that's my girl

madelyn couldn't stop reading for lunch and asked to bring her book to the table (we don't normally allow toys or books at the table when food is present). seeing her using the plate to keep her book open and her other hand to pick up her sandwich reminded me of how i used to (and still do) keep reading.

unfortunately she wasn't willing to let me take a good photo. although she did ask to see it after i took it which is why she smiled in this one.

it is fun to see her really try to read now. she asks me each word she can't remember and tries to read to mason. i say "tries" because she wants to sit next to him and read so that he can see the book but then gets upset when mason just grabs it and tries to put it in his mouth. love.

super bowl

we had our own super bowl party at home with our family today. we munched on chili-cheese dip, had hot dogs and pistachio fluff for dinner, and jiffy pop for dessert. this was a game day type of feast for us and madelyn was over the moon for the jiffy pop (a first time treat).

if you asked madelyn who was going to win, she would answer enthusiastically, "chargers! go chargers!" daddy is so proud.

madelyn was very interested in one of the early commercials where a dog's bark collar gets put on a man and the dog eats all his doritos. i would describe it as outrage that the dog would eat all his chips and wanted me to explain what was on the man's neck, etc. here is her retelling (not the best of the three versions she told us before i could get to the camera):

we never make popcorn, but i was feeling nostalgic when i saw the jiffy pop at the grocery store and thought that it would be fun for our family party. once i got it open the directions (on the inside) say not to use it on a ceramic top stove. gee - that would have been nice to know before i opened it! but as always i have to know why you shouldn't do it - what are the risks? apparently it is just that the heat isn't consistent and the popcorn may not pop (and it might scratch the surface of the stove). after watching a youtube video of someone popping it on a ceramic top i gave it a try. really not a big deal at all. anyway, we ended up with some yummy popcorn and madelyn thought that the jiffy pop dome was the neatest thing ever. i actually think that it scared her a little bit.

a fun evening at home with the family. love.

logistics

there are a lot of logistics to be worked out and planned just to get through each day with minimal stress and tears in the life of a mom, but i came across a few new ones on tuesday that i thought i would share.

of course it was snowing on tuesday because it was my morning off and i had several errands to run. the first was easy. (other than driving on the slushy roads. not that it was dangerous, grandmas! i just had to drive slower.) we went by the library to drop off books, but with the other errands we didn't have time to get new ones.

next we went to the dollar store to get valentines for madelyn to take to school next week. it was early and the weather was poor so we got to park pretty close. i always struggle a little with getting in and out of the car because i have to get them out on both sides of the car. (did i mention that i am really excited about not having worry about that with a minivan?) since madelyn is older and can stand on her own, she gets out first and stands next to me while i work on getting mason out of his car seat and grab my diaper bag/purse.

i feel bad making madelyn stand in the falling snow while i try to get mason's arms to cooperate with my removing him from the car seat. i always have a little panic because i can't see madelyn while i am doing this either. i just keep asking her to stay close and within the protection of the open door. by the end she is so close that i almost can't lift mason out and stand up; i have to ask her to please move so that i can close the door.

so anyway, returning to the car it was snowing a little harder and i quickly put everything into the car and got to work on getting mason settled. once i was done with him, i turned around and looked at madelyn - her head was covered in snow! she had decided not to wear her hat and her hood had fallen off. i just laughed and brushed off her head as we worked our way around the car.

mommy dilemma #1: prioritizing when loading the car.

next we were off to buy produce and other food items for mason's baby food. madelyn loves the organic market because they have little wire frame carts that she can push. as we were making our way through the produce department madelyn exclaimed that she needed to go to the bathroom. madelyn seemed to be a little panic ed so i took her cart and hunched over to push it and the full-sized cart with mason as quickly as possible to the restrooms. i am sure i was quite a sight practically running to the other side of the store!

once at the restroom entrance i grabbed mason and the diaper bag from the cart and hurried madelyn back to the ladies room. since madelyn was all bundled up she couldn't get her pants down and onto the toilet by herself. all i could think is - what am i going to do with mason? so i made a quick decision to put him on the floor. i put my purse as far from the toilet as possible and put mason's back towards it as i sat him on the public restroom floor - yuck. thankfully it was a very clean restroom in a clean store, but i wasn't fond of setting my infant who puts everything in his mouth (including the hands he was now using to explore the floor) on the floor of a public restroom.

mommy dilemma #2: multiple kids in a public restroom.


after we finished our shopping i needed to get everyone back into the car - including the groceries. i had two bags of groceries, a diaper bag/purse, and two kids to get to the car with no one (including me) slipping and falling. not wanting to try and push a cart through the snow i started to gather everything up. first i put the diaper bag and both grocery bags (at least 30lbs.) on my left shoulder. i could barely put my arm down far enough to pick mason up. as i pulled him up he lost both shoes and a sock! thankfully, madelyn helped me out. but at this point i just couldn't put everything back down to get his shoes back on; so out into the snow i went with my barefoot boy that i was holding with one arm. he was flailing (happily) and i was trying my hardest not to drop him with the weight of the groceries on the same arm. i had to hold madelyn's hand with my other hand. i am sure that, yet again, i was quite a sight.

mommy dilemma #3: braving judgement when your kids aren't wearing socks/shoes.

i hope that you have enjoyed my reflections of everyday logistics. love.

still catching up

i am still very behind on, well, everything; so here is my attempt at an update. (i started this post yesterday.)

