Madelynn's 2nd Birthday

I can't believe our baby girl is two! She is an absolute joy to have in our little family. We feel like we definitely got spoiled by having her as our first child. She is such a cute, sweet, funny, spunky little girl. She cracks us up with so many of the things she does and says. She really does keep us entertained. She is also an absolute sweetheart. She loves to cuddle and give hugs and kisses. She also really likes to sit on your lap while reading books or watching a movie. But she is also a very energetic little person and loves to dance and spin and run and run and run. She also really likes to have daddy swing her around and hold her upside down and help her climb on the ceiling. Her daddy is her best friend and favorite person to play with and her mommy is her cuddle buddy and safe place to be. She loves animals, especially kitties, doggies and monkeys. She really likes to make animal noises as well. She also likes to hide under blankets like they are a tent. She will hold the blanket up and tell us to come in. It is always fun to have the whole family hanging out under a blanket tent. Madelynn loves it when we sing to her and has just recently started to try to sing the songs herself. She is also picking up language fast. I think my very favorite things that she says right now are, "Mommy, I hold you!", "I tried it, I like it", "come on!", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Where are you?" and any time she randomly busts out the animal noises. Just today we were shopping and she decided that she should make monkey noises to entertain herself. They are pretty funny. We love our little Madelynn!

Since her birthday is on Halloween we decided to throw a little Halloween/birthday party with some of our friends who have kids that Madelynn plays with. We played a few little games, let the kids play with toys and had dinner and birthday cake. After the party we went trick or treating with our friends the Lovelands. We only went to about a dozen houses, but for a 1 1/2 year old and two 2 year olds it was perfect. The girls were so excited! They would giggle and squeal and try to run from house to house. They were not very good at saying trick or treat yet, but when they tried it was the cutest thing ever. The three little girls together were super adorable. There was more than one house where someone inside was summoned to see the cute little girls. Once we were done trick or treating we opened presents and skyped with both sets of grandparents and let Madelynn eat way too much candy out of her pumpkin (pronounced "bumbkeen", so cute!). It was a wonderful birthday and we want to say thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate!

McKay Turned 30!

October is birthday month in our house and we started off with McKay's 30th birthday. I felt like turning 30 is a big deal and kept proposing different ways that we could celebrate, like having people over for dinner and then birthday cake, having people come over for a game night, just having a couple of McKay's guy friends over for an old school video game night.... he shot them all down pretty quickly. Anyone who knows McKay knows that he would much rather avoid social interactions, especially social interactions with large groups of people, so we had a low key family birthday. We started out by going over to the school and having lunch with McKay on campus during his lunch break. It was really cold, but Madelynn loved cuddling up inside daddy's jacket while we walked to lunch. That evening we went to our favorite Indian restaurant for dinner then came home and had cake and presents and skyped with his family and talked on the phone with mine. My dad had a fun time teasing him about becoming an old man, I think his sisters might have a little bit too. It was the perfect small family celebration. Happy Birthday McKay you old man! We love you!

Kaimii's Visit

One of our good friends, who happens to have known McKay since High School, and was our neighbor for about a year before we moved to Wisconsin came out and spent a long weekend with us at the beginning of October. I was really worried about the timing of her visit because I was still feeling super nasty with my pregnancy and throwing up all the time. Luckily I was able to keep some of that at bay while she was staying with us. We had a lot of fun just having her hang out at our house and I enjoyed all of the girl talk, especially since I have been missing out on pretty much any of that for the last 3 months. We had a pretty relaxed weekend with her, but some of the highlights were carving pumpkins, going to the farmers market, visiting the capitol, driving around farm country to look at the fall colors, and eating some really yummy ice cream downtown. Luckily for all of us, Madelynn has known Kaimii since the day she was born, literally. Kaimii came and saw her in the hospital. And since we lived in the same apartment complex when Madelynn was born Kaimii spent lots of time with her when she was little and was even one of her first and most regular babysitters. Madelynn has always liked Kaimii and even though she hadn't seen her since May, this visit was no exception. Madelynn decided that she would much rather play with and spend time with Kaimii than with mommy, and even started to call her mommy. We had to pay attention to which "mommy" she was calling. I am so grateful for good friends and easy friendships. Thanks for visiting Kaimii, we had a blast!