last day of daddy's leave

today we went to the zoo as a family. mason slept through the whole trip except for one feeding. matt took madelyn to a "zoo music" class that lasted an hour when we first got there and mason and i waited at a picnic table. it sounds like matt and madelyn both enjoyed the class. she made a drum, a book about animal sounds, and painted a picture.

madelyn's animal of choice today was snakes. she could not get enough of them! she was particularly interested in their size - the smallest and the biggest she could find moving.

after the zoo we had a nice family lunch at panera.

madelyn took a nice long nap (about 4 hours) and got up just in time to go to the first of her swimming lessons for this session with daddy. again daddy reported that fun was had by all. madelyn was very happy to be home to see mason. i think she said hi to mason before she said hi to me when she first came in the door. and after dinner she really did some big sister-ing.

as we were finishing up dinner madelyn was getting upset that mason was crying a little. she would just say "mason" in a very sad, pouty voice and looked to us to do something to comfort him. we told her that mason was fine and she said, "i want to talk to mason first." ("first" and "today" are very common at the end of sentences these days - especially for negotiations.) then she wiped her face and hands clean with her napkin before going over to "talk to mason." i can't remember exactly what she went to talk to him about, but there were hugs, kisses, pushes in his swing, and other conversation/questioning.

she went to play with her mr. potato head in the playroom and came out after she had built a monkey one. she was coming out to show it to mason. it was so cute to see her telling mason that it was a monkey and then making the noise that monkeys make ("oo-oo, ah-ah"). she tried to give mason the monkey potato head but i told her that it was too big for mason and she put it on the ground next to his swing before running off. she came back with a smaller potato head for mason. she is just too smart sometimes. she posed the potato head in the swing with him and then told us that she needed to take a picture. maybe tomorrow i will post some of her pictures. you might be able to make out the little potato head under mason's elbow.

after her photo shoot with mason she went back to the playroom to "be a doctor" with her little doctor kit. there is an otoscope for looking in ears and matt said that madelyn was checking out his ears and declared that there were "no birdies in there". this was hysterical because madelyn's doctor, who she hasn't seen since she was 18 months, always says that she is looking for birdies and whistles while checking out madelyn's ears. matt asked, "how does she remember that?!" i keep warning him that she remembers everything so be careful what you say/promise. she remembers.

tomorrow we get back to a normal sort of schedule because daddy is going back to work. madelyn has a full week because she is starting pre-school on wednesday and then grandma and big pop get here on friday night. love.