Week 60: March 4 - 10

EC
We got back to EC a little bit at the start of this week. On Friday, Madeleine signed potty three times, all three immediately during or after peeing in her diaper. So each time, I took her to her potty, and we played with our potty toy for 5-10 minutes while she sat there. No catches, but she's definitely learning the connection. I love seeing her form connections in her mind (see Elephants).

Sunday morning, I still wasn't feeling well, so I didn't go to Bible class. Matt went instead. When I went to get Madeleine after her nap, I heard a toot first thing, so I took her straight to her potty. I sang to her, we played and talked, and after about 5-8 minutes, she pooped! She had JUST peed before I put her on because her diaper was quite warm. But I was thrilled to catch a poop! After a week and a half of diarrhea, waking up from naps already dirty, and just general diaper yuckiness, this was awesome. SO much easier to clean up, and then we moved right on with our day! :)

Madeleine's rash/sores are a lot better but still not completely healed, so she is still in 'sposies. Hopefully next week I'll be able to report differently. Because of this, I haven't spent too much effort on EC, but still, if Madeleine signs potty, I take her there and we sit for a few minutes. Usually, as I reported last week, she has JUST peed and is telling me, rather than telling me before she pees. Still, it's building an association.

One good opportunity for cueing a pee is at bathtime, when baby is already out of her diaper. Every time we put Madeleine in the bath, I let her stand for a few seconds to see if she'll pee so that I can make the "pssssss" sound. I've cued a number of pees, and Madeleine has noticed and looked down at what was happening. Well, on Tuesday night when Matt put Madeleine in the water, he let her stand like usual. Then SHE made a weird sound--we were both like, 'whaaa???'--and then she peed. She'd CUED herself! That's awesome. It means she knew she was going to pee, and she told us she was going to pee, and then she peed. It's amazing how much she picks up considering how little we've actually done. Have I mentioned that she's brilliant? :)

PLAY!!
Madeleine is really doing well with playing. It's incredible. She no longer needs direction in her playing; she can sit in front of something and play with it alone. What's even cooler is that if she gets bored, she can find something else to play with. And she sometimes plays with toys "wrong," meaning not the way they were intended--which is totally fine with us! Just trying to explain. Here's an example. She's got this cool thing where you can pound these wooden balls through the top and they go down and around the tower, then pop out of the toy. She would sometimes put the ball in the side of the toy instead of hitting it through the top. Then she would put other objects in to see what happened.

She's also got a box that had belonged to Matt (and Wes and her cousin Lola) where you fit different shaped blocks through the lid. She got very good with the cylinder through the circle hole, but then she would put other round object through the hole. One of the balls from the poundy toy (it didn't fit through though), and even a tape measure rolled tightly.

We've been playing with a stuffed Noah's ark for her potty toy (which she loves and reaches for every time she gets on the potty). It's got eight little finger puppet animals inside, plus Noah. So I sing some Noah's ark songs and put the puppets on my fingers. Well, this week, she started putting a puppet on HER fingers! And she'd play with me, touching her puppet to my puppets. Like, for real, actual playing where we interact!


CHICKENS & ELEPHANTS
Speaking of the finger puppets, Madeleine has a most favorite animal: the chicken!

There have been quite a lot of elephants in Madeleine's world this week. We've got one whole book just about a mommy and baby elephant. Then one of the animals in our Noah's Ark play toy is an elephant, and Matt and I [try to] mimic the noise an elephant makes. Let me tell you, that is NOT easy! Then there's a stuffed elephant (though to me, it looks more like an oliphant) that Jill Palmer gave her in the hospital. And finally, we bought a new book, and it too had a page with elephants. So Matt looked up the sign for elephant, though it seems a little complicated for her--though, who really knows!? She's brilliant.

Anyway, she started trying to make an elephant noise! It's so adorable. We'll have to try and get it on video. Though she's only done it once or twice.

EATING ADVENTURES
Madeleine is slowly learning to use a spoon. I can load it with yogurt or applesauce or whatever, and she can get the food into her mouth! She tries to load her own spoon, and has limited success.

Sometimes, she gets both her hands full of food, but then there's something on her tray she wants. She will lean down and lick the tray or use her mouth to pick up whatever she wanted. So silly!

She also helps us put on her smock. She's been doing this, but I just picked up on it this week. I'll put her arms through the sleeves, then snap the back, and she tucks the front down by her lap so that she can reach her tray.

ALSO, Matt started reading to her at the table, and she really enjoys it! She pays excellent attention (you may remember that I lamented the fact that she didn't seem to enjoy reading anymore), and she's even started asking for us to read to her other times, too, like in Matt's rocking chair. Yay!

SIGNS & WORDS
She's learned the sign for bath this week! She sees the tub and does the sign. And she is learning the sign for "tree" now.

Ooh, and she's started doing the sign for book! It happened after we went to this book store and got Madeleine a new pop-up book called "Cookie Count." It's an awesome book, very cool pop-ups. We'd read it once or twice, and then she saw it sitting out. She immediately dropped what she was doing and did the sign for book. Repeatedly. So of course we read it to her right then and there.

"Hat" is her new word! She saw her daddy wearing a beanie this week, so we told her it was his hat. Now she says "hat" and reaches for Matt's hat. But, naturally, as soon as she has it, she throws it on the ground.

WALKING UPDATE
I realized it's been awhile since I mentioned Madeleine walking. She really doesn't. She took her first real steps before her birthday, but that was kind of it. If she walks, she uses our fingers.

This week has seen a HUGE increase in the amount of walking she wants to do. And it's typically not to get somewhere but to simply walk around the house. We walk all over, around and around. I'm sure it's just part of the process; she's gaining in confidence every day. So that is cool.

LITTLE THINGS
The baby kisses just about everything. Granted, I am certainly not complaining, but she's just so sweet! She kisses stuffed animals, animals in books, Layla, us of course.

As you probably know, we go to Chick-fil-A once a week. Well, this week, as we made the usual big U-turn that's part of the route, Madeleine said, "eat!" as though she knew exactly what we were doing and where we were going. It was crazy--and a little sad. LOL. We clearly eat too much Chick-fil-A!

Madeleine has 3 freckles now: 2 on her head, and one on the top of her hand.

I put chapstick on one day, then let her hold the tube. She imitated me for a few seconds--then tried to eat the tube. :)

She enjoys patting her belly in the bathtub!

We've got a lego kit on Madeleine's bookshelves, and she discovered it this week. How it makes a really fun sounds when she shakes it!


SLIDESHOW!