the most magical place on earth...

it has been a very busy weekend! (and we are exhausted!) we flew to orlando, matt was in a wedding, madelyn (and matt) had their first trip to disney world, and we drove down to fort myers. i will warn you now that this is going to be a pretty long post.

madelyn started the trip by eating her first banana straight from the peel while we waited for our flight on thursday morning. and she was just shoving it in her mouth. we would try to tip it to the side so that she wouldn't get a bite too big, but she was having none of that! this has been a really helpful skill during this trip. another new skill that has come in very helpful this trip is sitting in a kitchen chair to eat. she really likes sitting at the table and eating with everyone else like a big kid. i think we are going to have to buy her a booster seat when we get home and say goodbye to the highchair.

in orlando we stayed with "auntie" natalie and rob (who actually had to leave for the weekend, unfortunately) and attended chad and leslie's wedding. matt was a groomsman so he had lots of wedding activities thursday, friday, and saturday and natalie had to work on friday so maddie and i were on our own without a car for the day. natalie drew me up a map for walking to a nearby park. so maddie and i headed out friday morning (in the thick humidity) to find the park. there was a panera nearby so i picked up a bagel on the way and maddie checked out the great playground at the park. it was really nice and even had a canopy over the swings to block the sun. there was the neat "seat" thing that i had never seen before and madelyn really liked it! the video shows her spinning around in it - it sits at an angle so that when she shifts her weight it spins. she really got the hang of it when we took daddy and natalie on saturday morning. (it sounds like she wants to get out, but when i took her out she got right back in - i think she is just frustrated that her shoes get stuck on the rubber.)


natalie babysat while matt and i went to the rehearsal dinner, wedding, and reception. i am sure that she just loved having us - we stayed all weekend, asked her to babysit friday and saturday, madelyn broke her grandmother's lamp, and we drug her out to disney. she said that she enjoyed our visit - but...

so now for the big event! disney world! we never would have taken her this young, but as matt says, "the price was right". natalie works for epcot and was able to get us into the park for free. so there was no pressure to stay all day and get our money's worth. we just went took in a few rides and souvenirs and then got in the car to head to fort myers. i have a picture from my first trip to disney when i was at least 6 months older than maddie that we were trying to recreate. we took this picture on the way in while she was fresh, but then got the mouse ears and minnie mouse doll to match my picture. we forgot to stop again on our way out to take a picture with the accessories so we took one from the outside part with the same planter in the background (i didn't get my picture scanned in so i will have to add it later).

we were able to go on the small world, winnie the pooh, snow white, and peter pan rides. madelyn did really great on all of them. i was a little worried that she wouldn't be able to sit still long enough or would cry when it got really dark, but even on the snow white ride she never cried. she did stand up and hold on to me with a death grip while shoving her face into my neck for a while, but never cried. here are some more pictures and captions from our disney adventure...

heading into the park from "pluto 25"

the iconic castle shot down "main street u.s.a."

in awe of "small world". she finally started pointing at things towards the end of the ride. but she took everything in the whole time and would look where we were pointing.

auntie nattie is a natural with a stroller!

the snow white ride was just a little too scary. (yes, i took a picture. i know - i have a problem.)

maddie and auntie nattie in their 3d glasses for mickey's philharmagic show. the show is about 10 minutes and maddie made it through about 5 with the glasses on her face before trying to take them off. i was very proud!

madelyn was so in love with her minnie doll that we had to take the tag off to pay for it because she wouldn't let go. i was surprised because she has had so little disney exposure.

trying to stay hydrated in the hot florida sun was a top priority for us snowbirds.

today we are going to take some pictures with madelyn's two cousins (annabell and briana) before having dinner with the whole family tonight. but now, we are all going to take a much needed nap. love.

from rocks to blocks

madelyn got some new blocks for her birthday (indirectly from her uncle derek). she plays with them first thing in the morning and last thing at night. they have almost replaced her rocks as the constant companion. today she picked up their 'box' to carry them around. she has been picking up actual boxes all over the house and walking around with them - even when they are more than half her size! here she is walking around with it today.

i have to run since there are a million things to do before we leave town, but i had to post the stats from her one year check-up:

height - 32" (99th percentile)
weight - 22lbs. 12oz. (77th percentile)
head circumference - 48cm (98th percentile?) - we don't really think that this one is correct...

okay. time for me to move on to the next thing, but i wanted to share her checkup info and the block box video. love.

maddie's first year

one more post for maddie's first birthday. here is a picture for each month of her first year. love.

june 2007

july 2007
august 2007

september 2007

october 2007

november 2007

december 2007

january 2008

february 2008

march 2008

april 2008

may 2008

june 2008

it was meant to be...

