maddie in mittens

madelyn had a great day today. after a later than normal wake-up (7:30 instead of 6:30) and a good afternoon nap (2 hours), madelyn was all smiles today.

she has really been into hugging lately. she hugs everything - pictures, toys, clothes, socks, books, mom, dad, everything she loves. when we are watching cartoons after her nap or sitting a reading books, she will put her arm around my shoulder to grab my neck and pull me in for a kiss or hug. the kind of hug where our cheeks are squished together. i love being her buddy like that.

we spent the morning at home while i was working. madelyn played by herself most of the time, but she wanted to watch "lorelai" "talk" when it was time for one of my meetings and had to go to her room. by the time i got back to my office and flipped on the video monitor i was just in time to see her door swing open and hear her happily making her way back to my office. again i had to leave my video conference (luckily it was just with one of the girls from my department and not a huge deal to interrupt) to occupy maddie. this time i opted for veggietales since apparently maddie can open doors now! i am hoping that i just didn't close her door all the way and not that she can turn a doorknob now - we will see.

the picture to the right is of her hugging and dancing with her caterpillar/lovebug. she was just laughing and hugging it and then started spinning in circles with it and that is when i went for a camera. i missed the perfect shot of one of the times she fell down and had her face on the bug's head with a big smile and her hair mirroring the bug's antennas - oh well.

after her afternoon nap i decided that a very good girl deserved a trip to the park. she was so content that it took me asking a few times before she was interested in getting dressed and putting on her shoes. once she was dressed she ran and got her red mittens. these mittens are really fuzzy and madelyn often plays with them and the matching hat - of course she hugs them a lot too. she brought them to me so that i would help her put them on. typically, i put them on and then she wants them off, but not today. today, she clapped her hands together and headed for the garage door to leave for the park. she wore them the whole way there, in the swing, up and down the slide twice, and even picking up sticks! i couldn't believe how long she wore them. they finally had to come off when she couldn't manage to hold two sticks at once. sticks trump mittens.

it is encouraging to know that she will keep them on when playing because i was worried about trying to keep mittens and gloves on her this winter. hopefully her affection for them will last that long. love.

i see you - upside down

tonight madelyn figured out that she can put her head on the ground and look at me upside down. she was very amused by this and kept giggling. what was really funny was that she was spinning in circles and then putting her head on the ground to see me. she has gotten in this position before, but not several times in a row like tonight with an intention to look at the world from this perspective. i have actually been looking forward to this phase. i think it is so cute when toddlers peek at you between their legs.



during dinner we had a unique show as a hot air balloon took off down the street and floated over the neighborhood right behind out house. madelyn was so excited to see such a big "boon"!

since today was one of the last days to this unseasonably warm stretch of weather we have been having, i decided to treat madelyn to one last dip in the pool. especially since she has been begging to wear a swimsuit. which lead to two new words of the day "suit" and "hat". i asked her to pick out which swim suit she waned to wear and she put on her swimsuit hat. granted it matches her favorite swimsuit, the one she ultimately chose.

we have been letting her choose her clothes before getting dressed from two pre-selected choices. so when she said "no" to both pj choices last night she slept in just a diaper. matt had forgotten and when he went in to get her in the morning he was a little surprised to see her undressed.

while the weather was around 80, the water out of the hose was substantially colder. maddie had fun though. she played in the pool and yard for a good hour. and then we started working on a new skill - opening the front door. as you can see reaching was not a problem, but she didn't quite have enough strength in her little index finger to get it open. she was so patient while trying. i think it helped that she wasn't actually trying to go inside, she was just trying to see what would happen.

my health update - i took a sick day today and went to the doctor. i was given an inhaler so that i can have a conversation without a coughing fit and a prescription for antibiotics. i am already feeling much better and the sick day was a great idea (thanks, matt!). and then my wonderful husband came home for lunch and watch maddie while i napped (she was just waking up when he got home) before picking up dinner on his way home tonight. love.

cookin' with mom

i have been struggling since last friday. i am starting to think that i need to go to see my doctor about my congestion because it is just getting worse. it is difficult to do nap time when i can't get through a book without at least one coughing fit!

i had the morning off (technically i had it off, but i spent the whole morning working) so maddie and i went to return some library books. since i am sick we didn't go inside, but i decided that while we were out i would check out the little lakeside city where this library is located. (library cards here are good at most of the neighboring cities' libraries, so you can get some variety.) there is actually a small beach on the lakefront! i almost stopped just to take some pictures, but i didn't want to get maddie all sandy just for a quick picture. i think that we might go back to check it out on thursday afternoon if i am feeling better.

