Sugar and Spice...

Happy New Year-ish

2012-02-01T21:15:00.001-05:00

So what that this post is one month late. It's late for a good reason. I never posted about our New Year's Eve so today is the day! For years Jonathan and I have had NYE get togethers at our house with friends. Looking back over the years was quite amusing when we remember our parties going well into the night. Or should I say morning. This past NYE, we had Derek, Billie, Tim, Lindsy, Justin and Jes (and all the kids) over. The funny part was that only Tim and Lindsy stayed long enough for the ball to drop. Ahh. Times they have a-changed.

I do have to say that the kids/babies were really great and all went down to sleep in different rooms of the house and let us all have a nice adult evening. And we even watched a movie. (Because we have wild par-tays if you haven't figured that out yet.)

The reason I never posted about NYE is because we didn't take many pictures, but the pictures we did take showed a secret that is now "out". So here are a couple pictures:

Our girls announced some news in their Big Sister shirts!

Jes (mommy to be), me, Billie (newborn Emalyn was sleeping), and Lindsy - The 4 mommies all with new babies / babies on the way!

Yes! Lindsy is pregnant and due the same week that I am! And we decided to surprise our friends on NYE! It was so much fun to surprise everyone. And fun to do it with a friend. How many chances in life do you get to reveal such exciting news like that with a friend?

The way that Lindsy and I found out about each other was so crazy. I was bound and determined that I wasn't going to tell anyone until we went to the doctor but I was doing a service project with Lindsy the day after I got a positive pregnancy home test and randomly things came up about how long till the next baby. I guessed Lindsy was pregnant and when we got over the screaming and hugging I must have had a crazy look on my face because she said "you're pregnant too" and I couldn't lie to her. So cue another round of screams and hugging. It was so unbelievable! Then Lindsy let me in on another secret... our friend Janine is due the same week!! Crazy!!

Such an exciting way to start the new year by telling our friends our good news! We had a fun time of fellowship and food too! Next NYE we will have 3 more babies for our party!! How fun!

Ring Pop!

2012-01-30T19:51:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-28T20:55:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-24T20:49:00.000-05:00

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!

2012-01-22T19:57:00.002-05:00

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

2012-01-10T20:14:00.001-05:00

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

2012-01-09T20:33:00.001-05:00

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!

2012-01-04T20:57:00.001-05:00

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

2012-01-04T07:41:00.000-05:00

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!

Christmas

2011-12-29T21:38:00.000-05:00

I've been busy enjoying my family this week so I'm just getting around to posting about Christmas. We had a wonderful holiday with both of our families. We started the weekend off by going to church on Friday night. Here is a picture of Jonathan and Adalyn before the Christmas service.

On Christmas Eve day, we headed into Louisville to spend the day with Jonathan mom, sister and nephews. We exchanged gifts and enjoyed the kids. In the afternoon we went to Jonathan's cousin's house for a party with the extended family. We had a great time! Jonathan's cousin has small kids, so she had a great idea to do the Christmas Eve party early in the evening so that the kids could get home at an early time. We were very thankful for that!

By the time we drove home, it was past Adalyn's bedtime but we let her stay up late enough to read 'Twas The Night Before Christmas and also the Real Christmas Story. After she went to bed Jonathan and I got to work wrapping her presents and getting stockings ready.

Christmas morning we set the tripod up to get a picture on the stairs. One of my family's traditions was that the furthest we could go downstairs on Christmas morning was that we could only go as far as the stairs. And when my parents were finally ready for us to open presents they would take a picture of us in our pj's half asleep on the stairs. So we did that picture and even though it's against my better judgement, I'm going to post a picture. Please don't notice the lack of make-up. (Can you believe we got everyone to look at the camera at the same time??)

We video taped Adalyn opening gifts and never even thought to get the regular camera out! OOPS! Adalyn was so much fun opening her gifts. We got her mostly books and just a couple small toys. Santa got her a baby doll and a stroller (the stroller was $7 at a consignment sale last August and I hid it that entire time!) and she loved it. She keeps trying to climb in the stroller herself. So cute!

Christmas afternoon we headed to Toledo to visit my family. My mom is home from the hospital but is unable to leave her house. She has a nurse coming to attend to her wound every other day but she has been getting stronger so we are very thankful. Her friends, family and church have surrounded her with delicious meals! We even had someone bring us a full Christmas dinner. It was quite wonderful! After dinner with my parents, my brother and his family we opened gifts with my parents. My parents were so sweet with Adalyn's gift even with my mom in the hospital. Thankfully my parents had the Internet at the hospital and my dad is a good gift wrapper! But we were truly reminded about what Christmas is really about this year.

We stayed with my parents for a couple days and were able to see my aunts and uncles. One of my cousins lives in China and was home for Christmas. She had never met Adalyn and we were so excited for them to finally meet. She had brought the absolute sweetest gift from China for Adalyn. A Qi-Pao (sounds like Chee-Pow and is like a Kimono) and a panda bear wearing a Kimono. Of course we had to try it on Adalyn! She was so cute in it!

My dad has tons of bird feeders and squirrel feeders so when we are at their house, it is like being at a nature preserve. He has some beautiful birds! It's like the squirrels know they are nice because they aren't afraid of people. They come right up to the door. Dakota likes to bark his head off at the squirrels as they play in the yard. The day we were leaving one of the squirrels came right up to the door. Dakota was barking his head off but the squirrel just came closer. He actually had his front paws up on the window and Dakota had his paw on the inside of the window. We watched Happy Feet the night before. I've seen too many kid movies about animals because I just pictured what the two animals were saying back and forth. And what that squirrel thought of the loud furry thing that was allowed to be inside when he was out in the cold! HA!

All in all we had a wonderful Christmas! We don't have many pictures to show, but I'll just say it was because we were so enjoying the moment that we never got the camera out! We're home now and going to spend the rest of our vacation working around the house, cleaning and organizing and spending time together! I'm looking forward to some "down time"! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Family and Santa

2011-12-23T13:34:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday my brother and his 3 kids came in town to stay for a couple nights on their way from Florida to Ohio to visit my parents for Christmas. My oldest niece had never met Adalyn before and she was so sweet with her. My other niece and nephew were around last summer when we went to their house in Florida so they had already met Adalyn. They were also very sweet with Adalyn. Pretty much she didn't know what to do with all of the attention.

My nieces and nephew are so very well behaved and are so fun to be around that we didn't want to see them leave. Our house was loud and lively but I loved it. It was a good loud - everyone enjoying each other and playing games together.

The kids swapped presents and they were so excited about the gift they had picked out for Adalyn. It was sweet. They showed her how to play with it and helped her get the pieces in the openings. Precious. Dakota seemed to enjoy all the extra attention too!

One of the things that I had yet to do this season was to get a picture of Adalyn with Santa so I thought what better time than when her cousins were with her. So we got one picture with just Adalyn and Santa and one picture with all of the cousins. Of course Caleb needed to know why this Santa was a different Santa than the one he had already seen this year and knew one had to be an impostor. But since it's difficult to know which one was an impostor he went ahead and told this Santa what he wanted for Christmas too.

We went to the same Santa we saw last year who happens to be outside a bookstore in town (instead of fighting the mall traffic and lines). We got on a call-ahead list for Santa so that we could go hang out in Joseph Beth. (That bookstore is pretty much the coolest thing ever and has a whole toy section so we stayed busy for the hour we would have been waiting in line.) The kids played so nicely while we were waiting.

Santa!! (She was just curious...no tears!)

After waiting for her cousins to get in the picture, the tears started coming. :(

This big tree was outside the store. Great picture-op for the family:)

We had an awesome weekend! Adalyn and I were actually able to meet up with the whole crew on their way back down to Florida today for lunch. It was a nice surprise to get a call that they were able to meet up on the road! Adalyn was reaching for my brother while she was in the high chair at Chick-fil-a. I'm pretty sure she loves her family!! I just hope that we can see them more often than once a year!

Jonathan's MBA Graduation

2011-12-21T15:17:00.000-05:00

I need to take a moment to brag on my husband. On Saturday he graduated from Morehead State University with his MBA (Masters in Business Administration). When he graduated from UK (undergrad) he didn't walk, so I told him when he graduated with his Masters that he would be walking! I was so so proud of him when I saw him walk into the ceremony in his cap and gown!

Let's back up a minute. Jonathan had always talked about going back to school at some point, but we put it off due to the expense. Then he got a job at the University of Kentucky. Employees of UK can attend any state school for FREE because the school values learning. (We of course paid for taxes and books out of pocket but we couldn't complain since everything else was covered). So two years ago Jonathan decided to start his masters classes at Morehead. (Morehead had a completely online program where UK he would have had to attend physical classes.) He took 2 classes per semester for fall, spring and summer the past two years...aka no breaks! When he puts his effort towards something he goes full out for it. Last year when Adalyn was born I even asked him to just take one class per semester but he was so determined to finish in two years that he kept up his pace.

Jonathan is a really good student and he has this brain that just sucks up info, so he did amazing in his classes with (I'm sure) less studying than his fellow students. For the first few semesters he was getting a 4.0 and then found out that Masters grads don't get any honors. He was so bummed out. Let's just say that he would have had honors cords had they had them for the MBA students. I truly don't know how he completed his courses in such a small time with such amazing grades while working a full time at a very stressful job, being a supportive husband and an attentive daddy. He truly is amazing. And I'm so lucky to have him!

Since his classes were online he'd never been to the campus before. We were all surprised by how small the gym was (and that the graduation was in the gym). There were more people graduating than I was expecting since it was a winter graduation. The gym was packed so we had to sit up in about the furthest seat away from the stage. Bummer. But I still took a few pictures! It was a very long and very boring ceremony. (You really forget how boring they can make those things.) Although watching him walk across stage to get his hood was so exciting! Here are some pictures of his big day!

Waiting patiently for the ceremony to start.

Jonathan walking in.

Jonathan walking across stage.

My two favorite people! (After the 2 hour ceremony can you tell that A wasn't "perky" anymore?)

Jonathan, his mom, sister and kids.

We came back to the house afterwards for cake and a celebration. We were blessed that our friends and family could come and celebrate Jonathan and his achievement! We of course were sad that my parents weren't able to come. We know that they really wished that they were there. My mom was actually back in the hospital with an infected incision. She has since come home and will be healing for at least the next month. We're just glad she's ok and is home from the hospital. But we for sure missed them at this momentous occasion.

Jonathan, I am so very proud of you! You did it!!! And no more studying and papers!! yipee!!

2011 Christmas Decorations

2011-12-16T21:03:00.000-05:00

This is our second Christmas in this house so of course I went back into my old blog posts and pictures from last year to see where all of my decorations went. I'm a person of habit so if I found a place for my decorations last year and was happy with it then I didn't want to waste time this year refiguring out the same decorations. Many of these pictures are quite similar to last year, but I did mix things up a little bit:)

Let's start with the living room. Adalyn received the Little People Manger set from Jonathan's boss last Christmas. (How sweet was that?) So, we set the manger up under the tree and she loves to put the people and animals in and out of the black bin. She was playing with her manger until I got the camera out and then she thought I needed her to crawl to me. :)

This tree was new last year and I still love it. I absolutely love the fun feel of the lime green and bright red. The tree topper makes me happy! After Christmas last year I went to one of my favorite boutique stores by my mom's house and I got a bunch of fun glass ornaments on discount. This year as I was unwrapping all of these awesome ornaments it was like opening Christmas presents because I couldn't remember what I had bought and I still loved everything I had bought!

Here it is at night. Glowing.

I like my mantle. The red present was from the same fun boutique as the ornaments. I bought it and a green one two years ago after Christmas and last year had them sitting together on the fireplace hearth. I didn't think that would work this year with Adalyn into everything, so I moved it up to the mantle and I love it! It's so sparkly and the colors are great. I already posted about my fun Mud Pie stockings. At some point I'm going to have our initials embroidered into the top circle, but not this year:) I love how everything looks together.

At night. I love how the red box looks so different at night.

This is above my couch. I love reindeer and I've built quite a collection. I used to have a few around the house on the ground, but again I decided this year was not the year to have pokey metal decorations on the floor, so they took over the shelves. The only two new items this year are the picture frame (which was a Christmas gift last year and I was so excited that it matched my new lime green/red color scheme) and the red/green glittery garland on the top shelf. You can't see in this picture but it's the same material and colors as the gift on the mantle and I love how it pulls the colors and texture into this wall.

Hey! How did she sneak in here? :) I just couldn't resist. She was playing with her "bike" from grandma and papa. She has finally learned how to get on and off of it herself!

Jonathan hates when I put any decorations on the TV console but this green present is perfect because it's tall and skinny so it's out of the way of the TV screen and it's cute so when I watch TV it makes me happy!

Here's a wide view of the living room in all it's toy glory:) As unbelievable as it is, Adalyn has not bothered the tree or the presents one bit! I'm so relieved! I was careful to put less ornaments on the bottom row of branches, but she hasn't gotten into it at all. She will look at it and point to it, but she's so good about not touching. I hope we keep this up next year too:)

This is next to the front door. I wanted to do a bit of winter theme and just do plain trees. (There are three different sizes of lit trees.) The tree on the stand has little pine cones and I always keep it out all winter. I love this little corner at night.

