This Moment

At exactly this moment, one year ago today, I got to meet the most beautiful baby girl in the world.

7 pounds even, 19 inches long at 2:55 AM on 9/30/10 Madeline Rey arrived in this world.

This has been the best year of my life this far, I know that it will continue to get even better from here. Thank you so much little girl for making me a mommy, you are the joy in my heart and my life was not complete without you! Your daddy and I love you so much.

Also, leave it to Google to make you feel like a slacker parent. How adorable is this video?? I need to start sending e-mails to Madeline!





Hopefully more pictures and a longer post (maybe even a letter to Madeline) to come soon.

xoxox

Nine Months!

(Edit to add: Holy huge picture batman, I will try and fix that later)

Nine months has come and gone, just as quickly and as quietly as a whisper. 26 years spent without her, and for the life of me I cannot remember what it was like to not have her in our lives. I know, I know, that is cliché, but it’s the cold hard truth. Madeline has changed our lives forever, for the better, and it just keeps on getting more exciting every day!

The past nine months have been nothing short of amazing. Madeline continues to delight, challenge and surprise us. It is quite a remarkable thing to witness all of a person’s “firsts”. First time rolling over, sitting up, first tooth, first time crawling, first real food . . . and the future holds an abundance more of her firsts that I can’t wait to see!

TJ and I are so in love with the little person she is. She is stubborn, yet sweet. She is independent, but still quite helpless on her own. She is solemn, yet funny. All of her quirks, her contradictions, all of what makes her who she is what makes us love her more. Just when we think we can’t love her even more, or that we can’t enjoy her any more she masters another trick and our hearts grow tenfold.

It was my Birthday earlier this week and she gave me the best present ever. A real, honest to goodness, belly laugh. She can be a pretty serious baby. She saves her smiles for family, she studies anything that is new with severe concentration, and she is a master of the mean mug. We could get her to giggle just a bit, but nothing close to those videos on Youtube with babies in a fit of giggles. On my Birthday though she looked across the table at Alicia and could not stop laughing. As any mother would probably tell you, it was the absolute cutest thing in the entire world. I swear to it. The people at Olive Garden probably thought we were annoying, but we all couldn’t stop laughing with her. Happy Birthday to me!

Madeline continues to wow us. She mastered crawling early, she started trying in April and by mid-May she had it down. Around the same time she started to pull herself up to standing, and she now can stand for 30 or so seconds on her own without holding on. She’s also really good at thinking she can stand unassisted, forgetting that she isn’t quite that big, and then biting it. When she falls, or smacks herself in the head with a toy on accident, she looks at you like “WTF???” and then glares like you did it to her. It is really, really hard not to laugh.

As of today she has 6 teeth. She recently started to bite; it’s a problem we are trying to curb quickly with a stern “NO.” She is pretty responsive to the word “no”, and sometimes she’ll even shake her head no back at you. She waves hello/bye-bye, sometimes with a scowl on her face which makes me laugh. She can clap, and will sometimes even add in a "eeeeeeyyyyyy" (yay) with it. We even think that she makes a "kkkkkk" sound to say "cat/kitty". My mom, who watches her, has 4 cats living with her so Madeline is a HUGE fan of kitties (plus we have one of our own). Any time one comes in the room she makes the "kkkkkk" noise at them. A-dorable!

With all of the standing she does we think she may walk early, but we are in no rush to tackle that obstacle! As of right now she doesn't really have the concept of how to move her feet correctly. She tries to walk holding on to our fingers and takes too large of steps, and tries to stand on the side of her feet. It's quite the site to see.

I knew I owed an updated blog entry to give everyone an idea of what has been going on with us in the last few months. Everything is great, and I hope to be better about blogging, though I say that every time so don't hold your breath waiting for a new post. ;)