New Car Seats!

We bought Madison new car seats this week. She's just about to outgrow her infant carrier! We knew what brand we wanted, Britax, and that they are expensive. We found them online for 15% off and free shipping, and we thought that was a deal. They usually don't go on sale. Plus, we didn't have to pay tax!! We got the Boulevard for the Commander, and we got the Marathon for the Escape. The Marathon got here on Thursday, but the Boulevard didn't get here until yesterday. We decided after Madison went to sleep last night to try and install the Boulevard. Well, we must have been making it a lot harder than it was. It took forever, and then I didn't think it was very secure. In the end, we gave up and came inside to look up when they were doing car seat checks around Tulsa. As luck would have it, they were doing on today at Babies R Us. So, we decided to go to the Britax website to see if they had other instructions. Well, they had some videos that were really helpful. Jeff got up this morning and installed mine before he took it to get checked. They told him it was perfect!! So, that was good. He still needs to install his.

For some unknown reason, he wanted this pattern called "cowmooflage." It's basically a camouflage that looks like a cow! It's rather hideous!! AND, I think it really looks like a Dalmatian, not a cow! Jeff thinks it's just the coolest thing ever. I hope he realizes that we are going to be stuck with this for a long, long time!!! Here's Madison trying it out...

Mine is a subtle black/gray with a tiny swirl on it. It's much, much more conservative!! I think it looks more "timeless." AND, no one will be making fun of me!! Here's Miss Madison trying it out...

It's going to be different to actually have to figure out how to take her into stores instead of just leaving her in her infant seat. I'm sure we will adjust just fine. It's just going to be different. Oh, my big, big girl!!!

6 Months

Jeff took these pics this morning for me. He took a ton, but they were all blurry because someone was moving in all of them!! Miss Madison is 6 months old today, and she had her checkup. Her stats were:

• Weight: 17lb, 4oz--80th percentile
• Length: 27 3/4"--100th percentile
• Head: 45cm--100th percentile

I was just thinking the past few weeks that Madison was starting to grow into that big head of hers, but maybe I was wrong!!! She gets her head from her Daddy. I think so far that the big head is the only negative thing that she's gotten from Jeff. She has several negative things from me!!! Dr. Sood said that she was probably going to be 3 inches taller than me. I'm 5'5" tall, so that would make her 5'8". However, he told us last time that she was going to be 2 inches taller than me. So, I don't know. He did tell us that he thought we should have started with veggies instead of fruit because babies always prefer the sweeter things and then they won't eat the veggies. However, she really hasn't shown much interest in the fruit, except the bananas. She loved them! She hated the prunes and the applesauce. She really, really likes her oatmeal though. She got mad last night when she ate it all. I think I'm going to increase the amount we give her tonight.

I know I've said this several times before, but I just can't believe that our little baby is getting so big. I swear it was just yesterday she was born. She's getting more and more independent everyday. She HATES to lay down. She wants to be sitting up at all times. She's really loving the bumbo right now. We got some new Baby Einstein videos, and she's been sitting in her bumbo and watching them. She's such a big, big girl!!

Swimming

We finally got to take Miss Madison swimming today. We tried to take her over Memorial Day weekend, but she was so tired once we got to Grammy and Grampy's that she was a fussy butt! So, she didn't get to go then. We decided to go down today and try again. I already had her in in swimming suit and everything, so that all we had to do was get in the pool. Well, she was asleep when we got there, and when she woke up, she was really cranky. We decided to try and calm her down and get in the pool. It was a long, long battle to get her to calm down. We FINALLY got her in, and she did fine for about 30 minutes...until Grammy decided to put her in one of her floaties. She clinched her toes and did not want to put her legs threw the holes. Of course, she started crying and that was the end of it. I'm hoping that the next time we get to go swimming that we have a little different outcome. I think we will. She was trying to catch bubbles and actually had a few laughs at Grammy and Grampy. I just hope she starts to like her floaties because my arms were sure starting to hurt from carrying her around!! I guess she'll just have to learn to swim!!

Prunes & the Bumbo

We decided this weekend to moved beyond oatmeal and start on fruits and veggies. So, we debated on which to try first...fruits or veggies. I read a lot about which one to start first, but in the end we decided to go with fruit since she's been drinking prune juice since she was a week old. We figured that she would be familiar with the taste and not mind it as much. Boy were we wrong!!

