Maria was just past her 1st birthday on July 26, 1996.
This was her 2nd baseball game, and Williamsport won, 9-1.
Hiking the Loyalsock Trail on July
27, 1996.
Mile marker 20 is a quarter mile from
the Lycoming - Sullivan County line, and about 400 feet from the
highest
point on the trail, elevation 2140 feet.
Maria, posing near our front porch, on a warm Sunday
afternoon, November
30, 1998.
Yes,
that brightly colored object is BJ from the Barney show.
Maria
is posing for
a photo on July 30, 1995, when she was only 3 weeks old. She seemed to
understand
what was happening with the camera, and kept smiling and striking poses
each
time Dad prepared to take a picture.
First in a series of
photos of Maria posing near mileposts along Philadelphia's Main Line.
Here,
Dad is holding her next to the nine mile marker near downtown Bryn
Mawr.
She was ten days old and headed to her first dinner out.
Seven week old
Maria
on her first visit to the Winterthur gardens near Wilmington, Delaware,
on
August 27, 1995. She and Dad are posing near the reflecting pool.
In
the second milepost
photo, taken in mid-July, 1996, Maria is just past her 1st birthday and
standing
on her own. At this point, she was just starting to walk on her own so
she
wasn't wearing shoes yet.
Easter,
1996, was also
Maria's 9-month birthday. Auntie Mary visited us from Chicago that
year,
and she gave Maria this bunny as an Easter present.
Same Maria, next year,
different milepost. In mid-July, 1997, just after her 2nd birthday,
Maria
posed next to the eight mile marker in Haverford. No, this marker isn't
that
much smaller than the one in the other photos!
In September, 1996,
we hiked a segment of the Appalachian Trail near Port Clinton,
Pennsylvania.
The highlight of the hike was this spectacular vista, the Pinnacle. The
lowlight
of the hike was Maria kicking off one of her brand-new shoes somewhere
along
the trail on our three-mile descent.
On a visit to her birthplace
of Bryn Mawr on December 19, 1999, Maria posed once again near her
favorite
milepost along Lancaster Pike. By the age of 4 1/2, she had grown too
tall
to ride the SEPTA bus for free, but we didn't ride a bus during our
four-day
visit to the Philadelphia area.
Here, Maria poses
next to
a Chinese hibiscus blossom "as big as a dinner plate" on a visit to the
Longwood
Gardens conservatory in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. This was on Dad's
38th
birthday, January 25, 1997. Hibiscus is still one of Maria's
favorite
flowers, and she now has a hibiscus plant of her own in our Indiana
backyard.
Maria's next visit
to her birthplace in Bryn Mawr was in February, 2001. On February
17,
she posed by the milepost after we ate lunch in downtown Bryn
Mawr.
Between the fence that the township put up, and the fact that she keeps
getting
taller, it's getting harder to get a photo that includes both her and
the
stone!
Nine year old Maria
poses at the nine mile marker in downtown Bryn Mawr on her most recent
visit to the Philadelphia area during August, 2004.
Maria's first swimming pool in the backyard of our house in Haverford, Pennsylvania. She was about eleven months old when this photo was taken in mid-June, 1996.
Cousin
Claire from Chicago
and Maria are playing with some toys at Grandma and Grandpa's house in
Lapeer,
Michigan. The photo was taken on July 4, 1998, Grandpa's 76th birthday
and
Maria's 3rd birthday party with her Michigan relatives.
Two days before her
1st birthday, Maria is holding herself up by leaning against a tree on
the lawn of the state capitol building in Lansing, Michigan. None
of us realized at the time that six years and two moves later, she'd
end up living in the state!
Maria posing on a
log while visiting Conner Prairie historical settlement in Fishers,
Indiana, northeast of Indianapolis, in late August, 1999.
A few days after her
1st birthday, Maria visited Mackinac Island in northern Michigan.
Here she is posing next to a historical marker on British Landing Road
marking the site of the Battlefield of 1814.
After
a
surprise snowstorm in early March, 2000, Maria posed next to a snowman
that
she and Dad made in the back yard. About a half foot of snow fell, but
it
was nearly all melted in a few days. 
In this closeup of
Maria standing next to the historical marker, she appears to be very
interested in the official seal of the Mackinac Island State Park
Commission.