Author: katherine.manton@gmail.com

In April 2013, I cut back to part time and was fortunate enough to be allowed to take Fridays off.  My Fridays are spent with my baby girl and I know for sure it was the best decision for me.  Fridays I have fun with her, catch up on everything she has learned during the week, catch up on laundry, it’s my official vacuum day and get the house in order as much as possible during nap time day.  Things that I may learn on Fridays that she has learned: Example:  She leaned on my shoulder and caught my hair and said “I sorry Mommy, I didn’t mean to”…Me…speechless.  Madison is officially in the copy everything anyone says phase.  I asked her last weekend if she wanted something…”Yes, I do.”  “You do???” “Yes, I do.”  I was cracking up and told Tim to listen to her, then said she even says it with a little southern accent (must be from her teacher at school).  She says “my accent” with an accent.  Haha!   Yes, she is saying full sentences all the time, and making sense and listening to EVERYTHING!

I must say, I loved the newborn phase, and the infant phase and now in the toddler phase, being able to communicate with her is so special and fun and amazing!  We literally can spend hours laughing at each other.  She makes me so incredibly happy and fills our life with so much joy and laughter.

On a more serious note…Last night she got stung by a gigantic wasp!  I felt so bad for her and she was screaming for almost an hour.  Luckily, she loves having ice (frozen peas!) on her whenever she is hurt.  She was strong.  It did get very swollen, but looks like she isn’t allergic, so we feel good knowing that we have gotten through that!  As first time parents, it is very scary though!

As you may have seen I bought a new camera!!!  So I had fun last Friday with that!  and OMG…it is an awesome camera!  Good thing she doesn’t mind!

Eating some leftover smoothie I made, and trying to offer some to Kali!

Playing in Kali’s water!!Just like her Mommy…if we are baking cookies we have to have a bite of the cookie dough.  (Although she tried to have WAY too much!)  She was working on rolling it into a ball.
Somehow washing her hands turned into her feet and legs and arms too!Dancing and singing in the kitchen while patiently waiting on her cookies.

We had a wonderful week at Topsail Beach this summer with Tim’s parents and brother and his Aunt and 3 young children.  Madison thought she was one of the big kids!  They built “forts” on the bunk beds and Madison would hang out with the big kids in there for hours some nights.  Although I loved seeing her have such a good time and be a bit independent, I did not like when I told her she needed to come downstairs and her response was “Mommy, Madison’s busy right now.”  WHAT??? Did my 2 year old just say that to me??? Yes.  She did.  and OH Boy…I was not happy…(okay, I kinda was laughing inside…but not on the outside!)

We went to the beach for a weekend back in March and we couldn’t keep Madison out of the water.  For some reason, this week was very different.  She LOVES the pool, but something about the waves was very scary to her this summer.  It took us until Thursday to finally get her comfortable, and then of course Thursday and Friday she wanted us taking her out to the “big ones” all day. (Big waves.)  We really had a wonderful week.

After that beach week, and much to our surprise…Madison was ready for a Big Girl Bed!  Mommy…was thinking she would be in her crib for much longer…but Madison had other plans!  Ever since 7.5 months old she slept wonderfully in her crib, so I was in no hurry to change that.  For a few weeks she was randomly getting up and would SCREAM for me and it was tough getting her to go back to sleep.  Monday night after the beach week we were up from 1:30am until 4am and finally I got her to sleep in our guest room bed.  That morning I asked if she liked it…”Yea, Madison big girl bed!”  Hold on little one…we have never even talked about this before, how do you know what that is?  Was it the big kids at the beach?  Was it someone at school who has recently moved into a bed?  I have no idea.  I then asked “you don’t want to sleep in your crib anymore??”  “No, Madison no crib.”…and there it was…clear as day.  It took me all day to swallow that conversation, but she told me she was ready to move, and yet again…I learn that I my plans don’t always work out!  And I’m becoming more and more okay with that.  The next week we had the guest room bed mattress on the floor in her room and she slept wonderfully again!  and so…here we go!! SOOOO excited about her new Big Girl Bed.  No bedding yet or anything…but she doesn’t care and is back to sleeping well.

