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.

dancing machine

madelyn was a dancing machine today! she was having so much fun doing her 'cha-cha' dance all over the house. she particularly liked dancing in the guest room after turning on the radio. this was the best video i got because she has decided that it is more fun to watch the videos than to do whatever i am trying to catch. it is so cute how excited she gets to see the video. i did get her to run out and dance for a few seconds before racing back to watch, but it wasn't really worth posting.

today brought a flood of new words! here is some video of me trying to get her saying the first new word of the day - "turtle". most of the time it sounds like "turd", but she is trying to identify the turtle toy. if you listen closely the first time sounds the most like "turtle". she said it much more clearly other times, but this was the best i got on video.

in addition to "turtle", she said "bean" a few times while eating her green beans at dinner, "comb" after dinner (she had been playing with several combs before dinner with daddy), and her first really clear "uh-oh". she has been making the "uh-oh" sound for a while, but this was the first time that she has said the two syllables clearly. i get so excited when she adds a new word to her vocabulary! i am working on a list of all the words, animal noises, signs, and other identifying noises for her 15 month appointment next week because so many people keep asking me how many words she has in her vocabulary and i never have a good answer. i will post my final tallies after we go to her 15 month appointment. love.

energy burners

madelyn is starting to get a little cabin fever from all the rain we have had over the past few days. the rain has been constant and today it was starting to get pretty cool, so we have spent much of the past two days inside. madelyn has come up with some new ways to pass the time - and burn off some energy.

i was trying to take a picture of maddie's shirt ("when mommy says no... call 1-800-GRANDMA") and she started scooting around on her back on the hardwoods. so i started dragging her around on her back by her feet. the big smile is from mommy kissing her neck and sides for uncontrollable laughing. i have found tickling to be a great way to burn off a lot of her energy! not to mention that it is a lot of fun for both of us. she is learning that she can slide around better on the hardwoods than on the carpet - mainly by falling down when running in her socks. she will just lay down on her back and scoot around the floor laughing or talking.

another new 'skill' for burning off energy is spinning in circles. she was doing this on friday while eating the last of her lunch for the first time. i was on the phone with work when she started doing it and went for my camera. every time i would start recording, she would stop spinning. it is just as well because i am having a work conversation over all the footage i did get. today she was being silly with daddy bouncing her ball in the kitchen while i was cooking dinner and this led to lots of spinning. she figured out today that she gets dizzy when she spins - and that is really fun! there was a lot of spinning tonight while waiting for dinner. love.

the pocket lady

matt had a work event today and since it was a community-type event(read: child-friendly) maddie and i went to take a look. madelyn was particularly taken with "the pocket lady". she had a quilt like skirt with at least 30 pockets on it filled with surprises (like the tea pot she is holding in the picture). she also enjoyed dancing with the local high school cheerleaders/dance team. they performed twice and madelyn was really, really into it. she was even shaking her hands like they were with their pom-poms! sometimes she would freeze her dancing to just stare when they did a jump or something in unison. i should have taken a video, but it was lightly raining and i was carrying a lot of treats that we had been given during our visit.

i took this video yesterday too trying to catch her growling "mmmmm". you can sort of catch it a few times, but the funny part is that i caught her climbing into the pantry cabinet to get out a jar of baby food that she then brings to the table to eat (she didn't though). we have a few jars left and when she gets them out we let her eat them. my favorite part (besides the climbing into the pantry) is when i ask her if its good and she stops to take a closer look at what she is carrying - as if to decide if it is indeed "good". love.