we needed to do some sort of celebration on madelyn's actual birthday, so we were thinking that we would buy a pretty cupcake somewhere so that matt and i wouldn't have a lot of cake to eat (we just finished off the last cake). as we were perusing our options in the bakery - butterfly cake, 4th of july mini-cupcakes, etc. - we found it! the madelyn cake! i don't know if you can see the sign next to the cake, but it reads "5" Madelyn Yellow Cake". obviously we had found the cake for our celebration - it was meant to be! not to mention that it was cute with polka dots...

no video this time, but here is madelyn with birthday cake #2. she definitely knew what was coming this time.

hopefully madelyn doesn't start to think that cake is now a weekly event. love.

madelyn lane is one

at 6:15am one year ago today, after 31 hours of back labor (only 10 with an epidural) madelyn lane joined our family. this past year has been so exciting for us just getting to know her. when they were talking about the time she was born i thought that they were talking about her weight and was so confused because the ultrasound was measuring her at near 10 lbs.! but i was a little disoriented from not sleeping for more than two days. we feel so blessed to have madelyn. it has been such a joy to watch her discover the world around her and to see matt become a father. i am really excited for this next year when her personality starts to come out more and she develops more ways to express herself.

i was cleaning out our guest room closet a few months ago (i was feeling the need to purge) and came across this picture of me on my first birthday (i will post one of me with my cake when i make maddie's "real" first birthday cake in a few weeks). do you see a resemblance?

of course maddie got some presents this morning. she got a new red wagon from her daddy and i, some dresses, books, and a neat bug (that she loves) from our friends in california liz and john, and a bouncy rocking horse from big pop and grandma. here is some video of her discovering the rocking horse this morning (its long - 3 minutes - she took a while getting to it because she was so excited. when she is really excited about something she gets shy about it and hesitates to touch it - it makes me laugh to see her do that.).

she is really getting the hang of this opening presents thing. she now understands "out" and "in" so i can ask her "what's in there?" and she pulls away the paper to see and then we ask her to "take it out" and she pulls it out. she just started to really get this last week. it has been nice because she now helps me put away her toys.

after the gifts and some breakfast (blueberry pancakes, grapes, and mango), we took her for a ride in her new wagon around the block. she is wearing a dress that daddy got her for her birthday. he started to tell me that it had something to do with a coupon he had when buying the wagon, but i stopped him because i want to believe that he is just a big softy and wanted to get his daughter a dress.

happy birthday, madelyn. love.

hand-foot-mouth

my poor madelyn. she hasn't slept more than three hours at a time in two days. that is the first time in her entire life that she has had nights with less than four hours at a stretch - ever. last night was worse than the night before because it took over an hour to get her calm enough to go back to sleep. matt held her for a while and then i took over and held her until she stopped screaming/whimpering.

for those of you who missed my update on yesterday's post, madelyn has hand-foot-mouth disease. it is sort of like the chicken pox - highly contagious, uncomfortable, and once you get it you probably won't get it again. i noticed the beginnings of a rash on the tops of her feet and toes yesterday morning and that is why i called the doctor's office. today it has covered most of her legs - you can sort of see it on the backside of her calf in this picture.

luckily, in this case the rash is not itchy, but it does occur inside her mouth which has removed her desire to eat. all she has had in the past three days is cherrios, teething biscuits and water. i can get her to take a bite here and there of yogurt, applesauce, and today, sugar-free jello but she is nowhere close to getting a normal meal.

to make things worse, she has been refusing her medicine today so she is really getting no relief. at least i have gotten her to nap twice. i think that she is just starting to hit the wall after so little nourishment and sleep. i hate seeing her so pitiful. you can just see how tired she is by looking at her little face and its red rimmed eyes.

overall i think that she is doing a little better today. she even went outside to play with her sticks for a while. you can see from the picture that she is drooling like a faucet. her shirt was sticking to her body down to her bellybutton with all the drool pouring out! at least i know that she isn't dehydrated.

even with her illness madelyn has come up with some new 'tricks'. today i was holding her in my lap and reading to her. when we finished that book she got down off my lap, went to the bookshelf and picked the book she wanted, then brought it back to me. she even tried to get back up in my lap herself with the book! i have been waiting for her to do this since kids often do and she loves her books so much.

another new 'trick' is that you can ask her "where's your shirt?" and she will pull on her shirt; either near the neck or lifting up the bottom. she can also pat her belly when you ask her "where's your belly?". she can't find her own bellybutton though, but will point at where "bear"s

would be if he had one.

