Rice cereal is Deeelicious!

Well, Madison decided she likes rice cereal! The last couple of times we have fed it to her, she has just gobbled it down! It is so strange how just in one day things can change - she went from gagging and spitting to opening wide for the spoon and wanting it faster than I can get it to her. I think she realized that it will fill her tummy, but she wants it as fast as she can drink milk!

Since she has been doing good with the rice cereal, I decided to give something else a try. I bought some oatmeal and some other baby food to start introducing slowly over the next few weeks. Last night I asked Dylan to pick out her first vegetable and he picked peas! ...giving daddy all the credit for that one. ;o) The first couple of "bites" went ok and then I think she realized it wasn't rice cereal... Needless to say, she wasn't a fan.

The Christmas Marathon

We were really looking forward to celebrating Madison's first Christmas this year and getting to see how she would react to all of the presents, people and festivities! It was a great Christmas! Santa was very good to Madison. She now has more toys than she knows what to do with and our little clotheshorse has quite a few more outfits for her closet too! What can I say, she just gets cuter and cuter everyday and neither her Gramma, Nana or I can pass up all those precious tiny clothes!!

Here's Miss Claus, herself, in a Santa hat that Aunt Holly bought her...

As I mentioned before, we had quite the adventure traveling across the state. Dylan says it was a "Christmas marathon". I think we celebrated Christmas a total of four times, so we have tons of pictures to share! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with friends and family and hope that Santa brought you all that you wished for! :o)

Christmas in Austin

We had a great time in Austin!  Allison, Dylan's cousin, flew in from L.A., so it was really fun to see her again and for Madison to meet her.  

Holly, Sherry and Ron babysat for us one evening so Dylan and I could have dinner at Joe DiMaggio's with Justin, his girlfriend, Catherine, and Allison.  Thanks again, Justin and Ali, dinner was great and a lot of fun!  

We even got to see Dylan's grandparents' new place. They moved into a resort-like retirement community that is absolutely gorgeous!  It is in a very hilly part of Austin - the scenery is beautiful.  They treated us to a great lunch in the dining room our first day there...it was definitely a treat!  ...and for those college football buffs - they live directly across the hall from the, one and only, Darrell K. Royal!

Even though it was a quick trip, we really enjoyed seeing everyone and they were great hosts, as always!

Christmas in Beaumont (x 3)

We left Austin for Beaumont early in the morning on Christmas Eve (we didn't plan on leaving SO early, but Madison decided it was time to get up, so we did)! We stopped at home to eat lunch and pick up Cobber, Brody and the Christmas presents.

We finally got to Beaumont around 3 and quickly got ready for Christmas Eve at Luke's parents', Mary and Alex, house. Every year we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve at Mary and Alex's and then later that evening at my mom's and Luke's. This year we started at Mary and Alex's at around 5 in the evening and ended the night at my mom's and Luke's at around midnight! Talk about a Christmas marathon! :o) It is always lots of fun though - good food and lots of presents! Katie's boyfriend, Terry, had to work until 10:30 on Christmas Eve so we all played Scene It until he got off and then opened presents with my family.

We got to Dylan's parents' house around midnight and had Christmas with them and Devin on Christmas morning. We then headed back to my mom's and Luke's for an awesome lunch that my mom made (all of my favorite dishes) and then back to Dylan's parents' house for a very nice dinner and another spread of great desserts!!!

Before going home the next day, my mom, Sherry, Katie, Landon, Madison and I all braved the mall for some post-Christmas shopping. I always like to check out Dillards' Christmas decor the day after Christmas because they have a lot of beautiful stuff and it all goes on sale. I got quite a few more things to add to our collection for next year, so that was fun!

Everyone did much more than they should have for us this year! We got lots of great presents and ate enough sweets and yummy food between the three houses to last us a month! It will be hard to top this year, but we're already looking forward to next year. Madison will be about a year and a half old and will be a lot of fun for sure!

We love Christmas!!

We love Christmas (who doesn't??) and this year we are even more excited since it is Madison's first Christmas. We have a busy holiday weekend planned - headed to Austin for the weekend and then driving in to Beaumont Monday morning to have Christmas there with both of our families. Wanted to share some pre-holiday pics with you...

