Madison posing now......
Madison turned 5 this past July, I am still in shock over it. I am having a really hard time believing that my baby girl is 5 already. I can't figure out where the time has gone!She has grown up so much in the past year. Every now and again I look at her and no longer see a little girl, she has so many mannerisms and personality traits that scream teenager to me. Mostly she has developed a maturity to her that has surprised me, her insight and conversation skills have me floored. I guess I still think of her as being my little girl.
On her actual birthday, being the caring and loving parents that we are, we flew to Hawaii and left her and Hunter with my mom. This is the only picture I have of her on her actual birthDAY (she was headed to swimming lessons after dropping us off). My mom so generously offered to fly out and watch the kids for me while Ryan and I had a relaxing vacation all to our selves. It was a wonderful vacation and we found out that we were expecting our 3rd child on that trip, too, so that made it even better. My mom took her to celebrate at the restaurant of her choice....IHOP. She is so my child, I love IHOP and I LOVE breakfast foods. That might be the only thing she got from me (joking, of course, but she is definitely more Ryan than she is me).
We did celebrate with her on several occasions before and after we left for Hawaii. On July 2 we had her birthday party with her friends. This year we took her and some friends to see Ice Age 3. It was so fun, we rented the party room and they reserved seats for the kids and brought them all their own snack boxes with a drink, popcorn and one candy in it. I wish I had gotten a picture of all the little 4-6 year olds sitting on the front row with their snack box watching the movie. It was the cutest thing ever! I was so busy getting everyone situated before the movie and once it started I didn't want to disturb the other moviegoers with my flash going off while the movie was playing. I should have done it anyway.....Here are a bunch of candids that I got during the party. I think I got almsot every kid in at least one shot, she has some really wonderful friends that she plays with. We got a group shot, but a few of the kids had already left, we had a hard enough time corraling the ones there and getting them to all look at the camera.
A few years ago we signed Madison up for the CPK kids birthday club so she gets a free kids
pizza the month of her birthday. We decided to take the kids on July 4th for dinner at CPK and since we were headed to Town Square (probably my favorite place to go in Vegas with the kids) we dressed them in their bathing suits so they could play at the sprinkler park in the kids area. They had so much fun! It turned off and the kids area closed at 7 or 8 pm and the kids were so sad! They would have stayed for hours more. I got some great pictures of them playing, so that made it even more fun for me.
Madison is so funny, she loves going to the sprinkler parks, but the water comes out with such force that she gets terrified of it. Mostly she runs around all the spurts of water and barely gets wet at all. I don't think her hair had one drop of water in it when we left. She loves just running around with all the kids and splashing in the puddles.
Hunter, on the other hand, was so fascinated by the sprinkler park. He would watch the water come up and then he would go over to the spout and dig his finger all around trying to figure out
where all the water went. A few times he got socked straight in the face. He did NOT care for that at all! He ran in the water much more than Mads did, he was soaked by the time we left. He just kept giggling and walking around. There was a cute group of moms sitting by me and he would play in the water or with the spout and then he would walk over to them and clap as if he expected them to clap for him for doing whatever it was he had just done. It was adorable, and these sweet ladies were happy to oblige him. He is such a character.
We went to Utah for the July 24th celebration and while we were there we celebrated Madison's birthday with the family. Grandma Ainge had separate cakes for Madison and her cousin Sam during the family party and they got to open their presents with everyone. It was so fun! She loved having the princesses on her cake and the great part is that she got to play with the dolls after the cake was eaten. I'm pretty sure she still has them somewhere. They even lit up and everything, it was adorable.
After the party we headed to the Spanish Fork carnival for games and rides and then off to the rodeo. She even wore her cowgirl outfit to the party, the carnival and the rodeo, it was fun! She loved the rodeo, mostly because I let her eat popcorn, a snow cone and mini-doughnuts. She so rarely gets treats like that. She loved watching all the horses and got a kick out of the rodeo clowns. It was a super eventful day, she was exhausted by the time we got home for the night. She might have even slept in for an extra hour next day. For her that is a miracle. The child wakes up by 6 am almost every day no matter what time she goes to bed.
As this has become a journal for me, I wanted to include some little facts and tidbits about Madison before I forget them all. I promised myself that I wouldn't be the mom that forgets all the stats on my children, or confuses them. Well, as good as my intentions were, I have become that person. I contribute this tendency to the fact that pregnancy kills brain cells....I know I have lost a TON of them. The fact that I can even function each day is an accomplishment.
Madison Elizabeth was born July 8, 2004 at 7:22 am in Northridge, California at the Northridge Hospital. She weighed in at 6 lbs 9 oz and was 19 inches long.
She was born after 12 "wonderful" hours of labor (the "" signify my sarcasm in this last sentence). I was so incredibly exhausted by the time she was born. I was able to deliver her with no drugs, but lots of help from a wonderful doula. (I know, I know, I was crazy) Funny enough I did her labor drug free and it took 12 hours start to finish but Hunter required an epidural for less than 3 hours. More on that with Hunter's birthday post. Hence, our first family photo had me looking less than spectacular, and just plum worn out. I could hardly lift my head I was so tired.
I had gone into labor with Madison the previous evening, July 7, (considering she was a week late I was more than ready, her due date was July 1). Around 7 pm I started getting regular contractions and about 7:45, just as my contractions were 5 minutes apart, my water broke. I, of course, freaked out, less than 20% of women have water break that early in pregnancy. I figured the baby was going to come before we got to the hospital. Yeah, I was wrong. At about 8 pm we got in the car and went to the hospital. Thankfully we missed the wonderful rush hour traffic (it was a wednesday night, on the 5 and 405, in LA) and the hospital was about a half hour away without traffic. I loved my doctor and was willing to pass 2 hospitals to have him deliver Madison.
After a week of my dad calling me daily asking if I had had the baby yet I was more than ready to call him and tell him that I was headed to the hospital. It actually worked out perfectly, my parents were headed out that weekend to see me and the new baby, we figured it would be safe to get tickets since it was over a week after the baby's due date. I had Madison the morning of July 8 and that night my dad flew out of Memphis and was headed to the Olympic tryouts to work on some patients in Sacramento (I think) via LAX. For some reason or another, his fight was late leaving Memphis and he missed the last flight to Sacramento, so he rented a car and came to see me at the hospital and Madison on our first night together. I begged the nurses to let him in even though it was waaay after visiting hours. They granted an exception to the rule and let him in. He just hung out in my room from about 10 pm until 4 am when he had to head back to the airport. I felt really bad because Madison cried her first 3 days of life almost without stopping, so he just held her and calmed her down until 4 am. Needless to say, he did not get very much sleep. When he came back to LA 3 days later with my mom he adjusted her and she stopped crying and was a pretty pleasant baby after that.
Some memorable things about her:
When she was hungry she would make her "O" face (see first picture on the posting) and start bobbing her head around looking for food. It was so adorable.
Most newborns sneeze alot, she did as well, but whenever she would sneeze two times in a row she would follow it with a sigh. She didn't sigh when she sneezed once, only when she did it twice in a row. My heart would melt any time she did that. It lasted almost 6 months before she stopped sighing. I was so sad when she did. I wish I had known my camera would take videos so I could have recorded it!
For the first few weeks of her life she would only sleep if she could hear a heartbeat, so she slept on one of our chests for a while. It made it hard to sleep at night for us, but it was so fun to cuddle with her.
***I know the date on this post is off, it has taken me several days to finish it up. I don't know how to adjust the date, I'm not sure you can......
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