McKinley has had quite a month! In the short span of 30 days, she has suddenly figured out how to do every single thing that I hoped she would in fact NEVER learn how to do! Here's a few of her highlights...
- Climb on the kitchen chairs. We have a pub-height table, which we love! In addition to being a good size for my very tall husband, it has the added bonus of having chairs too tall for little children to climb on. McKinley has been climbing on regular chairs for months, but still couldn't get up on our tall chairs. Until now. Now she pulls them out and climbs right on up. This is especially fun since we keep the computer on the table. She knows how to open that now too!
- Open doors. She's been closing doors for quite some time, but hadn't figured out how to twist the knob to get them open, leading to more than a few hairy situations wherein she shut herself in a room and couldn't get out. Until now. Now she walks around like she owns the place. My former safe havens of my bedroom and the bathrooms, where I didn't have to McKinley proof everything, are only distant memories. I used to be able to shower in the mornings knowing she was relatively safe with Madison watching out for her and everything truly harmful hidden behind closed doors. Now she can often be found banging on the shower door yelling at me to get out and get her a bagel.
- Watch TV. Confession time: I let Madison watch a couple PBS shows in the morning while I get ready, clean up breakfast dishes, etc. McKinley has never shown any interest. Until now. In reality, she takes after her mother, which means she still doesn't actually watch anything on the tv, she just seems to like having it on for background noise while she does other things. The problem is she has fixated on the MOST annoying of all children's shows as her obsession - Caillou. I HATE Caillou. If Madison is that whiny at 4 years old, someone please shoot me. But for whatever reason, McKinley loves Caillou and starts yelling "Caillou, Caillou" as soon as she hears the tv go on. If we're playing in another room and she hears the credit music roll, she runs out to the living room and yells "Caillou" some more. Fantastic.
- Undressing. She can't get shirts off yet, but she call pull down her pants and is a pro at peeling off her pajamas. And her diaper. I can't tell you how many times this month I would go in another room for a minute and come out to a butt naked girl yelling "bubbles"
- Going Potty. This is a big one for me. I drank the Kool-Aid with Madison and was so anxious to potty train her. Big mistake. I have seen the inside of almost every public restroom in the city of Memphis, and it's not pretty folks. Five worst words in the English language - I have to go potty. When I get to create my own world, it will be perfectly acceptable for kids to run around in diapers until they're 10. I have NO plans to potty train McKinley this decade. She, however, has other ideas. I'm usually proud when she tries to mimic Madison, but this month brought a disturbing development. She is obsessed with going potty. Every time Madison goes, she has to go too. She pulls her pants down and runs to the bathroom yelling "potty, potty, potty." She sits on the potty just like Madison and even uses the toilet paper. The problem is that she has yet to actually do anything in the potty. I'm not quite sure how to get her to understand what's supposed to happen once she sits on the potty. But she sure loves "going" :)
Thankfully, she's still stinking cute and has a few redeeming qualities :)
- We had a setback with nursery over the holidays when her regular leaders were gone for two weeks (Thanks a lot, Jen and Ryan ;) ) but she loves to sing the nursery songs, especially The Wise Man and The Foolish Man and the Hello Song. She loves to do the actions and will come up to me doing them to let me know she wants to sing. Anytime she's upset, singing the Hello Song is an instant fix!
- Her vocabulary is rapidly expanding but she's learned that the most effective way to get what she wants is to just grab you and push you where she wants you to go! It's mostly cute :)
- Her new favorite words are Bagel and Milk. I hear these words all.day.long!!
- She's come up with a new game that she thinks is hilarious. She puts socks on her hands and then pretends to scare you with them. She cracks up so hard if you really act scared. It's awesome!!
- Her favorite thing to play with is still her puzzles, but she's figured out that Madison's train set is really just a different kind of puzzle and now loves to build train tracks. She also loves to build things with the legos for the same reason.
Madison
- Madison is seriously rocking this Sunbeam thing. As her new teacher (see The Rest of Us update below), I get to see firsthand how much she really knows and how she interacts with everyone during Primary. She's always raising her hand to answer questions and volunteering to say prayers. In fact, she gets very disappointed if she doesn't get to say the prayer. I guess I've taken some things about her for granted, not having another three-year-old around to compare her with. But she's the only one in her class who doesn't need help with prayers, sings and seems to actually pay attention to lessons. I'm also spending the last five minutes of class working on testimonies with all the kids and Madison is getting pretty good! She's just awesome :)
- Speaking of prayers, hers have turned into General Conference-worthy essays! We joke about it a little, but she really does say good heartfelt prayers with things like "please help us to obey the commandments and do what you say" and "please help us to remember Jesus and follow his example." We've had several bouts of sickness in our family this month and she always remembers to bless whoever is sick, that their "germies will go away." She actually critiques our prayers and gets upset with us if they aren't long enough, because we're adults so our prayers are supposed to be long (seriously, that's what she tells us).
