15 months

madelyn is 15-months old today! i thought that she had a 15-month appointment, but i guess she has a 16-month appointment instead. so i still feel like this is a milestone age so here are my updates.

• here are all the words she uses in context as of today (in no particular order): mom, dad, ball, turtle, please, up, again, waffle, dog, stick, rock, hi, bye, balloon, duck, peacock, bob, bird, go, no, wow, ding, car, truck, clock, what's that?, bean, cup, comb, okay, uh-oh, gone, cracker, down, snacks, bug, bubbles, cook, baby, salsa, talk, yes, kick
• here zoo of animal noises is growing too - dog/"woof", cow/"moo/boo", tiger/"grrr", lion/"roar", snake/"sss", duck/"quack", sheep/"baa", goat/"maa", giraffe/tongue out, monkey/"ah-ah-ah", chicken/"cluck"
• signs - more, eat, water, book, dad, airplane, shoes, cheese
• other noises - she calls out "hi" whenever she sees a phone (picture or real), says "brroomm" when she plays with cars or sees a motorcycle, and says "woo, woo" for a train
• madelyn is down to two cups of milk a day - one first thing in the morning and one after her nap. sometimes she skips one or the other in favor of a snack.
• one nap a day for around 2 hours - for now

i don't have any pictures because i was really busy this morning and matt borrowed the camera for work today. not to mention that i am really sick - of the head cold variety. until tomorrow. love.

this and that

okay, so last month i mentioned that madelyn was asking "what's that". shortly afterwords she stopped doing it as much. however, now its a different story! not only does she ask "what's that?" all day, but she has added "what's this?" into the rotation. and i am loving every minute of it! sometimes it is difficult to know what she is asking about because she points and sometimes she is pointing as something at a distance that could be any number of items.

it was fun today at the grocery store. she would point and say "what's that?" and i would have to quickly come up with a response without loosing track of what i was actually looking for - and i did loose track, several times.

to go with the questions and pointing is that she can point to things we ask about too. when we read books before nap time (daddy does bedtime) i can ask her "where's the dog?" and she can point to it! this makes story time that much more fun for me. and she must like it too because when we get to the end of the book she turns it back to the front cover for me to read it and quiz her again. (and if i don't quiz her she starts pointing and asking "what's that?") i am working on getting this on video. so far i have only gotten like one second because she looses focus when i get the camera.

her comprehension is getting really great too. i can ask her if she wants her diaper changed and she will go to the changing table in her room, tell her that it is bath time and she will head to the tub, when she wants milk she signs "milk" until i tell her yes, lets go get it and then she heads to the refrigerator, and last when i ask her if she is hungry she heads to the highchair and starts to climb. i think that she has climbed all the way up into the highchair at least seven times in the past two days. she just climbs up (silent as a cat) and signs for "more" when i find her. that is her sign for "eat" - we're still working on it.

back to the climbing into the highchair - well, i need more pictures. i will post more about that tomorrow. (the picture is a clue...)

she is also getting really good at her sign language - well, i am biased. she has added "daddy" to her signs. we were watching her baby einstein "first signs" dvd this afternoon (well she was watching while i made dinner for one of the neighbors) for the first time in a few months and she was trying to sign along (that is where the "daddy" dvd showed up today). when they came to the "eat" part, maddie signed "more". it gets her what she wants, so why learn the right sign, right? love.

can i go out and play?

madelyn loves her dogs. she likes to stand at the door and watch them while banging on the glass and 'talking' / yelling to them. since the weather is nicer she can get a little more interactive with only the screen separating them. it gets a little crazy when she is actually out on the deck, so the screen works best for me.

i didn't notice that she was pointing at and then signing "ball" until after i stopped the video. her sign isn't the greatest, but she does it after she points at the ball or when looking at it so i figured it out (she kept doing it for a while after i turned off the camera - that's how i made the connection). watch towards the end of the video and you will see her pointing/"ball" combo.



this morning i took madelyn to one of the biggest pizza places i have ever seen - unfortunately i left my camera at home. they do a mom's morning out from 9 - 11 during the week and i thought that we might check it out as a practice outing of getting somewhere on time in the morning before her music class starts next tuesday. they had a water play room with cascading tables and toys (they even had vinyl smocks to wear and keep clothes dry), a train room, a pizza restaurant play kitchen, a large block room, a face painting room, and a hamster style play gym. some of our friends met us there too. it costs just under $5 and includes a coffee, juice, milk, pastry, fruit, and cereal buffet. i think that we will try it out again sometime - especially in the winter months.

matt is such a great dad. i know that i am biased, but he is so cute with her. we stopped to get a quick dinner tonight while running errands and matt was sticking cheerios on his tongue and then sticking it out for madelyn's amusement. i had to remind him that madelyn wasn't the only one who could see him... then when we were leaving sam's, matt had her on his shoulders and was skipping. yes, matt skipping. i wish that i could have captured it because she was laughing and squealing and bouncing on his shoulders while matt skipped the whole way to the car. so sweet. i love to watch them together.

good night. love.

