The Lily Pad

I knew I wanted to breastfeed my child(ren) from the moment I ever thought of having a child. It was the one thing I was sure of as a parent. After I had Madelyn there were some complications and I really had to fight to keep up my milk supply while she was on formula exclusively for 3 days, but I did it. I fought, I drank Mother's Milk tea, ate oatmeal and finally produced enough for my baby. Somedays nursing her was our calm in the crazy. We've always been on the go and with moving and meeting new people I knew that whenever she and I would sit and she would nurse that she could look in my eyes and know that our love and bond had never and would never change. It was special. I would rub her little feet and touch her little face as she reached up to my face and rubbed my chest. It was our time. It was something that nobody else could have. At 12 months I toyed with the idea of weaning her but with more moving in our future I just couldn't take away that constant co...

There once was a baby named Madelyn. She hated getting her hands and her feet dirty, she'd look at the sand and crave the water but the feeling of the sand between her toes gave her the shivers. I would take her to the beach and we would carry her or have to put tennis shoes on her feet just so she would walk and play. One afternoon two weeks ago I took her to the beach. I forced her to sit in the sand and we put hands full of sand into a small bucket where she promptly wiped her hands clean on my skirt between hands full. Then my parents came to visit and we ventured onto the beach for a walk after a yummy seafood dinner at Fish House VeraCruz and something clicked. We couldn't keep her walking because she wanted to sit in the sand and let it run through her little fingers. On Friday we ventured down to the harbor and subsequently the beach. Mom bought Madelyn a little set of beach toys and boy did that little girl go to town with the sand! I took off her skirt so it wouldn...

My parents left today after an 8 day vacation and I have been a teary emotional wreck. I don't know why it's hitting me so hard. I think it's because there are no immediate plans in the future to look forward to. This past week was so wonderful. We got to show my parents what we love about CA and I think they fell in love with it too. Madelyn loved having her Nana and Grandaddy here and greeted them every morning with smiles and hugs and kisses. Our week was filled with love, fun, food, wine, laughter, and champagne...not neccessarily in that order, but there was a considerable amount of laughter after the wine. I have a ton of pictures and a ton of stories about ginormous aloe plants, mice, and boomosity ratings but those will have to wait because I apparently need to go cry a little more before going to sleep without a goodnight kiss from my parents, like all 30 year old women do. NO, I'm not pregnant, hormonal possibly, but not pregnant.

My parents are arriving in 3 hours 37 minutes and I am so flipping excited! I won't have much time for blogging I suppose, but expect tons of funny stories and great pictures when I do return. There always is plenty of hilarity to go around when my parents are around.

This is mostly a picture blog but after her doctors appointment on Wednesday we decided to hit the zoo for a bit and it was definitely meant to be because we got a parking spot right up front!! We were greeted by a little duck family... and then by a peacock... Some bears for Grandaddy...who will be here in FOUR days with Nanna!!!! A very special critter called the scrunchnose Madelyn CO...COUG...Hey hey...COUGARS...cougars! :) Oh and this cougar was totally growling at an old woman in a wheelchair. She didn't like her one bit, followed her down the side walk and watched until she was out of sight. Hilarious. Pandas! Riding the chairlift back to the front gate.

I wasn't going to blog this but after talkng to my mom I realized how ticked I still am about this. On Wednesday Madelyn had a doctors appointment where we were planning on scheduling the test that will tell us if her urine reflux has corrected itself or if we're going to have to explore other options. Well...that's not what happened. Let me preface this with Madelyn is fine, her medical condition isn't even noteworthy as it hasn't given her any problems and we wouldn't even know about it if she hadn't gotten a UTI at 2 months . So we're just kind of following protocol here and if it's not corrected a UTI could turn into a kidney infection and cause damage, but that has NOT happened. So we meet with the pediatric nephrologist and the staff is nice enough and the doctor comes in and starts going into detail about her condition which was nice because he explained it in a way no other doctor had. Then he started talking about it posed a problem beca...

