maddie goes to the zoo

it was a really nice long weekend here. we felt spoiled to have three gorgeous days! especially since today was very cold and they are warning of frost tonight! the joys of wisconsin...


we took maddie for her first "official" trip to the zoo on sunday. (we took her to the zoo when she was about two months old for a hospital picnic but don't count it because we never actually went in to see the animals.) it was a great day - not too crowded, a little on the cool side and not too sunny. she did take an interest in a lot of the animals and surprised me with how well she could find them in their areas. most of the animals were laying down and sleeping, but she could still find them (sometimes we had to point though when they were in a tree or a little hidden).

we stayed away from the petting area on this trip. i got a zoo pass for mother's day (with parking and two guest passes) and plan for maddie and i to go at least twice a month (if not more) so there will be other times for the petting area. we thought it might be nice to give her some time before having to see a goat up close and personal again, plus it was really crowded when we went by.

there was a "family farm" portion to the zoo and that's where we found out that maddie isn't all that crazy about roosters' "cock-a-doodle-doo". the rooster was back in the building, but you could see it behind the chicken and after its third crow maddie burst into tears and was ready to move on. but she did enjoy watching kids go on the pony rides and was even a lot closer to the ponies than at chocolate fest without any fear. in fact, she was calling out to the kids and waving as they went by on the ponies.



later in the day we went into the fish and reptile building. maddie wasn't really sure about the fish tanks and kept a really tight grip on daddy's arm. (matt is trying to put her down on the ledge to stand in the picture and she was not willing to let go.) after a while i took over holding her and found a smaller opening that she was willing to stand on. since the opening was smaller and she was standing close to the glass, she lost a lot of her peripheral vision. the fish in this tank were HUGE and one snuck up on her right next to the glass. she almost jumped into my arms she was so terrified! that one i understood because it surprised her - it would have startled me too.


all and all she really enjoyed the trip more than i thought she would. she even got out of her stroller and walked a little of it on her own. i am looking forward to taking her again. love.

chocolate fest

chocolate fest was not as chocolate-y as it sounds like it would be. although i did eat more chocolate before noon than i am comfortable with admitting. it was mainly a carnival with an exhibit tent with all things chocolate - from chocolate chip cookies to chocolate dipped cheesecake on a stick. the theme for the year was "pirates of the carri'bean'". maddie got her picture taken as both a pirate and a mermaid (much to matt's embarrassment!). he really hates that i like to do the cheesy photo ops with maddie - oh well.

after we were starting to feel ill from chocolate consumption and matt was dying of embarrassment we decided to leave the chocolate area and see what else chocolate fest had to offer. we checked out the helicopter rides (just watching them take off), a middle-aged bmx biker (middle aged is being generous but he was entertaining), some tiger cubs, and then the petting zoo. and that is when things got interesting.

madelyn, our child who is not afraid to climb to any height and finds nothing too scary to try has met her krytonite - goats. we had no way to know that madelyn was terrified of goats. the girl who loves to have her two 55+ pound dogs double-team her with slobbery kisses was terrified when a very small kid (baby goat) that was behind a fence came over to say hello. it wasn't just the goats that she didn't like, but they made her burst into tears. luckily they had some chicks and ducklings that madelyn found a little less threatening. matt and i have never seen her afraid before. never. well, now we know.

here she is enjoying petting the chicks and ducklings trying to put the goat experience behind her:

we are planning on trying the real zoo tomorrow - maybe we will skip the petting zoo portion... love.

walking update: maddie is walking again. really walking. she was all over the place yesterday and when we went to the park last night i just set her down and she took off walking over to the swings. i think that she is influenced by all the other kids walking around and doesn't want to miss out. she did stop once she tried to walk with one of the boy's scooters and fell over it face first. then she switched back to crawling for the rest of our time there - for safety.

countdown to one

madelyn is 11 months old today. i can't believe that she will be one next month! i knew that today was going to be a good day when madelyn woke up not screaming in pain for the first time in a little over a week. and it was a good day. she was ready to play and didn't need to be cuddled all day, well maybe a little at the end. its nice to see her acting like her normal happy self after a rough few weeks.

things with wheels have been some of maddies favorites for a while now, but this week she added sound effects (or at least i just noticed it this week). she reserves her "brrroom, brroom" noises for when she is playing with her cars and trucks. i think that it is so cute to see this little girl rolling her cars around with sound effects. i don't know if she learned it from me or the little boys down the street. here is my attempt at getting it for you all.

