Our Little Bi-Ped

Madelyn just took her first steps yesterday afternoon, and from the looks of it, she'll be running by Saturday! See for yourself :)

Shout Out to the Book Slots

I've been in a book club now for nearly six years. Molly, Nicole, and I started it back in the day, and it now includes seven, amazing, lit-loving women that have become dear friends and trusted confidants. We meet on the third Thursday of each month, and our gatherings include dinner (always delicious and often coordinating somehow with that month's read), updates on each other's families, plenty of discussion about the book (we actually do read our books!), and The Big Reveal of next month's read. Each of us so looks forward to our gatherings, but one thing has been missing these six years:

We've never had a name.

Every legitimate group needs a name, right?! We've talked about it several times in the last few years but have never gotten around to doing anything about it. This past Thursday, however, we finally did. We agreed in June to bring suggestions for names to our August meeting at which point we would make a list and vote for our favorite. In a series of emails just prior to this meeting, we were talking about the offensive nature of the book we had just read. Cheryl wrote her thoughts and then said "Speaking of offensive, how about the Book Sluts for our name?" Hilarious coming from Cheryl because she's one of the most refined, poised, and moral people I know. We all laughed but never considered it as a serious submission. At August's meeting, however, she told us this great story about her 3-year-old son overhearing her telling her husband about her "Book Sluts" suggestion. "What's a book slot, Mommy?" was his response...whew! She could actually answer him honestly! We all thought that was great, and lo and behold, we ended up voting for it as our official name with the tag line: "We're way overdue."

The following were a few other fun suggestions:

The Page Turners
The Spine Crackers
The Denouments (you'll have to harness your high school English classes to understand this one!)
Books and Bites
Book Addicts Anonymous
Lunar Literary Ladies with the tag line "It's that time of the month" (this was one of the husband's suggestions...who shall remain nameless for his protection!)

Mystery Sign

Like many other parents these days, we've used sign language with Madelyn since she was about six months old. "More, all done, milk, diaper change, home, hungry, water, and please" are all signs that we use on a regular basis. Madelyn understands them all and signs "more, all done, and change" on her own. Of course, it's wonderful that she's learning to communicate in this way (socialization being at least one of our top five goals in raising our children), but I've always felt confident and proud as a mother that regardless of her signs, I generally always understand what she's trying to communicate.

Until recently.

We have a book called "My Friends" that's all about various animals teaching a little girl to run, jump, climb, explore the earth, etc. It's one of Maddie's favorites (she will crawl over to us and literally grab our hand and put the book in our hand to read to her). One of the last pages has a drawing of about a dozen kiddos with outstretched arms that says "I learned to play from my friends at school." EVERY TIME we get to this page, Madelyn enthusiastically pats her tummy with both hands and smiles from little ear to little ear. Friends, I have absolutely NO IDEA what she is saying! Kurt and I have tried and tried to figure it out, and we have come up with nothing. None of the little kiddos in the drawing are patting their tummy, and patting your tummy isn't anywhere close to any of the signs we use. She knows where her tummy is (and her fingers, toes, and nose) and will pat it if we ask "where is your tummy?" but that in no way seems connected to this drawing. It is a complete mystery. And it's just killing us because she seems so genuinely thrilled to show us how emphatically she can pat her tummy each time this page comes up!

Any ideas?

She's Got the Beat

This clip is pretty short, but I think it's definitely worth sharing. Dancing has been one of Madelyn's favorite tricks for awhile now, but she has recently learned that she can move more parts of her body to the beat than just her little torso and arms (this is probably a function of her increased standing time). Some part of her brain must always be poised and ready to respond to music, because she'll often hear the first note or two of a song and stop everything to break it down. Hilarious. In this clip, Kurt had the camera ready to go before starting the song to see if this song would inspire just such an impromptu dance. It did :)

Ms. Long Limbs

Remember that tiny baby we used to have? The one who fit so snuggly in the moby wrap? We kept feeding her and look what happened!! She stretched! Madelyn is nearly 30 inches long now and weighs 20 pounds. She still fits in the moby,

as you can see, but we sort of become this disproportionate
double-headed octopus what with four extra limbs curiously reaching and kicking and grabbing about :)

First Foray into the Forest

At Auntie Kelsie's brilliant invitation, the three of us took Madelyn on her first hike in the Columbia River Gorge this morning. We set out first thing for Angel's Rest, a fairly steep 4.6 mile trail that offers stunning views of the gorge, the forest, rock slides, and waterfalls and ultimately summits on a cliff overlooking the river about 1,500 feet up. It was cool and misty when we first got started, but the sun popped out just as we summited and made for one heck of a gorgeous lunch spot. Madelyn, as always, was nothing but smiles and laughter. She rode in a backpack carrier on Kurt's back and loved every minute of it. We fed her at the top of the trail and even changed a poopy diaper on the rocks (that sounds like a really bad cocktail..."poopy diaper on the rocks..."). She even conked out for a bit on the way down, having missed her morning nap, and resumed being her playful self when it was time to load up the car and head home. How did we get such a happy, flexible, easy-to-please kid?!