So, out of nowhere Maddy got huge. I thought it was my poor perception as a new mom, and that all babies just get big, but... Maddy is huge! She suddenly went from 3 month clothes to 6-9 month clothes. BTW she's wearing 12 month clothes now! We finally got into see a pediatrician and got an update on her stats. Since birth, Maddy has been nice and average, always in the 50th percentile. So about a week and a half shy of her 5 month mark, the doctor measured her, she just said in a weird tone, your baby is measuring normal, but didn't tell me the percentile. So being the good science teacher that I am, I looked up the growth graph and plotted her height and weight. Boy oh boy did she have a growth spurt! In a month and a half she went from the 50th percentile to the 95th percentile for both height and weight! Babies are crazy, they grow so fast, in less than 5 months she's grown 6 1/4 inches! Image growing more than an inch a month. No wonder she's hungry all the time! The doctor also said we could start feeding her more than just rice cereal. Ethan was very excited to hear that. So we got all the first foods and got out our camera ready to record her funny faces... So we feed her some green beans and... nothing! No faces, she just munched away, apple sauce, nothin', sweet potatoes nothin'. Ethan even sneaked her icecream and gave her a pickle to suck on. NOTHING!!! She just eats and eats!

She is laughing a lot more now. You make a funny sound or face, and you can get her goin' real good. Here she is seeing Lola fetch for the first time.



Lola has been adjusting to Iowa too. At first it freaked her out to be out here. Hearing all the bugs, being so dark, even her shadow scared her. The first couple weeks, she wouldn't even walk down the street at night, we'd get about 3 houses down, and she'd turn around and start pulling me back. She doing better now, Karen even put her to work.



We officially had our first visitor. My sister Melissa came to Iowa and saw Maddy for the first time. We had some photo shoots, went to the Amanas, shopped, and just enjoyed hanging out. It was really fun. She even had fresh Iowa corn from the farm, and it was good!!!! Here are some of here pictures. So professional!



On Saturday we went to the last farmers market. It was fun, and colder than expected, uh 48 degrees, hello fall. I dealt with it well. But poor Maddy...

Everyone commented on how cute she was, but you can't really see her face, so... I guess she had cute accessories!? She did get filmed by the local new, but didn't make the final cut onto tv. Bummer.

We got callings at church. I'm on the activities committee and Ethan is an assistance scout master. He's got a camp out this weekend, sucker! He's trying to find his thermals but no luck yet!

Today has been a sentimental day for me... first it was conference, which brings back memories of our conference shmorgazborgs (sp?) with the Reddings and Olsens. Then they announced a Temple in Rome, and that reminded me of Kendra. And finally Eth had his computer out and it went into a slide show of our trip to Yosemite! Sigh, good memories, boy do I miss my friends.

All in all... I really like Iowa. You just have a have a good sense of humor about it. I need to take more pics of the "Iowan" things I see. Here's one for you... the Hawkeyes (football team) are HUGE, so I just had to take a pic of this guys Hawkeye Hummer! Maddy doesn't know it, but she's even a fan too!

Life is good. I hope it is good for all of you too! Love you all! And as always, here are cute pics of Maddy!