Maddy at 18 months

My Mom and I went this week to get Maddy's professional pictures taken and I loved the way they turned out! I got a whole cd full of images but here are just a few of my very favorites! The Cheerios were my idea! Well, actually someone else's idea that I copied! I brought the bowl and Cherrios and asked if they coul do some and they said sure! These ended up being my favorite because they are just so naturally Maddy!

And just so I'll always remember! At 18 months:

Maddy loves DUCKS!

Jello

Potato chips

Strawberries

Cheerios

Dinosaurs

Her little baby doll

Her paci!

Being outdoors

Barkley

Her bottle-yes at 18 months she is still on it- were working on it!

Her shiny, touchy, smelly book

Baby Einstein

ELMO video's

Doing My Gym At Home play video with Mommy

Doing "Airplane Arms" with Daddy

Playing in the laundry basket

Climbing in and out of chairs

Swinging

Tickles!

Playing peek-a-boo

Going for walks in her little pink car

Feeding the ducks

Kingsley Lake

Sunday Matt, Maddy, and I went on a road trip to Kingsley Lake. Our friends Kelli and Phillip invited us, Kelli's parents have a Lake House and we were excited to go!

The drive down was great! Maddy slept most of the way, about an hour. When we got there we dropped off our stuff at the lake house and headed down to the water! Maddy spent the first half hour or so trying to decide if she wanted to play in the water or on the shore! She liked going back and forth. After a little while we put her little floatie arms on and brought her in the water with us. She had fun chasing Kelli in the water and splashing around! The guys took off on the Jet-Ski and Kelli and I went over to the dock to let Maddy play on the slide. They had one of those little Tykes slides and I took Maddy up the steps to the dock and Kelli waited in the lake. Then we slid Mad's down the slide right into the lake! At first she wasn't too sure about it but then loved it! She kept wanting to climb back up again and again but it was funny because when we would get to te top of the slide I would say, "Are you ready?" And she would go, "Uhhhh..... no!" Which is one of her things that she does all the time now-even if it's something she wants to do! But then after saying that she would try to get me to help her down the slide.

She we went a few more times. then we took the slide to the shallow end and let her play on it, climbing up and sliding down. Much of the time was spent telling her she could 't climb UP the slide which she wasn't very thrilled about! Then she got on the top pf the slide and Kelli began making mud castles on her legs and she LOVED this! She would just laugh and laugh! After a little bit Matt and Phillip came back and Kelli and I went out on the Jet-Ski. Now let me just tell you this was my very first time on a Jet-Ski EVER!!!! I was excited but a little scared! Kelli promised she wouldn't go too fast! We went off and it was so beautiful out of the water! So much fun but I got a little scared if she tried to go faster and told her ok slow down! We saw lots of cute little boat houses and talked about which one we wanted to own one day!

When we got back we saw 2 little ducks swim by, Maddy was thrilled of course! Then we had a picnic at the tables right beside the lake. Kelli and Phillip has picked up drinks, subs, and chicken. Oh it was soooo yummy! Afterwards we played for a few more minutes before getting packed up. Once we got in the car to head home I gave Maddy her paci and within literally 3 minutes she was sound asleep!

Yesterday was hard...

So yesterday was a hard day for me. Some days I just have harder than others. First I was at work and a little boy in the class I was subbing for was named Tyler. This made me so sad to think that I will never see Tyler at this age.

Then we went to visit Tyler and Matt went up to see if they had gotten the green paint off of his marker- which they hadn't yet. It just little green chips but still!!!!! Matt was furious! He went into the management office and told the guy, "I normally wouldn't complain but this is my SON we are talking about and I want it fixed now!!!" So the guy came out, apologized alot and said they will have it done by tomorrow. While Maddy was waiting in the car waiting with me she saw Matt and the guy looking at Tyler's marker and wanted to get out, she was excited to get out of the car. I don't know how this made me feel but it got me thinking alot.

