birthday boy

today was matt's birthday.  madelyn called him "birthday boy" all day.  i had wanted to let him sleep in but the kids had other plans for me last night and when mason woke up on the floor of our bedroom he went to matt and i could not motivate to stop him.  oh well.  it made it that much easier to take daddy out to breakfast - which we were planning anyway.

we took him to dunkin donuts (his choice because we had coupons).  i have never had breakfast there before, but their hash browns are awesome!  after that we headed over to do some shopping.  there were still some really great deals and since we were out early, we had the stores mostly to ourselves.  we were going to take him out to dinner, but we were very close to the restaurant at lunch time so we decided to save ourselves another trip out.  we tried a barbecue place and daddy really liked it.  there aren't that many barbecue places around here so it was a real treat.

yesterday, the kids and i made matt's birthday cake.  we made a vanilla cake with a vanilla pudding and sliced strawberries filling covered in chocolate, chocolate chip frosting.  yum, yum!

daddy said that he had a nice day and i really think that he did.  we love you, daddy/matt!  love.

festival of trees

matt surprised us all with a trip to the 'festival of trees' after thanksgiving dinner. apparently this is an annual even where local businesses and families decorate Christmas trees and wreaths and donate them to the show where they are sold to benefit the children's hospital.  the pictures don't really capture how beautiful the trees were all lit up.  and the picture to the right was just the overflow; there was a whole ballroom of trees that i didn't take a picture of for some reason.  there were easily over 100 trees and lots of other holiday decorations.

the kids were asking to have their picture taken in front of their 'favorite' trees, but they could  barely hold still long enough for a picture before seeing their next 'favorite'.  and there was just way too much to see to pause for pictures.

the kids were very cute in their search for "baby jesus" - and there were lots to see.  we thought that this one using teddy bears was the most unique.

the event was closing, but we stopped by to see santa before we left.  i think the santa was a little tired because he was a little frustrated that the kids wouldn't speak louder.  he wasn't rude or anything that the kids would have noticed, but i decided to step in and repeat their answers above a whisper.  madelyn said that she wanted a candy cane for Christmas and when santa kept pushing for her to say something else, she said that she wanted a guitar.  we could not believe that the girl who has reviewed every toy circular in the paper - multiple times - and marked every toy that is her "favorite" - and she has a lot of favorites - could not think of something to tell santa.  "guitar" was inspired from maddux' birthday present that all three kids like playing with and then we found one with princesses on it - so not totally random but not something i would consider to be in her top twenty.  mason was more predictable with a "race car".  the santa seemed disappointed that they didn't want more toys.  he kept asking "are you sure you don't want anything else?" until i decided that we had better be on our way.

did i mention that the event was free?  we will most definitely come back next year.  love.

happy thanksgiving

gathered around the table for our first thanksgiving in the new house!  it was a great day with just the family.  now if the turkey had not started the day frozen... but it never had a chance because even our carrots were icy!  we only ate one hour later than planned and everything worked out great.  it was a lot easier to have three ovens instead of just one.

maddux surprised me by eating everything on his plate! he ate more than madelyn and mason.  if we had not needed to leave, he probably would have kept eating.  he has been really picky about what he will eat lately, but i will say that sitting at the table has made a huge difference in him not just throwing food on the floor.

the kids brought home some thanksgiving items home to decorate our table.

madelyn brought home a prayer turkey.  each of the colored cards had a prayer/song on it and we have used it for several meals.  madelyn likes them all on the back instead of spread out around the turkey.

mason made a place mat with a turkey made out of his hand prints and foot print and a 'picture' of our family on the back. it was so cute how proud he was of it and how he explained every detail to me and then later to matt.  a great keepsake!

we have so much to be thankful for!  we are all healthy, we have a beautiful new home, we have jobs, we have been blessed with beautiful children.  i hope that everyone takes time to be thankful for the simple things in life - like health and time with the ones you love - because those are the most precious things.

after dinner we went to get into the Christmas spirit.  love.

sleep

as everyone with small children knows - sleep is constantly evolving.  we started out doing pretty well, but things have been challenging.  our kids have always been early risers - between 6 and 6:30am.  we work towards staying in rooms until 7am.

