First and Greatest

Today Maisie had her first taste of cotton candy at The Greatest Show on Earth, Ringling Bros And Barnum & Bailey Circus. She wasn't oh too sure about the cotton candy at first but then she realized how sugary sweet it was and the girl was hooked.

Maisie really enjoyed the circus especially the elephants and tigers, the trapeze and Chinese acrobat acts as well as the motorbikes in the steel cage. Seeing the clowns and the smaller acts didn't thrill her much but overall I'd have to say that she sat wide-eyed and engrossed throughout the entire show. She was also super cute when something caught her eye as she would call out, "look Mama, look Baba" as she pointed and made sure we were seeing everything that she thought was wonderful.

It took Maisie all of about five minutes in the car on the drive home before she sugar crashed and fell fast asleep. Today's going to be the last day of sugar as five days in a row of sugar crashing is not good for anyone let alone a three year old. Also on the drive home, Eammon who seems to recognize and remember voices and faces all the time and from everywhere, did it again when he told me that he thought he recognized the Ringmaster from a show which also starred Desi Arnaz, Jr. When we got home I looked it up and sure enough, as always with faces and voices, Eammon was right. The Ringmaster Chuck Wagner starred in a one-season sci-fi television series, Automan. Eammon said that he watched 3 or 4 episodes twenty-five years ago, so of course he recognized the voice! Yeah I'd recognize him from that too...NOT!! Me, I could watch a show for years, see every episode, in person sit next to the star, talk to the star, be told whilst sitting there that they were the star and I still, most likely would not fully recognize them.

I think the last time I saw the circus, it was at Madison Square Garden in NYC and I was maybe in first grade at the time. It may have been the venue, the show itself or that I was just a child but the show today seemed so, so, so much smaller. It was still fun though and seeing Maisie enjoy it so much made it a wonderful day.

My sweet Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day 2009!

By bedtime Wednesday evening, Maisie thankfully had recovered from her Valentine's party sugar high and slept well. On Thursday I made a Valentine's bento for Maisie which was all hearts of pink & red with lots of sugary sprinkles and she loved it. Her bento turned out to be more nutritionally sound than I had first imagined but Maisie didn't care or notice, she just thought it was wonderful.

Friday after ballet Maisie and I made the little Valentine's house in the picture. I had found the kit a while back and loved that it was foam & stickers and thought it would be easier and less messy than doing a gingerbread house. Last Easter Maisie and I made a gingerbread bunny hutch which was fun but oh so messy, sticky & sugary. In addition, for days after making the hutch, Maisie couldn't resist feeling the coconut grass and poking at anything frosting and it just seemed to be a continued mess until I happily tossed it in the bin. This little foam house was great and I have one already for Easter but from making this one I did learn a few tricks for our future projects.

Maisie didn't have any problem piecing the structural house, roof and base pieces together but when we started decorating, if she pressed too hard, picked it up or turned it funny, it would cause the structure to come apart. I ended up taking it apart and hot gluing the house, roof and base together and that made all the difference, Maisie and I were then able to add all the decorations. The girl does have a little glue and glitter fetish so it wasn't as mess free as I had first hoped but now that it's dry, she's not poking at it, nothing is flaking off and no continued mess. In addition to hot gluing the structure together, when we make the Easter house, we'll do our glue and glitter pieces first so that they can dry and then when we decorate the house Maisie can add the glittered pieces without glittery glue squishing in her fingers.

Hope everyone had a wonderful day.

The face of a sugarholic

Today at school was Maisie's Valentine's Day party. The children each passed out their cards with attached candy and just before dismissal time they partied with the cookies that Maisie and I had made yesterday. Maisie's bag of Valentine's cards & treats held 20+ pieces of candy and the poor girl was just desperate to get her hands on some. I did allow her to pick one treat to have in the car on the drive home but I should have known better. Between the cookie and the candy, by the time we got home Maisie was flying high on the sugar and nap time just wasn't going to happen.

