BOY oh BOY!!

It's a.... BOY! I kept telling Derek this time I thought it was a boy but to actually go to the ultra sound and hear them say "It's a boy!!" was so exciting!! We feel so lucky that we will soon have a little boy and girl :) I think relief best sums up how Derek felt! As we sat down for the ultra sound Derek took a deep breath, lol! Not that he hasn't loved being a father to a girl, he just has been told by many people they think he is going to have all diva girls like Mads :)  Safe to say he was on cloud 9 when little baby W showed off his goods right away! For the record when we polled the family for votes on Madelyn, the majority by far was boy. This time when we polled the majority by far was girls, guess we know who not to count on for predications lol!

This weekend we are moving and last night was offically our last night sleeping in our old house. It is bitter sweet as we are so happy we sold but it is hard not to think of all the memories made in a home. All I keep saying is thank goodness we leave for Iowa on Friday, if I didn't have that excitement to keep me going I don't know how I would make it through this weekend/week! I think it is safe to say we will never move again at the holidays, with a toddler, while pregnant!  Thank you to Derek's dad Dale and brother in law Andy for helping with the movie and for his mother Mary Ann for sending some food our way to help during the move!

Last weekend we had breakfast with Santa. Madelyn loved the breakfast part but not so much the Santa part! Everyone needs a good screaming Santa picture, right?! LOL! Have to keep this a short post as I really should be packing! Here are a few pics/videos!

No twins!! Our vision was Madelyn would run in and open the box and lots of blue balloons would come out, clearly with a cranky 18 month old things never go as visioned haha!

With Mama at Breakfast with Santa, gotta love that new smile!

Priceless, haha!

Sitting with Daddy at church for a play one of my students was in,  someone was SO good!

Thanksgiving

It seems every year we have more to be thankful for. This year we are so thankful that we have been given the most amazing daughter. We can't imagine life without her and don't know how we got so blessed to have her! To top that off we are beyond thankful this year to be expecting another baby! We also are under contract on our house and so thankful for how everything has worked out with this.  The buyer requested a 30 day closing, so on top of holiday stress we are packing and trying to move. Since we don't have time to find a house we want due to the short close, we are renting a friends house who has had it on the market for awhile. It will be stressful because this of course will mean two moves instead of one, but it is worth it to make sure we find the right home and in the right area! Lastly, this process has reminded us how thankful we are for the amazing friends and family who have supported and helped us through this crazy transition!

For Thanksgiving this year we headed up to Virginia on Wednesday to spend it with Derek's family. As always we had such a great time with all the family. Madelyn absolutely loved being with her grandparents, Aunts and Uncles. She hasn't stopped saying their names since coming back to Charlotte. We had a great meal and hated it had to be such a short trip as we needed to get back to pack!

Madelyn has been a learning and talking machine lately! I wouldn't even know where to start to list all her new words. One big thing is she has started counting really well. We have worked on 1-6 and she does it all on her own. (minus often skipping 4 haha) She also will repeat all her ABC's and can do A through D on her own. Our favorite story from this week was she was busy playing and was counting to herself then we heard her say this:... "A,B,C,D, G,I, 8, 9, YEAH!" Apparently her mind is on overload of the abc's and counting, haha! 

This Thursday we find out if Madelyn is getting a BROTHER or SISTER :) We can't wait to find out!!!

Such a cutie on Thanksgiving

Blowing Kisses :)

Family picture over Thanksgiving

 Nanny and Poppy with Tate and Mads

Our new cheesing smile when we ask her to smile for a picture, haha!

Dermatologist Appointment

Today we took Madelyn to the pediatric dermatoligst. We were happy to finally take her as we have fought her diaper rash badly since about 7 months. The visit went great in the sense they took a culture and the doctor was able to diagnosis her immediately after looking at her. She let us know Madelyn has irritant contact dermititis, basically extremely sentsitive skin. Where in most babies/children when irritants in soaps, detergents, lotions, etc. contact their skin they produce oils to bring the balance back to a normal level, Madelyn's is so sensitive she can't. Therefore everything we have tried over the past 9 months has actually made it worse because it was just more chemicals on her skin. We were happy to have an answer however, the solution isn't going to be the fun part. We can no longer use any soaps, lotions, even baby wipes on her!! In the bath we have to use baking soda, wet paper towels and vaseline instead of wipes, etc. For right now during each changing we also have to apply this thick prescription zinc oxide compound paste to her. The doctor explained it that this will be a pretend layer of skin to protect her and to let hers heal, while we use no products/chemical irritants on her. Eventually we will be able to just use the cream at night. The bad part is this cream is not covered by insurance and costs $60 a container, yikes!! Of course all of this will be better once she is out of diapers so lets say we are very motivated to start training her, haha!

