Our Toddler

Our baby girl isn't so much a baby anymore.  She caught me by surprise well before her first birthday, with her emerging personality, definite opinions, independence, and charm.  Maude has been a year old for two weeks now and I swear she's changed so much in this short time.  This girl is fun.  F.U.N.  I laugh my darn head off every single night from the moment I walk in the door until moments before I put her in her crib for bed. I'm sure I make Mike crazy with my repeated exclamation of "how did we get so lucky to end up with this little person?"  She's hysterical - loves to make us laugh.  She'll do anything for a laugh.  Um, as though we didn't already know she was just like her daddy, this part of her personality has sealed the deal. 

We went to Maude's one year doctor's appointment today.  The not so fun part was a few shots and a finger prick to take blood.  The lab tech taking her blood commented on how crazy strong Maude is.  She was having a heck of a time keeping her hand and getting the blood. I had to hold Maude's elbow which added insult to injury for our little fighter.  She looked at me with her beautiful brown eyes and then looked up to the ceiling and wailed.  If she could talk in full sentences, she would have been crying "Why?  Why?  Why did you bring me here and not only let these women stab me and torture me, but you're helping them?  Can someone please come to my aid?  PLEASE???"  It was awful.  I hated as much or more than she did.  

The fun part is getting her new stats and chatting with the doctor as he asks lots of questions regarding Maude's development.  The stats:  Maude weighs 20 lbs (30th percentile), is 29 1/4 inches tall (55th percentile) and her noggin is 18 inches (75th percentile).  He also declared her a genius.  Ok, maybe not, but I know he was thinking it.  =)

One of my favorite things about having Mike and Maude together all day is the pictures and videos he sends me throughout the week.  Let me just say that an iPhone is an amazing invention.  Mike gets what I think are some pretty dang adorable videos.  I've attached a few recent ones here.  The first is of Maude climbing our stairs and eating an apple at the same time.  It makes me laugh.  Hope it does you too.  The second if of she and Mike singing and was from a few weeks ago - I posted it to facebook so those of you reading this that are on there you may have already seen it. 

And now some photos. 

We got Maude a wagon for her birthday.  This picture was taken on her actual birthday which was her first spin in her new ride.  I can't express enough how much she love this wagon.  She squeals, laughs, and babbles the entire time we're on a walk. Her face here says "Have you seen my new wheels?  They rock!  And how good do I look in this thing?  Pretty awesome, right?"

12 Months!  I discovered the day before her birthday that I can get little pigtails in her hair.  This new hairdo alone makes Maude look like a little girl and no longer a baby. 

Big girl.  So happy.

Reflective.

Almost 1!

Maude turns 1 tomorrow.  A year ago tonight, I thought maybe I was starting to feel some contractions, but I wasn't quite sure.  I didn't even tell Mike until much later in the night.  We hadn't yet met this little lady we love so much and know so well after this year we've all spent together. 

There are hundreds of stories from this past year and thousands of memories.  I know Mike and I each have our own highlights - a few that stick out for me:
- My surprise at how much hair Maude was born with - and how dark it was!
- What a calm and easy going baby she is
- How sweet and infectious her smile and laugh are
- She rolled over for the first time on Father's Day - a better gift for Mike than one I could have ever thought of
- Her very effective army crawl
- Her love for Stella.  She loves her puppy even though the feeling isn't always mutual.
- How when she's not calm, happy, and easy going, she can be incredibly stubborn and let us really know how ticked off she is!  (For the record, she gets her stubborness from both her mom and dad.)
- After months of signing to her, watching her pick up on what we were doing and start to communicate with us via sign language
- Her version of "what does a dog say?" is panting.  Mike and I have woofed our heads off, yet Maude knows that she mostly hears Stella panting so that's obviously what a dog says!
- How much we love her


It's been a great month leading up to the big birthday.  Maude is really digging food.  We've been off baby food for a few months but have now fully moved into letting her eat whatever we eat.  Some recent favorites are salmon, spaghetti and chicken tikka masala.  She now sits in a booster sit which sits lower than the high chair and therefore gives her more access to Stella.  This means she's now able to feed her best friend lots and lots of food.  Needless to say, we've had to reduce how much dog food we give Stella.

