— my little corner of randomness —
Maddie has recently realized that running around the kitchen island is fun. She does it all the time. I remember my parents had a place we could run in circles around their house and my brother and I spent a lot of time chasing each other around it. When I saw the island when we looked at this house, I immediately thought about our kids running around the island. Little did I know at the time, I would be required to chase them around it hundreds of times! Here’s a video of our island fun.
Maddie likes to growl. It’s normal for growling to happen when she is making the noises of a bear or lion. But lately, she has started growling words, too. Mama, Dada, Baby, No….it’s weird and frankly, a little creepy. Take a look!
Yeah, she’s special! 
Maddie has learned to wink. Well, sort of. If you wink at her, she will blink. But she thinks she is winking and it’s really cute. 
Here’s a video of her demonstrating her “skill.”
I love that little face!
I have 4 weeks to go until we will have TWO little girls! That is just crazy! Today I also realized that it is only 3 weeks until my birthday. Having another baby a week after my birthday and our anniversary (Annibirthary) made me completely forget that I am almost a year older. Yikes. And it also occurred to me that the election is in 3 weeks…also on my Annibirthary. So there are quite a few things to have a countdown for!
I also should mention that Maddie is 20 months old today. I am not sure where the time has gone. She is still learning more each day and saying more words all the time. The cutest thing she has been doing is she has starting singing to herself. I usually catch her singing in her crib to her dolls. It’s a bunch of gibberish, but it is the sweetest little sound ever! She is still obsessed with her dolls (or “baby” as each of them are called) and is so very nurturing to them. She is going to be such a good big sister!
I have a number of videos of Maddie I have uploaded that I will share soon. And a couple other random things to share, too. But for now…I am off to bed to try to read a few pages of my book before falling asleep onto the screen of my Kindle. 
Last week I took Maddie to a local community center. The first Monday of the month, they set up a bouncy house for the kids to play in. Maddie had never been in one before, but she thought it was a lot of fun once she got over her initial hesitation of it.
It’s incredibly hard to get a picture of a toddler in a bouncy house, by the way. Here’s the one that mostly turned out.
And here is a little video I took of her. She had so much fun!
A number of months ago, I came across this book at the library. I was renewing it all the time because Maddie loved the book and so did I. I did a little looking online and found that there are actually three books in the set.
I have given these books to a couple different people as gifts. They have cute stories and Maddie has learned a bunch of different animals from them. My mom really likes reading “Grandma Calls Me Gigglepie” to Maddie, too.
So if you’re looking for a good gift, you need to add something to your kids’ Christmas/Birthday list or you just want a couple new books for your kids, I highly recommend these!
Over Labor Day weekend, we went up North with our friends the Fishers. They had made plans to go and invited us to go along with them. We went a couple years ago with them. Trisha and I were both pregnant then with Maddie and Chelsea. This time we were both pregnant with our second little ones (they are having a boy a week after our Baby Girl is born). So we were pretty excited to go up there again, but with the toddlers this time.
It was a much different trip than it was the last time we went. We had to accommodate the schedules of a couple toddlers. 
But it went great. We did lots of swimming, eating, rock throwing, playing….it was a perfect weekend.
Trisha did a much better job describing all the things we did. Here are her posts about our trip (if you want more detail about what we did…or are trying to waste some time while reading this at work ):
BlueFin Bay 1, BlueFin Bay 2, BlueFin Bay 3, BlueFin Bay 4.
Here are some pictures we took.
Reading on our porch (which overlooked Lake Superior).
Crazy Hair!
Out for a walk.
Pouting in the grocery store.
More reading.
Play Dough!
Swimming!
Throwing rocks…Maddie and Chelsea’s favorite thing to do!
Chuck and Ben went kayaking one day.
More rock throwing with dad.
On another walk.
Playing with Chelsea before dinner.
More rock throwing.
My loves.
Sitting by the campfire….someone had sore teeth.
Aaaannnddd then our camera broke and we didn’t get any pictures from the last day. So you might want to refer to Trisha’s posts. But here are a few of her pictures.
More rock throwing.
Dinner.
Family pictures.
And if you made it through all of those pictures and still want to see more, here are all of the pictures we took. Beware….there are a LOT of them! Oh, and here are the ones Trisha took that have us in them.
Well, it’s October 2nd and I realized I haven’t posted much of anything on here for most of September. I also didn’t take a whole lot of pictures this month. And I never did a 19 month post about Maddie either. What a great mom! 
The reason has been my lack of motivation. I have had a cough for 5 weeks and a cold for 2 weeks. They have really put me out of commission. We also had a couple busy weekends thrown in including my brother’s wedding (which I still need to write about, too).
I have been a huge (literally), lazy bum these past weeks. So everything has been suffering; from house cleaning, to cooking meals, to blogging. Therefore, I am going to try to catch up on life a little bit here.
So here’s a little Maddie Photo Dump.
Maddie looking cute!
Chuck recently redid our office. And Maddie loves to know what we are doing at every minute. Here is Maddie “helping” dad build some shelves.
I look a lot better than I feel in this picture, but I was happy I got Maddie to sit on the couch and watch a movie with me.
Maddie loves to put on shoes and socks. Here she is wearing a pair of my socks around after putting them on.
We went to the zoo with Trisha and Chelsea and Maddie was obsessed with the scuba diver!
Maddie LOVED her cousin’s helmet. We really need to get her one soon.
Maddie decided she wanted to eat her snack at her play table. She also decided that her bear needed to sit there and have a snack with her. (I think she is missing from the picture because she is collecting more items for the table.)
Yep….we have a collector.
At lunch one day, Maddie decided to put her hands over her ears and started saying “lalalalala.” It was hilarious.
Of course, peek-a-boo was next.
My mom bought Maddie a little fake fish. There are some magnets in the base that makes them move. They look like Nemo and Dory. Maddie loves them!
And here are all the pictures from September that I took of Maddie.
Here are a couple videos of Maddie that I haven’t posted yet. The first one is Maddie swinging at the park. Chuck takes her there most nights after dinner and she LOVES to swing.
The other one is from one day when I was gone and Chuck was watching Maddie. She has been into the song Gangnam Style which you can read about here. Chuck showed it to me and said “this is what happens when dad is left in charge.” 
It cracks me up. She’s such a fun little girl and she gets more fun every day! I can’t believe I get to keep her!
Chuck showed me this video the other day. This morning I showed it to Maddie. I can’t count how many times I have heard it this morning. Every time it stops, Maddie signs and says “More.”
In case you haven’t seen it….
I sent it to my brother. Hopefully we can get the DJ to play it at the reception on Saturday. 
Hahah! Psy (the singer) was on Ellen and he said the key is to “dress classy and dance cheesy.” I love it!
And I’m not really sure if watching this a hundred times is better than Maddie’s other favorite….”Sexy and I Know It.”
