The many positions of Maevie

It always astounds me the crazy positions that Maevie girl not only gets herself into, but stays in. See for yourself.

Exhibit A - Kicking it back with both feet up on the bar in the stroller:

Exhibit B - Kicking it back with one foot up on the bar in the stroller:

Exhibit C - Lounging with both feet up in the shopping cart:

Exhibit D - Sitting with one leg up in the shopping cart:

These three especially crack me up because you can tell they are all taken on different days!

And finally, Exhibit E - Both legs up in the shopping cart:

Leave it to Maeve to sit in a seat in as many different ways as she can besides the way it's intended. Truth be told, she probably gets it from me. I always put my feet up on the dashboard in the car in the passenger seat and I even have started to put one leg up, resting one foot on the seat whenever I drive. Probably sounds so weird, but to me it's comfortable. Maeve and I both. I get ya girlie, even if no one else ever does. Like mother, like daughter!

Recorded

Because we all know videos are even better than pictures, here's some of my favorite videos of Maeve over the last month or so. They're awesome because some show how busy she is and some show her funny little mannerisms and such that are hard to explain in words.

That laugh!

Don't worry, she peed on the carpet right after I hit stop and then started to poop. Luckily the poop didn't fall out of her bum until she had crawled into the bathroom, but she did proceed to put her foot right into it once it landed on the ground... 

I love how she examines the sock for a minute and then decides it's no good and flings it too, ha!

That arm whip though!

Her tongue and hands in this one seriously kill me... and of course how hardcore she is cheesing it.

This entire video embodies her little personality so perfectly.

"11 months" baby

It's been too long since I've posted. Things have been a little busy and out of the ordinary. Which is why these "11 month" pictures were taken and are now being posted way too late. Maeve and I were just gone on an almost two week trip to Louisville and Atlanta to see two of my sibs families. She turned 11 months while we were gone (right at the beginning of course) and because I've wanted my pictures to be uniform all along I just decided to wait until I got back to take the pictures. Well, we've been back a week now and I just barely took them yesterday (oops, didn't make it enough of a priority) so here Maeve is at "11 months" but really, 11 days shy of being 1 whooping year old. Excuse me, what???? We're not even going to talk about it. 

Anywho, it's probably not even that big of a deal these pictures were taken so late because it wasn't exactly what you would call a smashing success of a photoshoot. I mean, let's look at these outtakes... The captions may even better than the photos. 

Sure, go ahead, immediately try and rip your sticker off. See if I care.

Okay, you can go ahead and be completely focused on anything but me, that works too I guess.

Alright, so now we're smiling, but you're looking the wrong direction sissy. Not exactly what we're going for, but close. 

Great improvement, almost looking at me, except perhaps you could sit down instead? 

No? You don't want to sit down? That's cool too, I guess. 

Alright so now we just took a million steps backwards (no pun intended). I promise I'm more interesting than the bookshelf.

Artsy, I'll give you that, but still not exactly what I'm after here.

Okay, so blowing bubbles is cooler than smiling! Check. 

You blow those bubbles, sister.

You've backed yourself into the corner and you're looking pretty cute, I'll give you that.

Go ahead, just tell me how you feel.

Back to blowing bubbles I see.

Bam! Mom finally wins with the sunglasses!

The real magic has happened people. This is the real deal.

Something about that facial expression is just really cute, that's all.

Still happy and we can even see all 4 teeth!

I spoke too soon, suddenly the world has ended. Sunglasses no longer mean anything to you. Got it.

Crying and blowing bubbles at the same time? Impressive.

