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.

7 months!

Well, the 7th month started with a new tooth! Maya got her first tooth on Oct 11th (bottom middle) and her 2nd tooth 2 days later. No wonder the week prior had some pretty rough nights! As far as accomplishments, she is getting up on her hands and knees and rocking, eating 2 meals a day of solid food, saying "mama," "nana," and "baba" occasionally, but "dada is by far her favorite! We have always known that she likes music, but we have found 2 songs that she absolutely loves! "Meltdown" by Rob Thomas, and "Rock and Roll" by Eric Hutchinson. It never fails, if she is crying or unhappy, we can play either of these songs and immediately we go from tears to smiling and dancing! It is pretty amazing!

Mt. Pleasant

On Oct 1st the Egan 3, plus 2 dogs headed to Mt Pleasant to celebrate my Mom's birthday. We went to Pawley's Island and had lunch with Grand mama and Grandaddy O'Shields, Berny, Wendy, Becky, and Mike at a wonderful marina to from my Mom's birthday celebration. We ate outside, under a huge oak tree, looking out over the intercostal waterway; it was beautiful! We had a great time, including, checking out the new waterfront park in Mt Pleasant, going to the farmers market, kayaked on Shem creek and in the charleston harbor, had lunch at Groucho's on King street, and I was even about to visit with one of my college roommates, Ashely Gruber, who now lives on James Island.

Maya's Baptism

On 9/11/09 Maya turned 6 months old! This was a big weekend for us, because it was Maya's Baptism weekend. We had a house full of family and friends to celebrate! She was Baptized on Sept 13th at Myers Park UMC, it was such a beautiful service and celebration. My parents were able to baptize her and participate in the service along with Dr. Howell (the minister of MPUMC). After the service we had lunch at our house; it was a wonderful time with family and friends.

At 6 months, Maya is doing wonderful. She is such an awesome blessing to our family. She is able to sit up. She has perfected "Dada" which adds a couple more loops around Joey's already wrapped little finger! At her six month check up she weighed in at 17 lbs 12 oz and I got another "Is she always like this?" from our pediatrician. Meaning, is she always this happy and LOUD! Again, yes, yes she is and we love it!

Joey is 30 and Maya is 5 months!

On August 11th, we celebrated Joey's 30th birthday and Maya's 5 month birthday. We had a great day starting off with breakfast in bed prepared by yours truly, including scrambled eggs and English muffins. Then after Joey got done with work we took Maya over to our good friend Adrienne's house and we headed to the movies. We saw "The Hangover" which Joey had been dying to see. It was quite funny and we both really enjoyed it. Then, we went to dinner at Cantina 1511, one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. They have THE BEST guacamole dip! After picking Maya up from Adrienne's we headed home and I sang happy birthday over a ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins (mint chocolate chip of course). For Joey's birthday I got him a zoom lens for our camera; he has been wanting one of these for quite some time and was very excited to finally have one.

As for Maya, she continues to do awesome. I'm know that every mom thinks this, but I'm pretty sure that Maya is the BEST baby ever! She is so much fun and has such a cute personality. It seems like everyday she is changing and learning new things. She loves to play in her exersaucer now and can hit the little animals to make them play music, she continues to play with her feet and can now get them in her mouth (which she thinks is a really cool trick), she is starting to sit up on her on- still pretty wobbly, but she is getting there, and she can shake her toys to make them rattle and LOVES to do that- the bad part is I've looked at her a couple of times and her little forehead will be bright red from her hitting herself in the head with the toy; at least she doesn't seem to mind! She had her first rice cereal experience on August 10th (actually we had tried a couple of weeks prior, but she wasn't ready- she just spit it all back out!). She was very impressed at first, thinking it was pretty cool, but still making a mess. Then after a few days she got bored with the plain rice. So, last night I mixed in some pears for her. (I know I'm not suppose to give fruit first, but that's what I had at home.) She liked them ok, but made some really impressive faces a few time- you would have thought I was giving her a lemon! She also started saying "DaDa" on August 15. This was after I got home from a 24 hour shift, so I am pretty sure Joey has been doing some serious practicing with her while I've been at work!

JT's Baptism

On August 9th we celebrated JT's, my nephew, baptism. Joey, Maya and I headed to Spartenburg on Saturday to begin the festivities. We stopped by the Gaffney outlets, forgetting that it was tax free weekend- wow it was crowed, to look for Maya a baptism gown. We didn't have any luck with Maya, but Joey and I each found a couple of shirts. Then it was on to Erin and Chris's for an awesome dinner prepared by Chris with his family and ours. JT had a wonderful baptism ceremony at church on Sunday and then we had a great lunch to celebrate, again prepared by Chris. It was a great time with family and friends.

Four Month Check up

Maya had her 4 month check up on July 22nd. She weighed in at 15lbs 11 oz and was 25 inches long. She is now 90th percentile in weight and length and 95th percentile in head circumference. As soon as we walked into the exam room she started showing off to the nurse by smiling, blowing bubbles, and squealing. Then when the doctor walked in she kicked it up a notch and became VERY vocal-to the point we could barely hear each other. The doctor's response was "is she always like this?"..... That would be a yes, yes she is! Four month accomplishments include: finding her feet (and now she plays with them all the time!), rolling from back to stomach and "Blowing bubbles" AKA spitting loudly if you are Maya!

Four Month/ Beach week

On Maya's 4 month birthday Taylor (my cousin), Maya, and I headed to the beach for the O'Shields 26th consecutive family beach week. Unfortunately Joey had to travel to Toronto to work for the week so he was unable to make it. But, about 20 people on my mom's side of the family converged on Garden City on July 11th for the week. My mom and dad didn't get there until Sunday, so I sure was glad to see them and have some helping hands with Maya. Although I didn't have to look hard to find helping hands, there was about 40 of them anytime I turned around or Maya made the slightest complaint- which lent itself to a very spoiled baby when I got home! This was little Macy's first trip to the beach, so it was a blast to have Maya and Macy together, we would just stick them under the tent at the beach and they would hang out together. One of the highlights of the week was celebrating my Granddad O'Shields 80thbirthday. We had a cookout in the back yard overlooking the inlet. Janey, my mom's cousin, her daughter, grandson, and son made the trip from Columbia to join us and surprise Granddad. Another highlight was going to the water park. We had a blast; Becky, Adam, Blakeley, Adam, Kristin, and I went- the grandparents did a little babysitting (Thanks!)! It had been years since the last time I made it to the waterpark, and I could definitely tell- there are A LOT of stairs! I remember running up and down those stairs like it was nothing when I was little- not so much the case this time! Highlight number three would be getting to see my friends Erica and Tommy and their precious baby girl Addie (21 months). I went to school with with Erica from Elementary school through Clemson. We were in 5th grade together, which was the year I moved to Lexington, and she was one of my first friends in Lexington. It was wonderful to get to see her family including her parents and brother and catching up with her. What a blessing good friends are! Maya had a couple of first this week, she rolled over for the first time from back to front on July 15th to a crowd of applause from the entire family, and she perfected "blowing bubbles." Although, for Maya it isn't so much "blowing bubbles" it is more spitting very loudly with a couple of bubbles thrown in here or there. Family beach week has been such a blessing in my life and has taught me many great lessons about the importance of family. Thanks Granddad and Grandmom O'Shields!! We love you!!