Maddox Gets ' Cheesy'

Hi all. Sorry so long since I updated. Time just gets away from me. Maddox turned 11 months old a week ago. Can't believe she will be a year old in just a few short weeks. Looking forward to seeing everyone at her party. She has been REALLY super good these last couple of weeks. So happy and giggly. She has started makin' what I call this 'cheesy' grin. She scrunches up her eyes and wrinkles her nose and definitely makes Eric and I laugh, which I'm sure makes her do it even more. I got a pretty good picture of it sitting in her high chair above. She has been a furniture explorin' fool. She loves to crawl in, under, and around the dining room table and in and over the end tables. She still loves to wrestle with us on the ground...crawlin' over and then back over us again gigglin' the whole time. She is really starting to learn words. She doesn't say them yet, but she definitely knows them....ball, sit up, stand up, sit down, NO, book, banana. She LOVES to stand up in the bathtub, so she quickly learned the phrase 'sit down' which she normally will follow after the first command but then how quickly she forgets and then wants to stand up about 30 seconds later. She is eatin' really well. You can see from the pictures I took yesterday her little cheeks are filling out....and we can tell. She is definitely getting heavier. I am no longer pumping any breast milk....so she is actually getting a combo of formula and a little whole milk here and there. No issues with the whole milk but we thought we'd wait till closer to 12 months before we go 100 percent to whole milk. She is eating a lot of regular food....green beans, peaches, bananas ( her favorite), gold fish crackers, acorn squash, hmmmm what else...pretty much anything that is soft I try to give her. As you can see from the pictures she definitely is primarily using her right hand to eat. Most of the time she keeps the left one CLEAN under the tray. She has really figured out the sippy cup. She knows how to get it to her mouth and even now she can tip it up on her own without us helping her. She has started taking her bottles by herself. I just prop her up on one of the pink pillows and hand her the bottle and she does well. Only a little messier without my attention. But, no big deal. She has become really inquisitive.....getting into anything that Eric and I leave laying around. I always have a stack of paper/magazines laying on the end of the bench behind our love seat and I don't know how many times I have picked it all up in the last 72 hours...hmmmm maybe I should put it all away! She loves to tear it down and especially look at the babies in the magazines that I have. She really almost talks to them, like they are talkin' to her. She is getting faster and faster with crawling and is a champ now at pulling herself up on furniture. Still not cruising a lot along the furniture but last night she let go of my hands and stood by herself for a split second. She totally initiated it herself....trying it out! Won't be long. NO more teeth yet, still just have the 2 bottom ones. And as happy as she has been lately, don't look for anymore to come in anytime soon. She is so fun!! Nothing much gets done around here ( laundry, cleaning etc...). But,hey we sure are having a good time being a family...!

Maddox Eats Baked Acorn Squash

Well, we have had a major breakthrough in eating. Maddox is now tolerating some different textures AND picking them up from her own tray to feed herself. She had baked acorn squash this AM for breakfast and then part of a banana for lunch. I cut everything up in small pieces and she picks it up from her tray and shovels it in. It is actually quite hilarious watching her try to pick up the slimy banana and squash...in fact it is actually difficult for ME to pick it up. Sometimes I help her and let her pick it off of the end of my fingers, otherwise we'd be sitting in that high chair all AM waiting for her to clean her tray. When she gets a piece in her mouth all by herself I clap for her...and then she starts clapping herself with this big banana'y' grin on her face. So funny!! But, she seems to really enjoy it....at least this week. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Oh, and by the way...the waving bye bye didn't carry over to the next day...gotta keep workin' on it. Oh....and another breakthrough.....she is getting so old....she 'shared' with me today. Now, I know she really has no idea what she did. And probably SHARE is a liberal description of the action. But, I asked her to give/share with me the cardboard box she was playing it, and I held out my hand and she GAVE it to me. It was so exciting. I know you're probably thinking 'why was she playing with a cardboard box'...but you know kids, they'll play with everything BUT their toys sometimes. It was just this little box and she had TWO of them, so I thought I'd test her to see if she would SHARE and she did! Again, we'll see if it carries over until tomorrow. Eric and I practically scared her we were shouting out with excitement and praising her that she SHARED! I have a feeling she is going to learn pretty quickly how to share as time goes on at Kim's. After Eric and I chaperoned 5 kids under the age of 3 in the nursery on Saturday night we think Kim really earns her money!! Phew, we were worn out.

