She's 15 Months!

Madelynn turned 15 months on the 20th.  I'm only a few days late :)  Here are some picture of her over the last month.  I haven't done a little photo shoot with her in a while because it just isn't easy anymore.  It is time to try again though!  Hopefully by 16 months I'll have a fun little photo shoot to share.  She has changed a lot in the last month and is acting more and more like a toddler every day. 

 

She got to enjoy her very first whole wheat waffle for breakfast a few weeks back and is now obsessed with them!  This has been Carter's main breakfast for well over two years and the love for waffles has passed on to Madelynn.  I know I could do better for breakfast but at least it is whole wheat.  I really like easy food for breakfast so that I can take a shower while they are content with their waffle watching cartoons.  It is a good tradition for us around here.  The pictures below are from the first time she had one.

 

This girl is also obsessed with smoothies.  Any kind of smoothie.  From an actual place or our homemade ones.  She sucks them down!  We make a lot of smoothies at home with lots of super good and healthy stuff in them and she will drink a full glass all by herself.  It makes me feel a little less guilty when we go a whole day with no veggies.  At least she had her smoothie which always has a lot of spinach in it.  The Jamba Juice was actually mine but I couldn't get it out of her hands.  She is typically a pretty good eater although lately she hasn't been loving my dinners :(  But besides not eating much of the main dish that I make she will eat all day long if I let her.  She loves string cheese, any kind of cracker, raspberries, blueberries, smoothies, waffles, grilled cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, bread, bananas, and yogurt.

She is a little daredevil!  She loves taking chances and is really starting to climb and try new things.  Except for walking.  She still refuses to walk!  We try everything.  Holding her hands and walking or having her walk between mama and daddy.  She actually gets mad.  She wants nothing to do with it.  It is very possible that she will turn two and still not walk.  She is a stubborn little girl!  Just like her brother.  How do I raise two stubborn kids?  What did I do wrong? ;)  She absolutely loves sitting on chairs by herself.  She loves sitting on Carter's bench and his bean bag chair.  Any time we are all sitting around in chairs, she wants her own chair.  And she gets so excited and proud of herself when she sits in the chair.  She also loves sitting up on the couch.  I have pretty much gotten over my fear of her falling off the couch and will just leave her up there until she hollers for me to get her off.  She has never fallen off and does so well on the couch.  She loves to crawl from one end to the other and then sit back down.  She also loves to watch out the front window.  She gets so excited when she sees birds.  She points and yells. 

 

She has the sweetest personality and yet can be very sassy too.  If she gets mad about something her newest thing is to scratch at us.  She will scratch at our face or our arm.  I hate it!  I have started spanking her hand when she does it which just breaks her heart.  She looks at me like she just can't believe I would do that to her.  It doesn't even hurt.  They are very gentle will spankings.  I mean, she is only one.  But then she has this other side to her, which is what we see most often, where she gives us the sweetest smiles with her adorable shoulder shrug all the time.  She shrugs her shoulders, tilts her head, and smiles a smile that lights up her face.  She also loves to give kisses and offers them up freely all the time.  You don't even have to ask for one.  She will just randomly look up at you and lean in to kiss.  It melts me every time!  She gives her daddy the most kisses and is completely and totally a daddy's girl.  This kid loves her daddy! 

 

I was trying to get a picture of her in her new jammies.  She does not sit still for pictures!

 

I gave her a piece of cheese and she decided to break it into a bunch of little pieces all over my couch.  No more cheese on the couch for this little miss.  This would be her little sassy self. 

 

 

The last time she was weighed, which was just over two weeks ago, she weighed 16.4 lbs.  She had lost about a half a pound because she was in the middle of a horrible stomach virus that ended up putting her in the hospital.  I'll have a separate post about that soon.  Carter was 21 pounds at 9 months old.  Madelynn was 16 pounds at 14 months.  Crazy.  Carter wasn't huge either.  She is one tiny little lady!  She eats a ton though so I am not worried about her at all.  She wears mostly size 12 month clothes now and is still in a size 3 diaper. 

 

She is an amazing sleeper!  Sometimes she still fusses for a few minutes before falling asleep but she is sleeping anywhere from 12 to 14 hours almost every night and takes one 2 hour nap each day.  Lately she has been sleeping in so late in the mornings (like 9 or even later) that we have been skipping her morning nap.  This might mean we are officially done with two naps.  This is about when Carter stopped taking a morning nap.  I always love nap time but I do enjoy when that morning nap is done.  It makes it a lot easier to do things during the day.  It also means that both kids sleep at the same exact time for the afternoon nap.  We are officially done nursing and stopped right at 14 1/2 months.  We were down to just one feeding right before bed each night and when she got the horrible stomach virus I was too afraid to nurse her because she wasn't keeping anything down.  And we were in La Grande, so I just tried a night without it and she didn't even seem to notice.  We were just done.  I am so thankful that God allowed me to nurse both of my kids for such a great amount of time but that the weaning process was also very easy and smooth.  