Maude can now sign 5 words.  She went bonkers this month and started signing"pear" "more" and "thank you."  Lest you think our daughter is not only crazy smart but ultra polite, she doesn't actually sign thank you in response to us giving her something, but she does it when we say thank you.

We went out with some friends last Friday night and Maude got to hang out with her buddy Matthew while his big sister babysat them.  A few days later we went back to Matthew's house for a brunch. She really loves her some Matthew.  There was a moment during the brunch where Matthew got on his knees and was crawling towards Maude and she was crawling backwards - there were facing each other and then they gave each other a little smooch.  Holy moly - cutest moment ever!

Maude and Matthew.  Matthew told his mom that he let Maude "push the buttons" on Buzz.  They were clearly having quite the fun time together!

Mike and Maude spent this past Wednesday afternoon at the Minnesota Children's Museum.  I was at work and received lots of pictures and a video of the fun they were having.  They were supposed to meet up with a group of babies from Maude's ECFE class, but Miss Maude decided to have a 3+ hour morning nap and they got there after everyone had left. I think they still had a pretty great time.  In fact, it sounded like the museum was nearly empty which meant they had almost free reign to explore as much as they wanted.

Exploring!

Practice walking.

Taking in the view of St. Paul.

A year ago tomorrow, my baby girl (I still get to say "baby" because tomorrow, according to the aforementioned emails, she becomes a toddler) and I accomplished a lot together.   After lots (and lots) of work, we met and started a pretty great relationship.  We had Maude's birthday party yesterday.  I started thinking about this darn party months ago.  I may have blown all my birthday energy and ideas on this very first birthday and every birthday after this will pale in comparison, but oh boy did I enjoy the process of party planning and execution.  I realize that every year is a big year, but there's something about this first year that feels like such an accomplishment.  I got an email today from one of the many weekly baby emails that show up in my inbox.  It gave some stats from the first year including the fact that we've changed approximately 3,000 diapers and lost 350 hours (is that all??) of sleep.  I'll add to that an unimaginable (and very enjoyable and well worth it) hours in the rocker nursing my baby girl, gallons of happy tears, sad tears, and worried tears, and hundreds and hundreds of conversations about our hopes and dreams for this little person we're privileged to raise.

To wrap up, below are the birthday party pictures.  I'll be back soonish to post the official 12 month photos. 

Our house decorated for the party.  We had poster sized pictures of Maude hanging on the walls.  I made her monthly photos into a photo reel and made her a fun "Happy Birthday Maude" sign.

Birthday Cake!

Maude's buddy Joseph from ECFE.

Opening present.  I made the dress Maude is wearing.  It may be the only item of clothing I ever make her, but I loved that she got to wear it for her first birthday party!

Who loves her birthday?

One of her cards had cupcakes on the front which she tried eating!

Birthday cake with candle.  Note the quiet observation.

Now note the left hand moving towards the candle.

In between last photo and this one was Maude touching the flame, me swiftly swatting her hand away, blowing out the candle, and swiping it from the cake.  Cue the scared and ticked off tears.

We sang another round of "Happy Birthday To You" sans candle and all was well with the birthday girl.

Frosting!

Messy.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl.

49 Week Quick Update

I wanted to share a few stories I forgot to share in the last post as well as a video Mike sent me today at work.

Maude likes to brush her teeth while I do in the morning. Mike holds her and stands in the bathroom door as I brush my teeth.  Maude brushes her teeth (chews on her toothbrush) while I do and as soon as I start rinsing and spitting, she holds her toothbrush out.  Mike tries to take it from her so she doesn't drop it on the floor, but she will not (!!!) give it to her.  She elbows him, stiff arms him, squirms away, whatever she has to do to NOT give him her toothbrush.  She'll hold it out as long as it takes for me to finish and then gladly hands it over to me.  She then grins at Mike with a very pleased smile that says "it's mom and my thing - stay out of it."  It's one of my favorite parts our day.

