new games

madelyn and i had some fun today playing a new game. i crawl around the house and she follows me. i would crawl around the couch and down the hall to her room, etc. and she would crawl after me laughing. sometimes she would sit up to see where i was and then would start laughing when she saw me and take off again. i can't wait for her to play this new game with her daddy!

here is a video of our second new game of the day - dropping a beach ball on her belly. for some reason this was hysterical to her and i filmed it because she was snorting when she laughed.



her new trick of the day is that she can get herself back down after she pulls up on something. it takes her a few tries, but she doesn't need me to help her down any more and she doesn't fall to hit her face. i am so proud of her for being such a 'big girl'!



she also started making repetitive "b" sounds last night. i wonder what word she will say next...

just to give you an idea for what a wiggle worm she is, today she sat down from standing and when she came right back up she had somehow gotten her arm out of her sleeve in less than two seconds! and then she sat back down to play again.

on the foods front tomorrow we start tofu as a finger food. the egg yolks have gone over great - she gobbled up her oatmeal/millet porridge this morning when i mixed in the hard boiled yolk and avocado (sounds disgusting, right?). it was almost a full cup worth of food!

i can't wait to see what new things she will have for me tomorrow! love.

sitting up captured

since i didn't post any pictures about madelyn last night, i thought that i would go ahead and post some videos this morning. this is not the greatest video of her trying the banana puffs for the first time last night, but she smiles in the beginning and you can see some of her three top teeth. she is eating one of the puffs and holding another in her hand. we tried them again this morning while i was getting her oatmeal ready and she ate all three by herself - using her pointer finger and thumb. i was so proud!



and then this video is from this morning. she kept crawling and sitting herself up and it occurred to me to grab the camera and catch this sit-up before she got too cranky to play any more and we had to move on to breakfast.



she crawled to me for the first time this morning as an extremely intentional action and she stayed on all fours the whole way (normally she drops to her belly at least once) - she covered about three feet. i was so excited! i told her to come to mommy and she did!

that's all for now. love.

one more day...

only one more day until Christmas! we are getting really excited here. i think that papa is excited to give maddie her presents. from the looks of the tree, we have all been really good this year.

madelyn has a lot of Christmas and winter themed clothes that i have been trying to get on her this week. here she is in front of the tree in a snowman dress that she wore to church tonight. she is much more interested in the presents than in the camera, so this was the only shot were she was actually looking at me.

i also tried to get some video of maddie crawling, but she just crawled backwards when i was filming which was something new. but otherwise she didn't make much progress today. although she did scoot herself backwards and into a full sitting position. i think that i was the only one really excited about this accomplishment though. you can sort of tell that there is a lot going on to distract her from her crawling.





for lunch we all went to matt's favorite restaurant, oklahoma joe's, and maddie got a new teething toy - nana's extra chewing gum! it actually worked out great because the gum was soft enough for chewing, the pack fit great in her little hand, and the packaging was drool proof. and she was perfectly content the entire time we were there.

we went to a lovely christmas eve service at westside family church tonight and maddie got passed all over. matt's parents' small group was so excited to see her in person that she got passed between several rows before falling asleep on one of their friend's lap. it was very sweet. he just kept saying that she was like a little angel.

we were also able to get a few family pictures after we got home from church tonight. (sorry about the red eye - i didn't have a way to remove it here.) papa picked up max for a few of the pictures and maddie thought that was so funny. she is developing quite the sense of humor.

after pictures and before we got maddie ready for bed, we participated in a z family tradition - we opened our Christmas eve pajamas. maddie is really getting the hang of opening presents. i think that she is going to be ready to go tomorrow morning - well, she might need a little help.



now i better go to sleep or i won't get any presents... love.

sitting pretty

madelyn can now get herself into a seated position on her own. she had done it twice yesterday sort of by accident, but it was much more intentional today (even matt agreed that she was sitting). she doesn't pull herself all the way up yet, she just sort of props herself up with one arm, but she can go from laying on her belly to sitting on her bottom and upright for the most part all by herself.

