All American

We enjoyed the long Holiday weekend this year by camping with the Dobbelaeres. We went to Bray Park in Madison Lake, MN where we all piled in Chad and Jodi's pop-up and managed to cram 4 adults, Madison, and the twins in the boat!

We were blessed with wonderful MN weather for most of the weekend. All in all, it was a perfect weekend to celebrate!

Some other friends also stopped by with their identical twin boys. They are a week younger than Kendall and Sydney - so we had FOUR six month old babies at one time. Madison got a good dose of what it will be like to be a big sister and was very helpful with all the babies.

Madison loved playing on the beach with her sand toys. She and her Daddy worked on building a sand castle.

Baby Sydney and Chad.

Baby Kendall.

Madison's favorite part of camping is roasting marshmallows around the campfire.

Saying Goodbye

Madison has been in the same daycare since she was eight weeks old. Madison's red hair quickly made her a favorite of Dianne and her husband, Red. (apptly named for his red hair). We have been very blessed to have Dianne care for Madison and teach her so much while I am work. It is nice to know that someone we trust is taking care of her each day. Although we work on it together, Madison learned her alphabet, numbers, colors, and shapes from Dianne's hard work.

Sadly, today was Madison's last day with Dianne.

My office and Mike's office are both less than two miles from our home - but Dianne's home daycare is across town. I spend nearly an hour and a half on the road each day, driving 30 miles total and I only go to daycare and work. Originally, we had chosen Dianne because infant care in our part of town is much more expensive and hard to find. With gas hovering at $4.00 per gallon, it is getting very expensive to continue driving so far. I also realized that I was wasting precious time while on the road.

With a heavy heart - I started searching for care in our own neighborhood. It took at least eight months to find the right place. It is two minutes from our house and I could even park my car and ride my bike to work! There is a spot open for the baby and I think Madison will fit right in. Dawn has a big backyard with lots of toys to play with and a puppy dog which Madison is slightly terrified of.

Madison has been putting on a brave face telling all her friends at Dianne's that her "new Dianne's" has a puppy dog. I think it is cute.

Last week, I started talking with her in the car about saying goodbye to her old daycare friends. I said, "You'll have to make new friends at your new daycare. It's always fun to make new friends!" As if sensing my apprehension for her, Madison said "Don't worry Mommy, I'll make new friends!"

She seems very excited for the change. I hope her excitement lasts when I drop her off at the new daycare on Monday and leave her there - all alone with nobody that she knows.

Change is scary but change is good.

So today, we say goodbye to a wonderful provider. Madison brought Dianne some flowers that she picked out herself, with a thank you card and a gift card to my favorite Italian restaurant. She had to have her picture taken with Dianne on her last day. I'm sure there will be lots of hugs and tears when I pick her up at 4:45 today.

Even though I am a little nervous for the change, it did feel good this morning knowing it was the last time I would drive across town in heavy rush hour traffic, fighting stoplights, the train, and out of town clinic visitors that don't know where they are going and therefore forget how to drive.

Indeed, it felt good.

A Scary Night!

Madison's bedroom is on a different level of the house than our's. With a good baby monitor, it never bothered me. However, now that she is more mobile at night, I'm a little worried!

Last night I woke up at about 2:30 am. It was warm in the room so I kicked the covers off and stretched out my legs. When I did that, I felt something at the end of the bed. I thought it was the cat, but she didn't move like she normally does when I kick her in my sleep. I got up and found Madison, asleep at the end of our bed. At some point between me going to bed at 11pm and waking up at 2:30, she wandered up to our room and crawled in bed.

This scares me! I didn't hear her get up, even though I had the baby monitor on. I didn't hear her come up the stairs and I didn't even feel her climb into bed - and it's quite a struggle for her to get up on our bed.

I have always been worried about her going out the front door while we're sleeping - too many kids are found frozen in snowbanks around here because they wander out at night and nobody finds them until morning. Sso a few weeks ago we installed a very simple door alarm on our front door. It has a key that allows you to arm the alarm when you want it armed. The thing makes the most awful sound if the door is opened while it is armed. It serves two purposes - it will alert us if the little monkey wanders outside and it would make any would-be intruder wish he had chosen the next door neighbor's house.

I think I will be spending some time doing even more kid-proofing in our house! I want to make sure there is nothing that Madison can get into if she should happen to start wandering the house while we're sleeping!

Bedtime Battles

UGH. I need a nap.

We were lucky enough to keep Madison in her crib for a LONG time. She never climbed out, so we just kept her in there. About three weeks ago, however, she learned how to climb over the side.

The little turkey was really smart about it too. She threw her pillow down to the floor for a soft landing and put her quilt over the side for something to slide down. I have no idea how she figured that out, but it was clearly a well-planned escape!

After a few nights of her escaping, we converted her crib to a toddler bed. Now I am wondering why they don't put straps or chains on these things to keep these kids in bed. I need some sleep!

