we should have stayed in bed

we had plans saturday, but we should have stayed in bed. the plan was to meet friends at a local farm at 9am, eat lunch, and maybe pick a pumpkin. i have been looking forward to going to a farm and picking a pumpkin for about a month. i was trying to go a few weeks before halloween and after the weather had gotten cooler. that was the plan, but here is how it actually went...

madelyn woke up screaming at 6am. i got her settled back down and then she woke up to start the day at 7:30am. i was still exhausted from madelyn's night of vomiting, but since matt had been up until 3am working on the basement floors i got up with her. while she was eating her breakfast, i was working on putting together a packed lunch for us to take to the farm. and then madelyn started screaming. she fell into the chair next to her at the table. i guess she was distracted (she gets a little dance-y when she starts to feel full) and tripped landing lip first on the neighboring chair. well, her lip busted open and blood started pouring out. i was torn about if i should take her to the emergency room for a stitch or two or if it was just a bad cut. the bleeding seemed to stop in a reasonable amount of time and once she was calm she wanted to finish her breakfast. so i assumed that we didn't need to go for stitches because from what she would let me see, it wasn't too bad.

once matt was up i was able to start getting myself ready to go. once i was presentable it was time to get maddie into her halloween shirt so that we could get some cute pumpkin patch pictures. by the time i had directions on how to get to the farm it occurred to me that we were going to be two hours late. if we were two hours late madelyn would be cranky and hungry by the time we got there and would be ready for her nap. but i was determined, so we all got in the car.

on the way to the farm madelyn started to get sleepy - as expected - and yawned. the yawn opened up the cut on her lip and it started bleeding profusely. i was trying to reach back and control the amount of blood stains by this time we were late, exhausted, and madelyn was wearing a now bloodstained shirt with more blood coming from her mouth - it was time to give up. so matt turned the car around and we headed back home with a hungry, tired girl demanding "snacks" in the back seat.

still unwilling to give up on our fall fun i suggested that we head to a nature center just down the street from us to hike up one of the trails to the top of a hill and check out the fall leaves after madelyn woke up from her nap (with her hand, thumb, face, and linens stained with blood). the day was gorgeous and surprisingly warm and i refused to spend it indoors.

the nature center was pretty crowded, but as soon as we headed up to the information center (to check out the fish tanks and stuffed wildlife) we realized that this too wasn't really going to work out. the ladybugs were swarming! it doesn't sound like a big deal, but ladybugs here bite. we were covered from head to toe with ladybugs by the time we got inside. after a quick brush off of the bugs we spent some time inside taking in the staged wildlife. madelyn was excited to see all the animals and we spent more time inside than we would have if it hadn't been for the ladybugs.

when we finally decided to venture outside again we just went on a quick lap around the short trail to check out the apple themed scarecrows. madelyn didn't quite know what to think about them - they were a little creepy and not in the fun halloween way. about halfway through the trail madelyn started to melt down and we had to leave.

after the nature center ladybug swarm, we went home and i started dinner. matt got to finally start preparing the basement floor for stain. i decided that since it was a nice evening i would grill the fish outside instead of cooking it in the oven. madelyn was snacking on some apples while i was preparing everything for the grill. when i would go out she would sit in a chair by the glass sliding door so that she could watch me put the food on the grill without getting too close. when i came in the second time she jumped down to follow me into the kitchen and landing face first down on the hardwoods! and as you might remember from the beginning of this long post, madelyn had already busted her mouth in the morning. the blood was twice as much this time. she and i were both covered in blood all over our shirts and she wouldn't let me anywhere close to her mouth to see where she was bleeding, if she had any teeth left, or wipe off any of the blood. in the mean time it was time to get the fish off the grill and matt was still downstairs in the middle of applying the etcher/degreaser to the floor.

i got madelyn calmed down, took off her shirt, got her some milk and put on some "bob" (aka veggietales). this time her bottom lip was split in two places on the inside. i think that it split more because it was still swollen from the trama in the morning.

bed time could not come soon enough! all and all the day was a bust - literally for madelyn. the weekend could only get better, right? love.