tonight she was really excited about her oranges at dinner and was slamming them in to her mouth. matt and i were cracking up but the video doesn't quite do justice to her speed.

meals have been interesting since being sick. madelyn mostly refuses anything with textures and has regressed back to purees. but she is much more interested in using the spoon herself - and that presents its own excitement. today maddie decided to skip the spoon altogether and drink her yogurt directly from the bowl. i don't usually let her touch, let alone hold the bowl, but i have been letting her 'explore' feeding herself and the different textures of her foods.

i'm really excited that tomorrow is friday! love.

walking? what's that?

madelyn stopped walking. altogether. a little over a week ago (and just a few days after her walking video) she just stopped. i think that she actually had a growth spurt that threw her balance off and then got sick causing her to lose all interest in walking or anything else, but whatever happened she stopped. i was pretty sad about it because she was starting to get around really well all on her own. she wouldn't even take one step between toys and furniture. she would, instead, sit down and crawl the six inches or so and then stand up again. she could still stand up without any assistance from an immobile object, but walking was a no-go.

over the past two or three days she has been starting to show glimmers of remembering that she knows how to get around upright, so there is hope. and the good news is that her stability/balance is even better than before. she just isn't as confidant as she was before. at least i know that she can walk and that all kids walk eventually.

yesterday we went to the grand opening of our neighbor's new sandbox. madelyn wasn't crazy about having the sand on her hands (she hasn't really had the opportunity to get good and dirty outside before). but the draw of the trucks and dinosaurs was too much for her to resist. her friend, dylan, kept just walking away so maddie was left to just sit like a bump in one place (since she didn't want to get any sand on her hands) and reach for all the sandbox toys.

(don't you just love her "trouble maker" t-shirt?) love.

more firsts (and hopefully one last)

another rough day of teething here today. poor maddie just wants to be held while she sucks/chews on her thumb and alternately cries (the picture below is from yesterday's snuggling). the benefit for me is that she is more snugly than normal, but the con is that she has to be held and it makes it difficult for me to work, cook dinner, or, well, anything. luckily she holds still so i can sit at the computer and type away with her on my lap.

while she was feeling well today she did one of her favorite things - 'read' books in her room. then she decided that she missed her shoes while i left the room for a minute and got up close and personal in her sock/shoe drawer.

to distract her from the teething pain i was going through some friends' blogs and playing videos telling her about the babies. she was watching my mouth really closely when i would say "baby" and then copy me quietly. so she said "baby" today for the first time! another word to her vocabulary. although she says it with a soft "a" instead of the correct, hard "a". (is that the correct term? i can't remember for the life of me right now and i don't care enough to do a quick search.)

there was another word first with daddy tonight during bath time. we always drain the water from the tub with maddie still in it and tell her to say "bye-bye" to the water when we open the drain. matt said that when he did it tonight maddie gave a little wave and whispered "bye-bye". he was all excited because this was a first just for him.

maddie has also started to do fake laughing for her own amusement or to get our attention in the car. she was doing it today while looking out the window into the backyard so i got the camera. when it starts she is licking the window and trying to bite it (there is a little 'fur' for the track that she is fascinated with right now).



saturday after playgroup we stopped by jcp to pick up our pictures from the not so great photo session. and i scanned them today so that you all could take a look.













and that led to the first that i hope never happens again (but somehow i know that it will) - maddie puked in public. she had been doing great for two days and i just didn't see it coming. i am pretty sure that we just over did it at playgroup with the 'treats' after so many days of just liquids and it upset her stomach, but still! we had just gotten her in the high chair at the restaurant for lunch with dad and it just kept coming and coming. i didn't even realize how bad it was until the lady at a table next to us offered her napkins. i pulled the high chair away from the table and saw the full extent of the damage. i didn't know what to do. i couldn't take her with me and matt was up ordering our food. so i was just yelling "matthew" over and over in the calmest, loud voice i could muster. he finally turned around when i used his full name. the restaurant employees could not have been nicer about the clean up. one busboy was so sweet that he offered us a clean high chair. i politely declined stating that we would be leaving now (matt got our food to go). so we left with lunch and a striped down to the diaper maddie. we did get a few looks on the way out... love.

