18-month check-up

we bundled up and headed out in the falling snow for madelyn's 18-month check-up this morning. she was in an excellent mood this morning! it was a little surprising because she woke up a little before 5am - the first time. she woke up a few more times before sleeping from 7-8. i thought that she would have been grumpy today since she usually is when her sleep is interrupted like that and she has been in this difficult phase lately (more on that later).

madelyn was so friendly at the office that her doctor commented on it because she said that it is unusual in an 18-month-old to be that friendly to strangers. there was a male college student shadowing the doctor and madelyn greeted them warmly with a wave and a "hi" as she ran up to show them the puzzle pieces she had been playing with while we waited. anyway, here are her stats:

height - 35 inches (99.6 percentile)
weight - 28lbs. 6oz. (92 percentile)
head circumference - 41.9cm (97 percentile)

her height/weight combo (equivalent to a body mass index) is around 62% which made her doctor really happy since she has been at like 30%. and it is definitely not from a lack of appetite! i think that she has just finally caught up with her growth rate. the summary of the appointment - she has been amazingly healthy and is doing great developmentally.

so we had another really great day today. whatever has been bothering her seems to have passed. her doctor said that it was good that we gave her motrin which made me not feel so guilty for giving it to her in the first place. but hopefully we will have many more days of happiness to come.

speaking of happiness, madelyn is really enjoying checking out the presents under the tree. and she notices every new package and every new ornament although she does have her favorites of each. yesterday she started asking about opening them. she is eyeing some new ones in this picture and then she is tempting fate in the video. she normally does listen to me when i ask her to put packages back under the tree, but the torn paper and the glimpse of a button was just too much for her to resist.



madelyn likes to help me in the kitchen while i make dinner. she got into trouble for putting her spoon into the taco meat i was making on the stove after i told her not to, so she lost her stool privileges. after a while i gave her another chance with the stool, but she could only sit on it away from the counters. surprisingly she did not even try to sneak it closer to a counter and just sat on it for the rest of dinner prep. as part of the compromise, madelyn wanted to do her own cooking. here she is sitting on her stool (well she started to get up once i got the camera) holding a mixing bowl and stirring with a whisk. (she added "tend" for pretend to her vocabulary today while we were talking about her toy food not being for eating, but for pretend.)

the first picture of the post is of madelyn and her precious jar of cherries i mentioned a few days ago. she was starting to get frustrated because i wouldn't open it, but for the most part she just carries it around.

so much is going on right now, i have to summarize in bullet points:

- for father's day i got matt a kid's set of golf clubs for him to use with maddie for $1 at target. they have used them every day for the past week. madelyn has also added to her daddy's enjoyment by saying "golf" and "club".

- yesterday madelyn and i headed out on the only day this week that isn't supposed to snow to buy some groceries and goodies for christmas. first we went to the organic market for some of maddie's foods. they have little kid sided grocery carts and i decided that madelyn and i would give one a try. she did so great! it went even better than i could have imagined. i would point something out and madelyn would get it and put it in her cart. she even did a really great job of making sure not to run into anything in the aisles. after that we went to the "regular" grocery store for the rest of our shopping. again we tried a new cart style - this time it was a firetruck shaped one maddie could ride in. i normally don't go for these specialty types of things, but i knew that this would be one of our only trips outside the house for most of the week and wanted to make the most of it.

- for about the past week madelyn says "up, up, up" when we drive up a hill. she might have been doing it longer, but it took awhile for me to figure out that she said it when we were driving up a hill. i just thought that she was just saying "up" over and over for her own amusement. she even says it when there is a hill in a cartoon. we have gotten her to add a "down" after we reach the top of the hill.

- tonight at dinner maddie was being really happy and when daddy asked if she was good today she replied "yes" and "good" - another new word - before busting out in hysterical laughing. after several more "good"s, i asked her if she were silly and "silly" was added into the mix of "good" and laughing. dinnertime is so much fun!

love.

the 15 month check-up at 16 months

this morning madelyn finally had her 15 month check-up. too bad that she is 16 months and two days old... anyway, here are her stats:


34 - 3/4 inches tall (off the charts at 99.93%)


26lbs. 12oz. (89.6%)


48.6 cm head circumference (98%)

(she is also wearing 2T/3T clothes and a size 7 shoe.)

