You've Got to Fight (For Your Right to Potty)

Madeline peed in the potty for the first time this weekend - two days in a row! The first time was an honest-to-goodness pee, and the second was just a few drops.

She's been talking about potty-related things for a while now, and she starts to tug at her diaper because we can tell she's getting tired of wearing one. I'm excited for her to make this next step, but I don't want to rush her, so I'm trying to just take things as they come.

Other Madeline-isms lately: when she wants something, she'll say, "me too!" So if we ask, "Madeline, do you want ice cream?" she'll say, "me too!" It's pretty amusing.

She always wants to go outside. We take lots of walks, pick dandelions, examine rocks, play with basketballs, and draw with chalk all the time. Oh, and we scout out the neighbor boy, too - if Madeline sees their garage door open, she'll point and say, "Shawn!" It's fun to see him out and about, too, since he's three days older than Madeline.

We take her out on the weekends when we go to Cub or Target, and apparently she's really starting to like it. A few times this past week, seemingly out of the blue, she'll call out, "Shopping!" A girl after her momma's own heart.



She's also really catching on to counting, and sometimes seems to understand all the numbers 1-10. If we count up to seven, she'll finish with "eight, nine, ten!" or if we start with one, she'll say "two, three!". I think she's just memorizing the word sequence right now, but hopefully the comprehension that these words represent a specific number of things will click sometime soon.

Madeline is coloring all the time, too - we make her "sign" Mother's Day, Father's Day, and birthday cards with a colored scribble now. She's also got her colors down pat, except she still confuses black, white, and brown. The rest are pretty set, especially purple, pink, and yellow - her favorites!

March Madness

Madeline has had quite a month. Early on in March, Mommy brought home a stomach bug from work that Maddie picked up, and in between all the yuckiness, she ended up with another ear infection, too. But now that's all behind us, and Madeline is a tougher kid for having gone through the illness.

Now she's on to teething, working on getting her incisors on the top and bottom. Needless to say, she hasn't been sleeping a lot. Last night she made it all the way through the night without waking up, though, so I think that's a good sign! Maybe all of the teeth are broken through (for the moment) and we'll have a calm spell for a while.

Entertainment-wise, Madeline is a hoot. She has been dancing all over the living room this month, which is great fun to watch. She bounces, kicks her feet, runs in circles, and claps - those are her main moves.

This week she was thrilled to finally see the movie Happy Feet. She's been obsessed with this movie since November. We've watched it twice now - which may not seem like a lot, but consider that we've only had the movie for two days. She always recognizes "Mumble" when he comes on screen, and she likes to dance like him, too. It's always a dance party at our house!

She's been coloring a lot these days, too. She loves to dump all of her crayons out of the box, sometimes from great heights so that they break. Most of the time, she does manage to color on paper or a coloring book, so Mommy and Daddy haven't had to scrub any major surfaces yet... but the blue crayon is currently missing, and I told Dave that some day we're going to discover that Madeline has been a bit too quiet in her room or down the hallway, and then we'll discover that she has re-decorated the walls. It's coming, mark my words!

Getting into trouble, every chance she gets

Now that she's 19 months old, Madeline is figuring out new ways to challenge us every day. She demands to be "up!" all the time, which means that she wants to be seated on the counter/table/other precarious place.

Everything sitting on the counter is fair game for playing then, so cell phones get thrown on the floor, kleenex get pulled out of boxes, and fingers inch ever-so-close to electrical outlets.

She's still just as charming as ever, though. After a bout with a nasty cold and double ear infection, she had lost a little weight - I'd estimate a pound or two. But her appetite is back now, and her little tummy is rounding out again quite nicely. Thank goodness, because Madeline's mommy is a born worrier!

The Latest Adventures of SmartyPants

Madeline just turned 18 months old this past weekend, and if my maintenance of this blog is any indication, she has been keeping us extremely busy. I have to admit that the age she is now has always been one of my favorite ages for kids, just because they are so much fun. She is discovering new adventures every day, and it's a great deal of fun to watch.

Recent developments:

She now gives high-fives. The other day she was putting puzzle pieces into one of her wooden puzzles, and when she finished I told her "Good job!" and asked her to give me a high-five, which she did. It was just one of those moments where I felt so happy that she and I were able to carry on this whole dialogue and she fully participated.

She loves the fridge. Because it is cold, and because it contains so many good things to eat and drink, the refrigerator is a source of fascination for Madeline. If Dave or I get something out of there, we have to be stealthy and/or quick, because before we can blink, Madeline is there between the door and the fridge, looking for something interesting. She likes to pick up the bottles or a pitcher of orange juice and then entreat us to "help," because then we are supposed to open the ranch dressing or worchestershire sauce for her, or pour her a glass of OJ.

Messiness is now part of the deal. I have discovered that Madeline enjoys making bigger messes as she gets older. She has found new ways to make messes, which is sort of confounding for her neatnik parents. She likes to pour things out of containers (crayons out of their boxes, juice out of a cup, cotton pads out of their sleeve); mash multiple gobs of Play-Doh into one big multicolored ball; or smear spaghetti or yogurt on her face and in her hair. I am learning cleaning secrets I never knew that I would need, but we'll survive, I'm sure.

She'll give you a pat on the back. One of her more charming traits is that she'll put her arm around me or hug me and pat my back while she does it. I don't know who taught her this, but it makes my heart melt.

She loves to dance. Madeline has discovered that music has a rhythm to it, and she loves to bend her knees to bop her head to the beat. It's so funny to watch her when there's a song that catches her attention playing on TV or the radio. A couple of weeks ago, we took her to a Baby Loves Disco event, which was a bit much for her because there were so many people there. Even so, she and Dave managed to win a prize for being such great dancers!