Oh Me Oh Maddie

Maddux is a ball of energy these days. Not that she was ever not, but she is acting every bit of a head-strong, busy little girl. She gets into everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. She does not have volume control over her voice. She loves to aggravate Eli. She is my everything.

I love how Maddie counts and recites ABC's now. She is pretty good counting to three and reciting A, B & C on her own. From there, she needs help, but not really. She will repeat half of the letters and numbers after me, and give the next one the other half of the time. (i.e. I'll say "L", she'll say "M", but then when I say "N", she'll say "N"). She loves to do this.

Maddux also enjoys learning new words. She will point to things all of the time and say something (if she doesn't know the real word), and then I'll tell her what it is really, at which point she'll repeat the correct word. Eli is getting into this too. In the last two days I've heard him on three separate occasions saying, "Maddux, can you say 'car'?" "Can you say 'banana'?" "Can you say 'baseball'?" It's really neat to see them interacting this way.

And she is still a bookworm. Mad Dog loves to read. Now she reads using words more and more though. She will flip through the animal books, barking and 'moo'ing at each page. It's hilarious when she gets to the bear and lion pages.

Maddux is getting into trouble more and more though. Her temper and quick-to-freak attitude has me reminding her about self-control a lot these days. And she has been in several time outs. Most of the time those occur at the table while we're eating. Maddux will play with her food after being reminded not to. Or she'll intentionally drop something on the ground. However she has received a few time outs for direct disobedience. One happened the other day because she kept trying to open the sliding door after I'd told her (very firmly) that she was not going outside. I put her in her high chair and told her to sit in self control. The GREAT thing was, she did!! I didn't have to strap her in or anything! I think she's seen Eli get in time out enough to know that she is expected to sit and not get up. How nice would it be to not have to 'teach' that part of discipline again!!

She is 'cheeky' too. Maddie is so darn cute, and she knows it. She will be ignoring me or not obeying, and then she'll turn her head slowly towards me with this ridiculous grin on her face, as if to say, "Really? What are you going to do? You KNOW I'm too cute!" T-R-O-U-B-L-E

My new favorite thing though is Maddie's role playing. She will grab an animal or baby-doll and put them in her stroller or in a bed. Then she'll cover it with a blanket and say 'nigh-nigh'. Even better, she'll carry it and say "SSSSS! SSSS!" (Her version of shushing.) She's seen me do that with other babies at church, I guess. It is seriously out-of-control cute.