we talked about other developmental milestones to see how madelyn is doing. she was impressed that madelyn is working hard at trying to walk up and down the stairs while holding the handrail. and not to brag, just to document for future reference, madelyn has the vocabulary of a two year old at over 50 words. and that is not including her signs and animal noises which the doctor counts as "vocabulary".

the doctor also heard an "innocent heart murmur" which is nothing to worry about. i repeat, it is nothing to worry about (that means you two, grandmas). she said that she only mentioned it in case another doctor brings it up - like if we had to go to urgent care or somewhere like that before it goes away. it is very common around 2 years old and might even go away by the next appointment. on another note, her iron levels are fantastic and she doesn't need a vitamin with iron any more but we can still give it to her if we want to (we will keep using the same vitamin (half a one-a-day childrens) because it has normal iron amounts - not extra like we were asked to give her). her iron was just slightly low at the last appointment and i think that it was just because she was sick that week and not eating normally.


poor kid had three shots and then had to go to the lab to have blood drawn. they made the mistake of getting her all set and then undoing it to find someone else to hold her arm still while i held the rest of her still. she was too antsy by the second attempt and got upset before they ever got the needle in. all in all she did great and even said "bye" through her tears and waved when we left the lab. she really had no reaction to the shots this time, she was just her normal self all day.


when madelyn wakes up in the morning, she flies like a bee to couch as soon as we open the door. usually she is signing for milk and calling for "bob" as she runs past us. its amazing she can find the couch behind her hair covering her entire face. i am usually right behind her with a clip to tame her hair so that she can drink her milk and watch veggietales while i finish getting myself ready or whatever else i might have been doing when she woke up.



this morning i decided to capture her bed hair for you to enjoy. love.

home sweet home

we made it home, safe and sound. maddie slept the first 4 hours and woke up just before we got to ikea (outside chicago). we spent about 2-1/2 hours there and then maddie slept the rest of the drive home (about 2 hours). she even went to bed early! we got maddie the bead "roller coaster" pictured and a stuffed ostrich (ikea has the most random stuffed animals).

madelyn was really excited to be back home! it was so cute how excited she was to see each and every one of her toys. she was all over the place today happily playing by herself. you can get an idea about her enthusiasm in this video (she has some trouble standing up and walking because of a stuffed animal on the ground).

today maddie had her 9-month check-up and here are the stats - height-30-3/4 inches (99.83 percentile), weight-20lbs. 10oz. (79.57 percentile). luckily, there were no shots today! maddie also got a clean bill of health which was a relief. the fever and slight crankiness are just from teething - yeah!

one more quick story. madelyn has pulled her hair bows out of her hair for a while now, but on saturday she tried to put them back in. isn't that so cute?! she just kept trying to put it back in where she pulled it out.

does she have a hallow leg?

today was maddie's 6 month doctor appointment and all's well! she is 29 inches long (99.94 percentile) and weighed 16 lbs. 5 oz. (62 percentile). i was surprised that her weight had changed curves like that (she had been in the upper 80s before) but the doctor didn't think that it was anything to be concerned about.

the doctor couldn't believe it when i told her how much madelyn is eating and asked her if she had a "hallow leg". needless to say that she agreed with my desire to add a third meal to maddie's day. so maddie had three meals today and loved every bite! i made her first batch of "super portage" (ground up brown rice) today. well, the first batch i didn't grind the rice fine enough, but the second batch came out great and she liked it a lot better. so she had 4 T. of bananas w/milk, 6 T. of oatmeal cereal w/milk, 3 T. of avocado, and 4 T. of super portage today! and that is in addition to 5 normal nursings! hopefully, a few days of this will get her back to sleeping all the way through the night. she has been getting up at 4am again to eat for the past week or so.

in addition, the doctor said that we could go ahead and give her teething biscuits (or any hard piece of bread) since she has so many teeth coming in and is able to put the spoon in her mouth by herself. here is a video of her enjoying her first teething biscuit (she picked it up and started chewing before i could get the camera on!).



i also learned from the doctor that her 'rocking' is actually an advanced skill for a girl her age (not to brag or anything). generally, girls don't start rocking until 9 months or so. i told her that is why she is eating so much and not putting on a lot of weight - she is always moving!

she also did a great job with the shots. she made it through the first one without flinching, but then the tears started. once the shots were done she stopped though and hasn't had any of the after symptoms that she has had in the past. today was just a normal day.

oh, and i got the proofs for her pictures from friday in her Christmas dress. here are a few of my favorites.

i need to get back to my to-do list so that i can get some stuff wrapped up before volleyball tonight. love.