It's been awhile!

I have admittedly been horrible about updating this thing regularly. I always say I'm going to take 30 minutes and update, but I just don't do it. Some big things are happening in our lives right now so I thought it would be a good time to get back into blogging. For this blog though, I'm only going to focus on Madison's birthday, which was 2 weeks ago.

Every year on her birthday it always hits me how far we've come and how much she's grown since October 11, 2006. I cannot believe that my 3lb 15oz premature baby is now 35lbs.

We took her for her 4-year-old check up, and she has grown a ton! I could tell by her clothes that she had grown a TON over the summer, but the measurements really showed it. She is 38.8" tall (30%) and 35lbs (51%). It took her almost 3 years to actually get on the growth charts, and now she's 50th percentile for weight. That is just crazy to me!

We had a party for her at the Kids Body Shop and had 14 friends and their parents join us. The kids had such a great time swimming and doing gymnastics. Madison chose a Hello Kitty theme for her party, and my friend Patti made her cake. It was really a great party, and super easy for mommy to plan. No clean up involved - the best type of party!

The big 4-year-old!

Everyone playing in the pool

Climbing up the rope

My little monkey, Macy, swinging from the bar

Opening presents

Blowing out the candles!

On her actual birthday we went to The Amazing Pizza Machine - at her request. The girls had a blast, and so did mommy, daddy, and grandma.

The birthday princess at the Pizza Machine

Another fun thing we decided to do for her birthday was to get her ears pierced. She has been excited about this for awhile, and I had told her she could get it done when she turned 4. There was only one lady at the store in the mall where we went to get them done so she had to do each ear one at a time. Madison freaked out! She really only cried for about 3 minutes, and then she was okay. She's done a great job of taking care of her earrings since then and is anxious to get to wear some of the earrings she got as birthday gifts. After being so brave with the ear piercing we headed to the nail shop for her first ever "real" toenail painting. She was in heaven sitting there with mommy and grandma like a big girl!

After getting her ears pierced.
She was not happy at all!

We had such a great birthday celebration, and I'm still in shock that my baby is already 4 years old. Happy Birthday Madison!