Late afternoon we headed off to gymnastics and Maisie fell asleep in the car five minutes before we arrived at the gym. Surprisingly when we parked she woke up in a good mood and did really well during her practice. At the end of practice, one of Maisie's teammates Mara, passed out really large white chocolate lollipops. It was very sweet but of course Maisie wanted the chocolate right then and there and how could I say no, so on the drive home she ate a good part of the lolli. My thought being, no nap, two separate sugar highs, a busy day of school and gymnastics practice, the girl should crash early and well tonight.

Once home Maisie forgot about all the candy as we got involved in activities and making dinner (plus I had already hidden her V-day bag of treats so that she wouldn't see it when we got home.) We had dinner and played then Eammon came home and she played with him for a while, then off to bed she went. She is loving all the Valentine treats and she has enough candy already, three days before Valentine's Day, to last her an entire month!

The sugar won't end today though, as tomorrow is her last day of school before Valentine's Day and I have an extra special bento planned for her. The bento will be high on fun, color, favorite treats and sugar with almost no nutritional value, woohoo, what more could my little sugarholic ask for!!

First (and hopefully last) of 2009

* Saturday a headache started and I thought it was just a bad sinus headache brought on by our temperatures going from 17F to 70F over the course of two days, but I was so, so wrong. By Sunday I was seriously hurting and increasingly over the day I was seeing auras and light flashes, having nausea, sensitivity to light, sounds and smells, I was barely up and about for more than a total of 30 minutes all day. I can't believe that I got a stinking migraine. It's now three days later and though I'm not completely incapacitated like I was on Sunday, I still feel like cr@p.

* I used to have devastating migraines that would incapacitate me for weeks out of every month but after years of prophylactic treatments, trigger management, recognizing and treating the onset of a migraine and of course pain management, I was able to break the cycle and thankfully since then, migraines have been far and few between. Now that it's been more than a decade of being relatively migraine free, I have no tools a.k.a drugs to help me deal with the pain and associated symptoms. Hopefully tomorrow I'll wake feeling better and this will be my last migraine of 2009 and forever.

* Even though I'm hurting life must go on. Last week I volunteered to make Valentine's Day treats for Maisie's class this Wednesday and in addition I decided to make multi-part Valentine's Day cards with Maisie for her class.

* We had fun making and decorating cookies together this afternoon and Maisie had fun taste testing them too.

* Next year for Valentine's day I'm buying those lousy little cards where all you do is sign your name. After assembling cards and candy treats with Maisie for 2 hours this afternoon, I thought the red on the Valentine's cards was going to be from blood spewing from my brain, eyeballs and ears as my head was throbbing beyond belief. Maisie was great and had fun putting everything together but she wanted to do so much of it all by herself (though she needed help) and it took f.o.r.e.v.e.r!!

* I'm so happy that the warm weather is back as the freezing weather of last week was enough cold to last me a lifetime. I knew that when I moved from New England I should have moved farther south, I'm so not a cold weather person, even one week of cold is too much for me.

* See the shirt that Maisie's wearing in the piccie? M3 gave it to me way back in August 2006 at our first Utah bloggy bash. Remember this piccie of us bloggy gals holding matching shirts with our daughter's names? In some ways it seems like so long ago yet in other ways it feels so recent. It's amazing to think how much things have changed since that piccie. Going from right to left in the piccie: Tiffany now has two beautiful children, Eliza and Solomon. Donna has been home for less than a month with her beautiful daughter Lauren, Julie and I were in China together back in December 2006 for gotcha of Tess & Maisie and Lisa, oh my gosh her wait has been so.very.very.long, should be receiving her referral in the near future and soon will have Tate in her arms and let's not forget the photographer M3 and the Salsa twins. Maisie wearing this shirt always brings fond memories but if she grows any taller the shirt will have to be retired, so sad. It's surprising that the shirt still fits her at all or as well as it does especially considering that the first blog post having pictures of her wearing it was back in June 2007! Check out that post's video for an adorable Maisie blast from the past. Hmm...Maisie wearing this shirt and on a trampoline, I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've seen that exact scene repeated since the video was taken.

* One final thought before I take myself and my headache to bed. How is it that all the laundry was done on Saturday yet today in Eammon's laundry drawer there were seven, yes seven towels???

Goodnight...

