as maddie grows...

all about mlg

2009-07-27T20:12:00.003-05:00

okay, so i have finally set everything up to make the big move - to a more inclusive blog address that is now that mason is here. i will not be posting to this address any more so change your bookmarks.

here is the new address: http://allaboutmlg.blogspot.com/

and don't worry, all your favorite posts from the past have made the move too. love.

messy monday

2009-07-27T19:31:00.003-05:00

not only did i not get much in the way of sleep last night, but today was an adventure in bodily fluids. i will try not to be too graphic.

i don't know what i was thinking, but i had left way too much to do for nana's arrival this afternoon. between the dogs and the kids there was a lot of up and down the stairs trying to prepare the guestroom and basement for house guests.

after feeding mason i thought that it would be a good idea to put him into my moby wrap so that there would be one less person/animal to keep track of as i went about my chores. mason does spit up a lot so i was just reaching for the burp cloth when i saw the first of the spit up coming up. as i was wiping that off his face i had to quickly turn my head to keep from getting projectile milk from hitting me in the face. instead i got it all over my neck, shirt, wrap, leg, and foot. not to mention that mason was choking and it was coming out of his nose. yuck!

the experience did give me another reason to love my wrap - it took me about half a second to lift him up and out so that i could turn him over to help him breathe and stop choking. the good news is that mason was fine. now what should i do next?

i haven't mentioned that madelyn had finished her snack and was crying for more as i was putting mason in the wrap and while i was standing their covered in a belly's worth of spit up she started whining about needing more water. thankfully she accepted my explanation about having to wait just a minute and settled herself down to wait.

i striped mason down to his diaper and laid him on the floor on his belly - in case he had anything else in him. then i went to strip myself down in the shower for a quick rinse off before getting back to work cleaning up the rest of the mess. but wait, there is more!

madelyn came to get me saying that mason was pooping. i didn't rush right over because he most likely just had some gas (his belly was pretty empty at this point). when i got to wear madelyn was sitting with him i found her holding his diaper and mason laying naked on the ground. and, yes, it was poopie. madelyn had managed to get poop on mason's belly and foot in the process of taking off his diaper too.

so here was more to clean up. remember, i am trying to get the house cleaned before matt's mom got here. i got mason cleaned up and dressed, got myself dressed again, and got madelyn cleaned up. i was really glad when madelyn's nap time came around!

thankfully, i was able to get everything, including me, cleaned up before nana arrived this afternoon.

we have been running a daily gentle cycle around here. between diaper's leaking in the swing, nursing bras, and stuffed animals there have been a lot of gentle cycle items to get clean. i did three gentle cycle loads today alone! i also did four or five other loads today in preparation for our guests. i am worn out today and very ready for bed. hopefully i will have a much more restful night tonight.

now just to mix things up a little, and include a picture, here is a madelyn story. yesterday madelyn decided that watching dinner preparation and occasionally pouring or stirring something for me wasn't enough. now she wants to "cut something too." it was her idea to use her little toddler knife to do the cutting, but i got her the cutting board and something to 'cut'. granted her knife isn't nearly sharp enough to cut any produce, but she is more than happy to help 'cut' green onions for me and it keeps her away from where i am using a real knife. and she is so proud of it! she kept telling daddy that she was cutting and tonight she happily told nana that she was "cutting onions". whatever it takes to keep dinner preparation happy and tantrum free. love.

the blog effect

2009-07-27T19:22:00.002-05:00

sometimes i hesitate to post when something is going well because it always seems to go poorly as soon as i post to the blog about it and last night was no exception.

i posted about mason sleeping so well and getting close to sleeping through the night - then the blog effect... last night mason got up every 2-1/2 to 3 hours. to make it worse, i had gone to bed early because i had a migraine coming on and needed to work double time to get the house ready for nana's arrival today.

i just love how kids keep life interesting! love.

i heart target carts

2009-07-26T19:38:00.003-05:00

after church we went to check out a new target and grocery store that were having grand openings in a brand new shopping center near our house.

right away i noticed the new cart style - all plastic - walking through the parking lot. they are definitely more attractive than the traditional metal carts you see everywhere. and then when we got inside the store i saw the most exciting cart ever! it has a bench for two kids and then there is still a regular cart. granted it is really long and feels like driving a bus around the store, but it is worth it to have two happy children.

besides the abundance of seating, the normal cart seating option (where i have mason's carrier) reclines further from the weight of the carrier instead of the metal ones that barely fit it and cause it to 'clip' on. i hate when the carrier 'clips' on to a traditional metal cart because it never seems to come off easily and just annoys me.

i never expected that i would become such a fanatic about shopping carts, but these are the kinds of things that make my life easier. and i didn't mention how thrilled madelyn was to have the option ride versus walking. she told us several times that she was very happy to be riding in the cart and that she really "likes this cart".

on the way home she started to blow her spit bubbles - a recent favorite past time - and just looked cute with her sunglasses and polka dot dress (that she picked out for church this morning because it had polka dots). love.

big helper

2009-07-25T11:51:00.007-05:00

madelyn is such a good helper! sometime she 'helps' a little too much, but overall she really is a help to me. and not just getting me things either. she can get him to take a pacifier better than i can! she usually offers to put it back in his mouth before i can even ask. i do have to ask her not to give it to him when he is already sleeping though.

she helps set the table for dinner by putting out napkins for all of us and then picking out three forks from the drawer to put on the table for us to use. she has been picking out her own spoon and fork for several months now, but letting her pick out forks for matt and i is new. she does a really good job of it too.

this week for dinner she shucked all five ears of corn for me out on the deck. and she often gets her stool out of the bathroom (before i can get her kitchen stool down off the refrigerator) to help with the rest of the cooking. i try to let her do as much pouring and stirring as i can but mainly she just watches and talks to me about what i am doing. or she gives mason "magic kisses" and his pacifier to help him stop crying for me.

madelyn's manners also continue to improve. she will now say, "may i please have [blank], mommy?" i love the "may i". and she rarely has to be reminded to say please or thank you any more. she is getting very consistent about saying "thank you" for complements too.

this week we have eaten cantaloupe. madelyn has eaten most of it. she eats half a decent sized cantaloupe with dinner and/or lunch before i cut her off and switch her to another fruit. matt can't believe how she puts it away! she really likes to put the halves back together to make a circle - she pointed this out to me while i was preparing her lunch one day.

everyday when we pick her up from school she tells her teacher (and anyone else who will listen that i am her mommy and he is her brother mason. then she tells us how much she missed each of us.

since the other two pictures on the page didn't show her face, i added this one from last night when she was showing me how she fit in the "closet" (aka the kitchen pantry cabinet). her hair had been in two front pig-tails, but she had one fall out after nap time.

the one thing madelyn doesn't really do to 'help' is ask to hold mason. she tells me that she is going to pick him up sometimes, but she doesn't really ask to hold him. this morning though she asked to "carry mason" (this is how she asks to hold him). and this video shows the last part of their time together. madelyn asked me to take her picture with mason (and i did) so i knew that she wouldn't mind the camera and used the opportunity to get some video since she has been so temperamental about the camera in general lately.

my last comments about my "big helper" would be that she daily points out that mason is "cute" and the past few days she has been commenting that he is getting bigger. she also tattles on herself if she "bonks" him with her body or toys in any way. mason isn't crying, she just tells me, sadly, that she bonked him. overall she is very careful and loving around him. she has not shown anything purposefully hurtful at all which is really nice. we feel very blessed to have such a great big sister around! love.

mason sleeping

2009-07-25T11:41:00.004-05:00

mason makes so many crazy noises when he is sleeping. he is way noisier that madelyn ever was! here is some video of a common sleeping sound.

he is sleeping until almost 4am now and i think that he will be making it all the way through the night (8 hours or more) very soon. he doesn't nurse longer than 10 or 15 minutes and doesn't really wake up all the way. i don't change his diaper or anything, just a quick feed and back down. so he is giving me about 5 hours, then a quick feed, and another 3-4 hours. madelyn definitely helps with his morning wake-up so he might sleep longer if he was uninterrupted.

i have been letting him nap on his belly during the day because he seems to have more gas than madelyn ever did and being on his belly obviously works it out of him. not to mention that his head is getting closer to the top of the swing already! i think after papa and nana's visit i am going to work on getting him to nap in his crib before i go back to work. it's not a huge deal at this point, but i want to make the move to a schedule as soon as possible. love.

yea, daddy!

2009-07-25T09:04:00.007-05:00

after three weeks of 9:30pm games, matt's softball team will now have three weeks of 6:30pm games. the great part about that is that madelyn, mason, and i can go to cheer him on at the earlier games. madelyn loves to cheer for her daddy! she is particularly proud of him when he bats and tells everyone around her that her daddy is batting and is going to hit the ball.

because it was an early game everyone else on the team had their families come too. madelyn was delighted to see so many kids around her age at the game. she was particularly interested in a one year old boy (seen to her right in the picture of the kids watching matt warm up for the game - madelyn is towards the middle in the blue shirt). i think that it was sort of like, "i wish my brother could walk around and play". she tried to run around with the older girls (ages 3 and 4) but they didn't always acknowledge her - not that it stopped madelyn from trying or running around with them. one of the girls did grab her by the arm and lead her over to where she had a bag of popcorn to share. madelyn, never one to turn down food, stood there stuffing her face until i called her away because the other little girl had left a few minutes ago without madelyn even noticing.

this is a picture madelyn requested i take so that she could "show daddy" how she wears her mr.potatohead pieces. i love it when she thinks about him and misses him when he is at work.

yesterday matt was pretty tired when he got home from work and he was so lucky that the game madelyn wanted to play with him was 'put daddy to bed'. she had him get into her bed, tucked him in, got him a drink of her milk from the refrigerator, gave him a kiss, and then laid down in bed with him to read him books. i went in to check on them after a while (it was pretty quiet in there) and sure enough matt was asleep and madelyn was still reading him books. she just looked up at me and said, "come, mommy. join us." "join us" must be something she learned at school. it just sounded so formal and mature to me that i had her repeat it a few times for my amusement.

i was surprised that she was being so still and quiet because she had taken a 4 hour nap and only woke up shortly before matt got home from work. we left the room and let daddy sleep until it was bath time; at which point madelyn went storming in excitedly declaring, "wake up, daddy, its bath time!," over and over.

now this one just amazes me. matt is almost always able to get madelyn to wear shoes she normally refuses to wear. i think it might be because he is getting ready to take her out to do something she really wants to do and just wants to get her shoes on as fast as possible. like today for example. she and daddy were going on a "trip" to take pictures downtown (it is something matt is doing for work and madelyn took her camera - our old one - to help). i have been trying to get her to wear these new shoes for over a week now by pointing out the heart and bow on them with no luck - in fact the suggestion is greeted with screams of "no". today daddy suggested them and madelyn not only put them on willingly, but then she told me to look at the pretty heart on them! at least one of us can get her to try new shoes... love.

"he touched my..."

2009-07-24T23:01:00.007-05:00

i know that the title of this post sounds perverted, but this is one of madelyn's most common phrases these days. she loves it when mason touches her things and points it out when he does. she also asks him to touch her toys or other objects. we are very fortunate that she loves to share with her little brother. although, i am sure that the "don't touch my..." days are in our not too distant future.

here is a video of her playing doctor with mason. you can hear her say, "he touched my doctor", "he touched my shirt", etc. she is also trying to get mason to hold the stethoscope (aka "doctor") again after he lets it go. don't worry mason was not forced to wear the stethoscope at the end of the video and madelyn didn't cry about it (i think she looks like she is going to cry when i tell her "no").

here is another example of her telling me that he touched something she gave him. she was 'reading' him the book and that is what i was trying to get with the camera originally. she does a really great job of 'reading' him books. she tells him as much of the actual story as she can remember and then starts just telling him about the pictures. the cute part is that she turns the book so that he can see the page and asks him, "mason, can you see this page?" she does this most when he is laying on a blanket on the floor. madelyn lays down next to him and brings over book after book to read. she even includes a "the end" when she finishes one before going to get another. the book in this video is franklin wants a pet.

another note from this video is at the end when i ask her if she wants to go to bed. this is how i have been addressing thumb sucking only being for bed time. she usually just removes her thumb from her mouth, but if she does indeed want to suck her thumb she will tell me that she is going to bed and will do just that. i will go in and she is under the covers sucking her thumb with friend. she only sucks her thumb when holding friend, so if i can further limit it just to her bed room i will be happy. so far so good. love.

thursday's onesie

2009-07-24T22:53:00.003-05:00

i wanted to post at least something tonight. here is mason's onesie of the day from thursday. it reads - "will work for boob". love.

madelyn's 2-year plus check-up

2009-07-20T21:17:00.002-05:00

and back to the doctor we go... madelyn was looking forward to laying down to be measured like mason had been on friday. i think that she was a little disappointed to have to stand on the scale and then be measured against the wall. she even asked to be weighed on the baby scale in the room. as was expected, her vocabulary got rave reviews and so did her coordination. i guess balancing on one leg for a second is a three-year-old skill and madelyn could do it on each leg - who knew?

here are her stats:

height - 37-1/2 inches (99th percentile)
weight - 32.2 lbs. (93rd percentile)
bmi (they start tracking body mass index at 2) - 44th percentile

basically, she is really tall and the perfect weight for her height. the whole appointment consisted of the doctor having a conversation with madelyn about her favorite things. apparently her favorite food is peanut butter and jelly - again, who knew? and when the doctor asked about her favorite vegetables she told her about the squash she and daddy were growing in their garden.

madelyn did a wonderful job with the shots too. they were never referred to as "shots" during the appointment, but on the way to the car she told me that she had gotten "pinched on the leg" and then told me that she got "two shots". after telling this to matt he mentioned that they have been reading a book about elmo going to the doctor that talks about shots so that is probably where she got the correct word from. she was not phased by the shots at all. i mean, she cried because it hurt, but she got over it as soon as the band aids were on. i was impressed.

as i was getting everyone ready to go before the appointment, mason gave me his first real smile! he looked me straight in the eye when i said, "hi, mason," and smiled his big smile. i guess the doctor was right about him smiling early.

we often call madelyn "maddie-mad" so tonight she was calling daddy "daddy-dad". i thought that it was funny enough to share with you all. love.

batter up!

2009-07-19T19:30:00.006-05:00

we had a pretty quiet day around here today. we went to church and then down to the "riverwalk" for a leisurely stroll with a stop at the playground for madelyn since it was once again on the cool side out.

after a long nap (without eating lunch first) madelyn went to help daddy in the yard. with their work done, and popsicles eaten, they decided to take out the bat and tee big pop and grandma gave her during their visit (we didn't have the time to use it while they were here). being as independent and stubborn as her parents, madelyn refused to let daddy show her how to properly hold a bat so here is her interpretation of playing baseball. (it might make you a little seasick because i was up on our deck with the camera and had it zoomed in to them.)

she was never as exciting when i had the camera on as when i was just watching - of course. she would say "ready, daddy, ready?" and then hit the ball while matt pretended to 'field' it for her. i guess she announced that she needed a hat (you need to wear a baseball hat to play baseball after all) and matt offered her his (you can see it in the first part of the video) and then when i came out to watch again she asked me to go and get "maddie's hat" so that it would fit better. she is the one that put it on her head backwards after first wearing it correctly. when she was telling her grandparents about playing baseball she brought up that mommy had to go and get her hat for her - it was that big of a deal.

daddy sent her in to get ready for dinner so after getting washed up she got her milk out of the refrigerator for a drink. she took a big gulp from her cup and then said, "it sure is hot today!" this made me laugh for two reasons - one - where did she come up with that, and - two - it wasn't hot today.

side note - madelyn gives mason and hug and kiss good-night without us having ever asked her. she just hugs and kisses me and then runs over to hug and kiss mason in the swing. such a loving big sister!

the oldest county fair

2009-07-19T13:37:00.007-05:00

yesterday we took our double stroller for its first outing - the county fair! apparently, this is the oldest county fair in the state at 167 years. we had never been before and thought that it might be more manageable than the state fair next month. as an extra incentive to check it out, one of our neighbors called in the morning to say that they had tickets and a parking pass that they weren't going to be able to use and offered them up to us. how can you say no to a free trip to the fair?!

we decided to wait and go after nap time so that we wouldn't have to rush. madelyn was pretty excited to be going to fair. not that she knew what a fair was, but the idea of somewhere new was exciting enough. once she saw the tents she thought that it was the circus and got even more excited.

i would say that we had a nice time. it wasn't hot (in fact the high for the day was only 70 and i don't think that the sun ever got to shine through all the clouds) and madelyn really enjoyed it. mason slept through the entire trip.

madelyn got to see lots of farm animals - cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, roosters, ducks, goats - and sharks. sharks were sort of a random addition to the fair, but madelyn liked seeing all four of them in their trailer tank. we went through all of the animal areas twice at madelyn's request. i think that she liked hearing them all make their noises.

we did take in a juggling show taking place in the children's tent. madelyn has been pretty interested in juggling and even tells me that she is juggling sometimes so we thought that she might enjoy it. she paid attention to the whole show - about one hour. she was really excited when one of the volunteers from the audience offered her their balloon animal (a koala) on the way back to their seat. amazingly she still hasn't popped it. not that she hasn't tested it by twisting, squeezing, and hugging.

(and, yes, we started in short sleeves - it is summer after all - but it was just too cold with the wind and we put on our jackets and fleece. in july!) love.

so much to share

2009-07-18T08:09:00.015-05:00

as i am sure you can imagine, we have a lot of entertainment here. i just haven't had the time (or energy) at the end of the day to post it all. here are some updates from the past few days:

- madelyn likes to snuggle up and read books more often lately. usually reading only happens at bedtimes, but she wants just as many stories read throughout the day now. this picture is not from a bed time. madelyn requested to read and instead of sitting on the couch she wanted to read in her bed so mason and i joined her. i called matt to take a picture because mason was looking at the book too, but he moved his head once daddy got there with the camera.

- madelyn has a renewed interest in her mr. potatohead set and play dr. kit. she plays with both of them at least once a day. one thing that she likes to do with the mr. potatohead set is to put the pieces in her mouth so that she can wear the smiles, noses, etc. i was trying to get a picture of madelyn and me because we both had in the toothy smile, but she wouldn't look up at the camera when i leaned in to be in the picture with her - sorry for the disappointment.