the new room situations seem to be working out well - actually better than i had hoped. mason does not seem to be bothered my maddux' crying most of the time. and being seperated from the boys has actually allowed madelyn to get more sleep.  but for some reason they must be having a secret meeting each evening to decide who gets to wake up in the middle of the night and come into our room.  madelyn doesn't draw that straw often, but she gets her turns.  mainly it is mason and he goes right back to sleep (usually in or next to our bed).  but maddux likes to go with a 5am wake up call.  he was at 4:30am for about a week, but 5:15am seems to be his favorite time.

out of despiration i decided to just let him cry until 7am.  knowing that it would wake up mason.  mason was getting a little too comfortable with sleeping in our bed after waking up before 7am so we have started only letting him sleep on the floor next to our bed - which he does not mind at all.  in fact, i had to wake him up at 8:30am on sunday so that we could go to church!  he has since come into our room and laid down without making a noise.  but maddux did not take as well to crying.  i wake up when he does and turn off the monitor so it isn't so loud and then lay in bed listening to him cry.  i do not enjoy it, but he is fine and will be better when he sleeps longer.  the first day i think he cried off and on for an hour before going back to sleep.  all three kids slept until 7:30am that day.  the second day he woke up at 5:30am, cried softly twice and went back to sleep.  i woke up at 7:45am and was the first one in the house awake!  (it was a saturday.)

we are still working on it and it is a little bit of a process with figuring out getting daytime napping and early morning rising balance out but we are much, much closer than we were a week ago. and we are all a bit more rested and cheerful.  love.

mason

i feel like it has been a while since i have done a post just about mason.  he is such a sweet little snuggler, but he can also be super silly trouble.

- mason doesn't always speak in complete sentences.  i understand him about 95% of the time without any trouble.  i only have to ask him to help me when i don't know what topic he is telling me about - like when he comes in from another room.

- mason loves school and gets so sad on days we take madelyn and he doesn't get to stay too

- he knows all of his colors (not confusing any like madelyn did with black and brown for a while)

- he often sings to himself.  i can almost always recognize the tune but can't usually make out the words.

- he knows a lot of his letters, but i haven't sat down with him to figure out how many (i really should do that though...)

- mason is very independent and rarely gets to an "i can't do it".  if he can't get it done he will calmly ask for help.  he only gets frustrated when you won't let him try.  that is one of the qualities i love most about him. i must hear "no, mommy/mads/daddy me do it!" 50 times a day.

- he can do most puzzles and is getting better at matching the picture instead of just matching the shape (he has a puzzle set where all the shapes are the same so i know that he is looking at the picture more).  his teachers at school have mentioned that his ability to do the 'hard' puzzles is impressive and their 'hard' puzzles are just the shape cut out kind, not an actual jigsaw type puzzle that he does at home.

- dressing himself is rarely a problem. he is very focused on not putting things on backwards.

- potty training has been illusive.  he starts out fine and can go in the potty without any trouble, but then he starts begging for a diaper and stops making any effort to go in the potty.  i think he is one that we just have to wait for him to decide when it is time.  unfortunately.  his will to wear diapers is stronger than ours to quit diapers.  the last time we potty trained (a few weeks ago) he was so determined to put his underwear back on by himself that he got a leg hole around his waist!  and it was very tight.  we couldn't believe that he was able to pull it up over his bottom without getting frustrated or giving up.

- he has started taking a book to bed with him just like bunny bear.  it doesn't matt which book because he doesn't look at it, he just sleeps with it.  he has also taken to 'reading' by himself instead of having us read to him although he does listen to stories when we read at bedtime with madelyn.

- he has a strong interest in basketball.  matt says that it must skip a generation since papa and big pop both played and matt and i didn't.

- still sucking his thumb.  i have started working with him about only sucking it when it is sleeping time and he seems to be very accepting of that rule.  i am actually impressed by him immediate removal of his thumb with a smile.

- he notices everything and talks almost non-stop.  i love listening to him.

