home bound

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.

the day after

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.

merry christmas!

merry christmas! i hope that everyone had a wonderful day with their families and loved ones! we had a quietly, wonderful day at home with our little family.

madelyn was so excited about each and every gift that it literally took the whole day to get her to open all of her presents. she wanted to play with each toy and read each book before we could tear her away from it to open another wrapped gift. while it took a long time, i was glad that she is always content with what she has and i hope that she has many more christmases like this one.

i have put together a little highlight video of our morning. madelyn was so neat about unwrapping her gifts. she would make piles with the torn paper and would usually have to get all the paper off before having a reaction to the gift. of course her first comment was usually "open". (we are all wearing reindeer pajamas. my family always unwrapped pjs on christmas eve and we have continued that tradition - this year's theme was reindeer.)

madelyn also got a junior doctor's kit. she has spent a lot of time playing with it. i think that it helped that she had her checkup this week and the doctor let her play with the otoscope the whole visit. she knew to put that in her ear (and ours) right away. another instrument that she knew immediately how to use was the stethoscope. she would quietly 'listen' to her heart and chest, my knees, jesus in the nativity, you get the idea. and daddy taught her how to make a heart beat noise so now she give a "thump, thump" sound when 'listening' to a heart.

she has really enjoyed a little play house set (seen in the picture). everything from her "henry" train to her stacking cups has made a trip through the front door. she is just having fun seeing what will fit in it. we didn't know that it took batteries until after we realized that we didn't have any more (the kitchen took a lot), so she hasn't even gotten to hear all the noises it makes too. that is just going to refresh her love all over again when we get some more batteries.

i thought for sure that all the excitement would make her get a long nap, no. i was very much mistaken. madelyn did not take a long nap, she didn't even take a short nap, she took no nap! we tried twice and she would lay down in bed like normal but then 15 minutes later we would hear her playing and her door opening and closing. at least she knew enough to stay in her room until we came to get her. surprisingly she was perfectly happy and cooperative all day. she didn't act like someone who had been taking 3 hour naps all week and needed to sleep.

since she was some how still awake and happy we went to a neighborhood in the area that has been doing a charity light display for the past 21 years. madelyn really enjoyed the lights (that she could see - street parking and snow piles made some of the viewing difficult) and really liked seeing "jesus" in the nativity displays. madelyn's love of jesus has been a wonderful reminder this season. he is the first thing on her mind in the morning and the last thing on her mind at night (she has taken the figure to bed with her more than once). and at dinner she asks to pray and then sing "jesus loves me" at least once before she will let go of our hands and let us eat dinner. she has been such a blessing to us and christmas has been such a wonderful time to reflect on just how blessed we are. merry christmas! love.

christmas eve

i thought that wednesday morning was like a fairy tale christmas eve. the snow was falling in big fluffy flakes and it was sticking to all the tree branches (or as maddie calls them "tree sticks"). we haven't really had a good tree sticking snow so i had to take some pictures. growing up in florida, i really was dreaming of a white christmas and now i finally get to have them! the day would have been better if matt and i didn't have to work, but thankfully we were both able to get off between 2 and 3 in the afternoon.

madelyn had a really good day and wore her santa outfit (thanks, nana) until it was time to get ready for church. she had eaten apple sauce with her breakfast (at her request) and was a mess. so she took a shower with mommy before getting into her christmas dress. she ate two cups of apple sauce and was still asking for more (and that was on top of her waffle and banana breakfast).

her words for the day were "hey" and "sunshine". she just kept saying "hey, hey" all day. sometimes it was for "hi" and sometimes in a "hey come here" kind of way. i think that she got that one from daddy, but i have noticed that i say it more than i thought i did since she started saying it. and then she was requesting that i "sing" a song about the "sun". the only one i could think of is "you are my sunshine". madelyn loved it! she would lay her head on my lap when i would start singing it and look me in the eyes. i don't know why this song makes her so cuddly, but it was enough to get me to sing it like 30 times. and then i decided that i couldn't just sing to her all day - it was nap time.


she didn't believe me that we were going to church at night. i would say "are we going to go to church tonight?" and she would say "no". while we were getting ready after maddie's nap, i let her watch "the grinch that stole christmas" (cartoon version). i wasn't sure that she would like it, but she loves her dr. seuss books so i thought that it was worth a try. she loved it! when the grinch first gets the idea to steal christmas and gets that evil grin on his face, madelyn said "uh-oh"! she was really into the songs and everything.

at church they were only doing childcare for kids 3 and under, so i thought that we would try bringing maddie in the service - at least for the singing. she was dancing and loving every minute of the songs and lights. it was cute because she would look around with this big smile on her face and then it would fade and her dancing would slow in a "why aren't any of you dancing" sort of way. but then she would look back at the stage and get right back into it! the girl loves to dance! once the actual message part of the service began, matt ran maddie to the nursery were there were a ton of kids to play with! he said that she never even looked back.

after church we picked up some chinese food and headed home. after a quick dinner maddie went straight to bed so that matt and i could get ready for "santa". it only took matt two hours to put together the play kitchen and we were in bed by 9:30. (we watched "tropic thunder" while wrapping and assembling since we figured it would have a pretty simple plot line. later we took in a little of the "a christmas story" marathon.)

and here is a picture of all our hard work ready to greet madelyn first thing on christmas morning! i love surprising people and was really looking forward to the look on maddie's face when she saw all the new additions to the gifts under the tree (most of which are from grandparents). love.

counting

madelyn requests to "count" in some of her books now. she will repeat counting through about six before loosing interest in starting over at "one" each time, but "eight" is her favorite number to say. she will always say "eight" when we get to it while counting.

there is one book she likes to "count" in particular - a bug book. it is colorfully illustrated, but the text is only the number and the insects' names. after five times through or so i start to have a difficult time bringing enthusiasm to the counting.

similarly to the repetitive counting, we also have to repeat the names for the seven dwarfs (a la snow white) when we get to that page of the story. she just keeps saying "again", "again". love.

18-month check-up

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.

last one of the day

i was obviously home all day today! i think that this is my sixth post of the day (or somewhere around there). i just had to note that during our weekly skype with the grandparents, madelyn said all four of their names - "papa", "nana", "grandma" (said more like "grapa" and "grampa"), and "pop" for big pop. she has said some of them before, but this was a record to say all four in a single night.

that's it. i am going to bed. love.