she never gives up

madelyn is a climber. and she is determined to climb on everything! she just never gives up. here she is making her first attempt to get up on top of the coffee table without using the baskets for help. it was a bit of a stretch, but she made it. i wish that i had kept filming another 30 seconds because she did a sort of victory knee stand and then got on her belly and slid feet first off the end before crawling away to play with something else.

then after daddy got home i got a chance to film how good she is getting at walking. she will now let go and make the effort to walk to you when you ask (and sometimes when you don't). well at least she does with me. tonight was the first time she was willing to walk to daddy so we were all extra excited!

i hope that you enjoyed the videos. love.

cold, windy weekend

the weather was not great here this weekend. it was mostly sunny, but with highs in the 50s and 30+ wind gusts yesterday - it was cold! that didn't keep us hearty, wisconsin folk inside though. we went to the park to enjoy some climbing and swinging and then for a walk around the neighborhood. and get this, it might snow tonight! is it spring yet?

maddie, of course, made me out to be a lier by showing little to no interest in climbing the rock form up to the big playset and didn't throw a single fit about getting out the swing. matt says that i am making it up, but at least some the neighbors have seen her do both so i have witnesses! i guess she is just on her best behavior for her daddy. she did show him how she can use her dresser drawers and steps for climbing and how she can throw a fit when we are attempting to change her diaper.

she even got cuddly with daddy before church this morning to read a few books. she was climbing all over him while i put on her shoes and socks, but the second he grabbed a book she froze in her tracks (hence the awkward pose in the picture). i am going to have to try using a book to keep her still on the changing table. she just gets mad that she has to stay in one place to get her diaper changed when there is so much to see and do.

the report from the church nursery was that "she sure does get around now, doesn't she?". they said that they had to chase her around all over the place. tell me about it! having a girl on the go sure does make the house feel a lot smaller. especially when i can't spend much time outside with her right now. i am switching up my working hours next week to give me some more time during the week when maddie and i can leave the house and give us both a break. i am hoping that will be beneficial for everyone involved.

it is also matt's last week at children's. then he starts a new job at a hospital right down the road from us. we are all excited for a shorter commute with more time at home with maddie and i!

my last thought for today - madelyn's memory amazes me! she can just remember where she left off the last time she was in a place. for instance in our bedroom. she either uses a chair footrest to climb up and over the foot of our bed (a new trick) or she heads straight of the closet and gets out the shoes shown in this picture. it doesn't matter how many other shoes are more easily accessible. she will go straight to the back of the closet and get this pair out of their box. i don't know how she remembers them - i even forget about them until she pulls them out!

later! love.

liz visit

today we were lucky enough to have our friend, liz, from california visit for lunch! she was in the chicago area visiting her family and her sisters were kind enough to drive her over for a visit. madelyn definitely enjoyed all the attention.

this morning (and i mean early morning) madelyn couldn't wait for liz to come and decided that she would pass the time before her nap reading. so she went into her room and flipped through the books on the shelf to the one she wanted. yes, she picks a specific book. eventually most of the books end up on the floor, but the first few are carefully selected before being removed from the shelf and examined at length on the floor. she closely studies each page and flips them back and forth being careful to separate the pages so she doesn't miss a thing. i just love it.

she has also gotten really good at standing up by herself without holding on to anything for support. she did it enough times today that i think i might have a chance to get it on video tomorrow. i will just have to be behind her to have any chance of her not dropping down and crawling when she sees me.

okay, well daddy is calling me to come feed her before bed. love.

yesterday's post

this is the post that should have been... i made a list during the day of all the things i was going to blog about but then i just ran out of day. and i just had to watch the american idol results show before i accidentally saw the results today. matt was finishing up the new concrete slab he wanted to put in place of our pavers under the deck and i was trying to entertain madelyn while cleaning up the house for our visitors today (more on that in the next post).

madelyn was having fun playing peek-a-boo during lunch and she actually did it with her palms over her eyes (instead of the backs of her hands) a few times. then because i like to keep my life interesting, i decided to see how she would do without her sippy lid on her cup. i hadn't done that with her in a long time, but she actually was more careful with the cup and didn't spill as much as she does with the lid on! i wanted to try it because she drank water really great on the airplane from one of their plastic cups - making me realize that drinking from a cup is a really useful skill for her to have. not only did she make less of a mess, but she was more interested in drinking everything in her cup. she never ceases to amaze me.

while daddy was working on the concrete, maddie and i went to the park after (her) dinner to get out some more of her energy. plus it was such a nice night that i thought we might run into some of her neighborhood friends. being the brave parent that i am i decided to try and take a few pictures while being on safety watch. she is a very good climber.

sometimes she is too good of a climber. and really fast! a few of the neighbors couldn't believe how quickly she can scale up 'rock' mountain like thing on the playset that i was trying to describe in my last post. and she did it over and over and over and over until she started to get mad at me for pulling her off the top each time she got there. one of the mom's was saying that maddie can get to the top because her legs are long enough to reach all the steps. we finally had to move over to the swings as a distraction. maddie is so over the toddler playset and moving on to the bigger one.

in addition to her park climbing, madelyn has also discovered pulling her dresser drawers open and climbing up them! that is too scary for me! thank goodness for straps to secure the furniture to the wall.

and that is the post i wanted to share yesterday. now i have to do my real post for today. love.