- speaking of the play dr. kit, madelyn decided to give mason a physical exam on thursday morning. she used the stethoscope to listen to his entire body. i liked this picture of her listening to his feet. every body part got the "thump, thump" sound effect.

after the stethoscope came the otoscope, but this one makes me a little nervous near mason (or when she does my exam for that matter). madelyn's pediatrician says that there is a "birdie in there" when she does a exam of madelyn's ears and makes a bird-like whistle sound. madelyn had declared that "there are no birdies in there" while examining daddy's ears on monday evening. then she looked in the play otoscope and pointed that there were no birdies in there either. we were surprised that she still remembered that about her doctor's visits because we had not been in about 7 months.

- i was changing mason's diaper on friday and madelyn came in to help. before her nap she had requested that he wear an elmo diaper. she had been trying to find one in the diaper hanger but i was already done changing him by the time she found one with elmo on it. while she was napping i set aside an elmo diaper to put on mason after she woke up to make up for not doing so before naptime. when i told her that we were going to put an elmo diaper on mason she started screaming, "no! i don't want it!" and then she started to take out all of the elmo diapers from the diaper hanger and took them to her room. later in the day i went into her room and found them all lined up in a row on her bookshelf. she loves to line things up...

- mason has sucked his thumb a few times that i have seen, but during his bath on thursday night he was really going to town so i had to get some video to share.

- we got our replacement stroller on friday and madelyn could not wait to try out her new seat. she is almost too tall for it! her head hits the sunshade, but it almost does that in all of the strollers now. i am sure people see her and think, "i can't believe that they are pushing around that 5 year old!" just like i think when i have seen a child clearly too big for a stroller. she still doesn't ride the whole time, but it is easier for us to have it as an option.

- madelyn bit her tongue while eating her dinner and came over to get a kiss (to make it all better) and i thought that she just wanted a kiss on her mouth, but just as i was about to kiss her she stuck out her tongue! at least matt had a good laugh.

- madelyn can say her last name now - and it is obviously a mouth full for her to say. i have yet been able to get her to say it for the camera. while trying to get her to say her full name and birthday, she has combined the two. she now says that her name is "maddie june". full name video to come...

- these are just some sweet pictures of maddie and mason having some tummy time together and then mason asleep afterwards (it was the first time he had fallen asleep on his belly).

- big pop made his famous ribs for us while he was visiting. we all went to madelyn's swimming class before dinner and matt was telling madelyn that we were going to have ribs and potatoes - his favorite - when we got home. madelyn kept saying that ribs and potatoes was her favorite too. and she must have convinced herself that they were too because she ate quite a bit of her ribs! madelyn eats almost no meat and she couldn't get enough ribs. i guess there is a reason big pop is famous for them!

- when madelyn counts to twenty she skips the numbers 5 and 15. it is not that she can't say the numbers or that we don't correct her every time. she just counts "4, 6, 7". it is just funny to me that she also skips 15. i wonder what the number 5 did to get left out...

- and last we have madelyn singing "ring around the rosie" while dancing with friend. finally, she will do it without mommy or daddy spinning in circles with her! love.

3 week check-up

2009-07-17T22:39:00.002-05:00

mason had his 3 week check-up today. madelyn was excited to take her brother to the doctor. she had given him a full physical herself earlier in the week (a post to come).

mason is doing great! our doctor even said that she thinks that he will smile early (he was giving her super big smiles while we were there) which validated my thought that he had given me intentional smiles three times yesterday. he was awake all three times and gave me a pretty good grin when i said, "hi, mason". it wasn't his full smile, so i thought that maybe i was reading more into it than was really there - i knew that it was pretty early for a real smile.

here are his stats from today:

height - 23-1/2 inches (97th percentile)
weight - 10 lbs. 8 oz. (73rd percentile)
head - 37.8 cm

obviously weight gain is not a problem here! i thought that his face has filled out a little, but i did not think that he had put on that much weight! even the doctor was pretty impressed and told me to keep doing what i am doing.

thankfully, there were no shots today because madelyn has her appointment (with shots) on monday. love.

big pop and grandma go to the zoo

2009-07-16T13:25:00.010-05:00

what trip to milwaukee would be complete without joining madelyn at the zoo? and big pop and grandma wouldn't have it any other way! madelyn is always finding new things to explore and she got to do two very special things with big pop and grandma.

(she is finally tall enough to get her eye up to the eye piece and i thought that it was cute to see her on such extreme tippy-toes.)

we had to return the double stroller we ordered (it arrived damaged) so madelyn was expected to walk the entire time. she asked for the stroller when we first pulled in to the parking lot, but then she never mentioned it again. she did get a few rides from big pop and grandma though.

first on our new zoo activities was a trip to the seal and sea lion show. we just happen to be walking by three minutes before the next show started so we got our tickets and headed in to find seats. i think that madelyn was more interested in her snack than in the show, but she did seem to enjoy the parts she watched. the show was nice and short but still entertaining. i think that was the first time i had ever seen a seal jump up in the air like a dolphin.

next we went to a temporary exhibit that i knew would be right up grandma's alley. it is called "wings down under" and it is where you get some seeds glued to a stick and then go into a big cage with parakeets, cockatiels, and small parrots (i think that is what they were - they were red, blue, and green). madelyn was a little taken back when she tried to pet a parakeet and got bit, but before long she wanted to get the birds herself, without big pop's help. we were lucky to have big pop with us because the birds were up so high almost no one could reach them. big pop was getting them down for other kids too because he was the tallest in the room. i felt bad for the shorter parents who couldn't reach the birds to touch their sticks to the bird's chest (making it step onto the stick). they were just walking around with their sticks in the air hoping that a bird would show mercy and come land on it.

grandma and madelyn looking for more birds while grandma holds the small parrot on her popsicle stick.

big pop giving madelyn a parakeet to hold.

madelyn showing me the bird she is holding all by herself. you can tell that she isn't 100% about this. i wasn't really sure how this exhibit was going to go. it was a little overwhelming to be in a cage with so many birds - even for me. and, yes, mason came in too.

after a nap at home it was time for madelyn to head to swimming class with daddy so we all piled in the cars to watch. madelyn is very comfortable in the water and likes going under and jumping to daddy from the side of the pool. she often comes home from class to tell me that she jumped to daddy and its okay because he caught her. tonight is their last class for the summer and i think that madelyn will be a little sad. although daddy will appreciate not having to rush home from work everyday to make it to the 5:30pm classes. i think he will miss swimming with madelyn though. love.

the great circus parade

2009-07-12T20:56:00.016-05:00

after church we piled in the cars and went to downtown milwaukee to stake out a spot to watch the great circus parade. madelyn had learned about the circus this past week in pre-school so she was super excited to see a circus and a parade in one. we were very early for the parade and it was going to be a two hour parade. i think that we were there a little over 5 hours in all and madelyn missed her nap so that we could be there. none of us had ever been to a circus parade and i think that i was as excited as madelyn was to see it (well maybe she was a little more excited).

this post is going to be mainly pictures and comments in an effort to make posting it as quick as possible - i am worn out.

daddy and big pop took madelyn to go and look for lunch while grandma, mason, and i stayed to watch our chairs and spot on the sidewalk. they found a hot dog place that was open and we were all just happy for something to eat. madelyn wasn't crazy about her corndog though.

madelyn got a bubble gun from big pop and grandma to help pass the time we had to wait for the parade to start. madelyn loved it. i am not so sure about everyone sitting around us having bubbles pop on them...

and mason was sleeping.

once the parade got going (it started a block over from where we were) madelyn kept saying "i heard something. listen." she could cup her hand over her cheek/mouth instead of her ear to 'listen'. it was pretty cute. i wanted to get video, but it was just too loud and you can't hear her in it.

once they closed off the street to traffic all sorts of people, not just kids, went out into the street and started drawing circles with sidewalk chalk. after grandma talked to some people sitting next to us we learned that it is a circus parade tradition. you are trying to draw a circle where you think that a horse will drop some poo. whatever makes it interesting for you.

there were all kinds of animal wagons. i really liked this one with the giraffe because of the little sun shade.

there were some amazing wagons in the parade. some of them are a century old and have been refurbished just for the parade. there were organ wagons too.

and mason kept sleeping.

and towards the end were the elephants walking in groups of three with their tails held by the elephant behind it. i thought that it was neat to be that close to them. i think madelyn liked them too.

we were all exhausted by the time the parade ended and madelyn fell asleep shortly after getting into the car. she even stayed asleep while i held her in the restaurant we stopped at on the way home for an early dinner. i think that we will all sleep well tonight! love.

a few notes...

2009-07-12T20:39:00.002-05:00

here are a few things that i wanted to note for later...

- madelyn is very interested in the callouses on my feet. gross - i know. she will even take off my shoes and lift up my feet so that she can feel them and tell me that my feet are scratchy. or she will tell me that they hurt her. i am so glad that i have her here to point out my flaws.

- i had to wrestle madelyn down to brush her teeth last night. not fun. but on the plus side, i did get to see that madelyn's top to molars have come in. i am not sure when exactly they came in, but at least i know that we are done with teething! woo-hoo! at least i think that i am done until wisdom teeth, right?

- big pop and daddy saw mason flip himself over today. again it was his belly to his back. they said that he picks up his head and pushes up with his right arm like a push up. there might be a little leg kicking that helps him too, but either way he rolls himself over. i know that he is too young for it to be intentional. i am just glad that i have witnesses so that you all don't think that i am exaggerating his strength.

love.

watercolors

2009-07-10T21:53:00.006-05:00

as her prize for walking around target without crying about not riding in the cart, madelyn got a little set of watercolors. (she was so good. after a few tears at the beginning of our trip she chose to pull it together instead of leaving.) she asks to paint at least once a week and since she had the easel already, i decided that some washable watercolors would be manageable.

she was speaking so softly in the video that i was able to get that i tried to repeat everything she said. she isn't really interested in talking while trying something new and was asking me not to use the camera on her so i am lucky to have gotten the responses that i did. i think that she liked the dipping more than the actual painting.

she is so good about managing her crying. we will often give her the choice to stop crying (really its just a form of whining, not pain or real crying) or to go to her bed because we don't want to hear her cry. she will tell us that "maddie/i stopped crying" when she does turn it off or she will be whining/crying and tell us that she is going to her bed/room or that she is tired and going to sleep. i have to suppress laughter sometimes because she really makes a choice about how she wants to handle each situation. love.

muscle man

2009-07-09T21:39:00.003-05:00

here is a picture of mason 'flexing' in his onesie of the day. this was the one matt selected as the winner during the baby shower - because i wouldn't pick one. love.

first tub bath and rolling over?

2009-07-09T12:23:00.006-05:00

it was nice to be able to give mason his first tub bath on tuesday night. i think that he missed being wrapped in a towel like for his sponge baths, but he didn't hate it. he was really happy once i got to his shampoo - almost like he is just relaxing in a spa. i have also noticed that he seems to fall asleep more quickly when he has a bath, so we might start to do that every day instead of the every other day that the pediatrician recommended.

sleep is still going okay. he doesn't sleep like madelyn did, but he does give me 3-5 hours at a time. the main difference is that he stays awake at night. he goes down around 10:30pm and sleeps until 2:30am before needing to be fed. its the after 2:30 part that we are working on. sometimes he doesn't really go back to sleep until 4:30am or so - instead he wakes every half hour to eat or be changed. i finally figured out last night that he needs to be rocked and burped more than madelyn - which was none. once he is down again he sleeps until 8 or 9am. this morning it was 7:30am because madelyn went in and turned on all his lights because she wanted him to wake up. at least i don't feel tired. well, not all that tired anyway...

madelyn is very interested in my pumping after the morning feed. yesterday she said that she was going to "pump too first". the funny thing was that she was trying to pump her belly button! mainly she reads books in mason's room and talks to/pets him in his crib until she can cheer that i am done pumping.

mason rolled over yesterday! from his stomach to his back (over his left side) and the picture is where he ended up. i didn't actually see him roll, but i left him on his belly so he obviously did. and it wasn't a momentum roll from when i flipped him over either. he has been able to roll up on his side since the day he was born and has an extremely strong neck (with surprising head control) so i think that he was just turning his head over to look up and must have just gone with the weight to his left side. i tried to get him to do it again, but just got some video of him getting up on his knees and moving his head around. it is not the most interesting video, but i thought that the grandparents might like it since they haven't gotten to see him in person yet. he is also sucking his hand at the end. we have seen him suck his left thumb many times now, so maybe he will be a thumb sucker like madelyn. he will take a pacifier, but not very often.

now, i know this was not a 'real' roll over, but he still rolled over so i am documenting it. love.

the first day of school

2009-07-09T11:55:00.004-05:00

yesterday was madelyn's first day of school and i am happy to report that we made it there on time. in fact, we were ready to go an hour earlier than we needed to be. everyone was just cooperating and we were able to get up, fed, pumped, showered, dressed, packed, and loaded in the car on time.

as you can see, madelyn was not interested in having her picture taken on her first day of school. i was able to sneak this shot while she was distracted by putting on her shoes all of the other pictures i took were of her screaming "no want pictures, mommy!" and showing me the back of her head. it was less about having her picture taken and more about it delaying her getting to school. you can see that she is holding her lunch box. she would not put it down - even after we got to the school - i think she was most excited about her lunchbox.

what i couldn't believe is that when we pulled up to the building (which is like an industrial type building - generic) she remembered it from when we went to visit around easter. she told me that she was going to "play with eggs" which is just what she did when we visited - she played with plastic easter eggs.

madelyn had no problem with going to school, not that i am surprised by that, but she did ask for "mommy/daddy/mason go to school too" on the way so i wondered how it would go. her teacher said that she did really great and had no problem with the schedule or playing with the other kids. there is a white board outside of her classroom that has all the things they did during the day posted and it looks like she was really busy! they were learning about circus shapes yesterday and today they are learning about circus clowns (there is a circus parade here this weekend - more on that in a future post). they cover math, reading, art, and science as well as playing outside and inside.

she was very excited to see me and immediately showed me where she had slept for her nap. i heard about her day the whole way home. apparently she met a boy named ethan and she didn't share a train with him ("didn't" was a new word she was trying out). other than that, she said that she read books, ate popcorn (their circus snack), and had fun.

we were early this morning because madelyn could not wait to go back for more fun. and she just lit up when her teacher came out into the lobby which made me feel good.

now for some non-school notes - i was singing "jesus loves me" while getting ready to change her diaper and madelyn said "maddie get book first" and quickly found her "jesus loves me" book that plays the music for the song just by looking at the spines! i would say that it has been at least a month since we have read/looked at that book (i asked matt about it last night to make sure that he hadn't read it to her more recently). i had read that a toddler's memory was much better than an adult's, but she really amazes me!

when madelyn and daddy got home from swimming last night, madelyn came in whining for me to kiss her head. after matt came in he explained what had happened. apparently she was hugging her friend dylan at swimming and they both fell down with madelyn on the bottom. she fell like a tree and landed with the back of her head on the pool's concrete! she has a little mark, but not too much of a bump so she is fine. i guess it just really scared everyone because it was on concrete and made a very loud noise before madelyn broke into a scream of pain. she was a little fussy last night, but other than that she was playing and speaking normally. this morning she told me that her head didn't hurt any more when i asked her about it. (when i would ask last night she would start crying/whining again.) that girl and hitting her head... it is a good thing that i am so relaxed about that kind of stuff or she would give me a nervous breakdown. love.

madelyn's gallery

2009-07-09T11:41:00.007-05:00

here are some pictures that madelyn has taken over the past week or so. i have done nothing to alter them and she is definately getting better about getting her fingers out of the shot and holding the camera steady. enjoy her first showing! love.

presents!

2009-07-07T20:52:00.005-05:00

so we were talking with big pop and grandma on sunday with skype (video conferencing) and talking about how they were coming to visit this week. grandma asked, "madelyn, can we come to your house?"

madelyn's response? "yes. i get presents!"

while this is funny (and a little sad - its not just big pop and grandma that are equated with presents either), madelyn has definitely been in a period of increased presents. every package delivered is identified as "presents for maddie" or as "toys!" between her birthday, mason's arrival, and madelyn becoming a big sister, we have had a lot of gifts coming to the house and madelyn loves it.

i have actually had to start going through her toys and sorting them for a goodwill donation because we are running out of room! she just has so much that she (and i) can't remember what all she has. and she definitely does not play with most of it. i have handed some things down to mason so that he can have a chance with them before they go to goodwill. we are going to be moving to the one in, one out philosophy soon.

speaking of gifts... at my baby shower for mason my friends made bibs and onesies for him. he wore his first of many today so i will document them - much like i did for madelyn when she wore the onesies made at my shower for her. they are in no particular order. this one says, "i get my...from my daddy."

mason lost his 'stump' today so we can move to real baths. yea! it is so much easier than sponge baths. he was kind enough to pee and poop on me during his last sponge bath, so i am really happy to see that the stump is gone and we can move up to his tub now.

my mission for tomorrow is to get madelyn, mason, and me all dressed, feed, and out the door by 9am. considering that i had to wake mason up at 9:30am this morning (he was up from 1:30 - 4:30 eating and being awake this morning, but then slept from 4:30 - 9:30) and didn't have time to shower before madelyn's music class at 11:00am, this is going to be difficult. she is really excited about starting school tomorrow. i think that it helps that we know they are going to be painting clay tiles tomorrow. madelyn loves to paint! while she is at school, mason and i are going to run several errands near her school. i am looking forward to having a day away from the house. love.

last day of daddy's leave

2009-07-06T20:16:00.004-05:00

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.

street fight

2009-07-05T20:23:00.003-05:00

i mentioned madelyn's 4th of july injuries in the last post, but wanted to get a picture today. i have been joking that it looks like she was in a street fight. she has two scratches running parallel to each other on her cheek and temple. and then there is a mosquito bite next to her eye. she also has a mosquito bite on the other side of her head near her temple. the scratches are not deep or anything. in fact, she didn't even cry about them. they just look bad, hence my street fight reference. i am expecting that they will heal quickly.

and she is still cute despite the injuries...

and not to leave out mason, here he is sleeping in his swing. that is really all he does besides eat and dirty diapers. love.

tears, a parade, and sparklers

2009-07-05T13:31:00.004-05:00

yesterday was a long and fun one. madelyn got off to a rocky start, but seemed to do better after her nap. she spent most of the morning crying. we went to babies-r-us to try out the double strollers again. and she started to melt down from the second we put mason's carrier into the cart. she was crying because she wanted to sit in the cart. once we got into the store we put her up in the main basket of the cart and had a moment of peace. then we asked her to sit in one of the strollers and she started to cry because she didn't want to. when her fit wouldn't end matt started to carry her outside, but then she said that she wanted to sit in the stroller. once we got her in the stroller she started crying because she didn't want to get out. and it just kept going that way. she has never had a melt down like this in public before and i was glad that we were the only people in the store. i am pretty sure that she was just tired from staying up later than normal the night before. or maybe she was just having a bad day.

after that morning display of ugliness we probably should have just skipped the local 4th of july parade, but madelyn loves a parade and i wanted to at least give it a try. we could always leave, right? it was such a nice morning out and we got to walk through the farmer's market on our way to the parade route. we went stollerless and it was nice to not have to fight the crowd with one. mason slept through the whole thing in my moby wrap. although i did have to cover his ears a few different times because the bands were too loud and made him squirm with discomfort.

as i expected, madelyn was in heaven watching the parade! she was an angel too. she is funny because she dances as the band is coming, but once they are in front of her she just stands and stares at the marching. she called out "hi" to everyone that went by - "hi, kids!", "hi, people!", "hi, man!", etc. and was super excited when someone gave her a flag to wave! she had been asking us for one after seeing some other kids waving flags, so it was really nice that someone walked by handing them out. and the people in front of us kept making their son share the candy thrown by the floats with madelyn. i felt bad for him because madelyn could care less about getting any candy, although she really did enjoy eating one of the lollipops while she danced.

the parade lasted about an hour and had a few different fly overs before it got started. i was surprised that it was so long but madelyn never lost interest and stood almost the entire time too. after the parade we headed home to eat some lunch and put madelyn down for a nap. as i mentioned at the beginning of the post, madelyn was in a much better mood after her nap. she let herself downstairs to help daddy with his chores outside. her favorite job? poop spotting. matt was ridding the yard of dog poop and madelyn was so excited to have helped him find the "dog poopie". she told me all about it as we were heading down to one of our neighbor's house for some dinner.

madelyn had a lot of fun playing with her friends - and managed to get two long scratches on the left side of her face - for a few hours before we went to another neighbor's house for sparklers.

as many of you know, i grew up in south florida and i know a few things about mosquitoes, but i have never seen them swarm so much outside of a swampy area! we were being bit all over by them and there were so many! i couldn't believe it! i don't think i have seen a single mosquito all year and then there were an overwhelming amount last night. not even the sparkler smoke would get rid of them. i stayed long enough to watch madelyn with the sparklers, but then i took mason home to get away from the bugs.

madelyn stood perfectly still while her sparkler was lit and stared at the spark/flame. she did try to touch it a few times, but thankfully there were not any sparkler related injuries. there were a lot of little kids (like 8 under the age of 4) running around with the sparklers so i was really surprised that there weren't any injuries.

all in all it was a wonderful way to spend the 4th and we are lucky to have such wonderful neighbors to have fun with. love.

