7 Years!

Sunday was Justin and my 7th wedding anniversary.  It is hard to believe it has been that long that we have been married and really seems to have flown by, although it also is a little hard to remember life before we were married...particularly life before Madelyn.  In the past we have gone places for our anniversary, but this weekend we stayed home and mostly did things together as a family except for a date on Saturday.  This summer it has been so much fun to do things with Madelyn because she gets so excited about them.

The weekend was filled with activities that might have been ok to do without Madelyn (at least some of them) but were a significantly better experience for taking her to do them.  On Friday Madelyn and I met some friends and their 19 month old daughter at the Mall of America to go to the Minnesota Sea Life Aquarium.  Although transitions are not Madelyn's biggest strength right now, she did pretty well moving from one place to another with only minor resistance at the different activities until it was time to leave when she pretty much had a full scale meltdown.  She really liked the jellyfish and insisted on looking at each individual display although there were only 3 different kinds of jellyfish in about 9 displays.  However, her favorite part was the underwater tunnels.  Unlike some of the children who were scared or startled or at least concerned by the sharks and other large fish swimming right at/by their heads, when Madelyn was caught off guard she laughed. Huge rows of teeth a couple of feet from her face did not phase her in the least.  There were "oohs" and of course "whoas" but not any fear.   We have been saying for a while that she is a pretty fearless child which I think bodes for an exciting toddlerhood.

It was a good weekend for the beach and the wading pool, and although we were not the only ones who had those ideas it is fun to see how much change even a week brings.  Last weekend when we played at the wading pool she would walk around and enjoyed any games or playing that we would initiate, but this weekend she initiated some water activities of her own, including splashing both of us and a new game where she jumped on top of me and pushed me into the water.  She thought it was hilarious, and actually Justin thought it was pretty hilarious too.  I tried to convince her several times to go play the game with daddy but each time she would just smile at me and then try to get me to go into the water again.


All in all it was a pretty fantastic way to spend our anniversary weekend.