This is her before we gave her the prunes. She looks so cute and unsuspecting of what is to come.

This is her after I had started feeding her the prunes!!

As you can see, she hated them!! She was gagging and everything. Needless to say, we didn't continue with the prunes after about another spoonful. We gave her the prunes for about 3 days, and she slowly has warmed up to them, but she's still not that crazy about them. She would much rather have her oatmeal!

Madison has been really sitting well in her bumbo lately. She likes to sit in it with the tray so that she can play with stuff on it. She's been really liking Bullet lately. So, here she is sitting in the bumbo playing with Bullet.

We haven't done a lot this week. We took Miss Madison to get her picture made yesterday. It was the first time we have taken her to get a professional picture made. She did okay. She never would smile though!! After we got home, I got terribly sick. I think it was my first TRUE migraine. It was awful. I ended up having Jeff call my mom because I was soooo sick. She stayed the night since Jeff had a doctor's appointment this morning. I didn't know how I would be in the morning. I feel much better, but just really dehydrated and weak still.

We don't have much else planned for the week. I filled out all my paperwork for my new job tonight. It only took me 2 hours!! I think we will probably go to Bristow on Saturday and then spend Sunday here for Jeff's first Father's Day!!!

So Cute!

I took this picture this morning, and I thought little Miss Madison just looked so cute. She's just such a big, big girl now!!

The Great Hunter

There have been birds out on our patio lately. We think they are eating Nacho's dog food. I think we are going to have to ration out his food and not leave it out all the time, because the birds are making a really big mess out there. Anyway, JJ has had a blast with them being out there. He loves to stalk them!! He's definitely our hunter.

For Rachel...

This post is all for my friend Rachel. She was one of my co-workers at Strat Land, and I love her dearly. She's been at Strat Land for the past 2 years, and it's been great to finally have another person there that was my age. For years, I was the only one there that was younger. So, I know how it's going to suck now that I'm gone!!

I just wanted to let her know how much she's meant to me over the past 2 years. I honestly don't think I could have made it through the past few years without her, especially the last year. She's always been there for me when I needed to vent about ANYTHING!! I almost didn't take the job with Samson because I knew that meant not being able to see her all the time, but I knew it was time to make a change. I'll still be downtown, so I hope we get to have lunch all the time.

Thanks for everything, Rachel!!

Madison got into Riverfield!!

We received a surprising call last night from the Admissions Coordinator at Riverfield Country Day School last night that they had a slot open for Madison beginning in the fall. I had been in contact with the school to see what the status was for the past couple months to see if we were going to get in. As of last time that I had talked with the Admissions Coordinator, I didn't think Madison had a chance of getting in because we were 3rd on the waiting list and they only had 1 slot to fill. Low and behold, the 2 people in front of us backed out!! So, we are very excited. This daycare is where we really want Madison to go.

Now all I have to do is get a job to pay for her to go!! No pressure. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up, we will figure out a way even if I have to do temp work until I find a real job. It will make it easier on me to find some kind of job since Madison will be in daycare.

One hail of a weekend....

We good had intentions this weekend of getting Madison into her own baby pool. Mother Nature didn't cooperate though. We actually have 2 blow up pools, 1 for Madison and 1 that we bought last summer for Jen and I to use. I spent part of the afternoon Friday afternoon blowing the pools up and filled the big one so that the water could warm up so that we could use it on Saturday. I didn't fill Madison's up until Saturday morning because I wasn't sure if it would blow away since it's so small. By the time we got back from running errands Madsion's pool was empty!! The bottom had 2 holes in it, so I had to patch it up. The bigger pool must have a small hole in it because it had gone down a little bit, so before the sky opened up Saturday morning I hooked the air pump back up to it. I gave up and took cover from the first storm.

Within a few minutes our yard looked like this... (the white stuff is pea to quarter size hail)

Sunday morning the sky opened up again, but the storm was a little more intense. Our house was right on the line of strong/heavy storms (the area to the south of us got larger hail-baseball to softball size hail) we managed to only get pea to quarter size hail again (nothing to bat an eye at though). We also had 60 mph winds and received 1.5" of rain in a very short amount of time. The temp cooled off and made the pool water a little too cold so we never got in. I ended up dumping the pools and putting them up for the week, which was an experience in itself because the bottom and sides of the pool were covered with small slugs. Jen was not impressed since she had many bad experiences with slugs around her parents pool growing up!