"mine fell off too"

2009-07-03T23:08:00.002-05:00

during my pregnancy madelyn became very interested in bellybuttons so i was surprised that it took her so long to ask about mason's. two days ago i was changing mason's diaper and she asked about his bellybutton. she touched his 'stump' and then lifted her own shirt to look at her bellybutton.

i explained that mason's 'stump' would fall off soon and then he would have a bellybutton too. i also explained that she had one when she was a baby, but it fell off to make her bellybutton. she told me that "mine fell off too" and ran off to tell daddy that hers fell off too. and daddy told her that his fell off too. now she confirms that hers already fell off every time she comes to watch me change mason's diaper.

she asks to touch the 'stump' during diaper changes and tells me that it is going to fall off soon. and reminds me that "mine fell off too". she actually does a great job about being gentle when touching the 'stump' and tells me that it is scratchy.

i had meant to include this info in my last post but couldn't remember when i was posting so here it is as its own post so that i don't forget again. love.

"i'm learning!"

2009-07-03T14:13:00.008-05:00

last night i was playing with madelyn in the playroom and she got out her refrigerator magnet toy. after playing with it for a while she declared excitedly, "i'm learning!" the refrigerator asks you to find certain foods/letters and madelyn was doing a pretty good job. i was surprised that she equated this 'game' with learning. i don't think that we have ever made reference to "learning" before but maybe she picked it up from the pbs kids intro - "learn something new everyday". she was just so excited about the idea that she was learning something (and repeated it more than once with a big smile) that i had to make note of it here.

after sharing friend with mason for most of the week, madelyn has decided that he needs his own 'friend' to keep him company. she has been tucking this costumed bear in with him whenever he is in the swing. she still shares friend, but understands that this bear is really more his size.

yesterday was my first day alone with both kids. matt had to go to work for few meetings and madelyn, mason, and i just hung out at home all day. i actually got a lot done during the day. madelyn spent the morning drawing on a new easel (that she got as a present from mason) and playing out in her sandbox while mason hung out with me in the office. i was finishing up something for work and trying to get my list together for baby announcements - which i got out too, by the way.

i didn't really have a good way to get both kids out for a walk because we still don't have a double stroller (i have been hesitant to get one) and madelyn has been insisting on riding her bike on our walks. so last night i decided to try out my new moby wrap. and i love it!! i don't really find the baby bjorn style carriers comfortable and didn't really have luck with the sling we got for madelyn. so i have been reading up on reviews for wraps and it was almost unanimous for the moby wrap. it is so comfortable and versatile - i highly recommend it. i wore it today when i took madelyn to the park by myself (matt is still working on staining the deck). i was able to 'wear' mason and pull madelyn in the wagon (today's transportation of choice).

this morning we were all sitting around reading (books/newspaper) and madelyn decided to read one of my books. in case you can't see the title it is toilet training in less than a day. she was telling me about the illustrations of kids putting a doll on a potty. i told her that it was a book on potting training before she started 'reading' it and she was eagerly looking at the pages even though there weren't really many illustrations. i would say that currently her interest in bodily functions peaks when we are outside of the house and there is potential for a public restroom. when we are at home she just wants us to change mason's diaper. she will come to tell me that "mason/brother needs a clean diaper" even when his diaper has already been freshly changed. love.

sibling love

2009-07-02T09:20:00.008-05:00

i had mason laying on a blanket during a rare awake stretch and madelyn had to get in on the action with a blanket of her own to lay on. she was having a little bit of an attitude problem yesterday. i think that something must be going on with her (teeth, growth spurt, etc.), but matt thinks that it was more of a frustration about having mason around to take mom and dad's attention. she shows no frustration towards mason so i don't think that's it. she actually asks for him first thing in the morning, insists on kissing him goodnight, and wants him to do everything with her. today she was happily giving him "big hugs" after lunch.

here are some pictures of them sharing some sibling love yesterday (okay so it was madelyn sharing the love, but i am sure mason would of shared if he could).

most of these pictures were at madelyn's request. here she is laying on her blanket just like mason. it was so funny to see her doing "belly time" and other laying down activities (grabbing her feet, rolling side to side, etc.).

madelyn was saying, "hi, mason. nice to meet you. how are you doing?" while shaking his hand. it cracked me up to hear her be so formal with him.

here she is showing me how much bigger she is than mason by laying next to him. this is a picture that she requested and is saying "cheese" in the picture.

madelyn loves to give mason kisses. i call them "magic kisses" because he stops fussing/crying the second she kisses him. it really is remarkable how he reacts. and it is only with madelyn that he stops crying like that too. (by coincidence he is smiling in this picture.)

she was comparing the size of their feet. this is a recreation of her original comparison and not as good as the first, but i couldn't get the camera turned on fast enough and had to ask her to do it again.

and i just thought that this one was cute of the two of them looking at each other. love.

2009-07-01T14:51:00.003-05:00

i usually post after madelyn goes to bed, but now with mason i am just going to have to post when i can.

this morning i was playing with madelyn in the playroom and she got out the costumes that she got for her birthday. she hasn't been interested in wearing them yet, but i talked her into putting on the tutu this morning (it is under the dress) and that was all it took! then she wanted to put on her wings too. to wear the wings she had to put on the dress that they attach to with velcro. once i had her all assembled she was very happy about it. until she walked out of the playroom that is...

i tried to get a picture of her but she started pulling at the dress wildly saying that she didn't want it! once i suggested that she go look at her wings in the mirror she ran off to see. (that is her new thing. when i fix her hair she tells me that she is going to go look in the mirror and runs to her bathroom to take a look.) that made her happy to be wearing the costume again and she came out to tell daddy that she was "wearing a costume". i think i told her that they were costumes when she opened them on her birthday so the word kind of surprised us. it also made her sound very grown up.

after breakfast she went to mason's room to read and i thought that she looked cute in her little outfit sitting down to read so took the photo op.

the costume came off when madelyn had an "icky diaper" and requested a "clean diaper". its been like seeing mason in diapers has made them too babyish for her and she is more aware that she has one on. i hope to finish up a few more things today so that i can read the potty training book tonight - wish me luck!

and you can see that mason was really enjoying all the excitement... love.

first doctor office visit

2009-07-01T07:06:00.002-05:00

yesterday we took mason for his first doctor office visit. we could only get an appointment during madelyn's nap time, so we had a babysitter come over for an hour to stay with her. that is the nice part about summer time - it is really easy to find a babysitter when you need one!

mason is doing great! he is already back up to 8lbs. 7.8oz. so we don't have to come back for a two week appointment (typical schedule) and will do a three week appointment instead because she isn't worried about him returning to birth weight. he was still measuring 22 inches long and his head came in at 35.5cm.

he is also pretty strong. the doctor was a little surprised when he showed off how he can already roll up on his side and hold his head up most of the time. madelyn had really busy legs when she was an infant, but mason has a busy body. he moves practically non-stop when he is actually awake that is...

before our trip to the doctor, we took the kids to the grocery store. once again madelyn had a fit about mason's carrier going in her seat in the cart. at target we put the carrier in the cart's basket, but that wasn't really going to work for grocery shopping. instead matt pushed a cart with madelyn and i pushed on with mason. we are pretty sure madelyn's need to ride in the cart is directly tied to her expectation of a snack while shopping. we are going to try giving her a snack to carry and see if that makes a difference in her attitude.

mason had his first bath at home on monday night. he isn't really fond of having his diaper off so he cried through a lot of it. except when we go to washing his hair. he loved having his hair washed! he got really calm and quiet while looking up at us. he really seemed to enjoy the feeling of having the water poured over his head. i am just relieved that he found some of it positive.

sleep note - i was nervous about how last night was going to go because he was sleeping really heavily for a long time before i wanted him to go down for the night instead of eating. but i am happy to report that he went down at 10:30pm and did not wake up again until 4:30am! it actually made me a little nervous when i woke up, realized what time it was and that he hadn't made a peep all night. after eating he went back down until 5:30 and then he was wide-eyed and alert for about an hour before starting to nap again. i forgot how nice that early morning eye contact can be when they are just calm, quiet, and content.

i will try to do better about adding pictures of mason. i don't like to use the flash on him when his eyes are open and the rest of the time he is sleeping. but i know that pictures are what my readers want, so i will do my best to deliver in the future. love.

adventures in big sister-ing

2009-07-01T06:42:00.004-05:00

madelyn seems to enjoy being a big sister. yesterday she took on the task of 'reading' to mason while he relaxed in his swing. she came up to "touch mason" (a new favorite activity) and then said, "i'll read to you, okay?" she picked her new happy birthday, maisy! book and told mason "this is maisy" while showing him the book cover before sitting down to read.

she told him about all the pictures and then sang him the "happy birthday" song when she got to that part of the book. this book has flaps and pulls so it was cute to see her trying to tell him about what he couldn't see.

she has also become very interested in her (and mason's) diapers. she has been telling us about what is going on in her diaper, sometimes before it even happens, and demanding a "clean diaper". she has mainly done this while we are out running errands. i was going to wait a few more weeks, but i think that i might think about starting to potty train her in the next week or so. she starts preschool next week so i might wait until she gets settled there but i would hate to miss this window of interest. right now it is just funny to see her pulling on her diapers while telling me that she needs to go pee-pee and needs her "wet diaper changed".

as part of her diaper interest, she has been watching and 'helping' with mason's diaper changes. we haven't used the changing table for madelyn's diapers in a long time - at least 6 months. we just change her on the floor because she got too big for the changing table to be worth using. not to mention that she was just too heavy for me to be lifting while pregnant. anyway, she has been asking to be changed on the changing table every now and then since mason came home. i guess she didn't want to wait and climbed up on top of it in mason's room and laid down for daddy to change her diaper yesterday! i missed it, but it doesn't surprise me that she could get up there on her own.

in non-mason news, madelyn has been doing more art-and-craft type projects. last week we made paper bag puppets with markers, googlie-eyes, and pom-poms. yesterday daddy helped madelyn use stencils and paint to decorate a bird house kit she received as a big sister gift. today they are going to hang the bird house and hope that something moves in soon.

madelyn and daddy finished up this session of swimming lessons the night we were admitted to have mason. they had been working on "dunking" and matt said that madelyn would jump in from the side of the pool and happily go under water before being 'caught' by daddy and brought back up to call out "again!" happily. i was a little surprised by this since she has always been really careful to keep her face out of the water in the tub and wading pools. but we have come to expect this type of fearlessness from our little adventurer. love.

to sleep or not to sleep...

2009-06-30T15:15:00.002-05:00

sunday night did not go that great. i think mason woke up every hour or less. i didn't get more than twenty or thirty minutes of sleep until matt got up with mason and maddie at 7am. i was at a total loss. madelyn had never slept that little at night - even when ill. i didn't know what to do with a baby that didn't sleep. not only was he not sleeping, but he wanted to nurse every time. he was eating so much that it was just coming right back up. i think i changed his clothes 4 times, diapers 10 times, and unswaddled and reswaddled 4 times. by the end of the day yesterday i had a bad headache and just wanted to get into bed.

thankfully, last night was totally different! i had remembered to get him to cluster feed from 6-10pm. i put him down at 10 (and got myself to bed by 10:30) and he slept until 1:30am. i got him back down at 2:00am and then madelyn woke up at 2:30am. no reason, just ready to be awake. once she was back down there was sleeping until mason woke up at 5am. madelyn followed at 5:45am.

the 5am wake up call/cry reminded me of how it was with madelyn. i had forgotten how early my days would start. it was actually kind of nice to have both kids up and happy this morning. mason was laying awake in his crib looking around and madelyn was climbing up on the side to tell him, "good morning, mason!" love.

compare and contrast

2009-06-28T21:53:00.002-05:00

here are two pictures. the one on the left is madelyn in her first week of life and the one on the right is mason today. compare and contrast. love.

the inner circle

2009-06-28T21:02:00.008-05:00

so mason is officially "in" madelyn's inner circle - she has chosen to share friend with him. not only did she have friend give mason kisses and then let mason hold friend, but she asked me to take a picture of the two of them in the swing together.

then madelyn took the photo shoot into her own hands and snapped a few pictures of her own of mason and friend. she hasn't quite figured out how to manage the camera without putting her fingers over the lens. this is probably the best of her shots because you can see mason and friend behind her finger.

after this photo session, madelyn was very excited to be taking mason to church with her. she kept telling us to "get dressed" so that we could go. once she was dressed, she wanted to have her picture taken with mason. she even smiled several times while saying "cheese" without any prompting by me.

church was our first outing in the car since coming home from the hospital and madelyn was just talking to mason the whole way. she was pointing out everything we passed, telling him what it was, and telling him about the veggietales characters singing on the cd playing. when she couldn't come up with something new, she would say "um....trees" as filler conversation.

people were pretty surprised to hear that mason was only two days old and we were all at church. mainly they were surprised that i was there. i am telling you, this time is SO much easier than with madelyn. but i also had the spinal leak headaches after having madelyn. i just want to get right in to normal life.

on a personal note, i wore non-maternity jeans to church this morning. it took me two weeks to get there after having madelyn, but i did only put on about 25 pounds this time versus the 30 i put on with madelyn.

mason had a pretty good sleeping night last night. i was a little worried when he woke up every hour to eat for the first three hours after i went to bed. but after i fed him at 1am he slept straight through to about 6am when i woke him up to eat. he did make some noise like he was waking up at 3:30am, but when i tried to get him to eat he went back to sleep.

this afternoon mason went on his first trip to the park. it was such a nice afternoon that it seemed like a shame to be sitting inside. he slept the entire time, but i think he enjoyed the fresh air. i also think that he likes it when the birds sing - weird, i know, but it really did seem like he would perk up to listen when they would sing.

i wish that i had taken video of madelyn at the park. she was hysterical! first she was wearing her bike helmet while playing (she requests to ride he bike while mason rides in the stroller - making me very happy). then she was yelling "hi. hi! look at me! look at me!" over and over to a little boy and his grandma that drove over to the park. they weren't people we knew either, but that did not stop madelyn's excitement to see them and have them look at her. and if anyone stopped to see mason, she would run over to tell them that he was her brother, mason. she is so proud to be his sister.

adding to madelyn's independence, she now fills her own cup in the refrigerator door water dispenser. she actually does a pretty good job of not overfilling her cup. she didn't spill any water all day until dinner time and i guess it was a big spill because daddy put the dispenser lock on so that she would not be able to do it any more tonight. either way, it was good progress to her being able to help herself. love.

and we're home again!

2009-06-27T20:35:00.005-05:00

we were released from the hospital around 10:30am this morning and very excited to be heading home so early. we had a pretty good night last night all sleeping at the hospital. madelyn's behavior received several complements from hospital staff. they couldn't believe how nicely she slept on her "big pillow" on the floor that we brought from home.

madelyn is still super excited to be a big sister. she was really excited to bring mason home in the car with her. she couldn't wait for him to use his swing and other toys at home. she also requested for him to come in the pool with her.

we all went for a walk around the block tonight after dinner because i really needed to get outside for a little while. madelyn suggested that mason ride in the stroller while she rode her bike. we were pretty impressed by this offer considering that when we have talked to her about sharing the stroller(s) in the past she declared that they were "mine" and not for "brother" to use. at the very end of our walk though (we were feet from our property line) she jumped off her bike and wanted her stroller back - we almost made it.

i think that we are all excited to be sleeping in our own beds tonight. mason napped in his crib for a few hours today so i think that he will do fine tonight.

other random notes from madelyn and mason's lives:

- mason has a dimple in his left cheek.
- madelyn uses this phrase, "hey, look at this guy". it has multiple uses - strangers, objects, mason, etc. it always makes me laugh.
- she also says, "look at me!" when she is showing off.
- madelyn tells us that mason is crying or talking or watching us.
- mason and matt were both born on the 26th of the month - different months, but the same date.
- mason loves to hold his head up and look around. when you try and burp him he keeps his head up the whole time instead of resting it on your shoulder.
- mason was 8lbs. 5oz. when released from the hospital
- mason sneezes a lot!

tomorrow we will have our first big trip out as a family - to church and then to the grocery store. love.

when madelyn met mason

2009-06-26T12:26:00.006-05:00

when madelyn first got to the room she was on the verge of tears and calling for, "mommy". it stopped shortly after she was helped up into bed with me so that she could get a close up look at "brother". she accepted his name as "mason" right away though. her first concern was to give him lots of hugs. it was so sweet how she kept hugging him and saying, "hi, mason".

in the video she loses interest in mason in favor of my breakfast - specifically my grapes, but for most of the morning she has just been interested in hugging, holding, and touching mason.

daddy helped her to hold mason after she got her fill of my grapes (read: ate every single one of them). she is really excited to be the big sister! she sits in the bed with me to watch mason sleep in the crib and wants to touch him the whole time. she really, really seems to love petting his hair. she does manage to keep the touching to his blanket while he is sleeping though.

other comments on mason:

- his cry is a lot louder than madelyn's was at birth.

