{MaDDiX the BoaRdEr}

Jeremiah was outside playing with the kids yesterday and took this video of Maddix on the penny board!  Maddix is obsessed with the skateboard since he sees Ayden & Zoey riding around, but I CANNOT believe that he was able to stay on this long!  Crazy!!  Maybe he will be a little boarder himself!!  :)

{FlasHbaCk FriDaY}

So crazy that this week last year.......

....this little guy was just getting his 1st 2 teeth...and now he only needs 2 more to fill up his mouth.....

....and this little guy lost his very 1st tooth!!

And now he has lost a total of 6.....

He was brave as could be back then letting Daddy pull out his teeth with floss.....and now he pulls out his own teeth with a piece of floss attached to the slamming door!

And this is what his 5 year old sissy is gonna look like any day now.....2 missing teeth!!

Yep, we are getting and losing teeth like crazy around here!!  As long as the Mom and Dad don't start losing their teeth, I think we're all good!!  :)

{SoCal RagNar}

This past weekend, Jeremiah and I did the SoCal Ragnar relay race with 5 other couples/friends!  The race was 200 miles running from Huntington Beach to San Diego.....through Corona (so the long way)!  We were split in 2 vans....the girls were in one and the boys in the other.  Our team name was "Half Nuts".....we decorated our vans and said that Van 1 was "nut free" (that was us girls) and that Van 2 "contained nuts" (that was the boys)!  HAHA!!  

I was runner #1 and Jeremiah was runner #11.....we both ran just under 18 miles total for all 3 of our legs.  While the girls were running, the boys were "resting" and vice versa!  The girls were first, so we had to meet up at 5 am because our 1st run was at 7:15 am in Huntington Beach!  Here are the 5 other girls....I am the one taking the pic....at 5 am right before we left!  It was COOOOOLD!!!

Jackie, Britta, Joanna, Liz & Kim......

I was really excited to be runner #1!!  It was cool to start the race and then to be finished with my 3rd leg knowing that there were still 11 people that had to run after me!!!  :)   My 1st leg was 5 miles and most of that I got to run along the coast of Huntington Beach as the sun was rising over the buildings on the opposite side of PCH.  It was absolutely beautiful and totally refreshing!!  I was totally worried about having to run "by myself".  I know that I was never really alone cuz there were runners everywhere, but I am so used to running with my little running group that has 3 other girls.  I never ever really run by myself....I rely on those girls to talk to me and keep me going....cuz sometimes it gets so hard that I know if I was alone, I would just quit!  So I was surprised that as I started running with my music blaring in my ears and the gorgeous beach scenery to the right of me, I quickly got in my groove and it felt amazing to be running!!!

Here I am right out of the start line.....that is me #282 just behind that girl in orange!  I look happy huh??  HAHA!!  So funny how excited I look!!  My team was right there cheering me on out of the gate!!  :)  It's funny that there were this many people around me at the start because as soon as we got going, I was at the head of the pack and noone ever passed me!  :)

Here I am at the end of my 5 miles.....surprisingly still smiling!!  HA!  Probably because I am done with leg #1!!  :)  Ready to pass off to my friend Jackie....

And then it was time for me to "relax" for the next 5 runners as we moved from exchange to exchange!  Here is runner #2 Jackie handing off to runner #3 Britta!  These girls are 2 of the 3 girls that I run with all week long....they are amazing and so encouraging and they keep me going!!  :)

Britta....

Runner #4.....Kim....

Runner #5....Liz....

Runner #6....Joanna....

Our van....

This was our 1st exchange where we met up with the men in Yorba Linda!  There were only 3 times during the whole race that we saw the guys.....it was always when we exchanged from runner #6 to #7 and from #12 to #1.  We were missing a couple husbands at this point, so I don't have pics of everyone!

Britta and her hubby Jonathan....

 

Jackie and her hubby Brandon....

Kim and her hubby AJ....