1. We are in the middle of "June gloom" and I am so freaking sick of it! I just want to play in the sun! I had forgotten about this nasty little month in SOCal. I worked when we were out here before so the gloom was usually "burnt off" by the time I got off work. We spent May in the sun using copious amounts of sunscreen. Now we're lucky to see an hour or two of sun in the evening. Blah! I want a beach day! 2. Madelyn will not say Momma, Mama, Mommy, or anything else that resembles a maternal name. Everything is Da! Except Chris who is Dadee! or Dad! Chris can get a Ma Ma out of her every now and then, but not regularly. 3. This morning Madelyn went pee pee in the potty! We haven't begun formally potty training her but every morning when she wakes up, after nap, and before bath we go sit on the potty and this morning she finally peed! I'm so proud of her! We had to call Daddy to tell him. 4. Just in case there was any doubt of Madelyn being a Daddy...

When you're the parent of a toddler, body paint brings to mind a whole different scenario than might have been there before kids. Today Chris was able to come home super early since he had 24 hour duty yesterday/last night and he and Madelyn went outside to fingerpaint. Well...it took a very different turn from the very beginning. He squirted the paint out onto a cardboard box and miss priss immediately dipped her toes in and loved it! So now we're toe painting... Look Mom I painted my own toes! Cardboard covered in finger paint gets really slippery so off came the dress so that we could maximize the messy falling baby. Uh oh... Can you tell Chris had a hand in this part? Oh and that little bum was dripping with paint but the funniest part was that every time she sat down in it and got her hands messy she wanted them wiped off...cause she hates being messy. Of course all good fun has to come to an end and luckily Daddy was there with the water hose and Mommy was prepared with a...

Why do strangers feel like it's OK to touch my daughter? Why do people in Southern CA dress like idiots? Why was there a rare ferret in my yard the other day when they are banned in CA and the kind it was is considered endangered? Why isn't there free daycare at the base gym? Why are we the only base without it? Why is my daughter in love with Yo Gabba Gabba? Why is it still so chilly here at night? Why am I posting a list of questions? Why are you still reading this? Seriously, why?

On Wednesday Madelyn graduated from Baby and Me. It was a fabulous little party and lunch and I can't wait to start Summer Fun and then in the Fall get her in classes with older kids. Here are some pictures from the graduation.

On Wednesday night Chris and I took advantage of being near family and went out on a date. After learning that our original plan closed to the public at 5 p.m. we modified and endedup at the Grove Park Inn to look around and decided to stay for dinner out on the patio. This was our view at dinner. Proof that it was our view at dinner. :) This was the drink menu. The drink called The Charleston was invented by Chris but we didn't patent or copywrite it (or whatever you do to claim an alcoholic beverage that was invented on New Years in at a certain Aussie steakhouse because they made a wrong drink that tasted like crap so we discovered that chasing/mixing it with tea was better). We have witnesses. On Thursday we went to the Biltmore Estate and were the only ones brave (or dumb) enough to buy rooftop tour tickets in the middle of heavy rainstorms. Luckily it rained right up to the point we were supposed to go outside. It was so much fun to have a private tour and a fabulous ...

Last Saturday we left on a jetplane for Asheville and were lucky enough to procur an extra seat (we didn't buy Madelyn her own ticket) and she did as well as could be expected from a 19 month old. No, we weren't on a spaceship, blogger won't load the rotated picture. Madelyn was greeted with lots of hugs and kisses and I was amazed at how well she remembered everybody. There was the sweetest look of recognition in her face whenever she encountered another family member. It's kind of sad that the poor thing is so used to seeing strangers. She ate nutella and graham crackers at midnight because she didn't think she needed to switch time zones... She played the piano for Great Great Grandmother Brown at Great Grandmother Sue's house. I'll post a video of her playing later...it's so cute! Friday was the rehearsal for Uncle Brandon's wedding and we had a cookout afterwards where she fell in love with the teeter totter. Saturday was the wedding and she p...

great rainy going too fast rainy warm fun rainy fabulous time with family exciting since Madelyn remembered everyone rainy and... rainy.