Maude is recently REALLY into reading.  I don't think I can fully express how truly into books she is right now.  Anytime we're even near a book, she's lunging at it and shoving it at one of us to read it to her.  When we sit in her rocker at night before bed or in the morning when she wakes up, she lunges and nearly throws herself over the arm of rocker to pick out the next book.  Once we grab one that she wants to read, she then settles herself back into our lap to flip through the pages for us and listen to the story.  The second it's over, she's lunging back over the arm of the chair to pick out another book.  I go through 10 books, on the low end, each night.   We love that she's a book worm for the moment!

The video below is something Mike sent me today at work.  Maude has never allowed socks to stay on her feet but she apparently became obsessed with trying to get her sock back on today.  The video is only about 30 seconds long but she apparently worked on getting that sock back on for at least 5-10 minutes.

11 Months!

T- Minus one month and counting until the big birthday!  We've obviously had a lot going on this year which likely helped make it seem like the shortest year ever, but I truly am shocked at how quickly it's gone.  I've thought about her first birthday a lot since she was born and now it's almost here.  Wow.

I'm surprised every day by how much Maude is learning and changing.  A frequent question coming out of our mouths is "did you see that new thing Maude is doing?"  She's still in to animal noises, but is mostly focused on elephants.  She raises up her arm (like an elephant trunk) and makes her elephant noise. It may be the cutest thing I've ever seen.  I try making her do it frequently.  She's becoming less patient with me.  =)

Our little gal is becoming more mobile.  I think walking is still a ways off, but she's definitely cruising around on everything she can reach.  She started crawling around five months and started out with the army crawl. She's been using that method for the past 6 months but in the past month, she's started crawling on her hands and knees.  So, she's moving forward in the transportation department.  She's also mastered going up the stairs.  She typically saves going up them for when we're not making her the center of attention.  She knows we'll immediately come running and she likes that reaction! 


Her first Christmas was wonderful.  I don't think she had any idea what was going on, other than Mommy was home for more days than normal and we all spent lots of quality time together.  I can't imagine a better Christmas.  As most everyone knows, it's been a very warm winter so far so we spent every day that I had off going for walks with Maude and Stella.  We all thoroughly enjoyed them. We were doing the same thing last Christmas, just a little over a month before Maude was born. 

As we prepared for our first Christmas with Maude, we thought a lot about what we want our traditions to be.  It's important to me that our family has traditions and rituals we look forward to each year.  Not surprisingly, the traditions we've implemented thus far involve food!  We made homemade burgers with sweet potato fries for Christmas Eve.  Mike grew up having crepes on Christmas morning and we decided it was something we wanted to do as well.  We decided that the food for the rest of the day is whatever we feel like and doesn't have to be a holiday-ish type of meal.  This Christmas, we had pizza for lunch and a roasted shrimp dinner.  It was perfect.



Maude got to see lots of grandparents for Christmas, too.  My parents came up to visit the weekend before Christmas and we went to Kansas City the weekend after Christmas.  It's so fun to see how much Maude loves being around them and I think they like being with her, too!  =) While my parents were here, Mike came down with the stomach flu.  They left on a Sunday morning, with Mike still feeling pretty sick and not able to do much beyond laying on the couch.  Within a few hours of their departure, I came down with it as well.  I'd heard of two parents getting sick at the same time and always felt so sorry for them, and was secretly glad that would never happen to me (of course!). Ugh, it was not at all fun.  As Mike said "to all the parents that have come before us, we salute you!"

On to the pictures!

Happy!!

Posing for the camera

11 Month Old Sweetie

She recently can't be bothered with hair bows.

We rang bells for the Salvation Army.  Maude brought in some major moola!

She particularly liked the bell.

Awww.

Her expression didn't change the entire time she sat on Santa's lap.

See?  No change.

Christmas Eve

We've got a talker!