"please" stop the bleeding

this morning madelyn tripped at the park and got her first bloody injury, below the neck that is, on her knee. she got up, cried a little bit, and brushed herself off. once she was back on her feet she just got in the wagon and called out "go". i guess that was the end of the park.

once we got home i showed her how the peroxide made 'bubbles' on her new cut before applying her first band-aid. she left it on for most of the morning, but then curiosity set in and off it came. luckily, it had done its job and the bleeding had stopped.

madelyn loves to watch videos of our blogger friends. she really, really likes a "please" and "thank you" video by our friend lorelai. i think that she likes that lorelai eats a pretzel in the middle of the video. she signs "more" and "eat" every time we watch it and then "more" again once it is over. she has watched it so many times now that she knows when it is almost over and starts signing for "more". she has been trying to say "please" along with lorelai, so after watching it at least 10 times today i decided to say if she would say "please" for a snack too. and here is what i got... love.

sleep tight?

madelyn was a little over tired when bedtime rolled around tonight and cried a little when matt put her down. madelyn usually puts herself to bed, so crying is a very rare occurrence. the last time she cried (again overtired) i went in to check on her after she quited down and found her asleep on the floor behind the door. i had to gently inch the door open to get into her room because she was in the way!

that is what i was expecting to find tonight, but instead i found her in this uncomfortable looking position - sound asleep. love.

zoo afternoon

i know that you all are probably getting a little bored with hearing about our trips to the zoo, but here is another one. after her afternoon nap and a little lunch we headed to the zoo for a few hours. there was hardly anyone there and the animals were pretty active.

what i love about our zoo is that maddie can walk almost the entire time and can get really close to the animals. how often can you get that close to a tiger. it made several passes too, so we got to really check him out. she walked almost the entire time from one exhibit to the next and since there were very few people, i didn't have to worry about her getting into any trouble.


in the primates house maddie made a friend named mackenzie. mackenzie is three and insisted that i take her picture too when i was trying to take a picture of madelyn trying out a water fountain (aka "bubbler") that was her size. mackenzie was trying to teach madelyn how to use it. she was also trying to teach her the alphabet song. we ran into mackenzie and her grandma a few more times during our visit and she was always happy to see us and tried to help with the stroller and maddie.

in the fish pavilion (not really what it is called, but the real name escapes me right now), madelyn excitedly ran between the fish exhibits and called out "wow" for every single fish she saw. and she wasn't just running from exhibit to exhibit. she would stay at each tank until i told her to come see some more fish at the next tank. then she would run over with lots more "wows".

every time we go to the zoo i think that we should do this more often (and i wish that matt could join us too). love.

should you be doing that?

yesterday was our first neighborhood music class. we have so many small children in our neighborhood that we were competing to get into the few spaces (12) that the county parks and rec offered in their class. so one of the neighbors arranged for us to have our own neighborhood class at her house with the same teacher! it was a little chaotic this first week because there were a lot of us and since we were at some one's house there were a lot of toys as distractions. we keep joking that we will be able to start our own school because there are enough kids for a kindergarten class (when they all get to that age).

madelyn is getting more and more difficult to photograph (this is the best one that i was able to get after we got back from music class). so here are a few stories without pictures.

maddie has a new dance move - cha-cha feet. she gets so excited for the music (or anticipated music) that she starts doing a little cha-cha with her feet. and then she works into the general knee bouncing dance move. the new little cha-cha is so funny, but i haven't had the camera ready when she gets the urge to bust a move.

as i have mentioned before, madelyn likes to 'help' me by picking out food from the corner cabinet. yesterday she was happily examining the different canned options when i asked her, "should you be doing that?" and she responded "no" before starting to replace all the food items in the cabinet! i just thought that it was so funny that she said "no" when i asked. she didn't get everything put back in the cabinet, but she got most of it in there before she lost interest and went in search of more to explore. she is getting really good at putting things she shouldn't have back where they go or closing cabinets/drawers when i ask her to close them.

i have another new noise that i am trying to get on video - "mmmmm". she says it when ever she sees something she wants to eat. for example she will point at the bananas on the counter and say "mmmmm" and sign for 'eat'. it is funny because she says it in a deep sort of growl. it is the way i do it when i am being silly about how yummy something she is eating is (sometimes when it really isn't). i never realized how weird it was until she started doing it! i will have to try and change it into a sweet, normal pitched, sing-songy "mmmm" so that she isn't the weird kid. love.

