1st birthday party

No commentary for right now, just pictures. Promise I'll take the time to write more later.

I'm back with commentary! What a busy, wonderful, memorable and fun weekend. Like I said earlier, we all loaded up and hit the road for Marshall after Madi's 1-yr check up. We got in a little later than expected due to the horrible construction on I-70. Being late wasn't that bad but Madi totally missed her "I'm tired" window and didn't stop fighting bedtime until about 2.5hrs after her regular bedtime. Serenity now! I realized I packed everything for the weekend except the birthday balloons and formula. Oops. Mom Stone made a run to WalMart and saved the day regarding formula. Plus we cheated and gave Madi a bottle of 1% milk until the "real" fake stuff arrived. I remembered the birthday signs so we still had those for the directions but no balloons. Another oopsie was that I forgot to specify whether the party started at noon IL or IN time. Since I'm telling all my secrets - if you had the white confetti cake it was made with boxed cake mix and a can of Sprite. I ran out of eggs and found online that you could substitute a can of diet soda. Now that you know, could you tell a difference? I think that's all I have to confess...

We had close to the whole family there to celebrate - aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins - and some friends thrown into the mix. At one point Jerry, a guy from our ski club, asked if he was the only one not related. "You got a big family!" Yes, yes, we do. Both sides of the family don't get together that often but everyone seemed to pick up where they left off. I was tickled to see all the kids playing together. I have great memories of summer vacations on the water so I hope we gave the young'uns a few new memories. The weather cooperated, could have been a tad cooler but the sun was out and there was a breeze every once in a while. It really was a beautiful day. I've joked that since Madi is an August baby and not December we have way more birthday party options. An outdoors birthday party in winter would be a lot shorter if you could pull one off at all.

Madi's Uncle Lance barbequed some amazingly tender ribs, brisket, pulled pork and hot dogs for lunch. It smelled wonderful as it was cooking and tasted just as wonderful. So glad we had leftovers. Madi's morning nap almost went through birthday cake time but she managed to wake up just in time. We put on her party clothes and got ready for cake. I made a little onesie that had a 1 on it and a matching party hat. My Aunt Donna embroidered "Madi's st" so it would look like Madi's 1st. I think we did an awesome job. Being fresh from a nap Madi wasn't too sure what to do when we plopped her in the high chair but she got the hang of it once the cupcake hit the tray. We had a trial run earlier in the week so it wasn't her first go round. She dug in there and took fistfuls of cake to her mouth. I need to say Kudos to Grandma Stone for getting the icing out of Madi's ears and hair, and the folds of her neck. I'm sure Madi had some down her shirt as well. After cake we moved inside to the air conditioning and opened presents. It's such a shame the girl is not loved. There were gift bags and presents everywhere! Glittery and shiny always grab her attention and it was the same with presents. "Ooo, glitter tissue paper!" When we couldn't hold the attention of the youngsters any longer everyone took off for their own play time. Some played in the kiddie pool out back while others went down to the dock for a swim or out on the boats. According to the parents I talked to, the kids slept great that night.

A huge thank you to everyone that helped us celebrate. One year in the books, many more to come!

Where's the cake?

nothing left but crumbs

icing deep down in her ear, nice work Madi

working off that sugar high

1-year check up

We got to go to the doctor today. I say "got to" because we were excited to see how Madi measured up against the norm after a year. Our nurse and the doctor couldn't believe how big Madi was, "never tell she was a preemie!" I love to hear those words after so many months of having to explain to people why Madi wasn't doing what they thought someone her age should. Not anymore, Madi hit every developmental check the doc had. Sleeping, self-feeding, crawling, cruising, waving, first words, sippy cup...all checkmarks. We need to work on being bottle-free by 15 months. We can switch formula for whole milk. Madi could slow down on motor skill advancements as her language skills develop so we're not to worry. Here are the stats:
Weight:  20lbs. 33%
Height:  29" 48%
Head:  18.4" 90%
Still has a big noggin!

After all the fun and chit-chat Madi had to get her vaccinations. Today was hep A, MMR and chicken pox. We got a little opinion from the doc on the last two. We are to thank all our friends that don't vaccinate as mumps and pox are becoming mainstream again. Northern Indiana and northwestern Indiana have continually had outbreaks of both. Yikes. I haven't researched the why-not-to in order to form an opinion, just sharing our doctor's.

We're loaded up and headed to Marshall for Madi's birthday party tomorrow. Looking forward to celebrating an answer to prayer and attempting to repay friends and family for their generosity last year.

Stay tuned for birthday pics!

so darn cute!

You already saw some of the pictures taken the same day as these but I couldn't pass up the chance to share them too. Anything shiny grabs Madi's attention and she loves exploring so it didn't take long for her to start wandering around the boat.

And then we played with the box:

Then she crawled to the back door and pulled herself up. She LOVES to stand there and look outside. The other day Dan was working right outside the door and Madi crawled over to watch and jibber-jabber with him.

NICU reunion

Saturday was the annual NICU reunion for St. Vincent Women's. Wow, what a production. I was expecting a cute little get together in one of the park's shelters, maybe a hospital spokesperson would say a few words and then everyone would chit-chat about their past year. Boy was I wrong! It was a mini-carnival. There was face painting, pony rides, rock climbing wall, bounce houses (plural), lasso the steer, topple the bottles and a car merry-go-round. There was even more that we didn't ever get to - it was huge! And busy. There were people everywhere. I was amazed how many families found themselves in the NICU...and this is just one hospital's graduates. When we pulled up I was nervous we'd never find any of our staff. But we did. Dr. Pyle, Dr. Ben Saad, Nurse Sarah, Nurse Alex, Nurse Ashley, Nurse Shelley and Dot were all there. It was so nice to see them again, better circumstances this time. All were amazed at how well Madi was doing. The docs joked that they didn't need to see us except at the reunion picnic. Of course that's always our hope but should we find ourselves in the same situation I know what hospital we will be going to, no question. The timing of the reunion couldn't have been better for us. Or maybe it could have. The reunion kicked off the week everything started happening for us last year.

As of about noon today it was exactly one year ago that we walked into Carmel St. Vincent so the doctor on call could make sure everything was okay. "It sounds like everything's fine but since I'm just up the road from you, why don't you come on in to confirm." was the conversation I had on the phone with Dr. Moore. He was the only doctor in the practice we hadn't met with yet. What an introduction it turned out to be!