Looking Toward the New Year

(As always, Troy is in italics, Tricia in regular type.)

It is incredible to think that Christmas has already come and gone!  The last week was a whirlwind of activity for us, and it was truly a blessing to experience Christmas as a parent for the first time.

Everything started on Tuesday evening last week when we took Madelyn to my Grandma's house.  Madelyn enjoyed spinning in the big white chair that I used to spend hours in when I was little (with a book, of course).  The true hit of the evening, however, was the Christmas cookies - my Grandma set a large plate of shortbread cookies on the table and Madelyn assumed that the entire plate was for her.  She told Troy "no!" when he tried to take one - I think we have a new favorite dessert!  (She also was smart enough to do the trick where she would take a bite out of each cookie so that no one else would want it).  We lost count of how many cookies she ate before cutting off the sugar fest.

On Thursday evening, we took Madelyn to the mall to help us ring the Salvation Army bell.  This has been a long-time tradition in my family - something I have done with my Grandpa since I was Madelyn's age.  Madelyn donned an apron and a bell and rang her heart out…for about 15 minutes.  Then she and Troy went for escalator rides in the Kohls department store to burn off some energy after standing still for so long.  I think we had the most donations during that 15 minutes - who can resist such a cute little bell ringer??

Friday morning began with making Christmas cookies.  Madelyn enjoyed using the cookie cutters, really enjoyed putting sprinkles on (we went through an entire bottle of red sugar on maybe 2 cookies), and REALLY enjoyed eating the finished product.  I think the pictures of this tell the whole story pretty well.  Later, that night, when we were laying a few of the cookies out on the table for Santa, she wasn't as interested in why we were putting them on the table as much as she just wanted to eat them :)

On Christmas Eve, we had our Olson Family Christmas at Troy's parents' house.  We had to take a little "protein" (i.e. cheese and turkey) break in between gift opening to give Madelyn enough energy to finish up.  Her favorite gift of the evening was a wooden food set that included a carton of milk.  She traveled around the room pouring milk into everyone's coffee cups.  (We resorted to caffeine during Madelyn's protein break).  While we sat visiting after gift opening, Madelyn gathered her stuffed animals, laid them out on the kitchen floor, then laid down with them and told us all "Night Night."  Needless to say, she went right to sleep that night!

On Christmas morning, Troy and I could hardly contain our excitement.  Madelyn didn't appreciate the fact that we woke her up, however, so it took a few books and hugs to restore her good mood.  The first thing we showed her when we came downstairs was the plate of cookies we had left for Santa, along with the carrot for the reindeer.  It probably shouldn't have surprised us that Madelyn assumed the leftover cookies were for her - so after a few tears and non-persuasive reasoning on our part, we consented to include cookies in her breakfast.  It was Christmas after all!  After breakfast, it took us about two hours to help Madelyn open her gifts.  There weren't necessarily a lot of gifts, she just liked to play with each one as she opened.  Her favorites were an old Sesame Street Elmo (previously owned by me) and a Fisher Price horse on wheels that I received on my first birthday.  Should have known that the best gifts were the free ones!  She wasn't too sure about the new doll we gave her, but she is starting to warm up to it now after a few days.  And she LOVED the wooden train set we got for her.

Another favorite gift -- the stickers and oranges in her stocking.  She enjoyed putting stickers on each of them.  So we could have probably spent $10 on Christmas presents and had a very happy girl :P As for the doll, she actually seemed to like the stroller we got for her doll much more than the doll itself.  After she opened that, she was off to play, putting various stuffed animals in it and giving them rides around the house, during which time Tricia and I had enough time to open our gifts for each other.

After nap on Christmas, it was off to my grandparents' house.  Madelyn sampled almost everything we had for Christmas dinner - her favorites were the mashed potatoes and corn casserole.  Next, Madelyn enjoyed playing Christmas carols on the piano with Uncle Kelly and playing chase with Auntie Shelley and Nana.  She also spotted the dessert and appetizer table but, to our surprise, she grabbed handfuls of cherry tomatoes instead of the cookies!  Her love of vegetables trumps dessert!  (Bread and rolls are still the favorites, though, hands down.) 

