18-month check-up

we bundled up and headed out in the falling snow for madelyn's 18-month check-up this morning. she was in an excellent mood this morning! it was a little surprising because she woke up a little before 5am - the first time. she woke up a few more times before sleeping from 7-8. i thought that she would have been grumpy today since she usually is when her sleep is interrupted like that and she has been in this difficult phase lately (more on that later).

madelyn was so friendly at the office that her doctor commented on it because she said that it is unusual in an 18-month-old to be that friendly to strangers. there was a male college student shadowing the doctor and madelyn greeted them warmly with a wave and a "hi" as she ran up to show them the puzzle pieces she had been playing with while we waited. anyway, here are her stats:

height - 35 inches (99.6 percentile)
weight - 28lbs. 6oz. (92 percentile)
head circumference - 41.9cm (97 percentile)

her height/weight combo (equivalent to a body mass index) is around 62% which made her doctor really happy since she has been at like 30%. and it is definitely not from a lack of appetite! i think that she has just finally caught up with her growth rate. the summary of the appointment - she has been amazingly healthy and is doing great developmentally.

so we had another really great day today. whatever has been bothering her seems to have passed. her doctor said that it was good that we gave her motrin which made me not feel so guilty for giving it to her in the first place. but hopefully we will have many more days of happiness to come.

speaking of happiness, madelyn is really enjoying checking out the presents under the tree. and she notices every new package and every new ornament although she does have her favorites of each. yesterday she started asking about opening them. she is eyeing some new ones in this picture and then she is tempting fate in the video. she normally does listen to me when i ask her to put packages back under the tree, but the torn paper and the glimpse of a button was just too much for her to resist.



madelyn likes to help me in the kitchen while i make dinner. she got into trouble for putting her spoon into the taco meat i was making on the stove after i told her not to, so she lost her stool privileges. after a while i gave her another chance with the stool, but she could only sit on it away from the counters. surprisingly she did not even try to sneak it closer to a counter and just sat on it for the rest of dinner prep. as part of the compromise, madelyn wanted to do her own cooking. here she is sitting on her stool (well she started to get up once i got the camera) holding a mixing bowl and stirring with a whisk. (she added "tend" for pretend to her vocabulary today while we were talking about her toy food not being for eating, but for pretend.)

the first picture of the post is of madelyn and her precious jar of cherries i mentioned a few days ago. she was starting to get frustrated because i wouldn't open it, but for the most part she just carries it around.

so much is going on right now, i have to summarize in bullet points:

- for father's day i got matt a kid's set of golf clubs for him to use with maddie for $1 at target. they have used them every day for the past week. madelyn has also added to her daddy's enjoyment by saying "golf" and "club".

- yesterday madelyn and i headed out on the only day this week that isn't supposed to snow to buy some groceries and goodies for christmas. first we went to the organic market for some of maddie's foods. they have little kid sided grocery carts and i decided that madelyn and i would give one a try. she did so great! it went even better than i could have imagined. i would point something out and madelyn would get it and put it in her cart. she even did a really great job of making sure not to run into anything in the aisles. after that we went to the "regular" grocery store for the rest of our shopping. again we tried a new cart style - this time it was a firetruck shaped one maddie could ride in. i normally don't go for these specialty types of things, but i knew that this would be one of our only trips outside the house for most of the week and wanted to make the most of it.

- for about the past week madelyn says "up, up, up" when we drive up a hill. she might have been doing it longer, but it took awhile for me to figure out that she said it when we were driving up a hill. i just thought that she was just saying "up" over and over for her own amusement. she even says it when there is a hill in a cartoon. we have gotten her to add a "down" after we reach the top of the hill.

- tonight at dinner maddie was being really happy and when daddy asked if she was good today she replied "yes" and "good" - another new word - before busting out in hysterical laughing. after several more "good"s, i asked her if she were silly and "silly" was added into the mix of "good" and laughing. dinnertime is so much fun!

love.