February

After four years of anticipation and excitement, we finally got to celebrate the first Leap Day since Madeline was born four years ago. It was a tremendous day, but the rest of the month was pretty good, too.

Probably the most exciting thing that's happening around here these days is Madeline learning to read. By sounding out the letters and using context clues she has been able to read words in books and elsewhere. With no prompting from me she read the text of an "I voted" sticker on election day this week. She also saw a sign in a field that said "tomato" and was able to read it, even though there was no picture or other clue what it might say. It's happening slowly, but I can see her making big strides in the next 6 months to a year.

Here are some pictures from the month:

Madeline was sick - again - early in the month. That usually means a lot of time cuddling on the couch and reading.

When she was feeling better, I took her to Inflation Nation to check out the bouncy houses. She loved it! When we walked in and she saw all the inflatable playthings, her smile grew and she turned and said, "I love you, Daddy!"

I got my little Valentine her own rose, plus some other treats.

Madeline spends a quiet moment listening and feeling for her little sister.

At long last we got the first snow of the year. It didn't last long, but we were out early enough to make a snowwoman (whom Madeline named Tina).

Madeline helps vacuum the house on a chilly winter day.

Madeline has been eager to help prepare for the new baby. Here she does some painting in her sister's room.

We've also been preparing a garden in our yard. The biggest task so far has been clearing the area, which was rife with roots and other vegetation.

Madeline's birthday celebration started on the 28th, when I took her to the Children's Museum and to lunch. She loved playing at the museum, including riding the spring-loaded whale back and forth.

She also played pirate ship, before digging for fossils and treasure in the sand pit.

Madeline came downstairs on her birthday to find a special balloon, a chocolate-chip muffin with candles and a few presents waiting for her. After celebrating with Lacey and me in the morning, she had another party at her preschool.

The party continued at home later that day, when friends and family came over to help celebrate the big day. She had a circus theme for her party, following her own visit to the real circus just a few days earlier.

Madeline, of course, loved being the center of attention. Here, dressed in her party dress, she conducts the singing of Happy Birthday before blowing out the candles on her cake.

January

After the hustle of the holidays, January was a pleasantly quiet month here. It was back to the routines - work, preschool and busy weekends - and, unfortunately, even a couple bouts of illness for little Madeline.

But on the last day of the month we got the biggest piece of news that we've received in, well, a few months - the gender of our new baby. And . . . it's a girl! Madeline is going to have a little sister. Madeline came along to the ultrasound appointment and patiently sat through the 20-minute exam, even though it can be a little hard to figure out what you're seeing on an ultrasound sometimes. And, while she says she was hoping for a little brother, I have a feeling that she'll like having a sister, too.

So now we turn to the next few months of preparation - getting the baby's room prepared and digging out all of Madeline's infant supplies out from the attic. The fact that we're having another girl means that we get to reuse all of those familiar and adorable clothes that we tucked away almost four years ago.

Another celebration we're gearing up for is Madeline's first real birthday. Madeline is a Leap Day baby, and this will be the first time that February 29 has rolled around since she was born. We're already involved in deep discussions about cake flavors and party themes!

Some pictures from the month:

Like I mentioned earlier, January was a quiet month. We found small things around the house to entertain ourselves, like bubble baths . . .

tea parties . . .

science experiments (such as seeing if a pot of water would freeze if left on the front porch overnight) . . .

making pancakes in interesting shapes . . .

and playing outside in the yard even on the coldest of days.

It's always fun to play catch . . .

until the ball gets stuck in a tree!

We even put in a cd of the Nutcracker and let Madeline dance along (she saw the Nutcracker Ballet in December and fell in love with it).

We even looked up some YouTube videos of the real thing and she danced along with the pros.

December

As Madeline gets older, the holidays get more and more fun. We had a blast this year, from decorating our own house to checking out the sights around town. Madeline was as happy to partake in Christmas cheer as I was to oblige her - we read Christmas books every day, drove around to see tacky lights whenever we had a free evening and did our share of shopping for family gifts. It was a month full of activity and it passed too quickly, as it always does. But we got to spend lots of time with family and with each other, which is what the season is all about.

Here are some photos from the month:

On the first weekend of December, we opened the Christmas season with our first trip to the Richmond Christmas Parade. Madeline loved watching the floats and balloons pass by, but the highlight was seeing Santa at the end.

Madeline shows off some of the produce from our backyard garden.

Decorating three trees in our home apparently wasn't enough for Madeline. She jumped at the chance to decorate Grandma and Papa's tree as well.

Madeline knows the protocol for a proper family portrait.

Madeline spend some quality reading time with her cousin Caleb during our annual holiday visit to Roanoke.

There's just something wonderful about cousins, still in their pajamas, playing in the living room on a lazy weekend morning.

Madeline checks out the lights at the "crazy house" - the tackiest place we could find, which just happened to be a couple minutes from our neighborhood. We visited this house on several occasions and she found something new each time.

Madeline and I made our annual trip to the Jefferson Hotel to check out the tree, the gingerbread house and the musicians that play Christmas tunes at noon during the holidays.

Madeline had a blast on Christmas morning. She gave me this look of anticipatory excitement even before she had opened any of her presents. (She had already seen the train and the dollhouse that were her big gifts this year.)

Madeline's 2011 Christmas portrait, taken in our living room with her favorite nutcracker.

___________________________

Having a child is an amazing experience. I don't often stop to think about it, between the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities that keep me focused on the moment at hand. But taking a step back I realize what an unbelievably rewarding experience it has been to be Madeline's dad for the past four years.

When you hear the words "your dad," you probably have an immediate and visceral response that is the result of a life's worth of interaction with your own father. Even before you start picturing specific memories of him, there is a feeling - perhaps comfort, happiness, stability - that you associate with those words.

