Okay, so her first podcast happened a few years ago when she could barely sing Twinkle, Twinkle litter star and muddled her way through the Alphabet song.  I was playing around then and made the background music too loud so it was difficult to hear her tiny little voice.

I just set up all of the middle school podcasting equipment today and Maddie was kind enough to help me test it out!  I’ve listened to it many, many times now and you can tell that we just did this on the fly.  I decided to go ahead and put it on her blog because I want you all to know about the conversations I have with Maddie.  I love it that conversations take forever, I love it that she is silly, I love it that she is five, I just love her to pieces.  Let me know if this plays for you!

For those of you that subscribe to Maddie’s blog, you may not be able to access it in the email sent to you so please log into her actual blog at www.maddiesminute.com.

Every once in awhile I pop back to Wordle to see if they can create a cool pic for Maddie’s tags.  Today, I finally found one that I like so I decided to publish it.  Notice how the largest words are Maddie, Good, School and Year?

How did this happen? My daughter is attending her third first day of school. She has been chomping at the bit for nearly three weeks to get back to school. A week ago she chose what she would be wearing. Two days before she packed most of her snack for the first day of school. The day before school started we snuck into school at 5:00pm so we could go to the board where the class lists were posted. Alas, Maddie found out that she was going to have Mrs. Howitt. Maddie already has a connection with Ms. Howitt (actually she has a connection with most of the teachers since we work in the school). But she has a special connection with Lynsey. When Lynsey had her baby boy, Ben, back in May, Maddie drew a Baby ben a picture and delivered it to him in the hospital when he was a day old.

We’re all so happy with Maddie’s set up this year. She has some close friends in class and will be making some new ones – it’s the perfect combination. Thankfully, Youn Suh is in the class with Maddie which thrills her to no end. She also has Sophia who has been in Maddie’s class since PreK-3. And Justin is the perfect match for Maddie this year. For two years he has not let Maddie play trucks with him and she has told me that she is determined to play trucks with him this year. I think this is her year!

When we walked into school on the first day, Maddie walked past Ms. Preeti’s room and longingly stared into classroom. I saw the look in her eye and suggested that she go give Ms. Preeti her ritual good morning hug. Maddie’s face beamed and she ran into class, throwing herself into Ms. Preeti’s arms. I think Preeti was just as happy to see Maddie! She made her way to her new classroom, found her cubby and her cubby mate, Abigail, before heading out to discover her new classroom.

There were some children who were experiencing their first day of school – Maddie could tell because the children were scared. Maddie on the otherhand was obvioulsy NOT experiencing her first-first day of school. I asked her if she wanted me to hang around and she clearly said to me, “Mommy, you can go now. I’ll see you later!” And that was that.

I walked down to see her during my lunch time (I’m still going to do that) and found her proudly getting everybody into a straight line after lunch – the duties of the line leader. I watched her play outside with all three of the kindergarten classes combined which was cool because she was able to visit with friends from the past few years.

She came home exhausted and with the first picture of the year made for me. She drew a picture of herself with black hair again…. we’ll see if that holds though because there are two other blondes in her class!

It’s going to be a good year for Maddie Anna – it’s a good life!

What a full week it has been!  We got back to Shanghai late Thursday night and here it is Thursday night again so we’ve been back a week.  Maddie spent a fair amount of time in the pool which meant we had a lot of time for some interesting conversations.  Maddie has been on so many planes this summer that she has decided that she wants to be an airplane girl.  Later, when I asked her where she wanted to go she said that she wouldn’t ever get off the plane.  She would just stay on the plane forever to help people!  Okay, so maybe the 11 take-off and landings this summer had an impact on her mental health!

Like any good mom, I took Maddie to the doctor on her birthday because she needed a check-up in order to go to school this year.  Now, Maddie had five shots when we were back in the States this year and I promised her no skin pricks with the TB test so we did an x-ray.  That ended up being just as traumatic as a skin prick though but she persevered!  Because school hasn’t started and there are hardly any kids back yet, we had a small celebration for Maddie’s golden birthday. Ron, Ashley and Eva came over for Miss Maddie’s birthday where she set the table all by herself and even decorated her own birthday cake. I told her that she had to act suprised when she saw it and I think she did a pretty good job!:)

We did get Maddie a new puppy for her golden birthday. I think it’s good for us to have a dog in the house. Maddie turned five on the fifth so we got her a golden lab. Maddie decided to name her Shallie Callie because she’s on a rhyming word kick. We call her Callie for short though!

Callie is a cute puppy and enjoys our routine of getting up in the morning and sitting in the backyard.  Watch the video below even though it’s a bit blurry… it’s actually the result of a cold camera going outside into the humidity!