Le Dance

Madeline started dance a few weeks ago. More pictures to come after the first viewing class. The parents are not allowed to stay and watch so I'm not sure exactly what they are doing, but she bounces in and out with excitement so I know she's loving it. They'll be a class in a few weeks we can stay and observe.

Renee - she specifically asked me to post these for you to see her!

Through the trenches

Crawling. He's really crawling. And I mean everywhere. There is no containing him at this point. It's this adorable, digging through the trenches, army crawl.

I am always spotting the instinctual differences between boys and girls. I brought out a little play table that Madeline used to play with today for Jonny. It's an activity table that sings, makes noises, lights, etc. Madeline used to love pushing all the buttons, bouncing to the music and eventually learned to pull herself up for the first time using that table. She would walk around it and would make her way to the other furniture in our family room as she was learning to walk.

Soooooo I had high hopes to see what Jonboy would do. His eyes lit up and I soon realized what he was thinking. Something new to try and climb! He had his arms reached across and was trying to pull himself up and onto it, grunting and crying in frustration. I'm sure he'll be interested in the lights and sounds eventually, but for now it's his Everest.





I also have been taking lots of pictures of him sleeping. I can't help myself. There is just something about a sleeping baby and I sound like a broken record but it's just going to fast and I want to be able to look back on these and remember how little he was, although he is not little, he's a chunk.



Just today he cuddled up on my chest with his head down on my neck and took a nap. A whole hour. I know the days of him doing that are numbered and for that reason it was the best hour of my week.

This is the First day of Preschool this year, at least I thought it was. The first week is a transitional week so 1/2 the class goes on Tuesday, 1/2 the class goes on Wednesday and then the whole class comes on Thursday. Well I had the dates wrong and we got Madeline all excited for her first day on Tuesday. Dressing up, pictures, she was so excited. Then on the way to the school it hit me that she wasn't supposed to start until the 8th. Oh my gosh, today is the 7th!Oops. So I called Jon to confess my big mommy mistake and then proceeded to tell her that the school wasn't open until the next day. They had to mysteriously close!!?? Good thing I'm still smarter than her, at least most of the time. It was a traumatic 10 minutes of crying - which I felt very guilty about - until we got to Bethany's house and she was excited to see her and the other kids. Then I stopped feeling guilty and realized she is not going to remember this at all.


The next day. The ACTUAL First day of School. Oh well.

I'm allowed to brag a little right? Madeline is actually writing letters now which is very exciting for us as her parents. I'm in a little awe of this as I just didn't expect it this early. Do I have low expectations? I don't really know when most kids start doing this sort of thing. I'm trying to teach her how to write her name. Unfortunately for her she has a long name, with lots of different letters. She can spell it out if you ask her, but she can't write all the letters just yet. She's got M-a-d and then she just starts drawing O's so maybe she wants to go by MADOOOO. That's kinda catchy right?

To my surprise last week she came over and said that she had a present for me. Then she handed me this.


Aaawwwhhh. Is your heart melting? Mine did. A few days ago she told me I was her Best Friend. Sometimes the sweetness is just too much.

Then minutes later she throws her fairy doll at me and screams "Leave me alone!" because I was singing along with her, Rachel and Finn on Glee. How dare I sing at the same time she is performing? What was I thinking?

More Oldies

More old videos of Madeline. This is just a few weeks shy of her 1st birthday. Again, notice the big baby head and the emerging attitude. That's my girl.




Two weeks after her 1st birthday. Hard to believe she was this little thing tottering around. Sniff, sniff.

Oldies, but oh so Goodies

I came across these old videos of Madeline that were taken well before I started this site. They are too good not to put up here.

It's unbelievable how much her and Jonny look like. Jon and I didn't really see it until looking back at these videos. She's 6 months old here. Thank good she grew into her noggin cause that's a big baby head!




This is probably my favorite video we have of her. This was the first time she really laughed. I mean full belly, hysterical laughter. Jon was juggling blocks and she had us going for about a half hour like this. She's 7 months old.




This is her saying her first dicernable word at 9 months. COOP which led to COOPER. Maybe Jonny will say mama or dada first, most likely it will be Mady!

You want me to do DISHES?

I wish the camera wouldn't have died so I could have caught the rest of this conversation on tape. Trust me, it was funny.

Evidence of what I'm dealing with here

I have to preface this video by saying a few things. I had been trying to get Jonny crawling on video for three nights in a row. My darling daughter for three nights in a row was "helping" him by getting in his way, crawling "for" him and insisting that I video her instead. I assured her that her crawling was very well documented, but she didn't care.

All that being said, I'm sure you can hear the impatient, frustrated tone in my voice. Lovely isn't it? Add to that Madeline beating Jonny with her head at the end of the video and I can't help but really laugh at this. He's tough and someday soon he'll probably rip off the head of one of her princess dolls to mark his revenge.

Slow down please

This was intended to be a post to mark Jonny turning six months old. He is now over seven months old. I do have an excuse in that I haven't had a laptop for almost two months because of the ordering and re-ordering of my new battery. I think I'm finally back up and working, for now at least.

Jonathan, Jonny, Jon-boy, Jon-jon, JB, stinky-butt. I don't think the poor kid is ever going to know his name. It seems like this time it's going so much faster. With Madeline I feel like I documented every single movement and but every time I blink Jonny is doing something new.

He's crawling. It's an army crawl using his forearms like he's in training camp sloshing through trenches of mud. He's on the move and constantly moving. He doesn't every know if he wants to be held, sit, crawl, stand, bounced, he just wants to be in constant motion...like a shark. Changing diapers and getting him dressed is like dealing with a crocodile doing the death turn. This must be what everyone was talking about when they said boys are different.

Who Dey!

The kids have their first Bengals game underfoot. How exciting to have them there at the stadium, particularly for Madeline who is old enough to be amazed at the noise and all that was going on. Dancing around to the music and showing her all there was to see was so much fun. She loudly cheered for the wrong team at times "Get him!" "Boo!" and found a new best friend in Who Dey the tiger mascot. She was screaming at him from our seats trying to get him to say hi to her. Of course he didn't hear her, but when he looked in our direction I told her that he heard her. And what do you know, he waved up at the stands. She thought he had picked her out of the huge crowd to wave to. She was so excited and for days talked about how she couldn't believe Who Dey waved to her.

Jonny meanwhile, was so unbelievably good I was shocked. Actually, he's like that all the time so I shouldn't be shocked. He feel asleep in the midst of the cheering and deafening noise of the game. Thumb, check. Shoulder to lean on, check. Lights out.

Quite

The quite times are few and far between, but I love these photos because they are during those scarce moments.