This is our dining room. Our table is so bit that it takes up the entire room, but I love having a tree in our front window, so we just squeeze it in! This is what my tree looked like back when I was single. I was really into the dark red and gold colors. I still like this tree, but it's not as fun as our other tree. We put our memory ornaments on this tree. All of the "Couple's First Christmas" and "Baby's First Christmas" and Willow Tree ornaments that J gives me every year go on this tree.

My Willow Tree nativity set. I absolutely love it and I've loved holding Adalyn and showing her all the different animals. I love giving it the main stage of the buffet. I've been building this set since we got married. Every year J's mom gives me another piece to it. Last year I got the angel and I now only have one piece missing! (I totally just realized that there is a reindeer booty in the forefront of the picture. Sorry!!)

The dining room

I love this mistletoe. I have it in our main walkway. My mom always hung mistletoe under our entryway growing up and I love the memories. Adalyn loves when we walk under it. She points up to it and then we kiss her. It's so cute! She's gotten really in to giving kisses:)

Jonathan's mom gave us this advent calendar our first Christmas and I love it. Growing up I used a felt advent calendar that my grandma made me and I have such wonderful memories of using it. When Adalyn is old enough we will use that one also. But I love this one. It's perfect with our decorations!

Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the two pink trees in Adalyn's room. I love her trees. They give such a pretty glow to her room in the evenings. Maybe one night before she goes to bed, I'll remember to snap a picture:) And now our decorations are documented so I can look back next year to see where everything goes! Ha:) I hope you enjoyed a peek into our house this Christmas!

6 Years Ago Today...

2011-12-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

Six years ago today Jonathan asked me to marry him! It was the best Christmas gift a girl could ask for! And yet he still got me a beautiful Tiffany's necklace for Christmas that year. He's so romantic:) It's been an amazing 6 years! I still feel like the luckiest girl in the world. He is an amazing husband, provider, and leader of our house. Oh, and he's an awesome baby daddy too:)

(I feel like we look like such kids in this picture! Oh and you can tell this was a long time ago...back when I had my nails done every two weeks. There is no way I could find that kind of time anymore!)

Another Random Post...Surprise!

2011-12-12T19:59:00.001-05:00

My wonderful husband has started a blog! Go check it out here! Of course back in college he was a bit of a computer geek (ok so maybe he still is a bit of a computer geek) and he was able to write his own code for the buttons on the side of his blog. I was amazed and asked why he never offered to make my blog all cool with fun buttons!! That is just wrong! :) I'm interested to read what he has to say on his blog... And maybe I'll sweet talk him into making my blog pretty:)

We have finished all of the Christmas decorations in the house, but I hate the wreath on my front door. I've looked to buy a new one but can't find one anywhere. The wreath I've used for the past few years was faded and looked pink/orange instead of red, so I pulled a wreath out of the attic from at least 6 years ago and it is awful.

Jonathan and I got ALL of our Christmas shopping done last Wednesday (we took the day off to spend together) and Saturday! It feels so good to have everything done. We also wrapped all of our gifts for everyone but for Adalyn. All I need to do is buy Jonathan's gift and think of something for Adalyn's sitter. I want to get her something extra special but I am at a loss...

And as a reward for reading yet another random post, here are two pictures from Adalyn's one year photo shoot with Jes. She refused to smile except for 2 in pictures the entire day but I still love them!

Please continue to keep my mom in your prayers. She is still in the hospital and is slowly recovering, but it is a slow process filled with ups and downs. Unfortunately she also was diagnosed with pneumonia a couple days ago, so now we are praying for her lungs along with her colon! Hoping she can go home soon!

Phone pics and an update

2011-12-08T15:01:00.001-05:00

Here comes another random post. I can't gather my thoughts for a real post so I decided to upload a couple of my phone pics from the past couple weeks.

Eli stayed with us when his sister was born. When E and A saw each other in the morning (A was already in bed when he got to the house the night before) it was precious and they played so sweetly together. Eli wanted some milk and kept telling me that Adalyn was thirsty and that she needed a drink too. (How do you love that cheerleader pose my child is sporting?)

I tweeted this picture last week. I fell in love with these stockings last year and then couldn't find them in stock anywhere. Thanks to Jes for texting me a picture of them at a local store. I wasn't sure about the white with green dot stocking so the tags are still on in this picture. But I've decided to keep the white one. I love them!! They make the room so happy. And yes, we do have a stocking for our dog. He is our first child!

Before church on Sunday we took a picture to send to Grandma Nan to cheer her up. This outfit is so cute! Layers of ruffles!

Adalyn loved the kids menu that she was given at the Olive Garden. She looked like she was reading a newspaper. Cracked us up!

Jonathan worked on the outside decorations last weekend. I love the lights. They make me so happy! We have new landscape since last Christmas so we needed some extra strands of lights to finish the bushes. Jonathan went to Lowes and Walmart and would you believe that both stores were completely out of all Christmas lights??? He ended up finding some soft white LED lights that I just KNEW were going to look blue and wouldn't match, but he put them out anyway, and can you tell where they are? Didn't think so!

This week our church is packing 1 million meals to be sent to Haiti through Lifeline Ministries. Our MUMs group decided that since our meeting was cancelled and this event was going on during our normal meeting time that we would all volunteer together. We had to wear some especially flattering hair nets. Lindsy and I had so much fun since we're competitive and were rockin it so our table finished first!

Just a portion of the MUMs group. These were the ladies (and gentleman - our table leader) who were at our table! And yes, that baby hung out in her stroller with a hair net on the entire time. Such a good baby!

Update on my mom: She is thankfully out of ICU as of Tuesday. She still has a lot of recovery ahead of her and is in a lot of pain but she's at least going in the right direction. She's back on fluids so that's great! Thanks for your continued prayers!

Prayers for my mom

2011-12-04T20:19:00.001-05:00

Today I'd like to ask for prayers for my mom. This past Friday my dad called me in the morning to let me know that my mom had been admitted to the hospital during the night from excessive bleeding. Over the past few days she was admitted to the icu because the extreme loss of blood. We thought she was getting better Saturday night and then the bleeding started again. My dad texted me this morning to let me know that my mom was in surgery and will be in the hospital for probably a week. Please be praying for her healing and for my dad's stamina and his ability to rest. It is so very hard to be 5 hours away and not be by her side through all of this! Thanks for praying for our family. I really appreciate it.

Random List

2011-11-30T19:30:00.000-05:00

1. I like sleep. Waking up before 6 is not ideal for me. Waking up at 5:15 (and now 5:45 thanks to no morning feeding for A) for over a year makes me feel like I'm constantly in a fuzzy sleepy daze. Especially in the mornings. When I go to sleep I am so asleep that I don't hear Adalyn on the monitor if she cries and I don't ever hear the alarm in the morning. Good thing J is a light sleeper. He always has to wake me up. Well, the nice long Thanksgiving weekend allowed us to all sleep in. Adalyn was so good and slept in until almost 8 each day. It felt glorious. (And this is where my 21 year old college self would disown me because 8am = crack of dawn. Sleeping in = 11am. Boy how our priorities change with age...) It made me wonder how late Adalyn would sleep in if I didn't have to wake her in the mornings to go to the sitter... Then she'd be able to stay awake past 7pm so that we'd be able to spend more time with her after work... Ahh. One could only wish.

It was quite a shock to my system on Monday morning when I woke up at 5:45. ::yawn:: Can I just sleep until I feel rested every day? That would be awesome. And maybe I won't be so tired at 9pm that I can't keep my eyes open. Or could I just have nap time during the day? Waking up early sucks.

I know. Riveting.

2. I had an anonymous comment on Adalyn's party details post on how I made her high chair ribbon skirt. Since I didn't know who posted the question, I couldn't reply so I figured I'd just post it on here. Jenna's son had a birthday about 2 weeks after Adalyn and she made a boy one for him. She posted on her blog how she made hers. So you can click over and read her tutorial. I made mine a bit differently. I found this cute ruffled ribbon-like material at the fabric store and wanted to use that around the top. Then I just cut a whole bunch of ribbons I had on hand. I didn't worry about making them the same length. And my mom hot glued the ribbons to the ruffle in no particular order of the wide/narrow and pink/green. I wasn't sure how to attach it to the high chair without it falling off (all those ribbons got a bit heavy) and I didn't want to use hot glue and melt the high chair tray. So I used clear packing tape and rolled it and it held the "skirt" up perfectly! And yes, I kept it for next year. My child might have pink and green birthday parties until she's old enough to ask for something different:) HA!

3. Our dishwasher broke again. The last time this happened it was a blown electrical fuse. That was only a couple months ago. Because the fuse went out again so soon Jonathan says this means that there is more issues than a blown fuse. It broke the day we left for Toledo so we got back to town and had the wonderful realization that our dishwasher was broken again. BOO! Hand washing sippy cups and bottles is not cool. Not cool at all. What is cool is that Jonathan has been awesome about hand washing our dishes! Yay! We've actually needed a new dishwasher for sometime. Its a cheap one and never washes our dishes well enough. I hate getting crusty glasses out of the washer! Problem? One of the previous owners of our house put hardwood floors in and butted them up against the dishwasher. So in order to get the dishwasher out to replace or fix it, we either have to tear up our floors or tear up our counter tops (which I would jump for joy for if we had the money to replace them.) So we're kinda stuck right now. I'm hoping we can come up with a solution soon... Ideas??

4. I have our main Christmas tree finished, Jonathan arranged the nativity set, and I decorated the mantle and living room. I need to do some tweaking to the mantle, put the Christmas tree in our dining room together, finish decorating the dining room and entryway, and Jonathan needs to put lights outside. Somehow I feel behind even though 75% of our decorations were up before Thanksgiving. How did that happen??

5. I have yet to order Christmas cards. Let's back up a step. I may need to have Christmas pictures taken still. I'm not sure how the ones that Jes took turned out. Once I see those, I'll know if we need to have someone take a Christmas picture. It's not yet December, but people are doing this stuff so early this year that again, I feel behind that I haven't even gotten the picture let alone mailed out cards! It will all get done. I know. Breathe in breathe out.

6. I just want to slow down and enjoy this time of year and not worry about the house being perfect or our cards being mailed out by a certain date. I need to just sit back and watch my sweet girl discover the beauty that is the Christmas tree all lit up with white lights and decorations. To see life through a child's eyes...

Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-11-29T20:33:00.001-05:00

We travelled to Toledo for Thanksgiving this year. We spent the holiday with my family and I was so excited! Both of my brothers were also going to be home for the holiday and it had been many years since we had all been in the same place at the same time. We won't discuss the should-have-been-4.5-hour-drive-that-took-5.5-hours-with-a-screaming-baby-drive. The interstate was packed but we got to Toledo safely Wednesday night.

My brother, Aaron and I ran in a Thanksgiving morning 5k. We were supposed to run with my cousins, but there were over 1,200 people running and we couldn't ever find them until the race was over. Bummer! Here are some pics from the race.

My favorite cheerleader!

Grandma keeping Adalyn warm. We had quite a loud cheering section. Leave it to my family...

At the start of the race. Smiling and still running together. (Ignore all the Michigan colors. Gag! The Ohio State/Michigan game was that weekend and so everyone was dressed for their favorite teams. J told me I couldn't wear Ohio State colors - the team I grew up cheering for. So I was rocking my UK t-shirt. Hey UK actually won their game this weekend!)

At the end of the race. Can almost see the finish line...

My brother kicked my booty by a few minutes!

We found my cousins after the race! We were glad we ran it = extra turkey! And we all four finished without walking at all! Yay!

My first race to run with my brother. Maybe this will become a yearly tradition! I'll need to work on my pace time! :)

After running, we went back to the house and got showered and then went out and got some Starbucks. It was my reward for missing the Macy's Day parade! My oldest brother and his family came in town in the afternoon and then we all had a big family dinner. Of course we didn't get any pictures with my camera from the dinner. After dinner we attempted a family picture, but none were Christmas Card worthy so I will post it on here.

Adalyn cuddling with Uncle Aaron after Thanksgiving dinner.

Papa giving a horse-y ride!

On Saturday, Aaron was getting ready to catch his flight back to Florida and was playing some Christmas carols. Adalyn loved helping him out. So sweet.

Adalyn with my brother, Brian. This is the first time she's met him. (Other than briefly last Christmas for about 5 minutes.)

Adalyn with Uncle Aaron

I'm pretty sure the last picture like this from when we were all together was when I was in college. (I graduated almost 9 years ago...)

Adalyn enjoyed my grandpa's toddler rocker. How sweet! She learned how to get off but then not back on so we'd have to help her. She loved rocking.

Dressed in matching clothes to Grandma!

I think Adalyn has been watching Mommy a little too much. She knows exactly what to do with that phone.

