adventures in big sister-ing

madelyn seems to enjoy being a big sister. yesterday she took on the task of 'reading' to mason while he relaxed in his swing. she came up to "touch mason" (a new favorite activity) and then said, "i'll read to you, okay?" she picked her new happy birthday, maisy! book and told mason "this is maisy" while showing him the book cover before sitting down to read.

she told him about all the pictures and then sang him the "happy birthday" song when she got to that part of the book. this book has flaps and pulls so it was cute to see her trying to tell him about what he couldn't see.

she has also become very interested in her (and mason's) diapers. she has been telling us about what is going on in her diaper, sometimes before it even happens, and demanding a "clean diaper". she has mainly done this while we are out running errands. i was going to wait a few more weeks, but i think that i might think about starting to potty train her in the next week or so. she starts preschool next week so i might wait until she gets settled there but i would hate to miss this window of interest. right now it is just funny to see her pulling on her diapers while telling me that she needs to go pee-pee and needs her "wet diaper changed".

as part of her diaper interest, she has been watching and 'helping' with mason's diaper changes. we haven't used the changing table for madelyn's diapers in a long time - at least 6 months. we just change her on the floor because she got too big for the changing table to be worth using. not to mention that she was just too heavy for me to be lifting while pregnant. anyway, she has been asking to be changed on the changing table every now and then since mason came home. i guess she didn't want to wait and climbed up on top of it in mason's room and laid down for daddy to change her diaper yesterday! i missed it, but it doesn't surprise me that she could get up there on her own.

in non-mason news, madelyn has been doing more art-and-craft type projects. last week we made paper bag puppets with markers, googlie-eyes, and pom-poms. yesterday daddy helped madelyn use stencils and paint to decorate a bird house kit she received as a big sister gift. today they are going to hang the bird house and hope that something moves in soon.

madelyn and daddy finished up this session of swimming lessons the night we were admitted to have mason. they had been working on "dunking" and matt said that madelyn would jump in from the side of the pool and happily go under water before being 'caught' by daddy and brought back up to call out "again!" happily. i was a little surprised by this since she has always been really careful to keep her face out of the water in the tub and wading pools. but we have come to expect this type of fearlessness from our little adventurer. love.