Maddie and Daddy

We have had so much fun this summer with Madison.While I love my time with her and we have our special girls moments, she will have some great memories with her Dad as well. Mike has always been an amazing husband so I guess it is no surprise that he is an amazing dad as well. Here are just a few of my favorites Maddie and Daddy pics of the summer.

Hanging out on the big horse at Rod's Western Palace.

Learning how to buzz on Daddy's tuba mouthpiece. This is a lesson that he was giving at Music and Arts in Westerville. Maddie and I went out for a walk....to find some dogs to look at....during the lesson. Most of Mike's lessons are at the house. Maddie is going to miss them once school starts. She loves to go into the lessons and sit and listen. Sometimes she will just stand and watch. Sometimes she will dance as they play. My favorite though is to watch her crawl over and sit on Mike's lap as he teaches. Mike on a chair with his trumpet and Maddie just  listening. It's a wonderful picture.

An evening at Uncle Dom's baseball game. They won the district tournment and are headed to States next week. Looks like more baseball for us!

Cheering on Daddy at the softball field as he plays Friday nights.

Mike and Maddie after listening to Daddy play his tuba at Comfest. It was HOT that day. Maddie slept through the first part of the concert, but was up in time to dance and bust a grove to the final few numbers.

Uncle Vince

We had a wonderful, yet bittersweet evening at the Porretta's last evening. Mike's brother Vince is headed to Edmonton, Canada to pursue his doctorate in linguistics. While classes don't start until September, he is headed out this week to get settled in his new place before the rigors of school begin. We enjoyed some wonderful food thanks to Grandma Mary and just enjoyed our time together as a family.

Maddie got an early birthday gift as well, since Uncle Vince won't be here for her party in September.

She loved her dog birthday card and is in LOVE with her newest stuffed animal. She is all about dogs right now.When Maddie is not happy the one thing that gets her in a good mood is seeing a dog. She says 'doggie-doggie' and just grins and smiles.

We are so sad that we won't get to see Uncle Vince on a regular basis, but are so happy for this new phase of his life. Even though he won't be across town anymore we are excited to get to talk to him via SKYPE which Uncle Vince set us up with. Now thanks to our new webcam we will get to share with him all of our new words, dance moves and fun times as Miss Maddie grows up.

We Love you Uncle Vince!

Happy 4th of July

Maddie at the 4th of July concert in Bexley. Mike plays in the Bexley Meadow Band every 4th of July and Labor Day for their concerts. The last time Maddie heard the group play she was literally 3 days old. A little different this year for sure. She still got a little fussy and tired at the end of the concert like last time, but this concert she danced and walked all around the campus of Capital University. Here she is trying to figure out the pinwheels that lined the walkways.

We spent some time over at the Grandma and Grandpa Porrettas 4th of July weekend. Here is Maddie loving on Grandpa David. Notice the "Grandpas Rule" T shirt. It was pretty hot out so we put out the little blow up pool that Uncle Vince and Dom got her.

Here's Maddie showing off her new bathing suit. (Thanks Aunt Kathy and Cousin Erin). The little one already has the 4-H pose down. Norma Pitts would be so proud!

This is the closest that we ever got to actually sitting down in the pool. Most of her time is spent walking around and bending over and splashing. We still haven't made it to the 'big kid pool.' I am excited to get her into a pool where I can hold her and we can start to learn to kick and swim. I was such a water baby growing up. I hope that Miss Maddie has the same love of water as well.

Dancing Queen

Its no secret that Madison had a lot of musical experiences in her short 10 months. From sitting through countless piano lessons when I was pregnant to listening to me sing everyday in musical class she has had music as a part of her life from the moment she was conceived. Now music continues to be a part of her everyday life. If you come over to the house you will most likely hear her banging on the piano at some point during the day (sometimes in the middle of Mommy's voice or piano lessons). You will hear her singing with Mommy or listening to Mommy and Daddy sing nursery rhymes from her favorite jazz book. Madison sits and plays while Daddy teaches countless lessons in the front room ranging from trumpet to saxophone to clarinet. Maddie will walk in the from room, stare at the kids. Sometimes she'll walk over and want to crawl up on Daddy's lap and listen. The music never seems to bother her. It is a part of her everyday life and we hope that she will have a love of music just like her Mommy and Daddy.

