Happy Halloween!

Initially, we debated whether Madeline should be a lady bug (since that's kind of her theme) or a green M&M (since her nickname is M&M for Madeline Margaret).  However, after we saw this ADORABLE lady bug costume, we couldn't resist...

Halloween is probably my absolute least favorite holiday, but I made an effort to be more festive this year on account of Maddie.  On Saturday, we went to Boo at the Zoo with Mat's mom, sister, and our 3 year old nephew.  It was also Maddie's first trip to the zoo.  She wasn't particularly interested in the animals, but she loved riding around outside in her stroller all afternoon...

 Well, for most of the afternoon that is.  She started to get fussy about the time we reached the petting zoo, so she spent the rest of the time sleeping with her head buried on my chest (since the sun interfered in her nap)...

 By the time we left the zoo, she was a well rested and happy little girl again, so we got some cute pictures in the park...

 Considering how worried Mat initially was about holding Maddie, it never ceases to amaze me how he just throws her around now.  Well, he obviously doesn't literally throw her around, but he isn't nearly as worried about hurting her now that she's significantly more sturdy...

 First time sitting on daddy's shoulders.  I foresee her doing this all the time when she's a little bigger...

 On Monday night, we dressed her up in her lady bug costume again.  However, it would be silly to go trick-or-treating since she can't eat the candy, and Mat and I certainly don't need to eat a bag full of candy ourselves.  Of course, we still wanted to show off our little lady bug a bit.  After going to visit my great aunt and uncle, we ended up over at the Wilson's house.  Zack was really excited to see Maddie.  Mat was really excited about the fact that Zack has a big flat screen HD tv with ESPN since the Chiefs were playing, and we don't have a big flat screen HD tv nor do we have ESPN on our tv period.  Here's the guys and the little girls...

 Annika and I did take Maddie and Chloe trick-or-treating at a few of their neighbors' houses while the guys watched the game.  After that, we headed home with a very exhausted little lady bug...

 She had a long, festive weekend as we did a lot of running around and not a lot of napping.  Before taking her out of her costume and putting her in some comfy pj's, we did get one picture of Maddie and I...

 I hope everyone else had a Happy Halloween as well!

Bath night

About once a month, it's bath night at our house.  Of course, Mathew, Maddie, and I take baths a lot more than once a month, but this is full bath night.  That means everyone gets a bath, including the puppy dogs.  It's quite a process, but we have a pretty good system down.  I wash and Mathew dries.  First up is Madeline...

She loves splish splashing around in the tub.  Maybe she'll grow up to be a swimmer like two of her aunties.  Bathing her is the easy part.  After that, the real fun begins.  We put Maddie in her swing to kick back and watch the show.

Conveniently, the first floor guest bathroom has a walk in shower with a sliding door and shower head with a long hose, which is perfect for washing dogs as I put on shorts and a t-shirt and hop in the shower with them.  It's (relatively) easy to get them in, and they can't escape once I slide the door closed.  First up is always Daisy since you can say "Daisy, go get in the shower!" and she'll run right to the shower.  I always forget how white she is when she's clean...

Bailey is always #2, but Mathew usually has to pick her up and put her in the shower as she isn't nearly as excited about getting a bath.  However, once she's in there, she doesn't mind it in the least bit.  Here's our nice and clean Bailey...

By this point, my back is starting to get sore, so the big guy is third in line since he's so tall that I hardly have to bend over.  Like Bailey, he is not too excited about getting a bath, so it takes some serious wrangling by Mathew to get him into the shower.  Mat used to be the dog washer, until Edison got huge.  Now, the two of them won't fit in the shower, so that's when I turned into the washer instead of the dryer.  Once we get Big Ed in the shower, he just sits down and thoroughly enjoys getting scrubbed down.  The only hard part is getting him to stand up long enough to wash the back of him.  He he is crashed out, after his 30 minutes of post showering spazing...

He won this month's award for being the dirtiest and shedding the most.

Last but not least is Miss Allie May.  By this point, she has realized what's going on and decided she wants no part of it, so she's usually hiding in our room.  She doesn't struggle when Mathew picks her up and puts her in the shower though.  She just surrenders to the "torture" of being washed.  After she's clean, she slowly and delicately steps out of the shower and stands there (looking completely demoralized) and waits for Mat to dry her...

Fortunately, she doesn't pout like she used to.  I had no idea dogs pouted until we got Allie.  She has quite a personality.  I love washing her though because she's the shiniest black labrador I've ever seen when she's clean...

Usually, Mat washes the munchkin in the kitchen sink at some point during the process.  However, since he was keeping an eye on Maddie as well as drying the big dogs, I ended up washing Freddie in the shower.  The poor little guy stood there shaking like you wouldn't believe the entire time.  I forget how small he is, until I get him wet and realize that his hair makes him look a lot bigger than he really is!  Here's the clean little guy...