It was about 11 am at this point and time for the guys to start their 1st leg....and time for us girls to rest!  We drove to Corona and had from about 11:30 am to 3 pm before we had to meet up again.  I came home, showered, ate lunch and hung out with my dad while we watched the news of the Bostom Marathon bombers being captured!  Ayden was at school and my mom took Zoey and Maddix to Pretend City for Zoey's school field trip!!  So grateful that my parent's were able to come and watch the kids so we could participate in the race!

The girls met up at 3 pm again and headed to Lake Elsinore where we were meeting up with the guys again at the next exchange to start our 2nd leg.  The guys were cheering on their last runner of this leg!

Right before I left on leg #2.....had to use the port-a-potty!  Yuck!! I seriously never use these things and most of the time, I would rather wet my pants than go to the bathroom in one of these!!!  YUCK!!!

My 2nd leg started at almost 5 pm in Lake Elsinore and was 6 miles long.  It was hot....like really hot!!  And I don't run in the heat.....EVER!!!  I don't even run in the sun....let alone the heat!!  Remember, I get up at 5 am to run.....so me and running in the sun and heat are not a good match AT ALL!!!  It was an awful run....I was totally miserable....it was way too hot.....super super windy....I had to run through the disgusting old par of the city of Lake Elsinore....and there was dirt and dust flying all over the place.....getting in my mouth and my eyes!!  BLAH!!  It was miserable!!  But I survived....and was glad that I was done with leg #2!

We did a ton of this for 36 hours......sitting in the car....driving from exchange to exchange....

  

And we hardly did any of this......

We stopped at a friend's parents house in Escondido after our 2nd leg and showered and slept there from about 12:30 am - 1:45 am......we had to get up and get moving because my next and final run was at 3 am in Carlsbad.....another 6 miles!  I was super scared and worried about running in the middle of the night...but I survived and it was actually a great run....just like the one I started with in Huntington Beach!  :)

After all us girls ran our 3rd leg from about 3 am - 9 am, we went to a hotel that they guys had stayed at in San Diego during their last break.  We showered again and took another hour and a half nap before we had to head back to the beach to meet our guys at the finish line!  I wasn't able to get any running pics of Jeremiah since he was runner #11 and I never got to see him run!  Here is our final runner #12....Jonathan....right before the finish line waiting for all 12 of us to gather together to run across the finish together!

Here come the other 5 guys ready to finish....

All 12 of us after crossing the finish....in our "half nuts" shirts....

Jackie and I....

The girls....

We finished about 2:30 pm....almost 30 hours after we started....and sat around for a little bit.....finally all 12 of us together!

The guys van on our way home....

Guys....

Girls....

Time to take all our signs off the cars....we were getting some interesting looks! HA!

Now that it is over....all said and done....I can admit that I had so much fun!!  I admit that it was torturous when we were in the middle of it.  It wasn't fun at all to not sleep....I decided I am way too old to not get any sleep!  I'm not ready to sign up for another one just yet, but you never know....I may forget about the pain by this time next year!!  :)

Thanks Mom & Dad for watching the kids!!  They made it look so easy....they did a bunch of yard work for us, cleaned up our backyard for summer and even planted new flowers in the front and back!!  They also took Ayden to his baseball game on Saturday and took Zoey to a field trip on Friday!!  What?!?! Why do they make it look so easy!!  HA!!

Here are some pics of Zoey and Maddix at Pretend City....

HAHA....this is so cute!!  I love that Maddix is in the middle of all the preschoolers...he totally looks like a preschooler himself!!  :)

Maddix getting snacks from Grandpa at the baseball game....

{ZoeY thE wRiteR}

A newly turned 5 year old Zoey.....

....is all of a sudden into writing all day long!!  She gets out pieces of paper and just writes!!  She never asks me how to spell anything....she literally just sounds every word out and writes it as she hears it!!!  It must be the teacher in me, but I can totally read what she writes!!  It's funny cuz it looks like a bunch of random letters and Jeremiah has a hard time making sense of most of it, but I get it!!  :)  Sheesh.....already reading....now writing.....I am predicting that it is going to be fun to watch this little girl go through school!!

