Dance Time

Parker's favorite pass time is dancing. He has a favorite CD (from Grandma & Grandpa Lewis-Thank You!) and his favorite songs on it too. He dances for at least an hour everyday and never gets tired of it (and we have to repeat his favorite songs over and over and over...). Madisyn loves to dance with him (she climbs up on the chair and boogies away) and it is hilarious. I think she'll be our little punk rocker when she grows up. Here's some videos of them dancing.

We hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!!

First steps!

Madisyn is finally taking steps!! Again, it seems like it's taken her forever to decide to try walking, but now she's finally decided to give it a try. She loves to hold on to one of our hands and walk all over the place (which she has absolutely refused to do before), and she's also taking steps in between things. I love how stiff they are when they first take steps! What makes it more funny when she walks is how Maddie gets going. She pushes her bum off of the couch, and that propels her forward so that she takes steps. What a funny girl! I've just started babysitting a baby that's a month older than Maddie, and she's been walking for a long time. So I think that has inspired Maddie to give it a go. It's been so different with Madisyn than it was with Parker, but it just goes to show you that each kid does their own thing at their own time! We love our little girl!!

Eureka!!

Finally, finally, finally, after waiting over 13 months I looked into Maddie's mouth yesterday and she has her first tooth!!! After thinking she was just about to get it for like three months now, and really really get it for the last 3 weeks, she finally has one! Of course it's just barely there, poking through a little tiny bit (even if you zoom in on her picture, you still can't see it-but it really is there on the bottom!), but I definitely count it as her having one. It may not be that exciting to everyone else, but I'm so excited because we've been waiting so long and although she does pretty good gumming things, teeth can definitely help!

Bed-head Maddie, 13 mo old

Reading Time

The other day I peeked into Parker's room to see what the kids were doing and I found Parker reading a book to Madisyn. So I ran and got the camera before they noticed, and took a picture. Cute!!

Then yesterday in the bath, I got Madisyn to show us her new kiss. She has been able to smack her lips for a long time, but she would never do it when she kissed someone. It was still the mouth open slobber kiss. But she finally decided that it would be better to kiss the right way, instead of the slobbery way. So here's a video of her in the bath giving kisses. She also blows kisses at the end too, which is new.

And just to let everyone know, Maddie is finally over all her sicknesses, and is eating like a horse and gaining weight. I'm guessing she's at least back up to 18 lbs by now. Yeah!!!! And my oldest sister is finally in the hospital to have her fourth kid. She was due on Wednesday, so we're all really glad the baby finally decided to come! I'll put some pictures up when I get some.

Our crazy girl

Madisyn makes me laugh so hard sometimes. Whenever she hears music, or gets really excited about something, or is just being silly, she loves so shake her head back and forth and say, "Ahhhhhhh." I've tried so long to get it on video since I love it when she does it, and we finally got her to do it (a little). After I took the video, I realized it was sideways, and I don't have any program that will flip it (sigh). So I tried to get her to do it again, and kind of got her to do it. So I'll go ahead and put both videos on since they're not very long, and since the first one is a little better, but sideways, and the second one is right side.

Take #1:

Take #2

"C is for Cookie"

Parker and I were just making some apple crisp together (okay, he was just eating the apples as I was cutting them), but he was singing some songs and I got him to sing on camera. He kept singing the "C is for Cookie" song over and over. If anyone doesn't know the song, it's from Sesame Street, and the Cookie Monster sings it. The words for the part that he is singing goes, "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me, Oh cookie, cookie, cookie, starts with C (except he always says me)."

Happy Halloween!

Happy (late) Halloween everyone! I can't believe it is already over and that it's November already!! We had a pretty good Halloween. We went to a trunk-or-treat at our church on Tuesday, we went trick-or-treating at Melaleuca (the largest businesses here in I.F.) on Thursday (man, they go all out-it was amazing!!), and then trick-or-treating at the mall and my grandparents yesterday. Of course I completely forgot my camera on almost all of the occasions (I only remembered it for the trunk-or-treating) so I didn't get hardly any pictures, and the ones I got weren't that great, but I got one of the kids in their costumes together, and then a cute video of Parker talking about Halloween. It was really fun because he was old enough to get really excited about it and to have fun dressing up and everything.

Other than Halloween, we've just been trying to get Madisyn better. She has been sick for 2 weeks (almost 3 now). It started with a fever for several days, a right ear infection, and then she still didn't get better and started throwing up for 3/4 days. We took her back in to the doctor again on Wednesday, where we found out that even though she had just finished her 8 day amoxicilin (the night before) and her right ear was fine now, she had still developed an ear infection in her left ear. It is an infection that is resilient to amoxicilin and it was probably what was also making her nauseous, and so they have her on a different antibiotic called Azithromycin. Today is the first day she has not been sick and she's starting to eat a little better, so we are crossing our fingers. She is down to 17lbs even, which considering she was 16 1/2 lbs at her 9 month checkup, and she was almost up to 18lbs a few weeks ago, we are really really hoping she will be better at last. She has surprisingly still been our happy little girl (for the most part) and acts like nothing is wrong, except for the fact that she won't eat hardly at all and doesn't really keep anything down that she does eat. It's been very frustrating, but like I said, hopefully she will be better now.

Aside from Maddie's sickness, we were able to take the kids to the park the other day one one of Maddie's better days. It's a really fun park near the zoo that has all kinds of toys, musical things, slides, a sand box, etc. So here's a few pictures from that.

And here's a few more random things. This is a picture of the two kids standing up next to each other, which makes Parker look so big and Madisyn look so small!

This is Parker's new dance moves.

And here's Parker & Ben playing catch together.