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.

During the last quarter year of Madeleine's life she has proven to be an absolute delight. She has officially toddled into toddler-hood and is supremely proud of her new walking (and running) skills. What can we say? At 15 months old she's already a budding soccer star. She LOVES to dribble the soccer ball all the way around the block.

On other developmental fronts, Madeleine likes to show off her knowledge of sign language (more, eat, drink, cheese, hot, sleep, all done, milk, etc).  She is curious, playful, sweet, and good-humored. She can also be insistent when she knows what she wants. We think she would make a great traffic cop—"pointing and grunting "Go there! No, not that way, this way! Now!" Madeleine has also graduated to her first household chore: feeding the chickens. She adores this task we've set her.

After being sick on her first year birthday, Madeleine was able to celebrate in style on her 13 month birthday.  It even worked out that her Midwest grandparents could be here for it!

This past month Madeleine was baptized at St. Columba Catholic Church in Oakland. It was a wonderful experience having an aware, alert 14 month old baptized - we're glad we waited past the newborn stage. She was happily passed up and down the pew between her three godparents and her grandparents before she had water poured on her head. Rather than being frightened, she was just really, really interested in what the priest was doing. She also wanted to play with the chrism oil, the baptismal candle, and the seashell used to pour the water.  Her Grandma Naffziger made her baptismal dress as a  gift since she couldn't  be with us on the day of the baptism. 

New photos are here.  Photos of the baptism are here.

Maddy is officially a toddler, as she has been refining her newfound walking skills over the past week.  Yesterday was the first day she's been walking more than crawling.  I think it's a little hard for her to slow down a bit from the sprinting crawl she perfected, but she's already starting to pick up speed now that she's on her feet.

But don't take our word for it... see for yourself in Madeleine's YouTube debut...

Madeleine hit the one year mark last week, but unfortunately she was too sick to enjoy it very much. Our tree has inundated us with plums, even more so than last year at this time, so we made some pie for her birthday.   But she had no appetite and wouldn't touch it.

She and her parents are doing much better now, and are catching up on things like posting photos.  In her twelfth month, Madeleine took her first dip in a swimming pool, continued gaining teeth, and learned how to intentionally blink her eyes (accompanied by a very cute smile).

You can check out month 12 photos here. 

We were just looking for a nice wooden toy for Madeleine to play with, but when we brought it home we noticed it is:

• ISO 9001 Certified (quality management systems)
• ISO 14001 Certified (environmental management standards)
• OHSAS/TIS 18001 Certified (occupational health and safety management systems)
• ASTM F963-96a Conformant (toy safety standard)
  
• Made of replenishable preservative-free rubberwood.
• Packaged in fully-recyclable materials.
  

That's not bad for $14.95.  The toy was made in Thailand (alas, not locally) by PlanToys.  They apparently also meet SA 8000 (social accountability standard for ethical workplace conditions) and E-Zero (low formaldehyde) standards, although these weren't mentioned on our box.

Oh, and Maddy thinks it's pretty fun to play with, too.

Madeleine is having a lot of fun these days understanding lots of new words and showing off her comprehension. When she follows simple directions (i.e. splash, pour, fill, hug) and gets praised, she always looks supremely proud of herself.

She has developed a newfound appreciation for spoons and her ability to manipulate them to direct food into her mouth. The corollary is that she also enjoys throwing spoons off of her high chair tray. Speaking of food, we've discovered her culinary tastes match her personality. She likes strong flavors: pepper jack cheese, very spicy Indian food, unadulterated fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, and Mexican salsa to name a few. She doesn't even blink before asking for more. Also, our little vegetarian loves beans of any variety - she happily eats them as finger food almost every day.

Madeleine is babbling away happily: "da-da-dot" and "ba-ba-bop" being favorite combinations.

Most noteworthy this month was her first airplane ride and trip to the Midwest to meet her Bianco great-grandparents and visit the Naffziger family farm in central Illinois. Along the way, she met several great aunts, uncles, and cousins. Then it was back up to South Bend, Indiana to spend more time with the Naffziger grandparents and to meet her Aunt Ellen for the first time. We celebrated her 11 month birthday with Ellen, Aunt Susan, and Grandma and Grandpa who requested a traditional German chocolate cake for the occassion. Even though it was her first real taste of anything sugary, she was duly unimpressed, obviously taking after her Canavese lineage rather than her Naffziger family in this respect.

New photos are here. 

As you can see, "Madeleine Grace with the Beautiful Face" enjoys looking at herself in the mirror these days.  She also enjoys pointing at just about anything in sight, waving goodbye, and clapping. In honor of the latter skill, we took her to her first Oakland A's game which she thoroughly enjoyed. (She didnot seem to enjoy garlic fries-flavored breastmilk a few hours later.) She's beginning to recognize quite a few words and now can use sign language to ask for a nursing. She continues to crawl and get into everything, and now she pulls herself up. We didn't know she could climb stairs until we took her to a friend's two story house and she immediately scrambled up the entire flight of stairs unaided. We've decided she'll be great on the monkey bars and climbing trees.  

The new photos are here.

Madeleine has hit the nine month mark, and as you can see, she's pretty excited about eating solid foods.  Some highlights from this month:

• First Easter egg hunt.  She wasn't very interested in the searching part, but did like playing with the eggs and our tie-dye-clad friend Randall.
  
• Excitedly throwing balls.  As well as plastic Easter eggs and other toys...
• Practice wearing a bike helmet.  We've been putting on her helmet occasionally so she'll be ready to start riding behind mom in a trailer.  We usually wear ours, too, and play catch with her on the floor.
• Eating.  At a retreat we recently went on, she actually ate artichoke off the leaves (no, she's not eating a pickle in that picture).
  
• Speed crawling.  Madeleine has mastered the art of getting around on her hands and knees.  Particularly amusing is when she makes a determined break for something on the other side of the house.
• Visits from all the grandparents.  She charms them every time.
  
• Riding on dad's shoulders.  She gets quite excited by this, too.  This now is accompanied with pulling off glasses and tasting his hair.

More photos are here.

It's official. Madeleine is a very fast crawler now. The other day Ann left her alone for about 10 seconds and returned to find her stunned and half buried under a tub of cloth diapers she had pulled over on top of herself. When Ann lifted the diapers off of her, Madeleine quickly crawled away with nary a whimper. Crawling has been one of her primary activities this month, as well as trying to grow teeth. She has none to show for her efforts so far, but it seems the first two are getting close to making an appearance.

The weather has been beautiful this past month so Madeleine gets time outside at the park and on a blanket in the front yard almost every day now.  New photos are here.

Madeleine (more and more often being called Maddy recently) is changing dramatically each week now. After a scary bout with pneumonia this past month, she is back to her playful self again. She is scooting and crawling all over the house and loves to play "catch" with one of her various balls. Ann is pleased to see that she seems to have produced a left-hander (which will save her the trouble of teaching her to switch hit in a few years.)

A few other things of note: Madeleine already likes more vegetables than Ann did by the time she went to college, although breastmilk is still her favorite food of choice.

One of her favorite past times is watching our four chickens: Annie, Omelette, Wiggly, and Joy. Since we don't have a television, we call this "chicken TV" since it can entertain her endlessly. We think she'll speak chicken before she speaks English.

Her penchant for 30 minute naps continues, much to our consternation.

By pre-arrangement, our little girl gets two hours of Daddy's undivided attention each morning while Mommy gets to stay in bed.

To see more cute photos, click here.