The Coolest Thing I Did Last Year...

at least in the "making memories" category.

At the beginning of last year I decided to jot down every night something fun or cute that happened that day...you know, those everyday moments that make you laugh, but are easily forgotten.  I wrote at least one for all 365 days of last year.  Sometimes they were easy to remember, and sometimes I was racking my brain at the end of the night asking myself "did anything at all happen today?" 

It's nothing pretty, just an old moleskin notebook I had laying around, and my handwriting is terrible throughout most of it, but I'm so glad I did it.  Bill and I have enjoyed going back and re-reading them here and there throughout the year.  He'll randomly name a date, and I'll read the entry.

I debated whether or not to keep it up this year, as it was hard to do everynight, and if I skipped a night it was even harder to remember.  Ultimately I decided that I am going to keep doing it, but not necessarily every night.  As Madeleine's vocabulary grows, I imagine this year it will focus largely on those "kids say the darndest things" moments.

Here are a few of my favorites from the past year:

1/16/12 - Madeleine eating an entire meatball like she was eating an apple.  She totally went to town on that thing!!

5/13/12 - Madeleine walked right up to Bill, stopped, and just yelled at him "Mom!!"  It was so funny, like he wasn't paying her enough attention and she was mad about it.  I hope she starts calling him "Dad" soon.

8/30/12 - I was reading to Madeleine before bed, and she kept waving at all the characters in her book.  After I laid her down in her crib, she looks up at me, waves, and says "bye".  It made me laugh.  I waved back, and told her it was good-night, not good-bye.  She definitely went to bed happy tonight.

12/7/12 - Madeleine was doing her alphabet puzzle today.  Whenever she couldn't find where a piece went she would shrug her shoulders and fliper her hands over like "Where is it?"  Then, if she tried it somewhere and it didn't fit she would say, "no".  The cutest thing though was when she found where it went she would say "There it is" although it sounds like "ere-e-is".  She was doing it all day, it was so cute.