i live in wisconsin

even though we have lived in wisconsin for over four years i am still a little in shock that i live here. especially this time of year. while it is really exciting to me for the change of seasons and i love the fall and winter wardrobes because of all the layers, it is still crazy how long winter lasts! last night on the local news they were pointing out that there has been record of snow from october 6 - may 10! that is more than half the year! i, who once spent most of her free time at the beach, now live where snow is possible for more than half of the year! they also said that we are losing 23 minutes of daylight a day. i think we only have daylight from 7 - 7 right now. pretty soon matt won't see the sun except for weekends because it will be dark when he leaves in the morning and dark when he gets home in the evening.

maddie had a pretty uneventful day - music class, three hour nap, playing at the park, playing in the front yard, dinner, bath, and bed. more later. love.

every time is something new

every time we go to the zoo madelyn discovers something new or decides to be adventurous in a new way. today it was giving the baby gorilla statue hugs, figuring out how to turn on the water fountain (or locally known as the "bubbler"), and climbing up into the foot massage chairs throughout the zoo.

it was a blustery fall day and pretty much the only people there were parents of toddlers. when we stopped that the playground in the "family farm" on our way out the 2-5 play equipment was crawling with kids, but the 5-12 set was totally empty. the zoo has put out some halloween decorations so that was something new to see and talk about as we worked our way around to all the animals.

the most entertaining animals of the day were the hyenas. they were pacing around and one of them would do a turn on its hind legs when it got up near the glass. the first time it did this madelyn just looked at me like "what just happened here? that isn't normal." but then we both started laughing as it did it again and again. i bet we watched at least 20 rotations. here is some of maddie laughing at this trick - and asking for it "again".

on the way to the zoo i was singing madelyn songs. when she would call out "again" and "please" i asked if she wanted me to sing, so she said "sing" "please". it is so funny the words she says and the ones that she still doesn't. we can't believe that she doesn't say "bear" with as much as she loves hers and as often as we say "bear". i know that she will say it some day. love.

socks away

i had to run a few errands this morning and madelyn fell asleep at 10:30 (her mid-morning hump) whining for "snacks". when we got to the house i went to get her out of her car seat and she woke-up shouting "snacks"! i thought for sure that she was awake for good, but instead she snuggled up into my neck and went back to sleep. i was a little torn about whether to encourage her to wake up and eat her snack or just let her go to bed. the risk was only getting a one hour nap and a cranky girl for the rest of the day. i decided to go with it and put her in bed - where she stayed for the next three hours!

dryer update: the electrician came out and it was just a loose wire in the electrical cabinet. yes, that would mean that our old dryer still worked. yes, that means that we spent money we didn't need to. yes, matt may never get over this. needless to say i have been doing laundry ever since the electrical was fixed.

when matt got home he helped sort and fold while i worked on dinner. to keep maddie out of the kitchen for me, matt had her putting away her socks. she made this trip at least ten times, but i decided to get some video right as she was starting to loose interest. we were speculating about what we would find in her room - would the socks actually be in her dresser or just scattered on the floor? watch and find out. (i couldn't decide which video was better and posted them both - the lighting didn't look as bad while i was filming.) love.

bloody sunday

disregarding the mess that is our garage right now behind her, take a look at our sweet little madelyn's right knee. she tripped on the way to the car after church riping her tights and scraping her knee so that it bled through her white tights. but like the big girl she is, she brushed herself off and kept right on going. a quick tight change at the house and we were off to do some more appliance shopping. three hours and a lot of money later, we had a new washer and dryer installed today (yes, they delivered today - sunday - at no extra cost). we had looked at getting a "scratch-and-dent" dryer just to get us through a few more years, but we couldn't find one under $300. and it just made more sense, economically, to buy the pair since we didn't have a lot of years left on our washer either.

i was so excited to get caught up on our laundry (a little over two weeks worth) and got right to it. i was very impressed by the wash cycle and pulled the clothes over to the dryer. only the dryer wouldn't turn on - at all. after flipping the breaker a few times, matt and i felt sick because we just dropped a lot of money that we would rather have not done and it is looking like there was actually nothing wrong with the dryer (and washer) that we let the appliance store hull away for us. it might actually be something the electrician did while working on our basement last week. of course we are calling the contractor first thing in the morning to get the electrician back out here (he is already slated to come by tomorrow anyway). i will give you an update tomorrow, but for now we are not that happy. although the washer is really great so far!