I am definitely happy that she likes to come out with us and visit Tyler but I am still afraid of the questions that will come when she gets older about her big brother. What if she asks me why God would take her brother away? I have no idea how to answer that. Because I don't even know and I don't think I ever will. What if she is mad at me because I couldn't keep her brother safe? I couldn't save him. I know there is nothing that could be done but I still feel guilty as a Mom that I couldn't save him, I am his mom and there was nothing I could do to change things and make him better. Also Matt and I don't know if we are even going to have any more children or not, what if Maddy feels sad because she will never have a sibling here on Earth with her? I have too much on my mind today. Its been a rough week already and it's only Wednesday.

Barbara Jeans

I love Saturdays!!!!! Pretty much every Saturday me and my friend Jeanna get together and go to garage sales! We pack up toys, snacks, and some DVD's for the portable DVD player and we're off! The kids usually do pretty good in the backseat and Jeanna and I take turns going up to garage sales. I found lots of good deals today! My favorite deal??? A book rack like the one below. They sell for about $140 at the store, my price at the garage sale???? 10 bucks!!! Woo-hoo! We are thinking about turning our guest bedroom into a playroom for Maddy and this would go perfect in there!

We then decided to go to this nice neighborhood about 30 minutes away that was having a Community Garage Sale. We found some good stuff there too and then since we were already in the area we decided to go to this neat restaurant on the water called Barbara Jeans. It's right on the river and we got great seats so the kids could watch the boats go by. And the food was soooooo good. It's seafood and home-cooking type things so I had the turkey and dressing with squash casserole. Oh my gosh, yummy!!!! After we ate we took the kids outside to the dock and let them watch the boats up close and we also saw lot's of fish in the water, some of them were jumping fish! Too cool! Now Mad's is napping and I am relaxing, what a great day!

Hugenot Beach

A few days ago Matt had off and we decided to take Maddy on the ferry for the first time and then go to Hugenot Beach. My Mom, Dad, and Josh came too! We got on the ferry and Maddy was very excited about the sea gulls flying all around! She was just pointing to everything! When we got ready to leave the horn blew and scared her like crazy! She started screaming crying and wiggling all around, poor thing she didn't know what was going on! After a minute or two she calmed down and enjoyed the rest of the ride! We got the Hugenot Beach and it was awesome because it was pretty much deserted! There wasn't hardly anyone there, we saw maybe two or three cars. We drove around looking for the perfect spot and came to an area where campers can park that is right directly on the beach. We got lotioned up and headed down. Josh was scared of the water so Mom stayed on the shore with him. Maddy wasn't scared at all she went right into the water, wading around with me. She liked to walk to me in the water then walk to Daddy and do this over and over again. She also enjoyed carrying around her little silver bucket from Grams and putting water and things in it! As I was sitting in the water all of a sudden a felt something hit my hand and a second later a horrible burning feeling!!!! It was a jellyfish! I yelled for Matt to get Maddy out of the water and I got out too. Luckily it only grazed two fingers but it still was burning sooooo bad! I was screaming!!!! Then if you have ever seem the "Friends" episode where they are on the Beach Matt came to the rescue if you know what I mean!!! I was going to try anything to get the stinging to stop. But I wouldn't recommend trying this it didn't really work and still burned! Ewwww!!!!! Ew! Ew!!
A jellyfish like the little monster that stung me! This one I saw after I got stung-figures!

After that we headed to another area. Hugenot Beach has the beach side and another side that is more like a lake where the river runs into it. We went to this side to try and get away from the jellyfish. This ended up being better because it didn't have any waves so Josh wasn't afraid to get in the water. We spent the rest of the morning here collecting shells and swimming in the water.

And of course, here are some pics because you know I don't go hardly anywhere without my camera!

18 months, Huskers, and retirement party

Haven't been blogging as much lately. So here's an update of the last few days! So my Dad has

finally retired! He has been counting down the days for a LONG time! We had a retirement party this weekend at Grandma and Grandpa Ford's and had so much fun! We had food, old time games, and lot's of swimming! Here are a few pics!

