365 Days

It's been a lot longer than 365 days since our little munchkin came into this world....but all I could think of leading up to her birthday and since was that she's been with us for 365 days.

For 365 days, I've been someone's mom
I've rocked her to sleep at night 365 times
Either she's woken me up or I've woken her up 365 mornings
And in that time, I must have kissed her a half a million times, because I kiss her 1000s of times a day
For 365 days, I've worried and sweated and laughed and cried and giggled and snuggled something more important than myself, something bigger than I've ever been a part of -

And it's been nervewracking
And overwhelming
And tiring
And joyful
And silly
And touched me so deep in my soul that, at the molecular level, I feel different.

For 365 days I've been someone's Mom and I thank the Lord that he's given me that opportunity because it's been the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me.

Ever.

Things in our neck of the woods have been the same, but different.  Every day, we get up, go to work, come home, make dinner, play with our girl for the precious moments we have with her, then we go to bed.  Rinse. Repeat.

The weekends pass quicker than I can even say.  The more independent Miss becomes, the easier it is to get things done around the house....but I still have a hard time doing "things" when she's awake.  When she's awake, I want to be playing with her and enjoying the time we have, not doing laundry and cleaning rooms.  So...the house stays a bit on the cluttered side and the list of projects grows.  Such is the life of parents of a toddler, I guess.

Madelyn's baby book stops doing a month to month check in at 12 months...which is really sad, I think, because she changes so much month! Now she's *really* beginning to make new discoveries and learn new "baby babbles".  Her firsts are far from over!  I'll continue to fill it in as we go for the things there are left - but I'll have to start keeping track here of the things that she's done.

At the end of February, she got four more teeth, all on the top.  They've just broken the skin, but I can tell when they're still bothering her, because she gets so very cranky.  She drools so much, I'm amazed she's not completely dehydrated all of the time.

She's also started Hi-5ing.  Actually, she likes to smack both Mom and Dad on the head - and we've tried to teach her to do Hi-5 on the hand instead.  We also take her hands and run them gently on our face and say "gentle, gentle"....which works for a few minutes, but then she goes back to smacking and giggling.  We've got to keep working on that.

On the 11th of February, she waved "bye bye" for the first time.  She hasn't done it much since, but recently started doing it again.  Never unprompted, but she's getting there.  She's always a little too late.  Today, we visited her Grandma Freda and we told her to wave "bye bye".  She did wave bye, but not until we were out of the house and out of Grandma's line of site.  Oh well....she's getting there.

On the food front, she's definately getting better.  She can now eat strips of toast instead of tinsey weensy pieces.  She's not a fan of meat, yet, but she did eat some turkey sausage this morning and seemed to like it.  She's now eating scrambled eggs (yea!) and has had bits of very lightly spread PB&J sandwhiches.  Sometimes she likes those, sometimes she doesn't.  Her absolute favorite foods are still green beans (go figure!), cheese, any fruit (but bananas most of all) and pasta.  Pasta, pasta, pasta.  When in doubt, feed the girl some elbow macaroni in marina sauce and she's a happy child.  She's tried a bit of breaded halibut and liked that.  She likes tater tots and has had bit of all beef, kocher hotdogs.  We keep trying avocados, but she's not a fan yet.  She's eating Kix cereal as a snack from time to time and love Pirate's Booty, veggie flavor.  Her absolute favorite breakfast is waffles.  She could eat those for every mean, I'm quite certain.

She doesn't drink much from a bottle anymore - some in the morning, some at night and when I put her down for a nap.  She's become an expert at the sippy cup and has started grabbing our cups and trying to drink from them.  She has a little cup she plays with in the bathtub and is constantly trying to drink her bathwater.  You'd think she was dehydrated, but she's drinking water or milk all day long.

At the end of January, I started putting hard soled shoes on her - and it was quite a site to see.  At our cousin Si's wedding on the 31st of January, we put little patent Mary Janes on her and let her walk around for the first time outside of the house (any house, really...we don't carry her that much...we'd just never let her run around in public).  She had a blast dancing the night away with her cousin Kaycee.

Since then, we've started taking her for walks - and that's now her favorite thing to do with her Daddy on weeknights, before I get home from work - and on the weekends.  If the weather is nice, we go for a walk.  Generally, we just walk around the block since the County built a water wall separating us from the River (hallelujah...they finally caved and built a wall surrounding our entire neighborhood!!!).  It makes getting to the park and greenbelt along the River a whole lot more dangerous, since we'd have to walk along the River road for quite a ways.  So, for now, we keep it to the neighborhood unless we drive down the road, past the wall, to the parking lot for the park and get out and walk there

She's quite the daredevil when she's walking.  She often go full steam ahead running down the sidewalk, which makes her Mama *very* nervous.  She's taken a bit of a tumble, not much - just enought to have to catch herself on the sidewalk...but it's going to happen, she's going to take a header at somepoint. I just hope I can keep it together when she does.

She *loves* to play chase with her Daddy.  With me too, but Daddy is so much better at tumbling around with her than I am.  She'll start chasing us, then we'll turn around and chase her back and she giggles and runs as far as her little legs can take her.  All it takes to get her started is peeking at her around a chair or a corner and she's off chasing us.  She loves to try and tickle our feet if she can catch them and if either of us is laying on the ground, she's trying and climb on top of us, giggle the entire way.

