Madeleine at 18 months

I love my little toddler - wow, what a difference a few months makes.  I think that 17 months and on is going to be my favorite!  I love that she is able to communicate with us. 

At 18 months:

• She loves giving hugs and kisses (mmmmmmmmm- muh!) and we love receiving them!  We can say, "Do you love Nana?" she'll go, "mmmmmmmmmmm-muh".
• She is such a little climber, and a stinker too! 
• Being a mommy to her "babies", she loves carrying her dolls around the house.  She'll even cradle her hands and rock them back and forth as she says, "BAAAAAY-BEE", it melts my heart. 
• Jesus is one of her favorite words, makes me very proud to hear this as a parent.  We read scripture stories to her every night before sleep - one night it was late and we were just going to skip our scripture story when she started crying and saying, Jesus (sounds like J-HEE-SUHS) - who could resist? 
• She's such a good example to us always reminding us to pray with her arms folded, she loves prayer time. 
• Bath time is so much fun for her, although she hates having her hair rinsed.  She loves playing with her Elmo toy in the tub.
• Every morning she is my alarm clock, I hear Mommy - MOM-EE!!! She's still a great sleeper - two naps a day (usually) and at least 10 hours at night.
• I don't think there could be a worse eater than Madeleine, she's awful.  We still struggle with this.  Luckily we've moved from the "failure-to-thrive" category for her height and weight because after our gamut of tests, the Pediatrician decided that was just her (finally, I might add, those tests were getting OLD!).  She does love all fruits, but somehow knows she doesn't like vegetables and won't even try them - I keep trying to give it to her and it still becomes dining room wall art.
• She's an official nursery attendee as of last Sunday - not much fanfare because I serve in the nursery so she's been going there for months - but she does love the "Seed" song as well as "Popcorn Popping" and "The Wheels on the Bus".
• She's such a drama queen, and if you know Andrew and I, you probably have somewhat of an idea how she might have picked this one up.  Even when she walks she'll wiggle her bottom back and forth.
• Jumping is her new thing, she's gotten even a little air!  I brought out her Johnny Jumper the other day for my friend's baby, he wouldn't have anything of it, but Madeleine did!  I guess that's the benefit of being under 20 lbs, you can still use the baby toys.  She LOVES jumping in this and looks like a little firecracker as she does.  She also likes to make it spin and she can get fast, it makes me nervous like I think she's going to get sick, but she keeps going back for more.
• She would be happy if every day was spent on the playground.  She can even go down the big slides with no fear. She squeals when we pull into the playground parking lot (or Chik-fil-A for that matter).

Madeleine's Vocabulary includes (but is not limited to :) :

Ga-ga - milk/cup/drink (not sure how she picked this up, we don't use cutesie words for things)
Won...T-eeeew.....Feeeeee - one, two, three
Nana - grandma/banana/night-night (you just have to know the context)
Bop-pa - Papa
Dadda - Dad
Mamma/Mommy - Mom
Ehhhh-l-muh - Elmo
mmmmmmm - eat/hungry
huh-uh - no
No, No, NO! - usually with a pointed finger, this means NO!
Uh-OH/uh-uh - something fell or was intentionally thrown
go
bye (buh, buh) - usually with a little open and closed bye bye hand gesture
Bay-beeee - baby
Ah...Beee...C - ABC
Mine - UGH!  I hate this one :)
Tickle, Tickle
All gone
Buh-Burrrr - Big Bird
JHeee-Suhs - Jesus
Hi
Bah - bath
CHEESE! - take a picture, camera, or cheese
Hot
Oh No!
Mouth
Nose
Eye
Cracker
Ball
Yes
Thank you
Please

Hiking

Dad has said for years how much he loves to go hiking, but never gets to.  Well, right after Christmas we figured it was time to break him loose!  My dad is soooooo not the outdoorsy type, but he went.  It was a lot of fun, Scott my brother-in-law, Andrew, Dad, me and Madeleine headed up and hiked around the Blood Mountain area.  It was a cold day, but you get so hot hiking I was down to a T-shirt by the end.  It was a blast!

Miss Me?

Could this be the oldest Christmas post ever?  Oh well!  We had a fabulous Christmas - seriously probably one of the best in my life.  Having Madeleine be so excited about the season made it so much more fun.    We went to my parents for Christmas Eve and had a wonderful feast there.  My Uncle and Aunt A came with all my cousins and my Grandma came too!  It was fun to spend the time with family.  Christmas morning, Madeleine woke us up (she now calls Mommy, MOMMY! - that's my alarm clock :) we walked her downstairs and as soon as she saw her "new car" she ran up to it, scaled over the toys and into the window - it was hilarious!

She gave me my own special present, she looked at the camera, smiled real big and said "CHEESE"!  It was a Christmas miracle!

After opening our presents we went to my parents for a quick breakfast then headed back home whipped up the fixings for the Opp Family Christmas Dinner at Andrew's parents and headed over that way.  We stuffed ourselves silly!  We also tried something new this year - all the families spent the night.  It was a lot of fun hanging out, but man, it's not a whole lot of fun messing with a toddler's sleeping routine.  Needless to say the sleep was not plentiful, but the memories were!

