we were home bound today between rain and fog (and lots of cleaning and goodwill sorting). it is amazing to see all that snow melted and our grass and deck exposed. anyway, we had quite a chatty maddie today and i wanted to note all the new words.
strong, milk, puddle, water, hug, helping, stickers, and cereal were the new words that i jotted down today and wanted to capture on the blog. love.
madelyn and i had a fun morning playing at home while daddy went to work until around 1. we played with her mr. potato head toys for a long time. she was having a lot of fun trying to get the glasses to fit on her face. she was so proud when they would stay on for even a moment. (i think that she looks a lot like me when i was her age in this picture. in fact, i called my mom because i thought that there was a picture of me with mr. potato head glasses on, but it was brad.)
she was so cute dancing to one of her toy's music today that i had to share. she was so happy jamming to it! she wasn't really playing with it, but wanted to keep it on for the dance beat. i think you can tell how big her smile is in the video.
she went strong until daddy helped her with lunch and made our first attempt at nap time. thankfully, she went down without a fight and napped for about 3 hours. she was a little bit out of sorts from the long nap when she woke up, but after some milk and rudolph, she was ready to run errands with daddy and mommy. her new thing is to say "out" when she is done riding in the car. it always makes me laugh because she just thinks of it all of the sudden like "oh, here is my stop - let me out".
other words to mention - heavy, cake, stool (as in step stool), mug, and play. love.
we bundled up and headed out in the falling snow for madelyn's 18-month check-up this morning. she was in an excellent mood this morning! it was a little surprising because she woke up a little before 5am - the first time. she woke up a few more times before sleeping from 7-8. i thought that she would have been grumpy today since she usually is when her sleep is interrupted like that and she has been in this difficult phase lately (more on that later).
madelyn was so friendly at the office that her doctor commented on it because she said that it is unusual in an 18-month-old to be that friendly to strangers. there was a male college student shadowing the doctor and madelyn greeted them warmly with a wave and a "hi" as she ran up to show them the puzzle pieces she had been playing with while we waited. anyway, here are her stats:
height - 35 inches (99.6 percentile)
weight - 28lbs. 6oz. (92 percentile)
head circumference - 41.9cm (97 percentile)
her height/weight combo (equivalent to a body mass index) is around 62% which made her doctor really happy since she has been at like 30%. and it is definitely not from a lack of appetite! i think that she has just finally caught up with her growth rate. the summary of the appointment - she has been amazingly healthy and is doing great developmentally.
so we had another really great day today. whatever has been bothering her seems to have passed. her doctor said that it was good that we gave her motrin which made me not feel so guilty for giving it to her in the first place. but hopefully we will have many more days of happiness to come.
speaking of happiness, madelyn is really enjoying checking out the presents under the tree. and she notices every new package and every new ornament although she does have her favorites of each. yesterday she started asking about opening them. she is eyeing some new ones in this picture and then she is tempting fate in the video. she normally does listen to me when i ask her to put packages back under the tree, but the torn paper and the glimpse of a button was just too much for her to resist.
madelyn likes to help me in the kitchen while i make dinner. she got into trouble for putting her spoon into the taco meat i was making on the stove after i told her not to, so she lost her stool privileges. after a while i gave her another chance with the stool, but she could only sit on it away from the counters. surprisingly she did not even try to sneak it closer to a counter and just sat on it for the rest of dinner prep. as part of the compromise, madelyn wanted to do her own cooking. here she is sitting on her stool (well she started to get up once i got the camera) holding a mixing bowl and stirring with a whisk. (she added "tend" for pretend to her vocabulary today while we were talking about her toy food not being for eating, but for pretend.)
the first picture of the post is of madelyn and her precious jar of cherries i mentioned a few days ago. she was starting to get frustrated because i wouldn't open it, but for the most part she just carries it around.
so much is going on right now, i have to summarize in bullet points:
- for father's day i got matt a kid's set of golf clubs for him to use with maddie for $1 at target. they have used them every day for the past week. madelyn has also added to her daddy's enjoyment by saying "golf" and "club".
- yesterday madelyn and i headed out on the only day this week that isn't supposed to snow to buy some groceries and goodies for christmas. first we went to the organic market for some of maddie's foods. they have little kid sided grocery carts and i decided that madelyn and i would give one a try. she did so great! it went even better than i could have imagined. i would point something out and madelyn would get it and put it in her cart. she even did a really great job of making sure not to run into anything in the aisles. after that we went to the "regular" grocery store for the rest of our shopping. again we tried a new cart style - this time it was a firetruck shaped one maddie could ride in. i normally don't go for these specialty types of things, but i knew that this would be one of our only trips outside the house for most of the week and wanted to make the most of it.