The past few weeks have been an endless bedtime battle. I put Madison in bed and before I get the door closed, she is climbing out. Super Nanny is failing me, big time. (GASP!) I have done her stay in bed trick continuously for the past three weeks. I have tried to follow it to the letter, but it gets frustrating when you have to carry a screaming and kicking two year old back to bed for the 387th time. It has only resulted in screaming, yelling, and tears. (More so from me than from Madison!)

On Sunday, to keep myself from going off the deep end after two hours of the battle, I shut off all the lights and locked myself in my room. I figured she would either burn the house down while fending for herself or eventually fall asleep. At that point, it was pretty tough to care much anymore. Thankfully - she did eventually fall asleep.

So - what are we trying now? I have asked daycare to cut down her daytime naps, to make her extra tired and try to get back on her schedule. That seemed to help a bit yesterday. I have put a baby gate up on her door, so she can't get out of her room. She is learning to climb that so I am going to put a second gate up so it is taller. I have even removed most of the fun toys from her room so she doesn't have something to play with when she gets out of bed.

I also started a new bedtime routine. We used to do bath, teeth, jammies, book, bed. The books seem to be getting her all worked up tho, so instead we are playing a lullaby CD. I tuck Madison into bed and turn on the CD. I stay in there and sing all of the songs with her and I even try to rub her back to help her relax. We have done this for two nights now. On Sunday, I felt certain it would work but Sunday was the worst night ever. I am determined to keep trying this tho. I did it again last night and it was definetely a much better night. She only got out of bed a handful of times and even though I could hear her playing in there with her blankets and lovies, she was still in her bed. So, we are replacing our book learning with an appreciation for music. It's not all terrible - we can read at other times of the day and she is getting books read to her at daycare.

Any other bed time tips are appreciated! If my music experiment fails I'll need a backup plan. Oh yea, and don't feel bad if I fall asleep in mid conversation - I need some sleep!

Bloomin' Butterflies!

The Como Zoo in St. Paul is having a special butterfly exhibit this summer. Madison LOVES butterflies. She gets so excited each time she see one. Since our daycare was closed on Friday, the three of us took a special family trip to the zoo to see the butterflies.

For an entire week, Madison told everyone that she was going to see butterflies.

When we got there, the very first thing we did was see the butterfly exhibit. Over 300 butterflies are released each week. Most are non-native species, so they were vary careful with double entries and exits. They also inspected each person for hitchhikers as we left.

The butterflies were beautiful and there were so many different kinds! Madison enjoyed watching butterflies eat oranges and watermellow. She thought it was neat that they liked oranges and watermellon, just like she does!

We also enjoyed the rest of the zoo. Como Zoo is really neat in that you can get really close to the animals. They had several different primates, including two gorillas. I am amazed at how big gorillas really are! They also had several lions and other cats. Madison really liked the zebras and the giraffes!

The highlight of the trip, however, was the carousel. Madison saw it when we walked in and said she wanted to go on the "circle thing." After awhile, she realized there were horses on the carousel. She asked to go on the horses the entire time that we were at the zoo! We saved it for last and Madison did not want to get off when the ride was over!

Father's Day

It was a nice, relaxing father's day here in Southern MN. We finally had a day of nice weather. Mike's dream father's day involved lots of food. He wanted McDonald's burritos for breakfast, rotel dip for a snack and grilled pork tenderloin with grilled corn on the cob and grillin' beans. After I realize how much food we had, I told him to invite his parents over for an informal dinner on the deck.

Mike loved the gifts Madison got him, including a Brett Favre tribute book (A compilation of all of the Sports Illustrated articles ever written about him!) and a new smart remote for the home theater. He was very excited and thought Madison did a good job of picking out presents!

After dinner, all of us were kicking a ball around the yard with Madison. It was one of those over sized, brightly colored balls that you see for $2.50 in every supermarket and Wal-mart on the planet. Madison loves her pink ball and kicks it around the yard endlessly. She also likes to sit on it and bounce and lay on her tummy on the ball until she rolls off into the grass. By some stroke of luck, Grandpa Lee kicked the ball and it hit the corner of the roof on the garage and it popped. The ball split in two and landed at Madison's feet.

This pretty much captures the look on her face as the ball dropped to her feet.

She starred at it for a full thirty seconds, completely stunned. We were all laughing so hard, but we knew that at any moment the tears would come. Boy, did the tears ever flow!

Once I calmed her down, I was able to get a few shots of her holding what remained of her ball. As you can tell - she is not very happy.

It resulted in Grandpa and Daddy making an emergency trip to Wal-mart for TWO new balls in pink and purple. Once Madison saw her new balls, she was quite happy to throw what remained of her old ball into the trash.

Call off the moving trucks

I no longer have to move to Canada!!! Mike has been saying for the past eight years "If Hillary Clinton is elected President, we are moving to Canada." I'm pretty sure he was at least half serious.

So - I'm breathing a sigh of relief today. I no longer have to worry about moving to Canada.