Maddox and the Tupperware

Just a quick update...Maddox found my Tupperware cupboard today. YES, she is able to get the cabinets open herself now....and to my pleasure the one she decided to open first was the LEAST harmful one.... the TUPPERWARE! She had fun playing with it and I'm hopeful that will be the ONLY cupboard she'll decide to get into...HAH!! She officially started waving 'bye bye' today. We were at a friends house visiting their brand new 2 week old baby and she was waving to everyone in the room!! We had been sort of coaxing her over the last few weeks but she just wasn't gettin' it, but today it seemed to click. We'll see if it carries over to tomorrow. We've been very lucky the last several weeks at least one or both of Maddox's Grandmas have been able to watch her at least one day a week. But, this week she'll be at Kim's all three days. A REAL week. But, she seems to love Kim. She reaches out for her in the AM when I drop her off, as if to say...'OK Mom, you can go now'. She is no longer nursing. She actually put that to a halt herself last week. So we've been giving her about 3 bottles of formula a day ( in addition to her normal 3 meals of baby food) and so far so good....she is transitioning well. She is still being a little finicky with different textures in her mouth but she really enjoyed the couple of pieces of cinnamon roll and apple cider donut we gave her at the farmer's market this weekend. Funny how she doesn't mind that but doesn't like the little bits of pasta in her 'lasagna and meat sauce' baby food. Guess she just needs a little more time. She is a really happy baby and makes us laugh each day. What a blessing! PS...we just had a breakthrough on the textures. I just dumped the little bits of pasta on her tray and magically she picked them up and shoveled them into her mouth...no gagging episodes. Interesting.....the same bits of pasta on the spoon cause her to gag...but let her put 'em in her mouth by herself and magic....no issues.

Maddox Starts to Cruise....

It has been an exiting week already. Eric, Maddox and I took a quick trip up to Aurora to visit Grammy Marti, Grandpa Dick, and Great Grandma Berg. Eric had another conference in the suburbs so we took advantage and came along to visit family. Maddox is getting very good at pulling herself up now. She does it much quicker and more efficiently now compared to just last week. She has additionally figured out how to sit down FINALLY. She actually started doing it on Great Grandma Berg's walker. She loves to pull herself up on the walker as soon as we get within crawling distance of it. But thanks to the walker she has finally be able to teach herself how to sit down. Although not always on command yet. She has been getting very good at standing up in the bathtub, which of course is not safe!! She hasn't quite been able to master sitting down in a slippery tub, but I'm sure it will come soon. She just started cruising on the furniture today. Only about 3 or 4 feet down the couch at a time. She has really takin' a likin' to wrestling matches. We lay on the floor and she literally tackles us, crawling over us and then back again to her starting position. She is giggling and growling the whole time she is doing it. It is hilarious. Let's see what else. She found the toilet paper today while I was cleaning and had a ball pulling it out from the roll. I posted some video of it.....she still loves to put things in her mouth as you can see from the video. You'll see in a couple of the pictures she has a bit of a shiner on her nose. She took a header into the carpet upstairs last week and skinned up her nose. She cried hard for about 5 minutes, scared me to death, but then was back to her old self in no time...and she had the scab rubbed off in about 72 hours. It was more of a carpet burn than anything. We're pretty much on the same eating schedule although there is no more breast milk in the freezer....so I just bought our first container of formula...and boy I'm glad it was our first.....very costly. Thought I'd give her formula for just a few weeks to get us a tad closer to the one year mark before we switched over to whole milk. I am still able to feed her directly from me in the AM and when I pick her up from Kim's although that may be short lived....she has been biting me...!! Well, ta ta for now....take care.