bumps and bruises

madelyn continues to try and disfigure her face. i don't know how she manages to always land on her face, but she does. again and again and again. this picture is blurry, but it was the best of the bunch (she doesn't sit still very much). she currently has at least four bruises on the middle of her forehead, a new injury under her left eye (new today), and a fading bruise on her right cheek. matt was joking that we aren't going to be able to leave the house because from a distance she looks filthy and up close she looks like she needs protection! luckily her injuries tend to fade quickly otherwise her face would look a lot worse. it is just where she collects her injuries.

another bruise collection is on her left shin (again sorry that the picture is a little blurry). she used to get them from crawling on the fireplace, but she isn't crawling any more and they are still there. i figured out their source the other day - her highchair. her legs are too long to get in it any more so she hits her shin. so this weekend we are upgrading her to a booster seat. she has been eating most of her meals sitting at the table on a kitchen chair for the past week anyway. i am excited about this transition more than matt, but now we will all be able to sit at the table for dinner! woo-hoo!

today madelyn figured out how to open the hinged closet doors. she has been casually trying door knobs and handles since she could first reach them a few months ago, but this was the first time she was able to get a door larger than a kitchen cabinet open. luckily she was just like - look what i can do - and then moved on.

another activity for the day was getting out madelyn's pool. i had a really difficult time finding a flat part of the yard to set it up in, but we finally got it ready for some play. the little girl next door (i think that she is going into third grade) came over to splash with maddie a little bit - which maddie loved! the pool was a lot bigger than i thought that it would be so next time we might have to invite a few friends over so maddie doesn't feel so lonely. as a bonus, i was able to get video of her saying "what's that?" enjoy.

lastly, here are a few of my favorite shots from madelyn's chaotic photo shoot with her cousins at jcp. love.

i love this one because madelyn is holding the candle like a cigarette and it just cracked me up!

rain, rain go away

it has been really stormy here for the past two days and it looks like we have a few more days of it to come. and i don't just mean wind and rain. the tornado siren went off 5 times during last night's storm! tornadoes freak me out because i think of them like small hurricanes without the warning. i got tired of going up and down the stairs between sirens, so maddie and i spent about an hour in the basement watching the weather reports. we are fortunate to have a room with no windows that we use as an exercise room and maddie enjoyed checking it out for the first time. thankfully the sirens don't scare her (she hears them when they are tested every friday morning at 9:30am) because it is really loud being only 3 houses down from us!

madelyn has had a few tough days (well, they have been tough for me anyway). i can see three of her eye teeth (i think two are through but it is tough to get my finger in and out for a feel without getting bit - hard) and two of her molars. she is chewing on everything! i know that she is really hurting when she tries to gently bang her teeth on the coffee table like she is going to bite it. i don't know how else to explain it because it looks like she is going in to bite it, but gently and without the actual bite. and to make matters worse she had her first walking injury. she was reaching for the couch after walking down the hall from her room and got a little too excited. she underestimated how close to the couch she was and hit it with her face instead of her hands when reaching. i am interested to see what it looks like in the morning because it made a big welt on the side of her face and has been red for a couple of hours before she went to bed.

she also discovered a new trick over the weekend (or at least she hasn't done this in a really long time). she has been getting spit on her lips to blow bubbles with by slowly opening her mouth and blowing. sort of like the way a bubble wand works (without the opening part). i have been trying to get it on video, but it is sort of an absent minded activity that the camera snaps her out of.

love.

its a hard knock life - for maddie's head

maddie's head (and face) have it pretty rough. keeping her free of disfiguring scars is quickly becoming one of my top priorities. as of bedtime tonight, madelyn has a mark and bump in the center of her forehead from an outdoor tabletop, another small cut near her hairline above her right eye, a long red mark that is starting to bruise running from the outside corner of her right eye to near her ear that she did some how with a couch cushion, and a penny sized bruise under her left eye (they all look worse in real life than they do in the photo). i am beginning to think that i need to assure people that i am not neglecting (or abusing) my child! the rest of her body stays fairly injury free - thankfully!

if you are just sitting down to read maddie's updates, you might want to get a snack. while we have been busy entertaining shannon and uncle derek this weekend, maddie has had a lot of experiences worth noting and i am going to do them all as seperate posts. enjoy! love.