rain, rain, go away

today was a fun one. (please note that there is heavy sarcasm.) madelyn was a little energized this morning and the cold, rainy forecast meant that we were going to be inside for the day - i knew that i was in trouble. somehow she managed to find everything that she shouldn't be into and break the top drawer of her dresser all before 9am. i made the executive decision that we would brave the weather and head to the park. it wasn't supposed to start raining until around noon, but it was cool and overcast.

when we got there we had the park to ourselves. madelyn spent some time yelling at the wind blowing through the leaves, hiding from and peeking at mom, and of course picking up sticks, leaves, and mulch. after a while her friend, jason, came with his mom and were surprised that anyone else was there. they were having the same 'need-to-get-out-of-the-house' morning we were. and then her friends michael and dylan came down to play too with their mom. right when michael and dylan got there it started to rain. it was just sprinkling so we stayed for a while longer. we finally left when maddie came down the slide with her teeth chattering.


a new game maddie has taken up at the park is shaking the trees. she will look up and the leaves and shake the tree (and herself). she has been playing with the mulch under the trees for a while and i lately i have been trying to get her to notice the trees (we count the trees as she points them out on walks). in a few more weeks the leaves will start to turn and she will be able to make them fall down with her shaking. i am sure that will make the game that much more enjoyable!

this afternoon was a big eating day for maddie and just when i thought that she was done, she obviously wasn't! i keep all the table chairs away from the table (so they they can't help my little climber). madelyn was so determined to eat that she got her favorite ravioli out of the cabinet and brought it to the table, then she got a chair and pushed it to the table, got in it and sat down. she was waiting for me to get the ravioli out for her. she just gets her mind on something and does everything in her power to make it happen. i love that about her! (even though it can make my life very difficult at times.) love.

are you ready for some football?

we are ready for the great winter pastime - football! i think that this is one of the reasons people were inspired to finish off their basements - to create a football watching den to pass the long winters.

in honor of the beginning of the season, matt and maddie got all dressed up in their chargers gear for church this morning - matt even brought his chargers travel mug. since we are in packers country sunday mornings bring out a lot of jerseys, car flags and decals, and other team gear. we are one of the few families not in green. since the packers don't play until tomorrow there wasn't much in the way of green this morning.

once madelyn has her shoes on, she is ready to go - now! (and sometimes even before her shoes are on.) she calls out "go" and heads straight for the nearest door. and if you don't follow close behind she comes back to you repeating "go, go, go" the whole way. once she gets to you and tells you "go", back she heads to the door. she gets more and more agitated with each back and forth (not that she doesn't calm down when we explain that we have to do such and such), but we try to put her shoes on at the last moment to avoid any frustration.

i am pretty sure that she turned the doorknob to open our bathroom door yesterday - which is a little bit scary. i distinctly remember closing it about 15 or 20 minutes earlier and then the next thing i knew she was in there playing with the contents of the cabinets. we already have safety covers on all the exterior doors, but we might need to get some for the interior doors that we don't want her to be able to open (i.e. my office door).

she keeps us on our toes. love.

we can cross off interior design

an interior designer madelyn is not. we went tile shopping today and madelyn selected this as the tub of her dreams. matt and i both cracked up when we walked past, but maddie was in love. tile shopping with a one year old is not for the faint of heart. luckily one of the stores had a little play table with books and coloring books with crayons that kept her in one place for more than 5 minutes. she actually behaved very well and didn't touch anything that we asked her not to.

after some napping and cleaning around the house, we headed out to our annual neighborhood block party. this year one of the neighbors (ava's mom) arranged for the teacher of our music class to come and do a session during the block party to help entertain the littler kids for a while. what was exciting for me was that matt could see maddie participate and help get some video so that we can share with all of you - my loyal readers.

madelyn loves miss sarah (the teacher) and is often right up next to her. the nice thing is that miss sarah says that madelyn is just like one of her kids and that maddie is fine getting in to everything. the benefit of the classroom is that there is a table where all the supplies can be put out of maddie's reach, but she does spend a lot of class time trying to reach everything on the table. she is getting really good at doing all the motions and participating, but today was not as stellar a performance. enjoy!

