Mischievous Girl

In the past few weeks, Madeline has started grabbing anything and everything on which she can possibly get her hands.  When she's sitting on someone's lap on the couch and spots the remote, she lunges for it.  The other night, she somehow managed to grab my glass of water off the nightstand and pour it all over my back.  She is exponentially more mischievous.

After I got her ready for church this weekend, I set her down with a few toys to play with while I got ready...

Here's our little cutie playing with her toys just like she's supposed to.  (Note the fully packed and ready to go diaper bag sitting by her...)

                                       

She hasn't had any teeth come in yet, but they're definitely close as she chews on everything even more than she used to right now...

A few minutes later, I walk back into the room and this is what I find...

In that short time, she managed to take everything out of the diaper bag...her blanket, hat, dirty diaper bag, diapers, spare outfit, burp cloth, pacifier, socks...all of it.

Here she is examining to see what's left in the bag...

 Busted!

It's amazing how much she has changed in just the past week.  It started off by her rocking forward a bit when she sits.  Now, she's progressed to lunging towards thing and falling forward onto her tummy.  She hasn't taken off crawling yet, but I don't think it will be too long before that day arrives.  After that, we'll really have our hands full!

Making Friends

On Friday night, we went to visit our good friends Cory and Katherine to meet their beautiful baby girl Charlotte.  Madeline is usually the baby wherever we go, so it was a change having her be the big girl.  Here she is "holding" her new friend...

It's hard to believe that Maddie was that size a mere 7 months ago.  She's a giant compared to Charlotte!

 Charlotte has a full head of beautiful hair, which Maddie was thinking about trying to grab so we called it good with the pictures at that point...

Although 7 months is a world of difference right now, we decided that they could definitely be the city doubles champions in about 14 years.  The two of them are going to be on the tennis court as soon as they can hold a racket!

On Saturday, we went to 4 PM mass.  When our arms got worn out from holding our very active 7 month old who wants to move and grab anything she can get her hands on, I sat her in the pew next to me.

We sat next to a mom who has a little boy that was about 2 years old.  When I sat Madeline in the pew, the little boy scooted over to sit next to her.  In typical Maddie form, she gave him the stare down for a minute...

A few minutes later, she reached her hand out towards his hand.  His eyes got huge, and he quickly scooted back towards his mom.  A few minutes later, he decided he wanted to check her out again so he came to sit next to her.  Once again, she reached out to grab his hand/arm, and he quickly retreated.  It was adorable.  After that, he stayed by his mom and played with his toy truck, so Maddie just watched.

She had plenty of her own toys to play with, but she just sat watching him for the last few minutes of mass, which worked out just fine!

Cheyenne

Meet the newest addition to our house - Cheyenne the Wonder Horse...

Cheyenne was probably one of Mat's favorite toys when he was a kid.  I can't even imagine the number of hours he spent in his cowboy boots and hat riding Cheyenne.  His mom and Jim got her all fixed up for Madeline, so we brought it home this weekend.  Of course, Maddie is a ways away from being able to ride her without some help, but she was definitely intrigued by her new toy.  As soon as Nana put her on it, she leaned forward and grabbed the handles like a natural...

 

Notice the camouflage socks that she happened to have on that day and the pink bandanna that Mat picked up at Tractor Supply on the way home to put on the horse...

I'm sure she'll have run riding Cheyenne someday, but it better not inspire her to want a horse as this is the closest that she's ever going to get :)

My new favorite baby item

We always planned on making our own baby food for Madeline as we can't justify paying .89/jar for pureed foods when we can puree them up ourselves.  However, we did end up buying two 12 jar cases of an organic breakfast variety pack (apples, bananas, and pears) recently as we wanted to have some glass jars to refill using the food we make.  They were on sale at Babies R Us, and I had a coupon as well as a gift card.  That's my kind of shopping :)

Initially, I was planning on steaming the food and then blending it in the fancy BlendTec blender that Mat bought before she was born, a purchase which was partially justified by him promising to make YEARS of baby food in it.  However, my mom got us this baby food maker (which was on clearance at TJ Maxx), so I tried it out this week.  

