10...1/2...month annibirthery

Those poor second children...never as on the spot with things as I was with #1. But Mae is still not 11 months old yet, so I figure I am pretty good to go.

She is a VERY happy baby most of the time.



And she went from an unstable sitting blob to a crawling machine in the three weeks that we were in Montana.



And now has her own special lovey in her Minnie Mouse. Today I asked Etta what kind of a birthday cake she thought Mae would like. "A Minnie Cake mommy!". And I think that is right on.



We put Mae on a produce scale on her actual 10 month annibirthery and she weighed about 18 lbs. Still hanging right on and very "healthy". She is crawling everywhere, pulling herself up and even standing for a few seconds at a time without holding on to anything. All very exciting. Tonight for dinner she ate whole, cooked green beans. Hard to believe that in just six short weeks she will be one!

Pig Tails

Etta does not allow me to put pig tails in her hair. And if I force her she pulls them right out - super fine hair that it is, doesn't hold in hair things well.

But yesterday with the introduction of RED (her current favorite color) hair ties she was game. For the exact amount of time that it took me to get the pictures. Baby steps, right?

Front view with the pulled back hair.



Cute profile.




Super cute rear view.

Pie!

Every summer Bob, Cynthia & I make pies for the Woman's Club pie auction fund raiser. We have all won various prizes over the years. This year Cynthia made 4 pies!!! and Bob & I each made 2. I was fortunate enough to win 1st & 3rd prizes in my age division and my mom won 1st place in her age division. And incredibly enough I won Best of Show overall! I definitely did not expect that.

Our pies in all their glory.



Bob's very creative Nectarine-Raspberry Pie with appropriate Longhorn decorations.



And a close up of my Best of Show Pie. (It was cropped from the larger picture above.) Obviously Best of Show is not only for looks.

Whole Food

*Note: For some reason I could not publish blog posts from my mom's computer while we were in MT. Hence why it's been two weeks since the last post. And on a side note, Mae actually has eight teeth now. Yes, yes she did cut six teeth in the last six weeks...*

So I figured that since Mae has six teeth poking through we ought to be trying to feed her something besides pureed food and Cheerios. So on our trip over when the waitress at the restaurant offered up some Saltine's I thought, "Why not?" And she loved them.

Wednesday evening I thought that maybe she would want to eat some whole cooked carrots instead of mushy glop. Um...not so much. But we'll keep trying!

Serious thought while eating a cracker.

But she loves them. That's "Mae the Destroyer" for you!

Fun to Eat...and Wear!

Mae has been liking most everything that I try and feed her. Apparently sweet potatoes are no good unless mixed with something else. And one of her favorites is beets, just like her big sister. So even though this picture may look like she wasn't enjoying eating, she was just having a super fun time smearing it around.

Unlike this picture where Etta was not enjoying what I had to offer. I think that their facial expressions say it all! [Note: there is only about 3 weeks difference in age as to when these two pictures were taken. Some times they look completely different...but sometimes they look just alike.]

Farm Work is Hard Work

This is Etta after a busy morning on the farm:



Always a good time.

Road Trip Pit Stop

On our drive to MT on Tuesday we made a pit stop at Bonner Park in Missoula. Initially Etta had said, "I don't want to stop at the park, I want to go to Montana!" (We have figured out that "Montana" is my parents house...) But boy, was she glad that we had stopped.

"Can I go again mommy?!"



"And again?!"



Mae did not want to be put on the ground, but she enjoyed watching all of the kids.



And since on Sunday Etta informed me, "I don't like you. Mae doesn't like you. Daddy doesn't like you. Anybody [by which she means nobody] likes you". I needed something to raise my status a bit. Blah. I knew that she would say that someday, I just didn't think that it would be when she was 3!