Cutest little patient!

Woah guys 26 lbs, I may need to lay off the milk some!

A quick lunch after my doctors appointment!

Loving the leaves!

Halloween!

We had a great Halloween this year with Madelyn! We only took her trick or treating to a few neighbors and then brought her home to help hand out candy to the other kids. At first she wasn't so sure about all the kids in costumes but after a few she had a good ol' time handing out candy. I wouldn't say she was the fastest at handing out candy so I am sure some of the kids were ready to get their candy and go by the time Mads got it in their bag!! 

Of course she is in this stage that is about near impossible to get a picture of her. Before you can even snap a pic she is off. To make it worse right after we dressed her up I took her out to the front steps to try and get the perfect picture and right as we got out she fell and busted her poor lip! So for the rest of the night she was a cat with a fat lip and no perfect picture lol :( 

This weekend Derek's parents came down to spend some time with Madelyn. She is really getting attached to family who come and all day after they left she kept asking for them. We really enjoyed having them here for a quick visit!

Right before Trick or Treating :)

Waiting for trick or treaters to come!

Practicing handing out candy to dada

Looking at all my goodies the next morning!

little helper

Playing with Poppy

Reading with Nanny, while eating an apple (someone is obsessed with apples right now)

Showing Nanny and Poppy how smart I am on the IPad

Big Sister!!

Well as most of you know, Madelyn will be a big sister as of next May!! I am currently 13 weeks pregnant and our due date is May 4th. We had a doctors appointment this week and everything went great and the babies heartbeat was 159.

Madelyn had a fun filled weekend. It started Friday with the Davidson Halloween March where the kids march downtown in their costumes and businesses sit outside and hand out candy. Madelyn loved it and did a great job of walking with her bag. However, after walking about a block she sat down in the middle and started pulling all her treats out of her bag. She apparently was spent and ready to check out her goods! She loved it so much she cried when we left and did not want us to take off her costume! We also had a few house showings this weekend, which meant lots of park time since we have to be out of the house! Today, we actually had a showing that requested to come back the same day so she had two park trips. She could barely keep her head up at dinner she was so tired!!

Here are some pictures and videos to enjoy :)

WAIT, What did you say, I won't be the baby anymore!!! 

stopped to smell the flowers 

Halloween March!

Cutest little cat waiting for the march to begin (couldn't get her to look for a picture, to busy watching all the other kids)

Watch out, Madelyn is behind the wheel lol!

  

This girl could go down the slide all day!

Add caption

Here is a video Derek got of her saying lot of words, topless lol (right after a messy dinner and the shirt had to go)  :)

We have been on the go over the past few weeks. Two weekends ago we spent back to back weekends in VA. We had a wedding one weekend and headed up for a tech game the next. Though two weekends on the go can be tiring it was really nice to spend time with the White side of the family. Madelyn had a great time with her cousin, Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents!

This past weekend we were very excited to have Nana and Papa here for a long weekend. It was such a fun weekend of shopping, baking, delicious meals and of course Madelyn loving time with them. The boys got to enjoy a night out to the race and mom was such a big help getting stuff done to the house. As always it was very hard when they left. We wish we could have these weekends more often!

Madelyn has started the lovely tantrums and beginning of what we think is the fun terrible two stage. Everybody knows how high strung she is so it was no surprise we would be starting this soon, lol! She is definitely getting very upset when she doesn't get her way or something she wants. She has even started biting us to show how angry she is! She continues to repeat EVERYTHING! A funny example is; while mom was here she was trying to get the attention of a worker at Walmart and said "Sir" next thing we know Madelyn is screaming SIR over and over at the man! I guess she was just trying to help, she sure did get his attention, haha!