Since I got very much off schedule and failed to update this blog on a monthly basis, I've lost track of what week we're at.  I think we're at week 43 or so.  Anyway, I felt the need to update the blog this week because Maude seems to have grown and by leaps and bounds and impressed the heck out of us with what she's learning.

The most exciting development is that Maude said her first word beyond "mamma" and "dadda"!  She learned how to say "dog" and loves to exclaim it whenever she sees or hears a dog.  Our neighbor's dogs tend to bark a lot and she yells out DOG every time she hears them.  It delights us more than you can imagine!  In addition to saying "dog" she is also working on making the dog noise.  She says "woof" but it's not quite as clear as "dog."

She's learned a few more animal noises, too.  She can imitate a cow, an elephant, and she's working on a chicken.  Now that we know she can do it, we're constantly in her face, making animal noises.  I'm sure she's quite tired of our antics!

I mentioned in my last post that we've been doing sign language with her for the past 6+ months.  Since mid last week, she's started signing egg (which I mentioned was her favorite food).  As she's eating eggs, she'll clap and then sign egg.  It seems it's her way to tell us how much she loves those eggs!! 

I didn't mention in the last update Maude's habit of shoving food into her mouth and not chewing or swallowing it in a timely manner and therefore storing it for quite some time. It appears as though we've moved past that - thank goodness!  I was getting tired of digging food out of that little mouth of hers. 

Lastly, the past few nights as I've read to Maude, she's done the sweetest thing.  In one of the books we read, there is a picture of a puppy giving a little boy a kiss and the page talks about a puppy dog's kiss.  As soon as she sees the page, she brings the book right up to her face and gives that boy and puppy a kiss!!  Awww!  I love it so much that when we finish the book, I flip back to that page, just to see her do it again.

I can't wait to wake up each day and come home each night to see what else Miss Maude has learned. This age is amazing - I feel like she's picking something up every single day.  I've been keeping a journal, trying to document all of these fun developments.  I just hope that between that and this blog, I can remember it all!

We didn't take many photos this week, so I thought I'd share some of our Christmas card photo outtakes!

Mommy, Maude, and Stella taking some practice shots before we set up for the family photo. 

Not quite there yet...

Not yet...

This isn't quite it either..

There we go!

We got ourselves a new winter hat!  Our first hat was misplaced, but I think I'm kinda glad because we got to buy this one!

10 Months Old!

I guess I should just face it - this has become a once a month blog. I apologize to those of you that check back often.  I sure wish I could get to updating weekly or even twice a month, but this seems to be all I can get to.  Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoy it anyway. 

As the title states - Maude is now 10 months old!  I can actually see her first birthday from here and it's coming up fast!  I have no idea what happened to the month of November and I'm positive the next two months will go by just as quickly.  And in between now and her first birthday comes Maude's first Christmas.  I'm fully aware she'll not have much of a clue what an event it is, but I'm still looking forward to it!  We've had a ball decorating the house, knowing this is her first time experiencing it all.  The first time Mike plugged the lights in for the tree, Maude started clapping.  Seriously, doesn't it just melt your heart? 

Our baby girl is indeed growing up.  Her general babbling of mamma and dadda are now definitely words she knows and uses when she wants us or is excited to see us.  We've also used sign language with her for a good 5+ months and I think she's starting to use some of them.  She's not terribly precise with the gestures but I can tell she's definitely trying to sign different things to us. 

In addition to the advances in communication have come some pretty clear frustration in not being able to tell us exactly what she wants (or rather doesn't want).  She can get pretty ticked off!  It's been a bit trying although I'm sure it's all even more frustrating for her.  I'm constantly trying to wade my way through the murky waters of what's normal behavior and what we should be trying to nip in the bud.  How did we go from simply growing a small human to raising a small human in such a short period of time?