We didn't go crazy for Black Friday. We did go out in the afternoon to catch a couple store sales. On our way home, I spotted the best Black Friday deal ever. A FREE treadmill on the side of the road with a sign that said "It works". WHA?? I'd rather run outside, but with this time change I just don't have time to run in the daylight anymore, but buying a treadmill would never have been in the budget. It's not fancy at all, but it works, folks! It collapsed and fit in our car! I don't have any excuses now...

Adalyn enjoyed the garden tub. Splash!!

Three generations.

Grandma and Papa. It's always so good to spend time with them!

We had a great long weekend although we are still recovering from it. Our drive home was much less traumatic. It may be in part to the car DVD player that Jonathan got at Target on Saturday for the Black Friday price. It pays to make the clerk check the overnight delivery for stock of items that show "in store" online. Maybe by next weekend my house will be back to normal. I was going to take Monday off to get back to normal, but Billie decided to have her baby so I was at the hospital all day! It was a WAY better way to spend a vacation day than doing housework!! And sweet baby Emalyn was worth every moment!

Party Details

2011-11-22T09:26:00.000-05:00

I want to take a moment to blog about all of the wonderful companies I worked with for Adalyn's party. And I wanted to post where I got different decorations. I got this idea from a blog about a year ago. She listed all of the websites she used to buy different party items and I actually used her recommendation list for one of the items I bought for Adalyn's party. I love using companies that have been recommended by someone else and are trusted companies/websites. And I love to promote local and small businesses!

Adalyn's Outfit...

Shirt was made by Allie's Appliques and Embroidery. A friend and old coworker, Allison was always posting cutie stuff she was making on her facebook page. So I asked her to make Adalyn's shirt (plus 3 others for baby gifts) and they all turned out so cute! She does a great job and uses quality shirts for her embroidery which is super important to me!
Skirt was Gymboree from a consignment sale for $8!! Whoo!
Baby Legs are generic ones from Hobby Lobby. Did you know they sell no named baby legs now?? Her headband and flower were also from Hobby Lobby.
Birthday Hat was Mud Pie from The Front Porch with a 20% off coupon.
Shoes were Mooshu Trainers that I got deeply discounted for $12 and free shipping on Totsy.

Invitations, Thank you cards, Food Tents and Treat Sign...

My friend and coworker Shannon is pretty much amazing. (She also did Adalyn's announcements last year.) I pretty much told Shannon that I was doing an un-themed party with just colors, gave her a picture of the banner I was going to use at the party and told her I was loving chevron patterns and she came up with these awesome invitations. Then I asked if she could make a few items for the party, ie. a treat sign and food tents. What she came up with was way beyond my expectations. Her creativity is beyond me and that is why she does what she does and I don't! :) After the party, I sent her a picture of Adalyn at the party and she made the cutest thank you cards. YOU ALL... Her prices are insanely good for this stuff. Let's just say that when I got the bill for all of the above, I about fell out of my chair because I could have easily spent the amount she charged me for ALL OF IT on just invitations elsewhere. (I'll stop yelling now. I just had to make sure you understood how amazing she is.) Also, she is taking orders for Christmas cards now and her etsy shop has fabric goods and wreaths too. Pretty much Shannon is Miss Crafty and you just gotta love her!

Cakes and Cookies...

I was super impressed both with the taste (our family is quite pickey when it comes to bakery cake) and decorations on Adalyns cakes and cookies. Katherine from the Yellow House Cakery has a licensed kitchen in her home and was sweet as can be! (Haha. Sweet. See how I did that?) I pretty much gave her zero instructions for decorating the cake. I told her the colors we were using and sent her the pdf of the invitation. I was seriously amazed by the work she did and how closely it matched the invitation! She even bagged the cookie favors. I will for sure use her in the future (her prices are great!) and I recommend anyone local to check her out!

Photo Books...

(That is my kindle in the middle so you can see the size of the books.)

I used Mixbook to make photo books of every photo shoot that Adalyn has had through the first year with Jes (including our maternity photos). I got the 14x11 books that are normally $50 for 20 pages. I found groupons for a $15 voucher for a $50 book and searched different cities to buy groupons to cover all of the different books! $15 is a steal for these books. They are super easy to make. I'm not crafty and not a real scrapbooker at all. But these books I can do because I can crop the "stickers" perfectly and I can "cut" the pictures and undo if necessary. I can't help my OCD. There are so many options to customize these books. I'm hooked! I'll be making another book for her 12 month pictures that Jes just took. And I've decided to make a year book of snapshots too. I'm so pleased with the way they turned out and their turn around time!

Which also brings me to Adalyn's pictures. If you've been around this blog for 2 seconds you know my good friend Jes has taken all of Adalyn's formal pictures and I absolutely love her work. She is so good with babies and takes amazing pictures! I can't wait to see what magic she works on Adalyn's 12 month pictures that she took on Saturday where Adalyn would not crack a smile!

Other extras...

I got the pink and white paper straws from The Sugar Diva. There were enough that I'll have them to use next year too!

Balloons and helium (with a 40% off coupon) were from Hobby Lobby
Ribbons were from Hobby Lobby 1/2 off or left over from my nursery projects from Hancock Fabrics.
Plates, polka dot napkins, plastic-ware, and ice cream bubbles were from Target.
Puffs were made by Billie with tissue paper and floral wire.

And that concludes all of the birthday posts. I think. I'm pretty sure:) Maybe I can get on to posting about something other than my child! :)

A Year of Growth Pictures

2011-11-18T15:41:00.001-05:00

For the birthday party I wanted to display all of Adalyn's growth pictures, both her 16 weekly pictures and her monthly pictures. As I mentioned before, Lindsy was kind enough to make a sweet display with ribbons on the wall. While she was making that, Jonathan was being ultra stelthy. What I found out later was that he took all of the pictures that we were putting in the display and made them into a slideshow to play on the TV during the party. It's so sweet and I love that he took the time to do a project on his own for her party! I just had to share it. (When I see the first few pictures of her I may or may not tear up each time.) Enjoy!

12 Months!

2011-11-18T15:14:00.001-05:00

Now that I've posted about Adalyn's birthday, I figure it's high time to post her 12 month pictures. This was the last monthly sticker in the pack. Jonathan jumped for joy since that means we don't have to take a set of pictures each month, but I may have shed a tear because my baby... Well, you know how I feel about that already.

And just for fun, lets look at week 1 picture.

Happy girl!

Adalyn turned 1 year old on November 9th. Jonathan and I took the day off work to spend a fun family day. We ended up running a bunch of errands, but it was nice to have a day in the middle of the week that we got to hang out just the three of us. We didn't want to be mean and make her have her shots on her birthday. Seriously. That would be mean. So we had her one year doctor's appointment and shots yesterday. She had to have a toe prick to check hemoglobin levels and 4 (!!) shots. Poor thing. But she was a good girl as usual. There were more tears shed this time, but I guess that's what comes with age since they know what's coming!

Here are her stats. She's stayed in her same percentiles all year:
Height 29 3/4" 75%
Weight 19lbs 10oz 25%
Head 16.5" <5%

Adalyn is still wearing a few 6-12 month clothes but they are mostly too small so we have moved up to 12-18 month clothes. She is still wearing size 6 month onesies (those don't have to be long enough on her arms/legs which is how her clothes get too small). She wears size 3 shoes and size 3 diapers.

The doctor gave us the go ahead to start on whole milk - the checkbook will like that! We're going to finish out the formula we have and slowly transition over to organic whole milk. And we're going to cut some of her bottles out and start more solid foods. She tried cheese last night and loved it. She looked like a chipmunk because she kept putting the pieces into her mouth before swallowing what was already in there. Ha! She doesn't like to each much food with her fingers. I have learned that the same foods that she won't eat with her fingers, many she will eat if I spoon feed her. Not sure if she just doesn't like getting dirty or what. You give her a banana, puffs, cheerios, graham crackers and now cheese and she scarfs it down but nothing else. So weird. I'm hoping it's just a phase. If I put food on her tray she will actually put the food on the end of the spoon. HA! Is she already showing that she is prissy?

She is cruising around and into everything. She's a fast crawler. Still no unassisted steps but they can't be far away. If the laundry basket is on the floor, just hope that it hasn't already been folded because she will remove everything piece by piece! She loves to check out everything in the kitchen cupboards. If the pantry or fridge are open for 2 seconds she speed crawls over to them to stand up and check everything out. She has been riding her little scooter toy that she got from my parents for her birthday. She's super fast on it and I think she realizes that she can get to things on it that she can't when she's crawling. She asks daily for rides in her wagon that she got from Jonathan's mom for her birthday. We have no room in the garage for it right now so it's sitting in the kitchen and she crawls over to it and tries to get in. She LOVES to be wheeled back and forth around the house by daddy.

She talks up a storm! It's not just mama, dada, buba (we call Dakota buba sometimes and she has picked up on it), baba (bottle while she does the milk sign). She has full on conversations where she makes noises and syllables and raises and lowers her voices like she is in a serious conversation and she really thinks we understand. It's so cute. She loves to dance to any music and lately she's been "singing". She "talks" at the top of her lungs in the car when we're listening to Air1. Yesterday her daycare provider texted me and said that Adalyn was singing to the Christmas music she was playing and it was adorable.

I wish I could capture all of it on video. I'm constantly taking mental snapshots because I want to remember everything. Of course when I get my camera or phone out, she stops talking or doing whatever it was that I wanted to capture.

Adalyn is such an absolute joy. She has been the sweetest, laid back baby. We are so blessed to be her mommy and daddy. I can't believe this year was so fast and I'm sure I'll feel the same thing next year at this time, so I'm just going to savor every minute I have with her. Even if it means that some nights I snuggle her instead of putting her to be awake (gasp!). This holiday season is going to be so much fun with her. I'm so looking forward to Thanksgiving and being with my parents and brothers. Adalyn will meet her cousins too! And I just know Christmas is going to be fun with all the lights and festivities! I love being a mommy and I just love her so very much!

Adalyn's Birthday Party - Party Pics

2011-11-17T13:35:00.001-05:00

Now that you've seen the decorations and food from the party it's time for some party pictures. We had a family party plus 3 couples (and their kids) who are like family to us. There were 13 adults and 9 kids under 6 years old. I was sad that my family is so far away that neither of my brothers and their families were able to attend, but I'm thrilled that we will see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas! I'm happy that our parents, Jonathan sister and her two kids, aunt, cousin and her three kids were able to drive in from out of town! Unfortunately I didn't think about getting a picture of each of the guests with Adalyn (that will be top priority on all kids parties going forward!) and I forgot to get a picture of all of the kids! But we did get some candid shots. (Get ready for picture overload!)

With my baby girl...who is soon to be a toddler!

Big girl standing on her own. No unassisted steps yet though!

Jonathan and his sister and their kids.

This was so cute! Jonathan was holding his nephew and Adalyn crawled over to check out what daddy was doing. She didn't seem too jealous so that's good:)

Adalyn sharing with one of her twin cousins. Right after snapping this "sharing" picture she took the toy back. Ha! The kids played so well together.

Our sweet family. I love these two!

Birthday girl on her throne waiting to eat cake.

After we sang Happy Birthday we gave her full reign to her smash cake. The first thing she did was pick the green polka dots off the icing and throw them over the side of the high chair. Um, is my child already OCD?

She wouldn't even lick her fingers and she wouldn't touch the cake again, so I tried to give her a little lick but as you can see, she wasn't ok with that.

So daddy got a spoon and gave her a bite and she liked it and sat with her little birdie mouth open waiting for more when all she had to do was dig into the cake in front of her. Guess she didn't want to get her hands dirty:)

This was her first taste of sugar and this is all the damage she did. We were hoping for more of a show:)

Adalyn was getting ready for nap time but she hung in there and opened every single present! For how much she wasn't into her cake, she made up for during present time. Everyone was so generous with the presents. We got a nice assortment of precious clothes and perfect toys for her!

My parents gave her a stuffed dog in her present. When she pulled it out of the bag, she immediately loved on it and kissed it. It was so very sweet. She just sat there swaying like this:

After a bit of snuggle time, I decided she needed to move on to opening the rest of the presents. For any other presents I had taken from her to move on to the next, she was just fine. But when I took the dog from her this is what she did:

So I gave it back to her:)

Awww. This dog has pretty much gone everywhere with her since then. It's so cute because she doesn't take a paci and never got attached to a lovie (small blankie) even though I tried, but now she seems quite attached to "pup". It's about the same size and color as Dakota so I think that's why she is extra fond of it:)

After presents, the kids played so well together with the new toys. These four were all playing with the new doll house. So cute:)

One happy birthday girl! I just love this girl so much! (oh and hey, you can kind of see the streamers in the background that I thought I had missing getting a picture of in my previous post!)

We are so blessed with such a wonderful and supportive family and group of friends. We appreciate everyone who came to celebrate Adalyn's first year of life!

Adalyn's Birthday Party - Decorations & Food

2011-11-16T15:00:00.000-05:00

I can't guarantee that I won't still be posting about Adalyn's birthday into next week. There are so many things I need to post since this is my personal scrapbook... decorations, party pics, Adalyn's monthly picture and also a video of her year of growth pictures, details and links... so many things. I'm going to start with the decorations and food.