Some of her latest words are: please, thank-you, help, rocks (all she wants to do it play in them), apple, stay and spoon. She is able to say and identify a dog, cat, cow and duck. She also can say the sounds that go with them except for duck. However, sometimes her moo and meow and gets mixed up:)

Madelyn has battled a bad diaper rash on and off since she was about 6 months. She also has always had very sensitive skin. However, lately it seems to have gotten worse. Getting the rash very often and red marks on her skin all the time. Her pediatrician has finally decided that we need to take her to a pediatric dermatoligst. We are actually relieved as hoping to find a solution to the poor girls constant rash! We go on November 7th.

                      Poppy and cousin Tate
                                                                              

                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                   Just sending some e-mail with Uncle Carter

                                              

                                                    Hauling rocks with Papa, our new obsession!

Waiting on our cookies to bake with Nana 

Cutie out to dinner with the girls! 

Checking out our Halloween goodies from Nana and Papa

Looking at her new clothes, saying "cute" as picking up each one! Yes we have one future DIVA on our hands! We also learned to twirl when showing daddy our outfit.

Better late than never :)

 I know once again we have fallen behind on posting. I am very sorry. We are currently in the process of putting our house on the market and have been working away any free moment to get it ready. As of next week it will finally be up, please keep your fingers crossed we sell! I am very nervous about going through this process with a one year old. Keeping our house picked up for showings is hard enough let alone with the tornado of toys Mads leaves us with every night!

Madelyn has a lot of new words she is saying. Some of our favorites are; good girl(we always said this to her, she now says it about herself when she picks something up, lol), down, eat, boo, uh-oh, purple, yellow and please. She repeats most things we say these days. We are working with her putting two words together.

We received a text from our sitter this week that Madelyn has learned to tattle on AJ (the other little boy) however, he has never does anything wrong, it's her new trick. She also tries doing this to Bo at home. She teases him with her snack or feeds him, once he eats it she comes running, screaming and tattling on him. We all know she is a little diva and this new trick is right up her alley.

Becoming a little artist

Helping Daddy with some yard work

Mama and Mads in their Beckett Tee's

Loves to swing at the park

Can't stop reading "melmo" even white eating snack

Morning tea party

End of Summer...

It is so hard to believe that next week it is back to school and summer vacation is over :( I feel like I am going back from maternity leave again and very sad to leave Madelyn. However, we are very thankful for the wonderful summer we had and all the fun things we got to do.

Last week Madelyn and I took our last summer trip and headed to Florida. We met Dad and Dorice at their condo on Indian Rocks beach. To make it even better my best friend Kara got to come down for most of the week. The joys of being teachers :) The week was absolutely perfect (other than missing Derek)! We got a lot of beach/pool time, relaxation and delicious seafood. Madelyn again was perfect on the trip down. Just like last time, many passengers on the plane couldn't believe how well behaved she was.

Madelyn is talking like crazy. I think everyday she has a new word she can say. Her most recent words are "wa-wa" (water, she got a lot of use of this one is Florida as she was obsessed with the pool and beach), on, off, up, dog, duck, cheese, ba-oon (balloon), book, no, and melmo or mo (elmo). Last month we gradually stopped her bottles and now she is drinking her whole milk only out of a sippy cup. I actually think this was harder on me than her. She also got her first training toothbrush and we have started teaching her to brush her teeth before bed. I think she just likes chewing on the toothbrush and eating the toothpaste most:) She has also associated reading a book to bedtime and insists on pointing to the "book" before we turn her music on.  She can now point and show you her nose, ears, teeth and toes are. We are working on eyes and belly.

This week I am busy getting my classroom ready, all Madelyn's things together to take to her sitter and trying to enjoy our last week off.

Lunch date with dada
before we left for FL

Loves the wa-wa/pool!

Out for dinner in FL

Cutest little beach girl

Playing in the sand with Kara

Loves the beach!

Clearwater Aquarium, watching the stingrays with Grandpa

Mesmerized by the fish!

Waiting for the dolphin show!

Watching Nicholas the Dolphin do so many tricks!

Someone wasn't going to let us have happy hour without her!

Morning walk on the beach

Out for lunch and checking out the shops at St. John's Pass boardwalk :)

Our view each night

With Grandma and Grandpa at dinner our last night in FL

Someone was SO excited to see dada when we got home, even napped with him :)