my aching teeth

madelyn had a tough day today because of her teeth bothering her - A LOT. she was so desperate for relief that she would whine/cry every time she couldn't get something into her mouth. the funniest to me was when she was trying to fit the toy phone handset into her mouth. i don't know what she was most upset about, that the phone wouldn't fit in her mouth or that it was attached to the base - take a look. (again, its a little long.)

she also was saying "dog" very clearly. i would ask her where the dogs are and she would crawl to the window, look down into the yard, and say "hi, dog" or "hey, dog" when she would see one of them outside. i was trying to get her saying it on video with no luck, but i did get her 'talking' to maggie laying on the deck. (you might even notice that she starts to whine when she can't bite on the window for relief.) she talks like this a lot - to her toys, to matt and i, to the dogs, to her friends, etc. i just think that her little voice is so sweet, but i am extremely biased. enjoy!



maddie is still getting over her illness and had her first 'normal' meal today for lunch. i hesitate to call it normal though. even though she ate yogurt with apples and tahini, it was like she had forgotten how to eat. i laughed the whole time (which is probably why she kept doing it). she would just smack her jaws to 'chew' each bite. it was almost as if her teeth hurt so bad that she didn't want anything to touch them, but still wanted to eat. i am just glad that she is taking in something more than milk and cherrios!

tomorrow morning we have a play date with some friends we haven't seen in a very long time (and even one friend that maddie hasn't even met yet). and daddy is going to have some more time to recover and rest. love.

Soooo Big!

we have been taking turns being sick around here. madelyn was sick tuesday and wednesday, i was sick yesterday and today, and matt's turn started today. luckily, madelyn and i are on the upside but madelyn still isn't really eating solids again yet. she did lots of resting while watching veggietales and drinking her milk to rehydrate. luckily, madelyn has handled this all really well and has napped more than normal so that i can rest too.

on top of being sick, her molars started cutting through her gums - on both sides of her top jaw! she has been chewing on her fingers, her toothbrush (in the picture), the remote control, teething rings - really everything! and cried while doing it. i can feel the ridges of her molars, but can't get a look at them or feel long enough to tell which location they are in. i can just feel long enough to know that they are there.

but madelyn did manage to learn a new trick while she was sick. i ask her how big she is, she will raise her arms up over her head. i got her to do it for the camera - finally - but she was standing with a hand on the windowsill so she only raised one arm. you will still get the general effect.



i did manage to get her to do it once with both arms, but then she got distracted by her toys so don't feel like you have to watch the whole things - she only does it once at the beginning.

hopefully, we will all be better soon. love.

fluid filled day

there are no pictures today. and you should be grateful because i did think about it this morning. but let's start at the beginning.

this morning i had to go do some blood work and nicotine testing for the insurance at matt's new job so i was excited that maddie was sleeping in so that i could get ready. she finally started to wake up a little after 8am and i was thinking about how great the blackout curtains were working out.

the second i opened her door to say good morning i knew that this was going to be a long day. there was my beautiful daughter standing up in her vomit filled crib with a huge smile on her face and greeting me with a "hi"! this was the first time maddie has ever vomited so i was a little worried. but since she was so happy i figured it must have been something we fed her for dinner. after giving her a bath and stripping down the crib, she nursed fine and acted like her normal self so off we went to my appointment.

madelyn did fine and hung out with daddy while i was getting my blood drawn. i was going to run by the grocery store for a few things on the way home, but since she and i hadn't had our breakfast yet i thought that we should go ahead and stop by the house first to eat.

she wasn't all that interested in eating so i went to get my cereal while i waited for her to work up her interest. instead she started on a dirty diaper - nothing too unusual. that is until i noticed something on her shoe... it was poo. yes, poo had gotten out of her diaper, down her pant leg and on to the front of her shoe while she was sitting in her high chair. so off we went for bath number two!

pretty much madelyn was acting totally normal with the exception of not having an appetite and drinking more fluids than normal. the diarrhea had slowed down and i had only had to change her clothes two more times. she took a 4 hour afternoon nap and seemed to be doing better. she ate a little banana for dinner and drank almost 10 ounces of milk for dinner. i gave her a bath, got her dressed for bed, read her a few books, and began to nurse her before going down for the night. she stopped nursing and started snuggling with her sleep sack and sucking her thumb (perfectly normal behavior).

