Ring Pop!

Adalyn tasted her first lick of a sucker this week. After dinner she gets a "cookie" (nilla wafer or graham cracker) and other than that her sugar comes from fruits and yogurt, so when she tasted a sucker it was hilarious! I had to get the camera and the video camera out! Jonathan had a ring pop and she would take a lick and then would smack her lips. oh my goodness. The cuteness.

Don't you love how Coda's all up in her face? He wants a lick too!

And here's are two videos...just because pictures aren't enough:) (and as always, please overlook my crazy video voice. I really hope I don't sound that way in real life!)


I can't handle the cuteness!! I may be a bit biased though:)

Fries Fries Fries

I will admit that we've been quite slow in introducing new foods to Adalyn. I wanted to keep her on organic milk, yogurt, fruits and veggies for as long as possible. But we've finally started her on big people foods. I'm still quite cautious about what she eats because I don't want her to get a taste for "bad" foods. But slowly we've been introducing "bad" foods here and there. She now eats what all the older kids at the sitters' eat and the last couple times we've gone out to get food, I've actually ordered her something off the kids menu (as opposed to feeding her the organic fruit/veggie pouches I keep in the diaper bag).

One night last week Jonathan came home from work and said he needed a big juicy hamburger and for us to get in the car. He wanted to eat at 5 Guys, but Smashburger is closer and also quite delicious! I tried to order Adalyn 1 chicken strip, but the girl didn't know how to charge me for it so I ended up ordering her a kids chicken strip meal because it only had 2 chicken strips anyway. She loves chicken, which is one of the reasons I keep cooking chicken and one of the reasons Jonathan had to go out to dinner that night.  He told me later that he couldn't eat chicken one more day! Ha! Anyway, she ended up eating an entire chicken strip. Then she tried a french fry. She made a face and didn't eat the rest. Then she tried another fry and then another. After a while we had to cut her off because she was shoving her face full of fries. I'm worried that we've created a monster! :)  Here are a couple pictures of how much she was enjoying her fries.

"Everyone look at this amazing new food I've discovered!!"

 "I better shovel them in fast before mom and dad take the rest away!"

She still won't eat pizza and lots of other foods that I figured she'd dig right into, but she really has started eating so much! When I talk to her sitter, she says that Adalyn sees the older kids eating foods and will usually eat whatever it is because they are. So I guess peer pressure is good sometimes!

12 Weeks and a Blogaversary

Today marks 12 weeks in my pregnancy! Only one more week of my 1st trimester! I've been able to skip a few days of Zofran and it gets my hopes up that the end of nausea is coming! (But of course the day after I'm able to skip, I need a Zofran before I can even lift my head off the pillow.) I'm looking forward to that second trimester. Can you tell?? :) My next appointment is in a week and I can barely wait to hear that heartbeat again!! I was going to start to take my first belly picture today, but honestly I forgot. Maybe next week? We shall see. Oh, and for anyone interested, I'm still wearing my normal jeans and I'm pretty proud of myself. (I broke down two days and work maternity jeans two weeks ago because I was too sick to have anything around my stomach but I've been back to normal jeans since!) I know I'm close to making the switch over to maternity soon!

Today is also an exciting day because it marks my 3rd year blogging! It's amazing that I've been blogging for so long. I started this blog as an outlet for my emotions while we were going through a rough time in our lives. When it seemed like we were in a dark tunnel with no light at the end. Jonathan had lost his job and we had infertility problems. Looking back only three years, it's hard to believe we have come so far. Each of us with new jobs, a new house, and now baby #2 on the way. I could have never guessed where I would be at this three year post! I'm so happy that I've kept blogging. I love being able to look through this journal to see where God has brought us. I can't even fathom where I will be at my 6 year post!

And just for the fun of it, here are a few pictures of Adalyn. Jonathan's mom gave her a Pottery Barn chair for Christmas and we just got the cover in the mail yesterday. She loved her chair so of course I had to get some pictures of her in it. (She kept bouncing up and down on the chair and brought her books and doll over to sit with her. So cute!)

My Child Loves Books!

I know I've been absent from blogging lately! Frankly I haven't felt like blogging. In the evenings I've felt sick or tired or have had headaches. So the last thing I've wanted to do was blog. I don't want to be complaining...just telling it like it is. And our lives have been pretty quiet the past couple weeks so I didn't have anything too exciting to blog about. Oh, and you know how I used to always take random pictures of my child and post them? Well, she doesn't stand still long enough for me to snap any pictures! She's a blur in all of the pictures I take! But she is so precious right now. It's hard to put into words all of the sweet and cute things she does. The way she says "das" for "yes" or the way she "da da" for "thank you". And she's just so much fun! Her little personality is just abounding.

