Jonathan's Accent Vlog

So now it's the husbands' round to do the Accent Vlogs so I roped Jonathan into doing it. He's lived in Kentucky his whole life but he doesn't have a really strong accent. Sometimes my mom has to have him repeat words because she can't understand his accent! I think he sounds pretty normal on this vlog though.

So cute and such a good sport! Thanks for playing along, J!

Wordless Wednesday

Friends!

Accent Vlog

Jenna posted an Accent Vlog link-up on her blog and I thought it looked fun so I thought I'd do an accent vlog too. It's fun to hear what everyone sounds like! You should link up too!  I grew up in Northern Ohio (close to Michigan) and I always thought I didn't have an accent until I went to college in Kentucky and everyone asked me if I was from Michigan. Guilty! Guess I was extremely northern sounding.  Now that I have lived in Kentucky for 12 years, I hear the northern accents when i go back home. And my friends from home make fun of me because I sound so country.  Some of the things I say are very northern and some are southern now.  My husband is southern through and through so I'm pretty sure he's rubbed off on me!  Here is my Accent Vlog (Please excuse my appearance. I've been up since 5:30am, worked 8 hours, played with Adalyn and made baby food tonight, so I'm looking rough but if I didn't tape this tonight I knew I never would!):

The instructions are to say these words:


Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught


And answer these questions:

What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

Link up your Accent Vlog to Jenna's blog party!!

9 Months

Adalyn turned 9 months old on August 9th. (20 days ago...I'm a bit late posting. oops) We were in Florida and I posted a couple pictures from the actual day in the Florida posts. When we got home we took a few more 9 month pictures in her normal poses.  Well, the normal poses were a bit of an effort since she barely sits still long enough to stay in the camera frame.  She's constantly on the move so half of the pictures I took were blurry! And she was not into sitting in the normal picture spots.  But we got some cute pictures (thanks to daddy helping).

Adalyn has 4 top teeth and 2 bottom teeth now!

Adalyn still wears sizes 6-12 month or 9-12 month clothes (depending on brand). She actually has a 0-3 skirt that she wore in her 9 month photo shoot with Jes! Her onesies are still 3-6 month.  She never wears shoes, but when I measured her for shoes for the fall, she is a size 2. And she's still in size 3 diapers.

Adalyn didn't have to get shots at her 9 month appointment but we did get her stats. She has stayed in the same percentiles as her previous appointments.
Height: 28 1/8 in. 50-75%
Weight: 17 lbs 3 oz 25%
Head: 16 1/4 in. <5%

Adalyn is such a great eater.  She has really figured out how to feed herself and is quite good at it! She loves Puffs. She hasn't tried meat yet, but she eats lots of different fruits and veggies! On our vacation, she tried non-homemade baby food for the first time.  I got a couple packets of organic/no-additives baby food to keep in the car and in the diaper bag in case we were somewhere where I couldn't thaw out her frozen homemade baby food.  We needed them a couple times so I was glad I had them and she loved them. I was worried that by her eating them that she wouldn't like her homemade stuff, but she went right back to eating them! She's pretty serious about eating and is up to eating two fruits and oatmeal with breakfast, two veggies for lunch and two veggies and a fruit for dinner!

She pulled up in her crib, so this past month we lowered her mattress.  She learned to crawl the day after she turned 9 months. She's pulling up on everything now!

She took her first trip to Florida, saw the ocean, met her extended family and had a very exciting month this past month!  She's so much fun and has such an infectious laugh. Every month I say this, but I love this age so much! Her little personality is showing so much now and we just can't get enough of her! Can we please stop time? :)

Florida - Part 3 (St. Augustine)

Wednesday evening we said goodbye to [rainy] Orlando and drove to St. Augustine.  My brother's family moved to St. Augustine last summer and we hadn't seen them since! (They used to live about an hour away from us so we were used to seeing them all the time!) We were so excited to see my niece and nephew (my oldest niece was at camp so we missed her!) and have them meet Adalyn.

Thursday morning we woke up to beautiful weather and decided on a day at the beach!  Well, with a baby it's not really a "day" at the beach. It's more of a "few hours" at the beach. By the time we got all of our gear and lunches packed and out the door it was going on lunch time! But the weather was amazing and the beach was beautiful.  It was a quiet secluded beach and completely non-touristy. Wonderful.  We got some great pictures of the water.  Unfortunately many of them included me in a bathing suit and you are sorely mistaken if you think that I will be posting those to this blog for the whole world (or the 2 of you that read this) to see.  But we got some pretty cute pictures of my niece with Adalyn.  Jonathan doesn't get in the ocean so he stayed on the sand and took some great pictures!

