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!

Well, it’s been a couple weeks since she took her first real steps, and for the most part she still prefers crawling to walking, but she’s starting to make the transition now.

Happy Halloween everyone! As you can see from the pictures, Madeline was a ladybug this year…her first Halloween. We went to the Media Halloween Parade on Sunday which was a great time. Unfortunately, since then Madeline has come down with a little cold and Mommie now has a stress fracture in her foot!

As a result, we took it easy Halloween night. We just went around to a few houses to show off the cutest baby on the block! Hard to believe that at this time last year, we were still anxiously awaiting Miss Madeline’s arrival. My how time flies!

Anyway, hope you all had a great Halloween and don’t eat too much candy!

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.

so tonight i noticed madeline pulled herself up by the TV stand and “walking” side to side, so i thought i’d see how she did with her little “walkie” toy.

look out, kitty kats!!!!!

the eagles’ new punt returner!!! she’s been working on her fair catch signal!

thank goodness it was 3 days long. our house was NOT the place to be. mommy was sick friday night, daddy was sick saturday, and maddie was sick the whole weekend! it seems we’re all out of the woods now, so here are some happy pictures for you to start off the short work week.

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

Well, on Friday our buddy Benjamin turned 1. Saturday was his party, so we drove down to Virginia to help celebrate. Hard to believe we haven’t been down to see Dave and Suzanne in over 3 years…my how things change!

Ben is such a big boy, he’s walking and starting to talk and is such a cute guy! No wonder Madeline loves him!

The party was a lot of fun, there were plenty of kids there for Madeline to abuse…i mean, play with. I posted some pics so check them out. I also have some video that I will edit and post in the next couple days.