and then she sat up and spit up a little - okay - and then came my banana milk vomit shower! back to the tub for maddie to strip her down again. once i had her back into some clean pjs and in her crib to sleep, then i took a shower and sat down to reflect on my day.

i think that i am going to call the doctor's office tomorrow morning. she must have some sort of stomach bug. at least she doesn't seem bothered by any of it and is being her normal, happy self. but it was a really long day for mom... love.

life at warp speed

madelyn changes so much every day that a few days skipped and i have quite a few stories to share!

first of all - happy mother's days to all you moms! my first mother's day was pretty nice. we went to church this morning and i got a surprise gift from madelyn when we picked her up from the nursery. they had stamped her hand on a coffee mug for me with her name and the year on the bottom. on the back there was this message:

"This isn't just a mug as you can plainly see.
I made it with my hand which God made a part of me.

It comes with lots of love especially to say,

I hope you have a very special Mother's Day!"

of course that made me tear up! it was so thoughtful of them to make that with her. (although i don't know how in the world they got her to hold still long enough to get a clear imprint of her hand!) madelyn did her own artwork at home for her grandma and nana mother's day cards. usually i let her hold a marker, but i decided to try crayons. the markers must not taste as good as the crayons is all i have to say about that...

it was if madelyn knew that it was mother's day and said "ma-ma", "mom" and "mo-mi" a lot more than normal today. matt and i also agree that she is starting to call us by the correct names. (as you regular readers might remember, matt and i have to agree on a development before it 'counts'.) she will look at him and say "hi, da-di". or reach to one of us and call us "ma-ma" or "da-da". she does call matt "da-di" more than "da-da" though and i get called "mom" mostly.

and here is video of matt and maddie playing 'catch' today! she is not ready for the majors or anything, and the timing of her release needs some work, but you can tell that she is trying to throw him the ball. she was actually doing it mainly with her left hand and i was going to post this saying that she is a southpaw, but as soon as i got the camera she switched hands on me! figures, huh? enjoy.

just in case my life wasn't exciting enough, maddie added a new death-defying feat to her resume - standing in her highchair. now, i know what you are thinking, lots of kids can stand up in their high chair. but how many can climb up it to get the seat in the first place under the age of 1! she got up and in and up to standing in under 15 seconds! the speed at which it happened was probably the scariest part. of course this was not the time for a picture!

she has also really dropped her morning nap for good (i think so this time anyway). it makes my mornings a little longer, but i am pretty much guaranteed at least a 3 hour nap in the afternoon. she has even gone as long as 4-1/2 hours!

another new activity of madelyn's is talking. not just making noises, but actually 'speaking' softly as she does things or when she wants me to understand her. i don't quite know how to explain it and haven't had much luck getting a really good example on video, but it is so sweet. my favorite is when matt or i are holding her and she touches our face and talks softly to us. however, she also has the opposite form of talking where she grunts - until she gets red in the face. and these are not the same as poop-y noises. she does these for her own amusement and we find it to be hysterical! which of course makes her do it more. this video is a vocal version of the grunting, but she does it silently too until her face is almost purple and her eyes are bugging out and then she will stop and start laughing. it is just a game and not a tantrum where she holds her breath. take a look to see what i mean.

and here she is playing with the same puzzle with some grunting, but she does two other things that i wanted to share. first she thinks that the puzzle board is a big book and is trying to get it to open by turning the pages. if you watch you will see her try to lift the bottom corner and then turns it on the side to try and use her thumbs to get it open (this is how she acts with her books is the only reason i understood her confusion). and then she starts kicking her legs with all the puzzle pieces. you can even see at one point she tries to bring some of the pieces back within kicking range. she does this with her blocks too. it thinks she likes the noise of them all banging together and seeing them jump around when she kicks her legs. (warning: it is kind of long - almost 3 minutes)

lastly, i just wanted to share a picture of some of the tulips that i cut from our backyard this weekend. they are one of the first signs of spring around here. this morning there was frost, but the tulips promise spring! i really can't wait for our peonies to come in! we plants the bulbs almost three years ago and had all but given up on them and then - surprise - the bushes are coming in this year! yeah!

sorry for such a long post. love.