I decided enough was enough at that point. Point taken, Maeve. Anyways, enough of the nonsense, here's what Maeve has been up to at 11 months (I'm just going to touch on everything up until this point, even though she's well past the 11 month mark):

1. She has 4 teeth now, her middle two bottom teeth and middle two top teeth. The middle two top teeth came one after the other almost right when she hit 11 months while we were in Kentucky. I think she had her first real "teething trouble", if you can call it that, right before those teeth came in. She went to bed normal, but then woke up at midnight and would not stop screaming. She didn't even want to nurse at first, which really threw me off. She finally ate and then when I put her back in bed she still screamed for a little while, which has honestly never really happened in her whole entire life. So that really threw me for a loop. The funny thing was, once I got her back out of bed she was the happiest girl you've ever seen. She just wanted to play on the floor. She stayed awake playing until 3am, which was excellent for me, since I could really only slightly doze off during that time. I couldn't trust that she wouldn't get into anything she shouldn't, like Tess's little butterfly clips that she tried to eat. Nope, not food. I nursed her again at 3am and after a little whimpering she went back to sleep. I can only attribute it to teething since her teeth came in right after that, but she didn't show a whole lot of distress over the matter, so it really was just an interesting experience to say the least. 

2. She's eating anything and everything, including tasting a few too many sweets in my opinion while we were gone thanks to her Aunt Rach, but what can you do. I drew the line at Diet Coke when we were with Tiersha. Ha, just kidding, she wouldn't have really given it to her anyway. She loves peanut butter now, and had no issues with it thank goodness! There are more finger foods she's feeding herself now, which is really nice. She loves munching on veggie straws now and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

3. She went through a period of waking up closer to 7am, but now is back to sleeping in until 8am for the most part. For my sake, I'm glad that was just a phase. 

4. She's making different babbling sounds than she used to, I think she's starting to learn more consonant sounds but of course still no real words besides mama and dada, although I still wonder if she really knows what she's saying when she says those. I'll really believe it once she points at us and says mama and dada. 

5. Speaking of pointing, she does love to point at us if we point at her. She's also really good at waving at people consistently now when they wave at her, as well as clapping when someone else claps. It's so cute to see her really pick all of these things up. 

6. She still blows bubbles, so intensely sometimes that I wonder for a slight second if her head is going to explode... She really gives it all she's got sometimes, ha! She especially loves to do it while she's eating which is real fun when food starts flying all over the place out of her mouth. 

7. I knocked some sense into her (appropriately of course) and she's doing better with staying still for diaper changes and not freaking out quite as much. Though she still loves to bolt away from me as fast as she can once it's all done. 

8. Just after she turned 11 months, she started standing on her own here and there. It's sort of random, and she walks well with her walker, but I'm still wondering when she's ever going to get brave enough to try it on her own. I had hoped she'd pick it up by her birthday, but it's not looking like that's gonna happen. She's definitely strong enough for it, I think she's just lazy. 

9. I probably said in her last monthly post that she was getting into everything, but now she's REALLY getting into everything. Opening every drawer and cabinet on her own, opening the toilet lid and sticking her hands in the water, messing with the toilet paper, pulling every stinking tissue out of the tissue box (once she's on a roll, there's no stopping her), and messing with the garbage in the kitchen. She can open the lid and if it's full will start taking stuff out. There's always a disaster waiting to happen when she's around and I can only imagine what it's going to be like when she can walk. 

10. Sometimes I shower when she naps, but there are times she'll be awake when I want to and I'll just close the doors to the bathroom, get everything off the floor she could make a mess with, give her some toys, and hope for the best. She's now figured out how to get herself up by the tub and move the outer curtain so that she can stand there and see me through the clear inner curtain, haha. It's pretty funny. Except that now she's realized she can also mess with the clear curtain and will try and open that curtain too and get water everywhere. Probably best if I reserve showering for nap time now... 

11. She transitioned from her infant car seat to the next kind of car seat. She still looks just as big in this new one though as you can see below, which is kinda weird to me, but we're gonna roll with it. 

12. She LOVES to admire people from a distance and seriously smiles and flirts with everyone she sees, but the minute anyone tries to hold her but her parents she immediately reaches back for mom or dad. Ain't nothing like your parents. 

13. She LOVES to play peekaboo, thinks it's the funniest thing ever. She will hide from us all the time and when we say "Where's Maeve?" she will laugh and reveal herself, over and over. She'll hide behind her bib, curtains, her blanket, really anything. It is so funny! She loves when we hide from her too. 

