Old Fashioned

In the middle of his bath, while belting out all the words to "Great is Thy Faithfulness" (with 98% accuracy), James stopped and announced, "This is an old-fashioned kind of song."

12 & 15 month growth info

I don't kid myself into believing that people actually look at my blog. But I don't have anywhere else to keep the stats on my growing children. So I'm posting Madelene Kate's one year and 15-month stats just so I have a record of them somewhere!

12-months (Nov 19, 1010)
Height - 29 1/2 inches
Weight - 20 lbs 13 oz
Head - 46 cm

15-months (Feb 18, 2011)
Height - 30 inches (45th percentile)
Weight - 21 lbs, 5 oz (25th percentile)
Head - 46 1/2 cm (75th percentile)

There is so much to say about everything, including what a precious little girl we have. But alas... there just isn't time right now to post more. Some day, maybe I'll get to put up details & pictures of what each of our children are up to. But this post is the product of trying to rid myself of another piece of paper. Done!

Stinker & Sweetie

The other day, Ben plugged in a carbon monoxide and natural gas detector in the hallway upstairs. The next evening while James & Ben were upstairs, I heard it going off. I thought maybe James had pushed a button.

Nope.

He tooted by it.

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Yesterday I signed "I Love You" with my right hand while saying it to Madelene Kate at the same time. A moment later, she lifted her right hand to her lips and blew me kisses.

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I just love being a mommy to these precious little people!

A little window

I wrote my aunt an e-mail today, giving her a peek into our world... and it seemed like the ideal blog post. So without further ado, here is a brief update on us.

We are well. Still not in our own home yet. Ben's mom has been incredibly kind to host us for so long. Ben has been working tirelessly at our new home. But he has continued to have problems breathing there. We have done everything we can think of to eliminate potential issues, but the ultimate cause has proved elusive. One friend suggested that we fill our home with living plants which have the ability to clean the air. Ben also just purchased an air purifier/ozonater - I think it will clean and add oxygen to the air (if I understand correctly).

With everything still rather upside down, Ben feels like Christmas cards are too much for this year. Hopefully we'll be able to send out something after we get into our house and settled. I had also wanted to do a picture gift again, but with our pictures spread between two computers and one of the computers at the new house, that is proving difficult, too!

I know the pictures paint a thousand words, but here is a little update on our "diddles"...

Madelene Kate took off walking the week after we returned from Massanutten (Dec 2). She loves to toddle around, carrying things - toys, papers, spoons. And interestingly, she only goes to the stairs when she is ready for a nap. She will walk around the main level for the longest time, not interested in the stairs, and then all at once she'll start climbing them. Every time when I follow her up and change her diaper, she lies back in my arms. So I put her in bed with her pacifier and stuffed dog and off she goes to dreamland! She still loves to put things in her mouth, although that seems to be diminishing a bit. I am very glad, for from between her clenched jaw, I have swept a spider and a stinkbug along with a variety of paper scraps and other small objects - mmmmhhh tasty! She is a fabulous eater, enjoying everything savory and not turning down sweets either. She doesn't care for anything bland. Last night she devoured dill salmon cakes with a side of mixed vegetables (smothered in farm-fresh butter and sea salt). And her favorite thing from Thanksgiving dinner was a tart cranberry sauce I'd made from scratch. She began feeding herself with a spoon last week, quite competent right from the start. Ben's mom & sister think it's early for her to be so skilled at that. She isn't talking yet, but she does say something ("es?") that sounds quite like, "This" - and she says it as if she's asking, "what's this?" or "may I have this?" And she has something that sounds like it might be a bark when she sees our neighbor, Jean, who has two dogs (Bonnie & Chloe) or if someone mentions the dogs' names.

James is a precious boy abounding with affection and not limited in energy. He is a very quick learner and doesn't prefer to learn the hard way. If someone tells him something is dangerous or could hurt him, he believes them and either alters course or avoids things altogether. What a wonderful gift in a 4 yr old! He loves to play outside, especially when it snows, which it has done twice in the past week. He is very thoughtful and kind to his baby sister (but doesn't hesitate to let me know quite loudly when she's about to "rip" something he's built). He will spend hours quietly coloring/drawing/cutting & pasting all on his own. He also enjoys playing with Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys, creating any number of structures. He is reading now on a first-grade level, recognizing words like "mountain" and reading words aloud when I type. He can look at a list of three words and pick out the right one to complete a sentence without sounding out each one. He has very nice handwriting. And he's loving the concept of adding (who wouldn't like the thought of having two cookies and getting one more to make three?!). Yesterday I used a line of cars to introduce the concept of subtracting when one would turn off the road we were traveling. He thought that was pretty great, too!

That's the fun in our little world! What a treat to live each day with eyes newly awakened with the wonders of discovery.

Footloose

My baby is leaving babyhood behind.