Time to catch up!  We have been so busy lately, a good busy, but I haven’t had a personal blog post in far too long!  This week Tim would typically be out of town, but they let him stay home!  Of course with that said…he is still working as I type this.  The good news for me is that it gives me time to sit and catch up on photos of Madison and my family from the past few months.  As I go through editing them, I catch myself smiling and laughing as I really feel myself re-living certain moments…and THAT…right there, is why I have fallen so in love with photography.  Looking at a single picture can put you right back in that moment, mentally and emotionally.  I hope in 10, 20, 50 years I can look back at these pictures and again, find the emotions I felt from that very moment the picture was taken.  As I’m beginning this journey in photography, I hope that I am able to let others feel this same way!

Madison turned 2 in May.  We jammed in a very last minute birthday party to a busy weekend for my cousin’s wedding!  It worked out perfectly and Madison had a blast!  We were planning to get her a swing set for her birthday…yes planning…okay it is a very long story that no one cares about, but there was no swing set for her birthday.  She loves jumping on them at gymnastics and she has a few friends that had these awesome little trampolines, and she loves them!  We found a (probably fake) website that said they sell these for almost $100 less than anywhere else and Toys R Us price matched our print out from that website…no questions asked!  If you ever shop there, don’t leave home until you google search that item…you never know where you might find it of much cheaper!

And yes…she had a “Frozen” Cake!

The following weekend was memorial day weekend.  We had a birthday party for a friend in her class and were missing a neighborhood cookout.  When we got home, everyone was still out having fun, so we headed over for a bit!  She wasn’t so sure about this slide though…LOVED the water at the bottom of it, but couldn’t climb up on her own and didn’t want Daddy’s help…When you are just a little bit bigger baby girl!

Oh…and remember that swing set I was talking about…we finally made a decision and Madison absolutely loves it.  

And so does “Babygirl”.  Yes that is her baby’s name.

A few weekends later another cousin got married down in Atlanta!  On Saturday all the family hung out at my Aunt and Uncle’s pool and had so much fun together.  Madison and Taylor, my cousin’s daughter, are about a month apart and spent 2 nights together with a babysitter and had so much fun together.

One of many evenings spent running around playing outside.

Heading out for water day at school!  Last year at water day Madison HATED it…I’m serious, you’d never know it now, but the pictures they had of her she was SCREAMING crying in all of them.  It broke our hearts!  But this year, she had a blast!

Back in May I told Tim I really wanted to make time to do a 2 year old photoshoot, however…it was the end of June and do you think this happened yet??  NOPE!  So last weekend we went outside to play after dinner and I said to them, wait stay here.  Ran upstairs and got a dress and hair bow for Madison and grabbed my camera…we walked over to the greenway trails right behind us and did a mini 2 year photo shoot.  Madison was upset because I told her we were going to look for the fish, although she quickly realized, we weren’t.  The fish are in the other part of the greenway…we also heard lots of frogs, which completely freaked her out at which point she wouldn’t let go of me…Yes, this makes it very difficult to take pictures of her!  But I’m happy that I got a few good ones out of it, and we had a nice evening exploring and listening to every bit of nature surrounding us.  It really was nice!

Madison, you light up my life each moment of every day.  You are so kind-hearted, smart and you certainly know how to keep me laughing all the time.  (okay…most of the time…)   You are starting to sing the words to all of the frozen songs, and every once in a while you have started matching pitch.  I tested you last week to see if you could match my pitch…and you were right on!  Your singing, talking and laughter are the MOST beautiful thing to my ears.  You rock your babies while you sing to them and cover them with blankets so they can sleep comfortably.  You also “wake them up” every morning before school.  I am so incredibly thankful for you my sweet girl.  You are truly a gift and I love you more than you will ever know.

I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings! 🙂