Our little model!

Omi made this dress for Maddie. I think the pictures turned out beautiful! I took so many pictures...it was hard to choose my favorites. ENJOY!

Sneak peek of a little photo shoot...

Omi made this beautiful dress for Maddie. It is so European, don't you think? I'm busy picking out my favorites, so I will post more soon!

What's been going on lately...

How did I let another three weeks pass by without a post? I guess running after an almost nine month old is the reason why! Maddie is standing up next to me as we speak trying to mess with the computer and get to the keyboard. Maddie is a MESS! She is so funny and is starting to get into everything! She is crawling so fast now and with a blink of an eye she is gone. We really have to watch her now. She loves going into my mom's bathroom and investigating. She has learned to open drawers, so I get so nervous that she is going to smash her fingers. I'm sure it will happen eventually. She is pulling herself up to stand on EVERYTHING and cruising now! I predict she will walk during her ninth month. Gabe doesn't think it will happen until ten or eleven months. I guess we shall see...

And she is off....



Aunt Teresa came to visit last weekend! She hasn't seen Maddie in a couple of months, so she had a great time loving on Maddie! We went downtown Greenville on Friday afternoon and got some really great pictures. It was a beautiful day!! On Saturday we had a little Oyster roast with Gabe's new "King Kooker". The thing is really awesome. I think we will even try to fry a turkey this year for Thanksgiving! We had a really fun weekend, but too bad the Gamecocks couldn't bring home a victory against Kentucky after beating the #1 team in the nation, Alabama. Oh well...there is always next year...

Downtown Greenville at Smoke on the Water

Falls Park

Yay! Aunt Teresa is here!

Maddie checking out her new shoes that Omi brought back from Germany!

Loving on Uncle Ryan

We devoured the oysters!

Maddie is eating more and more finger foods. Just yesterday I made her a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch (of course I cut it up into tiny pieces). She gobbled it down! It is amazing how big she is and I'm actually starting to make her "big girl" food. She eats graham crackers, animal cookies, nilla wafers, peas, bananas, melon, cheese, waffles, and pasta. She is really beginning to tolerate more texture without spitting it out right away. Of course she still loves her baby food purees. She eats just about any of those now. She is still on Nutramigen formula for her milk protein allergy, but here in the next few weeks we will try and switch her to a milk based formula. Pray she tolerates it and we can get her off this extremely costly formula!!!

Grilled cheese for lunch!

Awake from a nap

So many toys to play with!

What a big helper!

Yesterday marked a year since my dad passed away. I honestly can't believe it has been a year already. The year just flew by. So many changes has taken place all in a year. Now we have this beautiful, healthy baby girl who has brought so much joy into our lives and in a way has shadowed our grief and pain. We don't know why things happen the way they do, but we are so thankful that we were blessed with Maddie. The timing was exactly the way it should have been. Mimi talks about Poppy all of the time for Maddie and lets Maddie kiss on his pictures. Maddie is going to know all about her Poppy, even though she will never meet him. We will cherish the memories forever. And now Natalie is expecting! I haven't even mentioned that! I guess it was on the down-low for so long that I forgot to blog about it. She is about 18 weeks pregnant and will find out on November 17th if Maddie will have a little girl or boy cousin! We can't wait!!

8 Months Old!

Seriously??? Eight months old??? This just doesn't seem right. Where did my little 8 lb baby go? The one who slept peacefully in her carseat every time we went anywhere? Those days are long gone. We have a very busy baby who is on the move! We can officially say Maddie is crawling. She started off a couple of weeks ago doing the "army crawl", but she has graduated to a more sophisticated crawl where she is more up on her hands and knees. She is still trying to figure the whole thing out, so while she does that we have to get going on baby-proofing the house! Maddie has also mastered standing up in her crib. I have been telling Gabe to lower the mattress down further (we have already lowered it once), but he has been putting it off. Well the other night Maddie woke up at about 10 o'clock crying and when I went in there she was standing up! I completely overreacted because it took me by complete surprise! I immediately called Gabe and told him to lower the crib NOW. So at 10 pm he lowered the crib, so we don't have to worry about little Maddie taking a tumble :)
This week I have been working on nap training. It is going very well and Maddie is actually napping so much better. I do a modified version of the bedtime routine and just lay her down in her crib awake. I used to rock her until she was asleep, but it was becoming impossible to lay her down in her crib without her waking back up. It is working out really well. Half the time she falls asleep completely on her own, but a few times I have to rub her face or back and she will then drift off. She takes a morning and afternoon nap for about 1-2 hours each.
Well that is about it for now. Pop-Pop was here for a couple of days picking up my dad's tractor. My Dad loved his tractor and spent many hours on it. Pop-Pop is having it completely refurbished in my dad's memory and it should be ready by October 25th (the anniversary of my Dad's death). We are going to plan something special to remember him. I still can't believe it has been almost a year. They say the first year is the hardest. I can only hope it gets easier one day...but we have a lot of good things in our life to be thankful for. Thank God for our precious baby girl!!

Teething

Madison has started to teeth again (we THINK). For the past three days she has been miserable. She has been refusing her bottle, very irritated, crying A LOT, and having diarrhea. On Wednesday I decided to call the doctor because you just never know if something more is going on. I explained the symptoms and they said to go ahead and bring her in to be checked out. They checked her ears, throat, and body and everything seemed to be normal. The doctor said that she was more than likely teething. I haven't felt any new teeth coming in, but last time she teethed it took a month for the teeth to bust through. I wonder which ones will come in next??? I am thinking the top!! We will see...

Maddie has been coming back to bed with me the past couple of mornings, because she has been waking up really early. I have to admit I love to get some snuggling in with her when I can!