During the gift exchange, the best moment was when Madelyn received a bracelet from my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins.  Upon first glance, Madelyn must have thought it was a necklace.  When Troy tried to put it on her wrist, she started shaking her head and pointing to her neck.  Troy explained that it was a bracelet, not a necklace, and again tried to put it on her wrist.  This time, Madelyn burst into tears and wailed, "Daaaaddddy!"  That is the first time she has ever pulled such a move with Troy and, my goodness, did he ever react!  Panicking, he started asking if anyone in the room had a necklace he could borrow.  Several were offered, but were not necessary as a later gift contained a necklace and matching tiara!  Madelyn proudly wore ALL of the bling.  (She also received a Sing-A-Ma-Jig - if you have never experienced one of these - check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-R4759-The-Sing-A-Ma-Jigs-Pink/dp/B00388J386 - it provided plenty of entertainment for everyone else in the room.)

Sadly for me, that "Daaaaaddddy" thing wasn't an isolated incident and she has been using it quite a bit lately.  I'm doomed.

On Monday, it was off to my parents' house to celebrate Christmas one more time!  The first gift that Madelyn received was a table and chair set from Ikea.  No other gifts were necessary as she happily planted herself in a chair for the rest of the morning!  She has since done just about all of her playing at that table - her favorite is setting her puzzles out on the table.  She also likes to set her Cookie Monster in the chair opposite her and talks to him while she plays. When I asked what she was doing, I'm pretty sure she told me she was "playin!"  Madelyn also received some pretty cute outfits as Christmas gifts, so you will see her latest fashion in upcoming blog posts.  We also received a steamer, dumpling press, and Chinese recipe book from Tiffany and Drew, so we are set to start our new traditions for Chinese New Year in February!

To end the night, we put in the DVD of The Snowman and Madelyn sat there quietly engrossed (it's become one of her favorites -- she really loves the music and when the little boy and the snowman fly through the air) sitting in our laps for the entirety of the movie.  A nice and quiet ending to a extremely fun and eventful weekend.

2010 has been a momentous year for our family.  It is hard to imagine life before becoming parents - it was honestly the best gift we could have ever received.  Madelyn is a blessing in our lives and it is also a blessing to experience all of the love showered upon her by everyone else among our family and friends.  We are looking forward to our adventures in parenting in 2011 and are 100% confident that Madelyn will have plenty to teach us!

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"Mey Ima"

(This post is written entirely by Tricia)

That’s “Merry Christmas” in Madelyn-speak. As Troy noted in the previous post, the speech therapists at Doernbecher are going to be preparing a list of specific speech and sound exercises for us to help Madelyn develop her ability to talk. They assured us that she is doing beautifully, though, considering the language change just 7 months ago, and the palate repair less than 4 months ago.

We have been very excited about Christmas in our house and we are starting some new Christmas traditions as a family.  At the beginning of December, we met some friends and family for hot chocolate at the IKE Box, then headed to Willamette University to see the lighting of their Christmas trees.  Madelyn was fascinated as she watched the carolers and the lighting.  She also proudly wore the reindeer antlers they handed out to all of the kids.  Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is quickly becoming one of her favorite Christmas songs.  And whenever she hears “fa la la la la,” she joins in now (even if in a store)!

The next weekend, we headed to my aunt and uncle’s house to make Christmas treats.  They gave Madelyn an entire table filled with sprinkles and frosting to decorate cupcakes!  At first, Madelyn was hesitant.  She has a true aversion to getting her hands dirty (just ask my Mom who has tried four times, unsuccessfully, to get Madelyn to make a hand print art project).  Every time the frosting got on her hands, Madelyn would stop and hold her hands out until someone cleaned them off with a washcloth.  But then, my Aunt introduced the sprinkles and Madelyn momentarily forgot about being messy.  She happily emptied three entire containers of Christmas sugar onto her cupcakes (and the floor).  She was pretty proud of the cupcakes she got to bring home to Daddy, along with the Martha Stewart baking set that my aunt and cousin found for her.