- he has a pretty solid head of hair and it seems pretty similar to how madelyn's was when she was born; maybe slightly more blond than hers was though.

thank you to everyone for all the well wishes! love.

delivery pictures

2009-06-26T06:47:00.005-05:00

here are just a few pictures from the delivery. i promise that more will come once we are all up and cleaned up this morning!

one last belly shot after being admitted.

measuring mason's big ole head. i don't know how big it was, but i can pretty much guess that it was bigger than madelyn's.

mason meeting his daddy for the first time.

seeing mommy after getting cleaned up a little and checked out. i thought that he looked a lot like madelyn when i first saw him, but now i am not as sure. i think he looks like matt... love.

welcoming mason lynn

2009-06-26T06:26:00.004-05:00

mason lynn joined our family at 12:27am on june 26. he was 22 inches long and weighed 8lbs. 12 oz. (one ounce less than madelyn did at birth). he has blue eyes and dark blond hair (i think - i haven't really gotten to see him in full light after his bath). i will post more pictures later today, we didn't really get many good ones of his face and he is sleeping right now.

we could not have planned his delivery better. i went in for my appointment at 3:40pm yesterday afternoon and my blood pressure was on the high side - 130/80 (not really high, but pretty high for me). my doctor couldn't even reach my cervix during the office visit, but the blood pressure was enough for her to want me to go to the hospital. there was no rush so matt and madelyn went to swimming lesson at 5:30 while i went home to clean up a little and get a few things together.

by 7:00pm madelyn was with our neighbors for the night and matt and i were in our room at the hospital. amazingly, as they got me hooked up to the monitor i started to have very regular contractions on my own (i had contractions at 7 minutes apart all day on wednesday, but not really any on thursday until getting to the hospital). then my doctor came in to check me - still 2cm - and broke my water at 8:15pm. by 10:45 the contractions were too close together for me and i started to get lightheaded and nauseous so it was time for the epidural. i got a little rest then (and so did matt). we started pushing at 11:45pm and had to stop for a little bit so that my doctor could get there from a c-section. and mason was born at 12:27am!

i guess he came out face up and eyes open (he has been amazingly alert)! i can't believe how much faster things went this time and they never even had to put me on pitosin (sp?). i also can't believe how night and day different i feel now compared to madelyn's delivery. i am barely sore at all and it looks like we might be released tomorrow.

matt is going to bring madelyn over this morning and i can't wait for her to meet her little brother! love.

and finally we had cake...

2009-06-23T21:39:00.010-05:00

madelyn had an early and tearful start to her day today. she got up around 6am and was crying when she came into our room (matt was already at work) to get me. what did she want? for me to put her tool belt on her. i guess that is why she was crying, because she couldn't get it on herself. then when i went to get a picture of her all cute in her left over pig tails, her new pink elmo jammies, and her tool belt she started crying again. she was saying "no, mommy! i don't want it. no pictures!" of course i took one picture anyway.

i am exhausted, so here are some pictures from today with captions to cover today's post. enjoy!

madelyn enjoyed "cooking" with real baking supplies that were just her size. later in the day she added her apron to the whole experience.

unfortunately, madelyn found the tools that we removed from the tool belt before giving it to her because, as matt put it, "she could put that hammer through a wall." i did let her play with them for a little while so that i could get these pictures of her being little ms. fix-it.

by 9:30am it was already getting really hot (a heat advisory went into effect at noon today) and madelyn was ready to hit the pool. she is carrying her new bug box in the picture.

she had fun for a little while in her pool, but it was getting way to hot for me sitting outside in the sun. she splashed around for a while and then we had to go in and get ready for music class.

at about 8:30pm we finally got around to giving madelyn her birthday cake. i think that she was most excited about the candles though. she insisted on helping me put the candles in the cake herself before sitting at the table for us to sing. we were so late past bedtime because she and i went to 'swim' some more in the backyard after her swimming class and didn't come in until after 7. and daddy went to a work function after swim class and didn't get home again until after 8, which is when madelyn and i were just finishing up our dinner.

happy (belated) birthday, madelyn! you finally got to eat your cake. love.

madelyn's 2

2009-06-22T21:20:00.005-05:00

madelyn turned 2 today! and as of 9:35pm she is not going to have to share her birthday with her brother (my big concern with the due date being so close to her birthday) - not that i am not ready for him to come out already.

we have been so busy around here this month and will have house guests next month so we have opted not to have a birthday party for madelyn this year. i, of course, have "mommy guilt" and decided to take madelyn to the zoo this morning. it was going to be a pretty hot day (for here - not other parts of the country) so we got there shortly after it opened. after about a half hour i realized that i really had no business pushing her up the hills in that heat; not that it put me into labor or anything.

madelyn took care of protecting her knees from the sun. she actually wore three of these stickers on her legs for most of the day. they were stickers that she got from one of our visits to the doctor's office and found in the car on the way to the zoo. for some reason she insisted on riding around in her stroller almost the whole time we were there, which is very unusual for her. she also had no interest in the fish building - a first. but i practically had to drag her away from the hippos after like 20 minutes. at least she always finds something of interest when we go.

again with the "mommy guilt," i wanted today's trip to the zoo to be a little special so i let her get a pressed penny souvenir. she thought that was the coolest thing ever. if i had more quarters i would have let her get two, and she chose to have a giraffe for her single selection.

unfortunately, she didn't get a decent nap again. she has just been falling asleep in the car early in the day and then can't go down for her actual nap. hopefully we will have better luck tomorrow because she really does need her nap.

since it was madelyn's day i just went with whatever she wanted instead of what was normal. she had a bowl of canned corn for breakfast (her request) with a slice of sharp cheddar cheese and two bananas with string cheese for lunch. i think that she had two cups of yogurt with daddy this morning before i got up too. dinner was a medley of taco ingredients. we never got to the birthday cake because it got too late past bedtime after we finished with the presents. we will just have to sing and eat it tomorrow night.

she was going to have swimming lessons today, but they got cancelled due to a power outage at the pool (i guess it messed up the chemical system). when i was getting her ready for swimming she told me that she wanted to "go to the doctor's first". this is because last week she had to go with me to the doctor's before class - i thought that it was funny that she remembered and asked to go. since madelyn was so excited about swimming, and already in her swimming suit, we invited her friends michael and dylan down to swim in her pool instead (they have swimming lessons at the same time too). she was so excited to have the boys down to enjoy some splashing fun with her.

after sliding and splashing with the boys we went in to have some dinner. i didn't think that she was going to make it through dinner. she was definitely bobbing her head with her eyes closed while eating slowly. as soon as daddy started using his tools to hang up her height chart in the playroom she perked right up! right now it is just a painted board, but once i get all the numbers written on it it will be a height chart. matt just wanted to make sure that we got her measured on her actual birthday. she did so great at standing straight up against the wall! her 2nd birthday measurement came in at 37 inches! if what they say about doubling is true, she is going to be 6'2" someday.

once we finished with the measuring madelyn became ecstatic about the mention of presents. every time the doorbell would ring she would come running and ask, "what is it, mommy?". if i asked what she thought it was, she would shout "toys!" i haven't let her open anything over the past week, but today i did let her open her presents from uncle josh and aunt adrienne when it arrived.

now, back to the presents... madelyn go so many presents! and not from mommy and daddy either. we got her a little tent and a tunnel (one of those cloth things that kids crawl through). there weren't pictures that i could really post because she wasn't dressed. i should have thought about that and put some clothes on her before presents, but i didn't. i am sure that there will be many pictures of her and her gifts throughout the rest of the week. (on a side note, she had been asking me not to take her picture today. there were lots of pictures that i wanted to get and couldn't.) she really loved the tool belt from her blogger friend, lorelai. i really wish i could post how cute she was with it, but i have a feeling that you will see a lot of it in the future.

she also got several dress-up outfits including a thumbelina costume (which you might remember is our nickname for our little thumb sucker). she is going to have fun dressing up in these some day. i can't even list everything out. all i can say is that she is very spoiled (and loved)! thank you to everyone who made our little girl feel so special on her birthday.

(madelyn got a special birthday greeting from her blogger buddy, lorelai, today too for anyone who wants to see it.) love.

happy daddy's day

2009-06-21T19:54:00.004-05:00

poor, daddy. today was his day, but he spent it doing physical labor outside. he had to finish putting down mulch on his new landscaping and then had the regular mowing and weeding to do. i still think that he had a nice day.

i had tried to get a picture of madelyn with daddy before and after church but madelyn would have none of it. this was the best picture with attitude i was able to get and couldn't resist sharing. she was lovely and chatty at church this morning though. she was telling everyone about her dress with flowers and a heart necklace of mine that she was wearing. it makes us so happy to see how excited she is to go to church every week.

madelyn didn't really take a nap yesterday and only napped for an hour today leaving us with a crabby girl at times. thankfully, she would get over these moods pretty quickly and had a major second wind this evening after dinner that was fun for all of us.

even though it was "daddy's day" (madelyn didn't really understand "father" so she would say "daddy's day"), madelyn got the biggest present. today we surprised her with a sandbox that papa and nana sent for her birthday. when i told her that there was a birthday present outside for her, she replied, "i am so excited!" and she was, too. madelyn asks to use the neighbor's sandbox at least once a week and she loves to use her shovels (even just to carry them around with her). i think that the sandbox will see a lot of play this summer. and to make it even better it fit perfectly under the stairs of the deck so that she is in the shade and it isn't in the way. matt and i couldn't believe how perfectly it fit! she was already asking to go back and play in it during dinner tonight. between the sandbox and the pool we won't need to leave the house this summer - although i plan to be out and about as much as possible while on leave. love.

38 / 39 weeks

2009-06-19T14:02:00.004-05:00

i will be 39 weeks tomorrow, but just got around to my 38 week appointment yesterday (i was scheduling around matt's work schedule). baby's heart rate was good, my stomach measures 39 weeks, i was down one pound, and i was almost 2 cm dilated. i am scheduled to be back in next thursday and we will pick a date for inducing at that point.

the picture is a quick one before i headed off to my book club. i really need to try and get a nice picture at some point...

madelyn was playing with her doctor kit before nap time yesterday. after 'listening' to brother's heartbeat in my belly for a while she laid down and listened to her own belly. i tried to get her to recreate our conversation and that is why it is not as spontaneous in the video. maybe she doesn't get the whole baby in my belly thing after all. love.

we're still waiting

2009-06-16T19:46:00.005-05:00

we might still be waiting on brother, but the weather has been great (until today that is - more in a minute) and madelyn has been itching to be outside. her desire to be outside has dramatically increased after one of her birthday presents arrived late last week - a new pool from big pop and grandma.

matt set the pool up on sunday while madelyn was napping and she could hardly contain her excitement when she saw it in the front yard! she was looking out to see daddy working in the yard and then saw her surprise. she could hardly get into her "swimming suit" fast enough!

and then she spent monday morning 'swimming' again. in fact, she was in her suit and outside by 8:30am! it was all i could do to get my computer and stuff together so that i could supervise. she even ate her snack out on the deck because i couldn't get her any farther away from the pool. she played in the pool and with the dogs until lunch time. she really had fun teasing lady by taking all the dog toys into the pool. when lady would dip her head in and snag one of the balls out, madelyn would say/yell, "lady, knock-it-off!" and then get out to try and get the ball back. she would play tug-of-war with lady, but lady usually won. madelyn would even refuse to let go and get drug across the yard by lady a little bit on her belly.

we only played in the pool before nap time because she was going to have her first swimming lesson later monday night. it isn't so much a 'lesson' as it is parents paying to play with their kids

in a community pool with minimal instruction from a lifeguard. the good (or the bad) part is that it is every night so she can easily build on what they did the night before. i went with them last night and tried to take pictures, but there were just too many parents standing around. you can see her happy face as she is coming down this fun frog slide - if you look closely that is.

today was cooler and overcast. i thought for sure that her class would be cancelled, but to my surprise ours was one of the few pools not closed. so i dressed madelyn in her swimming suit and put a fleece over it so that she would be warm enough. matt said that it wasn't actually that bad although there were some concerning warm spots in the pool tonight...

madelyn has been in the most wonderful mood for the past week and she cracks me up daily; we just love her. here are some points that i thought i would share here:

- madelyn's birthday is june 22 or as she says "june snack it"

- matt's co-workers threw him a baby shower and he was going through the gifts this weekend to write the thank yous. madelyn came across a toy that she was interested in claiming. when we told her that it was brother's toy she explained that "brother sharing and it's maddie's turn".

- since matt was working on thank yous madelyn got her crayons and some paper to "draw a card for grandma and big pop for pool". i was impressed that she equated a thank you note with having received a gift.

- when we got to the pool on monday matt was already there (he had a late meeting that required us to bring him his swimming gear to change there) and madelyn ran up to him for a "big hug". while hugging him she said sadly "i missed you, daddy!" she said this several times while hugging and kissing him. i got to hear it for me after class was over since i didn't do the class with her. it is just so sweet and sincere when she says it.

- after madelyn woke me up this morning she asked me, "where'd friend go?" to which i said, "i don't know where is friend?" after thinking for a minute madelyn replied, "um... friend is still sleeping." and sure enough when i went to her room later friend was tucked neatly in the bed as if he was still sleeping. now, if only she would let me sleep in.

- i have taught madelyn how to get her own milk out of the refrigerator when she wants it and then put it back in when she is done.

- tonight she was doing somersaults and kept asking us "how do that?" with her hands and shoulders shrugged as a question. when we would ask her to show us how she would happily reply, "okay", and do it again - with the same question.

- madelyn was shy for the first time ever at music class this morning. we haven't been in few weeks while waiting for the new session to start so i think that might have been some of it. there were also lots of new kids and we were meeting at a new neighbor's house. she was just really clingy and quiet. that is until the end of class when she felt like chatting with miss sarah, the teacher. at last she was acting like matt and my child - not the social butterfly she seems to be the majority of the time.

- lately when she wants matt and i to come with her somewhere she pats her leg and says, "come," like she does when calling one of the dogs!

- she likes to say "oh my goodness!" when something exciting or surprising happens. i don't know if it is how she says it or that i realize how silly i must sound using this super clean expression all the time, but it always makes me smile.

as you can see there is never a dull moment with madelyn around. love.

pbs at the zoo

2009-06-13T13:22:00.009-05:00

today was pbs kids day at the zoo and i think madelyn was a fan. we woke daddy up early to brave the zoo crowds on a saturday. madelyn has been so very excited to go to the zoo with daddy this weekend. she has actually been asking to go to the zoo for two weeks now, but it just hasn't worked out. when i heard about pbs kids day i knew we had a winner.

madelyn was really excited about seeing george, clifford, elmo, and cookie monster. surprisingly i think that she was most excited about clifford the big red dog. i don't think that she has ever seen the show, but we have read a few books from the library. madelyn was really excited about all the characters, but did an excellent job of waiting her turn to say hi and take pictures. here are the best ones with each one:

on top of meeting the characters, she got sheets of stickers for other shows including her current favorite - word world. daddy was impressed at her ability to name all of the characters on the sheet. it was a big deal for madelyn to have daddy at the zoo with her. not just because she loves her daddy - a lot - but because i tell her that she can do things the next time daddy comes with us as a way of avoiding things when we are out. for instance at the zoo when she asks to ride the train, i tell her that we should wait and do it with daddy. she always agrees that it is a good idea to wait so that daddy can go too. so it was no surprise that she said, "yea, ride the train with daddy!" when i told her that we were going to the zoo with daddy today. her memory is always impressive. it has been over a month since we were at the zoo talking about riding the train the next time daddy was with us.

during the summer there is a lot more going on at the zoo. there are all sorts of information desks set up at the exhibits. when we went to see the big cats they had a huge lion skin. i wasn't sure what madelyn would think of it, but asked her if she wanted to feel the lion's fur. there was no hesitation in petting the fur, but she said that she wanted the lion to wake up. thankfully she accepted that the lion could not wake up. then she wanted to pet the real lions in the exhibit.

as we were walking around shortly before leaving, madelyn was riding on daddy's shoulders. she then laid her head on top of his and started snoring. she would sit up and say that she was tired and sleeping. she would make the snoring sound for a little bit before sitting up to tell us that she was snoring because she was sleeping. i would have taken video but it was too loud out and she was too quiet to hear her well.

this is something she has been doing a lot of lately, telling us what she is doing. the funniest is when she cries and then stops to say "maddie's crying" or "i crying". today there was a little boy crying at the zoo and madelyn started to fake cry before telling us "maddie's crying too".

we had a great morning at the zoo and tonight matt and i are going on our last date night before baby boy comes.

and i have to add a special "happy 2nd birthday" to madelyn's cousin, annabell, who had her birthday party today. due to my poor counting skills her present didn't get there in time for the party, but grandma and big pop are going to give it to her tomorrow at church. at least it is way early for her actual birthday on the 29th! love.

g-maddie

2009-06-12T20:29:00.002-05:00

it occurred to me that i need to keep posting so my loyal readers don't think that i have gone into labor. so here is some of the fun from today.

madelyn got into some jewlery of mine this morning and wanted to wear several of them at once. i thought it was pretty funny that she was wearing all this bling with her little cotton sundress. as she was playing she kept asking to remove one at a time. she would play for a while and then decide that one had to go before she could go on about her day.

for some reason madelyn called me "ma-ma" today. she would say it as two words and with various european accents. i have no idea in the slightest where this came from. and she definitely knew that she was doing something a little silly which made her call me it all day.

madelyn came up for a snuggle and i said something like "hi there, baby". she pulled back and looked at me with her head tilted as she said with a question, "baby?" to which i replied, "oh sorry! big girl." to which she smiled and threw herself into giving me a big hug. she is really embracing the idea that a new baby is coming and that she is a big girl. i love it.

tonight we took her for a tour of the hospital because i wanted her to see the rooms before i was there in a hospital gown and tagged/tubed up. she just kept asking "where is brother?" and telling us that we were going to "get brother". i think that she was a little disappointed that we left without him. she was asking "where'd brother go?" she just can't wait for him to get here! i keep telling her that i can't wait either... love.

where there's dirt, there's madelyn

2009-06-10T20:30:00.003-05:00

tonight madelyn got to go to her first softball game because daddy had his first early one of the season (aka before bedtime). she had so much fun cheering and looking for daddy. by the 6th inning she found some dirt to play in on the ground and all but forgot about the game.

i was impressed by how well she knew when to clap - often before i had started cheering. she even got that daddy was playing "first base".

madelyn ran up to matt after the game and said, "good job, daddy," while giving him a big hug and then a kiss. she must have heard the other 'fans' saying "good job" after the game and wanted to tell her daddy the same thing. in fact, she kept telling him "good job" quite happily all the way out.

after the game she was excited to try out the playground at the ball park. daddy was impressed by how strong her climbing has gotten. i mean madelyn was always a good climber, but now she actually thinks about which foot or hand to use. if she can't find a foothold with her right foot, she will put it back and try with her left foot. it makes me nervous when she is climbing up so high wearing flip-flops, but she never slips. she definitely uses her height to her advantage. love.