Looking through the 350+ pictures from her party I am so sad that I didn't take more pictures than what I did. (I know that sounds crazy!) There were some decorations and some food items that I totally forgot to take pictures of and I'm soo bummed. oh well. We enjoyed seeing the decorations even if they aren't forever in history in my pictures.

I couldn't decide on a "theme" for her birthday, so instead of doing a specific theme, I decided to use the decorations that I had left over from the shower that Lindsy and Billie gave me last year and go with that "theme" of pink and green and use ribbons to tie it all together.

I called my friend Shannon (I'll be posting an entire post of links to shops I used and where I got things.) and told her I didn't know what I wanted but I wanted her to make invitations. I sent her a picture of the "Adalyn" banner from the shower and I told her that I wanted to use that as part of the decorations. After a couple sample invitations she came up with this and I love it!!!

Front door. This was another shower decoration. This lives on Adalyn's bedroom door, so I thought it would be cute to greet our guests!

Jonathan and my dad were very sweet to put up with me NEEDING the pink mesh on the front pole. They did a good job of fluffing:) (Please excuse our blurred out house numbers which makes the pole look dirty.)

As you can see below, the invitation completely "went" with the decorations I already had! Billie gave me the idea to use the area on and around the fireplace to decorate and I love how it turned out! We put her weekly pictures (weeks 1-16) on the left of the fire place and monthly pictures (months 1-12 and a couple extra close ups) on the right side.

My huge project leading up to the birthday was making a mixbook for each of Adalyn's photo shoots with Jes. So we have baby bump, newborn, 3, 6 and 9 month books and the fireplace was the best place to display for people to look through so little hands of the 9 (!) kids at the party wouldn't get a hold of them. Again, I will share more about my mixbook experience in a later post.

Monthly growth pics. Lindsy came over Friday evening to help with decorations (bless her!! I was about to lose my mind! I was so overwhelmed! And yet I was still up till midnight finishing decorations!) and she got right to work making these ribbon displays. Don't they look awesome?

Weekly growth pics

View from the living room to the kitchen. Billie came over on Friday night and threw all of the puffs together that you see hanging from the ceiling. I love the festive feel they give the room! I borrowed the table cloth from a friend. The table center are cute little cupcakes Billie made that I have held on to from the shower. Not pictured: Above the kitchen table from the light fixture to the corners of the ceiling, I hung grosgrain ribbon as streamers. I loved the look of the ribbon streamers and now I can save them and use them again next year! Wish I had a picture of how cute it was! Darn it! (Please don't tell anyone that I allowed a 9 month pregnant girl ::cough cough Billie:: to stand on my kitchen table to help secure the ceiling decorations. Pretty sure my mom about had a heart attack thinking that she was going to fall.)

View from the opposite direction. Bad lighting. Sorry.

Food table. We had hot ham and cheese sandwiches, veggies, fruit skewers, chips, pink white chocolate covered pretzels (made with love by my dad!), homemade applesauce, and chocolate chip cookie dough dip with animal crackers and nilla cookies.

(again...bad lighting. These were pink!) We also had pretzel rods you can kind of see in the other pics.

My friend Shannon made cute little name tags for the food that match the invitation. I loved them!

Drink station. We had water and pink lemonade. I threw a scrap piece of fabric (left over from the pillow I made for Adalyn's room last year) on the counter and I think it helped make things pretty.

Shannon offered for me to borrow her mason jars and I loved the idea. (Of course I had seen decorated mason jars on pinterest and loved them.) I first wanted her to make paper decals for them and then decided I'd rather just decorate them with ribbons and then everyone can tell which jar is theirs. I got the paper straws online. I'm seriously in love with this!

Another pinterest idea! We pre-scooped ice cream into large sized cupcake wrappers and left them on a cookie sheet in the freezer. Worked out perfectly!

Dining room. I used the buffet for the cakes and favors. The table we left open so people could eat their food there. The fabric on the table was a $6 piece of fabric I grabbed on a whim one day and thought I could maybe use it somewhere. Well, that table is bigger than most any table cloth, so I was thrilled to find that the fabric covered it nicely!

The apothecary jars are filled with scrap tissue paper from what was cut off of the puffs.

I loved this cake. This isn't from an actual bakery. This is from a person who makes cakes in her home! Again, I didn't have much of an idea for her for what to do with the cake. I told her I was thinking about polka dots and I emailed her the invitation. It's perfect! And it tasted delicious too!

Smash cake! So cute:)

Favors. Shannon made this cute sign that says, "Thanks for making Adalyn's birthday so sweet. When you leave please take a treat." We had ice cream shaped bubbles for the kids...

And yummy cookies for the kids and the adults! The cake lady did these and also "bagged and tagged" them with cute stickers!

The throne!

I saw a high chair skirt on pinterest (in primary colors and also in tulle) and had to do it. My mom was a good sport and stayed up late to help glue it together. Such a cute way to fancy up the high chair!

I love this birthday hat. You do know I'll be forcing her to wear it for years! And the bib was a baby gift from Lindsy and I thought it perfectly matched the decorations and the birthday girl's outfit so she needed to wear it to eat cake!

This post is long enough as it is, so you'll just have to wait for a post of the actual party! Now you get to guess whether Adalyn tore into her cake or just sat and stared at it:) Seriously though, if it wasn't for my girlfriends and Jonathan and my parents there is no way I could have pulled this party off! Between Shannon loaning me decorations and Billie and Lindsy taking time away from their own families on a friday night in order to help me, and my mom working so hard to clean the house and make the food and help with decorations, and of course my dad with the pretzels and Jonathan and my dad doing the "guy" stuff that isn't quite as glamorous but needed to be done. It was seriously as amazing in person as it was in my head. And if you know me well, you know that nothing ever measures up to my ideas in my head! So, a big thank you to everyone who helped!!

Recuperation...

2011-11-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

You all. I am so exhausted. Still. A day later. Adalyn's party was awesome and I was thrilled by how the cake and decorations turned out. We had a great time with family and friends! When I look around my house I can still see some lingering balloons and decorations but I'm past the point of any more clean up. It can wait until tomorrow. For now, here is a picture. Maybe in the next couple days I can tackle the 350+ pictures that we took so I can write an actual party post.

Happy Birthday Adalyn!

2011-11-09T21:50:00.001-05:00

This year has been the fastest year of my life. I've enjoyed every single moment spent with my sweet baby girl and I love every new stage that she enters, but I still can't believe that I don't have a newborn any more! Today has been a day of remembering back. Last year at this time... All day long I'd look at the clock and picture what stage of labor I was in. Jonathan and I took the day off to have a family day to spend together with Adalyn. She is such a joy!

Last year...

This Year...

Adalyn started the day with her favorite breakfast. Bananas and YoBaby!

Then she wore her cute birthday shirt to run errands with mommy and daddy and then had some play time.

Then the UPS man brought her new squeaker shoes that I ordered from Totsy a few weeks ago. Two pairs $12 each and $0 shipping. Score! And she LOVES hearing them squeak!

Then she opened her cards. She thoroughly enjoyed playing with the envelopes:)

Then she opened one gift from mommy and daddy (a toy I bought at a consignment sale in August and had set it aside for later). She loved it!

After Adalyn went to bed (I really wanted to hold her all night!) Jonathan and I hooked up the video camera to our TV and watched all of our home videos from delivery day through the entire year. I'm not going to lie. I was an emotional basket case. Jonathan kept asking if my tears were happy or sad. BOTH. Where did my newborn go? But oh my do I love her so much and I can't wait to start this next year with her! We are so very blessed! I can't wait for her party on Saturday and to have our house full of family and friends celebrating Adalyn's first year of life!

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

2011-11-07T21:01:00.001-05:00

Today is Jonathan's 31st birthday! Adalyn and I took him out to Saul Good for dinner and then Jonathan and I enjoyed Caramanda's Cupcakes! I had to get a few pictures of my two favorite people after dinner.

(Adalyn hasn't adjusted to this time change so she was sleepy in these pictures. And her poor rash hasn't gone away yet. See the marks on her face? Poor thing.)

I am so very blessed to be married to such a wonderful man. He is a loving husband and amazing daddy. I'm so proud of him. He's gotten straight A's in his MBA classes all while excelling in a high stress job. Next month we will get to celebrate while he walks across stage in his cap and gown. It's amazing how he has been able to juggle school work, work, Adalyn, me, house stuff and friends. He's amazing. And he's all mine! (Although Adalyn holds a piece of his heart now.) Last year his birthday gift was two days late in the form of a little pink bundle of joy. This year, he got to hear his baby's giggles as he played with her as his birthday gift. She loves her daddy. So sweet.

We love you Jonathan!

Gallery Wall

2011-11-03T07:30:00.001-04:00

This project has been many months in the making so grab a cup of coffee and settle in because this post is going to be long. I'm a bit embarrassed to say how long this project actually took me. And the thing that finally kicked my booty in gear? Having people to the house for Adalyn's birthday party next week! Isn't it sad that it takes having a party to make me finish a project? We had a very blank empty wall in our dining room. I really wanted to bring color into that room because the walls are dark and the furniture is dark, but I didn't know what to hang.

Then one day many months ago I was reading Young House Love and they were doing a gallery hall in their house. They were using white frames and it looked awesome and all of the sudden I decided I needed to do a gallery wall in our dining room using black frames. I had a bunch of black frames left from the office in our old house. We had black and white pictures with our friends at sporting events we had been to. Well, our lives have now changed because instead of sports pictures I really wanted some family pictures and pictures of Adalyn in the frames since I literally had ONE picture of her in our main level of the house. And I decided I wanted to do colored pictures in the frames.

So I used YHL's tips on how to arrange a picture wall and how to hang the pictures using paper templates.

I'm embarrassed to say how long these papers lived on my wall. (Please note the Happy Everything Grill = July. But I took this picture when I was ready to take the papers down and the papers had lived on the wall for a couple months.) They drove me crazy, so one day I decided that I just needed to hang the frames!

I got all of the pictures hung and HATED it! Sorry for the phone pic (my new phone takes much better pics but this was months ago!)

There were just too many similar large frames. I needed more variety. My mom volunteered to bring a box of frames that were living in her attic for me the next time she came in town. So, thankfully Jes was willing to come over and she got her creative self on and laid a bunch of frames out on the floor.

I took a picture of the arrangement and then my mom and I carried the frames into the dining room one by one and used my camera to hang them in the right spot.

As I said before, I had wanted to use only black frames and only colored pictures. And my mom said I could paint any of her frames she was giving me. But once I saw the arrangement, I just couldn't bring myself to paint a few of the old frames. And I also couldn't bring myself to take the black and white pictures of my ancestors out of the frames. These are pictures that were on the walls of our house when I was growing up and I know them well. The picture at the bottom right? My grandpa when he was 2. He was so cute. This was the last picture of him before he lost one of his eyes in an accident. The other pictures are of my grandpa and his brother and sister and my great grandparents. I love looking at the old fashions. One of my great great uncles was into photography so the pictures are really good. I just love having them on my wall. So I decided I would work them into the arrangement instead of changing them.

There were 3 frames that were just plain ugly and they weren't "good" frames, so I didn't mind spraying on two coats of black paint.

Then a few weeks later (I told you it's been a long project) my mom and I sat down with the laptop at the dining table and figured out which pictures to upload to Snapfish to have printed for which frames. And we decided to add two more 8x10 frames at the bottom of the wall for two reasons. First, I really wanted to have frames for our parent's wedding pictures and second, I felt like the layout was a bit too pointy so I wanted to even it out. So this is what we came up with (can you believe this is a phone picture? I love my new 4s!):

See the picture of grapes? That was a place holder because I had Adalyn's silhouette made this past week so it was for her silhouette. See the silhouette that is already on the wall? That was mine from 1982. Once I had her silhouette made, I realized that I actually needed a smaller sized frame for it and that the wall was really off balanced with the two so close together, so I made a few switches and we now have a finished gallery wall!

Here is an up close picture of the wall. The picture in the center was my anniversary present from Jonathan this year. It is a picture from Adalyn's 6 months photos wrapped on wood and it has this awesome shiny metallic-y finish. I love it. You might also be able to spy a few of Jonathan and my baby pictures. I love the mix of the old and new pictures and old and new frames. Even our parents wedding pictures are mixed black and white and color. And we added a few fun pictures of Adalyn with her friends and cousin.

Please notice the Happy Everything Pumpkin = October

I am so thankful to finally have this project done. Even if it did take me most of this year to do this in stages. Although there will be some pictures that stay, I think it will be fun to swap out pictures from time to time. I love how it filled in the once empty wall. The other evening, Jes was leaving my house and called me to tell me how cool it looked from outside the front window when the lights are on dim. So of course I had to check it out and I love it! I really am so happy with the end result! What a fun low-cost way to bring some life to my wall!

Happy Halloween!!

2011-11-01T07:30:00.005-04:00

Happy Halloween from my sweet kitty cat! Adalyn didn't go trick-or-treating this year, (she will have enough years of candy ahead of her) but she did go say hi to a few of the neighbors. She mostly just greeted the neighbor-kids as they came asking for candy.

