Visit with Gung Gung

Maddie's Gung Gung Wilson, Vickie's Dad, came to visit us on July 17th and see Maddie. She took to him right away, giving him hugs and lots of kisses on his nose and lips. It was great to see him and he was surprised at how big she has gotten!

Music Class with Mr. Dave

A couple of weeks ago after work, I took Maddie to a music class with Mr. Dave at a children's store a couple of blocks away.  Mr. Dave is pretty well known among parents in Chicago.  The class is for kids from 0-3. We had taken Maddie to a class a few months ago but she was tired and overwhelmed as it got pretty noisy, and we had to leave that class early.

This time, we stayed the entire time and Maddie loved it!!  I had a feeling she would since she is now mobile.  We even ran into a friend from the Wicker Park playgroup - Jackie & her daughter Ruby!  We sat next to them and Maddie even gave Ruby kisses!

The class is essentially Mr. Dave playing his guitar and singing songs like "If You're Happy and You Know it" and "The Wheels on the Bus."  He then puts the guitar away for a bit and lets the kids play with tambourines and various other noise making instruments. He then blew some bubbles, which Maddie had never seen before.  He ended the class by letting all the kids strum his guitar.

When class started, Maddie sat very still watching Mr. Dave and observing all of the kids. All of a sudden it clicked that it was supposed to be FUN and she smiled and started to clap and got very excited!  She crawled around the entire room, and even right up to Mr. Dave as he was playing a song.  She even gave some kisses to a couple of unsuspecting little boys.

We hope to make it a more regular thing since there are classes Monday through Friday, and on certain days there are classes 3 times a day so we can work around Maddie's nap time.

Taking it all in

 

This little boy crawled up to Maddie and of course she went in for a kiss!  Ruby wanted to join in on the fun!

Going in for a closer look

I couldn't believe she got so close to him!

Reading Already!

Just kidding! Here are some pictures of Maddie enjoying some reading material.

Thanks Grandpa Don and Grandma Mary Ellen for the Hello magazine!

This is Thriller, Thriller Night

Maddie showing off her favorite Michael Jackson moves!

At the Playground

We try to take Maddie to the playground every day for swinging, and now that she is mobile she can explore almost all of the playground!

Madeleine's Evolution of Crawling!

Madeleine learned how to crawl rather quickly, if we do say so ourselves!  Below are lots of videos chronicling Maddie's crawling progression.

Here is a video from May 29th at Playtime at the Wicker Park Fieldhouse.  This shows an exercise we regularly did with Maddie during tummy time (long before this video).  We would hold her feet down a bit, or hold behind her feet, and let her push forward.  She caught on rather quickly and it was one of our favorite things to do.  Before Maddie would just slide with her tummy on the ground. In this video, you can see her getting up on her hands and knees rather well and tries to push forward on her knees.

June 25 - Maddie is on her belly and tries to go forward, but ends up going backwards instead. She's not yet on her hands and knees, and hasn't learned how to sit up on her own just yet.

July 8 - The first full day back from the Tulsa trip, where she pushed herself up to sitting a lot and scooted backwards a lot.  You can see her going from hands & knees, to sitting up right, back to hands & knees (and belly) with ease.  She's going forward just a tiny bit but still ends up backwards, but mainly stays in the same place.

July 11, 7:45am - She's so close! She crawls forward 1-2 tiny steps before sitting back up. She even shows you how she can raise her arms over her head.

July 11, 5:00pm - By that evening, she had gotten it!  She crawls about 1.5 ft before reaching for her ball!

July 12 - Maddie wanted to play with some cables hanging in the corner of the room and kept turning to play with them. We decided to move her far from them to see how far she could crawl (if she even could crawl that far) to get them. She surprised us by crawling the entire way!  

August 2 - Since then Maddie has been a crawling machine!  She crawls the easiest when she is on the carpet and is a bit slower and clumsier on the hardwood floor.  When it is bathtime, she will even crawl from her bedroom, into the hallway, make a left and crawl into the bathroom!  I will try to capture a video of it soon.  Here's a video from earlier today of her crawling from the dining room all the way to the kitchen. We started out in the living room but she got side tracked in the dining room.

First Trip to Ikea

A few weeks ago we went to Ikea! For anyone who has been to Ikea, you know it is pretty much a day long affair. We were hoping Maddie would be able to last the whole trip...

Maddie was a trooper, we entertained her with lots of stuffed animals and even bought a couple for home. We ate an early dinner and Maddie had some cucumber, mashed potato and even some swedish meatball! The entire trip took about 5.5 hours from door to door, Maddie fell asleep about 4.5 hours in, as we were loading the car.

Here are some cute pictures of her enjoying the store.