- mason loves being my "helper" when we go shopping and he truly is helpful by carrying things and getting items off shelves.

you always hear how wild boys are but mason seems to be pretty tame.  don't get me wrong he comes at you full speed when it is play/wrestle time and is "all boy" at times.  we are very proud of him and love how loving he is to everyone around him.  so there is a little update on our growing boy.  love.

more teeth

it was tough to give a count of teeth on maddux' first birthday because there were so many coming in at once.  and as of today he has the last four for a grand total of 16 until he gets his two-year-old molars.  we are all super glad to be done with teething for a while. love.

little drummer boy

the kids' school's church had a family movie night screening of the little drummer boy - aka the new veggietales movie.  we actually have a copy that maddux got for his birthday, but we have waited to watch it at this event.

it was cute.  they had all the kids make 'drums' on their way in (styrofoam sandwich containers covered with Christmas themed stickers) and then had them 'drum' while we sang "the little drummer boy" Christmas carol before the movie.  then they explained how the drummer boy isn't in the bible, but that it uses Jesus' birth as its inspiration.

everyone is invited to wear pajamas to the movie.  here is our crew waiting for the show to start.  mason is in that squinty, nostril 'smile' phase that makes a good group picture difficult to come by.

and i was there too...

i wasn't sure how maddux would do during the movie.  i actually thought that he might fall asleep.  he wasn't noisy and didn't cry, but he kept touching the lady in front of us so i took him out to walk around.  mason kept switching back and forth from walking with us and sitting with matt and madelyn.

after the movie they offered a 'bed time snack'.  there was more sugar than we would normally let our kids eat that late, but let them have their treats since this was a special outing.  mason wasn't looking for the first picture, so he requested to have his picture taken again once he was ready to 'smile'.  madelyn leaned in at the last second which is why she looks surprised.

i think that we would do this again if the movie was something of interest to the kids.  it was a nice family night out and i think we all enjoyed it.  the best part was that we were home only a few minutes past bedtime.  love.

watercolors

i let the kids paint with water colors for a while today on the easel.  madelyn is much better than she was before we moved and mason just wanted to paint black "trees".  although he did switch to brown so that he could paint a "geese" (i am having trouble convincing him that when there is just one, it is a goose).  love.

maddux meets the swing

we hung the swing in the basement a few weeks ago.  and maddux finally got his turn!  it's a little too high for him to climb into but he loves it any way.  i don't think you can really hear him laughing or see how big he is smiling.  it doesn't really look all that fun, but he loves it!  love.

big kids

mason completely selected his outfit, removed his pajamas and put on his clothes all by himself today!  madelyn was wearing a pretty good outfit of her own choosing and mason wanted to pose for a picture with her.  i hope that this keeps up because it was really nice to only have to dress one (and myself) before school today.  love.

meet mommy and daddy

madelyn and mason were playing quite a game of pretend that evolved into madelyn being the "mommy" and mason being the "daddy".  to complete their outfits, madelyn thought that they needed to wear our shoes.  the funniest thing was madelyn was concerned about how matt could go to work without his "work" shoes.  i explained that he has more than one pair. love.

this was the pose they chose to 'show' me the shoes.

and they both fell down after the picture; i caught them getting the shoes back on

maddux at one

i wasn't able to get maddux a one-year check up until next month. so i thought that i might jot down a few things about maddux right now...

- he has 12 teeth
- he can go up and down stairs by himself (he just started going down this week)
- he points at what he wants as his own form of 'signing' (no, i haven't been very good at teaching him signing)
- maddux wears 18 - 24 months clothes, 4 shoes
- when he is done eating or drinking he just throws the rest or his cup on the floor; this makes me insane
- biting does not seem to be his favorite activity any more!  although he did bite mason this week when he was trying to take away a toy
- he has more or less stopped nursing.
- he is walking full time
- generally sleeping from 8-6 with a two hour nap although he will take a morning nap too if he/i need him to
- maddux loves his brother and sister!  he tries so hard to understand their running around games and keep up
- he says "dada", "mama", "sis", "dog", "this" and tries to say "book"
- he literally devourers books; i am working on him about this because i hate to see the books getting destroyed
- everyone who interacts with him for any period of time (like the church nursery) they comment about how "sweet", "easy" and "happy" he is - yes
- maddux likes to lay his head on my shoulder, but only when i am standing.  if i sit down he is very likely to wiggle down
- his hair is still curly, but so fine that sleeping on it and rubbing food in it can straighten it out over the course of a day and it seems to be lightening up a little

we love him and couldn' imagine our family without him.  love.

