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October 2014

Almost-Eight-Month Madison

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I’ve been meaning to write a Madison update for months now.

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I’m sure you’ve been on the edge of your seat waiting for one.  Is she sitting?  Teething?  Eating solids?  Crawling?

Yes, yes, yes, and almost.

First, can she sit?  All of our kids have been over-achievers when it comes to sitting.  By five months they can sit for minutes at a time unassisted:

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By six months they’re pros:

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Does she have teeth?  Yes!

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This picture shows her first tooth and her second bottom tooth has also surfaced.

Is she eating solids?  Yes.

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She loves her veggies.  Surprisingly it’s the fruits I’m having a hard time getting her to accept. She acts like she’s eating a lemon with each bite.  I’ve been mixing fruit into her cereal to get her used to the taste and I’m starting to be able to give her some fruits on their own with slightly less face puckering.

Have I ever let Brooke feed her?  Once and only once.

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Why only once? Because how many times would you want to clean up this?

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Does Caroline still love her to death?  Are you seriously asking me that?  Of course yes.

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What about Spencer?  He’s less doting, but just as cute with her.

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Can she crawl?  Not yet, but she’s starting to get into position:

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Can she clap?  Yes!

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My parents came over for a visit and someone clapped which scared Madison to death.  Naturally, we thought it was fun to terrify her so we continued our visit with sudden bursts of clapping interspersed.

The next day, she clapped, easy as that.

Does she wave?  The mind is willing but the body lacks the coordination.  She caught onto clapping so easily we started trying to get her to wave.  When we wave at her she’ll sort of spaz out flailing her arms all over the place trying to figure out how to replicate what we’re doing.  You’ll get there, baby girl.  Keep at it.

Does she smile?  Only all the time:

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Are her eyes still blue?  Yes!  Our only baby to have kept her blue eyes.  We think they’re here to stay.

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Do yourself a favor and click on these pictures.  The sun was shining and making her eyes the prettiest color:  I didn’t edit the picture at all:

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Do I have any other pictures of Madison looking cute?  Yes, thanks for asking!

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I had set the boppy pillow around Madison as she was sitting to prevent her from hurting herself should she tip over.  She ended up in this position and the girls thought she looked like she was in a tube floating on the water:

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Conehead:

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How’s she sleeping?  I hate to mention sleep habits because without fail after I write about them my babies always regress to a horrible degree.  However, we have done the dreaded sleep training and now she usually sleeps through the night.  Hallelujah!  The bad news is she almost always wakes up at 6:00 on the nose which leaves room for lots of improvement in my book.  I’m trying to convince her that 7:00 is a better time to wake up and see the world but so far she doesn’t believe me.

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One last personality quirk to note is she’s a quiet little thing.  She’s so quiet that Dallas and I call her our little mute.  You know how babies are supposed to coo?  And babble?  Ours just sort of doesn’t do that.  I mentioned this to the doctor at her six-month check up and he didn’t seem concerned yet, so we’re just talking to her tons and hoping her speech will develop normally and that she’ll find her voice one of these days.

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All in all I’d say we lucked out once again in the baby department. Madison is a keeper and we love her to bits.

 

Mrs. Caroline

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A couple of weeks ago Caroline got sick.  On a Sunday she got a fever which came on fast and hard and then left just as suddenly.  I kept her home from school on Monday to prevent spreading whatever she had even though she felt fine.  I learned you can take the girl out of the school but you can’t take the school out of the girl.  After saying good-bye to Brooke, Caroline got right to work setting up school for the day for her one pupil – Spencer.

Spencer was a good sport about being the student for a while.  After a good 45 minutes of playing I noticed him trying to inch toward his cars.  Teacher Caroline put a quick stop to that and Spencer was stuck playing for another mere two hours until he was saved by lunchtime.  Does it count as an absence if Caroline played school longer than she would have actually been in school had she been well?

The teacher and her (somewhat willing) student:

 

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Snack time:

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Happy Birthday Emma!

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We love our friends, the Fraziers.  Brooke and Emma have been friends since birth.  Brooke was thrilled when Emma invited her to her 7th birthday party.  We met up with the Fraziers at Hollywood Connection and partied all day long!

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Brooke learned pretty early on that the more friends you invite to a party, the more presents you get.  When she heard she was the only friend Emma was inviting to this party she decided to make Emma several gifts so Emma would still have a lot to open.

Brooke colored a picture of Olaf and Emma acted like that drawing was EXACTLY what she wanted.  Her reaction was priceless:

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Brooke also made a multi-level house that Emma could use for her ponies:

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Emma was so cute about appreciating all of Brooke’s handmade creations.  She is such a good friend for Brooke.

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Later that day Brooke discovered her true calling in life as a roller skater.  This was the first time she really took to skating and she never wanted to leave the rink:

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Surgery for Spence

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I’ve gotten a bit behind in my documenting so let’s revisit August for a moment.  Spencer went under the knife.  We discovered he had a hernia and so he had to get it repaired.  Excuse the blurry photo but I had to include it.  I thought he looked so adorable in his hospital gown:

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Getting ready to be wheeled into the operating room:

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Surgery went fast and before we knew it he was recovering with some pain meds and a root beer slushie.  The nurse asked him to point to where it hurt.  He groggily lifted his hand and pointed to a tiny scratch on his knee that he had gotten the day before.  She thought that was funny.

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The recovery was pretty easy.  They gave us some pain medicine which we gave him.  After a couple of doses we noticed he was asking for the medicine more and more often.  It was then I realized we had a burgeoning addict on our hands. When he’d request medicine we’d ask him where it hurt and he’d point everywhere except his surgery site all the while searching our faces to see what the right answer was.  We resorted to hiding the good stuff and only giving him Tylenol and were then able to taper off of that pretty easily.

I was surprised that he didn’t sleep at all the rest of his surgery day.  Finally, two days later, the trauma caught up with him and he succumbed to a midday nap:

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