(her shirt says "I play sports with daddy". its a boy's shirt but i haven't been able to find any girl shirts with sports on them...)

i am hoping to capture it on film soon, but for now i have a still shot of her in her sort of sitting position. what she does is get into her 'rocking' pose and then straightens her legs out and steps them forward until they are in front of her behind and then sits down and uses her arms to push her torso up. she gets herself more upright than the picture shows, but that is the general effect. she can also get into this position while rolling to her side and bringing her legs to the front one at a time, but the hands and knees 'rocking' way is the more frequently used.

she also straightens both her arms and legs when 'rocking' but i missed getting a picture because she saw a toy she wanted by the time i got the camera. it almost looks like she is just going to stand right up and skip the whole crawling thing. she just amazes me everyday with the physical things she can do now. i just expect her to start crawling all over the place any day now. maybe she is just waiting until we get to kansas so that she can show her papa, nana, and uncle derek.

she woke up twice to eat last night! she hasn't done that for about two months now, so i figure that her teeth are hurting her or she is having a growth spurt - only time will tell. she is eating over 5 - 7 tablespoons of food three times a day plus nursing now so hopefully we will get back to sleeping through the night again soon.

this is a video of her playing with her favorite part of her mirror - the ties. her favorite part of everything is the ties, straps, or buckles! well, that is when she can't reach the tags. i just know that the wrapping paper is going to be her favorite toy this Christmas. love.

capturing Christmas

i haven't been feeling all that Christmas-y this year. i think its because we won't be home so there are no decorations, or cookies, or anything resembling Christmas that i can see on a daily basis. i also do almost all my shopping on-line so there hasn't been much shopping either. but what we did do was go out for family portraits today with maddie in her Christmas dress. she looked so grown-up! and i think we actually got a decent family shot this time. i can't wait to get the prints. they also had some 'santa sleeves' and white gloves for matt to wear while maddie held his hands and stood-up - very sweet... we got this very pretty dress and hair bows (with jingle bells) for only $0.86 thanks to a gift certificate we had been hanging on to for the purpose of buying her a Christmas dress. i was really excited for such a bargain! and maddie liked the dress so much when we tried it on at home that i couldn't get her to look up at the camera! luckily, she did better at the portrait studio.

maddie and i did some other shopping today before heading to the mall for pictures including home depot and target. since she is getting to be such a big girl i decided that we would try sitting in the cart by herself and it couldn't have gone better! she did great the whole time we were shopping (and since it was target you know that we were there a while). i was afraid to get kicked out for using my real camera so the picture is from my cell phone.

she is also getting her arms straight out while she does her rocking. before she was just getting up to her elbows, but now she can get all the way up to her hands. she isn't quite crawling, but she has figured out that if she gets all the way up to her hands and rocks back a forth a few times, she can lunge herself forward enough to reach a toy (or her daddy) that is too far away.

she is also ready for some new toys. but i am trying to control myself until the grandparents do their gift giving. it just seems like she is ready to move beyond her rattles and stuffed animals. especially now that she can sit and move more. she has also taken a great interest in standing on her own (she doesn't want to be in her exersaucer, she wants to be outside holding herself up while playing with the toys) so we might look for something that will help her pull herself up to a standing position. every time i go to get her from a nap now she has both hands on the top of her bumper or on the crib bars themselves trying to pull herself up so she is definitely getting ready.

since i didn't take any video today, here is one from yesterday. i was trying to get her doing this soft "singing" with the keys in her mouth, but when the camera went on she realized that she wasn't alone and started to get fussy because it was nap time. oh well. love.

i'm back already

i am back from my trip to chicago and ready to blog again - so get off my back already! i would have gotten on last night, but i came down with a 24 hour cold. i felt fine in the morning but ended up sleeping most of the afternoon and had a 100.7 degree fever last night. but feel much better today.

maddie changed SO MUCH while i was gone! i knew that she changed everyday, but it was unbelievable when i went to pick her up how different she was! she felt heavier and her face looked really different too. plus, she was sitting up better and her dexterity had changed dramatically. she can pick up the smallest objects (like my fleece zipper) with very fluid movements. its difficult to explain, but the difference was very striking to me.

as you can see her daddy is proud of his work with the sweet potatoes! (this was one of the few pictures he took while i was gone.) matt would have posted more, but he was in the final week of writing and giving reviews and just didn't have even one spare minute.

and she finally showed some interest in holding the sippy cup herself. she always tries with a normal cup, but the handles of the sippy cup were of no interest to her. matt said that he just set it on the high chair tray and she picked it up and started drinking!

she did pull herself up while holding on to the laundry basket on sunday night before i left for the week. (the picture is a posed reenactment.) she is so anxious to get moving! we just keep saying that we are going to be in trouble when she really gets mobile...

okay, i just spent three hours on a christmas project and i am going to make matt a turkey dinner tomorrow and work on a million other things that i need to get done in the two weeks before we leave for kansas, so i am going to have to call it a night. i just wanted to make a quick post before bed since i have been m.i.a. and some of you are going through withdrawal. love.

