okay - its cold

madelyn and i have not been outside since 10:30am on sunday when we got home from church. it has been cold. in fact "cold" might be an understatement. when matt left for work this morning (and still at 10:30am when i last checked) it was -15 with at least a -29 degree wind chill. there were warnings for -30 to -40 so school was cancelled yesterday and today. i think that maddie and i are both getting sick of the house and wearing on each other a little. she has been quicker to fuss and cry than normal and i have been extra worn out. as a mixed blessing, it has been really busy (and stressful) at work this week and that has been a nice distraction from our containment.

i decided to try sesamestreet.org as something new to occupy madelyn indoors. there were actually a lot of games that just use the keyboard that she enjoyed playing. they aren't so much "games" as something that identifies which keys she pushes on the keyboard. i was glad to find this because we have used starfall.com on several occasions, but she can't quite get the mouse and clicking down yet. it doesn't help that we have a wireless mouse that matt and i have trouble using on occasion. i have at least gotten her to not click the whole time and wait until i get the mouse into location for the click.

today madelyn got out her animal book from the bookshelf and started 'reading' it aloud to herself. she has made sounds from books and pointed out objects on the pages by herself before, but this was the first time she went through every page and identified the item on the page. she even identified animals that i didn't know she could pronounce (i.e. "fox"). (on a side note she brought us her "panda" this morning - which she said clear as a bell.) i went to get the camera for some video, but she had moved on from the animal book (and i couldn't get her to go back to it). but here is some video of her reading from her "first words" book.

yesterday she was singing some letters to herself so i started singing the abcs while folding the laundry. when she asked me to sing it again i paused after every letter for her to repeat it. and she 'sang' the entire alphabet! (well, she skipped the "u" and went right to the "v" without me saying it first.) by the third or fourth time through she was singing every other letter for me through "g". we don't sing the abcs very often at all (like i can probably count on both hands the number of times we have) so i was pretty surprised by this. then today she was doing a pretty good job of singing "you are my sunshine" all by herself. she had asked me to sing it, but when i explained that i was still eating my lunch she started singing it to herself.

when i went in to join her playing with her kitchen tonight i was surprised to find some of our pantry items in her refrigerator! she often plays with the pantry items, but that she carried them into the other room and put them away in her kitchen was pretty cute. what was even funnier was when i asked her about the V8 soup box she told me it was "juice"; to her a cardboard box equals "juice" and to her credit, it is the same style as a juice box.

because of the extremely cold weather, we didn't spend a lot of time in the basement - it was just too cold down there. but while we were down there, madelyn discovered how to buckle her bike helmet. she was also able to release it one time by herself after i showed her how to squeeze it to release. i am always impressed by her fine motor skills.

my last story of the night is from yesterday. madelyn will lean on my lap and point to her back asking to have me "pet" her. and she doesn't want me to scratch her back, only pet it. it is just so sweet that she wants to have a moment of comfort from me. she has also asked to have her hair "pet" a few nights when she couldn't sleep. i don't know where she got the idea to call it "pet", but that is just what it is that i do. love.