A COOL spot to play...

On the latest episode of "The New Adventures of Maddie Crawling," the main character found a brand new, cool place to play. I was washing some dishes and overlooking the living room, when I could no longer see Maddie playing. I turned off the water and looked around. Immediately, I heard Nils barking at the window from outside, so I figured Maddie was taunting Nils, while he suffered in the heat (side note: do you think Nils is spoiled too if he thinks 80 degrees is too hot to be outside? That is pathetic! However, I think he might shed less if he is in air conditioning...what do you think?). I was right. Maddie was sitting by the slider giving Nils a funny look. But this time it was different. Not only was she giving him the look, but she was also straddling the vent blowing out a pleasant air conditioned breeze. Take a look for yourself...

I thought I would throw in this cute picture of Maddie playing ball. She loves chasing it and passing it back and forth!

Don't call CPS...

Please don't call CPS, but these pics are of Maddie eating her first McDonald's Cheeseburger. Yes, childhood obesity is a problem in the United States, but we have already committed to limited TV, and encouraging activity. Thus, she is eating her burger in a swing! We will put some more swing pics on later. Jeff built the swing from a Home Depot kit the day before Father's Day. His favorite part of the process was when we were looking at the box. I told him, "Look, this one says it only takes 1 hr to put together. That means we can build it and play on it tonight." He wanted to throw a fit for false advertising. The swingset took him about 1.5 2 3 5 5 6 6.5 hours to build...WELL WORTH IT! Maddie squeals with delight every time we go swinging and sliding and eating cheeseburgers. Thanks Dad! Maddie loves the swingset.

Red High Heels...

So Maddie turned 10 months today...and she is changing daily. She seems to crawl twice as fast as any previous day and is now able to pull herself up and stand on her own. With the speedy crawling, several new challenges and funny stories have come up.

Nils used to get in Maddie's face, licking, sniffing, etc. She usually didn't get too upset; in fact, she usually got a good laugh at it. Now, Nils is running away from her, because she has figured out how to take his treats:) Jeff says that one of these days she will yank really hard on his privates tail...that won't be a pretty scene.

Maddie also loves to crawl into our closet and peruse through my shoes. She tends to grab only my red shoes, however. She loves my red polka-dot platforms I got in New York, but she especially loves a pair of my red high heels. It reminds me of the Kellie Pickler song, "Red High Heels." (Turn up your sound) Check out the pics below of Maddie after getting caught with my red high heels...still a tad too big for her:)

This is the "oops, I got caught" look

This is the "now that I am caught...look how cute I am with my extra squeezable cheaks" look

Piano's Only...

My mom has a piano, which needs tuning. It has been around for at least 50 years. My grandpa bought it when she was little, and we hope to give Maddie the opportunity to take lessons. So, we started to call some piano places. Jeff's first reaction was to text google, which is actually pretty cool (GOOGLE = 466453), because it is free. This didn't get us very far, so I got out the yellow pages. When I opened it, I saw something that belongs on Letterman or something. Take a look at the picture (click on it), before looking below and see if you saw the same thing I did.

I came across a company called Piano's Only (if anyone knows them, no offense to the company). This sounded great, because we ONLY wanted them to work on the old piano. I looked below for their phone number only to find out that they are "Now moving hot tubs too!" My mom laughed until she cried and claimed they need to change their name. If anyone has any Letterman connections feel free to send it to the show!

Slowing down time...

We tend to post our various activities and general busyness on the blog; however, this one is quite different.

Jeff had finished preparing his morning coffee on Monday, when he decided to stop, smell the coffee and take a look around. In doing so, he figured he only had a few minutes before heading to school until he saw the clock. It was only 6:11am and he usually leaves around 6:45am. After looking at the clock, he proceeded to read the little phrase beneath the clock:

"Time is not measured by clocks but by moments"

Even though he sees this everyday on our walls, he really appreciated it this particular morning. He sat there for a moment, then headed to the back yard to sip on his coffee. On his way out, he looked at the microwave and found out how true the phrase by the clock really was. In all actuality it was 6:51 and he had to get going. The big clock on the wall was low on batteries...maybe we should keep it that way.