37 weeks

2009-06-09T19:55:00.002-05:00

well there has been no progress according to doctor. but there was also no weight gain since last week (mine, not baby). apparently my weight gain and blood pressure could not be better. the doctor told me to keep doing what ever i am doing. i think that i have put on like 27 pounds so far.

i have two friends due 1 and 2 weeks after me and they are both mostly effaced and dilated 1cm or more. i have pretty much resigned myself to the likelihood that they will have babies before me. matt and i aren't holding our breath, but we are still hoping that he will come early so that he is here and settled before the grandparents come to visit.

i am just exhausted at this point. i have been going to bed before 9 every night - which is very early for me.

madelyn and i had a nice morning of shopping and a girls' lunch out since it might be a while before we can have a relaxing lunch together again. it was such a nice treat! love.

bugs and bug bites

2009-06-08T20:34:00.003-05:00

madelyn is really into bugs right now. every itch is a "bug bite" and today she told me that she had a bug in her hair. i am not sure what made her think that she had a bug in her hair, but she was pretty cute trying to wipe it off the back of her head. and on our walk tonight she was identifying every insect that she saw on the sidewalk. there were ants, spiders, ladybugs, beetles, and rolly-pollies. she wasn't quite brave enough to touch the rolly-pollies but really wanted daddy to touch them so that they would roll up.

(she is saying "cheese" in the picture from lunch today. i just thought that she looked pretty cute with her peanut butter on her nose.)

she has a new manner that she has mastered - saying "excuse me" after burping. of course she tells us that she burped first, but then she says excuse me.

i have discovered that madelyn likes disco. we got a veggietales sing the 70s cd from the library and madelyn started bopping along as soon as funkytown came on. not only that, but she asked to hear it again and again. i finally had to tell her that we should listen to the other songs on the cd to see if she liked them too.

that's all for now. love.

just hangin' out

2009-06-07T13:52:00.004-05:00

madelyn got a birthday present early last night - a new swing chair for the playroom. (i think that it was early because daddy was excited to hang it up. he had been eyeing it at ikea for a while before we bought it on our last trip.) madelyn has spent a lot of time swinging since daddy put it up. she was delightfully surprised when she went in this morning because she had forgotten about it over night.

i think that the funniest part is watching her try to get in it by herself - she thinks its pretty funny too. the seat of it is a big air cushion and it makes it difficult to get up and in. not to mention that it spins in circles once she picks her feet off the ground.

i am sure that we will get lots of enjoyment out of this for a long time to come. love.

"does this work?"

2009-06-06T15:21:00.004-05:00

today was one of those times when i was so thankful to have the camera handy! we had stopped by bed, bath & beyond to try and find some curtains for brother's room. we have done this a few times over the past months and madelyn often likes to pick out curtains too. today she was in full interior design mode - especially after she took the paint cards/swatches from me. enjoy! love.

the shoe fairy

2009-06-06T14:55:00.003-05:00

last night madelyn had a visit from the shoe fairy. see the shoe fairy comes when little girls outgrow their shoes and trades them for a present. madelyn was not very excited about saying goodbye to her "brown shoes", but she was excited about a present.

since she was overtired we decided not to make a big deal about her putting the shoes out for the shoe fairy in the hope of avoiding a total meltdown. instead i took her shoes off in the car because she was complaining about her feet hurting - this has been a common theme lately.

i had a puzzle that i was planning on giving to her for her birthday or as a big sister present so this became our shoe fairy gift. i wrapped it up and put it outside of her room for her to find when she woke up in the morning. i was awoken this morning to the rustle of paper and remembered that madelyn had a present waiting for her. she was so excited to have a present all for her!

as we were getting ready to leave this morning i asked madelyn which shoes she wanted to wear. her response? "brown shoes." after reminding her about her present from the shoe fairy for taking the brown shoes she willingly picked from the shoes in her closet and let me put them on! not only that, but she brought them to me saying that she was going to wear "flip flops like mommy. they have beautiful flowers on them!" i was so, so, so excited! and daddy and i praised her selection and told her how great she looked with the new shoes on.

here is a picture of madelyn happily wearing her flip-flops while playing with her new puzzle from the shoe fairy. love.

(thanks to our friend, tina, for the excellent suggestion of the shoe fairy!)

shedd aquarium

2009-06-06T08:06:00.013-05:00

like i mentioned in the last post, matt has been at a conference in chicago. he was going to be done around noon on friday, so we thought that it might be nice for madelyn and i to join him and take a trip to the shedd aquarium. sea life seems to be one of madelyn's favorite things and we thought that it might be nice to do with her before the baby is born.

it was a gorgeous day and we had a nice lunch outside before heading in to the aquarium. madelyn loved driving through downtown - she keep pointing out every bicycle she saw. she was also really excited about all the seagulls hanging around begging for scraps while we were eating our lunch.

(unfortunately, there is no flash photography inside the shedd and pictures were very difficult to come by because most of the rooms are on the dark side, but i tried.)

i had started talking with madelyn about our trip to the aquarium on thursday and we went through her curious george book about a trip to the aquarium to talk about the animals we would see there. she told me that she was most excited about the whales and octopus. the one octopus was 'sleeping' while we were there and she wasn't all that interested in the beluga whales (until we saw their show) after seeing them once, but we saw lots of other animals that were amazing and new to even daddy and me.

she really liked this tank of jellyfish on our way down to the "wild reef" exhibit - i have to say that i was pretty impressed with it myself. the shedd has three different levels so i would ride in the elevator with the stroller while matt and madelyn took the more scenic stair path down each level. madelyn really likes the sharks when we go to the zoo (she runs back and forth with them telling everyone near her that they are "sharks") so i thought that she would be impressed with the sharks at the shedd. not so much. i was impressed with how large they were and how fast they were swimming in their tank, but madelyn would barely even look at them. i guess it was mainly because of her fascination with the sting ray tank.

i wish that i could have gotten a picture of her face and reaction when matt walked out onto the glass floor over the tank. madelyn was holding his hand and when she got to the edge of the carpeting she slammed on the breaks and almost sat back trying to keep daddy from leading her right into the water. it took some convincing to get her to try stepping on it. i had her feel that it was glass/plastic and okay to walk on. the picture isn't great, but you can get a sense for what the setup was like. once she saw that it was safe she kept touching the floor and stomping her feet trying to test it out. i don't even know how much she looked at the sting rays in the tank.

madelyn hugged and 'kissed' any of the model animals she could get close enough to hug and kiss. here she is with a sea turtle and penguins.

we just lucked into seeing a show featuring the beluga whales, a sea lion, and the dolphins by being in the right place at the right time and having a staff person tell us that a show was getting ready to start. the 'show' was basically a demonstration of how they are training the animals for their performance show that will begin later this summer. madelyn wasn't all that impressed until the dolphins started jumping and flipping. mainly because she kept missing the tricks because she was playing with and dropping a dime she found on the floor right before we went in to find seats. once she saw the dolphins she never looked away - even when she dropped her dime again. she was really disappointed when they were done. she just kept saying "more" and "again" in a soft way while never taking her eyes off the water. it was a beautiful set-up for the show too. you can't really appreciate it from the picture - no flash - but it was gorgeous out and the tank/pool overlooks lake michigan and there were lots of sailboats out on the water too.

here are just a few more pictures from our day:

here is a shot of madelyn watching the beluga whales. she also really liked a room where you could hear noises made by a beluga whale. i had to ask her to stop with the high pitched one because it was very loud and the room was not very large.

this was one of the coolest creatures we saw. it is called a seadragon.

it is difficult to see, but madelyn was overjoyed to run and play in this camping tent set up in the local waters section.

all and all it was a fun day and madelyn did wonderfully without a real nap - she napped about an hour on the way there. i am glad that we made the trip with her. and as you can see, she wore herself out taking it all in. dad and i were pretty pooped too. it was a lot of standing for me, but i wasn't in too bad of shape by the end of the day. love.

updates

2009-06-05T21:02:00.004-05:00

matt went to chicago this week for work and i have just been spent by the time madelyn goes to bed at night. that is why there haven't been any posts. here are updates and notes from the week to catch up on what you have been missing:

- we had madelyn's friends "michael-dylan" over for a little while one afternoon. madelyn loves michael and dylan. she will stand out on the deck and yell "michael-dylan" towards their house in the hope that they will come outside. she and dylan were so cute feeding the babies together that i had to get a picture.

- last weekend madelyn was in a "sure" phase. every affirmative reply was "yes/yeah...sure". it was pretty funny.

- when we were driving to indiana last weekend madelyn kept asking for the "airport". after a few times it occurred to me that she thought we were going to the airport to see papa and nana. because when we see them there has always been an airport - either us leaving or them arriving. the associations she makes between things always amaze me and keep me guessing - literally.

- okay. i have to mention the "brown shoes". we have been battling the "brown shoes" for a while in that they are the only shoes madelyn will wear. we can usually talk her into the purple canvas shoes, but the brown shoes are always her first choice. she even picked out her summer shoes at the store, but will not wear them. the problem with the brown shoes is that they do not fit (the purple shoes do). we are trying to have the "shoe fairy" take them tonight and leave a present for the morning, but we will see how that goes. she cried when we first started talking about them going away.

- madelyn jumped on her first trampoline at a party over memorial day weekend and got to try another one at a birthday party this week. she just loves it because its new and she is really into jumping, bouncing, and hopping these days. she often incorporates these into her 'walking' and tells us which one she is doing.

- she has not been very excited about having her hair or teeth brushed lately. in addition to not wanting her hair brushed she has been requesting not to wear anything in her hair either. she doesn't fight having it put in (most of the time), but after a while she wants it "off" or "out". i guess it just doesn't bother her to have her hair in her face all the time and it is not worth the fight. she willingly goes along with a clip or ponytail when it is meal time because i explain that we need her hair out of the way so that she can eat. she is fine with a logical/practical reason for a hair clip but just isn't that concerned with mere adornment.

- she has been really possessive about her body too. when i hold her legs to change her diaper she screams, "my legs! stop it, mommy." or when i brush her hair, "my hair!" it would be funny if it didn't come with such attitude. the exception is her "boogies". she will tell me that she has a "boogie", show me which nostril, and then say "mommy get it." gross - i know, but it is better than her picking her nose all the time.

- matt and i were being silly about a bad driver in the parking lot and both said, "indeed". i don't know if it was just because it was a new word to her or that mommy and daddy were obviously joking with each other, but madelyn really liked it. she kept saying "indeed" and it quickly became "deed". but she didn't quite catch the meaning and was telling us that "deed over there. i see it."

- the other night at dinner madelyn burped and then told me that she was "burping" which became very funny to her. i love that she already gets body function humor! at least at the moment.

- she has been doing a silly fake laugh and then saying "i'm funny." she and daddy really got on a roll fake laughing at each other tonight in the car on the ride home from chicago (see a future post for more on the trip).

- madelyn enjoys riding with her window down and often requests this.

- i have been going to the drive through more often than i should due to my junk food cravings and madelyn has started talking to the worker from her seat. i think it started after one guy was very nice about saying "hi" to her after she asked to have her window down too. now she tells them that she needs her apple juice and chicken nuggets. she also tells them "thank you" and "bye". we just don't know where she gets these super social tendencies... love.

36 weeks

2009-06-02T20:35:00.003-05:00

today was my 36 weeks check-up. it took the doctor a little while to find the heartbeat and that would have been a little stressful if it wasn't for the fact that he was doing all sorts of dramatic movements less than a minute before i laid back. after a few minutes she found his heartbeat and it was about 130 - good.

my cervix is still so high that she couldn't confirm for sure that his head was down - she said maybe 90% sure that it was down. i am looking at that as a blessing because there are lots of people who worry about making it to full-term and obviously that will not be something that we will have to worry about. i wasn't even half a centimeter dilated when i was 41 weeks, in full, active labor, and already admitted to the hospital with madelyn. but you never know with these things. we will see what she has to say at my appointment next week.

she did comment on how well i am getting around for being so far along. apparently i am just really good at being pregnant. now if we can just shave about 20 hours off my labor this time around...

after the doctor's appointment i took madelyn to the library to return some books and get some new ones. when the lady checking our books out asked madelyn if she was having a sister or a brother madelyn replied "baby brother." i was so proud of her for answering a stranger (she tends to clam up around strange adults). love.

happy 90th birthday, great grandma!

2009-05-30T19:06:00.007-05:00

tonight we celebrated great grandma's (aka "great nana") 90th birthday with nana's extended family at a lovely restaurant, the boathouse. madelyn talked about great grandma's birthday most of the way there, sang "happy birthday", and held the presents. as you would expect she was very interested in the presents. we asked her if she remembered what the presents were, her response - "toys". after laughing we reminded her that we had painted picture frames for great grandma and that really got her excited!

she had a wonderful time painting a picture frame a few weeks ago at a pottery place near our house. we picked out the frame, but madelyn picked the colors (white, pink, and purple) and painted the whole thing herself. she even knew to rinse her brush between colors (at first anyway). she was having so much fun that she started to scrape the paint off so that she would have room to paint some more. we added her name to the frame and then put a picture of her in it for great grandma. she loves painting!

madelyn finished her dinner rather quickly and was bouncing off the walls so daddy and uncle derek took turns walking with her outside. she requested to go on a "ship", or so i was told. she later started calling them "boats". she also spent the evening showering nana, papa, and uncle derek with hugs and kisses. she has this thing right now where she is most interested in whoever is not visible which basically left her running in circles giving her hugs. it was a lovely evening for a lovely lady.

madelyn fell asleep shortly after we got in the car and we thought that she might be down for the night, but she just woke up after sleeping for about an hour so we will see how the rest of the night goes...

we did manage to get a family picture after dinner that i think came out pretty well (minus my pale, swollen legs). she was so good this trip! we are heading home after breakfast tomorrow so we will see how the return car ride goes (we are planning to stop for some shopping on the way). love.

farm fun

2009-05-30T11:21:00.012-05:00

we made it! it took about six hours (with a cracker barel lunch break - where madelyn ate like she had not eaten in days), but we had a very nice trip to north manchester to visit for great-grandma's 90th birthday celebration weekend. last night we visited with papa's brother dennis at his farm. great aunt joy made a wonderful dinner for all of us and matt's cousins and their families came over to visit too.

not only was there a lot of family to visit with, but we got to enjoy all of the fun things on great uncle dennis and great aunt joy's farm. here are a few of the pictures from last night. i am posting while madelyn is trying to nap in the next bed at the hotel before we meet up for great grandma's birthday dinner in a few hours. madelyn is a little confused by the "great" titles - i think that we might have to call her "great nana" to make things a little clearer (she keeps looking for her "grandma" from florida when we say "great grandma").

madelyn sitting with the big kids - nolan, leah, and dayton - on the golf cart.

almost sleeping while riding on uncle derek's shoulders during our hike after dinner - she really loves her uncle derek.

daddy swinging out over the creek. madelyn kept saying that it was "maddie's turn too" and great uncle dennis offered to hold her and swing, but daddy and i were too chicken to let her try - yet.

madelyn got to swing with nana and dayton instead at the cabin on top of the hill. there were these little seed like things from the tree and madelyn kept saying that they were worms. she wouldn't walk on the grass because there were too many "worms". daddy finally convinced her that they were not worms, but part of the tree and then she was good to explore again.

here she is swinging with help from great uncle dennis. a few minutes later he helped her swing by hanging upside down from her knees, which she loved.

a family picture with papa, nana, uncle derek, mommy (and baby brother), madelyn, and daddy at the farm.
all of us with the indiana g family. it was so great to visit with everyone again!

there is an hour time difference and madelyn stayed up until like 10:30 local time before finally conking out. we weren't sure how she would do sleeping in a big bed in the same room with us at the hotel, but she did great! she was exhausted from our day, but was too excited to sleep. she was singing all kinds of songs to friend - including "happy birthday". she has been singing happy birthday to (and for) daddy and me since i told her that we were coming for great grandma's birthday - she also sings it for great grandma. she has yet to sing it to great grandma, but i think she will do it tonight at dinner with the rest of us.

this morning we went back to great grandma's and were surprised because madelyn remembered which building was her's. granted she also pointed across the street to say that "maddie's house" was over there and our neighbor "dan's house" was next to it.

we met up with great grandma, nana, papa, uncle derek, and nana's siblings for breakfast. madelyn was lucky enough to get a ride from great grandma as we were walking around the hallways. she has also really enjoyed seeing an impressive caged bird display and fish tank. she is just loving all the new sights!

more of our trip to come later. love.

some things i have learned...

2009-05-28T19:50:00.005-05:00

here are two insights that i have recently come to that i thought i would share:

1. mylanta is the greatest!