look what i can do

maddie's latest skill is to hold the bottle while drinking. we haven't used a bottle in a few weeks and i thought that we should reintroduce it before we left her with a babysitter last night (more on that in a minute). plus, i am heading to chicago tomorrow morning and will be at a conference until thrusday so she will being seeing lots of bottle time over the next week. she didn't even flinch and got right to business by taking charge of holding the bottle.

so yesterday we had about 4 inches of snow that then got piled on by a few hours of sleet and followed up by rain. needless to say the roads were rough and there was a high risk of ice. but matt and i went out into the night for his office Christmas party downtown. so we left maddie with one of the neighborhood girls for the night (actually two of the neighborhood girls because on of the other neighbors came to keep the babysitter company since maddie would be sleeping most of the time). as we were getting ready to go, i kept worrying that something might happen to us on the roads. since we don't have our will written up yet (one of the million things i need to get done by the end of the year) i wrote up a little something and had matt sign it so that if anything did happen our families would know what we wanted even if a court wouldn't uphold such an informal, unwitnessed document. am i crazy or what? everything was fine. matt and i had a nice evening out at the public museum (where the dinner/party was) and madelyn did great for the sitter.

i also learned that the going rate for babysitting has not increases since i last babysat and in fact, we were called by the sitter's parents after i dropped her off saying that she would be returning half of the money because we should not pay her that much! oh well. i guess that it is better to over pay than underpay. right?

madelyn is way over this laying on the ground thing and just itching to sit and stand. here she is 'helping' me with the laundry and a video of her sitting and playing with a toy (not sure what you would actually call it - an entertainment table?). she also likes to stand at that toy and play - she holds herself up and can push the buttons so that they make noise and light put, but the camera is way too distracting to her when she is standing and she falls down before i get any real footage. maybe soon though... plus, you may notice that i have figured out how to lighten the videos before i post them! i think it makes them a little grainy, but at least you can see what is going on a little better. oh, and i should mention that she is not choking. that is just her latest extreme in making one of her favorite noises. even though it freaks matt and i out a little because it can sound like she is having an asthma attack or something! the joys of parenthood... love.

the return of the all nighter

after 4 weeks of early morning and late night wake ups, maddie is sleeping through the night again with 12 hours on sunday night and 13 hours last night! i am so thankful for the return of the all nighter!

we are still waiting to see which tooth comes in next, but you can see her two teeth very easily when she talks or smiles. her hair is always hanging in her face now so we have to use barrettes and headbands everyday now. they are a loosing battle most of the time though because she is becoming more active.

today she has gotten to where she can get herself up on her knees and elbows, but she just rocks back and forth for a few seconds before just dropping her belly down and kicking her legs. she's getting closer to crawling, but not there yet. she has made some progress with her sitting though. she can now get herself back down on her belly without just tipping over. she sort of rolls forward and uses her arms to ease her body down when she is ready. she has also discovered that she can reach for things to pull herself up with! this was something she figured out just before bedtime and every time i tried to take a picture she would get so excited that she would fall down leaving me with a lot of these 'in motion' pictures of her holding on to her basket.

lastly, here is a video of her playing with her water cup that i thought was cute. its not in the video, but since we always end our highchair time with the water cup she has figured out that it signals the end of a meal. after her cereal tonight i got the cup out and she started fussing and refused to drink it. after a few tries i realized that when i took the cup away she would stop fussing so i decided to mix her up a little more cereal. she was so excited to have more to eat and ate it all before she would gladly drink her water without complaint. its just amazing how they figure out their routines! love.

sitting pretty

my boss, michelle, stayed with us last night - why i wasn't blogging - and it was a great visit. she and i don't get to chat as much as we would like when we are in the office so this was a really nice treat! michelle has triplet boys that are about to turn 5 - can you imagine?! the picture is of her and maddie. matt worked from home on wednesday too and took maddie during her nap times and while michelle and i went to a bma (business marketing association) meeting last night.

i took some video of maddie sitting up this afternoon to show you all how good she is getting. she still topples over (as you can see in the second video) when she gets too excited, but over all she is starting to be pretty stable.



her new trick of the day is trying to escape from her bouncy seat to get to the floor or get the toy that she dropped. basically she turns upside-down and spreads her arms out reaching. she was reaching for the toy on the floor, but then she started reaching for the ceiling. she did it more than once today and seemed to enjoy the change of perspective.

but this new skill means that there are only two places that she is safe left unattended (or where i can turn my back) and those are her crib and the play-yard. straps will no longer contain her...


this last picture is of her enjoying one of her books. i am hoping that she picks up this passion of mine and not just her dad's passion for golf. love.