We hope you all have a very safe and merry Christmas!

Silent Night

Dylan's Aunt Sandi sent Madison the cutest Christmas onesie after reading my posts about some of our sleepless nights. Madison got to wear it to school today and it looked adorable! The ladies at Primrose loved it too. Here are some pictures of her ready to go this morning. She was so interested in the pretty blanket that she was sitting on, which my grandma made for her, I couldn't get her to smile for the life of me!

Thanks again, Sandi!

Family photo shoot

A couple of weekends ago, we got up early and got everyone ready for some family Christmas pics. It was just us at home, so it was a little bit of a challenge to get everyone (and dogs) in place before the picture snapped. Madison was in her first fancy holiday dress and was very cooperative. The dogs, on the other hand... They caused too much of a distraction to Madison so we couldn't get her to look at the camera for any of the family pictures. Some came out quite funny. :o)

Not so sure about Santa

Santa came to Primrose to see all the kids and babies there. As you can see, our little serious baby girl was not too impressed with Santa, either that or she wasn't sure what in the world was going on! I think it still turned out to be a cute picture.

Spoiled ROTTEN!

As I mentioned before, Dylan's mom and dad just bought a new home in the Fannett area. It is so beautiful and we couldn't be happier for them. They have been working so hard to get moved in and have been spending a lot of time decorating. My mom and Sherry have been busy recovering chairs, painting grout, and all kinds of other stuff! We finally got to see the finished product this past weekend. It looks great! Madison even has her own little area at Nana and Grandpa's now. What a spoiled little girl. :o) Sherry bought a crib and she and my mom picked out material that matched the room she wanted the crib in and then my mom made the bedding. It turned out SO cute!

Here are a couple of pictures of Madison in her new crib.

Our little cutie sitting up!

It is really amazing how fast Madison is growing and changing. It all goes by too fast, but every day brings more excitement and lots of surprises. She is so much fun!

Rice cereal is yucky

At Madison's 4 month check-up, the pediatrician told us that we can start introducing her to rice cereal and then begin to slowly add other solids to her diet. Of course, I was super excited to try it for the first time. Just as expected though, she didn't like it one bit!! Based on the look on her face, I'm pretty sure rice cereal tastes like poison.

It has been about a week since our first couple of attempts and Madison has really been watching us a lot more when we eat or drink. I fed her a little bit of cereal tonight and it went much better than the first few nights. Even though she still spit quite a bit out and made funny faces at me, she opened her mouth when the spoon got close and at one point even grabbed the spoon with both hands and pulled it in her mouth. She tolerated sitting and letting me feed her much longer, so I think she may be figuring it out!

Here are a couple of pictures from one of the first nights...poor baby! :o)

The 2 a.m. Chat

The past couple of weeks, Madison has been waking up a lot more often in the night than she had been. Though we have always gotten up at least once for a feeding in the middle of the night, there have been a few nights recently that she wakes about every 2-3 hours! We weren't sure what caused the change but thought she might be getting cold or was needing more to eat. I also noticed that after I would feed her, she was much more awake than she used to be. In the past, she would wake to eat and then go right back to sleep afterwards. Recently, after feeding her, she is ready to go! I will put her in her crib thinking that she will go right back to sleep and she will look up at me and smile....and then the chatting begins. She will just talk...and talk...and talk for what seems like forever...at 2:00 in the morning!! :o) I had mentioned this to Dylan (he is a very hard sleeper and it takes a lot to wake him up) the other day. Well, last night he got to experience it for himself. :o)