- She's obsessed with holidays! She still thanks Heavenly Father for Christmas in every prayer she says and loves to recite all the holidays in order. So she knows that Valentine's Day is coming up, followed by her birthday :)
- Speaking of her birthday, she finally learned how to say it correctly, which is a tiny bit sad. She used to say "Twenty March First" but she's got it down now. I keep asking her what kind of party she wants this year and her response is always the same - a rainbow birthday party with a "4" cake. Which is exactly what she got last year (except with a 3 cake, obviously). I'm hoping I can change her mind soon - it's no fun to do the same thing!
- Still LOVES the library - it has supplanted the big store (Sam's Club) as her favorite place. She wishes every day could be library day
- We have this little "thing" at night when we tuck her in where she tells us that sleeping is hard and we tell her that she just has to close her eyes and think of something happy. Then we ask her what she's going to think about. I love hearing her response to this question. Most of the time she says McKinley, which is so sweet! Every once in a while she says something random, like "flowers because that's my favorite smell." One night, she and I had had a rough day together, and I was very surprised and touched when she said she was going to think of me. Good Mommy moment.
Some Maddieisms from the month:
Mom: You're too smart for me
Madison: I'm not too smart for you, you're too smart for you
Madison: I have to go potty
Mom: Can you hold it?
Madison: No because it might come out in my hand
Mom: You need to help Dad clean up
Madison: Well I know Dad is a big boy so he can clean up by himself
The Rest of Us
- Jordan started his LAST semester of school this month!!! I seriously can't believe I just wrote that! His class schedule is pretty light this semester, but he's still been staying at school until about 4 on days he doesn't have clinic so he can study for boards. He has six weeks left before the test, and he's doing a great job studying and getting ready! Then at the end of April, he'll be done with classes forever!!
- If you haven't already figured out, I was released from the RS Presidency and called to be the Sunbeam teacher. I had very mixed feelings about my new calling - I spend all day, every day with a 3-year-old. Church was my one opportunity to be an adult!!! Instead, I'm now trapped with NINE 3-year-olds for two hours! But really, it's been fun. Like I said above, it's been good for me to see Madison in a different light, and teaching those kids is a lot of fun! It's really cool to see them learning and understanding things. I still desperately miss seeing and talking to people at church, and it's seriously tough coming up with a lesson dynamic enough to keep nine 3-year-olds entertained for 50 minutes! But I actually love it :)
- We had a fun MLK Day in Tunica. I didn't get any pictures, but we did a lot of clearance shopping for next winter (The Children's Place outlet was going out of business so I got some seriously awesome deals) and then we went to the pool down there, which is always fun!
- We put the final touches on a trip to Gulf Shores, AL in May!! I'm so excited for this trip - it's the last place on my must-visit list while we live out here!! We're renting a house with the Kings and Widdisons, and it's going to be awesome!!
Re-enacting storytime with all her "friends"
Daddy's shoes
Just kicking back with the iPad
At the beginning of the month, Dad took Madison to the library and they came home with this giant orangatun. We only had it for one week, but she spent every minute with it and was definitely sad to see it go back to the library. Now she says hello to it every time we go!
Going potty. Oh boy, I'm in trouble!
Playing primary songs for one of the elders
A sleepover party in the dining room
Date night!! Jordan and I went to a Mississippi River Kings hockey game on a real date!
This was the morning she woke up to her snow storm - we made a cotton ball snowman!
Who said this girl could use the computer?!?!
In an effort to help Madison not cough as much at night while she was sick, we tried to elevate her head a little bit with some blankets under her mattress. Obviously, it didn't work :)
We had the Walker kids over as part of our date night swap, and the girls wanted to play trumpets. So we whipped up something with paper towel tubes, styrofoam cups and pom-poms. They were thrilled!
Cute girl
One little monkey jumping on the bed
Two cute girls - McKinley does whatever Madison does :)
Found her perch
Another one of Madison's bedtime creations
