moving up again

since we had a slew of birthdays, it was time to move up in the car seats. manning moved up, maddux moved back, mason moved to a booster and madelyn is now car seat free! and she. is. SO. excited! she has been asking to drive around. when matt got home (since he didn't get to see it first hand) she begged him (and begged him and begged him) to drive her around the cul-du-sac. and then all the kids wanted to come. madelyn came back in with a giant "yes! that was awesome!" i guess daddy drove them all around the neighborhood. the kiddos are growing up. love.

in other carseat news...

i guess today is carseat day.  manning has entered that 'i don't want to be buckled into my carseat' phase.  you know the one.  he screams and convulsed in a way that i have to physically hold him in the seat while trying to fasten all of the buckles.  the one sure to attract the attention of anyone within earshot?  the one that makes you feel like everyone thinks you are beating your child?

yeah.  i am not enjoying it.

and once the buckles are on he is totally content and happy again.

did i mention that i really hate this phase?

i think it has something to do with him wanting to get into the car himself - or so i think i figured out today.

oh the things i forget (block out) from one kid to the next.  love.

thank God for squirrels - a cautionary tale

i was walking with a friend this morning and she was commenting on how the squirrels seem suicidal lately because they are all running out in front of her car.  she said that she had to stop for three just this morning.  and then i told her my squirrel story from this morning...

as i was driving the boys to school a squirrel ran out in front of the van.  as always, i slowed down (we were already going pretty slow on a neighborhood side-street) but this squirrel didn't run back out of the road when we approached like they usually do, instead it kept going.  i slammed on my brakes to stop for it and maddux' car seat fell forward into the back of my seat!!!!  he was NOT hurt.  let me get that out of the way.  we were going very slow at this point, it was just a very sudden complete stop.

he was able to push himself back into the upright position before i could pull off the road and see what had happened.  i think it scared him more than anything but he did say that he bumped his nose.  there was no red mark on his face of any kind when i checked him out.

while i regularly check the position of the kids' straps and buckles on their carseats, i can say that i don't check the way they are attached to the car other than when i am carefully installing them (seriously, i am careful.  like i read the manual step-by-step every single time).  when i looked at his seat today i saw that one of the kids had unbuckled the seatbelt that holds it in place!  (our back row carseats are all anchored in addition to the seat belt but we don't have as many options for the middle seats - although i am going to revisit the van manual to see if there are any anchor options besides the seat belt that we have missed.)  you would think that we would have noticed this because his seat would have moved when he climbed up into it, but there were no noticeable signs that it was loose.

this was after i had re-secured the seat to the van seat.

we do talk regularly about how important it is to not touch or pull on any carseat straps because it can make them unsafe, but i can't remember the last time we told them not to touch the seat belts. 

thank God for squirrels because without that squirrel providing this warning, we might have been dealing with something much, much worse some day.

so there is my cautionary tale - regularly check (like every time you get in the car) how the carseats are attached and make sure your kids know not to touch them.

i have been thinking about how to prevent this in the future.  is there a 'lock' of some type that can keep kids from pushing the release button?  or is that a safety risk in an emergency?  or maybe car manufacturers can give indicator lights of belts successfully buckled on the dash?

love.

musical chairs

both boys have outgrown their car seats.  we have been back and forth about whether to move madelyn up to a traditional booster seat or to get mason a seat like madelyn's current one.  while madelyn more than qualifies for a booster seat, we decided to invest is a second 5-point harness seat for mason.  by the time maddux is ready to move up again, mason would not be old enough for a booster so it was the better (and safer) investment for the long term.  plus, madelyn can buckle and unbuckle on her own so it isn't that big of a deal for her to stay where she is until she outgrows it and it will convert to a booster if we wanted to let her use a regular seat belt before out growing it.

mason in his new 'big boy' seat

maddux in his first true 'car seat'.  we have gotten our money's worth out of  this one!

the boys both seem to like their new car seats.  mason really likes his and it was nice to get him something of his own instead of always getting madelyn's hand-me-down.

we had a fun day of swimming at the neighborhood pool while matt worked on some finish up work at the house (light bulbs, batteries for fan remotes and paint touch up).  we swam, went and had lunch with daddy at the house and back to the pool for a few more hours of 'swimming'. after lunch mason sat and watched madelyn, maddux and i in the big pool and i got to meet a few more neighbors.  we are really going to like living there!  love.

fun with nana and papa

with all the things Christmas related to cover the past few days i haven't written about the little everyday things that have been going on. madelyn has moved up to a 'big girl' car seat. matt's parents got it for us for Christmas and maddie has been riding all over town in her cushy new seat. the trick is going to be getting it back to wisconsin. luckily, we have some wonderful friends who drove down to kansas for the holidays and said that they could drive some things back for us if we needed them to - i hope they have a lot of extra room...

we also started her on winter squash which has been a big hit! when we get back home i am going to make her up some homemade winter squash varieties, but for now she is enjoying the jarred version. i think that she might be ready for snacks too. she has been eating three meals a day and is still waking up at night. and these are not small meals either. she is eating about 7 oz. of food followed by 5 oz. of milk. yesterday she ate almost two whole bananas in one sitting! (i had to throw away a little because of a bruise otherwise she would have eaten the whole thing.) she is just so active that i can't keep up with her calorie consumption. i think that next week we will start to introduce snacks into our routine - maybe even some finger foods.

now that all the presents have been given, we got to the business of returning and exchanging. first stop was kohl's and maddie liked riding in their forward facing carts. after kohl's we went to one of my favorite stores, dsw, for some shoe shopping and everyone bought shoes except for me. i almost cried. they were having their 80% off sale and had nothing in my size! if only i could cut my toes off...

after shopping and dinner at the cheesecake factory, maddie got to spend some time playing with papa and nana while daddy and uncle derek played tiger woods pga golf on the new wii. here is some video of her sort of crawling to nana. she is not totally coordinated in her movements, but she is definitely starting to cover a lot more ground with a lot more speed. and she moves fastest when she is getting into something that she shouldn't be.



then nana got maddie ready for bed and papa rocked her to sleep.










everyone is waiting for me to watch a movie so i have to run. love.