Maddox the Ladybug

Phew.... I am finally able to take a minute to update the blog. Since we arrived home from Denver it has been extremely difficult getting back into the swing of our normal activities of daily living. Maddox got terribly sick when we returned from Colorado. She had a 103 fever which was followed by an awful cold. Her little nose was running all the time, she was coughing, and sneezing, not eating or sleeping well. I thought all her other little colds were terrible but they were nothing compared to this one. Luckily we are over that. We kept her out of daycare as much as possible that week. Eric was able to take a day off and luckily Grammy Marti came for a couple of days. She WAS well enough to go trick-or-treating. We were actually up at Grandma Marti, Grandpa Dick and Great Grandma Berg's house. Maddox had a great time although she really had no idea what was going on. She loved sitting by the front door watching all the goblins and ghosts come to get their candy. She even learned how to drop a few pieces into each kids bucket. We did go to a couple of house in Grammy's neighborhood. Maddox walked like a champ and even negotiated some big steps to access people's doors. She walked all over the neighborhood like she had done it a 100 times over....with Grammy on one hand and me on the other. It was hilarious. She did get tired quickly though and about 1/2 way back to Grammy's she just sat down in the middle of the sidewalk as if to say 'I've walked enough'. She has really started to problem solve in the last few weeks. She is able to push her giraffe and the cozy coupe all around the house getting it unstuck from the couch corners and the dining room corners finally able to realize REVERSE. She is even putting little toys on the seat of the giraffe as if to give them a ride. She has really started to play more dynamically and has become really involved in our conversations. She knows so many words...she isn't able to say many of them but totally knows them and is able to follow verbal instructions from Eric and I. She pretty much still just says DADDY and MOMMY and now UP but one of these days she is going to yell out a sentence. I can see the wheels turning in her little head. She still loves books and will bring them to Eric and I as if asking us to read them to her. She has totally mastered the stairs but isn't walking yet. She is getting very good at standing by herself without holding onto anything and she will walk for long distances now with only holding onto one hand instead of two. She has become very good at organizing and will sit for quite some time emptying and re-filling her leggo box. She also methodically puts the food that she doesn't want to eat into the little cup holder spots on her high chair tray, which is so much better than what she used to do with it....throw it on the floor. She is able to sign MORE EAT and COOKIE with a little prompting from me but she definitely know what the words mean. She is still taking 2 good naps each day but she has started getting up at 6AM this week UGH.... tomorrow it will be 5AM with the time change. She goes to bed around 7Pm and I was thinking maybe she'd sleep later if we kept her up later but something tells me that won't work. Her hair is getting so long, but I refuse to cut it yet. We just this week started putting it into pony tails but unfortunately she is able to pull those out herself. Her 2 top teeth are almost through and she really eats just about anything. This week we tried real beets which she ate just fine for me but didn't like them at Kim's house??? Luckily Eric and I invested in a MacBook Pro laptop so hopefully from now on I"ll be able to update the blog more often. Our old PC was so slow it was a definite deterrent to updating. Take care for now....