Mid-Summer Night's Update

Well, it's not actually mid-summer yet, but we're about half way through our summer here. Nothing too much to report. It has finally started to cool down a little. We hit record highs for a couple weeks. It was almost unbearable, but we hung out at the pool a lot.

Because Maggie still has so little hair (although, I think she's gotten more since we've been here and it's turning blonder), I cover her head in sun screen, too. It usually ends with her hair spiky, like below.
Her newest game is "shopping." She loads things into her beach bucket and carried it around the apartment.

John's team is doing really well, right now they are 11-3, probably 12-3 after tonight. During one of the hottest nights, when we got back in the car at 6:30, the car said 103F, Maggie and I went to a double-header. Because we were hot and sweaty, and the humidity was so bad, the sand that Maggie likes to play in turned to mud in her hands. Below are the results.

Just to show how hot is was, this is one of the guys only a couple innings into the first game.
Maggie just being cute.


I don't think this picture needs explaining, but you can imagine why her clothes came off! ;)

Maggie, in the car, is hilarious. Most of the time she is happy and babbles and yells. But, as you can see unfold, sometimes she freaks out. Lately, we've had our hands full with her little temper tantrums!


In the car, her tartrums result in screaming and flailing limbs.

For Father's Day, we spent the day in North Myrtle Beach. We had a great day, but I have to say I was disappointed in Myrtle Beach. I had expected it to be more classy tourism, but it was a lot like the Dells.

On our 4-1/2 hour trip to the beach (it only took 3 on the way back), we stopped in Cheraw, SC at an old cemetery. The oldest tombstone we found was for a man died in 1710 and served in the French-Indian War. He was also the man he had formed the church, which was the last pre-colonial church founded in SC.

But this tombstone was cool, too. It says the man was mortally injured at Chicamauga in 1863. He died in a Civil War battle. How cool is that?!

Maggie enjoyed her first trip to the beach. At first, she was unsure of everything. The sand felt funny, but apparently tasted pretty good. And she really didn't like the salt water in her mouth or her eyes. But the second time we headed toward the ocean, she went right in. In fact, she wanted to keep going deeper and towrad the bigger waves.

Lunch was, pretty much, a disaster. Unless she is in her chair, Maggie won't sit still long enough to eat. In this case, she was trying to walk around, and her food kept ending up in the sand. She was tired and frustrated, and when we took her sand covered food, she had a tantrum. Don't worry, we got it on tape! She ended up eating a good amount of sand during lunch. Here you can see she's still red and blotchy from the screaming fit.
But she flips the switch pretty quickly. And soon enough, she was playing with Daddy in the sand again.
John would bury her legs, and she would lift them out of the sand.
You can also see her latest injury. The two big scabs on her forehead came from the ballpark parking lot. I didn't see what actually happened, but she ended up face first in a big pile of rocky sand. Then two days later, she smacked her head on a chair leg, and the day after that it was the closet door. It's been a rough week for Maggie's head, but she bounces back quickly. Whereas for a while, the problem was she was still wobbly on her feet, then she was learning to run and her head would get ahead of her body. Now, she's learned to spin. And while she's really good at the spinning, she's not so good at the stopping and the balancing.

Other than our exciting beach trip, we've been hanging out and going to baseball games.

Play Ball!

The season has begun, and the Pageland Red Roosters have won their first 3 games. Things are going much better with the league, although John did lose one more player. If you want to keep updated with that half of our summer, John started a blog for the team: http://www.pagelandredroosters.blogspot.com/. He's been pretty good at keeping it updated, and I think he plans on posting after each game.

As for Maggie and I, we are enjoying being able to spend time with John. Their games don't start until 5 (at the earliest) and they haven't been practicing until 4, so we get a good chunk of the day together. We have been running errands and collecting the little things we still need for the apartment. I think we have finally stopped spending money!

We have been showing our support for the Red Roosters as well. We've been to games the last two nights, and Maggie is quite obviously the cutest fan there.

All the other fans love her, and, being the easy going little girl she is, she loves them, too. She will walk up to anyone and give them rocks (or whatever else she happens to be carrying around) or climb into their laps. While it's cute now, it won't be so cute when she hops into someone's car at age 8.

Maggie and I have been to the pool a few times. She is still not too sure about the water but does pretty well. She will step off the side of the pool to me, but the water is still a little cool, so we don't usually stay long.

(Check out the huge, water soaked butt!)

Maggie is still doing her own thing. At baseball games, and just about anywhere, she likes to be able to walk around and explore. She is incredibly independent and very brave, which is good except when it causes injuries. Her climbing and attempts at running have led to many falls in the last week. The worst of which happened when Maggie was running down the hall, (I'll admit I was chasing her), tripped, and smacked her forehead on the corner of the door frame. It dented her head (yes, dented), and we were a little nervous for a bit. But, as my mom says, babies have very resilient heads.

Other updates? Maggie has two new teeth: the next tooth to the left on the top and bottom. She is talking up a storm (mainly jibberish), and we think she's finally settled into NC, and so are we.