2. products marketed as "mess-free" really mean that they are messier than the regular option.

i finally broke down and called the doctor's office about my acid reflux. they told me that i could take any of the over the counter options but suggested that i start with mylanta because it will coat my esophagus and give me the most immediate relief. while the taste and texture almost gave me heaves, the relief was amazing! i am always hesitant to take anything while pregnant, but i can pretty much guarantee that i will take it a few more times before baby boy arrives.

now for my second insight about "mess-free" products. we haven't had a lot of luck with the lidless markers and other mess-free products, but i thought that i would give the finger paints a try. i just wanted a new craft for rainy days inside. we have have had a few inside days in a row this week, so i decided to give it a go.

now madelyn had a great time, but i was a mess trying to slow her consumption of the clear gel-like paint. she didn't really get the color selection part of it because the color markers are on the lids and when they are open you can't tell what color is being selected. not only that, but it takes a little while for the color reaction on the paper to occur.

i took a picture of the three masterpieces she created in about 10 minutes and with more than half of the paint. i think that a topographical picture would have better captured how much paint she used without spreading around.

it actually took madelyn a little while to get into the finger painting. she kept asking for a brush. and, honestly, she is a much neater painter with a brush. she even understands rinsing her brush between colors - not so much with the "mess-free" paints. it was everywhere! she did do a great job wiping off the table when i finally called it quits. i had hoped to get an hour or at least a half-hour out of this activity, but didn't want it to be a one time thing because the paint wasn't really cheap.

the moral of my tale - just get the regular art supplies. maybe consider the washable formula, but skip anything labeled "mess-free".

posting note - we are heading out to celebrate madelyn's great-grandma's 90th birthday this weekend so it might be a while before i post again. unless i can find some internet access... love.

feeding the goats

2009-05-27T21:05:00.007-05:00

yesterday madelyn and i went to the zoo in the morning. the weather wasn't great at all (cold, windy, and rainy) and i was blown away by how many people were there! it was one of the most crowded days we have ever seen there.

as one last treat, i decided to let madelyn try feeding the goats again (it didn't go so great last year). she loved it! i think it has to do with all the time she has been spending with our dogs because she treated the goats the same way. she even hugged a few - at the end of the video you can see her tilt her head as she is going in for a hug but changes her mind for some reason.

i didn't get to post yesterday because i got in bed at 6:30 as soon as daddy got home from work. i have been waking up at night with acid reflux in addition to my bathroom and water breaks. not to mention madelyn threw in three wake-ups of her own just for fun. she came in our room at 3:15am to announce that she was ready to "watch george" after wishing me a "good morning, mommy". i was able to talk her in to going back to bed but she only stayed there for about an hour before repeating her morning greeting at 4:30am. again we went back to her room talking about the fact that the sun was not up yet. she did wake up one more time a little after 5, crying, but it was short lived and then she slept until 7:30. i, however, was more than exhausted.

i am going to take some mylanta tonight (for the first time in my life) in the hope of eliminating one of the many things robbing me of my sleep.

i did want to note one more nickname that i have given madelyn that makes us all laugh - "thumbelina poopiepants". i call her "thumbelina" when she is sucking her thumb with friend and the "poopiepants" when she won't let us change her poopie diapers. they have become a combo over the past two days because she will go to her room for the diaper change but then hide under the covers with friend sucking her thumb and laughing. love.

"pretty face"

2009-05-27T20:52:00.003-05:00

as i was wiping off madelyn's chin after lunch today i told her to let me see her "pretty face" because she was looking down and i needed to see if i got everything off. this is the face i got.

i came to realize that she would give this face every time i said "pretty face" (as in "show me/daddy your pretty face") and we had fun showing daddy at dinner tonight. love.

happy memorial day!

2009-05-25T20:22:00.006-05:00

daddy didn't get as far as he wanted on his landscaping yesterday, so madelyn and i headed to the local memorial day parade by ourselves. i wasn't really sure how much of a parade it would be, but i figured that there would at least be a marching band and that should be enough for madelyn to be happy.

we got there about 15 minutes before the parade started and were able to find a place on the curb and in the sun - very important. unfortunately, it was very, very windy and that made it cold. it was a lot colder than i had planned for and most (almost all) people were wrapped up in jackets and blankets. because of the sun we weren't too cold until the parade actually started.

anyway, there were a few formation flyovers, representatives from different military branches, firemen, police, sheriff, and a few high school marching bands. all in all i think it maybe lasted 15 minutes (or less). madelyn was so excited to "see it coming". she stood and clapped for the flag presentations. after the first band went by madelyn turned to me and asked, "where'd the parade go?" and then she looked down the road and said, "there it is! i see it! more parade!" she kept telling me that she was going to dance with the band and would step out into the road, but as soon as the band would get close she would step back onto the sidewalk. i think that the drums were her favorite part because that is what she talked about for the rest of the day - the "big drums".

madelyn's big thing this weekend has been saying, "i did it!" it has been either, "yea, i did it!", or, "ta-da! i did it!" and it's not just when she does something new and wants to celebrate - it has been lots of ordinary things too.

this picture is just one that i thought was cute from yesterday of her and her friend. she wanted to have her picture taken, but i only got this one before her thumb went in.

madelyn got totally spoiled on our trip to the grocery store saturday! we always end every trip to the store by looking at all the balloons and flowers. we were in the refrigerated flower case smelling the roses when i decided that she could pick a carnation to take home (the cheapest option). as we were heading back to the cart an employee asked if i wanted the flower wrapped up. seeing as how it was only one carnation i told her that wouldn't be necessary, but maybe clipping it a little shorter would be nice. she then offered madelyn some ribbon for her flower. and madelyn picked out some

pink ribbon that the lady tied on and curled for her. after seeing how thrilled madelyn was with the ribbon, she offered her a balloon too. and not just a balloon, but she gave madelyn a 'bracelet' of floral mesh (like the put over gerber daisy) to tie the balloon too so that it wouldn't fly away if she let go. what a special treat!

madelyn was so, so, so excited about her bounty of treats! i couldn't get her to hold still far enough away from me so that i could get her and her balloon in the picture. she was so worried about her balloon being too high to get through the doorway leaving the store and going into our house. she looked up the whole time and pulled the balloon as low as she could by pulling the ribbon. when we got home she could hardly get out of the car before she was calling for daddy so that he could see her flower and balloon. she headed straight down the hill to the back of the house because she knew that daddy was back there "digging" for his plants. it was so cute. love.

35 weeks

2009-05-25T19:53:00.007-05:00

so i have reached another time when i have a picture of my pregnancy with madelyn to compare belly size. not that either one of the pictures are particularly great of me. it always seems like these pictures are taken in a hurry because they won't get taken otherwise. you might be able to tell that he (in the striped shirt) is sticking out more than madelyn (in the red dress) was at this point. but you can't really tell how much lower he is because of what i am wearing - you'll just have to take my word for it.

i think that i have put on about 20 lbs. or so at this point. (i had put on 30/31 lbs. with madelyn by the end.) i probably feel the best i have the entire pregnancy so that is nice, but i am barely sleeping at night. i try not to nap during the day because that is not a habit i want to get into - i don't have the time. plus, i am getting to the point where i don't feel tired because the lack of sleep is so consistent. thankfully, madelyn has been sleeping until 6:30 or 7:00 lately.

he gets the hick-ups every evening and seems to be awake during the day and sleeping at night. overall, the activity seems very similar to madelyn so i am hoping for another great sleeper when he gets here.

lastly, here is some video of madelyn's favorite thing to do with my belly - the last is a real kiss. love.

and the pool is out

2009-05-21T21:10:00.009-05:00

we have reached 80 the past two days so i thought that it might be nice to get the pool out. madelyn had more fun than i would have thought considering that we didn't really have any toys (she solved that problem as you will see), the water was very cold, and pretty windy both days.

i couldn't get her out of the pool! she really liked that the dogs would come over and take a drink from the pool. so much that she would try to make them dance. and then she got out of the pool and tried to lean over and drink like the dogs.

the main difference this year is that when the water is so cold that it takes her breath away she doesn't immediately want to get out. in fact, she barely misses a step. it makes me laugh because she is so happy and just can't catch her breath because the water is so cold. it is way too cold for me - especially when you add in the wind.

since she didn't have toys for the pool of her own she because inspired by lady dropping one of hers in and went around the yard gathering up all the dogs' toys to play with. she kept getting mad when lady when dip her head in to get her toy back off the bottom of the pool.

it is so nice to be able to spend time playing in the back yard! matt has done such a good job getting it in shape for lots of fun. it has been neat to see madelyn run over and play with some of the neighbor kids. and i think that the fresh air has done us all a lot of good.

here are some video from the past two days:

she was screaming with delight so loudly today that i was afraid the neighbors were going to come out and see what i was doing to her. at least she was laughing with the screams. love.

34 week checkup

2009-05-19T21:07:00.003-05:00

my 34 week check-up was uneventful this morning. my belly is measuring about a week ahead (madelyn was a little small to right on track). the doctor said that she couldn't be happier with my blood pressure, heart rate, and weight gain. both she and the nurse were surprised because i didn't gain any weight since my last appointment. i was surprised too because my appetite is revving up and because he is carrying so much lower than madelyn (still higher than most) i have been able to start eating dinner again.

madelyn was really excited to go and hear the heartbeat today. as soon as the doctor put the gel on she got very focused on listening. i asked her if she could hear the heartbeat and she smiled shyly while nodding yes.

i am starting to feel the need to make my final preparations - pack a bag for the hospital, pack for madelyn to stay with neighbors, get the carrier car seat in again, stock up on pumping gear, etc. hopefully, i won't be too disappointed if i make it to or past my due date. i am just so planning and hoping for the baby to be earlier. love.

apparently tuesdays are busy

2009-05-19T20:22:00.006-05:00

another busy day for madelyn and i. since i have tuesday mornings off i feel the need to spend every second possible away from the house. today we went grocery shopping, attended music class, went to my 34 week check-up, and had lunch with daddy before getting madelyn down for her nap. i was a slow draw will the camera today so the videos are the worst sample of what she was actually doing, but i think that the visuals will help make sense of my explanations.

madelyn likes to close doors behind her so hearing a door open and close is not that concerning - until today. i was getting ready for the morning and i heard a door open and then close. i had a moment of "gee, that really sounded like an exterior door" but i wrote it off because we have baby proof covers on the doorknobs. well, i heard a door open and close again before there was some crying. she had pinched her fingers when closing the door again. and, yes, it was the front door! she had gone out and come back in again. so we will be installing a chain catch at the top of the door this weekend as backup.

madelyn has never really paid much attention to the candle arrangement in the fireplace which is odd because she always notices candles other places (she loves to smell them) and spends a lot of time playing next to the fireplace. anyway, today she noticed them and exclaimed, "candles!", and then clasped her hands together, looked at me, and with a huge smile said, "i love it/them!" (i can't remember whether she said "it" or "them".) she did it more than once so i thought i would be able to catch it with the camera, but by the time i got back she was trying to get the candles out and was wining about it. here is what i got:

later we were getting ready to get in the car and she insisted on getting her "case" (a CD case she found somewhere this morning) to take with her. she had to bring her "case" because daddy brings a "case" to work with him (madelyn used to call it his purse, but we convinced her that it was a briefcase not a purse). as we were stepping down into the garage she told me that she was taking her case to work. and then that she was going to work with daddy. i didn't really get her to say it again, but you can see her case and hear her say "work".

i was changing madelyn's diaper before her nap and she was singing to herself. it took me a minute to realize that she was singing one of our music class songs. here are the actual lyrics:

i'm a piece of popcorn, rolling in the pan
shake me, shake me
as fast as you can.
ready, set, go!
pop, pop, pop, pop
popcorn!

she sang it trough correctly a few times for daddy before i got the camera and again it wasn't her best rendition.

and here are a few more notes that i wanted to include:

- somewhere (we think church) madelyn learned the term "jumping bean" and she asks for it often. matt snacks on trail mix most days when he first gets home from work. madelyn can hear him open that bag from anywhere in the house and comes running asking for a "jumping bean, please, daddy." matt has taken it to mean an m&m and madelyn could not be happier about the interpretation. as of last night though she asks for an "m&m".

- anytime i get my computer going upstairs madelyn asks to "skype" with her grandparents. she asks for them in pairs and then sometimes one at a time. it is just funny to me that she uses "skype" as a verb.

- madelyn can now walk up a flight of stairs without using a handrail. she can even have her arms full of toys and just walks right up the middle of the stairs without any support and will have no loss of balance.

she is so expressive and it is disappointing that i can't capture it on camera to share. basically, take what you see and amplify it by 2 or 3. love.

mommy has a name

2009-05-15T20:43:00.003-05:00

we ran up to sam's tonight and madelyn dropped her elmo toy somewhere. matt and i split up looking for it and matt was calling out my name from time to time. of course madelyn had to join in and was calling out, "michelle, where are you? michelle!". i asked matt if she was saying what i thought she was and he was happy to report, "yes." (you might remember that matt hated it when she called him, "matt".) love.

"bye, ya'll"

2009-05-14T20:13:00.003-05:00

today madelyn insisted on taking her ball and bat to the park. shewas pretty cute walking down the street with her bat and ball. as we walked she was calling out to all her friends that she wanted to see at the park. then she was telling me that she was a "big kid."

after saying goodbye to all her friends we were walking back up the hill to go home. she kept turning around and calling out "bye, ya'll"! i guess it was just a matter of time before she picked that one up from me.

she was wearing another dress as a shirt because while she isn't interested in putting a shirt on, she does like to pick a dress to wear and then i add pants. love.

behind bars

2009-05-13T19:59:00.003-05:00

madelyn loves playing with our dogs in the basement. she was having such a great time playing while i was working in the office. today's fun was playing in the larger of the dogs' cages. she even brought in some crayons and paper and sat in there drawing for a while. she was also insisting on feeding them their food by bringing it to them. and after a while she had to chew on some of it herself. she always tells me "the dog food is yummy".

here is the cutest conversation from the morning:

"be back, maggie, okay." and then she ran towards the stairs.

"madelyn, where are you going?"

"getting pants for maggie."

"getting maggie pants?"

"yea!"

"why?"

"to go to the park. pants for maggie to the park."

i had to convince her that maggie did not need pants and that it was raining so we wouldn't be going to the park. i don't know where she got the idea that maggie needed pants, but it made me laugh.

here is some video of her laughing at maggie from inside the cage.

other sayings that have me amused these days:

- "hurt myself. okay." - the "myself" was something new today, but the declaration that she is "okay" has become a regular part of her recovery routine. she might even be crying, but she still manages to get out an "okay" through the tears.

- "where are you?" - she calls it out, loudly, when she is looking for someone or something. sometimes even if she can see them/it. when we were at the zoo she was calling out "tiger, where are you?" entertaining all the adults around her who giggled to themselves. i haven't been able to get it on video yet, but i hope i can because the way she says it is priceless to me.

love.

busy morning

2009-05-12T19:36:00.003-05:00

if we don't get out of the house in the morning, there is a good chance that we won't get much done since she has been sleeping 4+ hours in the afternoon. i have tuesday mornings off, so i was looking forward to spending the morning away from the house today. and lucky for me we have lots and lots of time to get ready to leave because madelyn wakes up at 6am (or earlier). the library opens at 9:30 so we were there when they unlocked the doors. then we got to music class at 10:15 and after that the zoo at 11:45. and madelyn was delightful!

i almost didn't attempt all these stops because madelyn was in quite a mood this morning. these early morning wake-ups make her temper much shorter than normal. but i am happy to report that she cooperated, shared nicely, and was a general joy to be around all morning! the first picture is of her 'swinging' at the zoo - i loved the big smile on her face!

as we were coming around to the giraffes and elephants madelyn realized that she had pockets. she stuck both hands in as deeply as she could and was running like she was wearing a straight jacket. she was so happy about the pockets and seeing the giraffes that she had the biggest smile of pure joy on her face!

not only did we have a great time at the zoo, but she fell asleep on the ride home and stayed that way until i woke her up at 4:45! again she was passing the 4 hour mark and i wanted to get her to the park to burn off some more energy in the hope of her going to bed easily and on time.

daddy is putting her down right now and it looks like we are going to make it by 8. now if i could just get her to sleep until 7... love.

friend's bath

2009-05-11T20:25:00.006-05:00

madelyn did not want to wear a long sleeve shirt with her sweatpants today - she wanted to wear a "dress". so we pulled out her ladybug dress from last year that now fits as a shirt. she also got to wear her hair in a "tail". all and all she was very pleased with her appearance.

we had a really nice morning - at least until the accident, but more on that in a minute. madelyn loves playing in the basement with the dogs! sometimes she loves it a little too much. on more than one occasion she has eaten their food and let them in a room they are not allowed in. today it was letting lady come in and lay on top of the guest bed (don't worry all will be washed before our next guests).

while we were upstairs for our mid-morning snack madelyn got two of daddy's travel coffee mugs off the counter. i thought that they were clean ones out of the drying rack. she carried them around for a few hours so i had felt that my assumption about them being empty was correct. that is until she went to give friend a drink. she had been pretending to drink coffee out of them and then it was friend's turn. and now friend was covered in old, cold coffee. and now in need of a bath. even though she was crying about friend's accident and the resulting mess.

madelyn willingly put friend in the garment bag, closed the washing machine door, and pushed all the buttons to start the machine. and then she realized that friend was in there and she couldn't get him back. the hysterics started all over again. she went to get her stool from the bathroom and brought it into the laundry room so that she could work on rescuing friend or at least watch him. (her shirt/dress is also in the machine because of the coffee spill.) here is some footage of her trauma - it is over 3 minutes (if she was really traumatized i would not have taken the video, but it was just momentum at this point).

she did whimper a pathetic sounding "friend" a few times while watching nemo but by the time lunch was over friend was dry (or as madelyn said "friend is hot") and she was ready for nap. friend needed a bath so it was just as well she poured coffee on him because it helped her to give him up willingly. love.

"happy easter day!"

