Playtime!

Although Maddie seems to be able to make a supercool toy out of ANYTHING (see picture above), I decided to take her to a baby gym today. I'm so glad I did. We had a blast! Mike was feeling a little under the weather, so he didn't get to come. I took enough pictures so he'd feel like he was there though!
First, Maddie had to inspect the place for quality construction:

Once she was satisfied, she jumped right in! Who says you have to be 16 to drive?

Did I mention that this place was AWESOME? There were tons of toys for Maddie in a special toddler/crawler area, and then she could play on the big kids' stuff too.

The best part was...I got to go with her in the jungle gym area! (she never would have made it without me - those 8 yr olds were maniacs!) This is a picture of Maddie climbing the "stairs" to the slide. She can climb our stairs at home no problem, but these were farther apart, so I had to give her a little incentive by putting the camera on top of each step. :)

She got to the top though, and when she did, we went down a huge slide together! By the way, for being a kid's playgym, that slide was pretty darn fast! Maddie l-o-v-e-d it though! She doesn't really care one way or the other about the slide outside our house, but she giggled all the way down this one and at the bottom. We went down twice. It took about a half an hour to do the stair climb-to-slide rotation. :)

There was a lot of other stuff too, but I don't want to overload on the pictures. We had a really good time, and the best part is, when we got back, half of our downstairs was painted! (Not by Mike - we finally got someone to come and finish the painting for us) I'll post pictures of that when it's done.

Part Deux...After the Movie

Look out! There's an almost 1-year-old on the stairs! :) Maddie has so much fun climbing the stairs that every once in a while (actually, about twice a day), we let her "sneak" past the baby gate and climb the stairs. Her favorite game is pretending that we are trying to catch her but she's to fast for us. The only problem is that she starts laughing so hard that when she turns around to make sure we're chasing her, she loses her balance and tips backwards. Good thing we're always part of that game, huh?
Well, in adult news, Mike had a birthday today. We went to a casino where we pretty much only played roulette. Every single hand, we put at least one chip on the number that was Mike's age, and it didn't win a SINGLE time! Luckily, our other picks did, and we ended up positive $30 and two free buffets (I scored those from a worker named Jesus who was telling me to stop taking pictures in the casino. I took that opportunity to first apologize, and next proudly announce that it was Mike's birthday while pointing out his youthful looks.) Mike loves me for my talent in drawing attention to him. Needless to say, we had a really great time, and ended the night fondly remembering how fun dates are. Hopefully we'll get some more of those. :)
Sadly, we also watched U of South Carolina lose their bowl game while we were at the casino. Luckily, we did not bet on that game. ;-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all!

Maddie's New Toy

This is Maddie dancing with one of her new toys. This darn kiddo of ours seems to get cuter every day. She has started sprinting between the furniture, and she has really been developing her personality.

Christmas was conspicuously absent of most of our family, but it was good just the same. Sean, Mike's brother, came down from LA, and a friend of mine came over with her two kids, so we filled up the house anyway. :) I have another video to post for your viewing pleasure, but Mike is forcing me to end this blog so that we can watch Adventureland. So.....

TO BE CONTINUED!