20 Months Old

Miss Maddy hit the 20-month mark while we were on vacation in Florida.  I'll post more of those photos later.  Here's just one of her on the beach for the first time.

She loves dressing up in fancy clothes and headbands.  Here she wanted to wear *all* her headbands at the same time.

She's quite the doodler.  I'm trying to keep her drawings limited to paper and off of the furniture and cabinets.

Hey, it's a cat!  She still loves Calvin.  One time I saw Calvin actually enjoying being petted by her.

Levitating.

More doodling.  With lots of crayons.  On the dining room table (she likes to sit on our laps and pull herself up there).

This summer she discovered kiwi.  This is a good view of her chompers.  She's starting to bite her pacifiers so much that she's shredding them.  These pacifiers have got to go.  Operation Goodbye Pacifier commences soon.  It's a multi-phase project.

The goofball giving an even better view of her teeth.  She's using these toys - the walker and the exercise ball - a lot more by herself.  Thank goodness we have carpet in much of the house, because the more she tries to stand on her own, the more she falls down.  She mostly just cries, gets back up, and keeps going.

Ball. Ball. Ball.

She started saying "ball" a couple weeks back.  She still loves to take objects out of a container and put them back in.  And she still loves to share.  So this bucket of balls is her cup of tea.


This was after dessert one night.  That's why it looks like she's wearing chocolate ice cream as body paint.

Dinnertime

Here's part of a typical dinner at our house.  Maddy is aware of how amused Ben is when she throws herself back against her high chair, so she does it a lot now.  She must have been tired here because she was pretty low-key about it.  Sometimes she really slams herself back.  (That is part of why I'm thinking of moving her to a booster seat on a regular chair soon.)  Her high chair has a large tray that attaches to the front and is great for holding a plate of food.  But Maddy doesn't like the tray at all.  It's probably for the best, because the little space in front of her only holds small bits of food and I can take notice of how much she's eating.  She tends to eat too much too quickly and then throws up.  No amount of reflux medicine can stop that from happening.  Puke is a pretty typical part of our meals, happens at least a couple times a week.  I made the mistake of using the saying, "Her eyes are bigger than her stomach" and it totally confused Ben.  The explanation I gave just confused him more.

Looking Back: Decompression Post-Op

It's been almost seven months since Maddy's decompression surgery.  I was going through old videos yesterday and found this one from when Maddy was still in the hospital.  Things were so chaotic back then that I just forgot to post it.  It is truly amazing how quickly she bounced back.  And that quick recovery is pretty typical for this kind of surgery.  She was moving around on the second day.  When we got home, she almost immediately started getting back to her old activities like trying to climb the stairs.  She had a follow-up MRI a few months ago that showed things look good.  We're going back to the neurosurgeon this week for what I hope is the last neuro checkup for a while.

Push It

Keeping busy during a power outage last Friday (that's why it's so dark).


Today.  It's been a walker kind of weekend.