ridin' and readin'

madelyn was very cute reading her book in the car today when we ran out to the post office (the price of stamps go up a penny on monday). i had to pull over to snap a picture with my phone. she usually just ends up chewing on them in the car but today was a 'reading' day! (and, yes, her car seat now faces forward. her legs were no longer touching the seat because she was so squished up and we couldn't get the straps to tighten securely. plus, she had learned how to push off the backseat to make it next to impossible to strap her in when she was tired or hungry.)

what else is new with maddie? she is getting better and better with feeding herself. she will take the spoon from me when i hand it to her and put it right into her mouth without spilling anything. it takes a little bit to get it back because she needs to get a few chews in before she is ready for me to load it up again. she also loves bouncing! i go to get her when she wakes up and she sits right back down on her mattress and bounces for her own amusement. she crawls away and even reaches back for the crib when i do pick her up because she wants to bounce some more. and the crib is not alone, she also likes to bounce on the couch or anything else cushy. similarly to bouncing, she can also rock herself in the glider in her room. she climbs up in it, sits down and pushes back with her body to make it rock.

babies' finger nails grow like crazy! but maddie hit a new personal best. i cut her nails yesterday because they were crazy long after only three days since her last nail clipping! usually once a week is enough, but twice in one week is crazy. she must be having a growth spurt. neighbors are always asking how old she is when we are at the park because of how tall she is getting (and because she is an active little monkey - climbing on everything).

(there have been less videos and pictures lately because i can't take my eyes off her for a second and when i do have the camera handy she is all over it. hopefully, i can get some new video this weekend when daddy is here to distract her.)

love.

"Go! Go! Go!"

we enjoyed a beautiful day here in wisconsin today! and since i had the morning off we spent some time at the park. madelyn's word today was "go". she started saying it yesterday, but today it was said more often than "da-da". and it was appropriate! she climbed up the floating stairs at the park (see the picture). she has been eyeing them for a while now but today she made her move. she climbed up them a few times today and without much trouble either.

the other attempt at 'go'ing was walking in the grassy area next to the playground. i don't know if you can tell from the picture or not, but there is a slight incline and maddie kept falling backwards because of the uneven grass. (this picture was just seconds before she landed on her bottom again.)

her climbing is getting crazy, so we are trying to teach her that some things are not for climbing on - like the oven. yesterday she got a foothold on the storage drawer and was most of the way up the front of the oven before we knew it. luckily, the stove top burners were already cool from dinner preparation, but it was still a little scary. (daddy was on supervision duty and underestimated her climbing speed when following her into the kitchen from the dining room.)

in addition to climbing up the oven, she can also get on top of the kitchen chairs now. its only a matter of time before she learns that she can push them over to the counters and use them as a ladder. she already pushes around the bar stools and another little step stool we have. she has been pushing the step stool around and climbing up on top of it, but hasn't figured out the power of this skill - yet.

we love our little monkey! love.

i have a new hero

i am going to take a detour from writing about maddie to tell you all about my new hero - as a blogger and as a mom. my friend kellie recommended "the meanest mom" blog and i have enjoyed every post!

today's post was about an ad she put on craigslist to sell off some of her kids toys that they were not taking care of properly. now i thought that her ad was hysterical! i was laughing to myself at how cleaver she is as a writer (i also think that while reading her blog). and then she posted the "hate mail" she received from some of the people who saw it on craigslist. i couldn't believe that people shopping for children's toys online would suddenly turn into parenting experts and share their 'wisdom' with a total stranger! (i did laugh a little when a mother with a two year old shared her wisdom because i was imagining how she will feel when her child is older and she feels like selling off all the toys he is destroying.) although, i guess i am not that surprised since people are often quick to judge situations that they don't know anything about. particularly when it comes to parenting.

i hope that you all take a look at her blog and enjoy her approach to life and parenting as much as i have. love.

what size to wear?

madelyn is between sizes right now - in everything! we moved her up to a size 5 diaper a little over a month ago because the 4s were leaving marks around her legs. she her waist is too small so the diapers have always been too big, but she is also too tall which means that we have to move her up a size when the leg holes won't stretch far enough to let us get the diaper 'waist' up above her hips. we have had this same problem with every size diaper, but for some reason the jump from the 4 to the 5 has been the worst. the diaper hangs down to her knees if she isn't wearing pants!

then we have shoes. with the increased walking we have to put shoes on her when we are out and about. she recently outgrew her size 3 shoes and the size 4 is a little big - and wide. once again her feet are too skinny to stay in the baby shoes that seem to be wider. even the leather and elastic styles are way too wide and tend to come off easy. we have found that shoelaces and velcro are our best bets on such busy feet, but velcro is easily undone while riding in the car.

