Homeward Bound

We checked out of the hospital yesterday and headed home for home.  Mom and baby are connecting on the feeding front today so all is well.  Madelyn is taking a small interest in baby, she'll bring her a baby toy or a pacifier.  So far it's been easier the second time around, it's nice to know what to expect and how to handle it.  Madelyn looks like a giant when compared to her sister and so grown up.

7lbs 10oz the next day

Makena Hope Potter is Here!!!

Life is Good. Makena Hope Potter made her appearance at 2:30 this afternoon. I drove home from work in record time to find that Kathryn Leaty had beat me to the house. A quick call to Meme&Pepe took care of Maddy and off we went. We delivered the baby 30 minutes after check in to the hospital, that was cutting things kinda close. The birth went as planned, all-natural and Mom got to have baby on her chest after the delivery. It was another one of those amazing things to watch and the emotions were high.

Makena was 8lbs 2oz and 21 inches long. She has long, long fingers and toes, brown hair and a cute little nose

Puffing those lungs out with some crying after the birth. Meme and Pepe brought Madelyn for a short visit before dinner, little does Madelyn know what she's in for.

Still waiting for baby sister...

Baby sister is still on the way, she'll come when she wants to apparently, contrary to when we would all like her to.  Toddler Class ended today and teacher Amy gave Madelyn a Certificate.  Nobody was surprised to see Maddy crying.  The class has been great fun for her, she'll miss the snacks, songs and hanging out with her friends for sure.  Dad got to go to class today and witness all of the mayhem.

Hanging out with Ella.

What's for Breakfast?

Breakfast usually is cereal, a banana, maybe some toast and milk.  This morning Madelyn decided to eat her blue crayon as well.  I admire her for doing this, I keep reminding Maddy to live it up while she still can because if I pooped in my pants, drank milk from a sippy cup and ate crayons before 9:00am everyday, Karin would have me committed.  

Madelyn's memory is getting better week by week, she knows the location of her shoes, coats toys and dolls far better than either of her parents can keep track of.  Dad bought a box of building blocks(why I don't know) and Madelyn new word is "Wow" followed by knocking down whatever Dad has managed to build for her.  Other new words are "YeahYeah" when she's excited and yelling "MOM!" when she comes home from the store or wants to find where Mom is hiding out.  "BertErn" means her pals Bert & Ernie.  More verbs are popping up like "Up Down" and we still love hearing her say "peas" for please.  

Bed-head courtesy of a humidifier turned up too high the night before.  I don't even try to comb a mop of hair like this, where do you even start!?  This mess had to wait for Mom to wake up to fix.

She's Here!!

2007 Honda Odyssey

16 ft 8 inches

4,387 lbs

Well the minivan is here, and we are still waiting for baby #2. The Xterra served us well but it was not meant to be a family vehicle. We are thrilled with the new van and are over the "Who are you trying to impress" stage as one of Karin's friend put it when they were mulling over a minivan purchase.

Madelyn's new room was finished last weekend, when she moves in will be up to her, maybe by then end of the summer.

Bringing the tribe in to check things out.

Getting Happy with Ernie.

Speaking of Sesame Street, Karin bought tickets for Meme, Mom and Madelyn to Elmo's Green Thumb. It's kinda a corny show as you would expect but the smile on her face when all of her favorite Sesame Street characters popped out on stage was priceless. She has fallen in love with all things Sesame Street big time. She was kinda speechless for the first 20 minutes of the show, then decided to start clapping and yelled "yeah yeah" for 20 minutes straight. Other kids were dancing in the isles, stunned speechless and a few balled their eyes out. We left at the intermission shortly after Madelyn's folding seat decided to eat her leg. We were also lucky to have found her shoe that was tossed into the row below as well.

On the subject of lucky, Madelyn grabbed a 10" Chef knife off of the counter yesterday. We've been almost overly cautious with her. Outlet covers, gates, cabinet locks, etc... and have always put knifes out of reach when we are done with them. But she is so tall now that she can poke her head up on the counter and then make a grab for whatever is interesting. So here is my daughter wielding a chef knife and wondering what or who she could use it on. Karin screamed at Maddy, that froze her, I jumped out of my kitchen chair faster than I could image and grabbed the knife. Our kitchen has not seen such excitement since her Dad dropped the same knife on his foot about 8 years ago. We've learned out lesson with kitchen knives..for Halloween maybe we'll dress her up like Chuckie :-)

Play date with Ella, Brooks and her twin brother Will

:(

Photo by Sandi Heinrich Photography

For some reason I love the crying pictures from time to time, we spend so much time trying to get pictures that are perfect in every way that we forget all of the other moods. Madelyn's emotions can span from a face like this, to happy in about 10 seconds or less. This picture also reflects our mood around the house for the past week. We must be in another teething episode, she sleeps OK but has a horrible short fuse all day long and is tough cookie to put down at night. She has to have the whole cast of Sesame Street in her crib now, Bert, Ernie, Coo-Co0(monster) and a stuffed kitty need to be present along with a few other fussies. She makes them all into a nest and then off she goes to sleep.