- mason had his first teething biscuit on tuesday. madelyn had one too. i don't think that barley is her favorite flavor based on the face she made, but she did have another one today. (they come packaged in twos so maddie and mason have been splitting them.)

- mason is a patient little guy and that has been a really great thing - until recently. he has decided that he can cry - patiently - hour after hour in the wee hours of the morning until he breaks us. i think that it is his top teeth coming in but it doesn't always make me very sympathetic. last night he slept, but it took a while to go down - like three hours. tonight he felt asleep right away so hopefully he makes it all night.

- madelyn loves to play peek-a-boo with mason. i wish she could have refrained in the video below because i was trying to get him clapping his 'coins'. he was happily clapping the two coins in his hands together like symbols and then got distracted. it is almost a three minute video so besides mason laughing there isn't too much to it. (madelyn's hair looked like that when i picked her up from school. i guess he didn't want to wear her barrette any more.)


- madelyn just gets funnier and funnier. she has been testing out the things we say -mainly from discipline - on us and it makes us crack up. today she told me to pretend to be asleep and when i did she told me with finger wagging, "if you come out i will turn off your light. if you come out again no movies and no music." these have been her consequences recently for choosing not to clean up her toys in a timely fashion before bed (taking them away hasn't been enough motivation). but i am happy to say that after three nights of sad bedtimes, tonight she cleaned up all of her toys before bathtime the first time we asked and got to read books at bedtime.

- madelyn loves to wear her costumes recently. i don't have a lot of pictures of her wearing them because she usually wears the skirts without a shirt, but this week she put them on over her dress after school so i was able to get a few.

and just to make mommy out to be a liar she didn't repeat what she had been telling us about her purse and toolbelt before i got the camera. but she is still cute so i posted the video anyway. i just thought that she was funny carrying her tools in her 'purse', wearing a skirt over her dress, and wearing her leather toolbelt.

- mason was just going on and on while i was working yesterday so i thought that i would take some video but he was more interested in listening to maggie. (and i am not crazy, he was wearing a red and blue stripped jacket that made sense of the red pants with that shirt.)

- mason has gone back to "gak, gak, gak" as a favorite 'word' and added "boom, boom, boom" today.

i know that this is a random post but i didn't want anyone to go into withdrawal. love.

home sweet home

it is really great to be back home! my trip went really well, but it is always nice to get back home. it is amazing how dramatically different mason looks after being away for three days and even madelyn is noticeably different to me. mason gave me more of a reaction than madelyn ever did at his age. but madelyn was definitely glad to see me now. she held my hand the whole ride home from the airport and mason cried because he couldn't turn his head enough to see me.

everything went fine while i was gone. not that i was really too worried. it was a little concerning that we had yet to have any success feeding mason from a bottle, but matt wasn't worried about it and he was the one who would have to deal with a cranky boy. by the end of the first day he did take a full bottle from matt so that was reassuring to me.

matt enjoyed the time at home with the kids too. i was happy for that too - its good for him. he said that his favorite part was watching how they interact with each other. doing prayers at night madelyn would give her typical, "thank you for mommy and daddy and mason and friend..." but added another toy that she had chosen not to take care of and gave to other kids (aka goodwill). so she said thanks for it, but then remembered that she didn't have it - "where did it go? oh yeah...i gave it to other kids" - and then she went on with her prayers. this just cracked matt up - and still does when he retells it.

i guess madelyn was a little jealous that mason was getting to spend so much time nursing when i got home because she lifted up my shirt and asked me to feed her. it took me a minute to react because it was so out of the blue, but she accepted my answer of no and we moved on pretty quickly.

mason must have worked on biting while he was using a bottle when i was gone because he is definitely good at it now! i didn't yell out but i removed him and said firmly, "no biting, mason". to which mason instantly made the saddest face i have ever seen and began to cry. i only had to do it twice before he stopped biting me.

on a happier, funnier, note, mason has started to suck his big toe like he does his thumb. he has been able to put his feet in his mouth for quite some time now, but this was the first time i have seen him go to town sucking on a toe. he was so happy.

he still isn't doing much in the moving department but he is becoming a really, really good reacher when he is sitting up. he can reach all the way out to where it looks like the circulation must be cut off to his legs, get what he wants, and sit back up without falling. we have also heard 'talking' that sounds like "da-da" when he sees matt, but it hasn't been repetitive enough to be certain.

