Lemon Eating Girl

Madeleine has developed an interesting new eating habit. She likes to eat LEMONS. Makes Mommy and Daddy wince and pucker up to just think about it, but she will eat a lemon slice like it's a slice of orange. We discovered this habit at a restauant when we let her hold a lemon from one of our beverages in order to ward off a meltdown.

Now she considers it to be an essential ingredient in the dining out experience - as Mommy says, it's her "appetizer delicacy."






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Late Walking, Relatively Early Talking

To answer a question that we've been getting a lot from interested parties (grandparents), no, Madeleine is not walking yet and yes, she's a little behind the walking curve. Our pediatrician wants to have an orthopedist take a look at her feet to see if they are structurally sound and able to give her enough support - unfortunately, due to what could generously be described as a bureaucratic snafu between the doctor and the insurance company, the referral was delayed and we won't get in to see the ortho for 3 more weeks. Welcome to California.

Meanwhile, she's doing plenty of standing and walking while holding onto things - just not "freestyle" walking. Daddy thinks the B family foot genes may be part of the problem but also that, just like crawling, she may start "late" but once she starts she will be like lightning. He also thinks it's as much a motivational thing as anything - she just hasn't decided she's ready yet. The parenting message boards are replete with stories of kids not walking until 18, 19, even 24 months and turning out fine. But what do I know?

Her legs are certainly up to the task of supporting her.








She's doing a lot more talking these days and even took a stab at "strawberry" this morning. Grandpa Tom sent her a fun little toy that teaches kids how to sound out different letters of the alphabet - so that's how she's spending ALL morning today.





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Mommy and Madeleine Go to Disneyland

Daddy is finally letting Mommy post on the blog!

It took us a month, but Madeleine and I made our first trip to Disneyland today along with our next door neighbor Paola and her son Connor. Madeleine loved riding in the back seat with Connor and stealing his food as much as she enjoyed the rides at Disneyland. She liked the Snow White and Dumbo rides but got scared on small world - of course, her favorite part of the park was lunch!




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Looking for Cats and Staying Busy

Madeleine has found a word that she likes even more than Mama or Dada. Specifically, it is the word....."Cat!!!!!!!"

It's the first word she says in the morning and the last word she uses at night. Conservatively we hear "cat" 150 times a day.

There is a very friendly neighborhood cat named Bernie who always stops by to visit when we are out on the porch and will invite himself in when you leave the door open for a split second too long. One of Madeleine's favorite things to do in the morning or just before bedtime at night is to look for the cat.



As you can see in this shot, she's been brushing her hair before bedtime.


Time for bed! No more cats!!!!


Madeleine is also staying very busy. Already she's joined a playgroup, a swim class, a kids museum, two baby gyms, storytime at the library and she will join Mommy for a parenting class in the fall. Plus she gets to a park just about every day and goes running with Mommy at the Rose Bowl several times a week. She especially loves the children's garden at the Huntington Library (below) - oh yeah, she joined that too!


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Front Porch Social

What do you do on a nice and sunny afternoon when you're new to the neighborhood? You hang out on the front porch and get to know your neighbors. Madeleine has already made a number of baby friends in our new 'hood and even organized a short-lived baby jailbreak.






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Our First Earthquake

Had our first earthquake tonight about an hour ago. I was sitting out on the front porch and Hannah was in the living room and we both felt the ground shake and I heard one of the neighbors say "Earthquake." It was a mild shudder like you can sometimes feel when a bus drives by. Lasted about 3 seconds. Apparently it was a decent sized one at 5.0 and not terribly far from where we live. Hopefully that's the biggest one we get to experience!

Baby Kitchen

Madeleine loves playing with grownup things - pots and pans, mommy's shoes, our keys, etc. But she also likes doing the baby sized versions of grownup things, like the baby gym.

So now, we proudly introduce you to - Baby Kitchen, complete with miniature pots and pans and faux dishwasher, sink and oven.


Even though it just arrived today, her skills in the kitchen are threatening to surpass those of mommy.


Of course, sometimes only grownup sized things will do - as we discovered when she quickly spurned the overstuffed baby chair we got her in favor of Daddy's man chair, which she now climbs into and sits in (book in hand, of course)

Meanwhile, Mommy and Daddy are quickly learning how to speak SoCal-ease. Instead of fog, we have a phenomenon called "marine layer" - which looks, acts, and smells like fog.

And instead of referring to freeways as "I-95" or just "95" there is apparently a state law that forces you to say "the" in front of the number ("the 134" or "the 405"). Of course, I have no room to complain as I am a graduate of THE Ohio State University....


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Settling into Bizarro World

We are continuing to make steady progress on settling into our new place in Southern California. But even as we settle in, we are constantly reminded that it really is a different world here.

Step one to adjusting to SoCal - get yourself some shades. Sunglasses are essential out here and are taken very seriously by the locals - no more $10 drugstore specials for us!

Grandpa Bob and Grandma Kay visited us, and we put them to work on picture hanging, box unpacking, and babysitting. We did let them out one day for some tourism, going to Hollywood, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Santa Monica. We found a charming sidewalk cafe in Santa Monica that we will take them back to every time they come to visit - Bob especially can't wait to get back there again.

The baby's room looks a lot better after the grandparents' handiwork.
The living room and dining room are shaping up too but still work as a great place for a stroller catnap.
Madeleine is jibberjabbering a lot more and is adding words like "cat" and "shoe" to her vocabulary. She can also brush her teeth without much help from mom and dad.
Of course, she still loves her books.

Daddy got to take a break and catch a baseball game with some coworkers - the seats were not too shabby.
In the Bizarro world category, we learned that this house practically across the street from us was the setting for the horror film Halloween and people show up here on Halloween night in full costume to get their pictures taken.

We have also learned that the locals refer to this area as the Southland - which I always associated with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Sweet Home Alabama - but what do I know? And we have some fun DMV related stories to tell over a glass of wine sometime.

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Getting Settled

Our first full week in California has been interesting to say the least. Needless to say, California and Virginia are very different places. Already, we have lived in two houses, Daddy saw two cross-dressers and a person in a clown suit walking out of a bank, and we have been heckled by parrots. Kinda makes us wonder what week two has in store for us!

We really enjoyed our corporate housing - it was a fun little house with a great floorplan, a nice backyard and an incredibly short (1/2 block) commute for Daddy to work. To answer a question that several people have asked about a previous post, yes, it really did have a stable in the back - it's part of a development called Rancho Equestrian that was built for horse lovers in the movie industry.



Madeleine enjoyed having a backyard - she couldn't get enough of being outside, even using her patented one-legged skooch to get around the yard.



But, once our furniture arrived, we had something even better lined up for her - a house with a room truly her own for the first time!


Madeleine was happy to help Mommy organize her shoe collection - Mommy and Madeleine have their own closets now and don't have to share anymore - hurray!!!


Since it's sunny and warm here just about every day here (reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies - the first clip here although it's definitely PG-13 for language), Madeleine is spending more time outside than ever before. We've found some great parks and she's getting in some sand time to practice for our first family trip to one of the famous Southern California beaches.

And, she's begun to climb up on the little play areas and use the slide on her own - our little motion junkie likes nothing more than going down the slide as Mommy and Daddy watch nervously, then giggling and going again.

And yes, about those parrots, it seems that our new hometown has a local population of parrots, many of which like to congregate in the palm trees about 100 yards from our house. It's kind of interesting to see them and hear them for the first time - but they are LOUD and their 6am antics are enough to wake the dead. I wish my old roomate Mary still lived nearby - she would know what to do about them!

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