Toys

Brian's family must have known that we were making Maya play with stuff like this...

They spoiled her with toys this year...a vacuum cleaner, grocery cart (with toy foods), laptop computer, remote control, talking bear, and a push toy that sucks up plastic balls and then shoots them back out.  She has so many options that she doesn't know what to play with!  Yesterday she was playing with something and so I picked up her laptop to see how it worked.  She saw me and got up to take it away from me.  Then she put it down and went back to the other toy.  I picked up the laptop again and she came over and took it away.  We did this cycle about three more times.  Little stinker! :)

M and I hung out at home today while Brian was at work.  She was pretty independent about playing this morning (she even let me watch a few episodes of the Pioneer Woman on the Food Network!), but after she got up from her nap, she was totally clingy.  She wanted me to just sit on the couch and watch her play or hold her in my lap.  Any time she got focused on playing with something I tried to get up to do a little housework, but she would run over to me, whine, and cling on to my legs.  I didn't get a whole lot done today, but it was nice to get a little extra cuddling in. 

Happy New Year's Eve!

We are having a (mostly) quiet new year's eve at home this year.  Miss M is keeping us entertained with her dancing (the dog is a Christmas gift from grandma Judy) and other antics.  It's a good thing that we don't have any big plans tonight because it's COLD!  3.1 degrees and dropping!  Brrr!

Dance party

Maya's got her own distinctive dance moves developing.  They involve lots of marching/stomping and, occasionally, spinning in circles. 

She cracks us up!

Trouble

I was watching TV when all of a sudden, it was a little too quiet in the house.  I turned around to find this...

We've got trouble now that Maya has learned she can climb up high just by standing on something else! 

And here's one other funny picture...she will often bring us things she wants us to put on her...socks, shoes, hats, jackets...they don't need to match or even be a complete set.  Here she is one night finishing up her milk with a jacket and one boot on.

Christmas break

We had a great long Christmas weekend in Rochester.  We got lots of time with family and ate a ton.  Mindy and Tricia have great posts about Christmas, which is good because we only ended up taking a handful of pictures the entire weekend.  One video we did get was of Maya playing with Natalie's new American Girl wheelchair. 

Maya had fun pushing the doll around in it...and then she decided it looked so fun that she should try it herself!

Silly girl!

Christmas 2012

Only a quick post today to keep the Hawaii grandparents happy...

We came over to Rochester on Friday for a long Christmas weekend.  We celebrated with the immediate Knutson family on Christmas eve day.  Maya had a great time opening gifts.  She was meticulous about ripping off a piece of wrapping paper, balling it up, and throwing it away before moving on to the next piece of paper.   

Her favorite gift of the day was a vacuum cleaner, but I'm sure she'll explore the other gifts soon.  Today we are celebrating with the Sutter side of the family: Brian's grandparents, aunts, and uncles are heading over for lunch.

For those of you who don't know Jon well, don't worry, he's just joking...Jon, like Brian, inherited the deep cleaning gene from Cher. :)

Merry Christmas, everyone!!

Big shoes

There comes a day in every girl's life when she realizes she has big shoes to fill...

Flasher

After lunch in the Caf yesterday, I could tell that Maya needed a diaper change.  It wasn't until I got her on the changing table in the campus center, though, that I learned the extent of the damage...poop everywhere!  We had come up in the backpack, with no gear other than an extra diaper so Miss M got to ride home in her diaper, socks, shoes, and jacket.  She looked like a little flasher walking through the campus center!  She didn't seem to mind, though, and luckily it wasn't that cold for the .33 mile pants-less walk home. 

A new direction

In my "free" time I have launched a new blog.  This family blog will not be abandoned.  At the moment we have run out of free space for pictures.  When we decide to delete old posts or upgrade to more memory there will be more activity here.  So yes, there will be more posts from both Kate and I here.  If you don't get enough of me you now have another option.  http://bknutsonblog.wordpress.com/

A snow she can appreciate

Maya has been around snow when she was a baby, and saw some snow fall earlier this year.  This past storm though was enough to actually stick around long enough to play.  She's at an age now where she can explore snow and experience it for the first time on her own terms.  At first, she stayed on the sidewalk but soon 'warmed up' to snow and 'slid' into a good relationship with the white stuff.