Adalyn has been really into books the past couple weeks. She's always liked her book basket, but lately she goes and unloads that basket and wants to read everything before she even goes to her toys anymore. She has a few Sandra Boynton books she loves and her other two favorites are the two I've read before bed since she was little: "Goodnight Moon" and "A Night Night Prayer". I have both of those memorized and she asks to read them all day long. She loves to put her hand in my hand so that I help her point to all the items in the "great green room". 

We might actually need to make a trip to the bargain book section of Joseph Beth to see if we can get a few new ones in the rotation so that I don't go crazy reading the same books over and over! Ha!

Well, another SERIOUS favorite of hers is "Blue Hat, Green Hat" by Sandra Boynton. She absolutely belly laughs when I read it to her. So cute. The other day we had already read it about 5 times in a row and I decided to try to record it with my phone while I read it to her. She was a bit distracted but I still thought it was pretty cute. You can see for yourself. Oh and please don't mind my weird voice. I hate listening to myself on videos.

Random Thoughts from a Prego

• I'm this close to breaking out the maternity clothes. I know when I finally give in to the elastic waistband of maternity jeans I will wonder why I waited so long. But right now I'm bound and determined to continue to wear my cute jeans that aren't saggy in the butt like maternity jeans. But I know that day is coming. Maybe even tomorrow. NO. I refuse to give in! ok maybe I will...
• I feel like I'm showing really early this time. Probably because I had 25 lbs left over from the last pregnancy that I had left to lose. When I did try on a pair of my maternity jeans the other day I felt like I looked like I was very far along if you know what I mean.
• On that last note, I feel like I'm starting this pregnancy with a bit of a handicap. Knowing that one is only supposed to gain 25-30 lbs during pregnancy and knowing that I'm currently overweight by 25 lbs stresses me out. I know I shouldn't get caught up with the numbers but I want to feel healthy this pregnancy. And I'd like to lose the weight faster this time around.
• Oh and still on that note, I had finally been able to fit back into my wedding band. Yes, I'm one of those people that gain/lose weight in my fingers. I'm already mourning the day that my wedding band doesn't fit again...and I know the day is coming soon because some days I have to wedge it on my finger.
• I know pregnancy is worth all of the hormones and weight issues, but it's obviously my stresser.
• At the beginning of this pregnancy I was a bit worried but also excited at the same time because I wasn't feeling nauseous or sick at all like I did with Adalyn.  Never fear. The sickness has come. The food aversions have come. Sometimes after work I'll start to make something for dinner and all of the sudden it sounds so completely gross that I just can't do it. Poor Jonathan. We've had a bit of a shaky couple weeks of dinners. (Yes, I made him eat salad one night for dinner because that was the only thing that sounded good to me.) Thank goodness for Zofran and saltines! Praying that I only have two more weeks of sickness and that it ends when my second trimester starts like it did with Adalyn!
• Babies, Babies, Babies. Ok, you all know I work for a big church. We have a large staff and there are a large number of staff people that are right around my age. Which brings me to my next point.  You all. Between staff and staff spouses there are 11 women pregnant with 12 babies due in 2012!! And we're only up to August of 2012. We still have 4 more months worth of people who could get pregnant!! AND there were two babies born right at the end of 2011. That is CRAZY!! Good thing we don't do staff baby showers! HA! We are going to take over the church nursery on the weekends:) I guess we have a lot of happy, loving people on staff:) Everyone is joking that there is something in the water...but it's not a joke. There really is something in the water!! Looking around, there are a slim number of married people of the baby making age left who aren't pregnant or just had a kid in the past year. Should be a fun time around the office this year! We'll see if anyone else drinks the water!

14 Months

After Adalyn turned a year, I decided not to do monthly recaps. Well, it's only been 2 months since her birthday and there have been so many changes in these two months that I thought I should go ahead and do an update. I'm going to throw in a couple pictures. I've noticed that the number of pictures I take of Adalyn has severely decreased because she is such a moving target. I can never get her to pose for pictures or slow down enough to have a clear picture. I took these pictures the other night when she was playing with her daddy and was so giggly.

The biggest difference right now is that Adalyn is walking all of the time! On Thanksgiving Adalyn took her first step, but she never seemed interested in walking any more than that. The week before Christmas, Adalyn's sitter texted me to tell me that she took 12 steps across the room!  She went from not walking at all, to serious walking. Not just a step or two, but across the room!! When I went to pick Adalyn up that day she told me that she just assumed that Adalyn had been taking a few steps at home and I just hadn't told her about it. But the thing is, Adalyn hadn't been taking steps at all until then! Then in the 3 days we were at my parents house, I realized that Adalyn wasn't crawling anymore. She was walking everywhere! When Adalyn went back to the sitter after the new year, she couldn't believe that Adalyn was now a walker. In just those two weeks she had become a big girl!!  She's barely crawling anymore so she is officially a toddler! And she is FAST!