We put the Martha Stewart baking set to use for Troy’s birthday, and had Madelyn mix the filling for our brownie trifle (he requested that instead of a cake).  Madelyn mixed away, and also stole a few tastes from the bowl when she thought I wasn’t looking.

We also had a wonderful Christmas party with a group of our long-time friends, and Madelyn got to meet her new friend, baby Ainsley, for the very first time!  Just like with Auntie Tiffany’s birthday party, Madelyn jumped into the role of hostess with enthusiasm.  She spent time with almost everyone in the room, and helped unwrap most of the gifts during our gift exchange.

Perhaps because of all of the increased activity, Madelyn has started to have trouble sleeping during her nap – she just stays in bed and plays.  We are trying several different tactics to see if we can get that turned around for her.  By nighttime without nap, Madelyn is actually pretty funny.  She doesn’t get fussy – instead she gets really silly and clumsy.  She turns herself in circles until she gets dizzy and then she runs into things and falls over.

This week also started with another situation that is a by-product of Madelyn starting to learn to dress/undress herself: On Monday morning, Madelyn slept in and I made myself a cappuccino with the new Nespresso machine we gave Troy for his birthday.  My Christmas gifts were wrapped, and for one uncharacteristic moment, I was feeling fairly proud and in control of things.  I heard Madelyn making noises on the baby monitor and went to get her up for breakfast.   When I opened her bedroom door, she proclaimed “Uh oh!”  As I turned on her lamp, I asked if she had unzipped her pajamas again.  (She has been unzipping her pajamas at night, prompting me to double layer her pajamas with a 2-piece top and bottom under her 1-piece zip-up sleeper to prevent her from getting all the way undressed.)

When the light came on, I noticed that Madelyn had indeed unzipped her pajamas.  In fact, she was naked from the waist down.  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I then noticed her discarded diaper in the corner of the crib.  THEN my eyes fell on the huge pile of poop in the middle of her bed.  Starting to comprehend, I saw the streaks of poop on her hands, face, and the rest of her bed . . . I froze.  She froze.  Then, fueled by the fortuitous cappuccino, I moved into action.

I grabbed Madelyn and deposited her in the bathroom, telling her not to move.  Then I took a pile of wipees and removed as much poop as I could from her bed.  Madelyn did not move an inch and was in fact staring in horror at her dirty hands and started to tremble.  I assured her it was alright, took more wipees, and tried to clean her up.  Then I started the bath.  It took two baths to get her clean – she was weirded out by the poop floaties in the first bath and we had to drain it, clean it, and start over.  Honestly, I think the poor little girl was in shock because she did not make a sound for about 30 minutes.  After the bath, we took her sheets, pajamas, and stuffed animals and put them all in the laundry.  Then we broke out the disinfectant for her bed.  I will never EVER again think that I am in control of things – not for a second.  Oh – and we have started using packing tape around Madelyn’s diaper at night for good measure.  I’m not sure what the next level of security will be if it comes to that.  We are also starting to research potty training techniques and this seems to be a cue that the time is approaching!

We are so VERY excited for Christmas Day with Madelyn.  We have four different family events planned (over four different days) plus our own Christmas morning, so there will be plenty of stories ahead.  We are also working on teaching Madelyn the Christmas story, using an Advent calendar to count down the days until the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth plus a Fischer Price Nativity Set that we found.  Madelyn has the typical 2-yr old reaction to most of it – she wants to open all of the numbers on the calendar instead of just one and she likes to rearrange the Nativity scene (I recently found Baby Jesus in a Tupperware container in the living room).  She has caught on to the concept of praying though, and has the cutest way of bowing her head, closing her eyes, and folding her hands.  And she reminds Troy to “ay!” if she thinks he is going to start dinner without prayer!

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Extremely quick update + an awesome video

We just got back from Portland (we went over to our friends' house for dinner after our OHSU visit -- hi Brian, Linnea, and Owen!) and I still need to make our lunch for the week (Crockpot Lasagna) so this is going to be short for the time being, with Tricia providing a lengthier update soon (and she has an all-time great story from the morning with Madelyn, so it will be worth the wait for her write-up).