14. We've recently discovered that her lamb has sort of become a binky for her. She goes to sleep so easily because she immediately starts sucking on her lamb's tail. As you can see in my last post, there are even times she falls asleep with it in her mouth still. As long as her lamb always stays in her bed though, I see no problem with it!

15. Last, but not least, she's literally got the best laugh I've ever heard in my life. Her daddy can get her going like no one else and there's a little clip I should share because it's pretty insane how loud her laugh is considering her age. I almost died when I heard it. Music to my ears!

And now for the sappiness, she's still our sweet, happy, funny little cheeser of a goofball who gets funnier by the day and I just love her so much! 

Be still my heart

I just went in to see if she was asleep and laid my eyes on this. I couldn't believe my eyes. I literally died. I'm dead. She always sucks on his ears or tail before she falls asleep, but never has she fallen asleep with it still in her mouth! What a sweet little angel.

The next big time baby model ... or not

So, this one time Maeve and I were doing our weekly grocery shopping run to Kroger and she was probably around 6 months old at the time. As per usual, I was minding my own business as I accumulated items in the cart and Maeve was flashing her huge smile at anyone and everyone that would look at her. The next thing I know this lady says something along the lines of, "I'm sorry, I just have to ask... would you want free pictures of your baby taken? I do marketing with Picture People and we are looking for models and she would just be perfect." I smiled and a little hesitantly said "oh yeah, maybe" not completely sure what this was all about. I've always been skeptical of modeling and am not the type of person that really sees it as a good thing/fun. I myself most certainly would not be caught dead as a model, even if someone ever thought I was perfect for the job ... spotlight, no thank you! Especially in front of photographers I don't know! So even with all of the countless strangers that all day long from the minute she could smile have told Maeve how cute and happy she is, her doing any sort of modeling was not even on my radar. The lady continued to explain a little bit about it and told me I could email some lady if I was interested and then a couple more times before we parted said again "she'd just be perfect!!"

I told Adam about it later that night and his response was "Cool! Free pictures! Why not!" but still didn't do anything about it for awhile. The thought that her pictures could maybe potentially be used in any negative way just scared me away from it a little bit. After Christmas, I decided to just casually mention it to my mom and she warmed up to the idea and basically did agree that Maeve was perfect and that it could be a fun thing to do that could potentially segue into getting real gigs that maybe would pay something. As long as she was still little and had fun with it, why not? So, I decided to email the lady, then had my bro-in-law who is a lawyer read the release form I'd have to sign for her pictures to make sure nothing seemed bad about it. Eventually we signed up for a time slot, and at the beginning of March went and had the pictures taken.

Let's just say that it quickly became clear that modeling is NOT for Maeve, and it was a pretty uncomfortable experience for both of us. Girlfriend would not crack a smile for the longest time and just wanted to mess with all the props they wanted to so nicely be positioned around her. That's when I started to wish I had emailed the lady sooner before she became mobile! That would have been way better. Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure the photographer and Marketing lady were questioning why in the world I would have thought she was fit for the job and also questioning that she was even a happy baby! I felt all this pressure to keep her still, constantly staging the props again that she was messing with, trying to get her to smile and NOTHING. Poor girl just wanted to do what she wanted to do!

Here are all the shots that they sent to me (with the exception of one, because when they got desperate they decided to put me in a couple of the shots and I was not expecting to be photographed and hadn't done my hair completely so it's pretty bad and I will spare you):

Of course I decided to match her... how could I not?

I was laughing to myself when I was looking through these because seriously out of 57 pictures total taken, 29 of which they sent to me, and the 28 that you see here, she is literally only smiling for real in 1 stinking picture. With a whole lot of unamused straight faces and even sad faces mixed in. Ha! Doesn't exactly represent my girl very well, but luckily some of them are still cute. Others I don't like as much for different reasons, especially almost all the guitar ones, those are a little cheesy in my opinion. The silhouette one is pretty cool though. Anyway, although I'm doubtful, you just may see Maeve in some advertising and if you're reading this, you'll have to let me know if you do!