Birthday & nuggets

Wednesday morning we celebrated Chani's Birthday at one of the local large inflatable jumping places. Happy Birthday Chani!!

Maisie has never been a fan of inflatables and in the past, the noise alone has totally freaked her out to the point where she wouldn't even enter the facility. For Chani's party Maisie did pretty well with no freak outs but she was very reserved and cautious, only jumping on one inflatable when she
had it all to herself.

After the jumping time it was lunch of chicken nuggets, chicken salad sandwiches and birthday cupcakes. Maisie ate her very first chicken nugget and thought it was okay. It surprises many that she's never had a chicken nugget but we never go to fast food restaurants and it's just not something that I've ever thought to make at home. Funny thing is, next week at school they're having Chick-fil-A day and they're bringing in nuggets so this month she was destined to get her first taste.

Happy Birthday Chani, wishing you a wonderful year!

Cravings

Ever since I was a little girl, I've always had the same favorite cookie. Rainbow cookie, three-layer cookie, tri-color cookie, Neapolitan or Venetian cookie it didn't matter what they were called because when there were brought home from the Italian bakery it was just pure delicious delight. Unfortunately the bakeries that make the cookie now are far and few between and other than one bakery up in Connecticut, which has the perfect tri-color cookie, when I can find them they are just poor quality, dry or they have a fake almond flavor, just not like the cookies of my childhood. For a number of years I've had the recipe for these delightful cookies, in fact I've had a couple of variations of the recipe but every time I pulled it out, it always seemed so daunting I would tuck it away along with my cravings. I guess my cravings got strong enough because yesterday I took on the recipe. In the end, making the cookies wasn't difficult at all and really much easier than I thought it would be, but the time involved to make them, oh my!! Between the preparation, the baking, the assembly, letting them set up, getting the chocolate on and cutting, it was about 12 hours. So was it worth it? Oh my gosh YES!! These cookies are exactly as I remember them, dense and moist with a rich almond flavor, the perfect amount of chocolate and the sweetness of the jam...pure heaven!!

I've posted the recipe at Cook Lisa Cook if you're interested in making these delightful cookies.

April & Maisie

Last night we met up with friends Ilene and Michael and their daughter April at a favorite local Chinese restaurant. Even though we had tried to get together numerous times over the past year, between various sicknesses, business trips, personal trips and life in general, it just never seemed to happen. It was so fun seeing them again and we all had a fun night. April & Maisie were both shy at first but after just a short time they took to each other and had so much fun. As it worked out, for most of our time at dinner we had a private room so the girls were able to run around some and boy, did they did have fun chasing, catching and hugging each other. They also had fun playing peek-a-boo through the large fish tanks with the big child Eammon on one side and the two girls on the other. It was amazing how much energy those two girls had because even though they didn't tire out themselves, they managed to wear out all four adults. Hopefully we'll get together again soon and I'll have to remember my camera because my cell phone didn't do well with the piccies.

A style all her own

Maisie sometimes has a style all her own. Today she was dancing around the house in a pink sweatshirt sporting remnants of breakfast & lunch, camouflage sweatpants with roses, giraffe slippers and a pretty pastel tutu. Maisie thought she was hot stuff and who was I to argue?

* We had another fun week filled with the usual activities, school, gymnastics and ballet.

* Tuesday afternoon Cameron, Maisie's 9 year old friend from our street, came over for a play date. The two of them had fun making beaded necklaces and bracelets, playing with glue and glitter and playing together outside. Maisie keeps talking about playing with the big girls and can't wait until next Tuesday when Cameron will come play again.

* On Wednesday I had fun getting together with Kathy, Lisa & Randi so that we could celebrate Randi's referral of Emma, one very cute little girl.

* My not so fun part of the week was all the phone calls I had to make dealing with the obscene number of medical bills from back in November. Fourteen days in the hospital for me, four days for Eammon, three ER visits, one ambulance ride, dozens of doctors, lab services, radiology, nuclear medicine, IV therapy, specialty services, pharmacy & drug charges, respiratory therapy, OR and surgery services and the list goes on. Well over 100K in charges, thank goodness for insurance but still a huge bill remains.

