Spring Follies

The weather has finally started to get nice again around here. We have been going to parks a lot lately and playing outside whenever we get the chance. Yesterday, Maggie had a slight fever, so we had to pick her up from school. By the afternoon, she felt much better, so mom bought her a new toy (I know, she's extremely spoiled).



Her bike even has a basket for Ernie.









We've recently added history lessons in the evenings (sandwiched between differential equations and physical chemistry). The results seem to be paying off.





We also went to the circus a few weeks ago, but we didn't get many pictures. One of the highlights for Maggie was her grape snow cone that came in a totally sweet elephant cup:







Finally, as usual, Maggie spends plenty of her down time fixing her hair and playing dress-up.

1st job

I put Maggie to work this past week. Next, she will be washing dishes :)

A few videos

Here is Maggie enjoying "airplane"



Here is Maggie abusing her doll



Here is Maggie flexing her lexicon. Enjoy.

Random Activities

As it was recently Gabby's birthday, both of Maggie's grandmothers used this as an excuse to buy Maggie a bunch of cool stuff - which was not so subtly packaged along with Gabby's birthday gifts. One of Maggie's (sets of) presents was a Fantasia DVD along with a Mickey Mouse wizard costume. After some initial struggle, we finally got her to put the cape on.





Then, we gave her the magic wand...





...and taught her how to cast spells.



To get the full effect, you have to see the costume in motion:



Recently, Maggie has also started watching "Dora the Explorer" which, incidentally, was also one of Alice's favorite shows when she was Maggie's age. Having been alerted to this fact, Gran and Honey scrambled to buy up all of the available Dora merchandise at their local kids stuff vendors. Here is a back pack that Gran bought - it's the perfect size!



Honey's Dora gift to Maggie is just as practical as the back pack, though it currently gets more use inside the house.









After telling her that Honey and Gran bought all of this stuff at the store, Maggie hurried to get mom's credit card out of her wallet.



Here, Maggie demonstrates her musical talents.



Finally, here are a couple of recent videos showing how we constantly spoil our daughter:

A prelude to the terrible twos.

Maggie is usually a little angel (look back to our "Christmas Angel" post for evidence), but lately, she has been flashing her more sinister side. Her tantrums are usually characterized by swatting her hands at her mom and dad and by her "reverse crying crawl" technique. I think she exemplifies both in the following video.



What is all the fuss about, you ask? This next video will help to clarify.



Finally satisfied. If you look closely at this picture, you can see Maggie trying to lick the chocolate off of her face.



The rain in Champaign stays mainly in the plain.



The spinning umbrella mesmerizes her.



The other day, Gran and Papa sent some legos. One rainy day, I gave Maggie a simple task: Using all of the legos in the set, build a structure with two planes of symmetry. This is what she came up with:



Not bad for a novice architect, is it? (I may have helped a little.) In Illinois, there isn't much sand, yet they still sell sand buckets at Walmart. We figured that these must be for the "white sand" that is abundant in these parts, so we gave it try. They seem to work pretty good.









On the weekends, Maggie usually spends some quality time with mom. Here, she is showing off her fancy boots and purse carrying skills.





Well, we have to go for now, but before we do, Maggie wants to send you all a big (fish) kiss!!!