pregnant belly

i finally look pregnant enough to have a stranger acknowledge it! when greeting those seated around us at church this morning i got a "congratulations" from the woman sitting in front of us and it made my day. with maddie it was a man sitting next to me on an airplane to be the first stranger to make a comment. i always like knowing that i have passed the 'fat' look into a pregnant look.

since i look pregnant now, i had matt take a picture for me to post. it isn't the greatest picture of me, but i was just trying to let you see my belly today at 23 weeks, one day (i don't have one with from maddie until 26 weeks so i will compare the two then).

matt was feeling a little better today so i convinced him to go to the outlets for some baby boy shopping. it is the first time we have purchased anything for our baby boy to come. and we purchased a lot. we had coupons and there were great sales. we actually got more for maddie than for the new baby. we got maddie a lot of winter clothes on clearance for next year and a few summer items. the best was that we found cute "little brother" and "big sister" shirts (you will have to wait a few months to see them).

madelyn was so cute while shopping. to my surprise, she picked up a headband and put it on her head at one of the stores. i don't know how she knew that it should go on her head, but she wore it all over the store and for several more stores to come (after we purchased it - of course). she was so content for the entire outing (about 4 hours of shopping and store hoping) and had fun walking around and hiding in the clothing racks. at the carters store she played with a block table while we shopped. when we told her that it was time to go, she carefully took apart all the towers she had built and put them back in the bucket in the middle of the table. i was so proud of her for cleaning up what she had been playing with before we could leave. she even told us when she needed to have her diaper changed. needless to say, she fell asleep the second we got in the car after lunch to head home.

her behavior has been a dream since she started feeling well again, but she has been getting up very early (for her) in the morning. she has been getting up between 6:00 and 6:30am (instead of 7:00 - 7:30). on saturday morning she got up early and instead of coming into our room like she normally does she went downstairs to see the dogs. i could tell that she sounded far away, but i was surprised to find her in the basement happily playing.

in other stair news, i have been meaning to post for a while now that she can walk up the stairs holding on to the railing all by herself. she still prefers to hold our hand while going down the stairs but, as you can tell in the previous story, it is not necessary for her to get down. she will try holding the railing for a few steps, but i think she just gets a little nervous and wants to hold a hand and/or slide down on her bottom.

i was all ready to post when i got one more video to share. madelyn asked for paper to color with markers (this is unusual since we haven't used markers in a very long time). i had gotten some new washable markers at the dollar store so i decided this was the perfect occasion to give them to her. she was being so careful with them that i left the room to talk to matt for a minute. she was still doing so well at recapping the markers and putting them away that i had to get some video. love.