Testing out the ocean for the first time! She loves water and she enjoyed jumping in the waves with me.

 Lauren was such a great older cousin! It was like having a built in baby sitter! She loved on Adalyn at all times and Adalyn loved all the attention!

 I love this picture.  It's like they are having their own little conversation. Oh, and that Boogie Board she's sitting on? Yeah, I'm no good!

 They had this great tent that was perfect for Adalyn to have some shade!

She loved Lauren's bathing suit strings.

 This? This is not me. I need a little more practice. That must be it.

We went out to a delicious dinner at a "Fish Camp".  I've never heard that term before, but I guess all the seafood places there are called "fish camps".  Thankfully they had called ahead for reservations because the place was packed! We had a great time catching up with my brother and fam.  And Adalyn was a good girl at the restaurant.

Showing off in the restaurant.

Friday we decided to make it a pool day.  Their neighborhood has a pool and it's not like any other neighborhood pool I've ever seen.  It was like a nice country club pool.  Adalyn even took a nap under an umbrella table so we were able to lay in the sun a little! There was a huge water slide that Jonathan tried out! (My sister-in-law and I kind of pushed him to do it...but he liked it!)

That afternoon my brother left for a two week business trip to Australia (LUCKY!!) so we said our goodbyes and then went with my SIL and the kids to Old St. Augustine to walk around.  We were really hungry so we decided our first stop should be food.  When we got out of the restaurant it was raining for the first time that week there! Grrr. So sick of the rain.  We did manage to make one stop at a little fudge/ice cream store. But I feel like we missed out on so much.  I'm pretty sure we could have easily spent the entire week in St. Augustine with all of the fun stuff there is to do there!

Oh, and did I mention that Adalyn started crawling while we were at my brother's house? Because she did! And here's a really long video with very little crawling. (AKA if you're not a grandparent you probably aren't interested.) Please excuse my crazy voice in the background!

Saturday morning we woke up, got some breakfast and packed our car back up.  We got a few pictures with the kids in their pjs and then said goodbye.  It was sad to say goodbye since we don't really know when the next time is that we will see them.  In this year they have grown so much that I can't imagine another whole year from now! I could kick myself for not getting a picture of Adalyn with my brother before he left town! And for how little pictures I got of all the kids! You live and learn...

Cousins!

 Adalyn was sad to leave. Can you tell?

Overall we had a great trip.  Long gone are the relaxing, reading and tanning vacations, but that's ok.  I wouldn't have it any other way! We had a great time seeing old friends, enjoying sites and visiting with family.  It was hard to say goodbye to Florida but we knew we had to get back to reality.  Adalyn did great on the way home (not as great as the way there, but what can you expect?) and now we know that a car trip is possible.  And it's possible to pack enough homemade baby food in a cooler to last an entire week! So glad my baby didn't have to go hungry! I kid. I kid.

And why not wrap up the trip with another boring video of Jonathan driving and me babbling. I must have been bored:)

Florida - Part 2 (Orlando)

Tuesday Adalyn turned 9 months, so of course we had to take a couple monthly pictures...except the pictures were in a blue room instead of a pink room! We did take some normal monthly pictures when we got home so that will be another post, but here are a couple pictures from the actual day.

 Bows only last about 2 seconds lately... So sad.

It was dark and raining in the morning so we knew we needed another indoor activity and we had already checked out the mall on Sunday and the outlets on Monday, so we went to hang out at Ikea. I love Ikea and wish it we had one closer to our house! Here's a picture of Adalyn's first trip to Ikea:

I could live in Ikea. Okay, maybe not, but all of their organizing stuff is so tempting and then their prices are so amazing. I can easily fill up my little yellow bag! Britt and her two kids met up with us at Ikea and hung out with us. Then we went back to their house for a yummy home cooked dinner and had a bit of a photo op with the kids (after they had eaten, were past tired, and their cute clothes were either dirty or missing). Oh well. It's real life people.

 Trying to pull-up!

 Adalyn with Clay

 He was reading her a book. So cute.

 Adalyn and Addie. She's such a little beauty!

 Britt and me with our babies. So crazy to think back to college and how our lives have changed!

Wednesday, we woke up and it was still overcast but we decided to chance it and went to Downtown Disney. We didn't want to pay for a Disney park since Adalyn can't appreciate it so we did the free Disney activity. It was about 150* heat index and the sun actually came out. So we were feeling really refreshed:) Again, we forgot the camera so all of the pictures are from my phone.

We ate at T-Rex Restaurant. Adalyn was pretty intrigued with the light show every 20 minutes.

