Mary, Ryan & Mary Ryan

As most of you know, our little Mary Margaret is named after our maternal grandmothers. Mary is Danny's grandmother (more commonly known as Granny), which makes Mary Mary's great-granddaughter. Granny's last name is "Ryan," which is also the name of her other great-grandchild, born to Kevin (the oldest of 6 in Danny's family) and his wife, Leanne, back in November.

Confused? Let's make it simple: Mary Ryan has 2 great-grandchildren, Mary and Ryan. How cool is that? It's a great way to honor someone we all love so much. So, here are some pictures of Mary, Ryan and Mary Ryan.

This first picture was from the same day as Mary's dedication (May 3). It was the first time she met her 1st cousin, Ryan. As you can tell, Ryan inherited all of Granny's Irish genes and opted not to share any with Mary.


This next picture is more recent, from a family get together at Kevin's house. This picture includes my mother and brother, Kevin.


From the same family gathering is a picture of Ryan eating Mary's feet.


Rewinding the clock, here are a couple pictures of Granny holding her first great-granddaughter. The first was taken when Mary was just a couple hours old, the second only about a day old.


Next month will be a big month for Mary, as she'll meet her family on Lisa's side (Lisa's parents are the only ones she's met so far). That means we'll get pictures of her with all her cousins, aunts & uncles and great-grandparents, including Margaret. We'll be sure to post pictures when the time comes.

Wakey Wakey

One of our favorite times of the day is when Mary wakes up. She's generally in such a happy mood, no doubt because she's so excited to see us. This morning we could hear that she was awake for a good 20-30 minutes, happily cooing in her crib. Anyway, we busted out the video camera and caught a little of Mary's morning greeting to us.

PS: She does wear clothes, we promise. It was hot and muggy last night, so we had to choose between wearing clothes and being swaddled in her diaper. We opted for the swaddle.

Mary's Trip to the Rainforest

In preparation for our trip to India, Mary's friend Ellie is loaning her the Rainforest Bouncer (for the record, we will be visiting no rainforests in India). She was mesmerized, until about 10 minutes after we shot this video.

I'll admit I'm a little torn. I realize the sights and sounds are supposed to be good for a baby, but there's a part of me that thinks this is like video games for babies. Can't I just read her a book? Teach her some Greek? Watch a baseball game together?

And Sometimes, Mary's Head Falls Off (& a Couple Other Random Pictures)

We've joked about it before on this blog, but sometimes Mary's head tilts so far to the side that you think it must be attached incorrectly. I'm sure this is true of all babies, so I have yet to be alarmed.

That is, until the other day, while Lisa was feeding her and she kept falling asleep. I'm pretty sure her head disengaged from her shoulders. Take a look.




Pretty remarkable if you ask me. Almost as remarkable: Mary's head disconnected from the rest of her body and all Lisa could muster was a fake smile.

I have nothing special to say about this next picture, except that she's a cute baby in a cute polo dress. I can't believe I, Danny Pierce, just said a pink polo dress is cute. Something's happening to me...


And now for something completely different, I was fooling around the other day with the settings on our camera and came up with this: Mary's belly button in sepia tone.


That's almost as exciting as the picture of her big smile that Lisa put up in our last post. Almost.

two months and smiling about it...

Mary was two months old on the 15th. To track her growth we're taking a picture of her on the 15th of every month. She is big girl, weighing in at 12 lbs. 14 oz. at her two month check-up.


She is also smiling a lot more. I know that we have said this before but I finally got it on film this morning. Often times in the morning I sit her up on my pillow while I get ready in my room, so I can talk to her. She's always in a very smiley mood in the morning and I love it!




Update on the experiment... it is going pretty well. In the past 7 nights she has woken up before 6:30am twice. Not too bad. I'm thankful for the uninterrupted 7-8 hours of sleep on the nights that I get it!

An experiment...

So, a few weeks ago we decided that we were going to try to get Mary to get rid of her 4am feeding and move it to 6:30am. We have read that you can give them their pacifier if they wake up and they should go back to sleep. So, we did it and it was beautiful!... for about 5 days. Then, she started waking up every 30-45 minutes because it fell out. I tried many things and nothing really worked. We live in a very small Boston apartment so if Mary is awake groaning (she doesn't really cry, just groan/talk loudly) we are awake as well. So, I decided to shut both doors and move the noise maker into our room so we could sleep and see if she could put herself back to sleep without any assistance. Don't worry, I did a sound test before... I could still hear her is she cried. The first night she was awake for about 30 minutes. And, being a mom, of course I was awake and wondering how she is doing the entire time. But, last night I only heard one peep at 5:15am and then she was off to sleep again until 6:30 (unless the noise maker blocked out her moaning earlier...). Anyways, I am hoping that the experiment remains successful and she will be sleeping a solid 8 hours at night! Yahoo!

Mary is making some big progress these days...everything is big progress when your 8 weeks old! She smiles often, loves music, watches us across the room, turns when we talk to her (sometimes) and started hitting the toys that was dangling over her head. She loves to lay on her little playmat with toys dangling down. She will be content for 30-45 minutes... it is wonderful for me! :) She is such a joy to us! She has been a very content and happy baby so far and we feel so blessed! Oh, and she isn't hurting in the weight gain department! Her double chin is featured below.




And here is me (post-run and pre-bath) and Mary (post-bath)... oh well.

Mary Loves the 80's

This past weekend was our friend Sarah's 80's themed birthday party. We had 80's music blasting, trivia (our team, Reaganomics, lost), Atari games and, of course, 80's garb (well, everyone but me, that is). So, Mary donned some leg warmers and took some pictures with our 80's friends. Anyway, enjoy the pictures (complete with reference jokes and accompanying video links for those who don't get them).

Daniel-san stopped in on his way to the All Valley Karate Tournament. Immediately after this picture Mary proceeded to sweep Daniel-san's leg and get him a body bag. Too bad we didn't get that on camera.


Then Devo came in to play a few numbers for Sarah. While Mary despises their music (seriously, what were people thinking in the 80's?), how can you pass up the chance to get your picture taken with an iconic 80's band?


Here's Mary with the generic "preppy everyone wanted to beat up in the 80's."


After hours of begging, Mary finally gave into Iceman's requests for a picture, despite Iceman's concerned for how unsafe she is every time she goes up in the air.


Finally, here's a picture of Mary with the 80's girls, fresh off shooting a Cyndi Lauper video.