So it shouldn't have surprised us when Miss Madison started getting her grove on to the music on my cell phone. She started bouncing around and waving her hand up in the air. Let's just say that Ellen might have a new dance partner for her talk show.

A collection of Madison

Miss Maddie LOVES it outside. Every time that we open the front door she either starts running or starts waving and flapping her hands. The other day Mike went out to get the mail and Maddie 'waited' for him inside the door. Evidently she was being a little silly, so he went in and got he camera. This is what he captured..........

Do you think maybe she was hungry? Needless to say we had to wash the windows later that afternoon.

Speaking of eating and dinner we had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner the other night. We have Maddie a meatball to start dinner, while we waited for the pasta to cool down. (I went ahead and threw in so rotini in the pot along with our noodles, thinking that it would be a little easier for her to eat) However, the minute we let her eat the pasta she wanted nothing else to do with her meatball. The little girl went through about 15 rotini noodles and then insisted on more, so she got some of our spaghetti.

 She had a hard time figuring out that she had to let go of one end of the noodle when she put it in her mouth/ She kept sticking a strand in then unknowingly pull it out. This made her frustrated and mad and in return she got tired. Tired girl + spaghetti = bath time and scrub down. 

New friends and fun times.

What a fun summer we are off to. I am excited to get to spend the year at home with Maddie next year and all of the adventures that we will have. We have already gone swimming, gone on runs in our new jog stroller, played at the park and had music time. We are excited to add another friend to our play group as well. Starting this week I have started watching a friends daughter, Marley, part time. Marley is almost 7 months and the girls are already having a great time.

On our first day together Maddie wanted to show Marley all around the house. We showed her how to play the piano and Daddy's guitar. Miss Marley even gave it a try herself!

Sharing Mommy has been a bit of a challenge, but something that Maddie is learning to do. Since Maddie is so mobile its hard for her to understand that Mommy has to hold Marley and take her places when Maddie can just go. As you can see from the picture above we are creative with how we do things.

The girls are also working on sharing toys. The first day we had a lot of talks about playing nice and being careful when touching each other...(ie not pulling on hair and poking each other in the eyes) I think that Maddie has finally figured out that Marley is real and not a doll. She is being much more gentle and kind and often offers up toys for Marley to play with (however most of the time she takes them right back.....we are still working on that part of sharing).

Here are some pictures of Marley and Maddie trying to figure each other out a little bit.

Doesn't this one look like they are up to no good? I have a feeling that I will be seeing a LOT of this over the next year.

New Best Friends. I can't wait to see what becomes of their friendship and time together as they grow up.

Weekend Fun

What fun we have had this week! Maddie got her pictures taken at JCPenny. She did a great job concidering I changed her into 3 different outfits and there was a random stranger talking to her and waving a big black box in front of her face with flashes! I will post some of her pictures later this week. After our pictures we went to the play area at the mall. Maddie LOVES it there. She just squeals with delight and tries to chace the other kids around. As you can see she likes to now climb up the animals! I am not ready for this yet. She definitly has a mind of her own and when she wants to do something she does it! Below are a few of the pictures that Mike took while we were playing. We have a video of her going up the stairs, but it is sideways and I can't figure out how to flip it around.

I have been busy this week making cakes as well. Maddie loves to sit in her high chair and watch me mix everything up. Her eyes get sooo big when the mixer goes on and she just claps and claps. This weekend I gave her a spatella to play with while I was working and she continued to carry it around the rest of the day. She is also a big help at clean up time as you can see.......She likes to go over and grab the towel off of the frig door and carry it around.

Now here is the result of our work........ This is a baby shower cake for my college friend Jami's new little neice. It turned out great.