I don't even know where to begin....I feel like things are happening so fast that I can't keep up! Will someone please tell the child to stop growing up. Madie is all of
34 inches tall and only 23 pounds still with a vocabulary about 50 times her size. She is talking and I don't mean just words. There are sentences, other languages and plenty more I have yet to recognize. She knows all her colors, shapes and just started to learn letters. However, thanks to Mimi's efforts to teach her how to write the letter "M", it has now been renamed to "Up, Down, Up, Down" when you ask her what letter it is. She picks up books she recognizes and reads (from memory) them to us. The two favorites are "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and "Moo, Baa, LA, LA, LA". And most recently, while we were counting the acorns from our evening walk (for some reason, the child has an obsession with acorns) she just randoming spout out "uno, dos, tres, quartro, cinqo....." and I looked at Ryan and said -- Did I really just hear that? So, I'm sure there is plenty more that she is saying that we're not understanding.... My most favorite things is all the little songs she sings throughout the day. Any time we see a sweet treat she sings Happy Birthday and blows out a fake candle or when she sees Christmas stuff she sings Oh Christmas Tree.

So this was the first Halloween where she could actually participate. We did trick or treating at mommy's work, but she steered clear of getting the candy from people and searched out the un-attended candy buckets to get her candy from. Then for Halloween she wasn't feeling well so we stayed in doors and carved pumpkins with MiMi! She did really good with it and really wanted to help by poking the holes for the outline, scooping out the inside and helping mommy pick out the sicks so we could make Uncle JC a snack! And since she wasn't feeling 100%, instead of trick or treating Halloween night in the neighborhood, we handed out candy in our costume. Anything she saw during this month or that was orange resulted in "Halloweeeeen!!!!" Which is what she would say as we answered the door for our trick or treaters.
Right now, she is really big into airplanes. I think it was the sign language of the week at school and she went crazy trying to see airplanes in the sky. So, we decided one weekend to go to the parking garage at mommy's work that is right next to Tampa International and have an airplane picnic! We sat on the roof of the garage and watched them take off and land over and over and over. She was so excited to see them it was halerious as she over and over would say "Oooohhhhh".
A few weekends ago, we decided to break out mommy's "Toddler Bucket List" and we decided to go to the Largo Park and ride the miniature trains. She did so good sitting still and really enjoyed waving to all the people all over the park as we road through. We even ran into little Miss Ettie (the daughter of a good friend of mine) and had snacks in the park.
We'll post again soon to catch everyone up on the holidays! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.......