Dakota was thrilled to be dressed as Count Dogula. He liked greeting the trick-or-treaters so that made up for the costume.

Two of our sweet neighbors each gave Adalyn a piece of candy for her to share with her parents. Adalyn got so excited about her new treasures. She did not want to let them go. Here's a picture of her standing (not holding on) clapping with her snickers in her hand. (Thankfully she didn't get it open!) I can't handle the cuteness!

Hope you enjoyed your evening without a tummy ache from too much candy:) We have so much extra candy I don't know what we're going to do with it all! In our old neighborhood we went through bags and bags of candy, but this year we didn't even get through 2 bags and we have 3 unopened bags left! Oh no! Maybe I'll make Jonathan take them to work with him so I'm not tempted! :)

Run for the Refuge 5K

2011-10-31T07:30:00.001-04:00

On Saturday I ran my first real 5K since before I was pregnant. During the summer Billie and I ran/walked a 5K, but this past Saturday I was able to run the entire 3.4 miles. Back before I was pregnant, I had built up my running to the point that 3 miles was a light to normal run. Well, these last few weeks I have been back on the running wagon and I knew this race was coming up so my goal was to run the entire race.

The Run for the Refuge was to benefit the Refuge for Women, which is a great cause to give my $20 race registration fee to. Plus the race was at my church and around the surrounding neighborhoods (we passed 2 of my friends' houses on the course.) Plus my MUMs (mops) group was a sponsor of this race, so I decided it would be a great race to get back into the swing of things.

Oh, and I was still trying to decide whether I was actually going to run the race or not when my MUMs group contacted me and asked if I would be willing to coordinate a group of MUMs girls to run/walk the race and also do a t-shirt for all involved so we could stand out among the crowd. So that was what finally pushed me to commit to running the race (and training for it).

I missed my running friends. It's way more fun to run a race when you're running next to your friends and talking with them (or in my case, listening while they talk since I'm usually too winded to respond). But Billie is about a month away from welcoming baby E to the world and Lindsy was out of town, so I was on my own running this one. We had a great turnout of MUMs girls (at least 25 which was really great since it was only 34* out) but some were fast runners and lots decided to walk and push their strollers.

Jonathan and Adalyn came to cheer me on. Thankfully they had the warmth of the church while they waited for me because it was so cold out! I loved seeing my girl's smile when she saw me after the race! She was dressed in her Halloween costume because that was part of the race... they invited all runners and kids to dress up! (I have enough of a struggle to run dressed for running, so there was no way I was going to attempt a costume on top of that!) I ended the race able to sprint the last portion and finished at 32 minutes. Nowhere close to a personal best for me, but with my condition (carrying around an extra 25 lbs and just started back running in the last month) I'm happy with my finish time.

(After the race - looking especially lovely. My face matches my shirt! HA!)

Now that I've got this race under my belt, I'm back to being addicted to running in races! I love the feeling of race day! Maybe I'll sign up to run the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving in Toledo! Either way, I'm going to keep up running in my neighborhood at least twice a week. I don't always love running, but somewhere during the second mile my runners high kicks in and I enjoy the feeling. And lets be honest, I enjoy reaping the benefits of running...I've still got lbs to lose!

Sunday Dress

2011-10-30T14:09:00.000-04:00

Adalyn received a few precious outfits in size 12 months from a family friend when she was born. What a great baby gift idea!! When we received them a year ago, they looked so big I couldn't fathom her wearing them. But today I pulled one out and it fit her perfectly. It was so precious that I just had to share today!

Coda was giving kisses. How precious are the sleeves of this dress? She kept playing with them.

Oh my goodness. I could just eat her up!

Gated Community

2011-10-26T20:06:00.001-04:00

As of a few weeks ago, Adalyn now lives in a gated community. I don't think she minds yet, but poor Coda now has to decide which floor he wants to be stuck on:)

We put swinging gates at the bottom and the top of the stairs a few weeks ago. We got two of the exact same brand at Babies R Us and we had 20% off coupons and Rewards Bucks! Then we got home and had a bit of drama with the gates. First of all this was during our family sickness and Jonathan was sick but insisted on installing the gates anyway. (I think it's a guy thing.) When he got to installing the second gate he realized that it was updated and the latch on the second one worked 100 times better than the one he had already finished installing. (This was after trying to figure out a spot to drill the gate in the wall which resulted in 50,000 holes.) Since the recycling had already taken away the boxes, I called Babies R Us and told them the predicament and they allowed me to bring it back in, without the box but with my receipt. The drill came back out and the gate came down and we went back to the store. I made the worker open every single box that was left looking for the "correct" latch. I was not successful. We went without a gate for another week and made it to the other BRU in town and again we checked all of the boxes and this time found the updated gate! So we now have two matching working gates! I love that they swing. So much easier to use than the old school gates. I'm sure Adalyn will soon be bored with them because she'll be wanting to climb the stairs, but I'd rather keep her off the stairs for now:)

Applesauce: A Yearly Tradition

2011-10-23T20:50:00.000-04:00

I love fall. I love the smells. I love the colors. I love all of the fall-ish events that we do each year like going to pick apples and pumpkins and making applesauce! My mom has made homemade applesauce since I was little. I never remember having store bought applesauce in our house because we always had ziploc bags of applesauce in the freezer all year long. A long time ago my grandparents owned an orchard so making applesauce was the thing to do every fall!

Since Jonathan recently organized our pictures, I decided to look back through the years at our applesauce making pictures. I probably shouldn't have since I was reminded of what the "real" Abby looks like when she's not carrying an extra 30 lbs around. But, I thought the pictures were fun so I thought I'd post them.

2008 at my brother's house with my sweet niece who is now a teenager(!?!)

And with my nephew.

Jonathan actually got in on the action that year! (He hasn't since:) ) Can you tell the kids like to do the crank on the Victorio (maker)?

2009 at our old house with my parents and Billie:

And of course you can't see Billie's Eli belly but it was there... :)

2010 and oh my! Precious Eli. I can't handle it! And I also can't handle that this picture of him is the same age as Adalyn right now! WHAT?? I was in a total of zero pictures from 2010 probably because I sat for a good portion of it with my swollen feet and legs elevated.

This year Lindsy joined us in the tradition and Kennedy was quite interested in how the machine works! Here are a few pictures from yesterday.

I had to get a picture of Billie's baby belly this year! :) It's just so cute!

Eli was enjoying eating his apple in Dakota's bed (with a couch pillow) love it!

Eli was laying in the recliner and Coda came to lay with him. Precious.

Adalyn had fun playing with her bff Avery. They were sweet together.

Lindsy and Kennedy watching to see how it works. Kennedy loved helping us turn the crank to make it and she hung in there for a long time!

A picture of all of us girls! (The boys were at the driving range and then on kid duty.)

And this is what the living room looked like afterwards. Every piece of every single toy out plus Eli's trains and tracks. Wow...

Should we talk about the fact that I've had a UK t-shirt on every single year to make applesauce? Do I have a problem? I'll just say that it's because it's always on Saturday which usually means that UK is playing:) (And thankfully we won yesterday!) We had a great time spending the day with friends. We made 3 bushels of apples this year and now we have stocked freezers of yummy applesauce that also double as healthy baby food! Yay!

A Day at the Orchard

2011-10-20T21:31:00.000-04:00

A couple weekends ago we headed out to an orchard with Billie, Derek and Eli. We have made a tradition of going to pick apples and pumpkins every fall together. It's funny to look back at our pictures we've taken each year. We started off as a two couples. Then the next year Billie had a baby belly. Then the next year Eli was with us and I had a baby belly. This year we had Eli and Adalyn were with us and Billie has a baby belly. (If this tradition stays, I'll be the one with a baby belly next year!) {no, I'm not pregnant!}

Since we went after church, both kids had little to no naps but they were both so good! Adalyn was a bit of a grump and wouldn't give us many smiles for pictures, but she did give Eli lots of smiles. It was so cute! I ended up taking 150 pictures while we were there. Yeah. I know. That's just crazy.

Eli kept us entertained by dancing to the music the dj was playing!

Adalyn enjoyed her ride through the orchard.

Eli loved making Adalyn laugh by playing with her feet.

Anytime we set her in the grass (in the pumpkins or orchard) she did this... (Eli didn't know what to think about it.)

So he gave her hugs to make her feel better. Melt my heart.

Then Adalyn was full of smiles. Eli really enjoyed his apple too!

Adalyn wanted to pick her own apple.

Perfect size for her. She wouldn't give it up the rest of the day. It was her favorite treasure.

This was the only picture in the pumpkins where they were both looking at the camera.

Billie and I were both snapping away taking pictures all afternoon and not until the next day did we realize that we didn't get any pictures of all of us! Oops. My, how priorities change! We had a good time and decided that we may want to go back to our normal orchard that we visit each year later this month. Maybe it will be cool enough for Adalyn to wear her cute autumn outfit!

Still here...

2011-10-19T19:56:00.000-04:00

It feels like it's been forever since I have posted. It's not that I didn't have topics or pictures to blog about. Get this... Jonathan monopolized the laptop last week and I was okay with it. Why? Well, because ~~he was procrastinating doing his school work~~ he was consolidating all of our pictures from our desktop and laptop onto an external hard drive. And while he consolidated, he also organized every.single.picture we have taken during the 5 years we have been married. Wow. Seriously. Is he awesome or what? :) So there was no way that I was going to complain about needing/wanting to write a blog post. Nope. Not me!

I'm so thankful to have all of Adalyn's pictures organized and in files that I can find. I've been really into going through her pictures lately. I'm planning on printing out her weekly and monthly pictures to be displayed at her birthday party so having all of those pictures in one spot will be helpful! I've been making mixbooks for all of her photo shoots she has had with Jes. And once her birthday rolls around next month (!!??) I'm going to make another mixbook of her first year of snapshots. After making 5 {seriously!} books, I'm spent creatively, but hopefully in the next month I'll be ready to work on another 2. I may post a blog about my experience making them. (And what they are for those people like my mom who have no clue what a digital scrapbook is.)

We've had a fun couple of weekends, first going to an orchard and then grandma and papa coming to visit. So we've been busy, but a good busy! And just because this is a random post about nothing, here are a couple random pictures, because pictures always make a post better!

One night Adalyn fell asleep way before bedtime so I laid her on the carpet while we ate dinner because it was too early for her to go to bed for the night. Dakota went and laid next to her. He is so sweet with her!

He saw me taking a picture and wanted to be in the front. HA! He's so cute! (And yes, she always sleeps with her hands behind her head when she lays on her back. So precious!)

My two favorite people before church a couple weeks ago. Can you even believe how big that bow is? I can't handle it. It's practically a hat! :)

She usually stays so clean when she eats, so this face made me laugh and the tongue just made it even better!

11 Months

2011-10-13T21:01:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday Adalyn turned 11 months. What? I realized that last year on this weekend we were taking maternity pictures at the orchard and this year I have an almost 1 year old. Unbelievable. I've been working on digital photo books of Adalyn's first year and I can't believe how much she has changed. You don't see it in the day to day, but when you go back and look at the past its crazy.

{This week last year}

Adalyn is long and lean so all of her 6-12 month clothes are too short but the larger sizes won't stay up around her waist. We're being creative trying to find clothes to fit. Her onesies are still 3-6 month! I've had some issues fitting shoes on her so we took her to have her feet sized. She measured as a size 3, and the store we were at only had 2 options in size 3 so we didn't buy any. But any of the size 3 gymboree sandals that she has fall right off because her little feet are so skinny that nothing will stay on her! Thankfully we've had some warmer weather so we haven't needed to worry about shoes. Yet.

Adalyn got a stomach bug for the first time this month and poor thing was so sad. She really lost her appetite and we're still not back to where we were with finger foods but mostly she's back to normal. She loves puffs, cheerios and yogurt melts because they are few and far between. But we have started yo-baby and she LOVES it. And she eats grapes, bananas, peas and some other finger foods along with her normal homemade baby foods. She says "more" in sign language when she wants more snacks. It's so cute. She also squeals and whispers "ba-ba" and does the sign language for milk when she wants or sees her bottle. Right now she still has 6 teeth but we're wondering if teething is starting again... We shall see...

She just keeps learning so much. When we ask her where Dakota, dada or mama are she can point to the right answer. She also says uh-oh and it's cute because it sounds like she has an English accent. She also waives bye-bye.

I had to throw in a few extra pictures this month. I just love all of her different expressions. I can't wait to print out all of her weekly and monthly pictures to display at her birthday party. It will be so much fun to see how much she has grown! I'm probably forgetting lots of things that she is doing right now. We are just amazed by how much she understands and learns every day! We are so very blessed!

Bath Time!

2011-10-10T20:54:00.000-04:00

Splish splash Adalyn was taking a bath, long about a Saturday night... We hadn't taken bath pictures for a while and these were too cute not to post!

Dakota was checking on his sister. He wanted to join her!

My beautiful baby. She loves bath time!

Look at all that hair!

It's amazing how a set of cups can make a little girl so happy and splashy! I love this girl!