lastly is her clothes. she is bursting out of her 12 month clothes, but the 18 month clothes are - again - too big in the waist. as you can see in her picture of her standing in her church dress and bloomers this morning. i couldn't pull them up any higher and her legs were too skinny to keep them up by the leg elastic. i just told the church nursery folks to take them off if she was having trouble crawling.

i am sure that in another week she will be fitting into things better, but right now it is just comical to see her with a diaper hanging between her knees and trying to move around in bottoms that won't stay up. not that it is slowing her down at all...

in other maddie news - we put up blackout curtains in her room this weekend in hopes that it will keep the early morning sunlight from waking her up before 7. she (and i) discovered that she is now tall enough to reach the top of the kitchen counters and pull anything near the edge down and that is going to make cooking dinner a lot more exciting than it already was with my little cabinet empty-er. and we both have the sniffles. hopefully, we will not get daddy sick during his first week at a new job! love.

lots "more"

maddie started signing "more" at mealtimes today! i was excited. she doesn't have it totally right, but she does it each time she finishes eating what is on her tray until she was full.

today was also exciting because i dropped her mid-morning nurse and instead gave her milk in a cup. i have done this a few times before, but now we are going to get serious about starting the process of getting rid of nursing. she was being super silly and chatty after she drank most of her milk so i got the camera. as usual - she settled down once i got to filming. shortly after this video the camera battery died so i figured this video was better than nothing. enjoy.


the real tragedy of the dead camera battery is that she started walking around a lot once it was dead! i even went to get my old camera, but the batteries in it were dead too. maybe another day i can show you, but i was pretty excited. she would just stand up in the middle of the room and walk to one of her toys or some piece of furniture. crawling is still her main mode of transportation, but walking is gaining ground. its cute because it is two steps forward, one step back, three forward and then a few in place kind of walking. and she is smiling and giggling almost the whole time.

i have also had to move her crib out about a foot from the wall because she can reach the mirrors hanging up. plus, she somehow managed to get her left leg between the bars and wedged up against the wall during a nap yesterday. i am not sure how she managed that considering that she sleeps in a sleep sack and i had to pull the crib out in order to free her while she screamed like her leg was broken (and i thought it was from her yells and trying to figure out how it got in there in the first place).

just to keep me on my toes, maddie decided to try her hand at climbing the bookshelf in my office. luckily, this is one of the first pieces of furniture that we secured to the wall thinking that it would be the easiest thing for her to climb. she pulls the books down and pulls out the baskets everyday while i work, but this was the first time she made an effort to climb it.

matt is still at the office (he didn't get home last night until 11!), but it is his last day and he wants to make sure that everything is taken care of before he heads out for the last time. monday morning starts a whole new job in a totally different type of hospital. hopefully, he can get some rest over the weekend - or he could watch maddie...

love.

picture day

do you ever have the feeling that everyone is watching? i had my first 'bad mommy' phobia today. i took maddie to get her "9-month" pictures over a month late. she wasn't really feeling it and was the least cooperative she has ever been. the photographer was really great though and managed to get some great pictures (those to be posted later). she was starting to get hungry and tired by the time we got back to the car and fought her car seat a little. no big deal and off we went to our next stop - linens-n-things.

while i was putting her in the car she started screaming bloody murder. there weren't that many cars in the parking lot so i didn't really worry about it until i closed the door and noticed that the girl who had checked us out had come outside and was staring at me. i just sort of smiled and got in to leave. all i could think was that she must think that i am the worst mother for abusing my child so she would scream like that. oh well - given maddie's stubborn nature i had better get used to these experiences.

she just really had a rough day. her naps were off and that put her meals off and her molars were bothering her and then she fell off the couch and then we went to take pictures and then ran errands, and you get the idea.

on the food front - she is finally past all allergy risks. she had peanut butter on wheat bread at dinner last night and that was the last allergen (well besides egg whites). it is really exciting because now she can eat where ever we are when out and about. tonight we picked up dinner for daddy (he is still at work right now) and took it up to the hospital so that he could spend some time with maddie. anyway, i was able to order her a meal from the kids' menu! (veggie and chicken stir fry with brown rice - no sauce)

love.