home... alittle tuckered out. The day of the walk we made it down to the farmers market in the village for first time this year.  I wanted to buy a couple more herbs and check the produce.

We ended up buying some beets, one of Ryan's favorites.  I don't buy them that often because I don't eat them myself and they take alittle longer than just throwing together a salad or steaming some broccoli.  I cooked both the beets (boiled and then cooled and sliced) and the beet greens (sauteed with garlic, red pepper, onion, etc).  I hope to have a couple more trips to farmers market this summer and experiment some more!

Last pic for today... what a ham!!