She's been working at walking for a couple of months now, taking a few steps here and there, cruising along furniture, crawling to the wall to get up and walk along it, taking a few steps to a chair and walking along that until she could get to something else to hold onto (or crawling to the next crutch to climb up and cruise some more). Grammy bought a little pink walker stroller several weeks ago. She loves it. (So does James.)

But today, she fully prefers her feet to her fours.

She's walking all over.

She picks up her dog, Millie, and keeps walking.

She sits down. And stands back up again. And walks on.

Madelene Kate is a toddler.

(That happened too fast.)

Our sweet son

Just five minutes ago, as I was picking up some of James' craft supplies, we ran across the birthday card given to him by our friend "Uncle John." I read the card to James and we looked at it together for a minute. Then I went back to tidying, and James went about his business. He was writing on the back of the card - something he's been doing since signing birthday cards for my parents. So I didn't think much of it. When I tuned back in to him, I heard him say, "tr - tr- train. I need to spell train."

I looked down. Immediately tears sprang to my eyes as I read what he had written - all on his own, with no assistance from me:

Thankuforthetr...

He had written a thank-you note to Uncle John for the train car John had given him for his birthday.

(and with only the reminder that it needed a "silent I", he finished the sentence by himself!)

More than the fact that he wrote the sentence is the sweetness of seeing his grateful heart. What a gift to be this little boy's mommy!

Catching Up

It's been entirely too long since I've posted... certainly not because I don't have things to post! And if you read all the way to the end, you'll have a surprise awaiting you. :)

Where to begin...

In June, Madelene Kate got her second tooth, sat up on her own consistently, began to push herself around (backwards) and then got up on her hands and knees and began to rock back and forth. She also got to have a couple of baths with her big brother, which made him very happy. And Madelene Kate thought it was great to get to splash around while sitting up.

By June 25, when our girlie was 7 months and 1 week old, we decided it was time for her to sleep through the night. So we made a few changes in our sleeping arrangements so that she didn't smell Mommy when she stirred at night. We expected it to take a crying bout of 45 minutes the first night, 15 the second and 5 the third. That's what the books told us, and that's what James did back when we did sleep training with him.

What a pleasant surprise she had for us. The first night, she fell back to sleep after crying for just 25 minutes. The next morning, at 6 a.m. when I went in to get her, she was sitting happily with her pacifier in her mouth. She slept through the night the very next night from 10:15 p.m. to 6 a.m. Ahhh... sleep glorious sleep!

By July 1, Madelene Kate began to move forward on her belly and continued to push up onto her hands and knees. A week later, she brought each knee forward once and then both knees up and then slid onto her belly. And then she'd just fuss and fuss until I came to rescue her. Quite funny to observe... but not so funny to her, obviously!

On July 7, at 7 1/2 months old, Madelene Kate began to crawl. She was very timid at first. And when she'd get tired, which was pretty quickly, she'd sit on her hands and knees with her head on the floor and cry so pitifully! It didn't take long for her to get the hang of it, though. Although slow, she discovered that she could get into things within the week. Yikes!

July 8 thru 10, Ben's sister, Lizzie, was here with her Westie named Lily. James and Madelene Kate LOVE doggies. Madelene Kate would sit on the floor and squeal and open/close her hands, begging Lily to come over to visit her. It was very sweet.

On July 19, our girl sat up from crawling for the first time. She also waved to her daddy AFTER he left for the morning.

We went on vacation with Ben's family July 24 thru 31. Ben, James and I got to take a kayak out on the lake one morning while Madelene Kate napped in our cabin and Ben's mom stayed with her and Katie's youngest, Claire (nearly 5 months old). I think that was a highlight of James' week - he wants to talk about it still! We also returned to the Wild Center, visited another museum twice and went on a train ride.

The last night of vacation, after a week of Madelene Kate crying and demanding and lunging for food, we decided to let her try some avocado. Poor baby... she still isn't ready. Despite all of her excitement, she still can't move food from the front of her mouth to the back. So we'll wait a little longer. She's not needing food, for sure. Our girl appears to be more than adequately fed!

On Saturday night, July 31, we returned home from vacation. The next morning, Madelene Kate promptly began to pull herself up on furniture. And she hasn't looked back. She crawls right over to anything that sits off the floor and gets right up on her feet. By the following Wednesday, she had pulled herself up in her pack-n-play. And now, she doesn't need anything except the floor to push herself to her feet... thankfully, though, for now, she can't get upright... but it appears that is not too far off. When I take her fingers, she charges across the room. She started climbing the stairs on Thursday, Aug 12, so now we're either moving her away from them or following her up and then helping her come down backwards... it's a full-time job just tracking the baby!

There is more to share, but I will post this now and start another.

Here are some pictures - taken on our last day of vacation - Friday, July 30.