Hula Maggie

When I was pregnant with Maggie one of my best friends, Christin, went to Hawaii. She bought a little hula outfit for her and it's finally about the right size for her. Today I was putting something away and rediscovered it, so of course we had to try it on. It was pretty darn funny if you ask me. The first shot here doesn't show much, obviously, but we always like photos that show her strawberry-blonde curls (and the hibiscus flower clip in her hair is great, too).



She's doing a little hula dancing. We did not teach her this, I promise! She came up with it on her own.
She LOVES to walk around in our shoes. It doesn't matter if they're Grant's, and huge, or mine, with a heel. Here she's wearing a pair of my sandals with heels.

Another picture showing off her curls.Snuggling...and more curls. What can I say? We love them!
Tonight we were driving home from our busy day out and decided to drive through Starbucks for some coffee. This is a little embarassing, but should be no surprise to those of you who know us well, but Maggie can differentiate between a coffee and an iced latte (she can say iced latte!). We let her have a little sip every now and then. Anyway, as we were driving away she said, "Please! Sip coffee!" and we told her no because we were driving. So she said, "I NEED sip!" We cracked up...but she still didn't get any.

Food Miscellany

Okay, every now and then (I think this is the second time) I ask you to humor me as I write not about Maggie, but just about what's on my mind. Right now it's food.

For some reason today everything I'm reading and thinking about is food! First I wanted to share two great websites with you that are related to healthy living. I know many of you are health-conscious so I think you'll appreciate these. The first website, found here, may seem like it's only for women but it's not! It's called Hungry Girl and it's got lots of tips and information on healthy eating, but it's in a really fun, hip format so you don't bore yourself to tears. You can also sign up for an e-mail newsletter. This site's articles are sometimes used by Yahoo, so if you need someone else's praise besides mine, well, there you go!

The second website is one of my new favorites. It's called Map My Run and can be found by clicking here. You simply type in your zip code, a map pops up, and you plot a starting point, an ending point, and any other points in between, and it tells you how long your route is. It's very user friendly and helped me map out a new course!

I'm also reading a book now called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. It's essentially the story of how the author and her family decided to be a living food experiment for one year. They moved to their farm in North Carolina and for one year ate only food they grew/raised on their farm or was grown/raised locally. It's a really interesting read and has put things in a different perspective for me. She writes about how now that the year is over they still primarily eat only locally- or self-grown food, but she allows herself the luxury of Alaskan salmon or other non-local products occasionally. When you really think about it, it DOES seem rather decadent to eat a food that was caught in Alaska and then shipped on ice thousands of miles to your supermarket.
According to the co-author, Kingsolver's husband, Steven L. Hopp, "if every US citizen ate just one meal a week composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast." (Of course there are references in the book for this but it seems kind of silly to have references in my blog. If you want to know what they are I'll e-mail them to you.)
I know you all don't read this blog to hear my opinion on all this, but I just appreciated thinking about things in a different way and I wanted to encourage the people around me to start considering things differently as well. So let's all go to the Farmer's Market and buy some local produce! (It HAS to taste better than stuff grown in California or Chile and flown in here a week after it was picked!)

Thanks for indulging me if you made it this far! Please feel free to post on this subject or if you have a differing opinion - I'd love to hear what you think.

Maggie's latest antics

Here are three outdated photos for you (just slightly outdated):
This first one is a photo of a silhouette of Maggie that my amazing grandma commissioned (sounds fancier that way, right?). I had been researching silhouette artists because I just love them and then Grandma, out of the blue, asked me if I would like one of Maggie. So here it is for you to enjoy!

Here is my brother, Chris, with Maggie at a family birthday party. Chris is showing her photos from his trip to Peru and is explaining the socio-political situation there.
And here are Maggie and Poppy at the same birthday party. They sort of enjoy each other :)

Yesterday Maggie was being especially cute and we were asking her where all these different items were. We asked her where her shoes were, where her book was, where the light was, etc. and then I asked her where her cuteness was. She thought about it for a half of a second and then pointed to her face. Yep, right every time!

She is extremely polite (honestly, without much training from us). She says, "No, thank you," "please", etc. Recently she has started saying "Excuse me," although it comes out more like this, "Apoose me," which we like equally well. She even says it after she burps (or worse!) Her Uncle Jim (Landers) especially is a sucker for her politeness. When she says, "Thank you, Uncle Jim" he'll just keep giving her whatever she wants (like a good uncle should).

Every now and then I've tried to fake Maggie out with crying, but she thinks it's really funny and always laughs at me. A few weeks ago we were driving and she suddenly started crying. It sounded a little different so I said, "Maggie, are you okay? Are you sad?" And she said, "Maggie sad." And I said, "Are you crying?" And she said, "Maggie crying. Boo hoo hoo" and continued FAKE crying! Then she cracked herself up (let's be honest - I was laughing hysterically, too).

She also is really having fun with the word "silly" lately. If she does something funny or silly (or if someone else does) she'll say, "Maggie silly!" and then laugh a falsetto giggle/squeal. It's really funny.

Her vocabulary and sentence construction has just increased tenfold overnight! We are really amazed by it. Just in the last few days she's saying 4-5 word sentences like "Maggie kiss the boo-boo", and, "I see the zoo!"

I think that's all the latest Maggie stories, so hopefully I'll post some more for you soon! And of course this is unspoken, but so you don't think I'm an oblivious, biased mom, please know that Maggie DOES have her moments of less-than-cuteness, including some full-on tantrums. They're rare, but they occur. Just keeping myself honest here.

Oh- some of you have asked to see photos of some of our mutual friends' babies. If you'd like to see the blog (including photos!) of Nate and Emily Heffter's baby, Ruby, click here.
If you'd like to see Cole Tepner, son of Marc and Elise Tepner, click here.