I guess I'm going to just do a bunch of silly posts tonight as I sit here on pain meds with my feet up... Madelyn loves tickles and snuggles. She wants you to tickle tickle tickle her and then she buries her head in your chest. I love it! Her giggles are the best sound in the entire world and the snuggles, well...I don't have to tell you that snuggles are the reason God made babies. She will pull up her shirt to allow maximum raspberry and belly gobbles. She will grab your hand and put it on her belly for tickles and her whole body will tense if you even mention tickles. She and I just finished a round of T&S and she promptly hopped off my lap and sat on Chris chest (he's laying in the floor watching a movie) and wanted tickles and snuggles from him. I can't wait for our families to see her next week, to see how much she's grown and changed and to hear these beautiful giggles for themselves.

In 2 days we are flying across the country. Today I found out that I separated the ligaments between my big toe and my second toe and that I need to keep off my feet and keep it elevated as much as possible. Yeah right, that's gonna happen on a flight with a toddler...and I'm sure Chris would love to push me and the baby through Atlanta.

Last night Madelyn stayed up really late after a nap in the living room floor at 5 pm so Chris and were working around the house and at around 9 I walked back to her bedroom to put away some clothes and hear a horrible rustling sound. It sounded like somebody or something was trying to come in the window or was in a closet or something...it was really scary. I went to get Chris who of course dismissed my craziness (I'm a little paranoid sometimes) until he walked back and heard it too. It was a big enough sound that he got the pistol and headed outside to check it out. Upon seeing nothing he walked around the house and heard a similar sound outside when the sprinklers hit the roof. Sweet, the noise is named. Fast forward about an hour and a half and Madelyn is sleeping in our bed and I am putting away towels in the hall closet and I hear the noise again so I question Chris if the sprinkler is still on and it isn't. Crap! So we go back to the bedrooms to try to figure it ...

If you know me, or Madelyn then you know of our struggles with eating anything other than honey nut cheerios, grapes, and macaroni and cheese. Occassionally I can get something else in her, but it's never a vegetable. It's been an ongoing struggle since she figured out that she could refuse to eat. She has NEVER liked green vegetables and physically gags on peas (I do this too..I hate peas.) This past Saturday my friend invited me to a seminar by Dr. Sears. I had heard of him but didn't really know what he was all about and figured it couldn't hurt, there's always something to learn. He started talking about picky eaters and told us what he did with his own son who was a picky eater and told us not to be short order cooks. Then he told us about a Center for kids who don't eat good and dont' do other things good too* where they did a study to prove parents wrong about what their kids would and wouldn't eat. The study proved that it took an average ...

I've been snapping a lot of pictures with the blog in mind lately so here are the ones I remember the thought process behind. 1. The first time I saw one of these logo thingies I thought it was a fat man holding a drink with fire hair. Look again...the belly is on the right with a crooked elbow and flamey hair. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was supposed to mean. 2. Madelyn loves her white sandals. She wantst to wear them constantly even if she's still in her jammies and we haven't even had breakfast yet. They are the most difficult of her shoes to put on too. 3. Yesterday we went exploring in Hemet to find a museum that was having a Disney exhibit. Luckily there were also signs pointing us to Jesus. Unfortunately when we came to the end of this road there wasn't a sign so we went right. 4. And from the looks of this sign (right besdie the loading and unloading point for the museum!) we made the wrong choice on which way to turn. 5. L...

I learned an important lesson about being a mom today: It is very important to have a secret stash of yummy "mommy" food so that when the daughter goes to bed and you have a cosmo to read you have something other than fruit snacks and pudding packs to enjoy. I also found Jesus, but that's a whole nother post...and it's not what you think.

On Wednesday we had our friends, the Snipes, over for dinner and we had a great time. I cooked some easy but yummy stuff and we visited while the kids played for hours. I'm sure they were hating us after having to drive all the way home so late, but whatever, it was fun! Madelyn absolutely LOVED having friends over to play with and Bonnie's kids are awesome! There was a time when I would have stressed out over having 4 kids running rampant in my house but now, it's nothing...funny how a toddler will do that to you. Seriously though, the kids were great and played so well together, I was amazed. I want Madelyn to hang out with the Snipes kids more so that she can pick up their excellent manners and maybe some of Emmalyns curly hair grownin mojo will rub off too! I was a dork and set out the camera but didn't get a single picture of the girls throwing the ball back and forth or of Cooper jumping over Madelyn while she absolutely cackled. Oh well, maybe next time. It...