About a week ago, Ayden was obsessed with ninja smoke bombs and Jeremiah helped the kids make some out of real eggs!!  Zoey wrote down the directions for how to do it.....

"How to make a ninja smoke bomb.

First you get all the yolk out of the egg and you put in cornstarch.  Then you put in the egg water.  Then you put in the egg kool-aid"!

(I'm not sure why she puts the little dash in between each word, but I like it....definitely makes it easier to read!!  I can only imagine what a bad habit this will be for her kindergarten teacher to break)!!

"I'm writing a title of Nate in cursive....Nate the Great".....wow, she's even practicing her cursive!!!  HA!

(she told me that the 2 little dots above some of the letters mean that that letter says its name...ha....who knew?!?!?)

This is a sign that she put up on her bedroom door......

"You can only come in my bedroom if you are 5 or older and play."

{18 MoNthS oLd}

I cannot believe he is 18 months old.....one and a half.....almost 2!!  It really is crazy!!  He is almost totally out of the "baby stage" and although I am sure this will make me sad as time goes on, I am actually kind of glad to be saying goodbye to "baby" life....just not sure I am ready to say hello to the "toddler" stages just yet!  Maddix is officially a MAJOR handful!!  Gone are the days that I could keep him contained!  He is a boy on the run!!  He is so stubborn and so strong willed!!  He makes Zoey's tantrums/fits when she was a stubborn toddler look angelic!  The difference is that Maddix has a major attitude and when he doesn't get what he wants, he gets angry.....he hits and throws things!  This is all a new thing for me since Zoey and Ayden were not this way, so we are trying to learn how to "tame the beast"!!  :)  

I know....he looks so sweet and innocent here, doesn't he?!?!  HAHA!!

We went to the doc for his 18 month check up!  He was 28.5 lbs (92nd percentile) and 33 inches (70th-75th percentile).  I'll have to double check what he was last time, but he seems to be slowing down in the growth department!  Everyone always comments on how tall he looks.  I think people just expect him to be big since his birth parents are big.  But I checked back at Ayden and Zoey's scrapbooks and I was shocked to see that both Ayden AND Zoey were taller than Maddix at 18 months.  He has them beat with weight, but not height!  The doc did say that his head was off the charts big!!  HAHA!!  He asked me if "big heads" run in the family!!  Hmmm....not sure about that one?!?!  :)

Maddix is doing everything developmentally that he should be doing.  We have to see a specialist about his eye that always waters.....will probably have to have the tear duct surgery since it should've been cleared up by the time he turned 1.  Other than that, he checked out good!!  He had to get 4 shots and was a champ through them all!  I hate that part with a passion!  He kind of winced for each shot, but didn't really cry until the last finger prick test and then only cried for a second!

This might be one of my favorite pictures ever of this boy at the doctor's office.  He sure looks tall and skinny here, doesn't he?!?!

Maddix is into everything right now!  At least 10 times a day, I am telling him to get off the kitchen counters! I swear that he is like a cat....he climbs up on the bar stools all day long and gets whatever is in his reach off the counter!!  At least he only has access to the island, so as long as I keep that clear, I am safe!!  :)

He is a super duper picky eater!!  There are not a lot of things that he likes to eat and he doesn't even like to try new things....which is pretty frustrating!!  That's probably why he is shrinking!  HA!  He has oatmeal every morning for breakfast, which he loves.  And lately he has been having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day for lunch, which he loves!  He still is obsessed with milk and asks for it ALL DAY LONG!  I was giving him 3 cups of milk a day and the doc told me to cut back a little....so now I give him 2 1/2 cups a day and I am surprised at how much more and how much better he is eating!!  He loves to snack.....loves crackers, any type of bread, bananas, berries, grapes, raisins, Cheerios, edamame and of course anything and everything with a hint of sweet!!  He is not at all a fan of cheese, veggies or meat!!  It is crazy that he doesn't like chicken!!  A couple nights ago tho, we did get him to eat fish!  He LOVED it!!