Our Little Helper

2011-10-05T07:48:00.000-04:00

Adalyn is always "helping" us around the house. The other night Jonathan was doing dishes and she insisted on helping him...

I hope she's this excited about doing dishes a few years from now! :)

Another day she decided to "help" me by emptying the clothes from one of the sales out of the laundry basket...

Notice that she went right for the pink tu-tu. My girl has good taste!

She was also trying to "help" me while I was switching out her closet this past weekend. Thankfully Jonathan was there to distract her from emptying the bin of folded summer clothes as fast as I could fill it. She is just so sweet. I love seeing mundane household tasks through her eyes. I could just eat her up!

A (Few) Sunday Picture(s)

2011-10-03T18:07:00.001-04:00

Adalyn looked so cute in her reversible plaid/corduroy dress for church yesterday that I just had to get some pictures. The dress, turtleneck and shoes were all from consignment sales! Please excuse the mess in the background of the pictures.

"I'm too busy inspecting this lens cover to look at the camera, mom."

"Fine. I'll look. But no smiling."

"This is an awesome treasure!"

"Everyone look at my awesome treasure."

"Maybe I should taste my new treasure."

"Nope. Wasn't all that."

"Here mom. Do you want to try it?"

"Maybe I should just put the lens cover back on the camera." (My girl is smart you all!)

She really regretted giving the "treasure" back to mommy and didn't want to stand for a picture. But seriously with the cuteness!

The Bright Side...

2011-09-26T20:45:00.002-04:00

Let's look on the bright side first... I got to try out this SAHM thing and I really liked it, I got to spend the day with my sweet baby, I had lots of cuddles, and at least my baby made it to 10.5 months before getting sick.

On Friday Jonathan was diagnosed with a sinus infection and stomach virus. Well, it got passed around our house and Adalyn got a cough, sneeze, runny nose along with the stomach virus on Sunday. Poor baby has never been sick before (other than a runny nose) and I felt so sorry for her. The weird part was that she pretty much acted normal and then would throw up after every bottle or meal. But she slept much more than normal on and was quite pathetic.

She never falls asleep on us, so the fact that she slept with us holding her showed us just how sick she felt.

She and Jonathan were getting some Zzzz. They both needed the rest.

I stayed home with her today and thankfully she was feeling much better by this afternoon. We did some pedialite, applesauce and bananas and she did great. I'm thankful that it seemed to pass so quickly. It's nice to get all the extra cuddles, but it's hard to see your baby feeling stinky.

We puked through so many pjs (and also sheets) that we actually were able to wear the same pjs two days in a row thanks to daddy's laundry abilities. Today as she was starting to feel a bit better and played with her toys.

Smiles! And we even changed out of pjs!!

I'm so glad that she's feeling better. A sick baby is no fun. But I will miss her while I'm at work tomorrow!

I Love Deals!

2011-09-22T20:24:00.001-04:00

So you all know how much I love sales and never paying full price for things, especially baby gear, clothes and toys. I know that I've mentioned before how much I love consignment sales. I'm not talking about consignment stores (which I have never shopped in). I'm talking about sales that different mops groups, preschools, neighborhoods and churches put on. There are two times a year that sales happen: March for summer clothes and Aug/Sept for winter clothes. We have two huge sales and then a bunch of smaller sales over a few weekends. The sales usually have quality/current stuff that are gently used. (Most sales have strict rules about wear - although a few items always slip through.) If you volunteer to work a 3 hour shift, you get access to shop before it's open to the public. After one or two days of being open to the public, the Saturday shopping is always half off, so it pays to go back on Saturday to get some discounted items.

I know that many cities do not have sales like this, but if there are sales like this near you and you're not taking advantage, you are so losing out. Most of our baby gear and toys have all come from sales. And pretty much all of our clothes (except pjs because I like those new) are from sales. Why pay full price when babies barely use/wear items?

So, today I decided to document a typical trip to the sales. (Although usually Jonathan is with me and picks out a ton of toys and that didn't happen today.) I was offered an early shopping pass, so I snatched it up and ran to the sale as fast as I could get there so Jonathan couldn't get away from work. I shopped in peace and quiet and only had 1 person in front of me in line to check out. (Once the sales open to the public it's usually a mad house and a mile long checkout line. But you just gotta hang in there, because the savings that you get are so worth it!)

Here's my loot:

Sorry the picture is hard to see. This is how I shop: I only look for full outfits and try to only look for Gymboree, Gap and boutique brands. I'm also really picky about wear. I like things to look brand new. This is the breakdown of what I got:
14 full outfits (many of which have 3 pieces) both in current and winter sizes
1 tutu (couldn't pass it up)
2 tops (because they go with jeans)
2 jackets
7 pair of shoes in size 2 & 3 (including keds and robeez)
7 books
2 toys
This is what I spent: $130. That breaks down to $3.70 per item! Please remember that most items are FULL gymboree outfits!! Seriously. There are 3 outfits that are Carter's brand, 3 Gap items and every.single.other.outfit is Gymboree or boutique (that = 13). Consignment sales are the only way that I can dress my child in name brands. (Not that other brands are bad, but I love how name brands don't wear out easily and the knees don't get faded from crawling. I figure that I'll be able to pass them down to the next girl we have when that time comes.)

Please check out Dakota laying on this ($6) Christmas dress. He wouldn't get out of the middle of the clothes for me to take the picture so he finally moved but made sure that he was still touching the clothes. :)

And please look at this adorable Gap coat!

Now it's time to wash and sanitize everything! I'm so excited that my child now has some clothes to wear in this fall weather that's coming! We may go back Saturday to check out 1/2 priced toys and books to save for Christmas gifts. Jonathan enjoys trying and picking out her toys:)

Moral of the story... if you have consignment sales available to you in your city RUN to them and get your kids some deals!! Thanks for humoring me by checking out my loot:)

10 Months!

2011-09-20T20:14:00.001-04:00

I'm almost two weeks late posting Adalyn's 10 month pictures. It is so hard to get her monthly picture now so it's hard for me to choose which picture to post!

Adalyn didn't have a normal doctor's appointment this month so we don't know her stats. She's still in a size 3 diaper, size 6-12 month clothes (we've quickly realized quite a few fall items that we will be looking for at the consignment sale this week since her clothes in 6-12 are summer clothes.) She's wearing size 2 shoes.

She went through what must have been a growth spurt because she was eating us out of house and home. She was trying tons of new finger foods and ate all of her meals so well. The sitter asked us to pack extra food because she was still hungry after her meals. But lately she's had the opposite and barely eats her food. She'll eat some puffs, but even those she doesn't eat many of. I guess her appetite will keep shifting. She still loves drinking out of her straw cup!

She says baba for bottle and she also does the hand motion. She calls Jonathan dada and squeals when I come into a room, but won't say mama unless she is whispering it. So funny. She does the hand motion for "more" when she wants something. It's so cute.

She has come so far this month is her mobility. She is FAST! Especially when she's trying to get into something...like the dog food, toilet paper, or the stairs. She is constantly standing and pulling up everywhere. As soon as the fridge, freezer or pantry are open, she is inside them pulling things off the shelves.

Here are a few pictures:

It was hard to keep her laying on her back in one spot!

I had to throw this one in there. She thought it was nap time when I put her in her bed and she didn't want to take another nap.

She got over it:)

Adalyn is such a joy. She keeps us on our toes and keeps us laughing all the time! I love that toothy grin! She is such a blessing to us and we love her more than we could ever imagine!

The End of One Era. The Beginning of Another.

2011-09-19T07:30:00.002-04:00

I bought Adalyn's exersaucer in March at a consignment sale for $40. I wanted one that wasn't gender specific but I had been hunting the sales and this was the only one that passed my "like new" and "good priced" standards. So, I got it and I'm glad because Adalyn has gotten her money's worth. She loved that thing and would play forever in it. This is what she looked like the first couple times she tried it out:

It takes up a ton of space in the living room and lately Adalyn is on the go, so while she would still play with the items on the exersaucer - from standing next to it, she didn't like being confined to the seat. So, we decided to take it to storage. Can I tell you that I about teared up watching Jonathan carry it to the basement? Yep. It's true.

How cool is this? Jonathan figured out after I brought it home from the sale, that it turns into a walking toy. $40 for a 2-in-one toy? Double score! So, today was the day to take it apart. I took a few last pictures of Adalyn playing in the exersaucer...

Jonathan turned it into a walker and Adalyn was all about it. She tries to push it and it rolls faster than what she can walk, so then she "walks" behind it on her knees. So funny. If she runs it into anything, like when we were holding it for the picture, she tries to keep pushing it until it about flips over. So cute!

It's really short and wide and we were laughing because it looks like she's pushing an old person walker.

I love watching Adalyn grow and discover new things. But seriously. I can't handle how fast time is going! On to bigger and better. This is going to be the story of our lives going forward... growing out of toys and into others. (Oh, and I'm really enjoying having that part of my living room back now that I'm over the emotional shock.)

Lima Bean Kids WINNER!

2011-09-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

A couple weeks ago Jenna had a giveaway for a FREE Lima Bean Kids t-shirt. I was so excited to win!! I was able to choose any t-shirt from their website. There were so many choices that I could barely decide, but I just kept coming back to this cute owl. You get to choose which color of shirt and what font you'd like so there were so many decisions to make! I ended up using the font that they showed with the print on their site. And if I remember correctly, I got it within the week that I sent my order in. I was really impressed with the service and also the quality of the shirt and print. I got a 12-18mo size shirt, so it's big on Adalyn right now but I'm hoping to get some quality wear out of it this winter. Here are a few pictures:

Thanks Jenna and Lima Bean Kids! Adalyn loves her new shirt and so do I!

9 Month Pictures

2011-09-14T20:00:00.004-04:00

We got Adalyn's 9 month pictures back from Jes! I was so excited to see them. But I would be lying if I didn't say that I was nervous. We went to a historic site for pictures and Adalyn was a GRUMP. I was so grateful to Jes for allowing us to take a break during the shoot for Adalyn to take a nap. It pays to be friends with your photographer! :) After nap, she was way more happy but still not completely herself. But Jes has a gift with babies and cameras and somehow we got some amazing pictures! I have to share a few (or lots). I could barely decide which to post so I decided to post quite a few for the grandparents.

I bought this shirt/bow for her 6 month pictures but couldn't use it because it was too big. It still is too big but so cute so we used it for a couple pictures.

This bow is as big as her head! Love it!

I know I'm biased but I'm positive that she is the cutest baby ever! I want to go wake her up just so I can cuddle her now! :)

Big Stuff

2011-09-13T20:12:00.001-04:00

Adalyn keeps trying new things. This past weekend we got her push/ride toy out of the basement to see if she would start taking some steps. She would rather push her table toy (without wheels since the wheels push a little too easily right now.) But she did enjoy riding it. She kept rolling herself backwards. It was pretty cute. She rolled all across the living room until she was stopped in the corner.

I gave her a sippy cup since we're still working on her figuring out how to hold the sippie herself. Sometimes she gets it but sometimes she gets so frustrated because she doesn't hold it high enough. She was holding it down and sucking it like it was a straw so I decided to grab one of her straw cups to see if she could figure it out. Sure enough. She got it right away and was pretty proud of herself!

Pretty serious...

So proud!

Uh oh! Where'd the straw go?

Ok, Hold On!

2011-09-12T07:48:00.001-04:00

I just went back to my post from April when we were all dressed up to cheer the CATS on in basketball and I cannot get over the difference in my baby girl. I had to post a comparison of last basketball season to this football season.

Then:

Now:

What has happened between seasons?! Too much growing is what! Such a big girl now!

My favorite CATS fans!

2011-09-11T21:12:00.000-04:00

Saturday the UK Cats were playing and in this town you wear blue on game days. It's actually kind of crazy when you're out and about because there is a sea of blue wherever you are. Jonathan and I were wearing UK gear and we decided to try Adalyn's UK onesie from last winter's basketball season to see if it would fit. It's a 6 month and she's 10 months and yes it fit easily. Yay for a UK outfit for this season! So she wore that with her gymboree cropped pants and adorable Robeez tennis shoes (from a consignment sale). I thought she just looked adorable so I had to grab the camera!

I couldn't get one picture with both of them smiling so I had to post two...

While Jonathan was running an errand Adalyn and I were playing and I decided it had been too long since I had just taken pictures of her playing. So here are a few.

She gets really excited and makes this face as she's squealing and crawling just as fast as her little arms and legs can take her. (She was probably chasing Dakota.)

I love this picture. Her chubby cheeks, her little belly hanging over her jeans and her little jeans falling down in the back. Always standing on her tip toes. I could just eat her up.

We had a great weekend and the CATS won! Yay!

Random Pictures

2011-09-09T07:40:00.000-04:00

I was uploading pictures from my camera and found some sweet pictures of Adalyn that I just had to post. So here are some random pictures of my baby girl who is now 10 months old today!! (10 month post and pictures coming next week) (Why does life move so fast??!!)

Adalyn loves crawling to this window next to the front door and watching daddy or Dakota when they are out in the yard. She doesn't need a flat surface or two hands to stand up anymore. She stands up anywhere! "Look ma! One hand!"