* Maisie loves to skip and she has it perfectly coordinated and she moves fast. Now everywhere we go she's off at full tilt skipping she goes.

* Friday night Eammon, Maisie and I went to an absolutely FABU Japanese restaurant/sushi place. Every plate looked like a work of art and it tasted just as wonderful. We can't wait to go back and because it was so good, I don't think we'll be waiting oh too long.

* Tonight we're off to meet friends for dinner and it should be fun because it's probably been over a year since we last saw them.

* One final bullet, Maisie is obsessed with violins. All sorts of items turn into pretend violins. She's so cute playing her pretend violin and singing along as she plays. Music lessons may be in her future but oh how I hope that she moves away from the violin as I'm not sure my ears could take the practicing.

Busy, busy weekend

As a general rule, I am not one to pack a lot of activities into our weekends but this past weekend was just one activity after another. Since we always have such busy weeks, by the weekend I'm usually happy to just do one activity or honestly doing nothing specific at all is often fine with me too. After this past weekend I'm now ready for a break... but once again tomorrow is Monday and yet again the beginning of another busy week. So, what kept us so busy?

Friday night I met up with Kathy and a few of the gals in her Moms group. We started our evening with dinner...sort of, as they somehow lost both Kathy and my dinner ticket and by time it was realized it was too late as we had somewhere else to be. We then headed over to Just For Giggles where we spent the evening painting the "Blueberry Tree." It was a lot of fun and seeing all the different variations of the same painting was very interesting and the evening did provide for lots of giggles.

Saturday for lunch we met up with John, Ann & Katie at Tasty China to celebrate Chinese New Year. Even though neither of the girls was particularly interested in having their picture taken, both Katie & Maisie looked adorable in their Chinese outfits.

The food was all wonderfully delicious and spicy. Below are a few of our selections.

Hot & numbing combination hot pot

Kung pao scallops

Dry fried eggplant

Maisie loves her noodles

Katie loves noodles too!

Saturday night I headed over to Kathy's as she hosted a Dove chocolate/chocolate martini night. Chocolate candies, truffles, dipped strawberries & marshmallows, cookies with chocolate and chocolate martinis, O.M.G were those martinis gorgeous!! It was fun spending an evening with the girls whilst enjoying so many wonderful chocolaty treats. No piccies because I was too busy licking the Dove milk chocolate and Aztec dusting powder off the rim of my glass...Did I mention that the martini was awesome!!

This afternoon Maisie's friend Tommy celebrated his third birthday. Lots of little friends running around My Gym and monkey cupcakes, a three year old's idea of heaven!! I honestly could have gone for and would have preferred another one of those gorgeous Dove martinis but that will have to wait at least until all the goodies I ordered last night at the party arrive...something to look forward to!

After we arrived home from the party, two of the "big girls" (9 years old) from the neighborhood came over to play with Maisie. Sydney, Cameron and Maisie had fun playing together out on the deck, playing catch, blowing bubbles and just being little girls. 

It was a very fun weekend but I'm exhausted and ready for bed and a good nights sleep. If you've made it all the way through this post, congratulations and you too deserve a good nights rest...sleep well.

Two years Maisie Day *

Dec. 11, 2006 ~ A family of three, ChongQing Civil Affairs Office, China
<<~~~ Dec. 6, 2007 Maisie modeling her gotcha day outfit. The shoes were too small but the outfit still fit the little peanut pretty well.























December 2008 ~~~>>
Another year and though the outfit is too short, surprisingly it still fits well enough, at least for a picture.

It amazes me how much Maisie has grown up, from a scared and timid little baby to a vibrant, smart and self confident little girl. We look forward to many more Maisie Day Anniversaries and seeing our little girl grow and change over many years to come.

*Between being sick and away for all of November & December the end of last year, I didn't get this posted back in December on our actual Anniversary but it's something that I didn't want to go undocumented even if it's a month and a half late.

Bum in a bowl

Maisie called me over this afternoon to tell me that her bum was in a bowl...silly and limber little girl!

