"go brewers!"

last night madelyn took in her first 'tailgate' and brewers game of the season (unfortunately they lost). madelyn had a wonderful time and didn't go to bed until 9:45pm! (her normal bedtime is 8:00.) as an extra bonus, she slept until 7:30am this morning! i felt so pampered to still be in bed that late.


so we went to pick up our location balloons (balloons you tie to the car so the rest of your group can find you - in our case 80 people) on thursday night and madelyn could not have been more excited to bring home some balloons. all day yesterday when ever i would mention the baseball game she would shout "balloons!" and run up to see them where we had tied them to a dining room chair. the picture is from our trip to the game where she got to hold the two stars and "smile face" balloons.



tailgating with matt's co-workers madelyn got to learn several new words, but her favorite was "grill" or "grilling". i think that it helped that daddy was the grill master of the tailgate. she also got spoiled with more junk and sugar foods than she has ever had before. she really liked this huge rice crispy treat (with blue food coloring for the brewers). i don't think she has had so much sugar in a single sitting before. she was also really excited to run over and give daddy a bite at the grills. the first time she went to share was my idea, but she decided that she needed to go back later and give him another bite. she must have gotten her fill of sweets because she turned down a juice box in favor of water when we got into the stadium for the game.



i wish that i had been able to get video of her cheering on the brewers and clapping along with all the stadium chants/cheers but it was a difficult angle and so, so loud where we were sitting. she loved all the organ songs and would get out of her seat to dance. she did so much better than last season! i am sure that being older helped, but she also had her own seat this time and the game went by much faster (three-up, three-down pace).


she particularly liked the pitching. she would see the guy wind up and say "the pitch!" as he would throw it. i think she was able to follow the hits, but can't be totally sure. she did look in the right place the whole path of the ball and said that she could see it, but who knows.


after the sausage race (another high point for madelyn) we sat through one more inning before calling it a night. she was still doing great, but we knew that we were on borrowed time and

needed to get her (and me) home and in bed. plus the profanity in the college groups sitting around us was increasing as their beer counts did. (matt and maddie's creepy glasses were supplied by one of matt's co-workers and everyone wore them for pictures - even maddie.)


she called out "go brewers" several times on the way to the car and was marching to her own chant of "march, march, march" that was entertaining those walking around us. she did stop and look back towards the stadium when the crowd would let out a big cheer. i think she did so well because she was just feeding on the energy of everyone around her and expected her to crash in the car, but she stayed awake the whole ride home.


once we were home and ready for bed, she almost passed on a book but realized what she had said no to and quickly changed her mind. however, she only let me read it once before rolling over and saying good night. love.



p.s. the first of her 2-year molars has made its official appearance - at least it was the first time i got to see it.

a day off?

i took wednesday off from work so that i could finish up some christmas shopping, wrap gifts, get our family presents shipped out, and mail out our christmas cards. it was non-stop action all day from 7am until 12:30am and i still didn't get everything done!

madelyn was having another difficult day. so matt and i discussed giving her a little motrin to see if it was something causing her pain that was leading this this totally out of character behavior. while waiting for the motrin to kick in (or not) i launched into the battle of the shirt. for a few days madelyn has not been willing to put on a shirt and it has taken a lot of effort (and time) to get her into one. not having a lot of time before we needed to head out, i struck a deal - what about a zip up jacket instead? she loved that idea. so we quickly finished getting dressed and she would put on everything but her coat (usually her favorite item). i did convince her to bring it with us even if she didn't want to wear it because she might be cold. she even carried it all the way to the car for me. and as soon as we got out of the car at the first store she asked to put it on.

about the time we got in the car the motrin started relieving whatever pain she has been in because she was like her normal self all day! she walked without wining into and out of stores. she carried the basket for me in one of the stores. it was so nice to run errands with a happy little girl again! we had such a fun day together. we even sat down and shared a pretzel after shopping at sam's before heading home for lunch and a nap (for her, not me - i had a lot of wrapping to get done).

