A Keokuk Easter

We traveled down to Keokuk on Sunday to celebrate Easter with Eric's family. Maddox had a great time and was a happy baby...even taking a nice little nap on Grandma Kies' bed. Uncle Bryan cooked a yummy ham and Grandma, Aunt Lori, and Aunt Lora brought fantastic fixin's including Lora's traditional jello salad!! Maddox loved visiting and playing with her cousins, especially 6 1/2 year old Nicole from Cincinnati. She LOVED Maddox as you can see from the pictures. She is the closest cousin in age to Maddox on both sides of the family so I am hoping they will grow up to be buddies. Nicole was a big help with Maddox...keeping her chin clean after EACH bite of green beans, picking up the pacifier every time it fell on the floor and holding Maddox a lot of the time. Maddox thought she was pretty neat with that light hair and dark brown eyes. But, she enjoyed all the rest of the family too. It was nice for them to see how she is growing like a weed. She is back to her normal healthy self. No more cough, FINALLY, and sleeping like a champ both during the day and at night! She has been sleeping one big nap, almost 3 hours, in the late AM and then a little short cat nap in the afternoon about 30 minutes. We have expanded our baby food menu to include a fruit, PEARS, in addition to all the other veggies. She really likes the pears...probably the natural sugar. She is still a breast milk girl though. I had planned to be done nursing before my half marathon in Nashville, TN coming up the end of April, but now that she is FINALLY such a good nurser, I have to say I am addicted to our bonding time. We'll keep going for a while longer. She is really standing up well and loves to hang out in the Exersaucer stand up thing. She has figured out how to bang the toys on the tray together to make noise. She is really good at saying 'MUM...MUM'. I of course take that to be 'MOM'....but I don't really think she is connecting the 'word' with me. I keep saying 'Da Da' to her but she just giggles when I make that noise. She sits up pretty well but, would still prefer to be standing in the Exersaucer or sitting in the BUMBO. As soon as she grabs for a toy in the seated position she topples over. When we put her on the floor she almost immediately flips to her stomach within a minute or so and then starts to sort of stick her butt up in the air, I suppose getting ready to crawl. She has still not figured out how to turn back over to her back from her tummy??? C'mon Maddox, you can go both ways!! We are headed to Grandma and Grandpa Bergs this coming weekend. Eric has a conference in the suburbs so we'll do a little visiting with the family, including Great Grandma Berg who just loves to watch Maddox.