It's fall at last.

From October Weekend

Hello friends and family! We are wrapping-up a very busy weekend--Brian is doing some software work here at home (he has a Siemens laptop now that makes that possible!), I am preparing for my Childbirth Prep teaching tomorrow evening, and Maia is asleep.

It was a beautiful, cool weekend here in Ann Arbor. Yesterday (Saturday) we did our usual rounds through the Farmer's Market and got a bunch of beautiful fall veggies (butternut squash, potatoes, carrots, etc.) for our meals this week. This really is a fantastic time of year for harvests in Michigan, and it makes it relatively easy for us to do the vast majority of our food shopping for the week at the market.

It was a football Saturday in Ann Arbor, too, which means lots of traffic, tourists, and marching band music being played from storefront stereos throughout downtown. We went to Conor O'Neill's to watch some of the game, and Maia had her first taste of cheeseburger and french fries (albeit tiny tastes!) while we were there. She also charmed a table full of sorority sister alumni (seated next to us) who were in town for homecoming.

Then we went to the first birthday party of a "friend" of Maia's (the quotes signifying the impossibility of that distinction at her age). At that party, Maia had her first taste of birthday cake (prepared by the former pastry chef of Zingerman's! Fancy!!!) and Haagen Dazs ice cream. Clearly, Maia was living LARGE this weekend!!!

And then, today, we visited Wasem's apple orchard and pumpkin patch, where we picked a bushel of apples and got a pumpkin for our front porch. The farm was wonderful--it was busy with families, as you would expect this time of year, but it wasn't overly-commercial and crowded with petting zoos and corn mazes and other such things. It was basic: apples, pumpkins, cider, and doughnuts. It was just what we were looking for. And, of course, Maia tasted her first doughnut!

It was a busy weekend, but not too much. Because it has been so very hard to predict what Maia's sleep will be like from one day to the next, we try to be flexible with our plans and responsive to Maia's needs. With each day that passes, she becomes less like a baby and more like a toddler (particularly with the constant standing up and moving!), and with that comes the inevitable growth of her personality and attitude. Just today, at the pumpkin patch, she was playing on the ground and digging through the weeds and pumpkin stalks with her hands. When it was time to move on and pick more apples, she was not happy to be picked-up and put back into her baby carrier. She didn't cry, but she certainly made her feelings known. :)

Oh, and the last photo in the new album is her current favorite face: she wrinkles her nose and often snorts through it. My parents tell me that I did the exact same thing for months when I was her age, and they have the photos to prove it!