No way is this kid one year old already...

1 year picture from Hammett Photography-
check out the rest of these adorable pics here! If you
click on this picture to make it big, you can just baaaarely
see her first little tooth poking out :).

Ok, ok. I'm a lame blog updater- to say the least. I noticed myself looking back at old posts lately, trying to remember specific dates and ages of milestones that have already faded from my memory. This has inspired me to try once again to get back into blogging. I know I'll be glad I did it- Maddie is growing so fast and it's hard to remember the day to day stuff for very long.

SO! Miss Maddie Grace is 13.5 months old- for you non parents, that means she's 1. I never understood until recently why parents insisted on using months instead of years after 12 months- but I guess it's b/c a 13 month old is totally different from a 15 month old, a 15 month old is totally different from an 18 month old, etc. The point being, they are still changing so fast at this age!

Maddie decided to start crawling about 4 days before her first birthday. Guess she heard she was almost one and decided she wanted to be a mobile one year old! She is a little speed demon now. Just in the last week or two she has started pulling up on everything in sight, which has been a huge detriment to her naps, but she's having a blast. I was dreading having a mobile baby, but it's actually awesome. We've childproofed, and Maddie is so much happier now that she can crawl around and explore things. She plays much better independently now, although she still likes when Mommy and Daddy play on the floor with her better.

She switched over to table food around 11 months, and although she STILL doesn't have any teeth to speak of (her first one appeared at about 13 months but it's taking it's time growing all the way out), she is a GREAT eater. She has clearly inherited her Daddy's taste buds, hallelujah, and we are doing all we can to encourage that. Other than occasional slips into toddler "picky mode," she will generally eat absolutely anything we put in front of her. And we've now tried eggs, peanut butter, shell fish and strawberries- not allergic to any of them! Hooray! When she turned one, we switched from bottles of formula to sippy cups of milk- and Maddie LOVES her milk.


Maddie has been a BUSY little bee for the last few months. She was Christened by her Uncle Jim in Charlotte in a wonderful ceremony with lots of family and friends. We travelled to Richmond for Laura and Daniel's wedding, where Maddie stayed with a "stranger" babysitter for the first time- she did great! She has been to the Greenville Zoo a couple of times, which she loved (girl loves animals- especially dogs!). She took 6 weeks of swim lessons and she's a total fish- even likes being dunked underwater. We've been to 2 super fun kids museums and she even visited the Great Wolf Lodge in Charlotte. And a couple of weeks ago, Maddie had her first vacation- a week at the grandparent's house in SC (and Mommy got to relax! woohoo!).


So I think that's all the major stuff that's happened in the last few months! Maddie had a great birthday party in SC on 8/8/09, and she even got to meet her sweet cousin Faith, my Uncle Dan's new baby. It is SO much fun to see more and more personality emerge from her each day. She is absolutely HILARIOUS and I rarely go more than a few minutes without cracking up from her latest antics. She isn't talking yet, but babbles up a storm. She also understands a lot, and communicates her needs pretty well too. I'm finding late babyhood/early toddlerhood to be much easier as a parent than infancy. Maybe a little more physically tiring, but not nearly as emotionally tiring or frustrating. Plus, there's a lot to be said for sleeping all the way through the night!


Maddie gives hugs and kisses when we ask, and even sweeter is when she gives kisses unprompted- usually while she is sitting in my lap while we watch tv, read a book, or sing songs. She is very friendly and loves when anyone gives her attention- whether it's family or a stranger in the Target line. She loves music and dancing (My name is Maddie! I like to dance!), and will stop whatever she is doing if a Stanley Steamer or Empire commercial comes on. Her favorite songs are "You Are My Sunshine," "Twinkle Twinkle," "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Jesus Loves Me." Her favorite books right now are "Goodnight Moon," "Moo Baa La La La" and "Daddy and Maddie (a book I made Mike for Father's day with their pictures in it)."


Her most recent "stats" from her 12 month appointment show that she's still a shrimp- although my aching arms and back make it hard for me to think of her as a little baby anymore! She was about 18.5 lbs and 28.5". We'll be going back Monday for her first flu shot- poor kid!

9.5 month picture- Laura Brett Photography

Thus begins attempt #532 at being a regular blogger!

First trip to the zoo!