"ba" (read "ball")

madelyn has started saying and signing "ball" when matt reads to her at night. anytime she sees a ball in a book she gets excited saying "ba" and signing it. she has also begun to do the same with balls in real life too. she has been able to follow requests to "get the ball" for a while now, but it is really exciting to see her say/sign it. matt was excited because he would only do it for him at first because when i come in she is only interested in her last feed of the day.

speaking of her last feed of the day... she has started to cheer when i come into her room at night! i might even try to get it on video tomorrow - if i can remember. this is how it goes. matt does bath time, brushes her teeth, gets her ready for bed, and then reads to her until he or she can't take one more book. then maddie gets to signing for milk and matt calls me in to finish her bedtime routine. the past couple of nights she has been doing the cheering and practically leaps off matt's lap trying to get to me. and if i am to slow she turns around to climb down out of the chair so that she can get to me sooner. i don't think that she could be any happier to see me - ever.

and, yes, she is still nursing. i almost have her totally on whole milk during the day, but she nurses in the morning and before bed. her getting sick was actually great for helping her wean. but now that she is feeling better its as if she has just realized that she isn't nursing during the day. i guess it must be that we have had a few warmer days and i am not totally covered up from the neck down. she will be going to town on her milk cup, but then will look up at me and you can see the idea pop in her head of "hey, what's going on here?!" and she doesn't mess around drinking out of her cup either. she puts away anywhere from 5 - 14 ounces at a time! usually it is 7 - 10 ounces.

keep reading to hear about maddie's adventures in chicago, at a brewer's game, and on a return trip to the zoo. love.

lots "more"

maddie started signing "more" at mealtimes today! i was excited. she doesn't have it totally right, but she does it each time she finishes eating what is on her tray until she was full.

today was also exciting because i dropped her mid-morning nurse and instead gave her milk in a cup. i have done this a few times before, but now we are going to get serious about starting the process of getting rid of nursing. she was being super silly and chatty after she drank most of her milk so i got the camera. as usual - she settled down once i got to filming. shortly after this video the camera battery died so i figured this video was better than nothing. enjoy.


the real tragedy of the dead camera battery is that she started walking around a lot once it was dead! i even went to get my old camera, but the batteries in it were dead too. maybe another day i can show you, but i was pretty excited. she would just stand up in the middle of the room and walk to one of her toys or some piece of furniture. crawling is still her main mode of transportation, but walking is gaining ground. its cute because it is two steps forward, one step back, three forward and then a few in place kind of walking. and she is smiling and giggling almost the whole time.

i have also had to move her crib out about a foot from the wall because she can reach the mirrors hanging up. plus, she somehow managed to get her left leg between the bars and wedged up against the wall during a nap yesterday. i am not sure how she managed that considering that she sleeps in a sleep sack and i had to pull the crib out in order to free her while she screamed like her leg was broken (and i thought it was from her yells and trying to figure out how it got in there in the first place).

just to keep me on my toes, maddie decided to try her hand at climbing the bookshelf in my office. luckily, this is one of the first pieces of furniture that we secured to the wall thinking that it would be the easiest thing for her to climb. she pulls the books down and pulls out the baskets everyday while i work, but this was the first time she made an effort to climb it.

matt is still at the office (he didn't get home last night until 11!), but it is his last day and he wants to make sure that everything is taken care of before he heads out for the last time. monday morning starts a whole new job in a totally different type of hospital. hopefully, he can get some rest over the weekend - or he could watch maddie...

love.

new signs

maddie has started signing "story" back to us (excitedly) when we ask her if she is ready for a "story". that one might be my favorite. she also added "eat" to the rotation this morning. she was signing to ask me for "more" to "eat" as a way to say that she was ready for breakfast. of course her signs aren't perfect, but they are easily identifiable.

she also started walking more with her lion over the weekend. the cute (or not so cute) part is that when she hits the end of her straight line of walking (a wall, the couch, or some other immovable object blocking her forward movement), she tries to turn it for a minute and then sits down to cry until we help her out by turning it around so that she can go back the other way. she really likes this walking upright thing!