here are some more pictures from the block party tonight. love.

they had a two person bounce house that maddie really enjoyed. especially when an older kid would get in with her to do some actual jumping.

she enjoyed riding a train with a whistle and it was even self-propelled. it took a little bit for her to get the hang of steering it but she managed to get it going in a circle on her own. the train whistle also reminded me that i taught her how to blow a real whistle today. she didn't like how loud it was, but tried it a few times anyway.

madelyn's new thing is to squat down and look up at people so that she can make eye-contact when she greets them. here she is saying "hi" to miss sarah while she was getting set up.

here she is 'riding in cars with boys'. (you might notice that she is actually pushing him out.)

enjoying her first juice box. she wore more than she drank, but really enjoyed the straw.

reading books with daddy and ava.

"hi, crickets"

this morning maddie and i took an early trip to the park around 9am. i had to bundle her up a little because it was 50s/60s after all the rain yesterday. we had the park all to ourselves and i was glad that i had the foresight to bring a towel to wipe down all the equipment that was still wet.

we actually spent more time enjoying the wildlife than playing on the equipment. madelyn likes to gather up all the fallen sticks and leaves blown down from the wind. and then she was strolling all over the open field part of the park. she kept squatting down to examine things on the ground and pointing at things asking, "what's that?".

"what's that?" madelyn asked with a general gesture at the wooded area.
"where?"
"what's that?" madelyn asked with a more specific point and a little frustration.
"trees."
"what's that?!" this time with a little scream in the question and pointing in the same place.

that was when i realized that she was pointing at the sound of crickets coming from the woods.

"that is bugs saying 'hi' to you."
"hi" with a wave at the woods.

isn't that cute? madelyn has been way more into noises. earlier she had been asking me about the various bird calls - that is how i figured out that she was asking about the cricket sound. matt and i are going to have to hone our listening skills to satisfy madelyn's quest for knowledge.

we went to the park several times today. it turned into a really nice day and i am facing the fact that we are running out of 'park' weather so every day counts. when we went this afternoon there were a lot of maddie's neighborhood friends to play with. her friend ava is almost two and was saying "bye" to everyone as she and her dad were leaving. i was asking maddie to say 'bye' to ava and in typical maddie fashion she was waving to ava from her swing. and then she called out "bye" clear as a bell to ava while waving! it toally surprised me! she said 'bye' once or twice several months ago, but this was the first time she had said it on request to someone who was leaving. and she said it in her big girl voice, not a soft baby voice. that voice surprises me every time. love.

with the flip of a switch

madelyn has a lot of toys that make noise (thanks, grandparents) and i have enjoyed that most of them have on/off switches or at least a volume control. that way i can turn them off when i am on the phone, need a little less noise, or just can't hear a song/noise one more time. this week madelyn has discovered that a lot of her toys have an on/off switch and she can take control of whether they are on or off. the way she tests each switch is to activate the toy and then search for the switch before the song ends. if she doesn't find it in time she will activate the toy again so that she can flip the switch mid-song to off.

it has been cute to watch her carefully examine all her toys to try and find their on/off switch. she squats down and tries to look on the underside of her larger toys and flips the smaller toys over looking for the switch - this has become a new game for her. we may have to resort to removing the batteries this winter...

another on/off activity is turning on the clock radio in the guestroom so that she can dance to the music. she usually just goes in and turns it on, but i can ask her to do it too and she will run back to start dancing. she will even dance next to it if she misses the button to actually turn it on. i have been trying to get some video but she always looses focus on the way to the guestroom whenever i have my camera handy.

it rained all day today, so maddie and i had our first taste of what winter could be like for us being forced inside for the day. i did take her to check out another local library that some of the neighbors like and they did have a really fun children's section. madelyn worked really hard at trying to solve wooden puzzles like two older boys sitting at a little table with her. i think that

we will make more visits to this library in the future. madelyn was excited about wearing her rain jacket and is curious about her long sleeves after not wearing them all summer.