- for about the past week madelyn says "up, up, up" when we drive up a hill. she might have been doing it longer, but it took awhile for me to figure out that she said it when we were driving up a hill. i just thought that she was just saying "up" over and over for her own amusement. she even says it when there is a hill in a cartoon. we have gotten her to add a "down" after we reach the top of the hill.
- tonight at dinner maddie was being really happy and when daddy asked if she was good today she replied "yes" and "good" - another new word - before busting out in hysterical laughing. after several more "good"s, i asked her if she were silly and "silly" was added into the mix of "good" and laughing. dinnertime is so much fun!
love.
i wasn't going to post tonight, but then madelyn was hysterical telling matt about her day at dinner. we were all cracking up. mainly because madelyn answered "a lot" without any prompting and without having ever said that before. in the video version she says "a bunch" first, but it was the "a lot" that had us all laughing very hard. especially since madelyn knew that it was funny (even if she didn't know why) and kept saying it over and over, louder and louder cracking herself up throughout the rest of dinner and bath time. it eventually became that she was saying "what" instead of "a lot", but she would come back to "a lot" as her original punchline.
when i came down to download the video i found that i also had some video from this morning as madelyn ate her first bowl of cereal with milk and a spoon. she did a lot better than the video shows and hardly spilled any milk, but you can get the general idea.
when she came out of her room this morning (around 8:30am and she had another 4 hour nap today) she went straight to the christmas tress saying "uh-oh" over and over as she examined it. it occurred to me that she was upset that the lights weren't on and thought that the tree was broken. i had to explain that we would turn the lights on when it got dark, but that the tree was okay. i just thought it was cute how concerned she was that the lights might not be working.
tonight she must have been missing daddy and wanting to go outside in the snow because she spent the evening trying to get me to put his snow clothes on her (they were out from him wearing them to shovel before work this morning). she could manage to get his gloves on by herself and was satisfied with that for a while, but then she wanted his pants and coat put on her. obviously the pants wouldn't work, but she did manage to keep his coat on for a while after i got it on her.
she also broke one of her toys tonight (on accident) and told us that it was "broken" and then said that it "broke". it was only a matter of time on this word since she has broken a lot of crayons recently in her zeal for coloring.
her runny nose continues, but it reminded me that she can blow her nose. granted she does it very softly when she does and blows through her mouth most of the time. but she will hold still when i ask her to blow her nose and makes the effort while i pinch and wipe. love.
every time i post i think of something i forgot, so here are a few odds and ends...
- madelyn can definitely open door knobs now. she cannot be contained without baby locks any more. oh boy!
- "i color" is how madelyn talks about coloring. she says "color" to ask to color, but once crayons are in hand she tells me over and over that "i color". she is so proud. she is getting much better at actually coloring on the paper more than just lines/strokes.
- if something drops or gets away from her, when she picks it up she says "got it". tonight it was in reference to the bubbles in her bath. every time she would catch one with her hand she would say "got it".
- "fish" and "beach" are new words. she loves fish (to see and eat) so it was just a matter of time before she called them/it by name. "beach" was a little more of a surprise because we were looking at pictures of lorelai at the beach. i was telling madelyn about lorelai's bathing suit and sunglasses, but madelyn said "beach". it took me a minute to realize that the picture's background was indeed the beach. such a smartie!
- madelyn now likes to let me know when something is "stuck". this has really helped with her frustration in the car. she can tell me that the toy she wants is "stuck" instead of just getting more and more frustrated that i am not helping her when i can't see why she is upset; now she can tell me.
- one of the ladies from the church nursery was telling me how much she loves madelyn. that she is so happy, energetic, and a bully! she said that madelyn will go up to other kids and take their toy saying "no" to their stunned faces. she will then come back all friendly and say "hi" happily like nothing had happened. i was surprised to hear this since she is often offering toys up to share with friends and doesn't get upset when i tell her that something isn't hers and she can't have it. at least it doesn't appear to be a problem (this lady meant it as a compliment - i think). madelyn will be moving up to the older toddlers room in december anyway so she will have a harder time being a bully with the older kids.
love.
tonight we went to the downtown Christmas parade. i wasn't really sure what to expect, but i wasn't expecting much. and it was really nice! it started at 4pm and sunset is around 4:30 here, so it was dark for the majority of the parade. while it wasn't a very cold day, it was not close to warm - it was 39 on the bank sign when we were leaving the parade at 5:20m. i had bundled maddie up pretty well, but matt and i definitely could have used some more warmth.