bumps and bruises

one of the challenges of having a child who had a lot of teeth before they can even crawl is keeping those teeth from getting knocked out. madelyn had another tooth slamming adventure this morning. she was crawling around the living room while i ate breakfast and watched the morning news. she then got up on the laundry basket, walked/cruised over to the coffee table, and then to her toy basket under the table. she continued going between the coffee table and her toy basket in a 'walking' fashion getting toys out and putting them on the coffee table where she could better see, taste, and shriek at them. she was having so much fun that she started waving her hands around and let go - resulting in her top teeth hitting the edge of the coffee table on her way down.

this time i was more upset than she was. she cried initially, but as soon as i picked her up she was fine and started chewing on my fingers with no signs of pain. her gums were bleeding again around the same tooth where there was bleeding the last time she slammed her mouth like that (right before we went to Kansas when she was trying to crawl on the hardwood floors). there is still a little dark blood spot on her gums right above her right, front tooth from today's falls (yes, "falls" - plural - keep reading).

then when i went to pick her up from her nap i noticed the long scratch on her face that you can sort of see in the picture near her eye on the side of her face. after feeding her, i clipped her finger nails for the second time this week to try and limit the number of marks on her face.

and madelyn was not done injuring herself yet. her new thing is to crawl her hands up the walls so that she can stand leaning up against them, but the catch is that she can't figure out how to get down. i guess she was trying to get back down when i heard a thump and then crying. she had a nice red mark on center of her forehead the size of a quarter from where the wall texture scratched her a little on her way down (she caught herself during her fall and was just kneeling with her hands on the wall when i went to get her).

but, wait, there's more! at playgroup today she slipped while crawling on their hardwoods and knocked her tooth again!! there was a lot more blood this time, but she quickly recovered and was biting my finger as hard as she could while i was trying to figure out where the blood was coming from. its not like she isn't a stable kid. i think she was just so excited by everyone running around (there were about 11 kids between the ages of 3 and 5 months) and got ahead of herself.

her mouth started bleeding again tonight while she was chewing on her pack-and-play but best as i saw, she didn't hit her mouth again because there was no bang and no crying. what can i say, the girl is fearless and wants to try everything. i am just going to try and keep her scaring injuries to a minimum...

maddie's preferred method of communication today - shrieking. from the time she woke up until the time she went to sleep shrieking was the way in which madelyn expressed herself (she did throw in a few raspberries, grunts, "hi", "da", "ga", and nose snorts, but the day was mainly shrieking). i never know what she will sound like from one day to the next. here is a video of her shrieking today with her toys and the crawling to the newly discovered printer stand in my office and the 'fun' reams of paper underneath it.

yesterday she pulled an open ream of paper off the shelf, shook the paper out and proceeded to play with the plastic wrapper. of course i had to be the party pooper who threw it away.

hopefully, tomorrow will be much less bloody! love.

oops-a-daisy

as you can see maddie wore herself out playing in my office today. i turned around to check on her and she was just chillin' like this taking a break from crawling all over the improved floor space in my office and checking out all the office furniture that she couldn't reach before. she was particularly fond of the wicker baskets on my bookshelf and the magnets on my file cabinets.

she was sort of cranky today, but we still had a good day. she has finally gotten the hang of peek-a-boo. if i put a burp cloth over her face and say "where's maddie?" she will pull it off and smile/laugh. since she finally gets what all the excitement is over saying "peek-a-boo" i started hiding behind the furniture and peeking around the corner. she thought that this was a lot of fun and sat herself behind the ottoman so that she could peek out after i poked my head out from behind the couch and said "peek-a-boo". she would even go back to 'hiding' after she saw me.

with all the traveling and Christmas excitement i forgot to write about her first major accident - there was blood. i was running around trying to get everything ready for our trip and we were getting ready to get in the car for dropping Christmas cards and other items off at the neighbors' houses. i was trying to sign a birthday card and maddie kept grabbing the card and the pen so i set her on her back on the carpet. she rolled over and crawled out onto the hardwoods. since we were going out she was wearing sweatpants and her knee slipped resulting in bloodied gums and lots of tears. it was her first experience on the hardwoods. i didn't even notice the blood until i got her to stop crying, but then i was a little upset. i think the fall just caused one of her top teeth to push all the way through the gum causing it to bleed. i figure that this is the first of many injuries to come and a pretty minor one at that. plus, she was chewing on hard toys only moments later without any hesitation.

i am happy to report that she now catches herself when she starts to fall. love.