A Year and a Half!

It's hard to believe but our Madison is 18 months today! Where has the time gone?! I truly do feel like it was just yesterday that we brought her home from the hospital! And in about 2 months we will be bringing her little sister home from the hospital! This year and a half has been such a wonderful journey. We honestly have grown with her as parents. God has been so gracious to carry us through this journey day by day. 

She is doing so many fun things lately. She walks fairly well up and down our apartment stairs (we're on the 2nd floor) holding my hand. And she can pretty much walk beside me into a store etc. holding my hand (although she does occasionally flop on the ground because she wants to go a different way than I am steering her ;) I have diligently working on this because I want her to be able to do it when Rose arrives, but also it's getting tough carrying her up and down the stairs with my ever growing belly!  

To be honest, I don't think she quite knows what is going on with the whole baby thing. She does know that my belly is growing and seems to get a kick out of it. She loves to pull up my shirt a bit to expose my belly and give me raspberries ;) She knows what a baby is, but when we tell her baby sister is in my belly she just puts her hands in the air (her sign for -"where is it?"). So she may have quite the awakening when Rose actually arrives ;) 

My sister took this picture while I was home in PA. I was 30 weeks. 

She seems to becoming more independent each day. Tim and I are always saying to one another, "She is looking like such a big girl!" It makes us a little sad to see our baby fade into the background, but also very happy to see what a fun little girl she is becoming!
She has been:
* running faster
* loves swimming
* saying more words- some of the recents are : pool (poo), church (chur), food (foo), bus (bu), cup (cu) and some more I can't remember at the moment. It seems like last week when we went home to PA and she spend time around her older cousins, she picked up even more words. She especially has seemed to get the hang of how to use her lips, teeth and tongue to make sounds a little better. When we say a word and she tries to repeat it, she is getting much closer to the actual word on the first try! But she won't always use it again on her own. It's been fun though. Just for kicks on our drive home from PA, Tim and I were saying the alphabet to her to see if she could repeat the letters and she could get quite a few out!

Of course with her new found independence have come some more temper tantrums, but she has been responding well to discipline so far. We just pray that the Lord will give us wisdom for each new day to guide in into all truth.  We are so thankful for this little girl!

We got this great profile ultrasound picture of Rose (at 26 weeks) and we couldn't believe how similar it looked to Madison's newborn profile pic.

Rose at 26 weeks

Madison's Newborn picture

What do you think?

We will find out soon enough!