during our appliance shopping yesterday we returned some left over tile but could only get a store credit. off we went to try and find things that we actually needed and not anything we just never knew we 'needed'. i was pleased to find a solidly made wooden step stool. i have been looking for one for madelyn because standing on a chair isn't something i want to teach and she is getting heavy for me to hold up while she washes her hands or watches me cook. and for $6.99 i felt like it was a steal. madelyn is just tall enough to use it at the kitchen sink. she keeps climbing up to wash her hands, but i don't indulge her every time only when she actually needs to wash her hands. there was a little hesitation at this purchase because she will easily be able to move it around to reach anything she wants to; and she is already starting to realize that benefit of the stool. hopefully, this won't be a purchase i regret... love.

first frost

we woke up to a white world this morning - sort of - due to our first official frost of the year. the yards, roofs, and road were shaded white by a layer of frost. by march i am tired of winter, but this time of year i get excited to bundle up and hope for a white christmas. but for now, everyone is gearing up for fall.

after spending the morning looking at all our options for a new dryer (ours died last weekend), we stopped by "harvest fest" at a local grocery store. we were offered a pumpkin for maddie to paint and thought that we would give it a try. she has been doing really well with her crayons, spent fifteen minutes writing with a pen on some paper, and we were headed home after this stop so a mess could be handled. she did so great! of course i didn't really get any pictures or video of how good she was doing at dipping (she is a really good dipper and has added "dip" to her vocabulary) her paint brush in the paints to paint the pumpkin or how well she did drawing on it with a marker. here is some video of daddy helping her paint.



and here are front (with help from dad on the eyes) and back (all maddie) pictures of her finished pumpkin on our front porch. hopefully, she (the pumpkin) will have a larger friend in the next few weeks.










the lady at the store offered us some ribbon and let maddie pick from two choices - madelyn went for the literal option with pumpkins on it. she is getting so opinionated thanks to all the options we give her for almost everything (clothes, toys, stroller v. wagon, etc.). i stapled the bow on top as a salute to maddie's ever present bows.

late this afternoon we went down to the neighborhood park for some outdoor fun after all the appliance shopping in the morning. the most exciting part was that we didn't take a stroller or wagon with us! madelyn walked the block and a half there and back (up hill both ways - really). anyone who has even tried to walk even to the next house knows that is quite an accomplishment. toddlers are easily distracted and tend to wander. not that we got there quick or anything, but she didn't even ask to be carried and didn't wander off the sidewalk. it is just extra energy burned. we did stop often to checkout some of the halloween and fall/harvest decor, pick up a bird feather, blow some dandelion seeds, and point out rocks and flowers. i wish that i had my camera for video. everything was greeted with a "hi", then examined and discussed ("what's that?" and my answers), and then waved to with either a few more "hi"s or a "bye" before continuing on her way. i thoroughly enjoyed our walk.

once we finally made it to the park madelyn lost interest in the feather after her first trip down the slide and enjoyed climbing, sliding, and swinging. and tonight she discovered the joys of swinging herself in the big kid swing (aka regular swing). she finally figured out how to get on her chest/belly and push with her legs to swing. again i wish that i had brought the camera with me for video (the pictures are from my phone). she has gotten on the swing like this before, but not figured out how to actually swing all by herself - she was so excited about and proud of this accomplishment.

she also spoke her first sentence - "mom swing, please". i have been swinging next to her, counting to three, and then jumping off while she is swinging in the infant swing. she asks me to do it "again" and "again", but tonight i got the full sentence request.

last is one more picture of her by the swing because i thought it was cute. love.

new bubble game

after a few rainy days, today was a beautiful fall day. (granted matt had frost/ice on his windshield this morning that couldn't be scraped off by his windshield wipers.) since it rained last night, i thought that the playground might be too wet for playing this morning. instead we went back to the lotza fun room. we haven't been there in at least 6 months and they had a lot of new toys. and madelyn had the whole place to herself for over an hour! i guess they were really busy the past two days because of the rain, but we were the only ones all day today.

madelyn was totally overstimulated by all the toys. she went around the whole room saying "hi" to everything and could hardly play with anything before seeing something else that needed her immediate attention. she did spend quite a while feeding all the baby dolls in the play house in the middle of the room. and any other toys that got her attention for more than 5 seconds took a trip through the jungle gym tube. she would carry them through at least once and laugh the whole time. the picture shows her taking the bottles through when she was finished feeding all the babies.