Great-Grammie's Hat

All Photos in this post by Sandi Heinrich Photography

Madelyn's Great Grandmother loved to knit and maybe she will too someday. She knitted a lot of hats in her day and donated most them to charity. She knitted this hat last summer and gave it to Maddy when we were out visiting her in July. Madelyn is in a hat phase now and will wear most anything we give her This is the same child that was convinced the hats we were trying to put on her head last winter (When it was 29 degrees outside) were brain suckers and were going to attach themselves to her head and suck brains out. At least that is what her reaction to them sounded like.

She reminds me of the Fat Albert character who always had his hat pulled over his face. Bonus points if you can name the character.

In addition the "Mine" stage (Everything is mine and if you think it's yours well by golly your mistaken, it's all mine!) we are in the "Idoit" stage. No not idiot, "I do it" but when she says it it comes out somewhat mangled. It can apply to shoes, taking off her diaper, putting on hats and clothes.

New words keep tumbling out on a daily basis, such as Cow, Bert(used for both Bert & Ernie). She's not terribly vocal yet but does talk at times. She's become a much better climber, walking up stairs by herself with the aid of the railing or tearing all over the playground jungle gym going down slides on her own.

Sandi Pictures!!

Sandi delivered some outstanding pictures yet again, Thanks! 

This smile on Madelyn's face is 100% pure joy, we see this every day but it was not until we looked at this picture that we really apperciated how big our not so little girl is getting.   If I had to pick one picture that summed her up at this point in time, this would be it.

Heading down the slide

Sandi has more pictures on her blog from the photo shoot and a wonderful write-up.  We can't wait to see her again.  Thanks again for the memories.

http://www.sandiheinrich.com/

Water Table

That's one happy looking kid in this picture.  Hands down the best $70 we have spent this last year was our pass the the Everett Children's museum.  Madelyn loves this place, it's not as crowded as the Seattle museum and every bit as fun, I've been up there more times than I can count this past 6 months.  Thankfully today she finally asked to wear a smock at the water table, if I had a bathing suit with me I would have changed her into it and tossed her on in.

Kaitlyn and Dave joined us for our visit the museum today, here she is cracking a smile on the slide.
I love the expressions on Madelyn's face, she absolutely loves to watch kids who are older than her, she's amazed at how fast they can move or simply jump around.  

No I did not put this hat on backwards, she decided to turn it around for whatever reason.

Easter

The Easter Bunny made a stop, forgot the eggs but left a nice basket of goodies for Madelyn to check out. It was fun to see how excited she got upon discovering her basket. She immediately dove in to check it out and was thrilled with her two Sesame Street dolls, Cookie Monster and Ernie. She calls Ernie "Bert", so we'll have to work on that later. She carried them around all day and kept showing them off. It was too cute. The Easter Bunny was also very clever to bring her a dinosaur themed cup and plate, which was also a big hit.




We had a nice Easter just staying around home and watching the little one make a mess of everything. Michael surprised me by making a Quiche for breakfast and then he even went out to get donuts!! :) So Quiche and Donuts it was for Easter Breakfast. Not too bad. I had hoped to do a small egg hunt for Madelyn in the yard, but it was just too wet and yucky outside to make that happen. Next year.


We are into the dumping phase with Madelyn. She finds big thrills in dumping out all the containers from her toy bins. She sometimes will then sit down, in the middle and start to play with all her treasures. But more likely, she will try to escape of the mess she just made, trip, fall and then we have tears. I have tried to explain she really brought this on herself by making such a mess. However, I am pretty sure that is all lost in translation.

Great Grammie

With a heavy heart we received word that Madelyn's Great-Grandmother passed away suddenly this morning.  This was our last picture of her and Madelyn taken last summer when she was trying to steal her purse.  She was they entire reason I created Maddy's blog since she lived so far away.  I also shot about an hour of video each month and sent her a DVD as well.

Grammie meant allot to me and it's sad to know she won't meet Madelyn's sister.  I'll never have another bowl of her bread pudding or play another game of cards with her.  If only once I am grateful that these two Potter women got a chance to have met.  Someday when she's older we'll have to take her back to Massachusetts to show her the farm where Grammie grew up and literally show her the family roots.

Where the heck is Spring?

Spring is just getting started in Seattle, it's been a rather wet and cold March but we have been making the most of it.  Madelyn loves to go outside and play with the other kids in the neighborhood.  She has fun running around with Scarlet (she's the same age as Madelyn), but her true love is any kid older than her.  She just watches them in amazement as they dart all over the neighborhood playing tag or shooting baskets.  A trip outside without feeding goats would be a waste in her mind.  So after she's had enough of the kids, she'll just take off for the goat pen next door, if we let her go she would probably make it over there all on her own, she's very determined at times.

