My birthday was Saturday, August 19th. My parents took us out for a very nice dinner at Leslie's in Vermont. The food there is so incredible. I may have to change my mind about my favorite restaurant. Doesn't Maggie look absolutely beautiful in her velvet dress. You can't see it in this picture but she is also wearing ultra cute shiny black shoes. We had a lot of fun that evening. Maggie was quite well behaved, and a very nice lady offered to entertain her while we ate so that we could all eat at the same time.

The old apartment is completely emptied out. Now we just have the gigantic task of organizing the new apartment. I am amazed at how much stuff can accumulate over time. It doesn't seem possible that Matt and I barely had anything before we moved in together. It seemed endless, but we are more than halfway there now. We have the living room set up, almost and the kitchen almost all unpacked. It was an extremely stressful move, as I assume all moves are. I think it was most stressful on Maggie. She now has a runny nose for the first time in her whole life. Her being stressed made the move even harder, I had people willing to help me out, but much of the time she wanted mommy and only mommy which made it hard to get any moving done. No pictures will be put up until we have the new apartment under control. The hardest thing was moving the cats. We waited until the bitter end and then realized we should have done it in at least two trips. At 10:00 last night we said ugh... and ended up putting all 4 of the cats in one large kitty carrier to move them. They ended up mostly ok. One of them got peed on, but that seemed to be the worst of it. I'm going to get back to work, and eat something. Bye for now.

I've already turned in the modem, so I can't do blog posts at home now. I am at VitaSource, my mother's store, typing in this entry. I am sure stuff is going to be missing from here as I know I have thought, "I should put that in the blog," more times than I can now think of subjects.

I have now given Maggie wheat. Two days in a row I have feed her shredded wheat. I don't think that she has had an allergic reaction to it unless that is the reason that she was up too many times last night. She went to sleep around 8:30 and she was up at 9, 10:30, 11:30, 12:00 and 12:30 before I decided to give her tylenol in case she was in pain. Then she slept until 3:15ish. Then until almost 5 when I decided to give in and bring her into bed with me (after making Matt try to get her to fall back to sleep without me). Then, I sleep until almost 9 and she slept until about quarter after nine.

I have gotten some more progress made on our new apartment. Yesterday I was able to put some of our clothes away in our closet! We'll need to move some more of the small boxes before we are able to get the furniture in though. I don't know how good of planning it was to bring in the small stuff before brining in the big stuff. I'll have to move the stuff that is just "storage" before anything else since we know exactly where that is going to be going.

I'm scared about getting a job. I'm worried about how Maggie will be, about if she will be able to nap without me there. We have decided that it would be easiest for Maggie to have Katherine bring her to me at work to nurse. Hopefully she'll get the hang of solids more and wean to only nursing morning, evening and night so that we don't have to even worry about it soon. Right now though she has to nurse before even falling asleep for a nap, unless she's in the car. I want to stay with her, but we are at the end of the rope. She won't take a bottle, I can't even pump (nothing want to come out, only for her); I guess we could try to give her formula out of a cup while I'm working, but I don't know..... ugh.

So many changes in such a small amount of time. I hope that Maggie can handle it. She'll be getting her own room, in a new house, and I'll be going back to work. Sigh. It's a lot to handle all at once. My stress level is pretty high. Just writing about this is bringing up my heart rate. I think I'm also worried about working after not working for so long. I think that I'll do well, but I'm still worried. We shall see, we shall see.

This will probably be the last entry before I am typing away in my new apartment, so.... talk to you soon!

Maggie hasn't done that in awhile. I just had a very hard time getting Maggie to sleep. I started at 8:20, and she fell asleep shortly after 9:30, since she looked like she was getting tired, lying on the floor and such. Anywho, what she hasn't done in awhile is to pull away from nursing to cry, try again, pull away and cry. It was somehow different from before though. It was less often and even more upset sounding. I eventually gave her some tylenol since she seemed so upset and I really didn't know what else to do. She just seemed so tired and so upset, like she really wanted to be asleep and just couldn't get there. After I gave her the tylenol it only took about ten more minutes to get her to fall asleep. I hate to hear that upset cry, it tears me up inside. I don't know if her being mostly happy makes the upset times more upsetting. Do parents of children who cry more often get immune to it? Maggie isn't perfectly happy, but the unhappy times are so different in comparison to her normal temperment that it just drags me down. I wish that I could tell what her cries mean. People have been surprised that I don't know... I am surprised that anyone could know. Am I not being observant enough? Am I not auditorily inclined enough? Even after reading descriptions of what different cries generally mean I can't pick out if her cry is sharp or however else they describe them. They all sound equally gutwrenchingly exasperating to me. They wear me out.

I was checking my email and Maggie was sitting so nicely on the floor playing with a stuffed lion I just had to take some pictures. I think that this is the best of them. She already knows how to pose for a picture. Wow, is she awesome or what?

Looks like the video didn't work. I accidentally uploaded the same video as before. Here is the right one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cCBsNoznnI

Sorry it's not right here... I didn't get a chance to copy and paste the html.

Maggie is learning to love some foods. When I saw that she was making a big mess I put on the bib. She managed to get it everywhere but on the bib. On me, on her legs and her arms it was everywhere. I had to capture her in the act. Her lip was blue for hours after I cleaned her up from this meal. She is such a cutie.

This picture shows Maggie playing next to Matt's piano bench. We placed it there to block her from getting to the electrical wires behind it, but it's pretty unsafe in itself. She loves to pull herself up to standing using the legs and walk around it. I think she learned quick that when she played on it either Matt or I would come running so that also helped to attract her toward it. We have termed it the "Jungle Gym of Death". I probably shouldn't put this in writing. I was saying it was a bad name and we shouldn't jinx ourselves like that, but, what can you do, a name like that just sticks.

Here is a great look from Maggie. We did another longish photo shoot with her and I think this picture is the best of the bunch. If you want to see more check out her album on Kodak Gallery. (Let me know if you need an invite to access it, or if you can't let me know if you want a cd of tons of pictures.) Maggie spends quite a bit of time standing on the edge of the couch as she is in this picture. She has lazy parents who like to sit around and she constantly tries to climb up with us, but if we bring her up she wants to get right back down again. She is so active. I don't know how I will keep up with her when she starts to walk, and (uhoh) run!

We are really moving on this move! Hehe. We have narrowed down what we have to what we need. Just a few days worth of clothes, and a meal's worth of dishes, the computer, the tv, and the big pieces of furniture. We have a small bit more to pack, but we are getting there faster than expected. We're going to be having a yard sale this Saturday to get rid of stuff we just don't need, ah liberation!

Maggie actually slept until 3am before waking up last night. 5 hours of uninterupted by Maggie sleep. Of course, I kept waking up anyway since my body is used to it now. Ugh. It's going to be awhile before I actually get a decent amount of solid sleep. She did let me get an hours nap in just now and that helped to keep her napping longer, so, she has been asleep or her morning nap since around 10. Maybe a longer morning nap and if I keep her afternoon nap short and prevent her evening nap things will work.

Last night Matt and I moved a load of stuff over to the new place and then tried to stop and get a quick bite to eat. Maggie cried in the car the whole way from Walpole to Westmoreland then would not eat in the restaurant, then cried all the way from Westmoreland to Keene. I have made a rule that we are no longer allowed to be out with her past 7pm, and things will be quiet and subdued after that. I think one problem is that she has been getting overtired. An overtired baby gets worked up, and that is no good. She's is still amazingly wonderful though!