Peekaboo

By the way, this is a video so if you actually want to watch it you'll have to click on her blog link. You can't watch it from the email.

Tanglewood

We went to show Maddox the Festival of Lights at Tanglewood tonight. Of course she was in awe by it all. We got in line about 1/2 mile out of the park at 6:40 and got out at 8:20. Not too bad for a week before Christmas! For those of you who don't know, it's like Krug Park lights but a lot bigger, fancier, and more expensive. It's always on the top 10 list of Christmas lights to see in magazines and such. Here's the whole fam checking out the lights:This is how Maddox looked most of the ride:Here's a few more light pictures. There are 74 displays total so I guess I won't post them all. ;) And these pictures don't do them justice. Obviously everything is lots brighter, clearer, and much bigger than they seem here.

Music lessons

I gave Maddox a little music lesson after dinner last night. Start 'em young around here! Here she is learning the recorder. And actually, today, she wouldn't stop blowing it. And then she figured out I was blowing on her food so she blew on that too. I guess you could say she's figured out how to copy my actions a lot these days.

This one's for Mr. Hatten . . . she's got some work to do before I can enroll her in Professional Conch Blowing classes to become a Master Conchnician. We're working on it . . . But I can tell you that someday she'll be at least as good as her mother, and MUCH better than Mr. Hatten. She will not sound like a sick and dying whale on my answering machine!
We've been practicing her conch embouchure on the window. It's a little loose still. A little more blowing on the window will do her good. Or she can just continue licking it so she can also continue licking the conch. Getting that lip buzz might take some time.

She started this piano lesson on her own. She knows what's way up there . . .some cool buttons that make a lot of noise!

All better

Just in case you were wondering, Maddox is better. It seemed to be a 24 hour thing. She threw up 5 different times between 2:30pm and 10:30 pm and had no food left for the last one. I was beginning to get worried because it was Saturday afternoon before she had a wet diaper. But I woke up about every hour Friday night and had her sip a little water (she was sleeping with us). At 4 am and 7 am I let her nurse and she kept all that down. So I knew the pee would soon have to come. Here she is Friday night hanging out with dad. (I had a concert Friday and Sat. afternoon and had to work Sat. morning, Dad got the brunt of it. But he did say "Maddox, you've finally christened me into fatherhood" after he got puked on.)And here she is Sat. morning, with a low fever, but much more energy and smiles. She just took it easy all day and was back to normal by Sunday.Sunday we went to the church's christmas program and kept her with us. She clapped, danced, and intently watched the show for an hour and half. She was a good girl!

Christmas is coming!

And with Christmas comes the stomach flu! I was actually going to post just a couple videos and a few pictures. But as I picked up Maddox today to go get the kids she threw up 3 times all over me and the carpet. This is the first time she's had that kind of illness. Ick! Poor girl! She's sleeping now and that seems to be her only symptom so hopefully it'll pass quickly.

Now on to the happier days . . . Wednesday night Maddox and I decorated the Christmas tree. Well, she fussed, tried to eat a tiny lightbulb, and played with the beads and bells while I decorated. But apparently all the activity made her deliriously happy. She was a crazy girl that night! She discovered a new sound at dinner and wouldn't stop doing it and crawled between parts of the living room to parts of the kitchen over and over and over again. Back and forth, back and forth. And couldn't stop giggling if I even looked at her. It was strange. You would have thought I had served her Mt. Dew for dinner (and no, I didn't have any either).

Here's her active, very talkative dinner with me. She's figured out a high pitched, grunting "UHHguh" I could have made this a 10-15 minute video. Seriously, she never stopped.

She's also clapping now. She wouldn't stop doing that at dinner a few nights before, makes it hard to feed her.

Lastly, she's starting to wave at people. She waved at the waitress yesterday at lunch and twice at Jeff when he's come home to relieve me from work and a few other more random times. I don't have that action documented. Neither Jeremy nor I can hardly believe she's almost 10 months old! I'm now doing the whole "last year at this time you were___ and we were preparing by____ and we did_____ for you for Christmas" etc. Slow down!

Thanksgiving trip

We drove to Nashville for Thanksgiving and Maddox traveled very well. She only got fussy when it was time to eat so we fed her and kept going. We only had to stop once on the way there (it was time for us to eat anyway) and twice on the way home. Anyone want to help me invent a contraption so babies can nurse while in their car seats on the go?