so that is the latest on the gang and here are some other miscellaneous notes:

- i took madelyn for a free show at the planetarium down the road sunday morning before i left for kansas. just she and i went since mason and daddy weren't really that interested. madelyn is almost obsessive about the moon and its phases when we are out after dark (even when we are home she looks for it out the window) so i thought that she might enjoy the planetarium but probably would not have tried it when she is so young if it wasn't free. she really did love it. there were a lot of fun things to look at in the lobby and she liked seeing the winter sky star show once we were inside. she did ask to leave at the very beginning of the show, but then she got really into it (maybe i just didn't explain what was going to happen well enough). we also saw some friends there so that made it special to her too. i think that we will go again sometime soon.

- we had a new mattress for matt and i delivered while i was out of town. matt is so very excited because he believes our old one (a sleep number bed) is the root of all his back pain. we will see if the new one makes a difference. i am just glad that he would finally spend the money to find out. madelyn had a lot of fun mattress shopping with us over the past month. she liked trying them all out and bouncing on them (not that we encouraged the later).

- after months of not eating the crust of her sandwich (i think she learned this at school), madelyn has decided that she can only eat sandwiches made with the end of the loaf. she even gets upset when she has already eaten them both and there is a lot of middle slices left. you just never know...

love.

little mermaid

this morning we went to a local production of "the little mermaid and the prince". and it was about what you would imagine when i say "local production". the theater was nice and they had it set up cute with blue streamers hanging from the doorways to give it an underwater feel and there were bubbles falling from the ceiling - which the kids loved.

madelyn was super excited about seeing ariel, but it wasn't "ariel" in this production. i can't remember the official name but either "the little mermaid" or the "sea witch" was named something like "desdemona" (i am guessing that they were the literary names). all i know is that the names were difficult for me to understand and the kids around me seemed to be confused as well. but we all got over it and enjoyed the show.

they would get kid volunteers from the audience for each of the three acts. madelyn really, really wanted to volunteer but didn't quite get how it worked. she kept trying to the attention of the girl on the other side of the theater instead of the one who was right next to us. and then she would just try to go up on stage any way. maybe she will have the hang of it when we try another show sometime. she was really sad when it was over and didn't want to leave the theater.

and here are just some more catch up notes:
- madelyn is becoming quite the fashionista. she is most particular about shoes and hair, but is pretty opinionated about what she wears overall.

- mason's 'spots' cleared up after two days with the steroid cream - like night and day difference! we are now just to an eczema lotion and i can't believe how much better he is doing or that i waited so long to take care of this. the little bonus of going to the doctor is that we got to find out how heavy mason is getting. he was 21 pounds, 13 ounces! that is 2 pounds in less that a month. the nurse commented that he was going to be a football player one day at this rate. its funny because i have been thinking lately that he is feeling so much slimmer and lighter i was starting to worry that he wasn't getting enough milk. maybe i am just getting stronger with my p90x workouts... :)

- madelyn seems to have made "junior the asparagus" her imaginary friend. junior is from veggietales and it seems like he is who she imagines to be with her most often. she will tell me that junior is following her in the grocery store, riding on her lap in the car, and telling her something funny.

- one night when i came up from working out, two hours after putting the kids to bed, i found madelyn sitting on the toilet and an entire roll or toilet paper in pieces at her feet. i told her that was very bad and she started to tear up. since it was so late i helped her finish up and get strait to bed. in the morning she went in the bathroom and was upset to still find the mess. i told her that she would have to clean it all up since she had made it. it was cute because she got right to it and kept coming out to give me updates about how much was left for her to clean up - very happily too.

- yesterday both kids took a nap from 1:00 - 4:30pm! that was just worth noting. and it was on a day that i really, really needed them to so that i could prepare for a presentation next week.

- i must have been taking a little too long getting mason's lunch together because he grabbed the spoon out of the bowl and started feeding himself. i was pretty shocked.

probably won't be any posts this week as i am heading out until wednesday night for work and it will just be matt and the kids at home. love.

"mason has spots"

and you can imagine how excited the packed waiting room at the doctor's office was to hear madelyn call that out to the nurse when they called mason back. madelyn and i took mason to the doctor so that i could show them his dry skin at his worst. i have been going back and forth about whether i should bring him in but when i took off his pajamas this morning i knew that today was the day.

the dry skin patches are red and about the size of a quarter. this morning they were covering his entire chest and most of his belly. they don't really look like dry skin, more like raw skin. it doesn't seem to bother mason in the slightest, but i have been worried that it might leave scars. he does grab at his chest in a way that looks like scratching when his shirt is off. the doctor prescribed a steroid cream that should have him cleared up by saturday or she wants us to come back.

and here he is just being happy mason (and saying "ma-ma"). love.