We went into the Disney stores while Adalyn snoozed but we got a picture so that she could look back to see that she really was at Disney!

When she woke up, daddy showed her the alien from Toy Story. She was actually quite fond of it.

After some Ghirardelli Ice Cream (it was necessary because we were melting), we went back over to the princess store to get Adalyn's first picture with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

Once we were worn out from Downtown Disney, we packed all of our stuff back in the car, said goodbye to Angela and her sweet family, and drove 2-ish hours to St. Augustine to visit my brother's family.  That'll be a post for tomorrow!

Florida - Part 1 (Orlando)

For our first family vacation we decided to drive to Florida to visit two of my old college friends and then to head to my brother's family's house to visit them. (We hadn't seen my brother's family for a whole year - since they moved to Florida!) We've been home from vacation for over a week, but I'm just now getting around to writing up some blog posts.

I was so bad about taking pictures all week!! Can you believe we didn't get ONE picture of the three of us together? So mad!  Next time, I'm going to try to keep my camera closer to me. I do have quite a few phone pictures so you'll have to excuse the quality of them. I started the trip with the best of intentions by doing a little video:

(wow. I sound country. I'm not proud.) Picture taking was all downhill from here.

We first went to Orlando where we stayed with my friend, Angela, her husband, son, and doggie.  Angela and I lived in the same apartment (with 4 other girls) my Senior year.  It was so good to see her and catch up.  Her son, Elias is only 1 month younger than Adalyn so it was fun to see them interact.

We also visited my friend Brittainy, her husband and her son and daughter.  Brittainy and I were roommates Sophomore year and we were inseparable Freshman and Sophomore year until Britt transferred out. (I don't blame her. It was so she could be with her boyfriend who is now her husband.) But I so missed her the rest of college.  It was awesome to spend time with her family!  Her son, Clay is 4 months older than Adalyn so that was fun!

On Saturday, we headed to Britt's sister's pool where we spent some time floating around and Adalyn enjoyed splashing her daddy and floating in a shaded float.

Sunday, we went to church with Angela (and Britt since they go to the same church) and we had to take a pager for them to page us when a spot in the nursery opened up.  I'm used to being part of a large church, but this church even blew me away. I've never heard of a wait for the nursery! Talk about a big church!  Then we went to the mall food court to eat lunch with Britt and Lance and family.  Later we headed home to Angela's for an amazing cookout with all of her husband, Rene's family. It was seriously the best steak ever. Rene is an amazing chef.

Little did we know that Saturday would be the one and only day that we were in the sunshine in Orlando! Monday, we shopped the outlets in the drizzle and storms. Man, have times changed.  I realized that we never even stepped foot into Loft (my absolute favorite store) or Gap! But we hit every.single.kids.store. We got some awesome deals for Adalyn for next summer so we were excited. After shopping we went to dinner with Angela and Elias.

This is Adalyn's first car date! (She doesn't look too excited about it.)

 Playing!

 Look at those big eyes!

 I had to add this picture. I got her top 4 teeth in a picture!!

 Don't mind me in the background. This was the only picture with both kids looking at the camera. Oh, and Zoey (the dog) was smiling too:) Can you see Adalyn waving?

 Adalyn liked Elias' Jeep walker. She cruised around in it a lot!

Next up: Another rainy day and a little Disney.

A big milestone!

As I mentioned in my previous post, on my birthday we had some "baby stuff" come up.  Well, that baby stuff happened to be lowering the crib! Where is my newborn baby?? Since she's been on the floor more often she's starting to try new things but I still hadn't seen her get to a standing position without help.  I put her in her crib to play while I was in her closet looking through her shoes to see what size she is going to be for fall.  I turned around and sure enough she is standing up and about to topple out of the crib! (Maybe I should add that she was attempting to reach a cute pair of pink gap flip flops that I had just tried on her. Starting her shoe addiction at a young age! She's her mama's baby!)  It scared me so bad though! So when Jonathan got home from work I told him that I couldn't leave her in the crib one more night until her mattress was lowered.

That of course took longer than we expected since we had to do and then undo and then straighten the crib skirt (why do they make those so hard to keep in place??) and tighten the bumper and then we finally got it right.  It seems like just moving the mattress made her waay older. Here are a couple pictures of her in her "new" bed.

Can you tell she was worried that I was leaving her in her bed instead of just taking a picture?

And the other nursery change is a less impressive milestone, but a change none the less.  Sometimes it's the small things that make me the happiest.  The bow holder I made only had one center ribbon and we had filled up that ribbon. So I added two ribbons to the holder and now I'm able to keep all of her different kinds of bows organized and we have space for MORE!! :) ::as J rolls his eyes:: I see bow holders in stores and boutiques and they have these short little ribbons and I wonder WHO those bow holders are for? I'd never be able to fit even half of Adalyn's bows:) Good thing I made my own.