10 months today

madelyn is 10 months old today! which means that i better get on her "9 month" pictures before it is time for her 1 year pictures. oops...

today's trick was actually using her hands to cover her eyes for peek-a-boo. the cute thing is that she uses the backs of her hands instead of her palms. i couldn't get her to do it when i was filming video, but you can get the effect through these still shots.

she can also clap at the appropriate times when i sing "if you're happy and you know it". she started doing this last week, but is really good at it now. that is the next activity that i hope to capture on video to share with you all.

now that she is getting better and better about climbing all over and 'walking', she can crawl over to the playset at the park and climb up the stairs to go down the slide all by herself! well, sometimes i have to help her sit down. mostly she just turns around and goes down on her belly. this is on the 'toddler' playset, but she is now climbing up the 'rock' stairs (i'll have to get a picture because i don't think i could explain it right) on the big kid playset and its too high for my comfort. i have to quickly go up and get her to be carried back down.

lastly, she is saying "duck" and "dog" - at the right times. that is the way i know what she is saying. sometimes they are clear, but mostly they sound very similar to each other. i can ask her where her duck block is and she will pick it out from the other blocks and say "duck" (well at least her version). i am so excited to hear what she thinks about things! and, yes, i know that i have a little while to wait for that, but every little bit of progress is exciting for me.

that's it for today. i am ready for bed. love.

goo-ga-lie

today's word/noise is "goo-ga-lie" with lots of tongue and drool. she pretty much did it (or some variation) all day. enjoy the show! love.

we have returned!

maddie and i got back from kansas yesterday. i apologize for my lack of posts, but i forgot the camera cord and i was just plain exhausted by the time i got back from the office each day! this was my first attempt at bringing maddie with me on a business trip. her grandma flew up from florida to watch her for the week at her nana and papa's in kansas while they went to work too. she was totally spoiled by having three of her grandparents there to care for her. the visit was nice, but i think that we were both happy to get home and see her daddy. maddie wanted to follow matt down to the basement yesterday, but since the baby gate blocked her she just sat and waited.

madelyn has a lot of new tricks that she learned over the past week. one is seen in this video from last weekend - she didn't want to share her blanket with daddy so she would take it from him and then feel bad and try to give it back.

she can also stand up without holding on to anything for help. she just crawls over to what she wants and then stands up. she did it for the first time at the airport on saturday and i was so excited! she has done it a few times since then successful, but then today at the park she was trying to stand up with a stick and fell backwards on her butt with a "what just happened" expression. she is just that much closer to walking. she will now let go and walk 2 or 3 steps to me before jumping the rest of the way to reach me - laughing wildly!

there is also a not so nice 'trick' - temper-tantrums. she is definitely my child. she is so stubborn! if she doesn't want to do something she really doesn't want to do it. today she threw a fit because i stopped pushing her in the swing at the park and started crying when i took her out to go home. luckily, she settles back down pretty quickly.

she really missed her dad. he was working in the backyard this afternoon and madelyn just stood and watched him for long periods of time. she would stand on her tiptoes for a better view when he would get too close to the house for her to see him. i love to see how much she loves him. she is always giving him kisses. and he is the only one she kisses every time. i only get a kiss every now and then. i get lots of hugs, but matt gets most of the kisses.

last weekend madelyn started running a slight fever (100.3) and shivering. we ran errands all day on saturday, but when she woke up from her afternoon nap she was crying and had a really hard time calming down. since we were traveling on monday i wanted to call the doctor's office just to make sure that she was okay. it was just her body trying to deal with her molars trying to come in. i had to give her children's motrin for a few days to manage the fever, but it did the trick.

flying with madelyn by myself was interesting to say the least! she wasn't difficult per se, just her normal active self. and now she is tall enough to push her feet off the back of the seat in front of us. the flight there was a little more difficult than the flight home. she was happy and friendly and then fell asleep on the way home. actually the most difficult part of flying with her (especially for a business trip) is carrying everything! i had a big bag of stuff for her, my laptop, the stroller, and of course madelyn herself.