The speech appointment at OHSU went very well.  This was simply an evaluation and it turns out that Madelyn is actually doing good enough at the moment, all things considered, so we don't have to schedule regular speech therapy at this moment.  We will go back in 6 months for another check-up and re-evaluate things at that time.  In the meantime, we have a series of speech exercises to do with Madelyn to help her work on some of the basic sounds that she is really close on, but hasn't quite perfected yet (much of which is due to both the change in language and in her cleft surgery).  These would include the sounds from the letters B, P, D, T, K, and G.  I'll keep updates on how these exercises work and how her speech changes over the next few months.

Also, each kid who checked-in was given a toy today and so Madelyn chose this (which she already loves):

To end this quick post, I have a video from tonight, where Madelyn was able to play with her friend Owen.  It all ended when Owen went to bed and this scene unfolded…

She likes cars and kissing boys -- I'm in trouble in her teenage years, aren't I :P

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Updates Forthcoming...I Promise

I have pictures and stories to share from the last few weeks, but haven't taken the time to get those up yet.  I shall do my best to do that tonight (and you can berate me in the comments if I fail to do this).

Today is also Madelyn's first speech evaluation at OHSU, so I'll be sure to add a post about how that goes as well.

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Are You On Team Madelyn?

Hey everyone -- go vote for Madelyn in the Gerber Generation Photo Contest.  Grand prize is a $25,000 scholarship, though I'm not quite sure that the voting phase actually earns her that (I think a panel of judges determines that one), but I'm sure lots of votes can't hurt ;)

Click on the picture below to go vote -- you can vote once per day:

  
(Or just click this link if the picture isn't showing up for you: http://www.gerber.com/photo/?entryid=216251&/#/detail/)

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Thanksgiving Fun

It's been a while, but I figured it was my turn to take responsibility for writing the blog post.  Enjoy!  -- Troy

The three of us had quite a busy and eventful past week.  It all began last Friday with Tiffany's surprise birthday party at our house.  It was our first big event at our house since Madelyn came home - so it was also our first chance to discover that she is the ultimate hostess.  Madelyn went from person to person giving hugs and undivided attention, collected all of Tiffany's gift bows, and led everyone in a round of applause after each gift.

Somewhere in all of this I introduced Madelyn to A) the media room and B) Wall-E, both of which she is now quite enamored with.  Tricia and I had Wall-E and Eve stuffed animals for her that we got on closeout a couple years ago and Madelyn enjoyed watching the movie with them alongside, oftentimes having Eve fly in the sky or making robotic noises like Wall-E.  She has added both to an already crowded bed.  Alongside those two there is a Winnie the Pooh, brown monkey, pink monkey, bunny, Eebie, and teddy bear.  She loves talking to all of her friends, providing plenty of chatter, animal noises, and laughs (she woke us up on the monitor the other day by exclaiming "Wall-E!" quite loudly).  It's now to the point where she manages to put all of her animals around her and sleeps in the middle of all of them.

In addition to enjoying all of her stuffed friends, she's also been enjoying taking her pajamas off at night.  One night she managed to unzip her pajamas, take them off, all about 20 minutes after she got in bed.  Not wanting her to freeze, I went back in there to put them back on her -- it's dark as I walk in and so I go to turn on her light and she sheepishly places the pajamas in my hand so I could put them back on her :)  (We are now putting a shirt/pants under her zip-up pajamas so this isn't an issue anymore).

On Sunday, we went up to Portland with Madelyn to go to Toys R Us and Ikea.  Our idea was to let Madelyn go to Toys R Us and pick out her gifts in person this year as we were curious what she would be attracted to.  As expected, she loved the doll aisle, and to our surprise, she also loved the wooden toy trains.  Of course, getting in and out of the store took us almost two hours -- we still have trouble remembering from time to time how much less efficient we are with a toddler in tow.

