Sleep!!!

I really hope I don't jinx this, but the past 2 nights have been amazing. Maddie has truly slept thru the night. She has been a horrible sleeper from the beginning, and I had all but given up on either of us ever sleeping thru the night again, and then a miracle occured. We had decided to do a variation on the cry it out method. I say variation, because the thought of her crying for an extended period of time was hard for me. So we decided that we would give her 20 minutes and if she didn't stop crying by then Ster would go in and love her for a couple minutes and put her back down. We knew if I went in to her it would only make things worse and she would want to nurse.

So the first couple nights Ster had to go into her once around 2 am and then she would wake around 530 and I would feed her and put her back to bed. This was actually a big improvement for us, as she was still waking twice and sometimes 3 times during the night. I noticed as I really let her try and get herself back to sleep, each night the time in which she would cry would get shorter. 2 nights ago she slept from 10pm til 815am. OH MY GOSH.... I forgot what a good nights rest really felt like. I felt human again, I had energy without any help from caffeine, and I could complete sentences without stuttering. She slept pretty well last night and I'm praying for this to continue.

Maddie has learned to fold her arms and enjoys when we say prayer. It's so cute now, Ster or I will just casually say "Let's say prayer" and she will immediately fold her arms. Every morning I make her cereal and before I feed it to her we say prayer. Well this morning I forgot about that, but my little angel reminded me by folding her arms as I was getting ready to feed her. I was shocked! Not quite 1 years old, and she is already keeping me in line. I can't believe how attentive she is, and all the things she picks up on. It's so fun to see her personality emerge a little more every day. I can tell she is going to keep Ster and I on our best behavior!

I thought these pictures were awesome of her praying while riding her pony in nothing but her diaper. We've told her she can pray at any time no matter what. Looks like she's truly taken that to heart!! ;)

Flashback!

Ok ok ok. I know it's been forever since I blogged, and I'm sorry. I know many of you have just been sitting on pins and needles waiting for me to blog, so here it is! The holidays were AWESOME! We had so much fun in CA with my family. They spoiled Lil M rotten! So much so, that we had a little trouble transitioning back to "normal"-- meaning not being entertained, played with or fed non-stop(thank you Aunt Jen for insuring Maddie was not starving to death! ;0) Jen told us to pack light enough that on the way home we would have 1 seat open... I kept secretly hoping that was because she was coming home with us. When you look at the pics below, you'll see why.

I think my favorite story from while we were down there was that one day, I had put Maddie down for her nap and Ster and I decided to go out on a lil date. (We did that quite a few times while we were there. Free babysitting!) When we got back my mom and sis were laughing so hard and proceeded to tell us that when M woke up they went to change her diaper and inside was our dog Kali's dog bone. A dog bone!!!! How in the heck did it get in there you might ask??? Well it's still a mystery to us... especially since she was wearing a onesie.

Aunt Jen is usually very protective of Maddie (exception: when bathing and Maddie won't cooperate, she just dumped a cup of water over her head to rinse out the shampoo. Scarred her for life and she hasn't taken a bath since!) That pic is of Jen trying to comfort my poor baby. J/k Jen!

As you can see our little babe got spoiled rotten and loved every minute of it! She loves her little baby dolls and HUGE duck. Now she gives everything soft luvs. Couch included!

Firsts!

The past few weeks have been full of excitement as M has experienced many "firsts." Her first Halloween, crawling, dancing, climbing on everything, screaming, playing peek a boo, going to sleep without crying(MIRACLE), FIRST TOOTH and first words. It's been busy at our house!

Reaching High!

We could not wait for her to start crawling and now??? While it's so fun to see her progress, man you have to watch her like a hawk! She notices EVERYTHING! She has quickly learned the word "No." I sometimes feel like that's all I say... and apparently it is, because that was her first word!!!

A couple weeks ago I was changing her gnarly diaper, and she stuck her hand in it. Gross! So I said, "Maddie No no!!" And she yelled, "No no!" So I said again,"No no." Plain as day she said it right back to me. I was so proud... and then I felt kind of bad that NO was her first real word. SO I've decided that I say no too much and I am never going to tell her no again. Ha ha!

Yes she has a coke in her hands, and since I can't tell her no anymore, hey what baby wants...baby gets! Just kidding- I didn't even give her a sip!

We spent some time at my parents house, and they have a little yorkie who is not so found of Little M. She would always bark at her. So Maddie now not only says "No no no!" She also points her finger at the dog, or me, or whoever she happens to be telling no to and shakes it back and forth as she is telling you no. I think I've created a monster!

M's First Halloween!

Maddie Loved her costume as you can see. We went out trick or treating 2 different times. This was the first time. Not loving it. Yes this is our sweet little family. Me (pooh), Maddie (honey pot), Ster (Pimp).

This is us with my sister-in-law, Mandy and niece Lauren. She was a cowgirl, unfortunately you can't see how adorable her little dress was in this picture. Maddie's saying stop, no pictures!

"I'm serious! No more pictures!"

Baby with her pumpkin and new little bunny from Grandpa Steele.

2 Seconds!

So I would always hear moms say how they couldn't wait til their hubby's got home so they could go to the bathroom by themselves, or take a shower, or brush their teeth, or in my case, do the dishes, etc. And I always wondered why it was so hard to take those 2 seconds for themselves. I mean I know babies are work, but come on. Well yesterday I once again understood, as I have many times before, as I've looked at the time and realized , "Oh my gosh it's 5 and I haven't even gotten dressed, when's the last time I showered, and had my hair and make up done by the time Ster got home from work??" You wouldn't think that would be too hard right!

Well yesterday I was being a good girl, sitting right by Maddie on the floor while she played. (She has me on a pretty tight leash these days, and strongly protests if I'm further than rolling distance away from her.) I had just finished my spaghetti and thought "I better go rinse this out before M gets her wild hands on it." I literally walked into the kitchen, rinsed my plate and came back to find this:

My full glass of water all over the floor and M splashing around in it! I was gone 2 SECONDS! And she was way far away from it when I left. The little devil thought that as soon as I turned my back, "Now's my chance!" And she steam rolled her way to that glass as fast as she could. She's not crawling yet, but apparently is mobil enough. Good thing it was just water or mommy would've been in big trouble! I love her little innocent face.

Yard Work!

Well, we've finally started to try and fix up our yard a bit. I should've taken a picture of all of the wild sunflowers that had taken over our yard. Not so pretty. One day last week Ster came home and poured a little slab of concrete outside of our office. We thought it'd be fun to put M's handprint in it. She wasn;t so sure about it.

Then while Ster was doing some work in the track hoe Maddie was fascinated with it, so we decided to let her take a little ride with Dad. She loved it... that is until it started moving.

Stranger Danger

So a couple weeks ago M and I went to CA and had a blast. I wish my family could see her more often, she's constantly changing and they just love her to pieces. She gets so spoiled with attention when we're there, and everyone just ooh's and ahh's over everything she does. Well on our looonng drive back, Kimmy and I decided to stop and eat at a Wendy's in Vegas. When we walked in there were a few shady characters in there and one in particular that we were trying to ignore as he was trying to start up a conversation with us by saying "Well hello ladies." We just pretended to be hard of hearing and the next thing we know M is smiling and cooing at this dude. Well we couldn't ignore him after that! When do babies ususally develop the stranger anxiety? Wendy's would've been a good time to have had that!