Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Tonight we carved our pumpkin for Halloween! It is pretty neat looking. Madeline was very excited and she even was exploring the “insides” of the pumpkin. She started to lose interest when the scooping out part was done though, but she was very happy to see it all lit up once all the work was finally done!

So,it looks like we’re officially ready for Halloween now! We’re just hoping to get good weather for Friday. And if things go right, we may even be in downtown Philadelphia for a parade that day too!

Last week, on October 1st, Madeline had surgery on her ears to get tubes put in. Madeline has suffered with one ear infection after another since she’s been about 6-7 months old, so this was really overdue!

She did amazingly well and we are very proud of what a big girl she was through the whole process. She brought her lovie “Monkey” along to the hospital with her and he even got his own hospital bracelet!

Monkey AND Madeline are both doing well after their little stint at Dupont Children’s Hospital. Thank you Doctor Barth and Staff for being so great to us during our brief stay!

Congratulations are in order for our good friends Chris & Bridget as they welcome their beautiful baby daughter into the world! Good luck, guys! Madeline can’t wait to meet her!

Today was Super Sunday in Media, which basically means they shut down State Street and all the shops and restaurants set up in the street and you can walk around. All in all, a great time. It was supposed to rain today but it held out so that was really nice. Of course there was some live music and Madeline LOVED that. Here’s some video of her dancing around (the music in the video is NOT live, obviously).

Media Super Sunday from Steve Karsch on Vimeo.

Happy Easter everyone!

The last couple weeks, Madeline’s been teething and had a cold so things have been trying, to say the least. But these last few days she’s been our good old happy Maddie. A true joy!

Today was no different. We started with a video iChat with Grandmom, Popper and Great-Grandmom. Then we hosted Easter dinner for Jenn’s family. Madeline had a great time playing with Pop-Pop and enjoyed spending time with everyone.

We had a little Easter egg hunt for her, as you’ll see in the pictures. I under-estimated her hunting skills; she was quite adept!

Enjoy the pictures!

Well, Madeline did really well at her 15 month check up. She is now 25 lbs, 10 oz. and she is 32 inches long. Both are 90 percentile.

She is way ahead of kids her age with her verbal ability (she says about 25 words easy, and 5 words is average for her age), she’s also ahead as far as feeding herself with a fork and spoon. Most kids don’t even start having an interest in using utensils until about 18 months of age, but not our Madeline, she’s been doing the fork and spoon thing for a couple of months now.

Also, the Doctor said that she also exceeds the beauty scale by almost a hundred percent. Okay, just kidding on that last one, but Daddy and I seem to think this is case =) We just can’t ever seem to get enough of our little love bug. We’re continually amazed day by day at all the things she says and does. She sure has come a long, long way!

We’re a little late with this post, but Madeline’s first birthday has come and gone. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year. Sometimes things seem to be moving so slow, and the next thing you know a year has gone by and your daughter is eating her first birthday cake.

We are truly blessed to have such a happy and healthy baby (ok…toddler) as well as such an amazing and supportive group of family and friends who have helped out greatly whenever we’ve needed them.

Madeline is now really walking around, so much so that I finally relented and put up baby gates this past weekend. She’s also now totally off the formula and bottles (HOORAY!!!!) and she’s moved up to the next room in daycare. Today was her first day and she did great. I think she enjoyed seeing her old friends who moved up a couple months ago.

What a year…we can only imagine what’s in store for us this next year!

A bit late on this post, but last weekend we took a trip over to Linvilla Orchardsafter doing a 5k in Wallingford with Grandmom and Popper (where Popper won an award for coming in first place in his age group, way to go Popper!) It was a beautiful day and we got to take some nice pictures over at the Pumpkin Patch! Madeline was all eyes of course and couldn’t take her eyes off of the gigantic scarecrow they have there, but most of all, enjoyed pointing to all pumpkins and saying the word over and over and over again. She will now point to our pumpkins, cats, and even her Daddy and say Pumpkin. What a riot. All in all it was a great day and we hope you enjoy the new pictures!

Steve and I have been walking with Madeline for some time now and she loves to just hold on to our hands and walk all over the house. Steve also plays “the standing game” with her where he lets go and sees how long she can stand on her own till she falls down, and she adores it! She gives the biggest belly laughs from “the standing game”.

So tonight we decided to let go while she was walking and see what would happen, (we do this all time too, but Mads usually falls right down) and low and behold, our little munchkin was taking steps towards us by herself and was VERY proud of her accomplishment, she was clapping right along with Steve and I. Of course she is taking no more than 5 or 6 steps at time, but as they say, practice makes perfect!

Now the fun really starts, right?

We’ll make sure to get video up once Madeline has honed her new skill a little more.

Bye for now.

On Tuesday, Madeline had her 9 month check up.

She now weighs 21 pounds 5 oz, (90th %tile) and is 28 1/2 inches long (75th %tile). She is a tremendous crawler and climber! She is getting more and more daring each day with climbing steps, and pulling herself up to stand! Madeline is also waving bye-bye/hello, clapping her hands, and raising her arms up in the air to say “SO BIG!”

She also has two new top teeth that have come through. She is doing really great, is so much fun to be around, even though she’s keeping Mommy and Daddy on their toes, it’s great to see her so mobile!!! Looks like we’ll be heading to Stride-Rite before we know it