I need to get it on video because she loves "talking" to them through the glass. Can you tell?

Last Saturday Adalyn woke up with her hair sticking up. (I had to use water to make it go down...guess that means that she's getting more hair!) She was eating her bananas for breakfast and was pretty serious about it. Between her hair and her sleepy face, I couldn't resist snapping a picture.

I can't get enough of those chub rolls on her legs!

Snuggling with Grandma the last time she was in town. So sweet.

Before church with Papa and Grandma in her precious white dress. (It was before Labor day. Ha!)

Our family. We don't have many pictures of the 3 of us.

I know these pictures were all over the place, but they were just so sweet that I had to post them! Have a great weekend!

New Cousin!

2011-09-08T15:50:00.001-04:00

Last week Jonathan's sister had a new baby boy, so over the weekend we traveled to Louisville to meet Adalyn's new cousin! I was preparing myself for a jolt of reality. I knew Adalyn was going to look like such a big girl next to that baby and boy was I right! Of course we took a couple pictures. I'm sure Adalyn and Baby C will have many growth pictures together. At some point they will roll their eyes at us taking their picture together. (I know first hand since my mom used to make me take pictures next to a cousin growing up.) So we might as well take lots of pictures now since they can't protest:)

Jonathan with his nephews and Adalyn.

Adalyn was so cute with the baby and more curious that I thought she'd be. She was very gentle.

Trying to figure him out. :) Sweet babies.

A Weekend Facelift

2011-09-01T19:51:00.003-04:00

I posted earlier this summer about our front yard and how buying a few and repurposing a few plants made a huge difference in our front yard. I love our new landscape (although we still have one tree left to buy and plant in order to finish our plans), but our house was looking a little womp womp. (aka sad.) Our house is 16 years old and I can pretty much guarantee that the shutters and maybe even the door have never been repainted. Did you know that painting your shutters is a really easy and a low cost way to make your house look fresh? At our last house we had only two shutters but we took them down and spray painted them (one can per shutter) and then (regular) painted the front door to match and it made such a big difference that we kicked ourselves for not doing it sooner.

Here is a picture of what our house looked like before the landscaping:

(Can you tell it was taken of the yard and not supposed to be a picture of the house?)

Well I hated that we had lived in this house with faded shutters for over a year. Oh, and also? I was so embarrassed that our front door, which is metal, had two holes left from the old owners' door knocker that they took with them. But I knew that if we could find a fix for the holes and paint the door that I wasn't going to put the same knobs back on the door and that we would need to also paint the shutters. So one thing would snowball into the next. I wasn't sure what color I wanted to paint, but I knew I wanted to change it up but I just kept putting it off.

Here is an after picture of the landscape and before picture of the paint:

(In this one it doesn't really show much of the landscape at all. Wow. The photographer should be fired! But at least you can see the house.)

The house originally had hunter green shutters and door. With the white siding, I felt like I really needed to bring two colors to the house in order to give a little dimension. I didn't want to do the black shutters with red door (like most of the other white houses around here). So I found a slate color for the shutters and a blue color for the door. I got my color ideas from these pictures on pinterest:

(Source)

(There was no source listed with this pin)

The shutter color I had pictured in my head as being darker, but like my dad told me, most likely a darker grey color would have looked like a washed out black instead of a meaningful slate. (I was worried that my slate color looked a bit washed out.) My dad and Jonathan took the shutters off the house to paint them because it's way easier. (But you might not want to look at your siding when your shutters are down. Scary!) We used a Laura Ashley Home color called Chimney Sweep from Lowes. They painted two coats on the lower shutters and one coat on the upper shutters and we still have paint left over from our quart that we bought! They let them dry completely before putting them back on the house. I really like the end result!

Before:

After:

I realize that you can't see much of a difference since the before color of hunter green was so faded but in person the slate looks so much better and has a nice sheen instead of a dull washed out green.

Although my dad has painted his whole life and knows what he's doing, Jonathan and I decided we wanted to try something new/different on our front door prep. The part that faced outside was really sticky and I had read this post. (Do you love Young House Love like I do?? You should! They're awesome! And this post was perfect timing!) They recommended using a liquid deglosser to get the grime off before priming the door.

Let's take a look at the old color of the door and also those awesome holes and door knocker marks...that we lived with for 16 months. ::hangs head:: It almost looks like I was framing the ugliness.

We used the liquid deglosser on the front door to get the sticky off and get the door ready for paint. (We did two coats.) Then, my dad found some stuff called SteelStik which is an epoxy to fix the holes in the metal door. This stuff is actually supposed to bond so hard that you can re-drill into it! (Which is great since one day we may want a door knocker!) After all was dry, my dad painted two coats of an allen+roth color called Evening Stroll from Lowes on the door.

We priced new hardware for the door to replace the tarnished ugly brass hardware on the front door. I decided that I wanted Oil Rubbed Bronze on my new light colored front door and they start around $130! We have a storm door that is a no-name brand so I knew that there wouldn't be a replacement for those brass parts. I was planning on spray painting ORB on the storm door accessories, but after reading this post from YHL, (again, perfect timing for them to be working on their doors!) I decided that we should go ahead and try spray painting our front door knob too! We used the liquid deglosser and then sprayed two layers of ORB. I'm ecstatic about the result! And if it scrapes off or doesn't wear well, we can try spraying again or break down and buy a new door knob, but for now? LOVING this low cost option!

We stuck all of the knobs, accessories and even all the screws into a cardboard box so that we could get all sides of the knobs. YHL recommended putting a key half way into the key holes, but my dad said that wasn't necessary so we didn't ruin an extra key and the key hole still works!

Awesome paint! Love the easy trigger and the paint and primer in one! It has a great shimmer to it too!

Next round: Screen door

After: LOVE the ORB! It took years off that door! (The screen door makes the door color look really dark.)

Pretty door! And the ORB knob goes so well with the light fixture! Now I want to put the glass in the storm door just so you can see the color! I'm pretty sure I'd kick myself for not having a nice fall breeze be able to blow through the house this fall! Soon enough you'll be able to actually see my door color. Winter is coming:)

Our garage door had some white blotches where we assume the previous owners had painted out some dents and marks. When we first moved in we thought that the door needed to be power washed but we quickly realized that the splotches on the door were paint and not dirt. So we matched a new color of white to the siding (I had never realized how our garage door didn't match the white of our house before.) and now it looks amazing! (No one would ever notice but me, but I don't care!) Let's take a look!

Before:

After:

This was a relatively inexpensive, easy weekend project that gave us great results. (We only bought 2 quarts of paint - $15 each for shutters and front door, 1 gal of paint - $25 for garage door, deglosser - $6, Steel Stick Epoxy - $5, and ORB spray - $8. A house facelift for $74!) I didn't want our new colors to be crazy noticeable because I didn't want to be the person on the street with the wild house colors that aren't really house colors. Do you have one of those houses in your neighborhood? The updated paint blends in and makes a huge difference to me (even if you can't really tell the difference in pictures.) We had a couple neighbors come over during and after the painting process to ask how we did different parts. Maybe this will inspire the rest of our block to paint their 16 year old shutters and door too. It's like an episode of Curb Appeal...except there isn't a cool designer making the decisions. Here is the house now!

(And with the screen open so you can see the colors together.)

I love driving up to our "new" house! It makes me happy. And hey, if I get tired of the blue door I can always switch it up easily since most colors will go with the grey shutters. (Other color options I was looking at were light green and burnt orange.) But right now Evening Stroll makes me smile! And I really think that any wreaths I put on the door are going to pop! Now we just need to plant a tree to the left front of the house to be done with our exterior summer project! I better get working on a fall wreath. I already have an idea I've pinned for my new door:

(Source)

Jonathan's Accent Vlog

2011-08-31T20:10:00.000-04:00

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

2011-08-31T08:12:00.000-04:00

Friends!

Accent Vlog

2011-08-30T20:36:00.000-04:00

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

2011-08-29T07:57:00.000-04:00

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)

2011-08-25T07:44:00.001-04:00

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)

2011-08-23T20:41:00.000-04:00

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)

2011-08-22T21:10:00.002-04:00

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!

2011-08-19T16:07:00.001-04:00

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

2011-08-18T20:37:00.001-04:00

(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

2011-08-16T12:17:00.000-04:00

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! :)

I'm still here!

2011-08-15T21:31:00.000-04:00

So I have been absent from the blog for a while now. Oops! We went to Florida for 9 days and had a great time (posts to come). We visited friends (pics to come) and family (pics to come). Before we left I had actually written a blog post but never actually edited it to post it, so I really do have lots of blogs to share. I just haven't found the time to write all the posts I need to write.

Before we left I turned 30, we had to lower Adalyn's bed, and my mom came to visit/babysit for a week. While we were gone Adalyn turned 9 months (where did time go??), learned to crawl, had her first car trip, her first time in the ocean, and met her cousins and aunt for the first time (she had met my brother when she was 4 days old). Since we've been home, Adalyn ate her first meal by feeding herself!! So as you can see, we have been busy!

So here I am, checking in to say that we are still here, enjoying each other and I will hopefully be back soon with some blogs and pictures!

Blueberry Girl

2011-07-29T08:15:00.001-04:00

No, I'm not talking about Violet from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I'm talking about my sweet baby. Yesterday afternoon I made a new blend of baby food with mangos (she loves them) and blueberries (a new food). I was pouring it into freezer containers while she was eating lunch (my mom was feeding her), so I thought that maybe she would like a few bites of fruit with her lunchtime veggie. So I spooned just a tiny bit into a bowl for her to try. She LOVED it! YUM.

After eating, my mom got her out of her high chair and gave her to me so I could feed her a bottle. In that short amount of time I looked at her and her face and neck were covered in red splotchy welts. Then it started in on her chest and arms. It freaked me out but I knew it had to be a reaction to the blueberries because I've heard that even though it is recommended to give a food 3 days for a reaction before starting a new food, that food reactions are usually immediate. I was on the phone with the doctor's office as soon as I could retrieve the number from my phone and they wanted to see her. Thankfully she didn't have any problems breathing, so the doctor said that is the "good" reaction to have. Needless to say, she will not be trying any sort of berries for a while. The doctor said I could try a little amount after 12 months but I'm not sure I want to try that soon. Thankfully most kids grow out of berry allergies, but I'll tell you that it was a bit of a scary situation. It's not something that you ever fathom seeing on your child! This is one of the main reasons that I am always present when we try a new food and I never send an untried food to the sitter. You just never know. We don't have food allergies in our family and I would have never guessed that she would have a reaction to a blueberry. I am so thankful that it was only a couple bites and not a full portion and that it was homemade so that I know it wasn't a reaction to the additives or preservatives in jarred stuff! I'm also thankful that the splotches went away quickly and she was back to her normal self while we were in the doctor's office.

Kids...you never know when your afternoon trips to Panera, Hobby Lobby and Kroger are going to be nixed and you'll just end up at the doctor's office!

Free 5K

2011-07-26T08:33:00.000-04:00

Saturday I did something crazy! I ran my first 5K post pardum without having trained for it, in 100+ heat index. Some might call it dumb. But whatever. I needed something to jump start my fitness level and I'm competitive and love races, so why not. (At least I used to love races back when I never batted an eye at a lousy 3 miles.) Folks, between the extra 30 lbs, the heat, and the "I haven't gone running for a couple months" it was a pretty hard race! I didn't want to sign up in the first place, but we got a flyer at work for a FREE 5K and I sent it on to my girlfriends which then made me be accountable. Billie, more than half way through her pregnancy, was more than willing to run it so what excuse did I have?? So, two days before the race I signed up.

I've never run in a race that wasn't some sort of charity fundraiser so I didn't know what to expect. It was being hosted by 3 men, and the race was actually on one of their properties. We pulled up and there were a ton of people. (It hadn't been advertised on the running website so we didn't know how much it would spread through word of mouth. But Hello, FREE spread.) There were local police directing the parking lots. The individual who owns this land, seems to own about half of this town (kinda a joke but maybe not? His name is everywhere) but I'd never been to his property. Um, it was beautiful. It looked like a park and was pristine. (Even during the race there were people cleaning up the used water cups so everything stayed looking nice.) He has a whole paved running path around his property (think acres and acres of horse farms - except no horses because he's in the railroad industry). We picked up our numbers and saw that it was chipped timing! Really? Chipped timing for a free race? Half of the charity races we pay for in town don't have chips! We went to line up to race and the horn was a train horn. So cute but it scared me half to death.

Me (& my not cute bump), Billie (& her cute little bump) and Courtney

(I just noticed the guy in the background with his shirt off. Does he really have a tramp stamp on his back?)

Courtney stayed with us for about the first mile. After that I needed a walk so she ran ahead and Billie stayed back with me. I'm pretty sure I've only ever walked once while in an actual race and that was during my first 10K a couple years ago. I just do not allow myself to walk, but I couldn't help it on Saturday. The race had two water stations and even a port-a-potty (with RJ's logo on it- of course). We joked that everything on his property had his business logo on it. And at the drink table when we picked up our cold bottled water during the race? Yep. RJ's logo on the water! So funny. Anyway, the heat and humidity and lack of training really caught up to me and instead of pushing I took walking breaks. Thankfully Billie was ok with that. It ended up that they had one ambulance on site for emergencies and had to call in 3 others. I've never seen that before...but then I've never raced in these conditions. It kind of jolted me when I saw an athletic guy on the side of the trail being helped by the EMTs with an oxygen mask on. Scary. I think everyone was ok after the race though.