Adalyn's little personality just keeps coming out every day. She is so much fun. She communicates quite well.  (Which helps her to not do the melt down fussing out of frustration.) She does do sign language for milk, more, please and all done.  She's actually quite accurate...like when she signs "all done" in her high chair, she really is finished eating. I love when she signs "please" for something. So cute. I tried to teach her the sign for "thank you", but she actually has her only little language for "thank you" so she just says it and I absolutely love it! It's kinda like "tee-tee".

She loves stretching her arms up so she will be picked up.  On New Years Eve she was cracking me up, because it didn't matter who she was standing next to, she wanted to be picked up. I'm pretty sure during the evening she asked every single person at our house to pick her up at some point. It melts your heart... And if you're sitting in a chair and she wants up on your lap, she'll put her arms up and then will say "ah" as in "up".

Once you pick her up, she points to where she wants to go and says "dat" (that) about anything she's pointing to. The other day she pointed to the fridge so I walked there and she grabbed the handle. I opened it and she pointed to her milk and did "please" and "milk" in sign language. Melt.my.heart.

For Christmas we gave Adalyn a leapfrog cell phone toy and it is precious to see her put it up to her ear and say "ya-yo" (hello). She'll walk around with any toy near the size of a phone up to her ear. Jonathan says she sees her mom spend too much time with a phone to her ear:) She's learning to play so well with her toys. She doesn't just throw pieces of toys everywhere now. (Well she still does sometimes.) But she is learning to roll her firetruck on it's wheels and stack her little stacking toys. She "pretends" to eat the food in her picnic basket and then wants to share with whoever is playing with her.

She's really into giving kisses. Sometimes she'll blow kisses, but mostly she just puckers up and leans in. She likes to give kisses on the lips. I know some babies like to do the open  mouth kiss and she used to do that, but now she's a pucker-upper. And sometimes she even makes a kissy noise or says "umwha." She's extra kissy in the morning when she wakes up. She just covers us in kisses. Today when I picked her up from the sitter, I picked her up and she kept wanting to give me kisses. It was so precious!! 

There are so many other stories about things she does, but I've got to cut myself off. One last thing: She loves to tap her hand on our back when she hugs and loves on us. oh my.

I look at these past 14 months and still am in awe of how fast she's grown up. My baby is a toddler and is just soaking up life! I can't get enough of her!!! We are blessed!

Surprise!

Adalyn has an announcement to make....

Yep! That's right! Around August 8th-ish Adalyn will become a big sister!! We are still in shock a little bit, but we are so very excited. The kids will be 21 months apart so I'm hoping that they will grow up as best friends! I know we will have our hands full but I'm also so excited.

It was a bit surreal to become pregnant without "trying" after having a 2 year infertility struggle before getting pregnant with Adalyn. We were so thankful to see that heartbeat flickering on the ultrasound!! The good and the bad thing is that this pregnancy is not considered high risk (which is obviously good) but it means that I won't have another ultrasound until 20 weeks (with Adalyn I had multiple ultrasounds before 20 weeks).  I'm a little bummed that we won't get any more pictures of our sweet baby until March, but I am thrilled that this pregnancy is normal and healthy. So I'm not going to complain!

When I found out I was pregnant, this post came right to my mind. Remember in November when I posted about being so tired I could barely think straight? HA! I guess now I know the reason for that! I was pregnant but didn't know it yet!

We have some rearranging to do in the house to make room for another baby, but we're excited to start that whole process in order to prepare for Baby #2!!

Here is Adalyn after she "told" Papa and Grandma her good news on Christmas day. She was rocking her new baby doll in her new rocker from Papa and Grandma. I think she was practicing being a good older sister!

Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?? I have a very strong feeling...

Vacation Mode

You all. I know my posting has been spotty at best. While I was off work for a week and a half, I was so very much in vacation mode that I could never bring myself to sit down and write blog posts! (ok, other than one pretty short Christmas recap.) So, I want to apologize. I don't want blogging to be something that is hanging over my head that I NEED to do (which it felt like over vacation), but something that I want to do because it's an outlet for me. So, bear with me as I get back on track with blogging (and taking pictures of Adalyn - I still can't believe we took so few pictures over Christmas!) I'm working on a post for tonight or tomorrow... hopefully you will enjoy it!