2.27.2008

Madeline: Year One Retrospective

Seeing as I did one of these for my boy on his first birthday, I reckon it's only fair to do one for my little girl. The only thing lacking are sonograms of Maddy, which we never had scanned.

Enjoy!

Ten Minutes Old
Maddy didn't spring whole from her mother's womb, perfect and happy the way that Stephen had. No, sir. They had trouble getting her to breathe at first, and she spent a good time under an oxygen hood (pictured). She was puffy and generally unhappy, and I was worried sick.

One Day Old
It turned out well enough. Maddy was a lot fussier than Stephen, and Amy wasn't feeling so hot after the surgery. I was very much attached to my little girl right from the start, though.

One Month Old
Maddy continued to be fussy, but I don't recall it being terrible. Getting used to another baby in the house wasn't as big a transition this time around. After Stephen, we could do anything. It was all old hat.

Two Months Old
This is when Maddy started to smile, when she started to get a personality of her own instead of being just another demanding, crying, screaming, diaper-filling machine.

3 Months Old
I'm pretty sure she started getting happier around the 3-4 month mark. Less fussiness, more character. There were times, of course, when she'd just cry and cry (like at our going-away party at Frank & Lisa's), but you could usually attribute that to her being tired, overstimulated, or both.

4 Months Old
She was just about four months old when we moved to Virginia. I remember long stretches of road where she would cry because she was hungry, or (more likely) because she was tired of being in the car seat.

5 Months Old
Maddy in our new apartment in Virginia. This is probably the only home she remembers, given how young she was when we left California. She's definitely queen of the roost now. She walks around like she owns the place.

6 Months Old
My happy girl!

7 Months Old
Thanks to our friends and family, we had a lot of clothes for Maddy to wear. The older she gets, the more I realize that baby girls' fashions are incredibly silly. Butt ruffles are everywhere (though not on this little dress, which is one of her more fashionable outfits).

8 Months Old
Eight months was pre-crawling. She did a lot of rolling around, and was content to sit on our laps while we ate, or watched TV, or played computer games. Once she learned to move under her own power, those days were history.

9 Months Old
Fully into the crawling mode now. This picture was taken on Thanksgiving, prior to us driving to visit Amy's grandparents in Pennsylvania.

10 Months Old
Maddy's first Christmas. We flew to California and saw most of our friends and loved ones. Maddy was her usual cheerful self. I think she was more or less oblivious to the holiday, but she enjoyed the attention. The plane ride, on the other hand, was quite the adventure. Never again will I fly with a child on my lap, even one as cute as my daughter.

11 Months Old
Happy New Year! Unfortunately, photo taking went by the wayside in January 2008. As in, I think I've got two or three pictures of the kids in January, and this is one of them. It's a companion piece to the SS Sterilite photo I posted a week or so ago. By the tint of her rosy cheeks, I think Maddy was suffering from her first bona fide cold at the time. Poor baby!

1 Year Old
Enter the now. She's a year old, and she's got an agenda. She walks, she babbles constantly, she's into everything she can get her hands on. She follows Stephen around. He manhandles her, but she gives as good as she gets. The two kids get along pretty well, though he doesn't always know his own strength. Despite the occasional intersibling violence, Maddy has no fear of her brother. At all.

That's my girl's first year in a nutshell.

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2.26.2008

Happy Birthday to Maddy!

Today was Madeline's first birthday. She's officially one year old!

We celebrated by baking and frosting a cake (see above; yes, I know the "1" is backwards in the picture).

Maddy was intrigued by all the fuss, but she wasn't quite sure what we were up to.

While I cut the cake, Stephen helped himself to the frosting at the base of the candle. Surprisingly, he didn't eat any of the wax in his enthusiasm.

Her first taste of the chocolate decadence that had been placed before her ...

... and the sudden realization that, golly, this stuff tastes GREAT!

Touchdown! Maddy shows her appreciation for the sweets! While the cake itself wasn't a huge hit, the frosting was. She thought that stuff was the bomb.

While Madeline took her post-cake bath, Stephen and I horsed around in a futile attempt to work off a portion of his sugar rush.

As I told my little girl when I put her down for bed this evening, "I love you. It's been a great year since you came into our lives."

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2.21.2008

Yes, yes. It's been far too long.

Despite my exhaustion, I'm going out on a limb and posting some pictures of the kids. Not only that, I've got a special movie that is for Grandma and Grandpa's eyes only! So the rest of you, don't watch it!

(Well, I can't stop you from watching it, so go ahead ... just ignore me calling the camera a phone, and we'll get along fine!)


Also, a couple pics of the kids ...

Madeline, TV & French Fry Junkie
She eats solids these days. She's so used to eating what we eat, that she won't deign to eat baby food any longer. Maddy is such a snob.

The Kids, Out for a Cruise
This is just prior to their three hour cruise on the SS Sterilite. Which one is the Skipper, and which one is Gilligan? You decide!

Stephen (Maddy for Scale)
Stephen has always been a camera hog. Maddy doesn't seem to care for them. She'd rather watch whatever trash is on the TV (which is, thankfully, off-camera). To tell the truth, we rarely have the television on. I understand that there are a couple of shows the kids watch regularly (Teletubbies, Blues Clues, Comfy Couch). Next time I have an impromptu photo shoot, there will be no TV, and there will be no French fries!

My Son, the Hambone
I'm not sure where he inherited his fixation on cameras, considering Amy and I hate having our pictures taken. Maybe when he's old and fat, he'll feel the same way.

More later!

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2.20.2008

Photos Coming Soon

Sorry for being so quiet around here. Work has ramped up on a number of fronts, and so I tend to neglect things (like this blog) that I would normally try to keep up-to-date. I'll see about getting some pics up this week, but I haven't touched the camera since Christmas!

The kids are doing fine. Stephen is working on learning to read, while Maddy is perfecting her walking skills.

More later!