He is OBSESSED with being outside....just LOVES it!!  And he throws the BIGGEST fit I have ever seen when it's time to come inside!  He loves to ride around on his little quad or follow the big kids on his scooter.....or try out somebody's skateboard!  It will not be long before he is keeping up with them!  :)  A couple weeks ago, Jeremiah got down Zoey's old bike and let Maddix give it a shot!  It is just his size, so we just need to get him coordinated enough to scoot around on it!!  :)  Oh....and we might need to paint it blue too!!  :)

The other day, I asked Ayden to get Maddix out of his crib from his nap.  When he came downstairs, Ayden and Zoey were laughing and saying that they had changed Maddix's diaper!!  I was worried....that can't be a good thing I remember thinking!!  There was Maddix in a pink pull up that came as a bonus in our last batch of diapers we bought!  HA!

And right behind him was Ayden sporting his very own Lightening McQueen pull up!  HA!  I think this picture is definitely wedding video material if you ask me!!  :)

Here is another good wedding video pic.....Maddix loves to wear everyone else's shoes!!  :)

I used to be Maddix's favorite person, but just like clockwork (and in sync with exactly what the other 2 kids did), Maddix has moved on and is now obsessed with Daddy!!!  Everything is all about daddy!!  He says Daddy a thousand times a day, talks to him on the phone, runs up and hugs his legs for no reason, climbs up in his lap.....he is obsessed!!  When daddy is around, he wants nothing to do with mommy!!  Ayden and Zoey did the same thing about this age, so it is nothing new for me!  I'm glad they all have a daddy that they love and want to be around!

Here is what Maddix does when Jeremiah is out working in the garage or when he hears the garage door open after Jeremiah has been gone.....he peeks through the doggy door and yells "dada.....dada.....daddy.....daddy....." until Jeremiah greets him!!

Ayden tried giving Maddix a piggy back ride the other day....it didn't work out very well since Maddix crashed and slit his eye on a chair and ended up with a black eye!  We really are lucky that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often with as much as Ayden mauls him!!

This shows how big he is getting....he's a smart little guy!  I got this activity out a few days ago and just thought Maddix would throw the blocks around.....but I was shocked to see him stacking and threading and using them correctly!  HA!  He played with this for about 30 min....I think it's a pretty good "babysitter" and I need to get things like this out more often!!  :)

Last Sunday was his 1st day in nursery!  We have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this day to come!!!  He is REALLY impossible to have at church and Jeremiah has had to be out in the hall with him during the 2nd & 3rd hour for about the past 6 months!!  So we have been looking forward to the day that we could hand him off to someone else to watch him!  HA!

On his 1st day, he fell asleep right before nursery started, so Jeremiah laid him down on the floor in nursery and left him.  He wasn't too excited when he woke up, so day 1 was not a success!!  

But day 2 was!!!  He went this past Sunday and was awake the entire time!!  He had a blast and only pulled one of the little girls pigtails!!  :(  I must admit that he is my first child that I am kind of leaving in nursery....not because I don't think he can handle being there, but I am worried what he will do to other kids....he has been known to bite, pull hair and hit!!  Eeeeek!!!!  Yes, he is THAT kid....I just hope he isn't THAT kid in nursery too!!!  :-/

It was so much fun for me to look back on Ayden and Zoey's first day of nursery!!!  Such a fun comparison....

Ayden at 18 months....

Zoey at 18 months.....

Maddix at 18 months.....

It's crazy how young he seems to me compared to Ayden and Zoey at this age!  I guess that is because he is #3!  I noticed that when Ayden turned 19 months (just 2 weeks away for Maddix), we moved him out of his crib and into a queen sized bed!!!  HA!!!  I CANNOT believe that!!!  We were getting ready for Zoey to be born in just a couple short months, but still.....there is NO WAY that I am anywhere NEAR ready for Maddix to be on the loose at bedtime and nap time!!!  HA!

He is the best sleeper though and I am sooooo grateful for that!!  He is sleeping 12 hours at night and he will nap for anywhere from 3-5 hours a day!!  It is crazy sometimes when I put him down at 9 am and he sleeps til almost 2 pm!!  It's a good thing too.....because he makes the most of his waking hours!!!  :)