6 Months Old!

Maddie has just celebrated her half-year birthday! Holy moly, in just 6 short months we will be celebrating her 1st birthday!! Miss Maddie is ALL OVER THE PLACE! She doesn't sit still for long. She is so squirmy and is ready to GO, GO, GO! My mom and Gabe's mom both say that we were nothing like her, so we don't know where her little pistol personality comes from! She knows what she wants already, so looks like we are in deep trouble! HA!

Big girl standing up on the chair!

Brady and Maddie are becoming better friends!

Sitting up so good now!

Maddie loves the outdoors and riding on the golf-cart. Whenever she is fussy all we have to do is go outside and take a ride and she is immediately calm! She loves looking at trees, flowers, and the sky. She is going to be an outdoorsy little girl for sure!

Last weekend was pretty low-key. We ate pizza over at our friend's Anna and Josh's house on Saturday night. They haven't seen Maddie in several months, so they were shocked to see how big she has gotten! Josh even let Anna play with his Cocky stuffed animal. We knew she would love it, considering she is already a huge GAMECOCK FAN!

Go Cocks!

We have officially started "ferberizing" Maddie. It is a sleep training method that seems to be working wonders for her already and we are only on day 7. Her bedtime routine is as follows:
Between 5:00-5:30 Dinner
After dinner she no longer can have her pacifier (I know we are mean)
6:00-7:00 playtime usually with Daddy
7:00 bath
7:30 bottle & book
8:00 bed

We then say "good night", give lots of kisses, and put her in her crib. The first night she cried for a while, but eventually fell asleep and slept for almost 8 hours in a row! Two nights ago things went fantastic and Maddie slept from 7:30-5:15!!! The reason we decided to do the sleep training was being we were so exhausted by no sleep. Maddie would wake up when her pacifier would fall out of her mouth, so we were constantly back and forth to her room to plug it back in. She no longer needs to eat in the middle of the night, so it was time for her to sleep through the night! She now can fall asleep without her pacifier in matter of minutes and when she wakes in the middle of the night she goes back to sleep on her own! We just pray that this continues, because we feel great about how it is going so far! It is hard to do, but in the long run it is in Maddie's best interest that she learns to fall asleep on her own!

On another note, Maddie is now rolling over from her back to her stomach. We found her on her stomach a few nights ago after going in to check on her after she fell asleep. She loves to sleep on her stomach or side. Today she about rolled off the bed, so we can no longer place her on the bed unattended, because we have an official rolly-poly!

Gabe started his rotations at Spartanburg on Monday. It was a hard week without him being home, but we are so very proud of him! So far he loves it and is knows why he decided to become a doctor in the first place. He is happy to be out of the classroom and in the hospital. In just one week he has already learned so much. Good Job Daddy!!!

My mom goes back to work on Monday. This summer has flown by! We are going to miss her so much while she is gone during the day. Looks like I am all alone with my little rugrat again starting next week. We need to find some fun things to do to keep us both busy!