i think that she is hitting another growth spurt. she has been sleeping more lately. last night she slept almost 12 hours, took a 3 hour morning nap, and then a 2-1/2 hour afternoon nap! we will just have to see how much she shoots up. the only thing is that her appetite hasn't increased like it has with other growth spurts. in fact, the funny thing is that she is more interested in nursing lately! everyday is a surprise... love.

good signs

madelyn is getting pretty good at signing. well, maybe "pretty good" is being generous, but at least i can understand some of her gestures. she can sign "milk", "more" (her version that is just holding her hands), and tonight she added a "drink" sign. and she waves "hi" too - very enthusiastically.

i have added beans to her morning porridge to make a 'complete protein' and round out a healthy vegetarian diet. we intend to add meat, but the food plan we are following does not include meat. plus, our doctor asked us to wait until she was at least 9 months old (its just her preference). we will probably add it after our next appointment on monday. other than beans lately we have added spinach, cucumber, flax seed, cheddar and feta cheeses, whole wheat pitas (buttered with tahini), and beets are next.

matt and nana took maddie to "lotza fun" today and she had the whole place to herself! i guess someone else was there when they arrived, but didn't stay much longer. i don't think that they were as impressed with "lotza fun" as i was, but then again, they don't spend as much time stuck at home with a crawler either.


maddie did try the "gerbil" tunnel with them today. i hadn't taken her over to that part of the room on our previous visits. it looks like she liked it! i think it helped that she has had a lot of practice crawling under our coffee table when the baskets are pulled out.

so now i have to finish packing. i have all of maddie's clothes, toiletries, and food packed but i need to get myself ready for our morning departure. love.

happy new year!

its the first day in 2008 and we spent the day getting everything in order for the new year. matt worked on baby-proofing the house and i worked on cleaning up my office for optimal organization and maddie friendliness.
while we haven't counted it as an official first word, maddie does say "da-di". i have been working with her on saying "daddy" for months now. my goal was to get her to say it by Christmas (like i have any control over these things). today she looked at matt and said "da-di" more than once, but we aren't convinced that it isn't just a coincidence - yet. she also did a good job of playing "where's daddy?". i ask her "where's daddy?" and she looks all around for matt until she sees him and then smiles. the video doesn't quite capture it because she was more interested in my new camera, but you can get the general idea. its pretty cute how much she loves her daddy.



in addition to office organization, i worked on prepping finger foods for maddie. we introduced cubed pears today and she did pretty well. it takes her a while to 'chew' them up because at first she just sucks on them like the banana puffs waiting for them to dissolve. once she realizes that they don't work that way she sort of gums them and bites them with her teeth. most of them fell out of her mouth while she was chewing with her teeth because she hasn't figured out how to close her lips while chewing to keep the food in. after i finish blogging i am going to prep and freeze avocado, banana, and mango cubes to try in the future.

as you may have noticed in the pictures, i tried a new hairdo today for keeping her hair out of her eyes. matt doesn't like the little clips because they could be a choking hazard and the big bows aren't really practical for everyday play, so this was what i came up with...

here are some more pictures from our day at home.

maddie helping mommy clean her office.

while this isn't a great shot of maddie, it was the only way i could get a picture of at least two of her front teeth.

playing ball in mommy's office. she was laughing as she would kick it away with her feet and i would roll it back to her.

one last note - i started introducing sign language a few weeks ago and i think that she might be trying to sign back. tonight we were saying "daddy" over and over doing the sign (open palm with the thumb touching the forehead and then moving away from your head) and she kept bringing her hand to the side of her head after we would do it - sometimes her hand was even wide open. i know, you are thinking to yourself that i am crazy, but i found it to be encouraging to my signing efforts.

as part of the signing effort, i have been letting her watch the baby einstein signing dvd. and she sits and watches it! i'm not really sure how long it is, but it is at least 15 minutes. she will glance at the tv when we are watching it, but she has never paid this much attention to it before. (don't worry, she doesn't sit that close all the time. i had actually turned it on for me to learn the signs to do with her, but when i saw she was watching it i took a picture and then moved her farther back.) she even gets excited at certain parts and talks to the little boys in the video (yes, she already gets excited about boys - more about that another day.) she likes when the mommy puppet tries to feed the baby puppet with a spoon. she started talking to the screen at that point both times we watched it.

okay - i am done sharing for tonight. love.