She spent quite some time just sitting and rolling around acting silly and watching a video. I had fun watching her giggle and being silly.
It's been another busy week of school, gymnastics and ballet, I can't believe it's Friday already. Where do the days go??

This weekend we have a very busy social calender or more accurately, I'm very busy. I'm going out both tonight and tomorrow night for some fun with friends. Tomorrow for lunch Eammon, Maisie and I are meeting up with friends to celebrate Chinese New Year and on Sunday one of Maisie's friends turns three so we'll be celebrating there too.

Hopefully I'll remember my camera and have lots of piccies to post...we shall see though as lately I've been so bad about taking pictures of Maisie-the-ever-moving-target. I have taken pictures of Maisie's bento each morning and if anyone is interested you can check those out at Maisie Eats Bento. I've also finally posted a new recipe on Cook Lisa Cook. This past Sunday I made a roasted tomato, fresh mozzarella and pesto pizza which looked and smelled so awesome when I took it from the oven, I just had to share. It was so delicious and Eammon just couldn't get enough, so I ended up making it again last night, yum!

Have a great weekend and Happy Chinese New Year.

Fairy bread

Oh yeah, we went real gourmet this morning, ha!! Maisie had fun making and eating her fairy bread.
A little taste test.
This really can't be any worse or have any more sugar than cinnamon-sugar toast...right?
Oh,it looks so pretty!
And the taste...
yummy!
but a wee bit messy.

Enjoying the spoils of her afternoon

This afternoon Maisie spent some time over at our neighbor Mary's home helping to bake peanut butter cookies. Maisie had a fun time and returned home not only with a big plate of cookies but also a puzzle and a stack of books!! Maisie's looking forward to her next afternoon of baking with Mary and after eating some of the cookies, she declared them delicious!

First day of ballet

I'm a bit behind in my posting but last Friday Maisie absolutely loved her first day of ballet class! Unfortunately for me though, there's only one small window in the door where I could look in from time and I only had my cell phone with me for picture taking. But each time I did peek in, Maisie was completely engrossed, paying attention and following all of the teacher's instructions. Once class ended Maisie told me that she loved her class and couldn't wait for the next one!

Cell phone piccies

These are two pictures that I had on my cell phone from December 2008 and I wanted to remember them so I finally uploaded them to the blog.

This first piccie was taken on December 20 at the Gymnastics Winter Blast. We had been home from Aruba for less than eight hours so Maisie was sleep deprived and not 100% herself but she still had fun with her Fireflies team mates. (l to r) Tia, Aspen, Shelby, Coach Amy, Maisie and Mara. They all looked so adorable in their team leos and the fact that they're pink, shiny and sparkly just tickles Maisie.

This second picture was taken on December 29. Maisie was with me when I went for a doctors appointment and I had to have a chest x-ray. So while I was having that done, Will the vampire (phlebotomist) entertained Maisie with his video game. They were very cute together and both were well behaved during my x-ray.

Watch Mama Watch!!

Watch me Mama.
See my right leg.
I'm lifting it just like a ballerina.
See how pretty.
Look how high I can lift my let.
Now it's even higher!
Almost Mama, watch!
Ta Da!!

Tomorrow starts dance class and as you can see, Maisie can't wait to start.

In other exciting news, go check out my Utah Bloggy Bash Gal Pal Tiffany's blog to feast your eyes on and say hello to her new son Solomon.

Fashionista returns to school

Maisie was beside herself excited to return to school today. It's been over six weeks since she last saw her teachers and school mates and the morning couldn't go fast enough for her as she kept asking "is it time to go, is it time to go yet?" She had a great first day back, yeah!!

Vacation and the holidays were great but it's so nice to get back into our usual routine of seeing friends, school and gymnastics. Monday we resumed Maisie's regular gymnastics practice, which we also attend on Wednesdays, and then on Friday there's something new in our schedule and Maisie can't wait, ballet class!! It's actually a ballet and tap class and last week we went to the dance store and bought the appropriate colored leo and tights, ballet and tap shoes and even an adorable dance bag. Everything is so stinking cute and Maisie's just itching to start her class. This is shaping up to be a wonderful week for my little girl and what a great start to 2009.