A few tidbits....

Just some random updates about Madison.

Madison's comprehension really impresses me. She understands SO much! A few examples:

• When I tell her to give me something like "give that....(toy, brush, shoe)..to Mommy" she hands it right over to me.
• If I say "Give me five" she gives me five. I taught her this a couple of days ago in about 5 minutes!
• She will "brush" her hair when I tell her to. It may not be with the right part of the brush, but she gets the idea. And she will brush my hair too.
• If you ask her where someone is (Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa) she looks at them and points.
• She knows where things go...she'll touch her sock to her foot, her bows to her hair, phone to her ear, etc.
• If I ask her to give her stuffed animals a kiss, she will give them kisses. When I ask her for a kiss she will give me one when she wants to, but will always kiss dolls and stuffed animals.
• If you ask her if she has a cough, she will cough.

Standing by herself.

Madison has also mastered some physical challenges as well.

• Madison continues to "walk" short distances. She made it up 5 steps today.
• She can stand for quite along time now without holding onto anything, and can even "dance" while standing. (Dancing=swinging her arms out in front of her)
• Madison points at everything!
• She can clap. If I say "Yay!" and clap Madison will too. Just recently she has been clapping just if I say the word clap.
  
  

It's kind of hard to tell, but in this first video, Madison walks past the camera. Scott was sleeping, so I was trying to catch her walking by myself. I will keep trying to get a better video!

In this video Madison is standing alone and dancing a little bit. She gets a step or two in and then decides it would be easier to crawl.

Here Madison is dancing. She was pushing a button on her turtle toy to get it to play music so she could dance. You can also see her clap too. And she says "quack."

I have also changed a few schedule type things.

• Madison is down to just one bottle a day. Her breakfast and lunch formula is given in a sippy cup. Her bedtime formula is the only one given in a bottle, and I hope to switch that one over by her first birthday.
• She eats almost all toddler/regular foods. She does not get any "baby food" anymore. She likes to pick up her own food, and usually doesn't want to be spoon-fed except for yogurt. She likes a lot of the Gerber toddler foods (carrot and apple chunks, meat sticks, pasta pick-ups, and graduates meals). She also like most other real foods we have given her, green beans, peas, turkey, chicken, fish, all fruits and pasta.
• I am trying to get rid of the Binky. I try to only give it to her a nap/bedtime. Tonight I put her down without one, and she didn't make a peep. However, when she doesn't have it she just sucks her thumb. I hope she gives it up on her own and doesn't do it into elementary school like I did!
• Nap times have also been an adjustment. Some days she takes two naps, other days just one. I have continued to let her crankiness determine the number of naps. Her sleeping at night is still great. She goes to bed between 7:00 and 7:30pm and sleeps to about 8:00am (occasionally it's 7:30, and she has slept as late as 10:30)!

We went over to my parents house this evening and had dinner. When we first got there Madison made herself comfortable under the coffee table. She must have stayed under there for like 10 minutes. She'd start crawling out and then would go right back under.

Still playing under the table.

Standing some more! She is getting to be such a big girl! I guess the standing and walking would officially make her a toddler now and not a baby! It's exciting to see her grow-up, but sad at the same time!

On a side note, be sure to look back, I left some blank entries so that I could fill in the blogs that I missed. I am attemting to do a new blog and an old blog entiry when I do updates. So look bask to see the things I missed posting about on time!