A few new words this week are "a ball" and "bye - with a hand wave" and her favorites now are "kick" and "mine".  Meme was coloring with her the other day and remarked that Madelyn took all the crayons and stamps and said, "mine" several times.  We had to laugh at that because Karin and I get that a few times a day from her.  It's remarkable that we've gone from a child who a year ago was just starting to stand up on her own to a toddler who runs all over the place and has a sense of ownership about her things.  Oh and everything is hers by the way.  

Phoenix

Friends egging her on to climb the kitty post

Happy girl, it's always nice when other kids get to teach yours new and fun stuff to do around the house :)

We had some more pictures taken by Sandi, our favorite photographer, on Saturday so we should be able to post them in a few weeks.  She's great with kids and it's nice to get some photo's that are not the typical Baby's R Us shots.  If only she took Santa pictures.....

http://www.sandiheinrich.com/

Playdates, Getaways, and Tantrums

"Smile Madelyn"

Its been awhile since we've done a post, so I thought I'd post some pics from the last couple weeks. It's late and I'm tired, so this probably won't be the best post I've ever written. Dad does a better job at this than I....but we've been busy lately, the blog is falling behind.

Madelyn is 20 months and changing into more of a 2 year old everyday. The tantrums have officially begun. She is obsessed with putting on her own shoes and can do it most of the time. If we try to help, that will cause a big head shake with "Nooooooo" and possible tears. So if time allows, we wait , try to help, and hope that those shoes get on the right feet the first time. It's one of the small things in our days that is showing her new independence. She is also very insistent on choosing socks and coats, and of course, they never match. It drives me (mom) crazy.

This girl loves her dolly's. They now come with us in the car

Maddy & Will sharing his chair

Brooks and Maddy - more chair sharing

We took a weekend getaway to Leavenworth, a touristy town nearby. It was great to get out of the house for the weekend. I have to admit that Madelyn is not the greatest car-rider in the world and we definitely have a 2 hour time limit. But, she loved being in a new place and had a lot of fun playing in the park and exploring the town with us. We had one huge tantrum trying to get her in her stroller, as its a newer stroller and we haven't used it much. But later on in the day she was asking to get in it and playing with it! Dad was amazed at the quick turn-around in attitude about the stroller.

Dad & Maddy found the bookstore in town and look who got something.

Fruitstand with Farm Animals. How could you resist?

Stroller

Madelyn has had so much fun with her dolls lately that Mom bought her a dolly-stroller today.  She got huge grins an knew just what to do with it.  This is what you get when you ask a 20 month old to smile and the picture below is just her being happy.  

Meme&Pepe can now put Maddy to bed, for the first time last night somebody other than Karin or I put Maddy to sleep.  Thanks guys!  

She spends most of her time buckling her doll into and out of the stroller.  Speaking of buckles, Maddy can climb into her booster seat and buckle herself in when she wants food, crazy kid.  We gave up the high chair a few months ago since she liked sitting in the normal sized chairs so much.  She can feed herself well now and likes to use a fork and spoon.

Words and Hats

Hats have been a struggle since Madelyn was old enough to take off her head whatever we tried to put on it.  Much to our surprise she will ask for a hat before leaving the house now.  Everything is a phase with kids.

Not the most verbal at times but new words keep showing up so I've tried to write down everything that she can say: "Hi, Mum, Dah, Kitty, Dogee, Bowl, Ball, Cereaaal(Cereal), Mor, Apple, Pear, Quack-Quack, No-No-No, Brooks, Co-Co(cookie), Cheeeeeese, Sip(sippy-cup), Sit, S%$#, Poop, Uh-Oh, G0-Go-Go, Roooowlleeeeeeeow(kitty sound), Birrr(Bird), Fish, Eeeeeeaaaaahhhhh(goat sound), Hahahaha(panting like a dog), Hat, Mummumdahdah(used to say, meaning Mom & Dad), Show(Fifi and the Flowertots, groan...), Tras(Trash - taking out the garbage), Bubbo(says whenever she farts - meaning bubbles - came from the bubbles in the tub she blows with her farts, one of the finer joys in life I might add)"

Words that we would like to hear soon, Please, Help, Meme&Pepe, Potty and maybe some sort of word or sign for thanks.

Still eager to help around the house, she still likes to take out the garbage everyday, maybe I should start an allowance.  I tie up the garbage bag, open up the baby gate and she'll drag the bag all the way out the the garage with a big grin on her face.  She will also drag her step stool into the laundry room and help load clothes into the washer.  Unloading the dishwasher works about 1/2 of the time for us.  It does not sound like much but it's the little things that help sometimes.