Before she was born:

 After:

{We have a couple special bows but most of them in this picture are from Hobby Lobby. They have great prices for bows in case you're looking for some!}

And all that empty ribbon? Don't you worry!  I have an order placed with my Mom's group for a TON of new bows for $1 each and I'm pretty excited!!

These are enough milestones for now.  Can I slow down time please!  Let's not discuss what a mess I will be down the road when we convert her crib to a toddler bed. Nope. Not thinking about it. 

My 30th Birthday

(I'm running about two and a half weeks behind on blogs but I'm determined to write them in chronological order.)

On August 2nd I turned the big 3-0! Most of my friends are 30 so I know that there is life after 30, but for some reason that just shook me up. Everybody knows your 20's are fun, but your 30's...they just mean your old and boring. Right? :)  My mom was in town the week before my birthday, so she took me out shopping since she says that I'm impossible to shop for. (I'm SO not. wink wink.) And we went to a fun little boutique store and she bought me a new white cake plate that I LOVE. I was planning on using it for my birthday cake and then, as sad as this is, we never even got my cake out of the box! Not even to take the picture! After we went out to dinner (Adalyn was a great girl at Regatta) we had a few baby things that came up that had to be done.  We'll just say that by cake time we were tired and didn't feel a need to put on a pretty show for just the two of us. But we did eat a piece. Or two. :)

Heading out to dinner! My favorite birthday present was in my arms! I wish her outfit showed up better in the pictures. It was so adorable!

Yummy cake! (I thought the junk on the counter added a nice touch...)

Jonathan was so sweet and gave me a new Chi. If you remember my posts from a year and a half ago (you can read them here and here) you know I loved my Ultra Chi. (Yes, I'm aware than I have now written about a flat iron 3 times!) Well, my mom's Chi wasn't cutting it anymore.  I'm one of those people whose hair completely changed textures while pregnant/nursing. I went from straight hair all of my life to wavy/curly hair in the back of my head. Bleh. So Jonathan gave me a  new Ultra Chi and thankfully it is keeping up with my new wavy hair! He was so excited because he got it on sale plus had a coupon for Ulta that came in the mail that he took before I saw it. And to top off my Chi he gave me this snazzy holder so that hopefully I won't drop it again.  Although if I drop it in our bathroom it won't break because we have a 90's bathroom that has CARPET in it. Seriously. (One of those house projects that is on the list.) And my snazzy holder makes me feel like I work at a hair salon even if there is no way anyone would hire me to work at a salon unless it would be to sweep the floors or take the money to the bank. :)

It was a nice birthday and so much fun to have my first birthday as a mommy! And the good part is that life didn't end when I turned 30! Yay!

A Week with Grandma Nan

Three weeks ago our new sitter had a vacation scheduled so my mom was kind enough to come watch Adalyn. (We really had to twist her arm. haha!) It was so nice to have her around all week.  That hasn't happened since right after Adalyn was born. Unfortunately my dad was busy volunteering for the US Open that same week so he couldn't come. But Adalyn enjoyed some Gram time!

My mom played on the floor with Adalyn all week and it was amazing how advanced she became in just one week.  I have a feeling that in the past (at daycare) she wasn't set down on the ground long enough to learn how to crawl so she was always just satisfied with sitting and watching what was going on around her.  After being at our new sitter's house for two weeks she was all about floor time.  Then after a week with my mom, she is cruising around (although not on her hands and knees so she gets frustrated.) {since I wrote this post before vacation it's a bit outdated since she is now crawling!} She gets up on her knees and rocks and rocks and then ends up on her tummy scooting backwards.  Before she would barely tolerate tummy time and now she won't stay on her back.

Anyway, Adalyn had fun going on walks each day with my mom. (And I know Dakota enjoyed that too!) We all had a great time and it was soo sad to see her leave.  We're trying to talk my parents into "visiting" permanently in Lexington! It would be so nice to have them around more often.

We were busy having fun all week so we never remembered to take pictures! OOPS! But we did get a couple of pictures last Sunday before my mom left.

My mom and dad are puppy-sitting Dakota while we're on vacation so she took him back with her and it's been so quiet around the house without him.  I'm pretty sure he's living the high life there though! He's king of the house:) And my mom also knows she has the dog as ransom so she knows that she'll see Adalyn as soon as we want the dog back:) I'm hoping that means that they will come to town soon so my dad can help Jonathan with some painting projects I've dremt up! :)