miller time

yesterday we took the girls for a highly appropriate tour of the miller brewery. actually it was a very nice tour and madelyn laughed practically the entire time! "miller valley" is actually pretty with some great architecture and it is perpetually "miller time". here is a picture of maddie enjoying her free coaster at the end of the tour while the grown-ups enjoyed tasting the "champagne of beers".

she has finally come around to embracing the cold wind and seems to be invigorated by it. she used to gasp over and over again, but now she squeals, laughs and wiggles with delight.

but the day didn't start there, earlier that morning madelyn continued her work on improving her climbing skills (or as i call it "up-and-over") and got stuck under the kitchen table. here is a front and rear view for your enjoyment.













today's time with uncle brad, aunt abby, and cousin annabell was pretty brief but we took a few more pictures of the girls together before we left for breakfast on their way to the airport. here they are playing this morning at the house in matching outfits from grandma.

and then here they are with the deep snow while we were waiting for our turn to be seated at the restaurant. (don't worry - we were just outside for the picture. afterwards we went back inside.) we sat them on their changing pads so that they wouldn't cry from the cold on their bottoms. like i mentioned earlier, maddie loves the cold!

we officially had 16 inches of snow on wednesday and there are probably 20 or so behind them in the picture. the cold air is coming back tonight and with wind chill they are saying it will be -28 or 30 tomorrow. burrr!

crazy snow

we made it home safely. i know that lots of people were worried watching the weather reports, but our flight wasn't even delayed. we did have to circle the airport a few times when we arrived because of all the other flights coming in that had been delayed. apparently the airport had been closed for a while on friday. when we came in you could see from the air how clear the roads already were and they were almost dry on our drive home. there was a lot of snow on the ground though! everything was white! we have never seen snow stick like that! it is even on the sides of the trees and telephone poles several inches thick. matt had to dig the car out from under about 6 inches of snow at the airport so that we could go home. and the digging didn't stop there...

when we got home we realized that the snow removal service had not been out to the house yet because we have between 5 and 7 inches of snow on the driveway. matt dug a path to the garage for maddie and i to get inside before shoveling the rest of the driveway to get the car in the garage.

after matt got warmed back up, he and i had our own little Christmas at home and exchanged our gifts to each other. it was just nice to have a little quiet time together at home.

we spent the weekend running errands, unpacking, and doing laundry. so maddie hasn't really had a chance to get back on her normal schedule yet. she did manage to take a 3-1/2 hour nap yesterday afternoon and slept until 9am (after a 6am snack) that morning. matt has to work tomorrow so maddie and i will probably hang out at the house and have a pretty quiet day.

she likes being back to her homemade foods too. and when we tried avocado again she ate 5 tablespoons with "mmm"s the whole time. finally she has accepted the texture. we also tried banana puff snacks today. she only ate one of the three we gave her, but she did manage to pick them up herself. she would hold them in her hand and suck her thumb. she kept trying to eat them and ended up sucking her thumb. we will just have to keep practicing picking them up and putting them in her mouth. tomorrow we are going to try yogurt and later in the week - mango.

sorry that there are no maddie pics today. i will do better later this week.

teeth, teeth everywhere and not a bite to eat

tooth #5 came in last night. at least i think it was last night. i have been so focused on the teeth coming in on top i hadn't been watching the bottom gums and a new tooth showed up today! her mouth has just been an explosion of teeth this week! and there are more that i can see but can't feel yet and that is our criteria for counting them as "in". matt and i have to both agree that we can feel a tooth before i can record the date in her baby book. the poor thing just make chewing motions with her mouth - like she is chewing imaginary gum or something - or chews her fingers (as pictured), or my fingers, or any toy, or really anything she can reach and get to her mouth. you can just tell that it hurts, but she doesn't let it slow her down or make her too fussy.

since i have been making maddie baby food, i don't have many jars of food in the house (we keep a few for trying new foods before i make a big batch). but with traveling and being sick i haven't had a chance to make any and we have run out of 'cubes' in the freezer (well except for the avocado and she hasn't been too crazy about that yet) so today we tried peaches. she seemed to be indifferent to them. she ate them up. she didn't say "mmm" with every bite like she does with her other foods, but she didn't make an unhappy face like she does when we try avocado. there must be something to the sweet/sour flavor because she kept sucking longer than normal and would make this cute 'kiss-y' face while eating it.

we had even more snow today! we probably have close to two feet on the ground and it just keeps coming down. so we decided to try taking madelyn out in the snow again because she hasn't really been outside while the snow is falling (it has either been way to heavy or while she was sleeping) and we wanted to see what she thought of it. she tolerated us dragging her around on the sled and posing her for pictures, but she did not like it when matt dug a hole in the snow for her to stand in. i think she was just starting to get too cold.

and like i said, we were out of baby foods, so maddie and i braved the snow to go to the organic market for her foods and then to the regular grocery for matt and i. i buy foods for her that i wouldn't eat and have certainly never prepared - millet and acorn squash for example. she didn't really like the snow hitting her in the face while we were walking. she doesn't really seem to mind the cold, but she does not like the wind plowing in her face at all! she does this gasping thing until i find a way to block the wind. anyway, since i have determined that she can sit up in the grocery cart, i broke out this great fabric cover that i have for shopping carts today and she really liked it (and i did too). i will take a picture the next time i use it, but it basically covered everything that she could put her mouth on and has fabric loops for clipping toys on for her.

one last point of interest (maybe just mine). she started doing this thing that is pretty odd/funny to me. she closes her mouth and breathes really hard and intentionally in and out of her nose - kind of like when a cartoon character gets mad or a bull is going to charge. she is not mad at all when she does it, in fact i think she enjoys it. i don't know if it is amusing to her because she has a few boogies that rattle around when she does it or if it is just a matter of 'hey, look what i can do', but it is new and it makes me laugh. the funniest part is that her cheeks hang down farther than her chin when she clenches her lips to do it!

the video is of her opening her first official Christmas present from grandma z. and big pop tonight. and i thought that today was uneventful! 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.

first snow of the year... sort of

it was snowing pretty steady when i came out of the grocery store tonight! i was so excited! but there wasn't any accumulation, so it won't count at the first "official snowfall of the year".

so far, madelyn has not been a huge fan of the cold. the wind gets her gasping for air (that is the only way that i can describe it - she just takes air in over and over until we get her out of the wind). she does really like to watch the wind blow though. she will look at the windows and laugh at the leaves, trees, and grass blowing outside. i also can't imagine that it is fun for her to be changed with my ice cube fingers. i try to warm them up first, but there is only so much i can do when it is so cold outside.

she is about to outgrow her 9 month sleepers, so tomorrow i have to go and buy some 12 month ones. this is the first size where she hasn't had any and it sort of snuck up on us. it is just crazy how fast she is growing!

we have introduced a new bedtime routine tonight so that she doesn't eat to go to sleep. there are three reasons for the change:

1. bedtime is the only time of day that we have left where we were feeding her to sleep.
2. we really need to start brushing her teeth after her last meal.
3. its just time - she is almost 5 months after all.

so now first we eat, then we bathe and get dressed for bed, then we read two books (one fun and one about praying or going to bed), say our prayers and turn off the lights. we will see how long it takes her to adjust. i am guessing that it won't be long since this is how all of her other sleep routines are for naps. tonight she was just too happy and was crying because she was lonely. when you went in to check on her she was all smiles but would start crying again as soon as i left the room. matt was having a harder time with it than i was so he went in to hold her in the dark until she got more sleepy.

that's all for now. love!