after the lotza fun room we went home for some lunch and her nap. i had to fight to keep her awake on the drive over there because it was 10:30 and if she is in the car at 10:30 she falls asleep and if it is long enough that is her only nap for the day. i have been working on getting her back to a 1:00 or 2:00 nap time. she starting going down for her nap before noon after we got back from california and i hadn't really tried to push it back because when she sleeps 2-3 hours it didn't really bother me. but it is starting to be inconvenient to feed her lunch after her nap and it makes it difficult to keep her nap time consistent when we have to run errands in the morning.

because it really was a beautiful day out, we went to the park late in the afternoon. madelyn has been obsessive with her bubbles lately. she carries them with her everywhere when we are outside (i don't let her bring them in the house). sometimes she wants me to blow them, but most of the time she wants to "dip" the wand herself and can even blow out a bubble or two. so here is a new game that got her laughing when she was swinging with her bubbles (it is pretty bumpy because i am pushing her and picking up the bubbles).

yesterday afternoon we went to the park for a few hours. the sun had finally come out and the rain had stopped for a while. we did have to bundle up (i wore my first scarf of the season), but with the sun out it was a nice time to go. my trick for getting a little more out of her warm weather clothes is to put a long sleeved t-shirt under it. it was a lot easier this spring when she didn't care, but now she didn't like having to put on two shirts because it slowed her down from being able to "go".

all of the gorillas/apes/chimps/monkeys were inside and madelyn was very excited about seeing animals in every cage (usually at least half of the exhibits are empty because the animals are outside) and as a bonus almost all of them were swinging around and playing. she also gave a baby gorilla statute a close examination. she has never had any interest in it before, but we had also never gotten to see so much activity from the gorillas before and spent more time at that exhibit than normal.

love.

top chef

you have seen that madelyn likes to "cook" in the kitchen, but tonight i actually put her to work. she was asking to be "up" "please" over and over so i got a chair and let her stand next to me while i cut the onions. she has seen me use the chopper before and has always tried to see what i was actually doing. so i wasn't too surprised when she started pushing down the button that makes it chop. so we worked together. i cut the onion small enough for the chopper, got it started (the first cuts require the most pressure), and then maddie took over from there. the craziest part was that she didn't get watery eyes from the onion. i couldn't hardly see because my eyes were watering so much, but not a single tear from her. i told matt that she is going to be the official onion chopper in our house from here on out!



she pretty much won't let me cook anymore without being held up to see, so we are going to have to get this girl a stepping stool that she can use to see all the action on the counter and stove. since her presence in the kitchen has increased exponentially (climbing up me, striving to see what i am doing, wearing the oven mitts, etc.), we have been working on "hot" and "cold". mainly "hot" and stressing that the oven is dangerous when mommy has it open. she got it after the first day. this past weekend she even said "hot" while lifting her leg off her car seat buckle that had been in the sun and gotten warm. she even tells me she is "hot" when i cover her up with her blanket at nap time as a way of requesting not to wear it. we are still working on "cold", but she will have it in no time thanks to the onset of fall and winter - the high was 58 today.

we actually spent a decent amount of time out side today and madelyn got to wear her first tights of the season. she was fine with it except when it was time to change her diaper. she could not stand having them on her feet and ankles, which was surprising because i don't always take off her pants and shorts when changing her diaper. oh well, she will get use to it.

when we were inside i decided to let her use some crayons. we have tried crayons off and on for a long time now, for grandparents' cards and that sort of thing. she is just starting to get the hang of actually marking on the paper intentionally. we even got out some stickers for her artwork today. and the best part is that she didn't try to eat them or mark on anything other than the paper. she was very careful with getting them out of the box one at a time and even put them all back in the box when she was done.

after a decent nap she woke up happy and chatty, but then she started screaming. of course i

went running to her room to see what had happened, but she had just noticed some new items that she couldn't reach on the top of her bookshelf. so we got down the pillsbury dough boy figurine that grandma just sent her, then she wanted her mouse ears from our trip to disney (madelyn is really, really into "hats" right now) and then she wanted a little beaded elephant that papa and nana brought her from south africa. everything got a big hug or more when she finally had it in her grasp.


madelyn is really, really into hats. she puts on at least one hat a day. she can also say "hat" and asks for one when we go out sometimes (or stay in). she will keep putting a hat on over and over when it falls off - persistent.