Snapshots of Maddie

To everyone who mostly reads this blog to see pictures of cool European destinations, you may want to skip right on to the next post. To those of you who read this blog to see cute pictures of Maddie, you've just hit the jackpot- this post is entirely about our beautiful baby girl!

Maddie is seriously the happiest, most even tempered baby I could have imagined. Her short little life has been a bit adventurous so far, but she just seems to take it all in stride with a smile!

I especially love this happy picture because she is wearing a handmade outfit that I wore when I was a baby 28 years ago.  Doesn't she make it look good?!

When I was growing up I always wished that I would have a sister so that we could play together and dress up like each other.  Now, I get to dress up with my Maddie. This is a recent Sunday morning before we headed out to church.  These are the dresses that we wore to the wedding of my brother James and new sister-in-law Melina.

As you can see from these pictures, Maddie is quite an expressive baby.  It is so fun for us to watch her growing up and to see her personality developing.  While she is mostly a happy and laid-back baby who smiles a lot, I think she may have a bit of a mischievous streak as well.

Maddie loves her daddy and Kellen loves spending time with his Maddie girl.  When gets home from work she usually gets so excited to have a little break from mommy and Maddie time to play with dad.  She loves being lifted up high in the air and will sometimes just sit on Kellen's lap and relax, which is getting pretty rare for her these days.

Here is a picture of Maddie and her daddy at the Museum of Natural History in Brussels.  Whenever we take her out in public she wants to be held "facing out" like this so that she can see everything and smile at all the people.  She usually has such a big grin on her face that she attracts a lot of attention from strangers!

Maddie also loves to play with toys, especially ones that are colorful or make noises.  Some of her favorites are books, wooden puzzles, Sophie the giraffe, chapstick and bottles of baby lotion, her bouncer, and a green rubber frog and red octopus that she can take in the bath.

Like father, like daughter: Kellen's family is all addicted to popsicles.  They say it is because Kellen's dad, Blaine, fed them all popsicles when they were just little babies.  Kellen recently handed down the tradition as Maddie got to try her first taste of popsicle.  At first, she wasn't so sure, probably because of the cold.  Once she got a sense for the taste she was much more happy about it!  Every time Kellen would take a turn she would sit with her mouth wide open and beg for more. It was so cute and Kellen was so excited to share one of his favorite treats with his baby girl!

 I also recently shared one of my favorite things with Maddie - swimming! We picked up a little blow-up pool for Maddie and have used it on our patio on warm days.  Because it is such a small pool and only needs an inch or so of water for Maddie, we filled it up with warm water so it is almost like taking a bath outside in our swimming suits.  Maddie loves splashing and playing with her bath toys in the pool.  Because we don't have any community pools or anything to take Maddie to here in Belgium, this will likely be a regular occurrence for us this summer.

Having Maddie has been such a fun adventure and great blessing for us.  We hope you enjoy these pictures and glimpse into her life as much as we do!