 We took a trip out to the cabin too.  Maya was a little scared of the noise of shoveling the sidewalk and garage apron.  Once I threw a few fluffy loads of snow at her torso, she thought it was pretty funny and didn't mind the noise anymore.

We wandered around the yard and before going home, I took off my gloves and hers and we made a snow ball.  She didn't think she could hold it at first.  She found it really hard to pick up snow that daddy didn't make into a ball for her.  I wanted her to be able to play mitten-less for longer.  In the end, I think I was more worried about her cold fingers than she.

Christmas decorating

Since we weren't sure if we were going to make it back to Rochester for Thanksgiving (which, we didn't), we picked out and brought home our Christmas tree the week before Thanksgiving.  Brian threw some lights on it right away, but we waited until after Thanksgiving to really decorate it.  Maya was pretty excited about helping decorate.

So far, she's been really good with the tree.  She'll walk up to it and touch the lights and the ornaments, but she doesn't really pull on them or try to take them down.  Most of the time she just ignores it all together.

 

Saturday Shenanegins

Maya and I had a fairly quiet day around the house while Brian was at work.  One of the highlights of my day was watching her try to line up a bunch of the figurines from her nativity set on her giraffe.  She was so focused on trying to get all four of them to stay on the seat at the same time that she didn't notice me take the camera out.  By the time I started recording, she had already been doing this for a few minutes. 

What a cutie!

Maya and I also ventured downtown for the (ice) fish house parade.  Yep, you know you live in small town Minnesota when there's a fish house parade!  No photos to share from it, but I promise that Maya had a great time clapping and waving.

Missing you

I shot this video trying to get Maya's dance party on film, but she put an end to that as soon as she saw the camera come out.

Instead, you get a cute video of her looking at her book of pictures from the Knutson side of the family. 

The Chase...Mommy edition

Oh, you know, just a regular night at home with the girls when Brian's at band practice...

First toy

A few days ago, Brian and I gave Maya the first new toy we have every bought for her...crazy that it took us almost 15 months, but she has so many great hand-me-downs, gifts, garage sale finds, and empty boxes that we haven't needed to buy her anything.  She loves playing with our phones, so when I saw this toy phone on sale at Menards, I made Brian buy it.  As you can tell, she loved it.  And she carried it around with her all day.

Oh, and in case you were wondering...yes, that is a Christmas tree in the background.  And, yes, we did put it up nearly a week before Thanksgiving. Don't judge us :)

Maya's chores

Maya has always had a fascination with the washer and she loves to watch me do laundry.  Last night I got interrupted just as I started to empty the dryer and when I came back, she was nearly done with unloading the whole load!  What a great helper!  I caught her on video just at the end.

Daddy's fan

Brian was practicing his guitar the other night and I caught this little video of Maya.  She's always good about clapping at the end of songs and you can also see her version of dancing towards the end.

St. Peter fun

Yes we live in a small town, but we have some great resources here for kids and Brian has been making good use of them this fall.  Every Friday, the community center sets up an open gym time for little kids.  Here is Maya checking out some of the activities...

By far, the coolest thing in St. Peter for little kids is the Creative Play Place.  It's also in the community center and it is a free space with all kinds of toys, play stations, and craft projects for little kids.  It's open during the cold months and (best of all!), it's free!  Here are some shots of Maya from their trip down there a few weeks ago.

She's climbing out of the sandbox that is under a giant castle they can climb in

The cash register in the "shoe store" is one of Maya's favorite toys

Here's Maya at the bean table

You can see part of the castle in the background over her shoulder

Our little ham

Do I really even need a caption for this one?  I just found this photo that Brian must have taken sometime last week.  What a little ham she is! 

She's also a little sicky this weekend.  She's got a runny nose and a bit of a cough.  Maybe a cold, maybe a tooth...who knows!  She's had a tough time napping the past few days, though thankfully she's slept pretty well at night.  And she's been a little crabbypants lately.  Not all the time, but enough to notice :)

A visit from Grandma Judy

My mom came to visit for a few days last week.  Maya was very excited to have someone to read stories to her!