For every difficult moment comes 100 amazing moments.  Maude learned about giving kisses and is pretty liberal in the smooch department.  She loves giving them out and comes out you all open mouthed and slobbery.  I adore it.  We play a little game where Mike and I kiss and then she wants in on it so she immediately puckers up to me, then Mike.  She gets within centimeters of Mike before she starts zerberting in anticipation of his scratchy beard!  We get such a kick out of it.  In addition to the kissing, she also started hugging.  I just noticed it this weekend.  I was busy trying to get some things done around the house and she clearly wanted me to slow it down and just hang with her.  She crawled to my feet and wanted me to pick her up.  As soon as I did, she put her little head in the nook of my neck and spread her arms and hands onto my shoulders and gave a squeeze.  Since then I can ask her for a hug and she does the same thing.  Awww. 

We headed to Iowa for Thanksgiving.  The trip was great, minus the actual travel.  The way there was rougher than the way back.  At one point, I got desperate and handed Maude my (locked) blackberry.  A few minutes later it was ringing.  I answered it and it was the Mason City, IA police.  Our little smarty pants unlocked the phone and was able to call 911.  Nice.  On Thanksgiving, Maude ate all the favorite holiday fare.  She loved the turkey and of course the mashed potatoes.  She also got to meet her great grandma Nancy.  I think they both enjoyed each other immensely!

We continue to try more foods.  I think eggs are Maude's current favorite food.  She also really loves pears and seems to be pretty into peas.  Feeding her real food has certainly made Mike and I more conscious of our eating habits.  It's pretty clear she's watching everything we do and as I'm shoving some chips into my mouth, I realize that's probably not how I want her to eat.  We also try to feed her whatever we're having for dinner so it makes for some more mindful meal planning.

We hope you all are having a very merry Christmas season.  We're enjoying our first with our baby girl.  Thank you for caring enough for her to follow this little blog. 

Bundling up for our first trip into the snow!

Snow!

Stella has surprised us by really loving the snow.  She's eager to get out and romp in it.

Four generations!  I'm loving the oldest and youngest, both enjoying their pointer fingers.

Mike's caption of this photo when he posted it to facebook was "Hello.  I'm here to audition for the role of a young Shirley McClaine."

 

 

 

10 months old.  Super cute face.

Maude is 9 months old!

Has it really been a month since I last updated this blog?  Woah - I really hadn't realized it had been that long.  Sorry for the silence!  Hope this post makes up for it!

We visited Mike's family in mid-October.  I had a business trip to Kansas City so it worked out for Maude and I to fly down there and Mike and Stella to drive.  The only time we've had Maude in the car for longer than a half hour or so was a three hour trip that didn't go so well.  She's definitely not a long distance traveler so I was super thankful we were able to fly. 

Maude met her Uncle John, Aunt Amy, and Cousin Noelle for the first time.  Noelle is four and was wonderful with Maude.  She occasionally thought Maude should be able to do more things like knock over a tower of blocks on command or understand something like not to knock over the tower of blocks in progress, but it was fun to see them together and know that the will grow up looking forward to seeing each other and be able to play together more and more as the years progress.  When Maude would come and play, Noelle would immediately put away all the small toys so that "Baby Maude won't eat them."  I'm not sure if she was concerned for Maude's safety or concerned over the thought that her toys might be eaten!!  Either way, I appreciated her diligence. 

The day after we returned from KC, it was my birthday.  We had a group of friends over for dinner - it was perfect!  If you had told me 5 years ago that my perfect birthday was having friends over, with their kids, to have dinner at home and to play some board games, I would have told you that's impossible.  It really was a great night.  The main dish was made by Mike's dad.  He made up some extra barbecue ribs and sent them back with us.  They were ridiculously good and everyone went on and on about them!  Dessert was butterscotch budino (pudding) with a layer of caramel, topped with sea salt and freshly whipped cream.  All of our special occasions in LA had butterscotch budino that we'd by from Pizzeria Mozza, a popular restaurant.  Mike surprised me by whipping some up all by himself for my birthday!  YUM!!

