"I love you"

"Mommy, baby girl is sleeping. Be quiet puhleeeeaaaaase. SHHHH!!!!"

 "Kisses for the baby girl. I love you. Get some rest."

 "Let me put on your clothes. Hold still."

"Want to bounce?"

 "Let's read a book together. I like this one."

"That's it. The end. Want to read it, mommy?"

How in the world did my little baby turn in to a toddler that can articulate just about anything she wants to say?? Where has the time gone? Someone? Anyone? Time stand still, please.

For a few weeks now Madelyn's ability to make full length sentences has just exploded. For some reason, I am surprised by it most of the time still. Luke and I catch ourselves laughing at all the unexpected things she says.

She's sweet with her words one minute and bossy the next. She is such a polite little thing though and says, "Yes ma'am/sir and no ma'am/sir" unprompted now. While that's enough to make a mommy proud, my favorite thing she says is, "I love you".

The Birthday Book

Madelyn loves to read. She adores picture books, her Bible, story book and of course, pop-up books! Honestly, she might actually have too many books. They are on her dresser, on the book shelf in her room, in bins in her room (and the living room and the dining room) and there are always a few in the car. I keep some of them in tubs in the garage and introduce new ones from time to time. Despite all the store bought books she owns, her very favorite book is her 1st Birthday Scrapbook that my sister made. About once a week she asks for us to get it down (we keep it out of reach) so that she can flip through the pages.

Unlike her other books where she can look through them by herself, she always wants someone right by her side for this one. She points to each person and calls them by name. When she gets to the pictures of the cake she starts to sing Happy Birthday. It's pretty stinking cute!

She loves her Birthday scrapbook and I know that she will cherish it for years to come.

{Aunt Rachel, No pressure but I know she would love an equally awesome scrapbook made of her upcoming birthday festivities. Just throwing that out there. -Kathryn}

"Oh gosh, I tooted."

I love this.

Insta-Friday

The hubs has been using Instagram on his iPhone for a long time. After my usual, "that's so lame" spiel, I came around and realized he was right.  I jumped on the band wagon many months ago and never looked back. I loooove it and take pictures using that app daily. Sometimes I share the pics here or on facebook so I thought it would be fun to link up over at Life Reaaranged for Insta-Friday!

Here goes nothing...our week insta-style:

MK has been eyeing the pool a lot lately. We had a yucky yellow algae that visited with all the super hot weather so she has been missing it. I'm thinking we are due for a swim this weekend for sure!

We went for a sweet treat at DQ with Emily. They laughed and played and ate ice cream of course.

One of MK's new favs is painting. We paint almost every other day around here.

Emily loved it too. The tongue sticking out while concentrating is hereditary. Her daddy (my bro) passed it down.

Madelyn is obsessed with dice.

"Roll, roll, roll the dice!"

MOPS summer play date at Discovery Science Place.

Madelyn's favorite play area is the nursery. She is such a little momma.

We have had a couple of late nights around here lately where we've gotten home past MK's 7:45pm bed time. She definitely starts crashing at 8:30 or so.

Sleepy girl.

My sweet friend Mariann gave birth to Jackson Paul on the 8th. I got to hold him again. Goodness gracious this boy is sweet. He is super cute like his big brother and has the loudest, most adorable sneezes I have ever heard a little person make. I love him already!

We had our second Bitter Berry Boutique "For the Love of Crafting" night. I had a great time teaching some awesome ladies how to make boutique hair bows, fabric flowers and headbands!

Such a great week!

MK's pedi courtesy of Daddy

This evening I was painting my toe nails before craft night numero dos while MK and Luke were in the room. When I was finished, I put the top on and set it down. Luke looked over at MK and said, "Let's paint your toes".

It was pretty much the most precious thing I have ever seen!

He just jumped right in and went for it!

The most surprising thing about it was that he got more on her toe nails than he did on her skin!

What an awesome daddy MK has!

cabbage patch kids

Madelyn Kate adores baby dolls. Most of the time, she treats them as if they were real babies. I say most because they still get shoved in bags and drug around by their feet on occasion. Ninety percent of the time she loves on them, changes their diapers (my mom bought her a package of preemie diapers to use on her dolls), shares her food with them and rocks them to sleep.

Tonight, she put her two cabbage patch dolls in the rocker, stripped them of their clothes and diapers and said, "Wook my babies nakey, Mom!" (translation: Look my babies are naked, Mom).

"Nakey babies, nakey babies! I have nakey babies!". 

Sorry cabbage patch kids. I'll find your clothes in the morning!

rain.

A couple of weeks ago we heard a strange sound on our sky lights in the sun room. Out of the blue a little rain cloud opened up over the house. It has been so hot (heat index of 114 degrees that day) and unbelievably dry that we squealed (ok...so maybe Luke didn't squeal) with the delight and ran outside. MK loved it and we loved the momentary cool front that the 20 minutes of sprinkles brought with it.

 

I'm thinking it's about time to start doing a rain dance around here. Everything is so very dry and so very dead. Nearly every single county in Texas is under a burn ban. We cannot wait for more days to play in the rain!