Afterwards, it's treat time (aka positive reinforcement that baths are good) for everyone!  Our five clean and shiny puppy dogs...

After that, I was ready to soak in a nice bubble bath myself as my back was shot.  However, Madeline was ready for her nighttime routine of rocking and nursing until she falls asleep so I only had time for a quick shower.  The joys of being a mommy.  Of course, I wouldn't trade it for anything though :)  Here's a cute shot of Big Ed and Little Fred I took when Mathew and I finally sat down to watch a movie...

110 pound Edison and 10 pound Freddie...best friends :)

Puppy dog friends

Madeline absolutely LOVES watching the puppies.  She cracks up every time one of them walks by or comes and tries to give her a "kiss".  Initially, the puppies didn't know what to think of her, but they have officially decided that she's part of the family.  It used to be that every time we turn around Bailey has something that belongs to Mathew or I in her mouth (a shoe, shirt, sock, or anything else she could fine).  She never cared about Maddie's things until about the past week.  Now, she happily picks up anything of Maddie's that she can find as well.  Here's a cute video I took the other day of her laughing hysterically at the puppies.  Although you can't really see the dogs in the video, all 5 of them were running around and playing in the kitchen...

"Free" compost day

Since my parents/baby-sitters went to El Paso to see my sister for a long weekend, I took a few days off work to watch Madeline.  It just so happened that this is also "free" compost weekend in Lawrence, so Mathew took Thursday off as well. I think our little bright-eyed beauty was pretty excited to get to spend the entire day with her mommy and daddy...

After making sure the tires in the truck and trailer were nice and full of air (since compost weighs a lot), we headed to Lawrence.  We stopped at Milton's for a cup of David's blend coffee and a delicious scone before going to get our two giant scoops of compost.  The catch with "free" compost weekend is that it's only free if you scoop it yourself, which we usually do since we generally don't pay for something we can do ourselves. However, we had a feeling that Maddie would not be too happy about a 45 minute car ride to Lawrence followed by mom and dad scooping compost for probably another 45 minutes (at least) to load the truck and trailer followed by another 45 minute ride home.  That's a long time to be stuck in a car seat.  Therefore, we decided to bite the bullet and part with $20 in order to have the bucket loader drop an enormous scoop of compost in the truck and the trailer, which took all of about 2 minutes.  In this instance, I think our time is worth the $20.

By the time we got home, it had warmed up a bit and was a gorgeous afternoon.  We put Maddie in her stroller and bundled her up to watch us unload all the compost.  However, it took her less than 5 minutes to fall asleep... 

Last weekend, Mathew went outside to tear out everything (primarily weeds at this point) in our open garden.  After deciding that pulling everything was going to be a huge pain, he decided that spraying it all with roundup and burning it when it died sounded like a lot better plan.  Any excuse to get to play with fire :)  Here he was burning it today...

 The puppies always love it when we're outside.  I think they lay around 99% of the time when we're inside or not home, but they run and play non-stop when we're outside...

Except for Bailey.  She's a bit of a bum all the time.  It's a bit hard to see her in this picture, but she's up next to the house relaxing in the shade...

 Maddie took a nice time while we burned...

 Here's Edison trying to get Bailey to play...

 Farmer Mat...

 After burning what we could, it was time to unload our massive amount of compost.  At times like this , it sure would be nice to have a dump trailer.  However, unloading it is definitely a full body workout...

 Of course, after we had been unloading for about 15 minutes, Miss Maddie woke up and decided she was hungry.  I just love those big blue eyes...

At that point, her and I headed inside, and Mathew got to unload the remaining 3/4 of the trailer by himself.  After a long and busy day, we picked up a Papa John's pizza and had a nice and relaxing evening.  Days off sure are nice :)

(No so) smooth transition

We have this beautiful nursery...

With this beautiful (made in America) crib and comfy soybean foam mattress...

For this beautiful baby girl...

BUT...she has never slept in her room or her crib.  That all changed this week when we decided that she is getting too big to sleep in the pack n play in our room anymore.  Not only has she just about maxed out the weight limit for the drop-in for it, but she likes to sleep with her arms and legs fully stretched out, and she has a lot more room to do so in her crib...

However, this has not been as smooth of a transition as I hoped it would be.

Night 1 (Saturday) - She slept in her room from 10 PM - 1 AM.  When she woke up and realized that she was not in our room, she refused to be put back in her crib, but she fell right asleep when I put her in the pack n play in our room.

Night 2 (Sunday) - She made it from 10-10:30 PM in her crib.  That's it.  After that, it was one of the longest nights I've ever had with her.  She would fall asleep on my shoulder, but as soon as I laid her down, she would wake up and get fussy.  After going through that routine several times, I gave up on putting her in her crib and laid her down in the pack n play.  Once again, she instantly woke up each time I tried to lay her down.  Finally, I gave up the idea of laying her down, and her and I slept in the glider.  Thank goodness we have an amazingly comfortable glider and ottoman.

