Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Tooth number two broke through for Aderyn. With no fanfare. Not even the (joyous) biting we went through with the first one. But she does chew on her shirt sleeves now.

She also had a healthy check up with her Doctor this week. Growing well, and all that entails. The spit-up thing is definitely not normal, but at least the medicine helps, mostly. The not-sleeping-all-night thing is also decidely not normal. But our Doctor has no plans of action for either. Unless we can somehow show that they are related. But really...who knows? At least the daytime is fun and games. She is running everywhere and climbing all sorts of things and playing fetch for us. What, don't you play fetch with your one-year old?  read more »

The house required several days worth of cleaning to prepare for my parents' visit. I'm amazed at the dirt that two little girls can spread all over the house. My parents arrived on Wednesday afternoon and Camilla and Victor and Cameron came to have a sleep-over that evening. They decided to come spend the night in order to get an earlier start on preparing Thanksgiving the next morning.

So we were all up by 7am and getting things ready for the day. We made lots of food, three loads of dishwasher dishes and tired ourselves out. We opened birthday presents for Aderyn all day long and I feel we did a good balance of Thanksgiving events mingled with birthday events. She loves her presents and a special thank you to everyone. She would carry around her birthday cards and show them to everyone.  read more »

It was a calm week. We're planning the fun for this week, I suppose. All we talked about all this week was what we want to do next week! 

The only other things of note are that we all got sick. Okay, everyone but Wayne. Not that it's slowed the girls down. I stayed home with the girls today, because we didn't want them coughing all over the other kids at Church. Paela's voice is a whole octave lower than normal.

Camilla had the great idea to go swimming yesterday. We attempted to fit in between all the naps. It turns out one-a-day nappers and two-a-day nappers are kind of tricky to coordinate. But we found a 45 minute chunk of the day to go swimming. And everyone loved it! The water could have been maybe a teeny bit warmer for the kids' sake, but you know, they didn't seem to mind their lips turning blue and such. Aderyn and Paela can't wait for someone to suggest swimming again.  read more »

Sorry it has taken us so long to write everyone. We took a week off because we had a late night with Halloween and then we were in Austin last week with family. Our adventures have been fun, as have the attempts to return to a normal daily pattern of events.

We tried to take the girls to a trunk or treat Saturday before Halloween, but someone at church seriously didn't think through their activity plans and did the group activity from 6 until 8:30. Our girls -- and most every other family with kids the same age -- left at 8 PM after a few meltdowns. But on the whole, it was lots of fun for both. Aderyn chased balloons and people liked her monkey costume. Paela has been going through an obsession with the color red lately, so we helped her get dressed up as Santa Claus. That made her happy. As did the donuts.

But sadly, no candy this year. Whatever. They didn't really need it anyway.  read more »

In a week and a half we've gone 700 miles. Why do we drive so much? Who knows. Wayne says it's an embarrassment. If you do the math, this is definitely not beyond the norm for us though. With his work 33 miles away and various errands 20 miles this way and that, it's easy to do. It is a shame it's so easy to drive so much.  read more »

Our week was derailed on Monday when we were in a car accident. The whole family was in the car. Rebecca took it pretty bad, as did the two girls. The car was still fully functional, but upon taking it to a body shop for repairs we discovered that all parts on our car were discontinued, particularly the crash bar which was needed to drive safely (upon event of a second car crash). Because we have made a conscious decision to be a single car family for various reasons, we then began the painful process of car shopping without any comfortable window of time to do it in.  read more »

It is decidedly Fall. We had lots of rain, and then it cleared up just in time for us to go to the orchard on Saturday with Camilla and Cameron. We enjoy the sun, it's true. Today as we walked into our house, Paela felt the sun and asked if it was Spring yet. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm sure she'll find things (aka snow) to enjoy about Winter.

Paela was grumpy on the way to the orchard Saturday. Aderyn had her crib blanket, and Paela only had a car blanket, not her bed blanket. She wanted to go home and get it. And not see any pumpkins, she said. But after tears, she decided that if I carried her "like a baby" that it was worth seeing the pumpkins and donuts and goats and everything. And then she was excited to see everything. Just like that. Aderyn enjoyed walking around feeling the pumpkins. I suppose we should get her some shoes that fit. We only have a size too big.  read more »

So we didn't write last week. Whoops. Especially since that was the week that Aderyn decided to become a full fledged walker and almost abandon all crawling. Crawling is only used when she needs to race to the door if someone is going outside. 

Paela has had a number of playdates lately. She enjoys the social stuff, as long as it is a one-on-one interaction. As a side effect of her excitement for playdates, she has picked up the names of the week, even though she doesn't understand the order. We would let her know days before the playdate -- in order to prepare her for the experience -- that she would see her friend Alice on "Friday." Now she likes to ask what day it is and talk about what is supposed to happen on other days -- "We go to church on Sunday," or "It's not called 'windsday,' Daddy... today is Friday and that's the day I see my friend Alice."  read more »

It is beginning to look a lot like autumn. Everywhere you go. Soon the leaves will fall. And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you'll sing.

Or something like that.

We were glad to have cooler weather. Even if the leaves are (already!) changing color. The girls and Wayne went to the zoo (so sad to miss Aunt 'Mil!) Wednesday. We had a picnic one day after a walk. We've gone to the park several evenings this week. So much that Paela starts asking if it's time to go to the park as she's putting her dinner plate away.

There was more to the week. Wayne took some paintings up to another show. I missed a couple of things with friends Thursday because I lost track of time. But we had friends over Tuesday. Wayne started a new painting (commissioned) that will be part of a barter with a guy on craigslist. Which meant a rush to the store to pick up paint thinner because he hasn't painted in ages. Since California at least.  read more »

Aderyn stood up and put her hands on the hot stove.

We had cooked breakfast in the oven and after she was finished eating her mush, we let her down to roam. But when we heard her screeching at the tops of her lungs, we looked over and saw that she couldn't let go because she was leaning against the front panel. We doused her hands in water full of ice cubes as she screamed more bloody murder. After five minutes of this, it dawned on us that she normally LIKES to play in water. So we sat her down with a bowl of water on the kitchen floor and let her try to grab the slippery ice cubes out. Lucky for all of us, there was no burn damage.  read more »