2009-05-10T20:44:00.003-05:00

yes, that is how madelyn wished me a happy mother's day this morning - "happy easter day". easter must have made quite an impression because she has wished me happy easter a few times now. she was able to say "happy mother's day" a few times, but mainly it was "happy easter day".

when i told her that it was time to get dressed this morning she replied "yea church! God loves, God loves!". she must have decided that we were headed to church because i was already dressed - i didn't say that we were going to church. it made me so happy for her new association with "church" - "God loves"!

after church we went to get breakfast, but it turned into lunch after we waited over an hour and a half! madelyn was starting to melt down, but then recovered after a book of stickers, some crayons and paper, and running around with some other kids. the other kids were hopping on one leg and madelyn was trying to imitate them. i love the original pancake house! it is always worth the wait.

matt finally woke madelyn up from her nap at 5:00pm (more than 4 hours of napping). plus, i think that he was excited to give me my mother's day gift - a netbook! i have been shopping them around a little because i thought that it would be better for me than our desktop computer. (a netbook is a low cost, super-small laptop style computer that is primarily for email and internet use.) i am using it to blog tonight and could not be happier with it! i was going to use my birthday money to get one, but matt totally surprised me! it will be nice not to have to run downstairs every time i need to look something up real quick.

i also got lots of surprise hugs and smiles from madelyn today. i am a lucky mommy (and wife). love.

the cons of marathon napping

2009-05-10T20:04:00.005-05:00

so madelyn stayed up past bedtime on friday and saturday nights. she still wakes up at the same time though -6:00 or 6:30. so what do we have? a very cranky girl all morning who takes a 4 hour nap in the afternoon! normally a 4 hour nap would be good, but these are not worth having a cranky girl all morning. i mean, she is fine for the most part. she just gets to fussing a lot sooner than she normally would and it made running errands a lot more difficult. i am going to give her a few more days to get this straightened out on her own before i start waking her up after 2-1/2 hours of napping.

thankfully, she had a wonderful day with daddy on friday. i am not totally sure what all they did, but daddy reported that they had a great time! i was so thankful - that they had a good time and that i had a day to work totally uninterrupted. well, at least not interrupted by madelyn. i had forgotten how working at the computer really gets the baby going. madelyn was the same way when i would type all day. i must get my adrenaline up or something when i am focused like that because both kids have had the same reaction.

on saturday matt worked on his landscaping in the backyard - all day! he is doing such a great job back there! he finished filling the two vegetable garden boxes with their dirt and then put in the cutout landscaping behind them (all the bald spots in the grass are the joys of having dogs - that will become a project later). the cutout was a lot of work. he hand shovelled up all the sod and then used it to build up the mounds before adding the plants and more soil. he has plans for a larger one on the other side of the yard. he plans to get the vegetable seedlings in the ground later this week too. some of the neighbors have been joking that he is 'nesting' by racing through his projects outside. speaking of nesting...

i have definitely kicked into 'nesting' mode. i made a real dinner for the first time in a very long time (poor matt), cleaned out the car, put madelyn's outgrown clothes into storage, pulled the rest of the baby stuff out of storage, dusted and deep cleaned both kids rooms, did all the laundry, and cleaned both bathrooms. madelyn came to check out what i was doing while i was scrubbing her tub and wanted to help (she had helped me wipe down all the furniture in brother's room too). so i had her come with me to clean the shower in our bathroom.

i don't think that i have raved about shaklee get clean products yet, so here is my product endorsement. not only are the products great for cleaning, they are chemical free and affordable. my favorite by far is the "scour off" paste. this stuff is so powerful, smells great, and has gentle enough scrubbers to use it on our ceramic top stove (by far the best stuff i have ever used to clean it - so easy). anyway, since there are no chemicals madelyn was able to actually help me. she enjoyed dipping her scrubbing pad in the scour off and then in her cup of water before 'scrubbing' the shower. she was using a scrub brush too when i went to get the camera. she kept telling me that "cleaning is fun" and "helping scrub", but of course she clams up as soon as the camera comes out. as soon as i turned it off after this video she handed me one of the scrubber pads and told me that it was "mommy's turn to help scrub."

it was nice to feel like getting more done than the everyday tasks! i am hoping it lasts. i have the feeling that there is going to be a large goodwill drop in my future because i have the urge to purge... love.

rainy day inside

2009-05-06T10:44:00.007-05:00

yesterday, madelyn woke up in a labeling sort of mood that has carried through to today. she has been identifying every item she can see or do. it has been a little entertaining because she carries around her little stool to reach things to identify - like "daddy's wallet".

since we would be inside all day yesterday and madelyn was asking to "paint", i decided to let maddie do her first 'arts and crafts' at home. i didn't have any particular project planned for the day, but i did have a pair of safety scissors and a hole puncher from the dollar store. these items plus a glue stick and two sheets of construction paper kept her busy most of the day. here is a sampling of her arts and crafts adventure:

"my friends" posse has been growing. she can't even carry them all in a single trip. this picture is after nap time with all the friends she could carry out of her room with her. she then climbed up into this little chair that she has been sitting in for the past few days.

in addition to her labeling spree, she has been singing up a storm. she usually sings a few words of the song over and over, but she was actually singing whole songs. not only that, but she usually doesn't really sing in music class and on tuesday she was singing loudly. usually she just dances around and claps. it has been such a joy to hear her singing all her favorite songs without any help. she has even been singing her own compositions. her favorite has been a "humpty dumpty" tune and a song with all her grandparents 'names'.

tomorrow she and daddy are going to have a fun day together. matt is taking the day off from work - his first day off since last summer! they are going to have their breakfast out together before going shopping (for mother's day per daddy) and then working in their garden. i am so jealous that i will be working! love.

"my friends"

2009-05-04T14:58:00.002-05:00

over the past week or so madelyn's 'posse' has grown substantially to include "my friends". her friends include - friend, curious george, piglet, minnie mouse, and monkey.

even though this is a large group, she knows when someone tries to sneak into the mix and will cast them out when discovered. most of the time she will carry all of them at once, but sometimes she will start with friend and then announce that she needs to go get "more my friends".

she has spent lots of time "tuck, tuck," tucking them into her bed. she tells them all "good night" by name and gives each one a kiss before tucking them in and climbing in between them herself.

any one of "my friends" can be a stand in for friend when we leave the house. not always, but a few times now. she is really great about giving up friend willingly when we tell her that friend stays at home (so we don't loose him).

today her friends were helping her play with maggie and lady. madelyn spent most of her day out on the deck. she really likes it when she sees a neighbor that she can yell out to and say "hi". love.

summer sizes

2009-05-04T10:04:00.003-05:00

the odd thing about being tall and slim is that sizing is next to impossible. i didn't pack up last summer's clothes for just that reason. i figured that some of her dresses could be shirts and that maybe some of her pants and shorts would finally fit in the waist.

madelyn wears anywhere from size 18 months to 4T right now. i have to try just about everything on her so we always have a 'plan b' when getting dressed in the morning just in case something doesn't quite fit. there are only a few shorts and dresses that will fit in the 18 month size. the shorts from last summer finally fit in the waist and the dresses fit but are so short that the bloomers show. last summer these same dresses came down to her mid-shin.

she is wearing a size 8/9 shoe and a size 6 diaper (for length, not width - the smaller diaper won't reach up above her hips and fall down).

this is the widest variety of sizes we have ever had to deal with at once and that is why i wanted to make a note of it. love.

oh and her second molar on the bottom came in yesterday - two more to go!

some of my favorite things

2009-05-02T20:01:00.003-05:00

of course madelyn is just a little chatterbox, but there are a few things that either amuse or amaze me that i wanted to share:

- she understands the use of, and uses, "a lot", "stuff", "things", and "too"
- there is now a pretty complete understanding of opposites and she uses them correctly.
- she will often say things are "amazing!" - for some reason it cracks me up every time too
- when we watch shows or see characters she is familiar with she will ask for which ever characters of the group are missing. like if we are watching mickey mouse clubhouse she might ask "where did goofy go?" if he isn't in that episode.
- she will call out "okay" or "maddie okay" when she falls or bumps her head. i am pretty sure she does this because i always ask "are you okay?" when i head a thud.
- whenever the mood strikes her she will announce that she is "ready to dance". and then the second some music starts she busts a move. she has added an arm pump move to her dance routine too.
- she can now identify most shapes and colors correctly - some that i know that she didn't learn from me, like an arrow.
- when i sneeze she says "bless you, mommy". it is so sweet! sometimes my coughs and throat clearing get blessed too, but i still appreciate the gesture.
- when playing by herself she now declares that it is "friend's turn" before having friend try what ever activity she had just been doing.
- she now says "thank you" when ever i pay her a complement or praise her.

i just love what she shares with me everyday and i wanted to document some to share with you. love.

fun in the backyard

2009-05-02T19:20:00.010-05:00

after madelyn was kind enough to sleep in until 7:30 this morning, i headed off to an hour long massage at a local spa. it was a baby shower gift from some neighbors and it was wonderful! the masseuse was a little surprised by how much tension there was in my neck and back - actually so was i. i couldn't believe how many knots there were and how long it took her to work them out. i feel so much better!

while i was out this morning, madelyn and daddy had a morning out of their own. the went to their breakfast place (einstein bagels) and a few hardware stores. they were on the hunt for gardening tools. the idea was that they could get some maddie-sized tools so that she can help daddy with their gardening this summer. unfortunately every store was out of stock.

after madelyn's nap she went looking for daddy so that she could get to work. of course she had her red snow shovel to help with, but she also liked helping with daddy's tools. i was particularly impressed with her ability to control a full-sized hammer. and now construction is complete on their two vegetable garden boxes. next will come the planting soil and a few more warm weeks before the seedlings are planted outside. matt and madelyn have been lovingly sprouting their seeds inside the house preparing for their impressive summer garden plans.

in addition to helping daddy, madelyn had some fun playing with our dogs. maggie will hold still long enough for madelyn to pet her, but lady gets way too excited about the attention and tends to knock her down. madelyn has mastered most of their commands - "drop it", "no", "sit". she has also figured out that they are bringing her the ball so that she will throw it. when she is just on the deck they bring it up the stairs and she pulls it through the gate before dropping it over the side of the deck or just down the stairs for them to chase.

while daddy finished up the second box, madelyn used it as a sandbox. maybe that will be one of his next outdoor projects... love.

"go brewers!"

2009-05-02T11:29:00.009-05:00

last night madelyn took in her first 'tailgate' and brewers game of the season (unfortunately they lost). madelyn had a wonderful time and didn't go to bed until 9:45pm! (her normal bedtime is 8:00.) as an extra bonus, she slept until 7:30am this morning! i felt so pampered to still be in bed that late.

so we went to pick up our location balloons (balloons you tie to the car so the rest of your group can find you - in our case 80 people) on thursday night and madelyn could not have been more excited to bring home some balloons. all day yesterday when ever i would mention the baseball game she would shout "balloons!" and run up to see them where we had tied them to a dining room chair. the picture is from our trip to the game where she got to hold the two stars and "smile face" balloons.

tailgating with matt's co-workers madelyn got to learn several new words, but her favorite was "grill" or "grilling". i think that it helped that daddy was the grill master of the tailgate. she also got spoiled with more junk and sugar foods than she has ever had before. she really liked this huge rice crispy treat (with blue food coloring for the brewers). i don't think she has had so much sugar in a single sitting before. she was also really excited to run over and give daddy a bite at the grills. the first time she went to share was my idea, but she decided that she needed to go back later and give him another bite. she must have gotten her fill of sweets because she turned down a juice box in favor of water when we got into the stadium for the game.

i wish that i had been able to get video of her cheering on the brewers and clapping along with all the stadium chants/cheers but it was a difficult angle and so, so loud where we were sitting. she loved all the organ songs and would get out of her seat to dance. she did so much better than last season! i am sure that being older helped, but she also had her own seat this time and the game went by much faster (three-up, three-down pace).

she particularly liked the pitching. she would see the guy wind up and say "the pitch!" as he would throw it. i think she was able to follow the hits, but can't be totally sure. she did look in the right place the whole path of the ball and said that she could see it, but who knows.

after the sausage race (another high point for madelyn) we sat through one more inning before calling it a night. she was still doing great, but we knew that we were on borrowed time and

needed to get her (and me) home and in bed. plus the profanity in the college groups sitting around us was increasing as their beer counts did. (matt and maddie's creepy glasses were supplied by one of matt's co-workers and everyone wore them for pictures - even maddie.)

she called out "go brewers" several times on the way to the car and was marching to her own chant of "march, march, march" that was entertaining those walking around us. she did stop and look back towards the stadium when the crowd would let out a big cheer. i think she did so well because she was just feeding on the energy of everyone around her and expected her to crash in the car, but she stayed awake the whole ride home.

once we were home and ready for bed, she almost passed on a book but realized what she had said no to and quickly changed her mind. however, she only let me read it once before rolling over and saying good night. love.

p.s. the first of her 2-year molars has made its official appearance - at least it was the first time i got to see it.

thank you, post office!

2009-04-29T20:11:00.003-05:00

this is a short one. we went out to run a few errands today that we didn't get to run yesterday. our first stop was the post office. the lady helping us noticed that madelyn was talking about the mickey mouse packaging available and offered her a sheet of disney stickers. madelyn said "thank you. wow! stickers."

i told her that she couldn't take the stickers off the sheet until we got home - and she didn't. not that i was surprised, madelyn is incredibly obedient. still - the allure of stickers is not usually something she can resist.

she fell asleep on the way home from our last stop so she went straight to bed instead of getting to play with her stickers. shortly after waking up she remembered her new stickers and asked for the "mickey mouse stickers". she immediately used them to cover her face (she had removed some from her face and moved them to her shirt before i could get the camera) - this is typical. (she is saying "mickey mouse" instead of "cheese" in the first picture.)

and then she took the two nemo stickers and put them on the palms of her hands. for some reason this struck me as very funny. she was clapping her nemo stickers together. she was willing to show them to me but only as long as she could see them too. this was the best picture i could get of her palms.

she ended up with a mickey mouse sticker on her forehead for like three hours before she remembered that it was there and took it off.

just another day

2009-04-28T19:09:00.006-05:00

matt had to take the camera to work with him today and of course today presented a lot of photo opportunities. at least i had my phone to try and capture some of them.

it started this morning when madelyn requested gloves and snow boots for going out side - and no clothes. she was actually posing and smiling for me next to the front door, but there isn't a flash on my phone so you can't really see her face very well. this really was the best of the pictures i took. she wore her winter 'outfit' for quite a while. she did take the gloves off twice, but asked to have them put back on right away.

after a morning video conference, we headed off to music class. madelyn was so excited to be there. she really likes her friend dylan's mom, tina. madelyn throws herself into tina's lap pretty forcefully (she does the same to me and kind of bounces off of my belly - and, yes, it hurts me). it would be annoying except that she does it with so much love and joy that you can't be mad. dylan is nice enough to share his mommy's lap because madelyn takes up a lot of it. she even likes to lay down on tina and be rocked like a little baby. it is pretty funny because tina is pretty petite and madelyn looks huge in her arms/lap. i am just glad that madelyn loves our neighbor so much!

as soon as we could get ourselves together and to the car, we headed off to return some books that were due back to the library today. i had to get back for work so we didn't spend a long time picking out new books. on our way out madelyn noticed a statue that she has never given any attention to before. she realized that they were little kids and wanted to sit on the bench and look at their book with them. what was funnier is that she had me sit on the opposite bench and asked that i take her picture!

our trip to the library also reminded me of some other things i have been meaning to post about.

- madelyn is excellent at waiting to look for traffic before stepping out into the street! any time we are about to step off a sidewalk or curb she tells me to "wait for the cars". once she confirms that there are "no cars" she will step into the street. even if i tell her it is okay she will stop and tell me that she is "waiting". she insists that we come to a complete stop to look before stepping into the street. it is very cute - and responsible. the funniest instance of this was when we were going to get the mail and she wouldn't let me leave the end of our driveway until the neighbor five doors down had finished pulling out of their driveway and drove past us. simply because when she looked up and down the street she saw a car moving. we just stood holding hands at the end of the driveway and waited - the neighbor had a nice laugh has they drove by and waved at us.

- she always points out flags when she sees them. it was pretty windy when we left the library and we were talking about the flags waving and madelyn replied by waving at the flags and saying "hi" - so literal.

i don't know how to explain it here but madelyn's communication abilities have taken a dramatic step up over the past few days. our conversations have gotten much more sophisticated. that is the only word i can think of to explain it.

tonight she asked to go to bed an hour earlier than normal and that was after taking a 3 hour nap. either she is growing again or isn't feeling very well. we will see how she wakes up tomorrow morning. love.

31 weeks, 1 day

2009-04-26T19:51:00.003-05:00

after many requests, here is an updated belly shot from this morning. if you look really, really closely, you can see my little outie bellybutton that i have had since early in the pregnancy. looking at the picture it looks like i am carrying pretty high, but this one is actually much lower than madelyn.

he is such a mover! where madelyn was a kicker and jabber, this boy is a stretcher and pusher. lately it seems like he is just dragging his knee or elbow up and down the inside of my rib cage like someone would drag their finger along a keyboard - ouch! he is definitely running out of room and is making sure that i know it.

it is also becoming increasingly uncomfortable to sit and work at the computer during the day - baby just doesn't have enough room when i bend over the keyboard. with maddie i would lay on the couch and work in the last month, but madelyn doesn't like when i do that now. so instead i just take more breaks and do more work at night.

the good news is that i have been able to sleep through the night for pretty much the first time this entire pregnancy! i am not dragging quite as much when madelyn comes to get me at 6am. i am hoping that this won't be short lived (i think it has been three nights now) because i need all the energy i can to make it through the day and a good night's sleep makes a big difference. love.

zoo buddies

2009-04-24T19:34:00.007-05:00

i worked all day yesterday so that madelyn and i could go to the zoo with some friends this morning. we actually met up with 5 other families and had a very nice morning. some of the other moms had the great idea to take pictures of some of the kids sitting together. i couldn't believe how well everyone sat still! it was a little difficult to get them all to look the same way and smile, but they were pretty cute. (the only good one i got with them all looking at me came out blurry.)

today was the first day at 80 degrees since last september and we were very excited to be outside! the zoo was busy, but not so bad that it couldn't be enjoyed. madelyn loved having her friends with her! she also liked having all their moms there too. she kept taking their hands (the moms') and telling them to come and see the animals. she just loves to share everything - food, experiences, information, etc.

there is a map in the ape house that madelyn just loves. i think she likes it more than the primates. today she was counting the number of monkey markers on the map.

she fell asleep on the way home - as expected, but did not sleep an extra hour like she normally does after a trip to the zoo (not that i am complaining because she still slept for 2 hours). she woke up just before one of my meetings this afternoon, but she quietly watched a few cartoons while i took care of some work. then she ate her lunch. i had packed lunch in her veggietales lunch box for the zoo, but we left without eating it because it was getting late. she doesn't normally eat lunch on days we go to the zoo, so it wasn't a big deal. she really liked getting to eat out of a lunch box. i will definitely have to pack her up a lunch again - just for fun.

after spending the rest of the afternoon sitting at the dining room table 'reading' brochures about gardening plants and telling me about the seeds that she and daddy are growing (there will be another post about that later), we decided to take her friend ava up on a swimming invitation. ava had the coolest pool! there was a slide in the middle of it and madelyn had a wonderful time playing with ava - i think ava enjoyed having madelyn to play with too. here is one of her first trips down the slide and the only time she didn't sit on her way down. i should have gotten more video but was too busy chatting with ava's family.

and just in case madelyn's day wasn't full enough already, she got to eat her first dinner sitting outside (since being in a highchair). daddy grilled some turkey burgers and madelyn thought it was so exciting to be able to eat outside. and since we were outside we let her have an ice cream cone 'treat'. the thought was that we could go messy because we could just let the dogs up on the deck to lick everything up after she was done and she could head straight to the bathtub. while waiting for the burgers to cook madelyn was singing an original "mickey mouse dance" song and jamming by herself. once i took the video madelyn realized that this was a good show. she then demanded that mommy and daddy come and watch - over and over. enjoy her show!

on last note - yesterday, madelyn discovered that my belly button is an outtie now. she thought that it was so funny and kept trying to pinch it - which tickled me. she was then "kissing brother" over and over (aka kissing my belly).

as you can see she had a really full day! hopefully, this means that she will sleep later than 6am for once! love.

shorts and tank tops!