Madison and I fell asleep on the couch while Dylan was upstairs working on a paper. I woke up there around 1:45 a.m. - still in my clothes, with Madison next to me...still in her clothes. It had been several hours since she had eaten and she was starting to stir. Just as I began feeding her, I heard a lot of movement upstairs and then Dylan ran down the stairs with a very confused look on his face. He had fallen asleep working on the laptop and woke up about the same time to all the lights and the t.v. still being on and my side of the bed empty. He didn't know what happened, where I was, or what time it was. So, anyway, I finished feeding Madison, took her up and got her in her pjs and put her down. By this time it was about 2:30 a.m. and Dylan had crawled back in bed, but hadn't fallen back asleep yet. I went in and got changed myself...and then the chatting began!! Madison was wide awake and had a lot to say! I didn't want to encourage her to stay awake by interacting with her too much but I was wide awake at that point too, so it was a challenge not to. I went in several times to try and put her to sleep - tried rocking her, etc. She would dose off and I would put her back down, walk away and she would start babbling again! Dylan could hear all of this going on in our room over the monitor - we were both getting tired and knew we had to get up in a couple of hours, but it was pretty darn cute and funny!

Dylan and I had actually read something just yesterday that said that active babies around her age may begin waking up a lot more in the night and that you may just have to let them have that time to burn some energy. So...that is what we did. I let her talk for quite awhile and then went back in, covered her up again, gave her her pacifier and she finally went back to sleep (around 3:00 a.m.) and slept until morning (around 5:30 a.m.).

I think the key is to try and keep her up as much as possible in the evening before we are ready for bed. Last night was just unusual that we fell asleep so early. Anyway, it makes for a good story...

Madison and Yara

This past weekend, Roxanne and Yara came over so the girls could "play" and Roxanne and I could do some Christmas present wrapping. We got a few presents wrapped, oohed and aahed over the babies and spent a lot of the afternoon just chatting. Dylan even hung out with us girls for awhile, which was fun. Oh and we also ate some yummy cookies (if I may say so myself) that I made from scratch - oatmeal, peanut butter, chopped peanuts and chocolate chips all in one cookie...YUM :o). Between Saturday afternoon and Sunday night, I had eaten about a dozen of them all by myself and that is NO exaggeration!! It was nice to finally be able to get together and we're looking forward to doing it again soon. Madison and Yara are too cute together. :o)

Here's a few pictures of the girls...

Look how strong Yara is! She rolls all over the place and pushes up so high when she is on her tummy. It is pretty amazing how much of a difference just a few weeks makes!

CONGRATULATIONS STEWART AND KRISSY!!

Some friends of ours, Stewart Jackson and Krissy Pircher, got engaged this past weekend and we are so excited for them!!! Stewart was Dylan's best man in our wedding and has been a friend of ours for a long time. We love Krissy and think they are so great together!!

Though you have all seen pictures of Madison with her Lambie, I wanted to post a couple of sweet pictures we took of her laying with it and then falling asleep on it the other night since Stewart and Krissy bought it for her. It is so soft and cuddly - we all love it!

Congrats again, you guys!

Sweet cousin Landon

Just wanted to share a couple of cute pictures of Landon, my nephew, with Madison.

Here's little Lan-Man himself... What a cutie!

...and Landon holding Madison like a big boy! He was so sweet with her.

He's a normal rambunctious 2 year old though and as soon as we snapped the picture he opened his arms and started to lean back - letting us know he was done with that!

Playtime!

These pictures are actually a month old, when Madison was a little over 3 months, but I realized that I forgot to post them.

A couple of them are pretty funny - Madison in the bouncer with the blanket on her head. We were getting her bath ready so she was just in her diaper and socks, but I was afraid she might be cold so I just grabbed one of her blankets with a hood and put it over her while she played. Pretty funny looking!

I realized that at the time they were taken we were so amazed by Madison's ability to sit up in her bouncer (though her feet didn't quite touch the floor) and we couldn't take our eyes off of her because it was so neat to see all the facial expressions she made at the toys, lights and music. Not that we aren't just as proud and excited now, it is amazing to me how in just one month, what seemed to be so new and hard to believe is now the norm. She is getting to be such a big girl! She is so much stronger, her feet are touching the floor :o), and she loves her toys - mostly those she can put in her mouth. She grabs anything you put in front of her with both hands and puts it straight in her mouth. Dylan was holding the remote control the other day and she was staring at it as if it was the coolest thing she has ever seen. He put it out in front of her and she grabbed it with both hands and held onto it for quite awhile...not a good sign. :o) She has also begun pulling her pacifier out of her mouth and is almost successful at getting it back in the right way! It will be great when she figures that out because even though she pulls it out, she really wants it in there and gets fussy when she realizes it is gone. :o)

What a week!