The other thing we have trouble remembering?  Madelyn is not yet even 2.  Sometimes she is so easy to work with that we tend to treat her like a 5-year old and are somehow surprised when she doesn't communicate with us and instead reverts to her more babyish tendencies.  In this case, it was the fact that we figured she could wait to eat until we did -- at Ikea.  However, we left Toys R Us around noon, made our way to Ikea and by the time we got there, got through the lines, and ate it was almost 1 PM -- 30 minutes past her normal nap time.  Needless to say, her meltdown in Ikea shouldn't have been so unexpected. We rushed our way out of there as fast as possible and poor Madelyn cried herself to sleep and slept in her car seat for the next couple of hours (Tricia and I made a few other stops on the way home).

On Tuesday we had a winter wonderland outside of our house (perhaps an inch of snow, if that much, all melted by 4 PM).  Madelyn was quite excited to bundle up in her winter clothes (she loves her fleece hat and mittens) and go outside to play in the snow.  We pretty much walked up and down the street, which she enjoyed, proclaiming "snow" as we went, but she wasn't so excited when she tried to walk through the front yard, as the snow appeared to be deeper there.

Next on the agenda were our two Thanksgivings.  As has become our tradition, we spent Thursday at the Carlisle/Palmer family Thanksgiving and Friday at the Olson family Thanksgiving.  Madelyn was quite excited in both cases with all of the food available to her. Thursday she seemed to be particularly keen on pears from a fruit salad, turkey, and rolls.  In fact, while the leftovers were being bagged up, Madelyn somehow managed to commandeer a ziplock bag full of rolls and found me on the couch watching football. I assumed someone gave these to her to eat, so I started feeding them to her, only to later find out that wasn't the case :P  The other treat Madelyn enjoyed was the whip cream for the pies.  Uncle Drew (or "Dew," as Madelyn says -- those darn "r"s) was quite complicit in providing this to her throughout the night :)

On Friday, Madelyn's was particularly excited about sweet potatoes, turkey, and ice cream.  She also kept a bowl of cheerios with her that I was amazed didn't spill all over more often than they did!  We all watched the Duck game and celebrated my Mom's birthday.  Madelyn was quite hyper throughout all of this, giving plenty of high fives, cheers, and fist bumps as she typically does when we watch sports :)

Next up was getting the house ready for Christmas.  I was happy that we already put up Christmas lights outside (for Tiffany's party), so I got to stay inside this year and help.  We put on our yearly "decorating day" movies, It's A Wonderful Life and Muppet Christmas Carol, and got everything out of the garage, put up the tree, stockings, and all the rest of the decorations.  To our surprise, Madelyn was quite enthralled with It's A Wonderful Life, particularly when they were dancing the Charleston (Madelyn has been having many bouts of spontaneous dancing lately -- it's almost like she hears music and she just can't keep her hips from swaying.  It's hilarious).  To no surprise, she loved the music in Muppet Christmas Carol as well.  Madelyn wanted to help us put the ornaments on the tree, but it took both of us to keep her from helping too much…as she was in the process of taking the "hanger part" off of all the ball ornaments!  With proper guidance, though, she was a fantastic helper :)

This is already an extremely long post, but I have two more stories before signing off here.  Madelyn's word comprehension seems to be grow exponentially -- she now will try many more words ("worm," "egg," "door"), is working at family member names ("nana," "grandma") and has been doing a lot of her stuffed animal's names ("elmo," "monkey," "Wall-E").  It's tons of fun to see her growing in this capacity.  Our first speech therapy session is in the coming weeks, so it will be interesting to see what they have to say, but I've been impressed with her progress.

The other story is too fun not to tell.  On Saturday, as Tricia and I are working on gift wrapping, Madelyn goes around the corner to the stairs.  The next thing we know, she comes around the corner with something in her hands and is heading toward the kitchen.  Tricia is curious what is in her hands and follows her asking to see it.  Madelyn quickly gets to the trash and tries to open the cabinet door to throw what is in her hand away (she can't, because of the kid lock on the door).  What is it that Madelyn has in her hands -- why it's an earwig!  So, she's already more adventurous and efficient at pest control than either Tricia or I :)

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