thanks to shannon for maddie's sock fairy book and fairy bunny doll! she was inspired after reading about maddie's great interest in socks lately. madelyn loved the fairy bunny and gave it kisses (choking a little on a stray feather - more of a cough than a choke really). maybe daddy will read her the book tonight before bed, and i will read it to her tomorrow before nap time. love.

tonight's post is going to be a hodge-podge of stories from the past two days - i just wanted to warn you that i am going to jump around topics quite a bit.

this weekend i tried to have madelyn 'help' me with cleaning by letting her hold the spray bottles (chemical-free) and use a similar towel to mine for wiping. she really liked when i cleaned the front windows because the are the type that fold-in (i don't know what the proper phrase is). i mean she really liked it. now every time i open the windows she want me to fold them in and expresses it with a little fit and all.

yesterday the high was around 94 and then a cold front moved through to leave us with a high of 72 today. when the front moved through last night matt and maddie were at the park. it was still pretty sunny out and i was surprised to see that it was raining. here is a picture of matt and maddie after their walk home with the wagon in the rain. matt said that madelyn kept turning her head to the side trying to keep the rain from hitting her in the face. her cheeks look extra big with her hair wetted down.

speaking of leaving the park... madelyn has decided that she will just get in her stroller/wagon when we ask her if she is ready to go home. this is huge progress for us. once she started walking she fought leaving more and before walking we delt with not wanting to leave the swing. when we are ready to go we just ask her if she is ready to get into her stroller and she walks right over.

today madelyn had some fun playing with the hand-down doll stroller from the neighbor across the street. the funny thing is that she does not put any of her dolls or stuff animals in the stroller. she strolls around with her rubber duck, then a baseball. she just cracks me up. and later she spent some time serenading the dogs. i got the camera because both dogs were sitting next to each other and madelyn was banging and 'singing'. the dogs shifted around a bit when i came back and her song lost some of its momentum, but isn't she cute performing for them? and she really is doing it for them and not just near them.

with all the flying we have been doing, i tried to teach madelyn the sign for "airplane". (the sign is the "i love you" hand gesture going from one side of you to the other in an upward motion.) madelyn can't get her fingers into the right position, but she waves her hand in the general motion whenever she sees an airplane in real life or in a book. today she took it a step further when she heard one flying over our house. without any prompting from me (she heard it first), she started doing the sign and ran to the screen door and looked up at the sky to see the airplane. she always seems to surprise me with her ability to put concepts together and apply them. (not to brag.) love.

you should see the other guy

we feel pretty sure that madelyn had another growth spurt - mainly because her face keeps running into things. she has also outgrown almost half of her 18 month clothes even though she still doesn't fit into the bloomers and waists. she fell asleep on our drive home from the outlets yesterday and slept for a little over an hour. because of the extra, late nap, bedtime did not go very smoothly and somehow madelyn bumped her head. i can't figure out what she hit it on, but she definitely hit it hard! and it became more and more colorful as today went by. and then this morning she fell out of the kitchen chair while eating her breakfast, reopened a cut inside her lower lip (from a slip in the bathroom last week) and added some more scrapes on the outside. the whole left side of her lip is swollen and dark red and with the lump in the middle of her forehead, it looks like she was in a pretty nasty fight.

it didn't help that she got less sleep than normal last night and then took an earlier, shorter than normal nap today. she was pretty cranky. and since she wasn't at her best, balance-wise, there were a lot of head bumps and crying. for my own sanity i did whatever i could to keep the mood light and keep her occupied with safe activities while i tried to get some of my long list of chores done around the house (matt was doing some entertainment wiring and insulating in the basement all day in preparation for drywalling next week). what worked? jumping. i am not sure why, but she thought my jumping up and down or just kicking out a leg was hysterical. she is a little calmer in this video clip, but you can see how entertained she was. since i am jumping while filming, you might skip it if you get motion sick. enjoy. love.