Madeleine at 21 months

This little girl has totally stolen our hearts. We are in constant awe as we watch her grow, and we still have to pinch ourselves that she's ours and marvel at the great fortune we have to be her parents.

She is such a funny kid, she loves to:

Jump on the bed - or really jump anywhere - she LOVES to jump!

Eat snacks - one of the things we laugh at the most is when she says, "I-un-nack" (imagine nack with huge emphasis) this means she wants a snack, aka a fruit snack. If you don't answer her right away (heaven forbid) the request gets increasingly louder and louder, until you acknowledge her request by saying, Madeleine, do you want a snack? To which she would reply (as if it had been your idea all along), "Okay!".

Climb ladders, which can be very dangerous consider the amount of home remodeling we have going on, but she is fearless!

 

She loves and I mean ADORES bath time. She will lay on her tummy in the bath and move around her whole little body and say, "I'm wimming!" (swimming) Too cute!

In fact she loves the water period! I filled up a tub with water in the driveway on one of our recent 80 plus degrees days and took some bath toys outside for her to play with. She loved it!

 

We do watch Sesame Street everyday - I have to say, I've learned it's entertaining even for adults, and you know you're in trouble when you add in conversations with your adult friends what you learned recently on Sesame Street. Madeleine gets so excited when it comes on, she loves the intro and loves to clap at the end. Her obvious favorite characters are Elmo and Abby Cadabby. She shocked me the other day when she was sitting on my bed and said "a Abby" it was the first time!

Play the piano, in fact for a not even 2 year old, I think she's pretty dang good! She will usually hit the keys one at a time to listen to the sound and  never just bangs on the keys (by the way, don't you just love our piano bench?).

The park, playground, and Chick-fil-A are some of her favorite places. She's now learned to identify Chick-fil-A's when we are driving around and even if we're not stopping she gets so excited and starts clapping her hands. She's gotten really good on their indoor playgrounds and can climb to the top of the playgym by herself and slide down by herself. At the playground the swings are her favorite and she's not afraid to swing high!

P.S. this is not some scary man I met at the park who's twirling Madeleine, my dad met me at the park one day :)

She loves ice cream and has the - "I want to do it myself" attitude, which is not always the easiest to clean up!

 

She still loves  that darn paci, man, I do not look forward to it's extinction. We already try to limit it, but I can't even imagine how fun bedtime is going to be without them.

She loves her baby dolls and loves babies in general! I've taught her how to pat her baby's on the back and say shhhh.

She's such a fun little person. We've made the switch to a new pediatrician who I think the world of (thanks Jill!), such a difference a new doctor makes! All the junk we went through with testing Madeleine and her being tagged as failure to thrive really had me worried and stressed to the max. Our new pediatrician actually took the time to really look over her charts and test results and relay items found that would identify her as a perfectly normal and healthy little girl who's just petite. She's about in the 20th percentile for her height and at least she's finally made it on the charts again for her weight (I think she was like in the 6th percentile). I now feel fully at ease with Madeleine's health and know she is getting the care she ought to have, which makes me a happy mom!

In fact we had a new scare recently. Madeleine's been passing out when she gets really upset. Like when a child cries, they have their big wind-up cry and then they catch their breath and continue to cry. She doesn't catch her breath and passes out for less than 5 seconds and comes to. The first time this happened it was several months ago when we were playing and she fell and bonked her face on Andrew's leg. I always thought it was from the pain that she went in shock and passed out. However, this past weekend it happened twice! On Saturday at Chick-fil-A with my niece and Madeleine. My niece took the kid's placemat out of Madeleine's hand (and I thought inadvertently pushed her to hurt her) and she did it again! It scared me so badly, I'm standing at the order line with my child passed out in my arms. Again, she came to quickly, cried a little more and acted fine. The on Sunday we were leaving my parents' and she didn't want to go. Andrew picked her up and she did it again! So I called the doctor first thing Monday morning. She was concerned and got me set up to take her to a pediatric cardiologist that morning (she is amazing!!!). We had an EKG done and the cardiologist examined her and decided it was breath holding syndrome. I had heard of kids holding their breath to pass out, but never involuntary like how Madeleine has been doing. It's just something to keep an eye on and if it continues we'll have an ultrasound done on her heart.

In just a few months my baby will be 2. I really can't believe how the time has flown. It seems like my infertility years lasted forever, it's amazing how fast time goes with this special little girl. Kind of makes me a little sad like it's going too fast! We just try to enjoy everyday with her that we've been given.