Two legged race! Egg Toss

Sack Race

Playin with Daddy
With Grandma Ford
We also went to this restruant called Ham's with Mom, Dad, Bek, Eddie, and the boys. They go there for the Husker's games and it was PACKED! The whole restraunt was Huskers fans! They were a little crazy for me! They go to all the games here that aren't on regular TV but I dont think we will go near that often! Maddy had fun playing with her cousins as always!

Today was Maddy's 18 month well visit. I cannot beleive that she is a year and a half, the thing that amazes me most is that it has been 6 months- a half a year since her 1st birthday! It seems like that was just the other day! She is doing great! She is in the 90th percentile for height-33 inches! Our tall girl!!!! And around the 50th percentile for weight-24 pounds. Which is great to us because when she was born she was in the 20th since she was 6 weeks early and a preemie. Can't beleive how much she has grown! She is on target with most everything!!! She is a little behind on how many words she is saying they said at 18 months they should be saying between 10-15 words and Maddy says about 8 words. So they really arent concerned but we are going to really try to work with her on this more! Mainly encouraging her to name the items she wants instead of just doing the ugh...ugghhh that toddlers do when they want stuff! Today was a busy day we went to Pump It Up, a kid's play place that house inflatable jumphouses and slides and had lots of fun but I forgot the memory card for me camera! Oops! Well I'm going to go to bed now since I have to be up early -tomorrow is one of my working days. Fun, fun!

Kisses!!!!!

I was thinking today that one of the best things in the world are kisses from your child! Maddy is in this kissing stage and I just love it! Lately, if she see's that someone is hurt she will come over and give you a kiss! The other day Maddy and I were playing and she swung a book around and it hit me in the lip on accident and I saw, "Owww!!!!" So she put the book down, leaned over with the most concerned little face and gave me a kiss! It's amazing to me that at 18 months she already is learning so much!!! When Joshy is over (Maddy's cousin) and he get's in trouble and is in time out she goes over and gives him a kiss too! I know that's probably not the best thing while he is in time out but it melts me!

I wonder if Maddy thinks that a kiss will fix anything? If only that were true! She loves kissing Barkley and most days when we are getting ready to go out the door she will run over to Barkley and lean down and give him a kiss on his back before we leave! And she is also blowing kisses. If you blow her a kiss she will blow you one back and when she is excited about something she will blow it a kiss! Something that she loves right now is the My Gym at Home on BABY First tv so today when it came on and she heard the intro music she ran over to the TV and blew it a kiss! The same goes for when she see's the ducks at the park, they get kisses blown to them too! I love it! I will have to take some pictures of her doing these things! And video! I always forget to video!

Back to the working world...

So, I have officially entered the working world once again. I am substituting 2 days a week for now then at the end of January I am probably going to take a 12 week long term sub position for a teacher going on maternity leave. The good thing about all this is that it will give us some more cash so we have more spending money and money for vacations etc. Also this is good because it is easing me back into work instead of just going back full time all at once. Next year I am planning to go back to work as a teacher full time.

Now for the bad part. I MISS MY MADDY!!!!!! I HATE BEING AWAY FROM HER ALL DAY!!!! In a perfect world we would have tons of money and I could always be a stay at home mom with no money worries. I could be home with Maddy just like I have for the past 18 amazingly wonderful months! I felt so sad when I got home from my first day working. Matt had her that day since he was off of work and when I came home he said,"Maddy, where's your nose?" And she put her little hands on her nose!!!! It was SOOOO cute! But I was sad that I wasn't there to teach her that! (Although I was the one who taught her where her ears were! LOL!). I hate that on the days that I work by the time I pick her up at 3:45-4:00 there is only about 4-5 hours until her bedtime. = (

At least tomorrow after 2 days of working I am off!!! I'm going to take Mad's to feed the ducks, her favorite!!!!!!