It is immeasurably humbling to realize that I am that person to Madeline. It's an immense responsibility. I'm not just her caretaker or her friend - I'm her father. The memories and relationship that we're building now are what will always stay with her, and bubble to the surface when she hears the words "your dad."

Sure, there are tough times when you're a parent. Whether it's something out of your control - sickness, Madeline's relationships with her peers - that causes you heartache, or the occasional attitude, defiance and frustration that are inevitable as a child discovers their own way in the world, sometimes you just want to throw up your hands and throw in the towel.

But those times are fleeting, and quickly overshadowed by the good. The big moments - when she successfully sings with her preschool class on stage at the holiday pageant, or when she learns a huge new skill. And the small moments - when she gently holds my hand as we walk together, or when she looks at me with unvarnished pride when she places the last piece in the puzzle we've assembled together, and even when she simply calls my name - "Daddy!"

And that's why we're doing it again. In late June, Madeline will become a big sister as we welcome our second child.

November

It's hard to believe how quickly this year has flown by - the leaves are finished falling and the holidays are in full swing. Madeline is having a great time in preschool, and every day brings home some new craft or song to share with us. She's making gradual progress with her reading skills, although it's nothing too serious yet. She still likes identifying letters and spelling words she sees, and she can even sound out and read simple words.

(You really get an idea for how convoluted the English language can be when you're trying to teach it to a child - individual letters can make a variety of sounds depending on the situation, so it's hard to teach her firm rules. Take "C" for example - it can either sound like a "K" or an "S" - so why is there a C to begin with? I digress. . .)

Otherwise we're just having fun soaking up the season. Our house was decorated for Christmas, as usual, the weekend after Thanksgiving, and Madeline loved helping to decorate.

Here are some other pictures from the month:

Madeline bundles up during a visit to her grandparents' home for the annual Oyster Festival.

What should we do with all those leaves in our yard? Why not make a huge pile at the bottom of the sliding board?

Madeline spends some quite time putting Baxter to bed in her old crib in the playroom. She tucked him in carefully before reading him the book.

We took advantage of a mild weekend to take a hike at a local park.

We broke out the driveway chalk to draw a special message to greet mom when she returned home from work one Monday.

A hopscotch grid was also among the driveway doodles.

During our Thanksgiving weekend at Grandma's house, we made our annual gingerbread houses.

We also went to a farmers market in Deltaville, where Madeline enjoyed a leisurely hay ride - one of her favorite fall activities.

Once Thanksgiving was over, it was officially time to break out the Christmas decorations.

Madeline even helped me with some of the yard decorations - we decided to not let the fact that it was 70 degrees outside dampen the holiday spirit.

Madeline and Lucy (Aunt Hannah's dog) on the way to Grandma's house.

October

Madeline has made some big strides in the past month, inching ever closer to reading on her own. I don't know if it's something she's picked up at preschool or just in bits and pieces with her mother and me, but she suddenly is very fluent with lower-case letters - something that is second nature to older readers but is essentially the same as learning a second alphabet to someone just learning.

Not only can she identify all the letters with ease, but she's gotten very good at identifying the way they sound. A favorite game is to come up with words and figure out what letter they start with, and she's almost always right. And it's not just memorization of certain words - for instance, something will catch her eye as we're driving and she'll sound it out. She'll see a mailbox and say "mailbox" and then sound out the letters: "mmmmmailbox." And then, triumphantly, "M! It starts with M!"

We've also started practicing spelling smaller words with easily identifiable letters and sounds, like cat, dog and me. And once she learns a word, she'll pick it out in the text as we read books together. Slowly but surely she's putting this all together in her mind, and it's exciting to watch her figure it out.

She's also had some success with numbers. She's figured out that numbers generally repeat in tens, so she can pretty much count on her own indefinitely, with occasional help with every tenth number. I think she's counted up to 59 by herself, getting hung up on "sixty." But once I prompt her with that number, she'll continue on until she needs help with "seventy" and so on.

Aside from all the letters and numbers, we've had a terribly fun month. She's really gotten caught up in the excitement of fall and Halloween and has loved watching the season change.

Here are some pictures from the month:


Madeline flies a kite that she made during our annual weekend trip to a boat festival in St. Michael's, Md.

Madeline, in her role as space master, explains concepts from one of her space books to a captive audience.

By the time we made it to the apple orchard this month, many of the lower fruits had been picked clean. So Madeline helped me reach the higher apples.

We also picked up our annual pumpkin during the trip to the orchard.

Madeline soaked up the activities at the kids' area of the Richmond Folk Festival on a gorgeous fall weekend.

The weather has been so nice that we spent many an afternoon just hanging out on Madeline's swingset in the backyard.

We also made an impromptu trip to the zoo, scrapping our planned trip to the salon when we woke up to perfect weather. Madeline gathered her courage to feed the giraffes, which were very friendly.

The giraffes were also very tall.

Madeline got a kick out of leaping over every root in the trail during a weekend hike through the woods.

Madeline made a new friend when we got out the Halloween decorations - he was just her size.

Madeline got to go on two hay rides this month, and loved every minute of both of them.

Helping daddy carve Mr. Pumpkin.

All dressed up and ready to go, Madeline was a little butterfly for Halloween this year. She had a blast going from door to door - the candy was ancillary to the excitement of just ringing people's doorbells and showing off her wings.

Even though we only visited about a dozen houses in the neighborhood, Madeline scored enough candy to last a long time.

Madeline officially wrote her own name for the first time. She had some verbal guidance from mommy, but she did the writing all by herself.

Madeline could hardly contain her excitement as she unpacked the contents of a goodie bag she received at her preschool Halloween party.