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.

food! glorious food!

okay, so i have a new finger food for you all to try - "snapea crisps" by calbee snack salad. madelyn likes them (as you can see) and i think that they are really good too. i heard about them through a mommasource bulletin board (thanks, kellie) as a finger food idea. we bought them at a health food store, but it sounded like they are carried by normal grocery stores too. they are sort of the consistency of the more common gerber stars or wagon wheels snacks but are meant to be a snack food or salad topping. all i know is that i am not a huge fan of peas and these are really good (well i might be a little over enthusiastic, but when you think about a crunchy peapod i don't think that the expectation is very high for taste).

plus we dropped like $70 on food for maddie today (organics sure are price-y)! among the new foods - kale, eggplant, veggie dogs (read "hot dogs"), and cauliflower. i am just trying to make sure that she gets more veggies and variety in her finger foods. she is at least letting me give her more foods on a spoon again. i am really thankful that was a short phase.

she also had her first sandwich tonight - turkey and swiss on a whole wheat bread. okay - so she didn't eat it in the traditional fashion. each piece was eaten individually, but it was fun to make her a little sandwich! tomorrow i am going to start new recipes for "toddler hors d'oeuvres". i will let you know how it goes. i am starting with a cream cheese ball rolled in ground seeds (and, yes, i might be a little nuts!).

i thought that this video was worth sharing. not only is it cute because she is laughing so hard, but she isn't even watching what matt is doing. she is just laughing at the noise while she keeps right on playing.

lastly, this is the best picture we got today of her walking with only a little support. matt was cleaning out the garage and maddie and i were enjoying the warmer (60), breezy day. her pants are really capris, but she is just too skinny to keep them up (not from a lack of eating though!). she is still getting used to walking with shoes on. she definitely prefers to be barefoot.

good night. love.

the park...finally!

as you can see, madelyn had wheat spaghetti noodles with her dinner tonight. i even tried giving them to her in a bowl (fully expecting the bowl to end up being thrown on the floor). she kept trying to pick them up out of the bowl - even after they were all over her tray and she never picked it up to drop on the floor. she really liked them once she figured out that they were for eating and not for squishing.

i have mentioned several times that madelyn loves her books and that she will go to her room to 'read'. well i tried to get some video and discovered something - she loves to 'read' so much that she saw me and the camera and didn't crawl right over! now that is some strong power books have over her. she will stay like this for 20 minutes or so and then come back out into the living room and play with something else or look for me. i love that she only laughs at certain pages.

today maddie and i went down to the neighborhood park for a little over an hour because it got over 50. woo-hoo! it was so nice to be out in the fresh air and sun! i even opened the house up for some airing out when we got home.

madelyn's walking improves everyday. she can now walk just holding onto one of my fingers. she can walk 10 feet or so until something else distracts her. it is very exciting for me! she even added bending down to pick something up today at the park. we were walking side by side with her holding my finger for balance and she bent down to pick up a stick, stood back up, and kept on walking! this was a first. usually she will just walk until she sees something she wants and then plop down and crawl. here she is jamming out on the 'bells' at the playground (at least she was until the camera came on - unfortunately she could only reach two of the bells).

we took daddy down to the park after dinner and then took a walk around the neighborhood. maddie got to ride on daddy's shoulders and discovered that they come with 'handles'. apparently she holds on really tight!

it seems that after each post i think of something else that i meant to tell you about maddie, but then when the next night comes i can't think of what it was... oh well. nighty-night! love.

sound of the day

today's sound of the day is...brooom. all-day-long.

she also claps her hands really well now. real, open-palmed, sound making clapping. she also does it every (some) time we say "yea"! or just for her own amusement. or when we go to get her out of her crib. actually, she does it a lot now. she was more interested in her toys than clapping, but you get the idea. i also like how she gets herself all excited and starts choking on the spit she sucked down.

lastly, i have another laughing video. for some reason she just thinks that it is hysterical for us to flip her toys at her like that. love.

on the move

madelyn climbed up on the couch today. (i might have helped her keep her balance and not fall backwards, but she did all the work to get up there.) it amazes me that she could get her knee up high enough to climb all the way up there.

i didn't get that on video, but i did work on getting some more of her skills on video. she can just get to me and the camera so quickly that it makes filming her on my own very difficult. i have been trying to just film for a long time and then edit it down to whatever is interesting. i am going to try and get some of her signing this weekend when matt is around to help me with the filming.

she can also pull a book down and turn the pages all by herself. she will be playing in the living room and make a bee-line for the bookshelf in her bedroom. i did manage to get some of her turning pages on video today. at the very end of the video you can see how she lifts the corner of the page to turn them. at this rate she will be reading on her own in no time! what's cute is she acts like she is reading them by tilting her head back and forth while 'talking' and laughs as she looks at the pages.

i also got some better video of her 'walking' with her lion.

lastly, i want to mention that my "handsome" grandfather went to heaven this morning. he blessed this earth with his smile for 95 years. my pa-pa always said that i was his twin and that i got my good looks from him - it was our running joke. i loved him very much and look forward to seeing him again in heaven one day. i am happy to say that madelyn was able to meet this wonderful man. i will miss his smile and hearing him greet me with, "hiya, shell." very much. he was special for many reasons. love.