I think I mentioned in the last update that Maude's two top teeth came in with very little fanfare and I had high hopes that future teeth would follow suit.  She now has one more bottom tooth and is working on it's match and we've been quite aware of it.  There are days when she bites down wrong on the spoon as she's eating and we certainly know about it!  She's also had some general fussiness as well as more drooling which results in more action in her diapers which in turn results in some diaper rash.  Poor thing.  I had sort of hoped she was going out of order in the tooth sprouting process and was working on some molars or something.  Nope, just some little bottom teeth. 

Eating solids has really taken off for Maude!  She is loving food and gobbles up nearly everything we put in front of her.  I'm not sure if she just wasn't all that interested in food until about 8 months or if it took her a month or two of trying it before she figured it all out.  With her increased enthusiasm for food and her increased appetite, we've been pretty liberal with what we're feeding her which may have backfired.  On top of the diaper rash from teething, she's had a rash for the past week that just won't go away and I finally came to the conclusion today that it's an eczema rash.  I'm fairly certain it's due to a food she's sensitive to.  Our guess is that it's related to grains of some sort so we're cutting them out for the next few days.  Assuming it clears up, we'll add grains back in one by one and see if one is an obvious culprit.  I'm hoping that all of her food issues work themselves out over time.  I think it's pretty common to have some sensitivities to foods at this age and I'm thankful the worst of it has been rashes and of course the avocado barfing incident...

What's Maude's favorite thing to do you ask?  CLAP!!  She loves loves loves to clap!  She started out clapping and would clap to mimic us.  Now all we have to do is say "Yay" (and it doesn't even have to be in a very excited tone) and she'll start wildly clapping!  Anytime we are excited is another excuse for her to clap.  And when she gets food in her mouth all on her own, she's pretty darn proud and claps for herself.  We love it.  This probably helps to make her clap even more! 

Other developments she's working on mastering are pulling herself up and waving.  She frequently pulls herself up on me or Mike, but has only done it independently on furniture or other objects a few times.  The first time she pulled herself up to standing without using one of us, I shrieked like a mad woman because I was so excited!  I freaked her out a little bit so it was a while before she tried that again...  Maude also clearly waved goodnight to Mike last week. She's done really small waves before where we weren't certain that was what she was doing, but this wave was for real.  For some reason, it's now developed into some weird version of a wave where she takes all of her fingers and traps her thumb under them and then pops her thumb out and covers her fingers with it.  She does that over and over again. 

On top of all of that, our gal is a constant babbler.  She said "momma" for the first time on Halloween.  I know she doesn't know what it means but after hearing "dadda" for months, I was thrilled to hear her utter "mommamommama."  She's adding new sounds everyday and sometimes we swear we hear her actually utter real words.  She must think she's really saying something sometimes the way she goes on and on. 

Our little pumpkin dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween.  She was pretty darn adorable if you ask me.  We went trick or treating to some neighbors and checked out "Halloween Street" nearby.  The whole block is shut down to traffic and they go all out decorating their houses.  Mike and I enjoyed seeing all the gawdy spooky decorations.  Maude could have cared less unless it was really lighted up, but we had fun checking it all out.  We even had a decent number of kids stop by our house once we got home.  Mike did a great job decorating our place so I think it attracted a few more kids than we would have otherwise.

I think that covers it.  Oh, except for the pictures!  And a video.  The video shows off Maude's eating, some teeth, and of course the clapping!

Tuckered out after a walk with Daddy and Stella.  I love the cockeyed hat!  And note the pajamas.  Socks are not stood for in Maude's opinion so it's easier to leave footed pajamas on her when we need her to stay warm.

This was the first independent pull up.  We didn't get a shot of the standing because it lasted for a brief moment before my shrieking freaked the poor girl out.

Cousins!  Maude was enthralled with what we call Noelle's "movie star hair."

Our house all decked out for Halloween.

Maude and Henry.  He was Charlie Brown and she was the Great Pumpkin!

Can't you just see this as the picture on a Halloween greeting card?!

9 months old!!  Can you believe it?  She's now been on the outside as long as she was on the inside.  Woah.