being the youngest

while maddux was napping on his first birthday, i looked up pictures of madelyn and mason's first birthday. and it occurred to me that instead of letting maddux do things sooner, he does things much, much later.  where some people are over protective of their first and then loosen up, we encouraged madelyn to be independent and develop. it isn't that i am trying to keep him a baby or anything, it is more that i am so distracted by the other two.  i noticed this a little with mason but it was much more pronounced looking at the pictures of the other two at one.

maddux is still in the high chair, still in a stroller when we go places and sleeping in his sleep sack.  he walked as early as madelyn and we let him do what he wants to if he seems physically able but i think that we do hold back on his freedom a little.

i just thought that this was interesting. love.

the reading chair

maddux picked up a book, climbed up in this chair, 'read' it and then got down to pick another book before doing it all over again.  it was so funny to see him picking out a book and enjoy it.  love.

cozy coupe

maddux got a cozy coupe for his birthday from big pop and grandma.  how we managed to go this long without one is a little amazing. the weather warmed up today so daddy put it (and its trailer) together and maddux took it out for a spin.  i stayed inside to get some work done but i could see them racing up and down the sidewalk.  madelyn and mason running and maddux riding along.

i am sure that this will get a lot of use come spring and summer!  unfortunately, there most likely won't be too many more days were we can get out to use it before next year.  love.

maddux turns 1

although today is also our 10th wedding anniversary, the day was spent celebrating maddux' first year. we didn't really do anything too special during the day.  madelyn and mason went to school and maddux and i went to the grocery store and bed, bath & beyond before maddux had a melt down.

maddux is the first child that didn't get a homemade first birthday cake.  but according to madelyn, the ice cream cake we had instead was "the best cake ever".  we had bought a free dairy queen cake in a silent auction and thought that we would cash it in.  thankfully, the lady at dairy queen didn't let me settle for something too basic and maddux ended up with a pretty cute cake.
papa and nana sent a few small gifts for madelyn and mason so that they wouldn't feel left out (not that they did since they opened all of maddux' presents).  they loved that they got their own special presents.

maddux was having a pretty miserable day.  we were at bed, bath & beyond looking at humidifiers.  he is sleeping fine but the coughing from he and mason was getting worse.  maddux could not handle me looking up reviews on my phone and we left empty handed.  i didn't take very many pictures because he was not in the mood - at all.  i tried to get a picture of him with matt and i but he wouldn't let us hold him or get near him. and then i realized that i didn't take a picture of matt and i for our anniversary either!  oh well. 

this was one of the few happy moments in maddux' day.  he managed to open the dishwasher and get inside.  he was quite pleased with himself.

and then he went back to being needy...

madelyn and mason were excited about maddux' birthday and decided that they could help by watching for the macaroni and cheese to be "brown and bubbly".  i kept having to remind madelyn that the bread crumbs were already brown to start with and that it was the cheese that needs to get brown.

after naps we went to cvs to take another stab at picking up a humidifier and to get maddux a birthday balloon.  he could at least have a balloon!

he really, really liked the balloon (and the way mason hit it which he thought was hysterical).  and it seemed like he was even trying to say "balloon" by pointing and saying "ba".

i love his expression - like what is this?

and then he got more excited and put his finger right in

and a finger was pretty much his eating technique

and when he was done...

...he was done.

madelyn was excited to show maddux the special card she made him

maddux started with interest in the first gift, but he was quickly moved to the background as his brother and sister couldn't stand the anticipation.

it was a nice first birthday.  of course, it would have been a lot nicer if he had been healthy.  matt and i were discussing how fast this year has gone by - in retrospect only.  and how fast the past ten have past.  we are blessed.  love.