A couple of weekends ago we took Maddie for her first trip to the zoo. The Asheboro Zoo is split up into 2 parts- North America and Africa. It's a very spread out zoo, so we decided to do Africa in the morning and then see what happened after lunch. It was the end of April, but the high was over 90 degrees that day! So needless to say, we got moving early and were at the zoo (about 2 hours away) a little before 10.

There were lots of animals out, and the zoo wasn't too crowded, so that was nice. However, Maddie didn't care a thing about looking at the animals. She thought the viewing machines were extra cool though- she wanted to eat them, which is high praise in Maddie's book. She also enjoyed looking around at all the people. We were amazed at how well behaved she was, b/c we were strapping her in and out of her stroller every 5 minutes, and she skipped her morning nap.

After we were done looking through Africa, we met up with some friends and their babies for a picnic lunch just outside the zoo gates, and it was a lot of fun! There were scary geese trying to get our food, and those suckers were aggressive, but we managed to keep them from eating Maddie.

We headed back into the park after lunch with the intentions of taking a tram over to the North America side to see the polar bears, but the tram line was at least 50 people deep. The walk to the other side was estimated at 40 minutes, and Maddie had already passed out asleep in her stroller, so we decided Africa was probably enough for her first visit and headed out. I can't wait for next year when she will be excited to see all the animals!

National Champs 2009!

I think we know who the Tarheels really have to thank for their phenomenal season. I'm just sayin'....Maddie was born, then they had an awesome year. We're waiting on our thank you card, Mr. Hansbrough.

Bow ties are better than chocolate

Maddie had a fun first Easter. We went to church, where she continued her usual pattern of hating being left in the nursery. This time we were not "beeped" to come check on her, but it turns out they tried and our beeper just didn't work. Poor Mads. She is just not too sure about this nursery thing.

The week before Easter we attended an Easter Egg Hunt (Maddie was just SO excited to look for Easter eggs), mainly for the photo ops. What good is a baby if you can't take lots of silly pictures that they won't remember? We had fun though, it was a nice day and Maddie was very well behaved. Here are some of my faves:

I'm ready for some fun Dad!

Rockstar

Hey look, I found an egg all by myself. With no
help from my parents at all.
This bunny thing is kinda creepy looking- guess
I'll just taste his bow tie.
Easter is fun!!!

Sitting up!

I think the last time I posted, I was lamenting about Maddie still not sitting up. Of course, as soon as I wrote that, she started sitting a few days later. I guess maybe she reads the blog and wanted to prove me wrong. Here's her first official sitting picture, when she was a few days shy of 8 months:


It's taken her a while, but now at 9 months she's a pretty good sitter. She was still tipping over quite a bit for that first month, but she's getting the hang of balancing now. Although we do still usually have a pillow behind her, just in case!

Now that Maddie is sitting well, she's graduated to a "big girl" bathub (it even quacks!) and a portable high chair that is great for when we're eating out. She loves her new bathtub and also loves sitting right at the table with her mom and dad.

I won't lie though, I miss those days when we'd take her in her carseat and she'd fall asleep mid-meal. Or if she got hungry, I could just feed her a bottle and be done. Now she wants to be entertained and gets quite indignant if we even think about eating our food without sharing some with her. This girl LOVES to eat! (I swear she isn't drunk in this pic)

So we've conquered sitting, and although she was on the late side, she was still in the normal range. I'm really enjoying having a sitting, but non-mobile baby. I know that crawling, standing and cruising are coming up, but I'm in no hurry!

WAY behind!

Once again, I find myself behind in my attempts to blog all our latest happenings. So instead of doing one big mega post, I'm going to try and do a few posts to catch up on the last few weeks. Here goes!

Etsy Easter Egg Hunt

As many of you know, I am slightly addicted to the site etsy.com. It's a website that sells homemade goods, crafts, toys, clothing- pretty much anything you can think of. It's a wonderful place to go for unique gifts and purchases, and the coolest thing about etsy is that you are in direct contact with the person making the item you're buying- so in most cases you can completely customize anything you buy. Good for a control freak such as myself.

Anyway, the ACE team on etsy is having an Easter Egg Hunt contest. 21 local NC shops are participating, you just visit their stores online and try and find the hidden eggs. If you can find at least 10 of the 21 eggs, you can enter to win some fun prizes from the shops. And it's a great way just to check out some local etsy shops. Here's the link to the contest: ACE Blog. Happy Hunting! I'll let you know if I win anything :).