i had hoped to get all the wrapping and boxing done for our shipments while madelyn napped, but 2-1/2 hours later i was barely halfway there! madelyn was really helpful with the wrapping. i would wrap something and she would put it in the bag for where it was being shipped. the wrapping must have looked like fun because madelyn tried to wrap herself up in the paper. then she spent some time working very hard to carry the extra rolls of paper around the house before building towers with the ribbon spools. like i said, she was her normal, delightful, helpful self.

since we had success with the motrin we feel certain that she is dealing with pain. and when she spit up a little bit of milk twice yesterday, i feel fairly certain that it is her 2-year molars. she only spits up when she is teething so it has been a sure sign that teeth are on their way. we have her 18-month check up on tuesday, so we will definitely discuss this with her doctor. we haven't given her any more motrin - so don't worry that we are drugging our daughter for our convenience. and her temperament has been slightly improved so maybe she is getting used to it. some of it is just the normal "terrible twos" type of things, but there is very obviously more going on with her right now. love.

briana marie is here!

madelyn has a new cousin (well as of yesterday morning). briana marie was born to her uncle josh and aunt adrienne at 10:02am yesterday. we are really excited because this means that we will definitely get to meet her on our upcoming trip to florida! adrienne was originally due july 1. grandma z. and big pop now have three granddaughters with birthdays within a one and a half week period in june! not to mention that adrienne's birthday is today! (happy birthday, aunt adrienne!)

i wanted to post about this yesterday but was exhausted from a cranky, fever-y, tired maddie all night. maddie has at least 5 teeth coming in right now. i say "at least" because that is how many i can actually feel and see. she had a fever of 103 and all she wanted to do was sit with me, suck her thumb, and hold onto "bear". i had to hand her off to matt for a few minutes so that i could eat some dinner and you would have thought that i was leaving her forever. she had such a devastated expression on her face. she settled down in to her daddy's embrace quickly, but the initial reaction broke my heart. i just hate it when she is so uncomfortable and there is really nothing that can be done for her. luckily the motrin kicked in within an hour and her fever was down by bedtime. she napped a total of 6-7 hours yesterday! during one of her medicate "happy" times yesterday she was playing with a ball by throwing it at the wall and furniture to bounce it back to her. by the time i got the camera she had gotten too close to the furniture to get much of a bounce, but in the second video she starts throwing it and 'chasing' it. enjoy!

today has been another really rough day for madelyn. neither one of us got much sleep last night because she is in so much pain. say a prayer for us that tonight will be better. it is so hard to hear her with such a pitiful little cry. love.

update: i added a little baby orajel to her gums just now and it made a huge difference! she was actually able to play and sleep a little.

update #2: just came home from the doctor's office and madelyn has hand-foot-mouth disease. there is nothing that can be done other than treating the fever - it could be a very, very long week.

maddie in a basket

literally, its maddie in a basket. she spent a long time "playing" in this basket in my office today. and seemed to enjoy it. she kept squealing and laughing. she would look up at me and then duck and hide her face in the basket too.

she had a sad day with her teeth coming in. she even spit up more than yesterday (a classic teething sign for maddie). there are now three new teeth in for a total of 11 in her mouth.

that's it for tonight. love.

things that go

madelyn has been all about her toys on wheels today! here are some videos with her firetruck, tractor, and phone (the old school toy) powered by maddie. it was so cute to watch her push them all over the house. she even figured out that she has to flip them back on their wheels when she pushes them so hard that they turn over.

they have even been more interesting than looking in the cabinets (her current obsession). she pushed the firetruck into the kitchen and started opening cabinets. all i had to do was push the truck with my foot a little and she was all over it again. it definitely made my kitchen duties a lot easier tonight! (not to mention that my sweet husband had cleaned up last night because i wasn't feeling well.)

i think that her molars are making some more progress because she has been chewing on her pointer finger almost constantly and acting clingy and whiny. hopefully some will come in soon so that she can have a little relief.

another recent habit madelyn has is climbing into the toy baskets and sitting on the toys to play. she will stay in there for a while too, just playing with whatever she can pull out from under her. of course the other advantage to playing in the basket is that she can get up on top of the coffee table - well at least she can try...

that's it for tonight. i am off to bed early to see if i can shake this bug i picked up before maddie gets it. love.

