Santana Row Halloween Highlights

((More in my Picasa Album - Click on October link under photos.))

Today we headed to Santana Row for their Halloween & Trick or Treating event. It was so much fun to see all of the little kiddos dressed up! (and some parents, too!)

This year, Jason is Luke Skywalker and Madison is Yoda. Based on this scene:

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From 2009 - 10 - October

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Where's Madison?

My favorite part is the way she laughs and giggles when the blanket is still over her head.

Kick Kick Kick

Maddie kicks her legs like nuts whenever we pick her up. What's cuter than chubby baby legs flailing about?!

A Lesson From Daddy

How to Rock Out

Mommy Has a First!

I ran my first race this morning! It was 5K in the Livermore Grape Stomp.

Pinning on my very first race bib. And look! My number was 825, my birthday! I took it as a good luck sign.

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Ready to run.

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And we're off! I can't help but take one last glance toward my fan club (hubby and daughter) cheering for me!

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Jason captured this while waiting for my return.

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Homestretch.

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Crossing the finish line!!!! (What?? You see the heel of my shoe, right?)

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Post-race with my beautiful baby.

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The race was fun! I did better than I anticipated since my training didn't go as well as I would have liked. I was able to run without walking until about mile 2 and after that, I walked only a few times. I'm still waiting for my time to be posted online. I'll definitely be signing up for the Turkey Trot next month. It's a 5K in downtown San Jose on Thanksgiving morning.

Update: Got my time. I came in 17th place (out of 36) in my group (Female age 20-29) with a time of 34 minutes 40.5 seconds. :) I'm really happy with that. I think I'll aim to shave 4-5 minutes off of my next 5K.

9 Months

- 20 lbs. 7 oz. (77th Percentile)
- 30 1/2 inches tall. (100th Percentile - Off the Chart. This girl is going to TOWER over me when she grows up!)
- All the same sized stuff as last month.
- Her schedule is the same as last month except we've added breakfast at around 8:00AM, she tends to nap a little longer, and we moved dinner up to 4:30PM since she was refusing to nurse at bedtime recently.
- She has 3 words! Kitty, Dada, & Mama... In that order.
- She points to EVERYTHING! She fully understands pointing and likes to direct our attention to things she sees. I LOVE this. It's a really big communication jump.
- Started grunting at things she wants (like yogurt in the fridge!)
- Loves to clap, but rarely when we try to get her to (like when the Sharks score!)
- She waves 'Hello' and 'Bye Bye.' Adorable.
- Dances when music comes on.
- Sticks out her tongue for fun and sometimes when she's concentrating.
- She's already a rough-and-tumble kid who doesn't flinch at bonking her head and loves to be thrown in the air and hung upside down by her legs.
- Has 6 teeth. 4 on the top middle and 2 on the bottom middle. She has even more coming in still! At this rate, she'll have them ALL by the time she's 1.
- She's finally showing very mild interest in crawling. She'll stretch out to reach something while on her tummy and very slowly inch her way forward in an army-crawl fashion. (Though it really isn't army crawling yet. I'm telling you - she's sloooooow.) With that said, we're not worried at all and soaking up this non-mobile time while it lasts!!
- Story time is even more fun now. Mads is really engaged, points at the pictures, babbles, and now even turns the pages of board books as we read!
- She gets more beautiful every day. <3

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Pointing!

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Her hair is really starting to come in now.

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The paper-sign approach is only barely working now.

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Kitty Hat

This hat is way too cute!! (For the record... I got it before I saw it on Lily on 'Modern Family'. lol.)

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METALLIKID

Sporting an awesome 'hawk!

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Our little Air Drummer!

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Pumpkin Patch in Half Moon Bay

We took Madison to Lemos Farm in Half Moon Bay to get some photos in one of her costumes and check out the farm, pumpkins, petting zoo, etc! It was much hotter than we expected and Maddie decided she wasn't going to nap and was a bit of a grouch, but other than that it was fun. The farm is really cool and it will be great to watch her running around and exploring on her own next year!

Here's our little flower fairy!

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From 2009 - 10 - October

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Adventures in Food

Making our Own
I have found that it's actually pretty fun (and cheap/easy) to make Madison's food myself. Generally, I just steam whatever it is I'm making (here it's peas) and then throw it in the food processor for a while.

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Then I spoon the "mush" into ice cube trays to be frozen.

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And label a freezer bag for the cubes to be stored in once they are frozen solid and ready to be removed from the tray!

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After a quick zap in the microwave, her meal is ready to go!

Her Eating Habits
She's been proving to be a little picky and doesn't seem to be totally sold on the whole solid food idea. She still definitely gets the majority of her nutrition from breast milk. Sometimes she'll eat a decent meal, but a lot of the time, she'll take a few bites and then clamp that little mouth shut.

There are, however, a few foods that she'll almost always open wide for: Happy Baby Organic Greens Puffs, rice cereal, and oatmeal. And considering she really should be eating more prunes than rice cereal (if you catch my drift), this proves to be an issue. And I think she's addicted to those darn puffs. We can't let her see them before she has eaten her other food or she'll refuse anything else. We let her feed them to herself at the end of the meal.

Here is some puff eating in action. Her self-feeding skills improved very rapidly.

Waiting to be eaten.

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"What do you mean I missed??"

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Recent New Foods
We just introduced yogurt and cheese. She did NOT like the yogurt and I'm not surprised. Plain yogurt is really tangy. Any suggestions on how to get her to eat it (what to mix it with)?

The cheese she seems sort of okay with. She doesn't eat much, yet, but she seems to like that it's a finger food.

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Blog Challenge #1

Here we go! The prompt: Why do you blog? What do you hope to get out of participating in this challenge?

I blog for a few reasons. 1) To get stories/recaps/dates down quickly so that they aren't forgotten or blurred by time. 2) To keep friends and family in on all 3 of our lives. 3) To have an outlet to be heard. 4) For myself. It's my "journal" and I'll love looking back on it years (or even months) from now. 5) But mainly, I blog for Madison. This is baby book and I want her to see what life was like in her family during the years she won't be able to remember. <3

Some friends of mine are all getting together to do a weekly blog challenge and I'm joining in the fun. I hope this helps me add another layer here at Superwife's Adventures and get me to do new entries on a more regular basis.