2009-04-19T18:16:00.006-05:00

i am so excited to report that madelyn has worn her first shorts of the year! (me too!) it was decent on thurday afternoon (the short sleeves and skirt), warmer on friday (blue outfit), and saturday was warm enough for a tank top! i was so happy to open up the house and enjoy the warm sunshine outside for a little while. unfortunately, today was back to cold and wet. oh well, at least there are starting to be more and more signs of spring...

one such sign of spring is the weekly testing of the tornado sirens. every friday morning at 9:30am the sirens run for various lengths of time and since it is located at the end of our block, very loud. i was worried that madelyn would be scared by them, but she just tells me that she heard a noise. she does like for me to be near her when it goes off, but at least she doesn't cry.

another sign of spring is the return of the door to door solicitors. our neighborhood gets an obscenely high number of solicitors. it makes me hate, hate, hate that we have a glass panel in our front door. people who come to the door can see us sitting on the couch in the evening. matt has suggested that we start relaxing downstairs to avoid having to answer the door., but i hate having to 'hide' in our own house. hopefully, there won't be as many this year, but i think that there will be more since businesses are slower.

i had put off packing up madelyn's summer wardrobe from last year in the hope that some might be able to fit this year. as you can see both her shirts and shorts are not really long enough, but for around the house they will work for a few weeks anyway. saturday morning i was trying all her shorts on her and she would tell me if it was "too big", "too small", or "it fits". she kept it going as we headed out to a local church's rummage sale. when i would hold something up to her she would tell me whether it would fit or not - the vendors thought that it was pretty funny.

later in the afternoon, matt started working on his much anticipated vegetable garden. he only had time to pull of the sod and build the frame for one of the two 6x12 feet boxes. (i will add pictures when he has them completed.) madelyn woke up from her nap and went looking for daddy. i told her that he was outside. as soon as she saw him shoveling she called out "maddie help shovel!" i managed to slow her down long enough to get socks and shoes on.

we went out through the garage and as soon as we got to the driveway to head around to the side of the house, she called out "my shovel!" and ran back to grab her red snow shovel. and then she got to work with daddy. even looking at this picture tonight she gets so excited that she is using a shovel and daddy is using a shovel. she just loves helping him!

here are a few more recent notes:

- when eating her cracker snacks (bunnies, fish, or others) she identifies which ones are "broken" or "whole". she will also push her bowl across the table to share some with mommy - she is so sweet to share her snacks.

- madelyn now asks to feel "brother in mommy's belly". and she really is patient waiting for him to move. when she feel him she tells me and puts my hand on my belly too.

- wearing fleece on the slides at the park generates a lot of static electricity. not only does her hair stand on end, but the shocks can be really loud (and painful). she now tells us that she "heard it" or calls out "shock" whenever she hears the zap mommy or daddy gets when we touch the equipment again. (yes, you can hear it. it is really loud and it can really hurt! at least it hurts daddy and me, not madelyn as far as i can tell.)

- baby boy has outgrown the room i have to offer him and i don't think he is happy about his cramped quarters. i am 30 weeks plus now and i am not sure that i am going to make it another 10 weeks. i can't believe how much more difficult this pregnancy is on my body. i think that i just need to make more of an effort to take a break and put my feet up for a while during madelyn's naps. i was spoiled while pregnant with madelyn because i was comfortable for the most part and didn't have any swelling (i wore my wedding ring the entire time - and could take it off). i truly believe that my life will be easier once my maternity leave starts - don't think i am crazy (those of you with two or more kids) - the mental break from work makes a really big difference in my days!

- madelyn remembers things without any triggers more and more often. when we are riding in the car she will remember something and start talking about it. i am usually a few steps behind trying to figure out what she is talking about. it is particularly difficult when she is talking about an obscure toy that we haven't seen in a long time.

more later. love.

lotsa fun day

2009-04-14T19:36:00.002-05:00

after seeing pictures of her friend lorelai in a ball pit and some old pictures of herself in a ball pit, madelyn has been asking to be "in the balls", so today we headed back to the lotsa fun room because i knew that she would be able to get into a ball pit there. as soon as she saw it she ran over and jumped in! she was so excited to be there. and she really loved 'hiding' in the pit. i would help bury her in the balls and she would just giggle and hold very still to 'hide'.

we played for about an hour and a half and then we went to pick up daddy for a lunch date. he had called while we were there because he had some room in his schedule to eat with us and we haven't been able to do that in a really long time. we had a wonderful lunch at a restaurant we had never been to before. it wasn't really a child friendly place. we sat at a bar table and madelyn did really well sitting at the table. some older ladies even commented about how well she did sitting at the table (we were there for over an hour). and the waitress asked if she could have a treat for doing such a good job; she brought out a little hot fudge sundae for maddie. madelyn was so hyped up on the sugar by the time that we got home that i was worried she wouldn't take a nap (she had dozed in the car for 20-30 minutes on the way to get daddy for lunch). it took two tries, but the day caught up with her and she napped for 2-1/2 hours.

here is my video capture of her saying "happy easter" yesterday. as you can see she wasn't dressed. she spent the day in just a diaper - i wore a fleece all day. she wouldn't sit down for the video until i told her to say "happy easter, lorelai" that is...

i also remembered my other video mission - her climbing the rock wall at the park. she gets up that wall so fast! she doesn't even really need me to spot her any more - not that i would risk stepping away yet. i keep my hand on her back the whole way. mainly because she climbs so fast i worry that she will slip. the wall is at least 7 feet high. maybe i can get some video this weekend when matt can go with us. love.

happy easter!

2009-04-12T19:50:00.004-05:00

we had a lovely easter and hope that you all did too. as promised, we took a few pictures of our family this morning. since we don't have a tripod it is always a game of where can we set the camera and not cut off the top of our heads. this morning it was the mantel. madelyn even looked at the camera because of the timer blinking - these days that is a major accomplishment and i might use that trick in the future. i also managed to get a picture of her with each of us looking at the camera. she even smiled for her picture with daddy! we are so rarely all showered and dressed nicely that we have to plan to take pictures when we are.

on the way home from church madelyn had the random request to play soccer ball. we have never played soccer before, but we did buy a kick ball recently. after we got madelyn to eat some lunch (and she ate a lot), she finally got to play "soccer". as much as i wanted to get some video because she was so cute running around kicking and carrying the ball, it was one of those times when i just had to play too. matt and i were kicking the ball back and forth and madelyn would run after it. she was just in heaven playing outside with both of her parents! it was so much fun to see her running up to the front door and not even hesitating on the step up. she has changed so much since we were playing outside last fall and it really struck me today how much.

after her nap she work up and watched "golf" with daddy. (i was lucky enough to be napping today.) she was really into it too. she talked about the balls and clubs and was cheering for everyone who "got it" and "missed it". and then when we watched the end (after a trip to the park and more soccer) she kept saying that "mommy win" and "daddy win". she is just so sweet.

here are a few other notes:

- madelyn is already in bed or i would get video of her saying "happy easter". she says it surprisingly clearly. if i remember, i will get it tomorrow.

- she will come up and put her hand on my belly and hold very still to try and feel "brother" move. she will also put my hand on my belly and hold it there to feel. the first time she felt a big kick her eyes got huge and she slowly withdrew her hand and backed away. it took a little while before she would try feeling him again.

- madelyn wore her real cross necklace to church this morning and thought that was pretty special. it was the first time she has gotten to wear it.

easter fun

2009-04-11T19:47:00.009-05:00

this has already been quite an easter weekend for madelyn. she got some easter goodies early from her grandparents on friday. she enjoyed getting their special surprises. she has actually associated the doorbell ringing with a "box" being delivered for her. although these days everything is "maddie's". her box from grandma and big pop had snacks and some bunny jewelry which she immediately had to open and put on.

and then her fuzzy bunny card from papa and nana came with some glittery, foam stickers in the shape of eggs, bunnies, and chicks. madelyn immediately stuck an entire sheet's worth on her forehead while daddy changed her diaper. unfortunately, she took them off before i could get a picture. she does have them all over her sweatshirt in this picture before we headed out to pick up some quick dinner. she just loves her stickers!

last night she was crying to go to the zoo with daddy (we had been talking about what we were going to do on saturday at dinner). and since i told her that she would have to wait until the morning, it was the first thing on her mind today. she didn't even want to get dressed. she was ready to just get in the car in her pajamas and head to the zoo. after a little discussion, i managed to get her to finish breakfast and get dressed before leaving the house. she called out "yea, zoo" most of the way there but really got excited when we turned onto the road where the zoo is located.

there were several easter events we were considering for today, but decided that the zoo would be best because if she wasn't into the easter activities she would still enjoy the zoo. thankfully we go there pretty early and it wasn't that crowded. madelyn could not care less about the easter bunnies or craft activities. i was really surprised that she didn't care at all about the easter bunnies (costumed characters) because she couldn't stop talking about the bunny at the mall a few weeks ago. oh well. we enjoyed seeing all the animals (it had been a while since daddy had gone with us) and walking around in the sunshine - although it was still pretty cold out.

i was able to convince her to get her face painted. she even told the lady what colors she wanted her whiskers and nose to be when she asked. later in the day she finally got to look in a mirror to see her bunny face paint and she was really excited about the "whiskers".

we wrapped up our tour of the zoo with a trip on the merry-go-round. we were planning on riding the train, but madelyn couldn't pass up the merry-go-round today. i don't know that she loved it (because she looked pretty scared), but afterwards she kept telling me about riding "up and down" so maybe she did like it.

the last thing we were going to try and do before leaving the zoo was watch a "bubbleoligist" show. we decided not to wait the half hour when we first got there, but were now going to have to wait a half hour for the second show. while we were waiting matt looked outside and saw some large bubbles. once we realized that the guy was making bubbles outside right now, we decided that would work for madelyn and then we wouldn't have to wait for the real show.

she really loved it. i don't think that you can really see it in the pictures, but she is sitting on matt's shoulders reaching out to pop the large bubbles floating by her head. every time a really large bubble would get within her reach she seemed to be looking somewhere else and would miss it. it was a great way to end our morning before heading home for her nap.

after her nap we finally got around to dying our easter eggs. i had boiled the eggs earlier in the week, but we just haven't had the time to get them dyed. we put an old shirt of matt's on her as a smock and away we went to experiment with our egg dying kit i bought at the dollar store. madelyn did a wonderful job - not that the video is very exciting. after we were done she asked to eat the eggs. i think because i had told her that the egg dying was a "treat" for her.

i am hoping and planning to get some family pictures tomorrow since we don't do that nearly enough. happy easter to you! love.

p.s. i had my 28 week check-up last week and passed my diabetes test. baby's heart rate is great and his growth is right on schedule. really uneventful. the next appointment is in 4 weeks and then we go down to every 2 weeks. madelyn asked the doctor to hear the baby's heartbeat. she was really excited about that part because she had been pretending to listen to the baby with her doctor kit during the morning.

kiddie rooms

2009-04-11T19:32:00.004-05:00

in an effort to not have to repaint madelyn's room (matt worked really hard on those stripes), we have been carrying around the paint swatches trying to find twin sized bedding that would match. it has taken a few months but we finally found something that would work. matt still wants to repaint the two solid pink walls but i have convinced him that it wasn't a big deal to wait. here are some pictures of her new set up - which she loves.

and in continuing the theme of 'stripes', matt has finished painting baby boy's room. we finished arranging the furniture today but still have some work to do before we are all ready. here is a picture to give a sense of the finished product...

i think that we are finally done with our major indoor projects. next on matt's agenda - back yard landscaping. love.

play-doh is fun!

2009-04-07T20:42:00.009-05:00

madelyn enjoys playing with play-doh, but she has found a whole new level enjoyment from her new play-doh octopus! she asks for it every day; usually more than once. yesterday she played with it for one hour by herself. yes, one hour! then she did another 30 - 45 minutes after her nap and even woke up asking for the orange play-doh (she had used pink in the morning and wanted to switch things up).

i can see her from my computer, so it gives me a lot of time to work while she is awake without having to worry about what she is up to (not that i really have to worry with her).

in the video she is not as talkative as she normally is when talking about her play-doh octopus.

sunday night we went to "family fun fest" at our church and madelyn got to show daddy how to work with play-doh. they had fun making eggs, bunnies, and crosses together. there were also two bounce houses set up (the whole thing was indoors - it is wisconsin after all). we took madelyn there first before the lines got long but she would not go in either of them - even though she was very, very excited to see them. she did ask to "bounce" when we were getting ready to head out. of course the lines were now very long. but she insisted that she wanted to bounce so i convinced dad that we should wait. we waited, and waited, and waited. madelyn waited in line and cried about wanting to bounce. when it was finally her turn matt lifted her up in and i quickly ran around to the side so that she could see me. and what did i see, her screaming and trying to back herself out. matt carried her away screaming. we put her down to put her shoes back on and she took off running back to the entrance of the bounce house screaming to "bounce". i had to explain to her that she had missed her turn and now we were going to go home. as we were starting to walk away she went running back crying to "bounce" again and tripped on the corner anchor weight bloodying her lip. the poor girl cried "bounce" with a big fat lip all the way to the car while i carried her. i had to convince her that i would take her somewhere else to bounce very soon. (also from 'fun fest' she got a smiley face tattoo on her arm - shown in the first picture. this was really exciting to her. it took her a little bit to understand that this 'sticker' didn't come off.)

since i am in catch up mode, last week we went to celebrate madelyn's friend prathu's 2nd birthday. madelyn had fun playing with prathu's new art table (it folds up to be an easel and magnet board seen in the picture) and slide. what was really funny to me is that some of the kids were playing "ring around the rosie" (one of madelyn's favorite requests of matt and i at home) and she wouldn't fall down. when we play at home she falls down before we get to that verse because she can't wait any longer to fall down and lay on the floor.

she has been pretending to be a baby a lot recently. i have posted before about getting into the baby swing, but here she is snuggled up with friend in her toy playpen. she isn't supposed to do this, but she looked so cute that i had to get a picture before making her get out.

today, i was complementing madelyn on what a good job she was doing climbing up the stairs (she has been asking to be carried recently). her response - "oh, thanks".

i have been so proud of her lately because she is forming really complete thoughts and sentences. like, "i want milk drink, please, mommy." it is so fun to hear her thoughts on things and have conversations with her about things that happen during the day. i think that matt really enjoys it too.

its not all sunshine and moonbeams though. she has been in another not wanting to change her shirt phase. i am pretty sure it has to do with her teeth cutting though. she complains about them "hurting" a lot and even cries out during meals in pain. another recent problem is that she is waking up early still and will only accept "mommy". if daddy tries to get up with her so that i can sleep she bangs on the door and cries for me before barging in and running to me. today, however, when daddy came to pick her up and carry her out (kicking and screaming) she ran to him, asked to be picked up and gave him two kisses and a hug! we were talking about it tonight how surprised we were at this sudden change in demeanor.

we have started looking at pre-school options for this summer and fall (regular school year start). it has been difficult for me for a lot of reasons, but matt and i agree that it will be really good for madelyn to go two days a week. now we just have to figure out which school will work best for our family. more to come on this later. love.

video day

2009-04-01T19:43:00.008-05:00

i got a few videos to share today. madelyn isn't really cooperative about me using the camera these days because she just wants to watch herself on it.

i was able to catch her "measurin'" in "brother's room" this afternoon. that is how she helps daddy while he is painting. she doesn't really say or do much past the very beginning, but here it is:

and here is a sampling of what 75% of my pictures and videos are these days:

she spent a lot of time "drumming" today. she really enjoyed testing out the sounds the different sized metal bowls made when she hit them with a wooden spoon. i normally would not have had taken video (because it was so noisy), but she was singing softly to herself while playing her 'drums'. of course she stopped once i got the camera, but she sings for like half a second at one point of the video.

lastly, i got a little bit of her singing "happy birthday" tonight after dinner. on my birthday she actually sang the "to mommy" verse too. and actually, i just heard her sing that version to daddy right now as they are getting ready for bed and i am posting. she used to just say "happy day" and now she actually says "birthday" (sort of "birffday").

so after all the diaper drama last night, we were so excited when madelyn peed her her potty twice today! not that i count it as 'potty-training', but at least i know that she isn't afraid to go in it. love.

please give me a diaper!

2009-03-31T20:29:00.002-05:00

tonight while i was preparing madelyn for bath time she started to do a little dance and demanding a diaper. she has been sitting on her potty reading a book while the tub is filling and we were doing just that tonight. once the tub was full, i put her in and she started crying for a diaper and crisscrossing her legs. i asked her if she had to go potty and she said yes. i took her out and she sat on the potty crying for a diaper and doing a little dance. after a few minutes of this i decided to go put a diaper on her. once she had the diaper on she ran back to sit on the potty and read her book. after a few minutes i told her that it was time to take her bath. when i took off her diaper is was very wet!

while i don't think this is a great sign about what we have to come with potty training, i do see two positives - one - she knows when she has to go - two - she can hold it successfully. she also came to get me after lights out because she had gone "potty" and wanted a new diaper. again, her diaper was very wet. this is really exciting for me because i normally have to beg madelyn to change her diaper. she usually couldn't care less about her diaper being dirty and it has been several months since she was consistently asking to be changed at dinner time so i am taking this as progress towards the possibility of potty training.

we also said good-bye to grandma this evening. madelyn gets a little nervous when we go to the airport with me in the car. she worries that it means that i am leaving. she was sad to see grandma go, but was happy to see that i was getting back in the car and leaving with her.

before we left the house for the airport, grandma reminded us that we needed to get a picture of her with madelyn. madelyn had just woken up from her nap and was not in a hugging (or touching) and smiling mood. it took a while to get her to come sit on grandma's lap for a quick picture, but we got one.

and - for the record - i am not ignoring the fact that i turned thirty yesterday. i haven't posted about my day because i want to get some video of the most beautiful version of "happy birthday" i have ever heard on my birthday. not only that but she has a wonderful answer when i ask her about how old i am. i love her. love.