Maya's Christmas List

Dear family and friends,

All I want for Christmas is a few more empty boxes!

Love, Maya Jayne

P.S. I also hide the remote control for the TV in these boxes and carry around other various and sundry household items and toys.  

Make believe

We had our first real round of make believe play with Maya the other night.  She was up WAY past her bedtime because she had napped for over four hours that day.  She started mixing drinks and handing them to us for us to drink.  Brian got a bit of it on camera.

Halloween 2012

We met up with our friends from campus for dinner followed by trick-or-treating in a neighborhood just off campus.  The kids all looked pretty cute!

Maya wasn't too interested in getting candy.  She was, however, interested in going inside.  She would walk right past the person handing out candy and start going into their house! 

Special request

My mom reminded me that it has been awhile since our last video post of Maya walking.  So, by special request, here she is...

A Very Fun Run

Today I ran the St. Peter Halloween fun run.  It is one of the best fun runs there is!  Everyone gets in the spirit and dresses up and more and more people show up every year.   This year, there were over 1,400 people preregistered.  I dressed as a ladybug...mostly because my friend Heather had a ladybug mask that she said I could borrow and I knew I could find red and black gear to wear.  It was cold this morning (in the low 30s!), so I also wanted to be warm :)

Maya and Brian came down to cheer us on and Maya wore her costume, too.  Thanks to the Lundquists for letting us borrow this super cute butterfly costume!

We ran into Mindy's friends, Brent and Shanna before the race...I guess the ladybug option wasn't very original :)

 

Our little explorer

I didn't actually finish the race with Heather and her sister-in-law, Siri, but Brian didn't see me coming in time to get a picture the first time, so I jumped in with them so that there would be documentation that I ran

 

And here are a couple of the many very clever costumes...

Cleaning Maya

Just a few cute pictures for a cold, wet, gloomy day in St. Peter.

Happy fall!

And, happy birthday Brian!  He's the big 3-5 today! 

Here are a few shots from this fall on campus...

The Highline Highlight

I don't know where to start with Broventure2012, so I'll start with the highlight.  It's really hard to top some of the crazy adventures we have.  This adventure is a real gem.

 One of the geocaches we planned to get is located on a over-head cable trolley.  We don't know what it's intended use is, but there is a cache there and we were bound and determined to get it.  Jon had planned and made it all possible.  In addition to just getting to the cache, he made a...well, we'll call it the "Blue Butterfly".

The TARGET

Sizing up the start point

Jon had to retrieve the trolly.  Here he's preparing the safety rig. 

"Dangle crawling" out to the trolley.

The half way break.  You can imagine his arms were a bit tired!

Success!  Landing on the trolley.

 Riding the trolley, powered by hand over and on the over-head cable.  Back to the launch pad to examine the geocache and prepare for the next stage.

Tony rode the trolley, gravity assist this time, to the low point of the cable to "catch" Jon on the "Blue Butterfly"

A view from the deck of the trolley.  That pvc container holds the geocache we were after.

 Here's the "Blue Butterfly"!  A modified child's bike.  Oh yes he did!

And the "Blue Butterfly" in demo mode.  Getting the picture yet?

 Jon rode the "Blue Butterfly" first.  Yahoooooo!!!!!!

 Videos are a must!  Here is Jon getting to the trolley.

Getting back to the launch pad in the trolley.

 The inaugural ride video.  (AKA Jon the test dummy)

Jon's Trolley ride out to "catch" me.

My ride!

I was the "catcher" for Tony's "Blue Butterfly" ride, so I don't have good video of that, but he has a great video of himself taking the ride.  Maybe I'll get to post it later.  

For those that like a little slower pace, or feel more artsy, here's a sample of what we got to see.  Yes I've tweaked it some and it looks artsy, but it is an actual photo I took on a hike near Ely's peak.  I'll post an "artsy photo" blog in the days to come.  Until then....enjoy!