catch-up

sorry for not posting in a while, maddie is feeling so much better, but i, on the other hand, have been drained the past few days with a migraine today. not to mention that i am going in a hundred different directions and just haven't had the time to sit down and collect my thoughts. but tonight i am making the time - enjoy the update.

this picture is from today while i was resting on the couch and maddie was climbing all over me. she has been biting her bottom lip so much that she has a chaffed spot about the size of a dime on the right side of her chin and a smaller spot on the other side. it looks painful (she even scratched it today so that it bled a little), but she doesn't even seem to notice it. even when i wipe off her face after meals - nothing. so i guess that is good.

she continues to enjoy playing peek-a-boo. she has gotten better at hiding herself. in this picture she was hiding behind an end table in the living room. she just kept going up and down 'hiding' from me. you can see how much she was enjoying herself. also note the drool on her shirt from her molars coming in (i can feel one on the upper right about to cut through) although this is only half the size that it normally is because i had just changed her shirt.

yesterday her teeth were hurting her and she was being a little clingy as a result. i was trying to get some work done so i would put her back down on the floor. well, maddie wasn't going to have that and she would cry (fake cry) a little and put her forehead on the floor - her first temper tantrum. i say it was her 'first' because if she is as strong willed as her father and i are, there will be many more to come.

i love this picture of her from sunday morning before church because that is how she is most of the time - hair disheveled and a big, excited grin on her face. matt and i get so much joy from watching her enjoy each day.

lastly, maddie is taking more and more steps on her own each day as she grows more confident in her balance. we play the 'free standing' game every day and count "1-2-3-ta-da!" and then she will occasionally take a few steps towards us from her 'free stand'. maddie enjoys this game as much as we do (okay we probably get a little more excited about it than she does). its so cute because she whisper 'talks' the entire time and gets ready to balance with each count. i am hoping to get some video soon, but it is still too new to distract her right now.

okay. i have got to rest up. more later. love.

mouth talk

today's post is about madelyn's mouth - what it does and what goes in it lately. as you may have guessed everything goes in her mouth! today she even started biting her own arm at breakfast. i didn't realize that she was actually biting herself until i noticed the red teeth marks later in the day. i thought she was just 'mouthing' or sucking on her wrist because it had a little porridge. (i checked - this is perfectly normal in a teething baby.) she is just trying to get some relief for the pain of her molars coming in.

one of the other ways she has been finding relief is by grinding her teeth. it gives me the heebie-jeebies! but i try not to react too much. this is her teeth grinding face pictured here. at least she doesn't do it in her sleep. apparently that is when it becomes worrisome otherwise it is normal.

today i added kelp powder to her morning porridge and she ate the whole thing right up. i didn't try any myself, but maybe later in the week i will give it a try. i also made her a new finger food for her afternoon snack - mozzarella cheese. in addition to the cheese she had mango and cantaloupe pieces. she really loves feeding herself. she gets so excited and seems to enjoy the 'experience' more. and all the finger foods make her want to hold the spoon more without my help. i don't mind the extra time or the mess, but the really runny purees don't always make it to her mouth.

the next new food will be kiwi. (did you know that you can freeze kiwi, cantaloupe and other vitamin c fruits submerged in orange juice? the juice keeps the fruit from loosing its vitamin c. crazy, right? supposedly the texture is a little mushier when you defrost it but it keeps in the freezer for 10 months. more than you ever wanted to know - sorry - i was excited.)

the closing maddie story - she thinks "eskimo kisses" are funny. if you say "eskimo kisses" and rub noses with her she will hold still and giggle. so sweet. love.

success!

madelyn finally figured out how to climb over the center support under the kitchen table. here is a photo series documenting her achievement.

yes, she is crying in the last shot. the landing was a little harder than she had intended. but at least she didn't get stuck this time.

i am starting to see little signs of separation anxiety from madelyn. she has been a little clingy over the past month and shows a slight preference to me but today she cried when i would leave the room and stopped when i came back. she didn't do it once matt got home so that was nice. hopefully this phase won't last very long - it makes working a lot more challenging because i can't hold her all day (or rather let her hold on to me).

she also had the last of her front teeth cut through today. so now we wait on the molars.

i'm off to volleyball! love.

