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!

Big Scares

We had a couple of pretty good scares with Nate this week.  Raising a boy will be the death of me.  We have a shelf that hold baskets of toys in the living room.  On Monday he went to pull out one of the baskets but it stuck, causing the whole shelf to go down.  The top edge caught him right across the nose.  Luckily he was okay, no broken nose, but he got a pretty good bruise across his nose.  You always hear of furniture falling on kids and when we first got the shelf I was so afraid of that happening.  But we never secured it to the wall and I always stayed right by him when he was around it.  But after so long and no accidents happening, I became complacent and didn't really think it would happen.  It was very scary and gave him a pretty good scare too.  He now asks every time he wants a basket out.

Yesterday we went up to the pool in the afternoon, a last minute 'hey it's hot out, let's cool off!' decision.  My friend (who is also my neighbor) Mikki came with us.  We went up to the Atterbury pool and played in the kiddie pool.  We weren't there too long when all of a sudden Nate tripped and went down.  The water in the deep end is only two feet deep, so if he would have just stood up he would have been fine.  However, he panicked. He started flailing, head under water, and once I saw his feet kicking and him not coming up I knew he was not going to get above water on his own. I was with Maddie and I couldn't leave her so I yelled to Mikki to get him. She jumped over and got him (probably only five feet from him) and pulled him out.  It's funny when something like that happens, it feels like we were in slow motion (Mikki later said it felt like it took her forever to get there even though she was just feet away) yet everything happened so fast.  He was under the water for seconds, yet it felt like forever.  It gave us all a good scare and he stayed out of the water for awhile afterwards.

It's still upsetting just writing about these incidents and yet I know that this will probably not be the last time Nate get hurts or gives me a good scare.  Of course I'm glad he's okay and it just makes me want to love on him a little extra.  

10 months

On the move! Maddie started walking with a walker at the beginning of the month and now she is starting to take steps all on her own!  She is also pushing herself into a standing position from the floor.  She tries to be upright every chance she gets. It doesn't seem like it will be too long and she'll be walking.

She's becoming more vocal and more of her personality is emerging.  She is not as inclined to give up a toy that Nate wants and really lets me know when she's upset if I won't let her do something.

We are really getting into a good schedule with naps.  She is now going down the same time Nate does, which is wonderful, and they both sleep a good amount of time (1 1/2-2 hours).  Some days, if she gets up early or is just really tired, she will take a mini nap in the morning. 

At night, it is a much different story.  We have been struggling for about 3 weeks now to get a full night of sleep in.  I decided to cut out her night time feeding--just an early morning (around 4 or 5am) feeding.  The first couple of nights were horrendous!  She woke up and just cried and cried on and off for about 2 hours.  The first night I went in to try and console her, but I should know better, it just made it worse.  So the second night I let her cry.  And the third night, she SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT! I did do a separate blog entry about this because it is a BIG DEAL. Well, that was just for a night.  Since then she has been waking up around 1am every night and crying on and off for an hour or two.  I have tried giving her medicine, thinking it was her teeth, but she still wakes on those nights too.  And then there was last night, she slept until 4am.  I am willing to do the 4am feedings a little longer (originally I was going to try and push those feedings back until they just disappeared) as long as she will start sleeping solid until then.  I guess it wouldn't be a monthly update on Maddie if there wasn't talk of sleep, or lack thereof.

Last Day of CMO

Nate had is last day at CMO this year.  I am sad that he won't have school to go to (he loves it!) and even more sad for me (I loved it too!) but it will start up again in August, just like the rest of the schools.  In just the few short months that he has gone to CMO, he really has grown a lot.  When I peeked in the last time he was doing the motions during their song-so cute! And I notice other changes.  I had the 2 & 3 year old room for service at church on Sunday.  When I lined them up to get a drink from the fountain Nate got in line (something he wouldn't have done 6 months ago) and he actually put the stickers on the coloring page where they were supposed to go (when he first moved into the 2 & 3 year old room he was placing the stickers all in one spot on top of each other).  He's talking a lot more now too. 

Before leaving on Tuesday he made sure to give Josh a kiss good-bye; I see a bromance forming.  And as he waved bye to everyone, I became a little sentimental, much like I am doing right now.  My baby boy is growing up.

Anniversary #5

Can you believe we've been married for five years!?! Me either! :)
It feels like it has flown by, with so many changes--like two tikes--among many other things!  Michael had drill (of course) but luckily he was done earlier than normal because he had ceremonial duties this weekend and so we got to spend more than a couple of hours together.

No big celebration.  Just some reheated take-out Chinese from the night before and I made a cake.  We watched our wedding video, which was awesome to see again.  Nate thought seeing Mommy and Daddy on tv was hysterical and couldn't stop laughing.  And an early night, which is no different from most other nights because we are so exciting.

It feels good to be married five years and look forward to many more years to come.

And She Sleeps!

I have been waiting over nine months to say this-Maddie slept through the night! 
She was down to one feeding at night.  I knew she didn't need it anymore (she eats a ton during the day) and it was just habit, and after it was confirmed by the doctor I decided that I would try and push back the feeding time until it was just gone.  She was getting up between 3 and 4am to eat; that was until all of a sudden on Saturday night she wanted to get up at 1am.  The cry seemed different and so thinking she had a nightmare I went in to console her.  But she didn't want me just to hold her and I thought, 'oh no you're not getting anything to eat now!'.  After two hours of trying to get her back to sleep, I had enough.  I decided the following night she would not be getting any attention from me.  She woke up around the same time, and continued to cry off and on for the next two hours.  This happened again the third night, and after having a headache for 3 straight days, I didn't know how much more I could take. 

But, then there was last night.  I woke up at 5am, realizing that not only did she not get up at any point to eat, but she didn't wake up at all-or if she did she went right back to sleep without a peep.  It made me a bit nervous, but I told myself she was okay and if I go in there and check on her she will just wake up.  So there we have it, baby Maddie, almost 10 months old, finally sleeps through the night.  Now, let's just hope she does it again.