Here's what we did for entertainment part of the drive, ripping paper, her favorite pastime:

Here she is with Memo. She still does very well sitting on her lap and just hanging out. Uncle Rob had to put on a ventriloquist show for her. She was enthralled. She was also enamored with the kissing Mr. and Mrs. Claus that move. It doesn't take much for her to be enthralled. There's so much to check out! Here's a couple of pictures from home. We played in the pile of leaves one day. I'm not sure she enjoyed it, but she did it.Here's the day we found her reclining on her Elmo in bed. Makes a comfy pillow!Not really any new news for her. She's all over the place now. Her favorite place to play is the dog bowls conveniently enough. No more unsupervised baby while I shower. Can't wait to get that Christmas tree up this week so she can try to pull up on that!

9 months

We went to get our family picture taken last week and Maddox smiled for EVERYTHING! Quite the opposite of her 6 month shoot. There were only about 3 pictures that she blinked and couldn't be used. The rest we had to choose from, and they were all good smiles. So here's the two we chose and the rest are all gone (sob sob). I tried to have a bit of self control about the whole thing. She was so cute though!!

Movie day

Updated with correct videos......

This is how her Dad entertains her. Who says you actually need to know how to play the guitar to have fun. Maddox enjoys it! And it's always amusing to hear what Jeremy comes up with!

This is the one thing she seems to be afraid of. I know, it's mean, but it's so cute and funny! Hopefully she'll like it when she's older.

And this last one is the proof that she is finally crawling in the conventional, normal way. Not backwards, or just her hands and no knees. Crawling under the piano bench to bump her head, crawling to the front door to check things out, and crawling all over to follow me around while I vaccuum. She has crawled about 3 feet here and there in the past couple of weeks, but she's now going wherever she wants all the time. She's still slow but it still buys me some time to beat her to whatever she's not supposed to have.

Early Christmas plus some

We had a bit of an early Christmas here. I bought Maddox an activity table, actually a piano, off of ebay and since she's learning to stand NOW, we went ahead and gave it to her. By Christmas she may not need it to practice so we'd have been to late.

The look on her face when she saw what was really in the box and it wasn't just paper for her to play in.

Checkin' her new toy out . . .


Here she is in her makeshift toy box. (Used to be our coffee table full of our books, now it's hers.)

We watched Grady for a couple of hours yesterday. It's fun to watch the two interact now that they're getting more similar in their abilities. They sat on the floor and passed a toy back and forth for a good five minutes, each one only getting about 5 seconds with it each time. It was cute.And here's just some random pictures:

Silly girl!

Oh yeah, she had her 9 month check up this week. She's 28 inches long (75%ile), 16lb 15 oz. (25%ile), and her head is around 50%ile. All is good!

Pulling up

Maddox is now interested (all the time) in pulling up. We finally had to lower her crib when I went in and found her on her knees pulling up to peek over the edge. So loves to practice this so much that she gets mad when we don't hold her hand so she can stand up. Anywhere and everywhere. All day long. . .

I had to work all day Mon. and Tues. so she got lots of practice there pulling up on the toy box and pulling out toys.

I also got my hair cut yesterday. I found this great chick to go to and all I do is give her my "rules" (easy to fix with just a hair dryer, it really enjoys lying flat, etc . . .) and tell her to do whatever she wants. It'll grow back if I don't like it. I've been twice and she's done a good job twice. And it's only $18! Today I just washed it and then left to go to Jenn's house and this is how it looked drying on it's own. Pretty decent. I still have some playing to do with the cut.

It's 75* here, I'm going outside to read and after naps we're going to a new park!

Halloween

We went trick-or-treating at the mall last night since Maddox is a little young to be walking around the neighborhood in the dark.

"I'm all ready, let's go!"

We took a break to eat dinner. She'd already eaten so she checked out her goodies.

Here she is showing you her favorite goody. She's into ripping up junk mail for me. Especially Obama ads for some reason. Of course, that's all we seem to get lately.

When we got home we let her sit down her with basket and check it all out. She may have had no idea what she was doing at the time, but she liked the results. Stuff to pull out and dump all over the floor, what more could she ask for!?

After she checked it all out, Jeremy and I checked out an Extreme Sour Warhead. It takes a lot of sour for me to have a strong reaction but GEEZ, this was sour! So I made Jeremy try the other one after I got the camera out. Here's his reaction (I'm sure mine looked the same, I couldn't control my right eye for a good 5 minutes):

Well, we had a long night last night. She couldn't sleep at all by herself. She ended up in our bed by 1am. Highly unusual. I'm hoping this means she's teething or something. As I type she's sitting here screaming on my lap so I guess we better head to naps. Whee!

The Great Pumpkin

We took a trip to the pumpkin patch a few days ago. Here's some pictures of the event (okay, a lot of pictures, but they all have their attributes!):

And then yesterday, when it was 70 degrees outside we carved the pumpkin. As usual she was very interested in studying the gunk. Her interest was short though, she had a cold and small fever so she was quickly ready to quit.