Kai-Lan's Pad

Madison got up again early today - calling out "Mama!" I snuck into the nursery and saw her standing there in the crib, ready to come out. I think the temperature is a little low in the room, waking her up early because she has a tendency to roll out from underneath her blankets. Frequently, Mommy and Daddy will check on her in order to make sure she's covered up properly.

I picked her up out of the crib, and quietly brought her into our room, laying her on my chest - underneath the covers in our bed. There, she fell asleep once more. The three of us slept in a bit, but that's what our Mondays are like. It is somewhat of a day of recovery, really.

For Mommy, it was a little more than that though. She wasn't feeling too well today. Daddy did some outside chores, while Mommy and Madison stayed inside all day again. The weather is warming up again: today it reached over forty degrees!

When Daddy got home, he played with the Ni-Hao Kai Lan megablock set. It is like legos, but with larger and easier pieces. We spread the pieces out over the kitchen floor while Mommy rested in bed - and then we got to work again with our blocks. Today's project was building a pad for Kai-Lan. We didn't want anything ordinary though - we did this multilevel project that had a lot of greenery involved. All of Kai-Lan's friends had come over to play around too, some down in the dragon boats riding around on the kitchen floor.

This morning, Madison and Daddy played house with her new mansion too. There's even a little garden outside with a small watering can. I was using the Daddy action figure, and making sure the garden looked okay outside of this house. But she kept watering the action figure Daddy, which caused him to run away in panic! This caused a lot of giggles.

Actually, there were a lot of giggles today. We had a lot of playtime, and time spent reading as well.

MADISON'S BOOK CLUB

"Bringing in the New Year" is simple, which is perfect. The pictures are great, and Madison enjoys looking at them and identifying the objects on each page. As you turn each page, of course, there's a new thing to learn about the Chinese New Year. It's nothing complicated - it's all about traditions and things that families do for Chinese New Year. The back has a more detailed explanation, but most of the book is a good experience for Madison. When it's reading time, we've got this one in our circulation now and she keeps reaching for it first. When we actually go to a Chinese New Year celebration, it'll be great to have her already familiar with some of the traditions and things done, too. Anyway, this is an educational book - and an enjoyable read for Madison.

It was a rather uneventful day, but that's okay. Sometimes you need to stay at home and rest, especially in Mommy's case. Hopefully, she'll be doing a little better tomorrow.