Monday morning, we had a small epiphany.  After I commented how I was cold from not being able to pull a blanket up to my shoulders as I usually do when I sleep, we realized that might have been why Maddie was happy sleeping on me but not when I laid her down.  It was 74 in our house when we went to bed, but we didn't turn on the heat, and it was down to 66 by morning.  The poor little girl was probably cold!

Night 3 (Monday) - We turned on the heater in Maddie's room to get it to a comfortable 74 before putting her to bed, hoping it would help.  I was so exhausted by this point that I can't even remember what time she woke up, but I do know that I had not been asleep very long, so once again, she slept most of the night in our room.

Night 4 (Tuesday) - At 11 PM, after rocking for almost an hour (which usually puts her to sleep), she was still bright eyed, bush tailed, and ready to play.  Could those bright blue eyes be open any wider?

I decided to lay her down in her crib, turn on her mobile, and see if she would just fall asleep as she does sometimes.  After about 20 minutes (and several times of re-winding the mobile), she fell asleep.  The best part?  She slept until 5 AM!!

Night 5 (Wednesday) - She either decided that her room isn't so bad or she was too exhausted to care because I put her to bed when she fell asleep at 8:30 (which is super early for her), and she slept until 5:30 the next morning.  When she woke up, she was all smiles...

Although it's been a bit of a long week, I think the Madeline sleeping in her own room arrangement is going to work out just fine :)

Meeting Justin

Sunday was another very exciting day for us.  Justin, one of our absolute best friends, was in town from New York for the first time since Maddie was born!  The last time he was here was the week before she was born, so this was the first time he got to see her.  After Heather (his other half) got to meet her a few weeks ago when she was in town, I think he was pretty excited to meet our little lady :)

His first comment to Maddie was that she was adorable.  At this point, she was still checking him out and deciding whether she liked him or not.  His second comment was in regards to what he called her "thunder thighs".  At that point, she gave him a look (of extreme disapproval), wrinkled up her little face, and started balling.  It was priceless, and we're probably never going to let you forget that, Justin :)  After mommy got her calmed down (and Justin apologized to her), she decided he wasn't so bad...  

An hour later, she was laughing hysterically at him...

 We had a great afternoon (aside from the Cowboys loosing) with Justin and his family, which involved some delicious food thanks to his mom and grandma.  Maddie was a fan of Diane (his mom) as well...

 She gave Maddie a copy of one of Justin's favorite book from when he was a kid, which I'm sure she'll love.

 After Maddie got tired of playing on a soft and fuzzy KU blanket, she wanted to stand up so she could get a better view of the enormous HD flat screen tv.  Standing up (with some assistance) is her new favorite thing, and it's amazing how strong her legs have gotten...

 I thought she might be sleepy since she didn't take a nap the day before nor did she sleep well Saturday night, but she was in a great mood all afternoon...

 However, when we headed home around 7, it took her less than one minute to fall asleep in the car.  It was great to see Justin, and we can't wait until Heather and him move back to KC in just a few months!

Pumpkin Patch

With the temperature in the mid-80's on Saturday, it didn't really feel like fall, but we still decided to celebrate the season by visiting a pumpkin patch, which was the perfect occasion to break out Maddie's overalls for the first time...

I had to get a picture with her fun socks...

We met Sarah, Todd, and Brody at Grandma Emma's house for breakfast before the outing.  Grandma Emma got out her high chair, so Maddie sat at the table to have breakfast with us...

Although she didn't get to enjoy any of the delicious donuts, she had fun playing with her new toys... 

 After filling our bellies, we headed to the Schaake family pumpkin patch in Lawrence.  It's a great place that I would highly recommend.  There is no admission fee, and they give you free hay rack rides out to the pumpkin patch...

 Where there are TONS of pumpkins so you can find the perfect one...

 Due to the fact that we haven't had rain for a really long time, it was incredibly dry and dusty, and the windy day only made it worse, but we still had fun...

 We found a nice Maddie size pumpkin.  We were planning on taking a cute picture of her sitting on it in the field, but she decided that the Baby Bjorn was a comfy place to take a nap...

 She did wake up for a few minutes, but she didn't seem too inclined to be taken out of her comfy spot cuddled up against her daddy...

 Group shot as we headed back with our pumpkins...

 They have over 20 varieties of pumpkins in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and the price seemed pretty reasonable as well.  After getting apple cider slushes, we watched Brody play on the playground equipment for a while before heading home.  Now, I'm just hoping the puppy dogs don't decide to eat Maddie's pumpkin as they enjoyed feasting on the pumpkins we grew in the garden last year...