Ok, so it has been quite a long time since we have posted an update. We have good excuses. One of the biggest reasons is that I caught a VERY nasty virus. I know, I cannot believe it either! Anyone that doesn't know me well would think I am sick all the time but this has really just started since Madison was born. Probably a combination of things. This time I was completely out of commission for a week though. I went to work last Monday with a little bit of a sore throat and since the weather has been changing so much, I didn't think anything about it. Then, I noticed that I had a swollen gland in my neck on one side and it all went downhill from there. I stayed home Tuesday and by that evening I was running a fever of 102. I wasn't able to go to work the rest of the week and didn't even start feeling better until Sunday morning. I had fever spells off and on for at least four days, ranging anywhere from 100 to 102, even though I was taking Tylenol around the clock to keep it down. My throat was so sore I could hardly swallow anything. I didn't have an appetite but had to force myself to eat so that I could continue to nurse Madison. I wore a doctor's mask anytime I got close to her. That part was quite comical, actually.

Over a period of a couple of days I had two rapid strep tests come back negative even though the doctors and I were sure that is what it was. The doctor also did some lab work to determine what else it might be and also to check and see if I am anemic. The lab results came back this Monday and by that time I was finally feeling like I was going to live!! All I know is that it was a viral infection of some kind and I am not anemic, so that is good.

So, what's next? You guessed it - Madison is sick again. I don't think she has what I had though, thank goodness! Her symptoms are completely different. She has a cough and nasal congestion but isn't running a fever. This just started the beginning of this week and yesterday we noticed that she even sounds different, like she is losing her voice a little. :o( The pediatrician gave us some things to watch for but says we're just going to have to ride it out. She has her four month follow-up appt. tomorrow anyway, so they'll get to take a look at her then. I wish there was more I could do for her. It breaks my heart to see her that way.

On a happier note, the other night I laid her in her crib (flat on her back) while I went and washed her pacifier. I heard some fussing coming from her room so I went back in there and she was completely on her stomach - arms and legs stretched out - and not happy to be there! She is getting so strong, trying to sit up and succeeding a lot of the time actually, though still a bit wobbly. I don't think it will be long before she is sitting up on her own.

Here are a couple of my favorite recent pictures. I know...I have so many favorites! These were taken one morning before daycare and Madison was a little sleepy.

There are also a few more new posts below. :o)

A face we just can't get enough of...

So, I went a little crazy with the camera, but I just couldn't contain myself. That sweet face is irresistable!!

The things I go through to entertain my parents. ;o)

Madison's First Thanksgiving

We had a great, and most importantly, LONG holiday weekend! We stayed home this year and Dylan's parents came and spent Thanksgiving day with us. It was a last minute decision on our part and my family had already made the same plans they make every year and assumed we would do the same we do every year, so they couldn't make it.

It was the first time I had ever cleaned and prepared a turkey and I must be honest, I was a little afraid!! But, I braved the task and, for the most part, it was a success. :o) It was actually much easier than I expected - maybe the easiest part of the whole meal!! One thing is for sure...it takes longer to cook than you think! Dylan and I decided to use a couple of Rachel Ray's Thanksgiving recipes for the sides since we are no pros when it comes to cooking holiday meals and then I made one of Dylan's aunt's recipes that I love. We had Rachel Ray's manchego cheese mashed potatoes (good cheese that costs more than a whole turkey!) and orange scented green beans, sweet potatoes with a yummy crunchy topping (Aunt Karen's recipe), rolls and then Dylan's mom made squash casserole, which was great, and brought three pies - pumpkin, pecan and sweet potato. We had a TON of food for just the four of us, but everyone helped a lot with cooking and cleaning so it ended up being a very nice relaxing day and was nice to celebrate at our house this year.

Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving day and then some others from the rest of the weekend at home.



Madison in her highchair for the first time and her with Grandpa



Staying warm

Helping mommy with laundry :o)

The whole clan

Madison and Cobber

Bathtime!