Maddie is One!

My baby is now officially a toddler! I am excited about each new stage and development as the children grow, but it is hard to say good-bye to the baby days, knowing they are forever gone. She is now my big girl, and what a big girl she has all of a sudden become.  She's been walking for what feels like forever, but now her attitude feels much older, just overnight.  She is no longer content to sit in the cart at the store, she wants down so she can explore! She just knows what she wants now and is no longer willing to just "go along with things", although is still pretty happy and content. 

She came down with a fever last week and after a couple of days I took her in to the doctor.  No other symptoms and the doctor sent us home.  The fever finally broke on Sunday and she got a rash so I'm diagnosing her with Roseola.  It made her lethargic and fussy, but she was a trooper for her birthday party on Saturday.

We had our friends and family over for a birthday celebration cook out.  We had the kiddie pool and sprinkler toy out for the kids and Michael's coworker brought a bouncy house.  So the kids had a lot of fun and expelled a lot of energy.  Maddie, of course, had no idea that any of this was for her, but seemed to enjoy the attention.  She wasn't really interested in opening her presents.  She did try a few but I think I spent more time chasing after her-she just wanted to keep running away with tissue in her hand.  She played a little bit in her smoosh cake but didn't take one bite.

11 Months

Well, Miss Maddie is WALKING! She's been walking a few weeks now and gets better and better each day.  She is still a little wobbly, but walks most everywhere she can, only crawling out of speed necessity.  It really makes her seem like such a big girl. 
She loves to hand us toys now.  Whenever she gets a chance to hand us a toy she will; thinks it's the best thing ever.  She is also cleaning up her toys (something Nate still struggles with--so now we have our dumper and our cleaner).  She can put the ball in the hole now too. 

I figured out why she was waking up at 1am last month-she really WAS hungry.  One night I decided just to go get her during one of her crying spells.  I thought, even if she goes to sleep with me, I don't care, I can't take this anymore!  She didn't want to sleep with me and didn't want me to hold her, so I tried to feed her and she ate like she was hungry.  So the next day I decided to pump and found out my milk supply had gone down.  So all these nights she really was hungry! Of course I feel horrible!  So we are now pumping all milk and bottle feeding and supplementing with some formula.  It has helped at night but she is still waking for a feeding.  It's probably the guilt, but I am continuing to get up and feed her.  If I'm wrong, so be it.  Maybe everyone is wrong and she really is hungry.  I just don't understand why she can soothe herself back to sleep when she is content (she wakes periodically in the night and will cry just a bit and then go back to sleep) unless it is time to eat and then she won't stop crying until she's fed. 

She's also completely off baby food.  She eats mostly table food and likes most everything we eat.  She's not very picky at all.  She is even eating fruits now!  If it is a dinner she doesn't like then we have toddler meals for her which she seems to enjoy.

This past week has been pretty rough with teething.  We have been lucky so far as all her 8 teeth that have come in have not caused her too much of a problem.  But she has her first molar coming in and it's pretty rough.  She's been getting up at night and is a little crankier during the day.  Hopefully it will come in soon, poor baby.

**New developments at the end of this week: Maddie is sleeping through the night! That's right, I said it! She started the night before she turned 11 months and has continued to do so each night.  She sometimes gets up at 6am for a bottle (we are now completely done breastfeeding and just using formula/milk mixtures) and sometimes sleeps until 8 or 9am without getting up at all during the night.  There are some nights she wakes and stirs and sometimes cries a little, but she goes back to sleep like a champ! Maddie's sleep has always been on her schedule, even when I try to manipulate it.  I knew eventually she would get it and she did, it just clicked!