The Secret Garden meeting

This month at the Secret Garden, we are talking about our babies bedrooms and their belongings. This is a place kinda like an online support group for parents who lost a child to participate in each month.

If you created a bedroom for your baby tell us what it was like.
We didn't have the chance to decorate Tyler's nursery before he was born because he was born at 20 weeks. We were just beginning to think about what we wanted the nursery to look like and we didn't even know if we were having a boy or a girl yet! Although when looking at baby things I was always drawn towards the boy stuff. We were so excited though and I did begin buying a few things. I have always loved Pottery Barn and this is the boys nursery that I really liked. It just seemed so simple and nice.
Matt was really liking the Snoopy decor for a little boy and I remember before I even found out what I was pregnant- during our wait to see if IVF worked Matt called me into the computer room to show me a Snoopy set that he found and liked. I had no idea he was in the computer room looking at nursery stuff! I thought it was so sweet! I wasn't sure if I wanted a character theme though but a little while later while shopping at Burlington Coat factory I saw this little Snoopy blanket and just had to buy it for Matt.
If so how did you cope coming home to it without your baby?Did you pack it all away?
In a way I think it was probably good that we hadn't really started anything big in the nursery because that would have been so incredibly hard to come home to. But I did have quite a collection of things that I had bought so far and they were all in the room that was going to be the nursery. I had a bouncer, clothes, toys, breast pump, etc. and while in the hospital I asked my Mom to go to the house and move the stuff out of the house for the time being. I just knew that I couldn't handle it at that point. So it was all packed away until I was ready to deal with it. I ended up giving most of it away a few weeks later to the Women's Center and some families at church that were in need. Actually my mom did that for me too, gosh what would I have done without my mom???

The rest of the things I went through a little later and choose a few items to keep like the blue baby rattle that my sister and her family got for us when they went to Disney, my favorite pregnancy shirt that I wore all the time with Tyler, the pregnancy journal tha I had started, a baby's sleeping sign for the door, the Snoopy blanket, a onesie with dogs on it that I found and loved, a Snoopy onesie, a sign that my friend Kelli got me when I was pregnant that says "heaven sent." Two frames that I had for the ultrasound picture, one from a friend at work and one that I bought, some baby books that I bought for the baby, one about Daddy and Me, one to record my pregnancy and read to the baby later, and one title My Little Miracle, and a porcelain sign that read For This Child I Prayed and a few other items.

What is your baby's room now? If you are trying to conceive again, or are pregnant again how do you feel about setting up another room before your baby is born?
Since loosing Tyler we have been blessed with our precious little girl Maddy. She is now in the room that would have been Tyler's. At first I felt really weird about this. For so long it was "Tyler's Room." And I would go into that empty room sometimes and just lay on the floor and cry. It was so hard thinking about all the should have beens. When we found out that Maddy was on her way we decided that her nursery would be in this room. The other extra room get's warmer during the day from the sun and isn't as close. Matt and I have both said that Tyler had a part in bringing Maddy into our lives and I know that he wouldn't be mad that Maddy is in this room now. Yes, for a while I wondered about this and talked about it with my mom and Matt and friends and came to terms with it.

With our pregnancy with Maddy we didn't begin decorating until very late in the pregnancy. I just didn't feel comfortable doing that. I was afraid that I would jinx it although I know that is silly. We didn't order the furniture until the last minute but I did begin buying the other things so that everything was there and when I felt ready all we would have to do is spend a few days putting it together. After our 20 week ultrasound I began to relax a little more and decided that I wanted our little girl to have a beautiful room to come home to, luckily it was done in time for her arrival, although just barely because she came early! I decided that nothing I did was going to change what happened or the outcome and I wanted to enojy every moment that I had with Maddy during my pregnancy.

Missing you like crazy today Tyler. Love you and your sister with all my heart! And Daddy!