madelyn fell asleep in the car, which was earlier than i would have liked, so after she woke up we headed to the park. madelyn walked the whole way there (up a decent hill) and took in the neighbors' landscaping. she does a really great job at "looking and not touching" when asked of course. since it was still during the neighborhood napping hours (1-3) we had the place to ourselves. for the first time ever, i just sat on the bench and let maddie run around by herself. she spent most of her time checking out the tree mulch and picking up sticks. i think that she was just happy that i took her outside. we left when maddie started to call out "cook" and got in her stroller. off we headed, back to the house to "cook". only by the time we got home, maddie was ready for a real nap. she slept for another 2 hours! (on top of the 1-1/2 she slept earlier in the day.)

here is some video of how maddie 'helps' me cook in the kitchen (try not to be distracted by my scratchy voice). "cook" was the word of the day today. even when i was rinsing grapes for lunch she called it "cook" because i was in the kitchen preparing food. love.

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.

al's run/walk anniversary

today we walked the 5 mile al's run/walk for children's hospital. we also did this walk last year and it was much, much colder. we had maddie all bundled up and while we were walking to the starting line she sucked her thumb for the first time ever. i did a search for that picture on the blog for anyone who wanted to look back and realized that it was the first picture i ever posted to the blog and that today, september 20 is the one year anniversary of my first blog post! and 235 posts later, here we are.

back to the walk today. there were over 15,000 wheelchairs, runners, and walkers for the race today. it took us 5-1/2 minutes just to get to the starting line once the race began. we were near the middle of the pack and once we got going we couldn't see the end of the race or the leaders - it was just walkers as far as we could see. in the picture the entire road is covered in walkers. it is such a nice walk through downtown milwaukee and by the lakefront. and it is for such a great cause. it was really emotional for me to read the backs of every one's shirts because most of the walkers (if not all) are walking in memory of a child who has passed away, or in honor of one that is fighting, or celebrating a child that has survived. every now and then you will see a child identified as a children's patient. i was just so overwhelmed with gratitude that we have never had to know the struggles these families have faced and so inspired by the "mommies for maggie" who were walking together in support of one of the mom friends and "ethan almighty" who was riding on one of his team's shoulders. i had to stop reading the shirts because i kept crying. it is always nice to do something like this that puts my own problems in perspective. we are truly blessed.

madelyn realized today that her snack crackers were animal shaped. it kind of surprised me when she started to identify them with "baa", "cluck", "moo", etc. i had to take her word for it on some of them because i can't figure out what animal the cracker is supposed to be! recently she has learned to ask for "snacks" when she is hungry and we are not at home (sometimes when we are home). the funny thing about it is that is often sounds like she is saying "sex" and not "snacks". love.

yellow socks?

yesterday, maddie and i had a busy day at home. she fell asleep during one of my meetings in the morning and slept from 9-11:45 which meant that we had a really long time to go before bedtime. around 2 o'clock i was ready to take a break outside - and so was maddie. she was already wearing a red t-shirt and black leggings so i told her that we had to put shoes on before we could go to the park. madelyn takes off at top speed to her room when we mention "shoes" or "go". i let her pick out the shoes and as i mentioned before she has been insisting to wear socks regardless of the shoes. she grabbed some yellow socks and sat down on my lap. since these didn't match her clothes, i put them back in the drawer and suggested white socks instead. this was met with a very emphatic "no" as she dove back to the drawer and grabbed the yellow socks again. needless to say, she wore the yellow socks.

she discovered that wearing a t-shirt meant that she can see her body inside her shirt. and it made a really handy "hiding" place for a quick game of peekaboo while i prepared her lunch.

everyday we watch some of our blogger friends' videos and look at pictures. madelyn is particularly taken with lorelai - as you may have guessed from my past few posts. so here is madelyn trying to say "lorelai". she asks to see her by name now.

and madelyn got shout outs from lorelai today in her blog - in two different posts. i guess this is the modern form of pen pals. it is cute to see these two become long distance friends.

on a funny note, one of maddie's current favorite books these days is "here comes peter cottontail". and then we got "corduroy" from the library and she has reintroduced her "corduroy's christmas" book into the favorites mix. it is just funny to be reading holiday books away from the holiday season - well, maybe its just funny to me. love.

an interview with madelyn

madelyn can now fake laugh (thanks again to lorelai!). she doesn't so much say "ha-ha", but gives a long "haaaa". she also comes really close to actually saying lorelai. the picture is another constant companion these days. sorry for so many videos, but it is difficult to capture what she does day to day in still shots. love.