She and I took a quick trip to Idaho in February to see my folks.  We didn't spend much time with my Mom as she'd just been here for Madelyn's birthday.  We stayed at my Dad's house so she could visit her Papa and Gigi, her cousin Carson and Uncle Drew and her Auntie Bree.  She had a grand ole time - and while she was there, Gigi and Papa got her her very own table and chairs for tea.  She didn't quite get the concept of tea (but just give that time, I'd guess the next time we're there, she'll be all over the adorable tea set), but she did get the concept of crawling up into the chairs and sometimes onto the table.

Since then, she's becoming a crawling critter.  She tries to crawl up just about everything she can.  She's tried to crawl onto the coffee table, but we've successfully kept her off of that, for now.  We bought her a big soft chair for the living room and she crawls up into that and watches a few moments of Sprout TV (no lectures about screen time before 2, sometimes it's the only way I get a chance to make dinner...) or to read her books.  She crawls into her mini rocking chair in her bedroom.  She crawls onto her rocking horses and rocks herself.  She crawls up the stairs if we're not careful to close the gate.  She tries to crawl into her high chair, but it's a tad too high for her yet. 

She's also become quite the reader.  She'll sit and look at books for the longest time.  She is constantly bringing them to us to read to her.  Her favorite at the moment is "Milly Moo the Crazy Cow" (a touch and feel story about barn yard animals hiding from their friend Milly Moo in case you were dying to know).  She has always hated diaper changes, but these days if I had her a book, she'll let me change her diaper pretty smoothly while she reads.  Apparently reading on the toilet starts that young <>

When she brings a book to us and wants to sit on our lap, she does the cutest thing.  Starting about 2 feet away from us, she'll turn her back to us and back up, looking over her shoulder, till she's hit our laps, then she sits down.  I feel like I should be saying "beep beep beep" just like a semi truck backing up when she does it.

She is really starting to understand us.  If we ask her to get her ball, she'll get it.  If we tell her to throw it to someone (and she's in the mood), she'll throw it.  She'll get her babies and her binkies on command.  When we say, "Let's go for a walk!", she'll head for the door and wait for us to put her shoes on.  At night, Jim plays with her while I cook dinner.  When it's time to eat, he'll say, "Get in your chair" and most nights she'll head straight for her high chair and try to get in it.  She has started signing "More Please" and will make that sign whenever she's hungry.  She's done it a time or too when her Dad or her Grandpa Ron have been bouncing her (which she loves), but generally she does it when she's hungry and all through dinner till she's full.  Her universal sign for full is to start dropping her food on the floor, but she is starting to get "all done".  She'll sign it when we say "all done" - but she still doesn't exactly understand what it means.

A funny little story about her "more please"....  Recently her Auntie Jen (who watches her) and her Auntie Jessica took all of the Clark cousins to Walmart for some shopping.  It was getting close to Madelyn's (or, as Kaycee calls her, Mad - o - win) lunch time and nap time and she was starting to get cranky.  Jenny set her down to walk in the produce section and Madelyn ran over to the onions and started signing "more please".  This tickles me pink, since Jimmy is always teasing me about how many onions I put in food.  Looks like I've got a second vote on loving the onions!

Yes, she does understand quite a bit.  She understands that the remote is not for her and doesn't like it one bit.  She understands that the phone is not for her and doesn't like it one bit.  She does carry her little phone over her shoulder like she's talking on it and it's quite adorable.  She understands she's not supposed to bang things on the TV and that it makes her Daddy quite upset when she does (so, of course, she keeps doing it). 

She understands when we're reading at night that bedtime comes next and somestimes she wants to cut to the chase and go straight to bed.  She rarely cries when I put her down now.  Rarely - but she does get ancy when we're reading and just wants me to put her down.   She's not much for rocking and cuddling unless she doesn't feel so hot or she's super tired....which is why I still sneak into her room every night and pick her up and rock her.  I'm not quite ready to give that up just yet.  Luckily, I haven't destroyed her very wonderful sleep habits.  She is still sleeping through the night from 7:30ish to 7 am, unless she's sick.

She's still a big Daddy fan.  At night, she knows that when we come out of the bath, we look over the railing down into the main room and her Daddy will be there waving at her and throwing her kisses, so every night she calls out as we come out of the bathroom "Daaad, Daaad" - even if he's at work and not there.  If she and I are playing in the living room and he's not with us, after a while she'll go to the bottom of the stairs and call out "Daaad, Daaad".  She's always looking for him.   Last weekend, Jim was doing quite a bit of yard work and she would just sit and watch him out the back window.  Every once in awhile, he'd take a break and come talk to her at the window.  She *loved* that.  When he'd go back to work, she'd start crying - and I was never sure if it was because she missed her dad or wanted to go outside....both are some of her favorite things.

Her other current fascination is jumping and bouncing.  We still have some balloons hanging around from her birthday.  They're in a pile in ther corner.  She'll dive into them and sit on one and bounce herself up and down on them.  If there are pillows lying about, she'll move them, one by one, into one big pile in the middle of the room and jump and roll around in them.  Lately, shes' taken to putting her little yellow step stool in her room right next to her big "Lotty the Ladybug" pillow, climbing up onto the step stool and then doing her version of jumping (which is really just her squating and standing, then falling forward) into Lotty.

It's pretty funny to watch, that's for sure.

It's been a long time since I posted - and it's nearly 11 pm and I've yet to make our lunches for tomorrow and get us ready to go...and I haven't even added pictures - so this posting will have to wait until tomorrow....  That's me - always behind the 8 ball and loving every minute of it.

**edited note...three days later, I still haven't had a chance to add pictures, so I'm just going to post this and try to add some pictures another night....because if I don't, I won't start blogging little fun stuff, like the fact that last night Madelyn started signing "eat" instead of "more please" when we told her to get in her high chair...***