 

Madelynn Grace, we love you so much!  You are so special.  I love seeing your personality come out even with the not so great stuff, like scratching our face :)  You are showing us who you are and what you want to say about life.  And I like that.  I still feel like you are a little baby because you are so petite.  I think it is making me feel like my baby is a baby longer and I am loving that.  You make me laugh and smile all day long!  Your kisses melt me.  You are such a precious little girl.  We pray for you daily that you will grow into a happy, healthy, amazing young woman with a heart for God.  We love you so much Madelynn Grace.   

Our Carter Man

It is time to blog about our Carter man.  He is now three years and three months which means three months have gone by without a real update on him.  He is pretty great.  He is fun and silly, stubborn and independent, sweet and sensitive, with the brains to go with it all.  He is really smart.  I am sure every parent feels this way about their kids and in most cases, I am sure they are correct.  But I just love how smart he is.  I love that he has the desire to learn all the time.  He wants to know what everything is and what everything does.  If he hears us say a word that he doesn't know, he immediately asks what that word means.  He wants to understand everything.  If I am talking to someone about something that he doesn't understand, he wants me to explain everything.  As much as I love this, it drives me nuts too.  There are times that I have to tell him that this conversation is just for daddy and mommy.  I tell him he can listen but I am not going to explain it to him.  Poor guy.  That drives him nuts!

This kid loves stuffed animals.  I think it is pretty sweet.  This is where his sweet and sensitive spirit comes out the most.  He is so good to his animals.  He puts them down for naps in his bed, closes the door, turns the fan on in the hall (since we do this when Mady sleeps), and then tells us we need to talk quietly so we don't wake them up.  He must have his animals for bed but goes through phases on which ones are his favorites at the time.  We just got him a dalmation puppy at IKEA yesterday and he is obsessed with him.  He sure loves Minnie and Mickey Mouse too.  Minnie is actually Madelynn's but you would never know it by looking at this picture. 

 

 

He loves to play with his sister.  He is good to her and shows her love often but also has really bad moments with her.  He is so sweet when he sees her and will say "Hi Mady" in this sweet, high voice like he is just so excited to see her.  And yet, if she gets within 7 feet of his toy, look out!  He is quick to grab something away from her or even hurt her mildly to make sure she knows what he wants.  He will lighly kick her or push her out of his way.  It is not good.  It was getting fairly bad and we were feeling like we were failing and just not sure how to fix the problem.  We finally tried a time out chair and he had to sit in it every single time he did anything like that to her for three minutes.  This really seems to be helping with his behavior all the way around.  He has mellowed out quite a bit and we feel like we are in a pretty calm phase with him right now. 

How do you get mad at that cute face?

 

He loves to play with daddy's Kindle and amazes us at how quickly he learned how to use it.  He knows far more than I do!  In the picture above this Jay had just come home from work and was exhausted.  He laid down on the floor and the kids just swarmed him.  They both love their daddy so much!  Jay took a little nap, Carter played the Kindle, and Madelynn crawled all over him. 

Here are a few of his cute and/or funny things he has said lately.  I know there are so many more but I usually forget to write them down.  These are just the ones that I remembered to write down.

"You mean a big tractor, like a giraffe?"
"Mama, where is Iowa?" And before I could answer he answered it himself..."It's in the sky."
"Mama, I'm gonna toot on you." (And then lets out the biggest toot ever and laughs hysterically!)
"My legs are gonna go to bed."  (We were on a hike and we finally figured out that he was telling us that his legs were tired.  We always say that he needs to go to bed because he is tired so he took that to mean that if his legs are tired they go to bed." 

Oh, I wish I could remember more!  There are so many more.  I have to get better at writing them down so that I remember to put them on here.

He loves to ride his bike!  This is the kind of bike without petals so that he can learn his balance before getting a normal bike.  He does so great with it!  There is a good chance that he won't ever need training wheels because he really understands how to balance now because of this bike.  Thanks Uncle Wade!  This was such a great gift for him.  And boy does he go fast on this thing.  We were at Bush Park a few weeks ago and he was riding along with us while we walked.  He went flying down a hill so fast that I about had a heart attack.  He actually wiggled the handle bars a little bit too much and almost flew off.  But he didn't and he immediately wanted to do it again.  He can be a dare devil sometimes and other times he is really nervous about things.  He is fun :)

He is still a great sleeper.  Usually goes to be around 8 and usually sleeps until 8 the next morning.  We have no more bedtime issues like we did a year ago.  He stays in his bed now and usually falls asleep fairly easily.  Every once in a while I still hear "mama, come snuggle with me."  It's hard to say no to that!  We are so thankful we are done with the bedtime awfulness and that he handles bedtime great now.  He is still napping but probably about half the time.  He has quiet time every day and falls asleep some of the time and just plays quietly on his bed other times.  We have stopped fighting that battle too.  If he doesn't sleep then he is usually asleep about 7 that evening which makes for a really easy evening for us. 

