Mad Gracie Photo Blog

For several months now Madeleine has been eagerly awaiting the arrival of her new brother-sister. She would talk to the baby, kiss Kathleen’s belly before going to bed and in the morning. She couldn’t wait ! So on Monday she stayed with Grams & Gramps while we went to the hospital and later that day her wish came true, her new baby jacob arrived. Since Jake was born a little later Maddie had to wait until Tuesday to visit. I took her to the hospital in the afternoon and she was beside herself ! Maddie wanted to hold him right away and did a fantastic job. She has been a big help since we brought him home on Wednesday. I’m sure there will be some jealously at some point but so far so good !

Jacob Matthew Button

Born July 26 2010 7:25pm

9lb 15oz 20 inch long

So one thing I’m noticing is that as Madeleine has hit two years old, there are a lot of repeats. It’s the same events with just a little better understanding on Maddie’s part. One new thing came up recently though. They Might Be Giants, a band I used to, okay still listen to, also does kids’ music. They do the theme and a few other songs for one of Madeleine’s favorite morning shows, Mickey Mouse Club House. They were bringing their kids show to Rams Head Live in Bmore ! I immediately snatched up a few tickets for what would be Madeleine’s first club show !!  The day finally rolled around and we were off. It was so crazy seeing a place where  I have seen several great shows filled with munchkins waving “They Might Be Giants” banners. The show started and Maddie wasn’t to thrilled, but we didn’t panic and after their little intro, the house lights came up a bit  and everyone started jammin !! Madeleine warmed up after a couple of songs and had a BLAST !! We grabbed her first concert shirt, which she will have as a night gown for a while.

Our new house is moving right along, the first floor is framed out and the second floor is underway. We took a family trip to the house this evening as we often do to see the progress. Madeleine loves it, the first few times she grabbed some scraps of wood and started “building”. Basically hiding the scraps where ever she could find a good spot. Tonight she was more about having fun jumping around and figuring out the best path for those future laps through the living room and kitchen. It really didn’t hit me until I was editing down the photos from today.  I was really seeing the progress of not just the house but my family.

We finally got started building our house in April, it really has been an exciting journey so far. I will usually take Madeleine to the lot with me when I go down to check things out. She is very comfortable walking around all the equipment and has had a blast walking around on the piles of dirt, throwing rocks in the basement and just wandering around through the yard. As the house goes up I will continue to post pics of the munchkin supervising the build so be sure to stop back for an update soon.

Our neighbor Roy enjoys gardening, he has made some very nice flower beds around the yards at the house. The best part is most of the time he has no idea what the name of the plants are but he knows they are pretty. A few weeks ago Maddie and I were outside just kicking around. We spotted Roy getting some flats of flowers out of his truck so of course Madeleine had to investigate. Before long she was helping Roy plant and water some flowers having a great time.

As I’ve said before one nice part of my job is that for some assignments I can take the munchkin, soon to be munchkins, with me. A few weeks ago I had to go to the Bel Air Kite Festival, tough assignment !! Of course Kathleen and Madeleine came along. It was literally a perfect day to fly a kite, nice breeze, blue skies with just the right amount of clouds and just a bit chilly. We took a kite with us but shortly after we arrived we found out that the sponsors were giving away kites. We made our way to the sponsors tent and luckily there were about a dozen kites left. They were really nice nylon kites too not just a plastic thing with a spool of thread that would be trashed in minutes in a good breeze. We grabbed  green kite, got it strung up and sent it skyward !  Madeleine loved it she had a great time running around and watching then kite dance on the breeze overhead. I got a few shots I needed while Kathleen helped Madeleine fly her kite and after some convincing and maybe a hint of bribery we talked Maddie into leaving. There are a few more pics on the Go Fly a Kite page.

So Madeleine has already been on the cover of one magazine last year. Okay so it wasn’t Vogue or Cosmo but ya gotta start somewhere right. She was on the cover of Harford Magazine in her cute strawberry hat, I will post the pic later once I find it !! A few weeks ago I had to shoot another assignment for the magazine at a local bakery called the Woodlea Bakery for a feature story and maybe the cover shot of the upcoming summer issue. Of course I had Maddie lined up already for the model, she works cheap !! We showed up in the morning as scheduled and Maddie was suprisingly cooperative. She actually ate a few bites of the donut and spent the rest of the time looking at everything, asking a million questions and helping one of the girls who worked there with folding the boxes. She didn’t end up making the cover again but she is in the inside with the story. She may even end up on the bakery’s web-site who knows. One thing I am sure of though is that I really don’t want to have her go into modeling as a profession !!!

(check the Easter 2010 page for a few more pics) Madeleine actually got started a little early with the Easter Egg hunting this year. We went to Eden Mill Nature Center the weekend before Easter for an egg hunt where Maddie had a good time scouring the grounds for candy filled eggs with all the other munchkins. We walked down to the “big water” as Madeleine called it and saw a gentleman and his wife fishing. He showed Maddie one of the trout he caught but she wasn’t interested at all. On Easter weekend she went to Aunt Ruth’s house and gathered a few more eggs and on Easter Sunday we rolled over to Grams & Gramps house for even more searching. Madeleine and Aydan had a good time wandering around the yard, of course Gramps made Maddie’s eggs a little harder to find than Aydan’s but they found all of them and we all went home with a tummy ache later !!

(more pics on the Terra Cotta Warriors page) So in keeping with our plan of getting a little culture for the munchkin last Friday we took a family day trip to Washington D.C.. It was Kathleen’s birthday and we had bought tickets to see an exhibit at the National Geographic museum called The Terra Cotta Warriors. Madeleine was really excited and had been talking all day Thursday about going to Washington D.C. even though she had no idea what she was really doing . We picked up Robert and Nicole and made our way the nation’s capital Friday morning. We arrived with some time to kill before we could see the exhibit so we took a look around at some of the other photo exhibits. One was a photostory about water and the other was portraits of rare or extinct animals and plants of North America. Maddie had a great time looking at everything and she was all in all pretty good for the whole trip. She did get a little fussy while we were in the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit but we rotated her around with all of us taking a turn keeping an eye on her. Maddie crashed hard on the way home after being so excited she couldn’t sleep on the way down. I really doubt she will remember that she saw one of the wonders of the world but we will always have the blog and pics to remind her someday !!