look what i can do

maddie's latest skill is to hold the bottle while drinking. we haven't used a bottle in a few weeks and i thought that we should reintroduce it before we left her with a babysitter last night (more on that in a minute). plus, i am heading to chicago tomorrow morning and will be at a conference until thrusday so she will being seeing lots of bottle time over the next week. she didn't even flinch and got right to business by taking charge of holding the bottle.

so yesterday we had about 4 inches of snow that then got piled on by a few hours of sleet and followed up by rain. needless to say the roads were rough and there was a high risk of ice. but matt and i went out into the night for his office Christmas party downtown. so we left maddie with one of the neighborhood girls for the night (actually two of the neighborhood girls because on of the other neighbors came to keep the babysitter company since maddie would be sleeping most of the time). as we were getting ready to go, i kept worrying that something might happen to us on the roads. since we don't have our will written up yet (one of the million things i need to get done by the end of the year) i wrote up a little something and had matt sign it so that if anything did happen our families would know what we wanted even if a court wouldn't uphold such an informal, unwitnessed document. am i crazy or what? everything was fine. matt and i had a nice evening out at the public museum (where the dinner/party was) and madelyn did great for the sitter.

i also learned that the going rate for babysitting has not increases since i last babysat and in fact, we were called by the sitter's parents after i dropped her off saying that she would be returning half of the money because we should not pay her that much! oh well. i guess that it is better to over pay than underpay. right?

madelyn is way over this laying on the ground thing and just itching to sit and stand. here she is 'helping' me with the laundry and a video of her sitting and playing with a toy (not sure what you would actually call it - an entertainment table?). she also likes to stand at that toy and play - she holds herself up and can push the buttons so that they make noise and light put, but the camera is way too distracting to her when she is standing and she falls down before i get any real footage. maybe soon though... plus, you may notice that i have figured out how to lighten the videos before i post them! i think it makes them a little grainy, but at least you can see what is going on a little better. oh, and i should mention that she is not choking. that is just her latest extreme in making one of her favorite noises. even though it freaks matt and i out a little because it can sound like she is having an asthma attack or something! the joys of parenthood... love.