Anyway, a lot has been going on with the kids since I've stopped daily, or weekly, blogging. Now that I'm starting back on compiling our family yearbook/blog book for 2011, 2012 and starting 2013, I'm realizing how much I need to stay on top of this portion so that we don't forget the little details that make this crazy life fun!
Maddie's growing by leaps and bounds at this point. She's still not walking, although is happy, upon request, to pop from a tripod stance up to standing by herself. She'll do it over and over, but has yet to even really try to take a step. She's gotten really good about going up and more importantly, down the stairs by herself. We started teaching her how to go down them a few weeks before her 1st birthday, and ended up taking down the baby gates right after her birthday party. So far, no tumbles down these stairs!
When we moved into the house, the stairway echoed quite a bit, and the rug from Joseph's old bedroom was a perfect fit for the landing, so it ended up there. Now that Maddie has access to it, she loves hanging out on the landing, quickly crawling from spot to spot, spinning around in the closest thing we can equate to puppy spasms. Or she'll plop down, head on the rug, bottom up in the air, and just lay there for a few minutes before getting up and finding a new spot to lay down on.
Maddie's also quite the cuddly little girl. She loves giving face hugs, where she'll smush her face into yours, and will give this little "ohhh" sigh whenever she does. It's the sweetest thing, especially when she'll crawl over to Molly, lay in her neck and give her happy love sigh.
Most mornings she's awake by 6am, but not happy about it. She's still demanding a bottle first thing, and typically will spend the next 30-45 minutes cuddling back and forth between Joe and me, trying to smush in as closely as possible. Some days she'll fall right back asleep, other days she prefers just to soak up the attention and cuddle time. Until she gets antsy, and starts asking for Joseph. He knows that "morning isn't until 7am," and usually is pretty good about staying in his room until then.
Maddie's starting to talk, and really listens to how we say words, trying her hardest to imitate. Dada was definitely her first word, but about a month ago she started saying Jo-Jo ("do-do"). Next? We had mama for a few days before the trip to California, and when I got back, mama had been replaced with, what else? Papa! She'll say mama every once in a while, typically when she's angry or upset about something. Right around her birthday she started saying "ball," but with typical Madeline flair - she'll see a ball, point, and exclaim (and I do mean exclaim!) "Baaa!!" Every time. It's so cute.
She's getting a lot of use out of the "b" words. Her hairbow display hangs near her crib, and she's obsessed with them. Multiple times every day she points at them, emphatically shouting "bow." She loves having us put them in her hair, upon which she'll promptly try to feel it on her head, pull it off, hand it to us and say "bow!" insisting we put it back in her hair. Over and over and over. Every once in a while after we put one in her hair, she'll get distracted enough to leave it alone for a few minutes.
We're also back into the world of baby sign language. So far, Maddie signs "more," "milk," "eat," "all done," "please," "thank you" fairly frequently. It seems that any time she watches one of the baby signing movies and we ask her to sign something, she pauses briefly, and then will do it, and it's in her repertoire. It's been wonderful having a way to communicate with her, especially since she's so quick to fuss. :)
On Tuesday she cut another tooth - bottom left, next to the middle ones. She's working on the opposite bottom tooth, and I imagine it'll be here by this weekend, if it isn't already. That's made for some fussy days, particularly this past Saturday morning, when we had her 1st birthday pictures. I'm sure Sarah, our photographer, was able to get some good shots, but for now, here's our sneak peak picture.
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