we went downtown a little before 3pm and walked around for a little bit before deciding that we had better grab a place to stand on the parade route. i don't know why i didn't give any thought to where we would sit or how we would keep warm. i guess i didn't think that it would be so crowded and that we would just stand or sit on a curb somewhere. we ended up finding an open place up front where we could stand and wait for the next 45+ minutes for the parade to start. again, this was poor planning on our part. madelyn wasn't really keen on waiting for the parade to start and it didn't really help that they hadn't closed the road to traffic yet and cars were steadily going by a few feet from where we were standing. i decided to walk maddie around for a while, but then we needed to go back and join matt to keep our spot because others were closing/crowding in. the picture captured perfectly madelyn's enthusiasm for waiting until it was time for the parade to start (minus the occasional crying).
we brought the stroller with us, but madelyn spent almost no time in it. she began the parade on daddy's shoulders, then switched back and forth between "daddy" and "mommy" (our more common names these days), before finally becoming willing to stand on her own and dance along with the parade music. when she was being held she was clapping, laughing, and calling "hi" to the parade members.
we were all ready to get inside and get warm by the time the parade was over. and madelyn was getting more than ready for dinner. luckily, daddy was able to pick up some cookies for madelyn to snack on and get through the parade wait. even though i can count on one hand the number of times madelyn has had cookies, this is one word she has mastered and said repeatedly while we waited for daddy to come back with them.
this last picture is from thursday. i was making breadcrumbs for the recipe i was making for dinner and had cut off all the crusts. madelyn likes to get her stool and bring it over so that she can watch me "cook". after i cut of the crusts they must have looked really good because madelyn just started chowing down! she must have eaten at least two slices worth of crusts. it was cute because she got thirsty and went to the table, got her water cup, brought it over to the counter before climbing back up on her stool to keep eating.
while enjoying her breakfast of waffle, avocado, and banana this morning, madelyn paused to request a "hat". i thought that i had misheard her since this was an unusual request, but she pointed at her head and said "hat". once the hat was place upon her head she requested "shoes" (another new "s" word). i explained that she couldn't wear her shoes yet, but i could get her some socks. she agreed to the substitution. but once her socks were on the next word was "go" as she headed for the garage. i had to explain that we couldn't leave in just her pjs because it was too cold out, but maybe we would head out later.
so i was taking some pictures. i was really trying to get a good picture of the scratch on her neck that i posted about yesterday but couldn't really get one. this is the best picture and if you enlarge it you can see a little the scratch on her neck; it is at least three times as long as the part you can see and just as wide.
she has also taken an increased interest in the bird aviary. she will stand at each display listening to and looking for the birds. she points them out for me when she finds them too which is fun. the picture is from the shoreline birds and it just struck me as funny because the aviary is very warm in general (except for the penguin area) and this was a beach scene with madelyn bundled up in her heavy coat and gloves. today she wasn't that into the ducks that are loose so we didn't really spend any time there except for just passing through on our way out.
madelyn used to have a lot of interest in my shoes when playing in our closet, but she has never tried to put them on her own feet before - until today... i was cleaning up in the kitchen after breakfast and i heard this "clop, clop" noise approaching. obviously she had something on her feet, but i wasn't really sure what it was going to be. once she came around to the kitchen she had a smile on her face from ear to ear and a pair of my shoes on her feet. the funniest, and most amazing part, was that she had the heals of the shoes at her toes - she was walking in them backwards! i don't know quite how she made that work all the way from the front door to the kitchen, but she did none the less. it must have been a theme for the day because later she put on matt's slippers and wore them around our bedroom for a while.
there has also been an explosion of "s" words today (and yesterday): sleep, sleeping, step, slow (see video), stamp (she gets a hand stamp after tumbling class). additionally she has started to say her name, but she uses a "b" instead of a "d" when she says "madelyn". however, when she says "maddie" she says it with "d"s.
she ran to the diaper box that we emptied the day before to hide from me this morning and somehow managed to put a really good scratch from her jaw to near her collarbone. i know that she scratched her neck on the corner of one of the flaps because it was crushed, but i don't know what she was doing. she had only left me 30 seconds before she started crying. i will try to get a picture tomorrow because it is pretty impressive.
madelyn enjoys her bath time - especially since we have added "bubbles" to the routine. one way that we keep the bubbles fresh at the end of bath time is to pour water for her. she really enjoys this 'game' too. matt has taken it one step further by varying the speed that he pours the water. madelyn now refers to this game as "slow". she was laughing much harder last night because it was new, but i didn't think to get the camera. here is some footage from tonight's bath.
sorry that there aren't any pictures today, i left the camera downstairs this morning and didn't get it until tonight. i will try to do better tomorrow. love.
today's color of the day was "purple". i discovered this one by accident. she wanted to play with this moose head clip on my desk (a co-worker holiday gift) and i just asked her what color it was - and she said it! i didn't even say "purple" today at all. this i was able to catch on video. enjoy! love.
madelyn has added colors to her vocabulary. she has been able to hand us colored items as requested for a few months now, but today she said blue ("boo"), green ("geen"), and identified yellow without prompting.