on the road again

so much is going on right now! matt wants to stress that she is not "walking", but madelyn took two steps yesterday going from me to matt! its pretty exciting! i held her up for a step or two to get her going and then let go and she took two more to get to matt's hands. her balance gets a little better everyday. the sensation of walking both excites and scares her - you can just see it in her face.

since her mobility is just exploding right now i have started to give her free run of the house. i stay with her and follow her around, but i don't try to keep her confined to any one room. she is now free to explore her home. two of her favorite things are the stools at the kitchen counter. she has just figured out that she can climb up one and move herself to the other. they are a little wobbly with her pulling on them, but so far there have been no major catastrophes.

i am pretty sure that she is starting to cut her molars. (i think that i am starting to be able to feel them on the upper right.) she has never drooled so much! she has also shown real interest in her teething rings and anything long enough to reach the back of her mouth for chewing. her favorite is the rubber handle of her hair brush. the cutest part about the drooling is that she tries to suck it all back in. you can hear it in this video where she is sucking on her tongue and lips trying to contain the drool. all the drooling has also given her a little cough.

we are also experimenting with a later bedtime of 8:00pm. the thought here is that matt will have a better chance of getting home before she goes to bed for the night and that i will have a better chance of getting some work time in before she wakes up in the morning. we are going to try it for a month and if she still isn't sleeping later then we will go back to the earlier bedtime.

i am heading off to kansas for work tonight so matt and maddie will be on their own until wednesday. matt says that he might try to blog while i am gone, but we'll see - he is really into his tiger woods golf on the wii...

last night we went to a post-holiday party with matt's work peers. we took a picture of the kids together (at least the ones that were there) because there was a baby born to someone in their group every month last year. we lined them up by age and maddie is the youngest on the right (the oldest is 13 months).

be watching for matt's updates and if he doesn't i will be back to posting on thursday. 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.

grandma has landed

as you can see grandma is here! and she brought a late Christmas with her. she is spoiling us all rotten and madelyn doesn't know what to do with herself she has so many new toys to look at and play with.

we spent all afternoon shopping today. i am exhausted! maddie did really fantastic. we were out from 12:30 until around 7:30 without any really crying from her. she ate two meals and snacks on the road. napped a little in her stroller, in the car, and in grandma's arms.

i love these disposable place mats for dining out. it is so great to just stick them on the table and maddie can eat her finger foods by herself, just like at home. i had a whole lunch box to carry around with all her yogurt, bananas, avocado, snacks, and water today. it actually worked out better than i thought. i think it helped that it was pretty cold today so the car itself was like a refrigerator as we ran around.

grandma is having fun feeding maddie:



grandma is also really having fun making maddie laugh! here is some video of them playing in maddie's room while i was working. i could hear them laughing so i went to see what was up. later grandma told me that she was teaching maddie to dance.



in un-grandma news maddie was grinding her teeth yesterday! i checked my "what to expect the first year" book immediately to see what i should do about it (because i am that sort of spaz). i guess it was just a new fun trick for her. she did it off and on during the day, but didn't do it at all today so maybe she is already over it. i hope so - that noise makes me crazy.

maddie continues to sleep pretty soundly for 10+ hours so i think we might be out of the bad trend i had created of feeding at night. cross your fingers for another good night tonight!

love.

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.

video fix

okay, so my 24 cold has turned into more of a 96 hour and counting cold. i could not be sick at a worse time! i have so much to do right now between work and christmas preparation. oh well, i just have to concentrate on getting better and what doesn't get done, doesn't get done. enough about me...

the pictures are of maddie in my favorite pjs this morning. they are a size 12-18months! she is just getting so big! her sleeping feat last night was to get both of her legs out of the 'legs' of her pjs and into the torso part! they fit so snugly i don't know how she managed to do that...

here are a few videos of madelyn doing her 'rocking' that i think could turn to crawling any day now. (actually, as i was waiting for the videos to upload, she took a few crawling 'steps'! she covered about two feet of the floor!)







she also has another tooth! there is one that broke through the gum on the upper left, one over from center. so that was pretty exciting. it looks like all four of her front teeth may come in at the same time - only time will tell.

well i should get back to my recovery. love.