                                        

It is AMAZING!  Although my previous process of steaming the foods on the stove and then blending them isn't too difficult, this little machine makes it significantly easier.  All you do is cut up the food you're cooking into chunks and fill the canister.  Then, there's a chart that tells you how much water to put into it based on the food you're cooking.  After that, you turn it on, and it will steam the food for the appropriate time based on the water level.  When it's done, it shuts off automatically, which is incredibly convenient for someone like me who is always doing 20 things at once because now I don't have to keep running back into the kitchen to see if the food is cooked yet.  To puree it, you simply drop the blade into the canister and turn the switch to puree (instead of steam).  15 seconds later, you have perfect baby food!  Not only is it very convenient but it reduces the number of dirty dishes as everything is done using the same canister.  It also has some neat additional features, such as you can steam heat milk and sterilize pacifiers.  It's not too big, so it easily fits on a shelf in the cabinet in between uses.  It's called the Kalorik Baby Gourmet, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a convenient way to make baby food!

In the end, Madeline was a big fan of the sweet potatoes that I made for her... 

Next on the list...carrots!

Madeline and the Munchkin

Prior to Madeline's arrival, this little 10 pound guy was the munchkin around our house...

In addition to being called the munchkin, he has a wide variety of other nicknames, but his official name is Freddie.  Despite his miniature size, Little Fred is still best friends with his 110 lb "brother" Edison 

(aka Big Ed)... 

In the pre-baby ear, he'd be on Mathew or my lap as soon as we sat down, and I'd carry him around all the time.  As I'm sure many of you know, things change with the arrival of a baby.  Our Freddie munchkin was {temporarily} replaced by a smaller munchkin.  However, a mere 7 months later, our little Madeline is almost twice as big as Fred...

                                                 

Maddie loves all of our dogs, but she REALLY loves Fred.  The combination of him being closer to her size as well as the fact that he has longer hair that she can grab probably contributes to him being her favorite.  We set the two of them on our bed the other day, and she was giggling like you would not believe...

We attempted to get a picture of the two of them, but Fred had decided that he wanted to run as far away from her as possible at that moment...

This picture cracks me up.  I imagine Madeline saying "What's wrong with you, Freddie?  You're supposed to be playing with me!", and Freddie is saying "Do I really have to sit here?  My dog siblings are much for fun than this thing."

Maddie saying "Don't take away the puppy!" when Mathew decided that Fred had been patient for long enough...

Most of the time, Freddie likes her pretty well, as do the rest of the dogs.  They're all big fans of us sitting on the floor and playing with Maddie as it means it is easier for them to crawl into our laps in an attempt to get more attention.  However, I foresee the day coming when Maddie is big enough to carry Freddie around, and we'll see what he thinks of her then...

Retro clothes

When I arrived to pick up Madeline from my parents' house one day, this is what she was wearing (which was definitely not what I had put her in that morning before dropping her off)...

Yes, it is a long sleeve red velour outfit with a white collar.  Can you tell it's from about 1985?  The number of things my mom saved from my childhood is amazing.  While there are some outfits that are rather unfortunate, there are definitely a number of other ones that are pretty cute.  For example, here's Maddie wearing the dress that I wore on my first Christmas...  

                                                 

When I showed up with her in this dress at my parents' house, my mom got out my baby book and found several pictures from 26 years ago of me wearing it.  It was pretty neat.  Maddie looks a fair amount like I did when I was a baby...except I had long jet black hair, and her hair is pretty short and light blonde.  Here she is with Nana...

 Madeline and Aunt Lindsay...

 Maddie is definitely more interested in Aunt Lindsay's Kindle than smiling for yet another picture...

 Here's a few pictures of her sitting in the miniature rocking chair that my mom has had for as long as I can remember.  There are pictures of me sitting in this rocking chair in my baby book as well.

Just the other day, my mom showed me the stack of boxes in the attic (organized by size) which contain all of her favorite outfits that my sisters and I wore.  While there are some that she might not be wearing, there are a few that I'm super excited for her to be able to wear once she's big enough :)