photo summary

it has been busy for me the past few days with madelyn's preschool open house, matt's fantasy football drafts (yes, that is plural - as in three), and a neighborhood movie night while matt went to a brewers game. to try and share i am just going to post pictures with captions.
it seems like madelyn always asks to hold mason in the morning. here is the best picture taken at her request. she has also been telling mason that she loves him very much ("mason, i love you very much!") with a big hug and kiss without any prompting - it is just out of the blue. i am so thankful that she has so much love for her brother.

mason taking a little catnap. he is falling into a pattern of a two catnaps (around 45 minutes each) in the morning, a 3-4 hour nap starting between 12 and 1, and then two more catnaps before going down for the night around 8. he sleeps until 2 or 4am before needing to eat. he will sleep about 3 more hours after that. it seems to be working for him so that is nice.

madelyn has taken to playing toddler games on our phones. her favorite is this one that is a series of shape puzzles of letter, foods, instruments, trucks, and animals. it has been really nice for doctor appointments and other times when we need her to play quietly.

speaking of playing quietly, she has been wonderful about playing quietly when i need her to do so. this has really been new this week. she has always been willing to play by herself, but would come over to ask me questions or something along those lines. this week it changed. i have been working on ignoring her when i am on the phone and explaining that i was going to be on the phone before making the call or going to a web conference meeting. she has been wonderful!! she even tattles on herself after i hang up the phone if she tried to talk to me during my call. on thursday morning i was in meetings for about two hours. the only time she spoke to me was when she asked if it would be okay to play in the office with me because she wanted to paint. she even whispered her question. i was so proud of her! it has also worked for when i am nursing mason down for his nap. i just explain that it is time for me to feed mason in his room and put him down for his nap before i go back to his room. she waits for me to come back out before declaring happily that "i was quiet!" you've got to love her.

i thought that mason was cute in his blue and brown stripes so i took a few pictures. this one with the "o" mouth was my favorite. this picture had two purposes. mason can sit up in the stroller now (with a slight recline) and he is wearing his first jacket.
madelyn was very happy about her french braids. this was the first time madelyn has ever had braids and the first time i have french braided hair in a very, very long time - like at least 10 years. we were both pleased with the results. madelyn did a great job of holding still and loves them so much that we are one day two of them. she just doesn't want to take them down yet. her head looks like a huge mess after sleeping on them twice her head has a lot of fly-aways.

here is the best picture of all the neighborhood kids watching nemo last night. we were going to watch it outside but the mosquitoes were too bad. (they are really, really bad here this summer. i grew up in florida and have never had so many mosquito bites in such a short amount of time.) most of my pictures were really blurry because i was holding mason and trying to take pictures without being able to see in the dark room well enough to frame up the picture. you can get the idea though. madelyn is in a white shirt on the couch sitting on one of the older kid's lap.

on wednesday night we went to open house at madelyn's preschool. she was so excited to be going to school and see her teacher from the summer mrs. t. i had explained that mrs. t may not be her teacher, but i don't think it sunk in until we got there and mrs. t was not there and we took madelyn to a different room in the building to meet her new teacher mrs. w. it took us three tries to leave because madelyn wanted to go back to her room twice and once to check her old room for mrs. t. she was also very sad to be leaving at all because she wanted to go to school and have us leave. over the past few days she has come to terms with mrs. t not being there. she tells us in a sad voice that "mrs. t isn't there any more." and then in an excited voice, " my new teacher is mrs. w!" her first day back is this wednesday and she can hardly stand the wait! love.