Ann wrote up the story of the labor and delivery leading up to Madeleine's birth and submitted it to the journal Midwifery Today.  It was accepted and has just been published in the Winter 2008 issue as "A Surprise Posterior Brow Birth."  The article is not available on the MT website to non-subscribers and we decided not to publish it here because of some graphic anatomical details, but we can email you a copy if you let us know you want to read it.  They published a few photos of Madeleine with the article: a family photo with her as a newborn, a family photo on her second birthday, and one with her breastfeeding her baby doll.

Madeleine officially entered the "terrific twos" recently and with that turning she continues to be a pretty terrific kid.

As her vocabulary explodes we have wondered "Where has our little girl gone?" when she now says "Peek-a-boo" instead of simply "peek." Her favored manner of communicating continues to be with shouted exclamations and imperatives. She did enjoy announcing to the entire congregation during an especially quiet moment at mass recently "Poop!" as she pretended to change her baby doll's diaper.

Favorite activities continue to be playing with her doll (now she likes to nurse it), feeding the chickens and going on egg hunts (she can identify their cackles when they've just laid an egg), visiting our two beehives where she flaps her arms and implores the bees to "fly!", and any other outdoor activity, especially if it involves dirt, water, cats, climbing, swinging, or riding on the back of mommy's bike. We are fortunate to have many wonderful neighbors who welcome her presence in their front and back yards, because she thinks those are extensions of her yard anyway.

In this most recent quarter of her life, Madeleine became a seasoned traveler. We spent five days in Santa Cruz on a retreat in April where she loved the ocean and beaches. We then took a week-long road trip to Oregon in May, where she quickly took to farm life with its various domesticated animals, tractors, and a large trampoline. The week-long trip to Illinois and Indiana via airplane in June was exciting too. Her introvert side came out strong on the first two trips, but  she proved to be quite the precocious show-off to her grandparents, great-grandarents and other extended family in the midwest.

We had a great birthday week—remember we have 3 days of labor to celebrate. It was the second year in a row we tried plum pie as the birthday dessert since July brings us thousands of plums from our three trees. This year Madeleine took one bite of pie and wailed, "No. Crackers!" as in "I want crackers instead." We had a small party with mostly neighbors present. It was gratifying to see what a well-loved figure Madeleine has become on our block. Two of her godparents also came and they suggested a small parade around the block with the birthday girl leading the way. She happily blew her kazoo at the head of the procession, but later was upset when we returned home without having witnessed a "real" parade that included horses in it.

Photos from the past few months can be seen here.

The time came to retire the coop we built for our first flock and get some new digs for our current flock.

The coop we built from some diagrams in an old organic gardening magazine served it's purpose well, but had some drawbacks.  It was very heavy and difficult to move, quite hard to clean, and hard to completely secure.  The final straw was when we found a mouse or rat was trying to take up residence in the next boxes.

For the new coop, we settled on a Chick-N-Hutch with an attachable Chick-N-Rabbit Pen.  It was easy to put together, is relatively light, and was cheaper than the materials we spent on the original coop. It has a pan under the wire mesh floor that collects the poop and can easily be slid out. 

The coop also has a pole across it, so that the girls can perch at night.  While there's room for all four to do this, they're still fighting over who gets to sleep on the perch (two or three of them win, and the other one or two sleep under them on the wire mesh).

The only major downside so far was that it had an unsecured swinging panel on the back wall that we thought a raccoon could exploit.  I replaced it with a thicker hinged door with a latch.

Soon after we set up the coop, Madeleine learned that if she got scared of the chickens (pecking or chasing her, which they occassionally do) she could run inside the coop and close the door behind her.

It's time again for the Madeleine Canavese quarterly report.

A recent unexpected development was that she just figured out what our first names are and how to use them.  That day, she walked out to our front door and called, "AAAAAAAANNNNN!" in the general direction of her mommy.  She's occasionally using both of our first names, particularly if the "mama" and "dada" calls aren't working effectively enough.

Madeleine's imaginative play has taken off in the past few months.  She plays a lot with her baby doll: changing its diaper, putting it to sleep, feeding it, having it blow bubbles, etc.  She puts together her interlocking blocks and declares them a boat or a cat or a dog.  She draws "cats" and "dogs", one of which looked almost intelligible recently (which I'll choose to believe was not a mistake).  Ann and I have both had fun taking her to My Play Place, a cool toddler play area just a few blocks from us with all kinds of interesting toys and arts & crafts.

This quarter also included Madeleine's first trip to the zoo, trips with Mommy in a new bike seat, an Easter egg hunt, a couple trips to the ocean, and lots of splashing at the water table (yes, midwesterners, it really has gotten warm enough for that here already).  And, of course, Maddy helped us pick out our new chicks and enjoys watching, feeding, and hanging out with them.

And, finally, here is the latest Maddyspeak translation guide:

• "feep" => "sleep"
• "hawlk" => "help"
• "fing" => "swing"
  
• "fide" => "slide"
• "bay-bay" => "baby"
• "pookie" => "peek-a-boo"
• "shish" => "fish"
• "Ah-ah" => "Ana," her beloved babysitter
  

Latest photos are here.

As you can see, Madeleine is proud of being a one and a half year old. She  enjoys  having more mobility, which includes the ability to run in the opposite direction very quickly when she hears a diaper change is in the offing.

She is quite the little imitator these days, and shows an affinity for cleaning: sweeping while we sweep, drying dishes (even if they were dry already), raking, searching the floor for spills to wipe up, etc. She has her first baby doll now and loves to feed it and put it to sleep as she does with all of her stuffed animals.

Madeleine's second Advent and Christmas season was a delight. She loved reading her bedtime book by the light of the Advent candles and loved even more trying to blow them out. On Christmas day, she enjoyed receiving the attention as the only grandchild and only niece. If she was opening presents but couldn't fully rip the paper off them, she would stop everything, get up, and look around with keen focus saying "Sciss, Sciss" as she searched for a pair of scissors.

Just before the New Year, we freed up room in our freezer by finally planting her placenta under a new rose bush in our front yard. Madeleine was pretty intrigued by the whole affair. Since then, whenever we go outside she makes a beeline for that rose bush, points at the ground, and with arms upraised, asks with her eyes "Where is it?" See photos here.