the interior cover of most children's books are made of a solid color and we always identify it before reading each book. and as you can imagine with madelyn's love of books, we have a lot of opportunities to review colors. today, when we had a blue book madelyn responded "boo" while pointing at the book. as will everything 'new', i was really excited.
when we went to play with her blocks later i would hold up a blue block and ask her what color it was - "boo". then when i held up a green block and asked her the color she responded "geen".
the yellow came during curious george. she was watching while drinking her after nap milk and in the intro she calls out all the items she has a word/noise for (i.e. "duck", "ball", "ah-ah" (monkey)). the intro ends with george going through a yellow circle which i identify. today when i said yellow circle, she looked around and pointed at the yellow section of the blanket we were snuggling under. that is how she often expresses her comprehension of her cartoons. she will point to something on the t.v. and then find it, or something like it, in the room with us.
another new word for the day "burger", as in hamburger/cheeseburger. she has never eaten one herself (other than a veggieburger patty), but has some play food where she can build a cheeseburger that has become a recent favorite. love.
madelyn was a dancing machine today! she was having so much fun doing her 'cha-cha' dance all over the house. she particularly liked dancing in the guest room after turning on the radio. this was the best video i got because she has decided that it is more fun to watch the videos than to do whatever i am trying to catch. it is so cute how excited she gets to see the video. i did get her to run out and dance for a few seconds before racing back to watch, but it wasn't really worth posting.
today brought a flood of new words! here is some video of me trying to get her saying the first new word of the day - "turtle". most of the time it sounds like "turd", but she is trying to identify the turtle toy. if you listen closely the first time sounds the most like "turtle". she said it much more clearly other times, but this was the best i got on video.
in addition to "turtle", she said "bean" a few times while eating her green beans at dinner, "comb" after dinner (she had been playing with several combs before dinner with daddy), and her first really clear "uh-oh". she has been making the "uh-oh" sound for a while, but this was the first time that she has said the two syllables clearly. i get so excited when she adds a new word to her vocabulary! i am working on a list of all the words, animal noises, signs, and other identifying noises for her 15 month appointment next week because so many people keep asking me how many words she has in her vocabulary and i never have a good answer. i will post my final tallies after we go to her 15 month appointment. love.
another rough day of teething here today. poor maddie just wants to be held while she sucks/chews on her thumb and alternately cries (the picture below is from yesterday's snuggling). the benefit for me is that she is more snugly than normal, but the con is that she has to be held and it makes it difficult for me to work, cook dinner, or, well, anything. luckily she holds still so i can sit at the computer and type away with her on my lap.
while she was feeling well today she did one of her favorite things - 'read' books in her room. then she decided that she missed her shoes while i left the room for a minute and got up close and personal in her sock/shoe drawer.
to distract her from the teething pain i was going through some friends' blogs and playing videos 
telling her about the babies. she was watching my mouth really closely when i would say "baby" and then copy me quietly. so she said "baby" today for the first time! another word to her vocabulary. although she says it with a soft "a" instead of the correct, hard "a". (is that the correct term? i can't remember for the life of me right now and i don't care enough to do a quick search.)
there was another word first with daddy tonight during bath time. we always drain the water from the tub with maddie still in it and tell her to say "bye-bye" to the water when we open the drain. matt said that when he did it tonight maddie gave a little wave and whispered "bye-bye". he was all excited because this was a first just for him.
maddie has also started to do fake laughing for her own amusement or to get our attention in the car. she was doing it today while looking out the window into the backyard so i got the camera. when it starts she is licking the window and trying to bite it (there is a little 'fur' for the track that she is fascinated with right now).
saturday after playgroup we stopped by jcp to pick up our pictures from the not so great photo session. and i scanned them today so that you all could take a look.
and that led to the first that i hope never happens again (but somehow i know that it will) - maddie puked in public. she had been doing great for two days and i just didn't see it coming. i am pretty sure that we just over did it at playgroup with the 'treats' after so many days of just liquids and it upset her stomach, but still! we had just gotten her in the high chair at the restaurant for lunch with dad and it just kept coming and coming. i didn't even realize how bad it was until the lady at a table next to us offered her napkins. i pulled the high chair away from the table and saw the full extent of the damage. i didn't know what to do. i couldn't take her with me and matt was up ordering our food. so i was just yelling "matthew" over and over in the calmest, loud voice i could muster. he finally turned around when i used his full name. the restaurant employees could not have been nicer about the clean up. one busboy was so sweet that he offered us a clean high chair. i politely declined stating that we would be leaving now (matt got our food to go). so we left with lunch and a striped down to the diaper maddie. we did get a few looks on the way out... love.
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.
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.
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.
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.