We got to the end of the race and crossed the finish line running! Yay us! There were buckets of gatorade and water waiting and they had enticed us before the race with iced towels but by the time we finished they were out of towels. Bummer. I guess that's what happens when you have a free race. How do you gauge how many will show up? Oh and I guess that's also what you get for being slow. We looked at the race clock at mile 2 and made a joke that two years ago we had finished a 5K in less time than it took us to get to mile 2.

RJ had a catering company grilling up lunch for people and also My Old Kentucky Home was there making homemade ice cream. The ice cream HIT the spot after being so overheated. Oh my. I think that was the best vanilla ice cream I've ever had! All of it was, get this, FREE!

Oh, and for the winners of each age category they gave away free running shoes and everyone with a bib number on got 50% off running shoes and there was an actual company set up selling running gear! I didn't buy any but wow. That's pretty good.

I got a serious blister on the back of my ankle because my shoes are still new-ish since I bought them post Adalyn and have only run a total of 5 times post Adalyn. My shoe got bloody which means that I'm hard core right? No pain no gain and all of that stuff? Thankfully I wear flip flops to work because I'm still rocking the blister, although now that I ran Saturday I don't want to wait too long to go running again. Gotta keep the momentum up! I know from the past that each run gets easier and easier. Now it's just on my shoulders to make the time to get those runs in!

Reunited and It Feels So Good...

2011-07-25T08:04:00.000-04:00

Adalyn got a Sophie the Giraffe for Christmas. In the beginning she just sucked and nursed on Sophie and then later it became her favorite chew toy (other than her fingers). She wouldn't even play with other teething toys, let alone chew on them. She loved Sophie. The problem? Dakota loved Sophie too. I can't blame him. Sophie looks, smells and sounds like a dog toy. How's he supposed to know the difference, other than us yelling at him any time he would come close to the most expensive chew toy ever!!

For anyone not familiar with Sophie, she's a teether that is soft rubber and squeaks. She was originally made in 1961 in Paris and is still made the same way as she was back then. Every single baby that I know has a Sophie and every single mother swears by it.

On very rare occasions that Dakota acquired Sophie he would play with her and bury her in his blanket and just lay his head on her until I could somehow manage to get her back. There would never be teeth marks and he just loved on Sophie. Then I'd have to scold Coda, disinfect Sophie and then we would agree to guard Sophie better.

Well two weeks ago Dakota went missing and after Jonathan went looking for him he was flaming mad and had a disfigured Sophie in his hand. Sophie was missing both ears and also her little horns (are those things horns?). Poor Sophie. Well, we finally got around to buying a new Sophie this weekend. Oh.My.Goodness. When we got to the display in the store, Adalyn lunged right for the box with Sophie in it. As Jonathan was carrying the box to the register she wanted it oh so bad. It was precious. Just like a long lost friend.

When we got home, she was so excited to play with Sophie so I grabbed a few pictures.

Yes, the money spent on this toy was worth it by the look of that smile!

Dakota wanted the new Sophie so so bad and Adalyn knew it and kept waiving it and throwing it at him. It was quite funny. But Jonathan has vowed that if Dakota chews another Sophie that he's going to go away for good. (I don't believe him though.) Look at poor Coda...

Happy girl talking to her new Sophie!

Reunited and it feels so good! Poor thing has 4 upper teeth coming in at the same time! Two are cut and two are still in the process, so hopefully having Sophie will help soothe those gums!
(Yes, I really just wrote an entire post on a teething toy...I am quite aware. My how priorities change...)

Swim Lessons with Daddy

2011-07-22T08:04:00.000-04:00

Tuesday night I had an evening meeting for work so Jonathan got to be the parent in "parent and me swim class" and I got to be the parent in the bleachers taking stealth pictures with my phone. Jonathan was so brave! I was nervous that he wouldn't want to do it since all of the other parents in the class are women. But for his little girl he'll brave being the only daddy in the water! Here are some really blurry pictures from her swim class.

In this part of the class, the instructor gives each child a rubber ducky and the parent throws it out ahead in the water and the baby has to swim for it. She loves this part of the class and it's so cute to see how determined she is on swimming to that ducky.

Look at that good form! Adalyn too! :)

I think Jonathan started a new trend. At our class on Thursday two of the normal daddies that sit on the bleachers were in the pool with their babies. We only have two more swim classes! I can't believe this month has flown by so quickly!!

In other news, my child is using a sippy cup! She's finally figured it out. She would prefer for us to hold it but if we give her the cup and step away she can drink out of it herself! Never mind that half the time after a few drinks she decides that it's a great teething toy!

We've got two more teeth in and two more that are so close to coming through.

First Sleep Over

2011-07-21T07:58:00.003-04:00

This past weekend we took a day off work to spend a long weekend with my parents. Jonathan golf's with my dad in a golf scramble each summer and it happened to fall on the same weekend as our anniversary. (I was not aware of this when he paid, although I wouldn't have wanted him to miss it.) After our trip to the Zoo on Friday, my mom and I decided to take Adalyn to my aunt's pool on Saturday while the guys golfed the day away. Adalyn loved the pool and her cousins played so nicely with her. It was sweet.

I think the swimming lessons have had a great impact. She just kept kicking her little legs and was so happy to splash the day away! I finally had to call naptime because I'm pretty sure she would have just fallen asleep in her float if I would have let her! She's going to be a little fish!!

Having fun with Grandma Nan!

Saturday night Jonathan planned an overnight anniversary date, so Adalyn spent her first night away from both of us. (I was gone overnight at my work retreat a couple months ago, but this was a first for both of us to be gone.) Papa and Grandma did great and said that Adalyn was of course perfect. They took her to church with them Sunday morning so I'm sure my mom showed her off to all her friends! Jonathan and I did not take one picture of us on our date! My, how priorities change...

It was our 5th anniversary so we both tried to do a spin on the traditional 5th anniversary gift of wood. I got Jonathan a 5 Wood (golf club) because his broke a couple summers ago and he's really missed it. I think he was excited to try it out at the scramble. Jonathan gave me a wrapped metallic family picture from one of Adalyn's 6 month pictures that Jes took. The wrap is on wood so somehow we both stayed in the wood category! Jonathan also got me a fun rubber white watch with bling so that was a fun little extra:)

Sunday afternoon before we got on the road back to Lexington, we took a few pictures. Adalyn was so ready for her nap that she fell asleep in her car seat before we even pulled the car out of the driveway! Can you tell how sleepy she looks in these pictures? But yet, she didn't fuss. Such a good baby!

Can you tell that I got a bit too much sun at the pool on Saturday? It was my first extended time in the sun this summer and I got a bit lobster-ish! I was careful to put Adalyn's sunscreen on all day but didn't put any on myself! Oh well, I needed a little color and now the red is all gone so I'm good.

We had a great time with my parents as we always do, but it's always so hard to leave!! Good thing Adalyn gets to see Gram again next week for some babysitting!

The Toledo Zoo

2011-07-20T07:57:00.002-04:00

So it's been many years since I lived in Toledo and in that time the Zoo got a new slogan, but I can't get the old slogan slash jingle out of my head every time I talk about the zoo. So here it goes... pretend I'm singing it to you... The Toledo Zoooo - It comes ali-ive for youuu! I spent many a summer day at the zoo growing up. It didn't hurt that we only lived about a mile away from the zoo and always had a membership. I remember walking to the zoo and then knowing that after we were done looking at the animals that we still had to walk back home. Ha! The things we remember from our youth. I also have vivid memories of when the Panda Bears were loaned to us from China - that was an exciting summer and I totally had a shirt with the pandas on it. If you were a kid in the 80's in Toledo you did too. I'm sure. And I also always loved the koalas and wanted to hold one. And at least 3 of my birthday parties growing up were at the zoo. My mom pointed out to me the area that my birthday parties took place as we walked past them on Friday. (I always got to pick out what animal I wanted on the cake.)

On Friday we decided to take Adalyn on her first trip (of many) to the Zoo! Thanks to my parents yearly membership it was a nice inexpensive day for us:) - Well, unless you count how much the food and drinks were!

Mom always gets a picture of the grandkids in front of this polar bear. Adalyn's first of many pictures!

A real polar bear up close and personal eating some ice cubes on a swimming break!

Waiting in line for Adalyn's first train ride! We rode through Africa! (Oops! Adalyn's bow is so big that it is right in front of mom's face!)

Some of the animals on the African safari train ride. They have special giraffes that have funny spots.

Sweet baby! She had this sweet watermelon bubble outfit on (that I got at a consignment sale!) and she got soo much attention and so many compliments. I guess northerners aren't used to the way that southerners get dolled up for a play day! (HA! I'm actually referring to us as southerners??!) {And really it wasn't like she was in a dress... it was a bubble outfit!}

This stone elephant has been at the zoo for forever. We have many pictures of me on this elephant growing up. (They even have soft ground around it since everyone sits on it.) Little known fact... The elephant's trunk broke earlier this year and my uncle's stone company fixed it and it looks good as new. No one would ever know that it had surgery!

Three generations! (My mom used to come to this zoo as a child also.) Adalyn looks like she was posing!

And this chimp was posing too! It was too funny. He was showing off!

We had a great time at the zoo and even though the temperatures were high, it was very pleasant. We missed seeing the 3 week old baby elephant and I was so sad. I guess that means we'll have to go back soon! I'm sure this will be the first of many trips for Adalyn to the Toledo Zoo...It comes alive for you! (I'm ignoring the updated "I love my zoo" jingle...and taking it back to the 80's.)

Patience and Trust

2011-07-18T15:53:00.000-04:00

Are two things that are hard for me. I'm impatient and I think with today's modern conveniences and internet at my fingertips, patience is even harder for me. I think it's always hard to hand over the reins of my life and trust God to lead the way. I mean, I want to do that but I get so caught up in worrying about something going wrong that I always tend to take back over. Good thing God dishes out grace!

The last couple weeks have been difficult in that Adalyn's "Nona" {childcare provider} gave us her 2 weeks' notice because she wanted to start a new venture. It pretty much rocked my world. We all loved Nona and didn't have any plans to not have her help us raise our child until preschool (or I become a stay-at-home mom...whichever is first). I was just sick about it. Jonathan is such a wonderful husband and took over the childcare provider search because he knew I was too emotionally invested to be doing the search and weeding through the possibilities. We wanted in-home care and we needed it to be somewhere on our side of town. Well, for two weeks nothing turned up. I started calling daycares and all of the good ones had LONG waiting lists. Some daycares never even returned my emails or calls. We did find one daycare that I absolutely loved. I wanted to sign up that day but Jonathan reminded me that an extra $35 per week from what we were paying would put a serious strain on our budget. $140 per month makes a big difference! We finally got to a week ago Friday and Adalyn needed to start somewhere the following Tuesday. So I was ready to sign on the bottom line for the daycare and just make the money situation "work".

Friday afternoon I was off work and Jonathan emailed me a craig's list ad. I told him to go ahead and contact her to ask her location and price and availability. Needless to say, Friday evening we had 2 interviews with in-home providers. We loved both of them! They were both on our side of town and the one Jonathan had found Friday afternoon? Yeah, she lives in our neighborhood. .7 miles from our house to be exact. Why can't I learn to trust God? It's not in our time, it's His. He's never late. He's always right on time. You'd think that I would have learned that in the past with Jonathan's job, our house sale, our infertility, and our pregnancy scare just to name a few lessons. But I obviously still need to be reminded.

Oh yeah, and our new childcare provider? Instead of spending $35 per week more than what we were paying before, we are saving $40 per week from what we were paying! Wow a cost savings of $160 per month. God provides. Last Tuesday was Adalyn's first day in her new environment and we had a glowing review. It was interesting hearing a [pretty much] complete stranger who has never cared for Adalyn before tell us that she is the easiest baby she's ever had. {Yep} That she loves to talk. {Yep} That she has no interest in crawling even when they put her toys out of her reach. {Yep} And that she is all around content and happy. {Yep} So she pretty much already has Adalyn figured out and so far we are great with the new care and ecstatic with our .7 mile commute!

Five Years Ago Today...

2011-07-15T11:54:00.001-04:00

Five years ago today I married my best friend. It's hard to believe that 5 years have flown by so quickly, but single life feels like a lifetime ago. I guess that's how these things go. The past few years I've written about our anniversary here and here. And Jonathan wrote a blog last year here.

(My reception shoes!)

It's hard to not repeat my words from my previous posts. Jonathan, I love you much and am so thankful for your leadership and guidence in our marriage. I'm so blessed by you and am so lucky to be married to you. You're an amazing husband and daddy! It's amazing how many things have changed since last year's blog post! And I can't wait to see what the changes will be on our next anniversary! 143