lastly, i haven't had a chance to mention a new word from last week - "down". she definitely hears that one a lot so it is not surprising that she says it too. love.

briana marie is here!

madelyn has a new cousin (well as of yesterday morning). briana marie was born to her uncle josh and aunt adrienne at 10:02am yesterday. we are really excited because this means that we will definitely get to meet her on our upcoming trip to florida! adrienne was originally due july 1. grandma z. and big pop now have three granddaughters with birthdays within a one and a half week period in june! not to mention that adrienne's birthday is today! (happy birthday, aunt adrienne!)

i wanted to post about this yesterday but was exhausted from a cranky, fever-y, tired maddie all night. maddie has at least 5 teeth coming in right now. i say "at least" because that is how many i can actually feel and see. she had a fever of 103 and all she wanted to do was sit with me, suck her thumb, and hold onto "bear". i had to hand her off to matt for a few minutes so that i could eat some dinner and you would have thought that i was leaving her forever. she had such a devastated expression on her face. she settled down in to her daddy's embrace quickly, but the initial reaction broke my heart. i just hate it when she is so uncomfortable and there is really nothing that can be done for her. luckily the motrin kicked in within an hour and her fever was down by bedtime. she napped a total of 6-7 hours yesterday! during one of her medicate "happy" times yesterday she was playing with a ball by throwing it at the wall and furniture to bounce it back to her. by the time i got the camera she had gotten too close to the furniture to get much of a bounce, but in the second video she starts throwing it and 'chasing' it. enjoy!

today has been another really rough day for madelyn. neither one of us got much sleep last night because she is in so much pain. say a prayer for us that tonight will be better. it is so hard to hear her with such a pitiful little cry. love.

update: i added a little baby orajel to her gums just now and it made a huge difference! she was actually able to play and sleep a little.

update #2: just came home from the doctor's office and madelyn has hand-foot-mouth disease. there is nothing that can be done other than treating the fever - it could be a very, very long week.

more climbing and just more

thankfully madelyn has not tried to climb out of her crib - yet. but she does try to climb in. mainly she is trying to get in and get her "bear". here she is trying to lift herself in after getting a short step up on the bottom.

in addition to her crib climbing madelyn is obsessed with climbing up into chairs. this really started when she began walking. she had done it from time to time before, but mainly stuck to climbing up on the couch and glider. now she wants to climb up on the kitchen and dining room chairs (with her rocks in her hand the whole time). she fell off one of the kitchen chairs onto the hardwoods and is now much more careful. some lessons are learned the hard way.

one fun thing that madelyn has begun doing since walking is going to the bathroom for bath time at night. she would crawl to the tub from her room after we stripped her down, but now she can be playing in the kitchen and when we say/sign "bath" she stops what she is doing and heads straight to the bathtub! it surprised us a little the first time and now it is one of our favorite things to see each night. there is something so cute about seeing her toddle down the hallway to the bathroom.

that's it for tonight! love.

music class

madelyn and i (and nana) went to our first "music minors" class through the parks and recreation program here this morning. in preparation for class madelyn busied herself with the post-it dispenser in my office. she didn't really like the way the stuck to her hands, but didn't notice them sticking in a trail to the bottom of her feet when she got up to walk away.

so madelyn made herself right at home when we got to class! in typical madelyn fashion she went around and said "hi" to everyone with a big smile. then when the singing actually began she stood right up front with the instructor in the middle of the circle. i was the only one without a child on their lap. every now and then she would look around for me though. when she would see me she would 'run' over and give me a tight squeeze around the neck and then turn around and head back to the front of the room. then there were animal finger puppets for one of the songs and every child was supposed to pick up two. madelyn kept picking one after another up and putting them in her mouth. of course. she wasn't as interested in the scarfs portion of the class. but she did like the peek-a-boo song we did hiding behind them - she just couldn't wait behind the scarf the whole time until the "boo" part.

i am sure that there will be lots more stories from class in the weeks to come that will make the blog.

and this last picture was of maddie walking around outside of class this morning. she was walking around clapping her hands excitedly and it was so cute to me. she has been doing this a lot since walking. she is just so excited to be walking around on her own and every now and then she becomes overwhelmed with joy! it is just so pure.

love.

happy first birthday - take one

yes, "take one". madelyn is going to have four (four) birthday celebrations for her first birthday. the first was yesterday with matt's parents, the second will be a family celebration next week on her actual birthday, the third will be in florida with my family, and the fourth will be her traditional birthday party with friends and neighbors at home.

since nana is here visiting i decided that it would be nice to go ahead and make a simple cake so that she could celebrate madelyn's first birthday in person. unfortunately, papa could not make the trip so i set up the Web cam so that he could see too.

