9 months!

I can not believe that my baby girl turned 9 months on December 11th! How time flies when your having fun! She is developing the best little personality! She is so much fun and is non- stop! Since she started crawling, she is constantly on the move, which is a lot of fun, but boy, I am worn out by the end of the day! She has also learned to pull-up and will pretty much pull up on any and every thing she can get her hands on. She LOVES to read. In fact the only time you can get her to sit still and cuddle is when you are reading to her or her music is on the TV. Just tonight, I was reading to her and realized that she was playing with the pages as I was reading and trying to turn the page. So, I would lift the page just enough for her to get her fingers under and she would turn the page. WOW, I can not believe that we are already there! It seems like she is doing something new everyday and learning new things all the time! She also loves her bath time. She just loves to splash and play with her toys! She also has crawling races, where she just goes back and forth from one end of the tub to the other as fast as she can. I'm pretty sure I should be letting her do that, but oh well. What can I say she loves and I love it just as much, if not more that she does!

Oh, and the stats for 9 months..... 19 pounds 8 oz and 27 inches long.

We also celebrated Thanksgiving during Maya's 9th month. We spent thanksgiving weekend at my parent's mountain house in Old Fort NC. We had 11 people (my O'Sheilds Grandparents were also there) in a 3 bedroom 2 bath cabin, which even makes for more fun! We had a great time just watching the cousins play, took a trip to the waterfall, took some long walks, slid down the hill on a cardboard box, and built some fires; exactly what you are suppose to do in the mountains! Oh and had some wonderful meals. It was a wonderful reminder that we all have so much to be thankful for!

8 months!

Maya turned 8 months on November 11th and she is officially a crawler! She started crawling on Nov. 4th. She had been doing the army crawl pretty well for a couple of weeks, but once she discovered the true crawl it was on! I was hoping that the step down to our living room would keep her contained for a little while- seeing as our house has a completely open floor plan down stairs and there is no such thing as barricading or gating off a play area. Well, that plan lasted about 2 days and she had already mastered climbing up the step. The getting back down wasn't quite as easy or graceful, but she has that done pat now as well, she just lays on her stomach and puts her hands down on the lower floor and scoots until she is down- it is so cute!

San Fransisco

The Egan 3 took off to San Francisco on Oct 22 for a wonderful 10 day trip. I was attending a conference in San Fran, so we decided to make a vacation out of it. Unky Mike and Uncle Larry met us out there as well. Uncle Larry lived in San Francisco for a long time, so he was the perfect tour guide! Some highlights included visiting Yosemite National Park, a tour of Alcatraz, Twin Peaks, Pier 39 (I got a little too excited over the sea lions and face planted right on the pier- oops!), Monetary Bay aquarium, and 17 mile drive. Maya was a champ the entire trip! She was adjusted to the time change by the second night (which made me a little nervous for the return to the east coast, but she did ok with that as well). She had a blast playing with Unky Mike and Uncle Larry- highlights for her included a killer game of steam roller with Unky Mike and a pillow. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and it was time for me to start the conference on Oct 27th. Joey found us a fantastic loft to rent in the city, which ended up be the perfect location for us. So, while I was in the conference, Joey and Maya had a lot of quality Daddy/daughter time and Joey had to of walked at least 10 miles a day with her! They would come meet me for lunch everyday. So, we were able to tour a lot of the city during my lunch break: including Fisherman's Wharf, Embarcadaro Center, and the academy of science museum. One of the highlights came the last night we were in San Frances, which happened to be the night before Halloween! We had made it back to our loft after having dinner and I was starting to feed Maya and we heard quite the commotion going on outside our loft. Upon looking outside on our balcony we saw thousands and I'm talking THOUSANDS of people riding their bikes, some in regular clothes, most dressed up for Halloween and some wearing nothing at all lasting a good 20 minutes straight! It was unbelievable and the perfect end to a wonderful trip.