 

I know, I know

I'm an absentee blogger. It will get better, soon. I'm working on a big project that I'll soon enlighten you with. In the meantime I wanted to brighten your day with this blog post I was directed to:

http://clewsblues.blogspot.com/2007/10/lol-x-hundred.html

Seriously, there's very few things that I laugh 'til I cry with. Watching "The Office" is right up there for me, but this had tears streaming down my face I was laughing so hard.

Enjoy!

Rock ON!

I have lots of catching up posts to do (especially over on HoneysuckleDew), but unfortunately laundry comes first! I did want to get this one posted before I forgot. We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary on Saturday, and Madeleine had a blast playing with her cousins while Mommy and Daddy were celebrating - I came back to find my transformed child. She was loving Rock Band and couldn't get enough of the drums, she was cracking me up - especially in that oversized t-shirt Savannah put on her after she gave her a bath.

Santa - Take Two!

The cute smile Santa picture ain't happening this year! That's okay - I'm rather amused (isn't that totally EVIL!!!) at how she is so fear stricken by Santa, whom she adores on TV and lifeless statutes - but when it comes to the real thing HOLY COW! This Santa was much better than creepy Santa (aka daddy :) - he was the real Santa making a stop from the North Pole.

This one was my favorite!!! The real Santa sure knows how to ham it up for a picture.

Other noteworthy pictures - too cute!

I can't wait until she's old enough to appreciate why I was torturing her!

Our Christmas Kick-Off

This weekend is definitely the kick-off of our holiday season.


We shot family pictures (or Melinda attempted to) with my cranky bunch! It was cold and windy and neither Daddy, nor Maddy liked it very much! Melinda is an awesome photographer in my ward - we're photography nerds, and I shot her and her husband last week for their Christmas card picture (see the HoneysuckleDew blog) and she was returning the favor (see Melinda Murray Photography blog).


On the way to get pictures taken, we heard that Clark Howard was at the Wal Mart in Lawrenceville doing his annual Clark's Christmas Kids, which is a program where you adopt a foster child for the holidays and buy their Christmas presents for them. We had wanted to do this last Saturday when we were in Woodstock visiting my sister, but it just didn't work out. So when we knew it was close to our neck of the woods, as soon as our photo shoot was done, we headed to Wal Mart. Upon arrival we chose a child to adopt for the holidays - for us we wanted to pick a child close to Madeleine's age so we picked an 18 month old caucasian girl. On the sheet lists 3 items suggested for that child's Christmas presents. After we picked a child, Andrew went back to get a cart for our shopping when this lady from CNN approached me wanting to know if she could interview my family about our desire to participate in this program - of course! I'm sure I looked like a total ding dong, but it was fun - so we'll see tonight how good we look (as luck would have it - thank heavens we came straight from our photo shoot and I actually had on decent clothes, we coordinated, and I had makeup on!). The interviewer told us the spot was going to be on CNN tonight either at 10 or 11. After our few moments of fame (hee hee), we started to shop. We bought the little girl a Fisher Price Ride-On toy a Vtech Little Town, a baby doll (it wasn't on the list, but we knew she would like it when Madeleine went crazy over it!), and a sing-along cd. You select your presents, take them to the front and check-out and bring them back to Clark's table to drop it off. Christa (Clark's executive producer) came right up to us and told us she had seen our interview spot and wanted to meet us - so nice! I was excited to meet her, she was so nice! We met Clark Howard a couple of years ago at Costco one night while he was shopping and he was so nice then, and yesterday he couldn't have been more of a gentleman. He has to be one of the most genuinely caring persons in the world, he always takes the time to ask your name and make it personal, I really like that! We were on such a high from that experience, but also so saddened when we saw the stacks and stacks of profiles of foster children who still needed to have gifts for Christmas - it made us wish we could buy for all of them. I was also tempted to ask if I could take those poor children home with me, it breaks my heart.

That night we were invited to attend the Collins Hill Ward Christmas Party (me as the photographer and Andrew as the jolly old elf). We had a great time! Andrew did a fabulous job - he cracked me up as the big man. Madeleine was TERRIFIED of Santa, somebody even mentioned how funny that was with her mom standing right there (me, taking the pictures), they didn't know that it was her daddy holding her! I took her to watch him undress so she wouldn't be afraid - we'll see if that scars her for life.

Here's the few shots of our family with Santa :)

Steve (Andrew's brother) and Santa

Steve, Santa, and Dad
Hannah and Santa

Jenna and Santa
Me, a terrified Madeleine, and Santa

Kaitlyn, Santa, and Anne (Andrew's sister)

Isn't she the best elf EVER!?!

Tanner with Santa

Again, Madeleine - poor baby! See... It's really Daddy - She's thinking, "Dad, it was you as the creepy guy in the suit all along?"