the video is long (3 minutes) and there is a lot of talking and questions, but madelyn really got into the cake eating - actually a little too much! enjoy watching maddie enjoy her first cake ever. love.

happy father's day - a day late

daddy didn't get the greatest father's day yesterday, but i promised him that i would make it up to him on his birthday. we woke him up a little earlier than he would have liked so that we could get to church early for the dedication. his presents that i ordered didn't arrive on time and the gifts he did get went to madelyn. first his mom gave him some spongebob golf balls (madelyn carried them all over the house) and then maddie and i gave him a golf set to use for teaching maddie to golf. but i think that he still had fun sharing his gifts.

then off to church for the dedication. after church we tried to go out to breakfast but the wait was 2 hours so we headed to einstein's for bagels. the funny thing is that it took us way over 30 minutes to even get bagels. after that we went book shopping with nana for maddie's birthday present(s).

he did get to watch golf so the day was not a complete loss. after dinner we even celebrated madelyn's birthday with nana and papa (via Web cam) instead of a father's day dessert.


poor matt! i think he still enjoyed celebrating his new fatherhood and he definitely got lots of love from maddie and me. i am so fortunate to have matt as a husband and i feel so blessed to see him has a father everyday. he is so loving and patient with madelyn. and i love that he isn't embarrassed to be silly with her. there is just something about a daddy and his little girl that is so special. love.

madelyn's dedication

today was madelyn's baby dedication at church. (okay - there were other kids there too...) matt and i had to go to a class about a week ago and shoot a video introduction of our family and why we were doing the dedication. we were lucky to have nana (GG) visiting us this weekend. (and you are lucky she was visiting too!) thanks to nana we have a video of today's service to share with you! and this lovely family picture prior to church starting. madelyn did pretty well during the service, especially because she had gotten up earlier than normal and was being really cranky before we left the house. she spent most of our time on the stage waving to the guitar player behind us. then once the praying started that was when she decided that she couldn't wait any longer to get down and touch the speaker in front of us (towards the end of the video). luckily, i was able to shift her position in a way that kept her from leaping out of my hold. (note: we are the first family to the left of the speaker (your left).

i also scanned a copy of the program insert that has madelyn's information on it so that i could post it here. i didn't think that they would put the full body shot in the program, i thought that they would crop it down to a head shot. oh well. it is nice to know that they worked with whatever we had to give them.

lots more has been going on here with nana visiting, but i had to get this up quickly for maddie's grandparents who couldn't be here today for the dedication and really wanted to be! there are more maddie updates to come soon! love.

a few of my favorite things

after the "rat tail" post i realized that there are some other players in madelyn's life that i have not yet posted about and that just wouldn't be right.

"bear" the bear

madelyn will snuggle with almost any stuffed animal, piece of fabric, paper, stone, well - anything in order to suck her thumb before going to sleep, but there is one special animal that has a place above all others - "bear". madelyn has chewed most of his nose off and seems to have started on one of his feet. she definitely favors his ears, but will happily hug him whenever they are reunited. we keep bear mainly in the crib, but he does make a few appearances elsewhere in the house if she is feeling the need to have him join her after a nap. when playing in her room she will often try to pull bear through the bars and when that doesn't work she just holds her ear and sucks her thumb while standing next to the crib.

sticks and stones

it began with the sticks, but the obsession now is rocks! madelyn started gathering up all the sticks she could hold in one hand while playing at the park. she won't carry them in both hands for long, they have to all fit in her right hand. earlier this week she was in need of a distraction while i was working so i pulled some rocks that i picked up on the beach in san diego off my bookshelf. it is as if i introduced her to her soul mates! she carries at least one of them with her everyday from the time she first finds one in the morning until she gets ready for bed at night. she hold them through meals, walking around, while climbing, riding in the stroller, playing at the park, swinging, you name it and she does it with at least one, but most likely two rocks in her right hand!

vegetable steamer

another odd favorite is my vegetable steamer 'basket' (at least that is what i use it for). she opens the cabinets to look for it because it is kept towards the back of the cabinet. and now that she can walk, she has found that she can carry it with her. i think that this one as a favorite will be short lived because it isn't as mobile as her rocks. but i have kept it fresh by putting her rocks in it and closing it up so that she has to open it to get the rocks out.

and here she is holding her favorite of the rocks and bear while laying next to the kitchen table looking out the sliding doors at the dogs. she was already bathed because her dinner had gotten a little messy and matt and i were still eating so she was just hanging out waiting for story time. and she got herself into this position. it was funny because she was circling the table like a shark then found a rock, got bear and laid herself down while she waited. walking has done wonders for her patience!