Tom Sawyer Park

A couple weeks ago we went to Tom Sawyer Park. The weather was beautiful and we all needed some fresh air. This was Madelyn not wanting to sit on the bench for her picture.

I love this picture!! The girls didn't want their picture taken and were hiding and running away on the playground equipment. It turned in to a fun game of camera tag! Joe and I kept trading off the camera and trying to "catch" them in a photo. Don't they look surprised!

If we don't catch them off guard they always insist on posing for us. This is their posed picture!!

As we were leaving there were a bunch of hot air balloons launching. Our family always gets excited when we see hot air balloons. We stopped and watched until they had all lifted off.

Baby Talk

My other girls seemed to talk a lot! Madelyn doesn't really seem to care much about the whole talking thing. She says MAMA in a very demanding tone. For a long time everything was MAMA. She has added a few words Ball, Daddy, MINE and her most recent Bubble! It seems to me that my other girls said a lot more at this age ( could be my selective memory.)
Anyway it is something I have been working on with her. I have never used sign language with my other kids. But started looking into a little. I found this site http://www.signwithme.com/ It explains the sign and shows you a small video clip of the sign. I am so impressed with how Madelyn has done with this. She has learned 5 signs in the last 2 days and really seems to like it. (please, more, bath, bedtime, and drink) She also tries to say the word with the sign. Which I feel is a huge step in her communication. I wish I would have started this earlier with her. It has been fun for all of us to learn something new. It is also fun to see her come up with her own signs when she is trying to tell me something. My favorite is when she opens her mouth and points at her tongue and says ahhhh. She wants something to eat.