We have been at church quite a bit lately because I have been fixing up the nurseries.  The kids love coming down with me to play.  One of the times we were there Carter was playing in his Sunday school classroom by himself while I was working down the hall and this is what I found when I came to check on him.  He had made a train out of the chairs and used stuffed animals and books as his passengers.  It was so cute!  I love his imagination!

 

 

He is about 35 pounds and wears any size between 3T and 5T.  All of his pants and shorts are 3T or 4T but some of his shirts are 5T.  He isn't huge but he also isn't small.  Madelynn got the small and short genes :)  He is completely potty trained but still wears a diaper at night.  He has been waking up dry some nights though so I don't think we are too far off.  He was a rock star at potty training!  I could not have asked for it to go any smoother.  I am very proud of him for this!  He does it mostly by himself now and even washes his hands by himself.  We finally got him a stool so he can reach the sink.  This took away some stress for me because I don't have to help him with that anymore but it also added some stress because he loves to play in the water and use WAY too much of my expensive Bath and Body Works soap.  If it's not one battle it's another :)

 

These pictures were from Mother's Day.  I wish I had done better to get some more and some with Madelynn but she was sleeping when we took these and then we just never pulled the camera out again.  Carter is almost impossible to get a picture with but these make me smile when I see them.  He is my silly boy. 



 

 

Lately he has been wanting to wrestle with Madelynn.  Thankfully she usually loves it and they have a blast.  It makes me a little nervous because he just doesn't always understand that he still has to be careful.  She is little and can get hurt a lot easier then he can.  We are working on that.  I am so thankful though that they love each other so much.  This morning on our walk he picked her a flower.  He was so cute.  He knew that she would love that and she did.  She looked up at him with the biggest smile on her face as if she was saying thank you.  They melt my heart.

 

 

And he is always bringing her a stuffed animal.  He is really good at sharing his stuffed animals with her.  Not his favorite one at the time but any of the others. 

 

 

And boy is he handsome! 

 

 

A new favorite game!  They both love this and can't get enough.

 

 

And who doesn't love to vacuum naked?  Well, he does have a shirt on :)  He just cracks me up.

 

 

Carter still LOVES all things that move...trucks, cars, construction vehicles, farm vehicles, buses, ambulances, fire trucks, etc.  He can't get enough.  This is a passion that has not gone away yet.  He is all boy!  And I love that about him.  He is a big helper and is usually good at helping me with something.  He now has his first real chore around the house.  He has to empty his and Madelynn's laundry baskets into my bedroom when I am doing laundry.  He is good at helping with this.  I think it is time to start thinking about a second chore for him around here.  He is ready.  He has discovered he loves taking showers.  Yesterday he just came up to me and told me he wanted to take a shower.  He just stands in there and plays forever.  I like it because I think it is a lot easier then giving him a bath.  He still loves to read and has really discovered a love for reading the Bible books that we have and learning stories about Jesus.  He is constantly asking questions about God and who he is and where he is.  We are answering every question to the best of our ability in a way that he will understand.  I am so thankful for his interest in who God is and what he means in his young life.  I look forward to the day when he is old enough and mature enough to fully understand what Christ did for us and how to accept Him as his personal savior.  We are in no hurry for this decision to happen because we want him to be old enough to really understand it but I love being able to teach him about it and watch his interest grow.  Going to Sunday school is one of his favorite things to do each week and he absolutely adores his teachers, Mrs. James and teacher Nora.  I am so thankful for what they mean to Carter and the eternal impact they are having on our son. 

 

I know I could go on forever writing about our Carter man but I think I will stop there for this post.  I have some summertime fun and swimming lesson pictures coming up next! 

 

Carter man, we love you so much!  You are a true joy and blessing in our family.  You have a beautiful soul.  We are so thankful for who you are!  You brighten up our lives more then we knew possible and we are blessed to be your mama and daddy.  I adore watching you grow up but it also breaks my heart that you are growing so fast.  I don't want to miss out on anything with you but sadly my memory isn't good enough to remember every little detail of your life.  I hope this blog helps me remember exactly who you were at this moment in your life.  I don't want to forget any of it.  You are teaching me how to be a better mom, how to have more patience, and how to love so deeply.  There is nothing better then when you wrap your arm around my neck and pull me close to you so that I will snuggle with you at bedtime.  I am sure it is just a stall tactic, but good job kid, because it works every time!  My heart melts every time you do it!  You are beautiful, Carter!  I know, you would say, "no mama, I am handsome" which is also very true.  But to me, you are beautiful too, inside and out!  We love you buddy!