Changes

We're six months into this adventure with Adelaide, and good gracious, can it really get any better?

She's just such a person in her own right. She's an exuberant and engaging personality and that personality is all her own. I don't really see much of myself or Tim in her just yet, which makes every new development even more exciting. She's so funny that she keeps us in stitches. Part of that is because we're doting parents, but part of it is because she's genuinely funny. She's just so darn pleased with each new skill that she acquires.

Speaking of skills, she's rolling over both ways with ease, she's sleeping like an angel...a very hyperaware and hypersensitive to every little noise type of angel...and she very rarely falls over sitting up. We basically feel comfortable letting her sit on her own on high surfaces, like the couch or a kitchen counter, without any worries. We do take precautions in those situations, of course, but she's a steady, sturdy, solid little sitter.

It seems like every single day brings a new sound effect and a new interest for Addie. She's mastered a whole zoo's worth of growls, shrieks, squeals, and bellows and she's now moved on to some new physical "tricks". I caught The Move of the Day on video...fingers crossed that it will actually upload! This was the "head wag". Pretty darn cute, if you ask me. Ok, it's actually at the bottom of my post and it won't let me move it without messing everything else up. Oh well, it's a learning process.

We've been spending a lot of time with friends this summer, going to the pool, having playdates, picnics, etc. Here are some shots of Addie in the superspectacularincredible RAC pool during a pool playdate.


Do you notice a theme here in her interactions with Nolan?

My friend Rachel took these last two pictures. I look SO happy in the candid one of some of us moms, but I really was very happy, I promise! :-)

Grown up life has been kind of sucky this week (apart from Addie) because it included a basement flood and some food poisoning. The basement flood was 100% my fault because I knocked our drainspout extension thing off when I was mowing and just thought "why is that long piece of metal in our bushes anyway?" Turns out that it's there to keep my closet from flooding.

The food poisoning was kind of also my fault because we had "Recycle Sunday" where we basically eat any leftovers in our fridge. This Sunday featured leftover enchiladas, red and yellow pepper slices, baby carrots, hummus, and tsatziki sauce. Turns out that old tsatziki sauce is not good to eat. I was felled in the afternoon and Tim was hit last night. Blech.

In better news, our friends Brandon and Kristen had their baby girl this week! She was over a month early(!), but we're so happy to welcome Baby Halle to the world!

Here's the head wag, complete with her attempts to grab the camera. The camera, remote control, and phone are her toys of choice.

Addie also loves playing peek a boo. She's gotten so good that she's almost "over" that game, so I thought I better catch it quickly.

The Small Stuff

We've had a lot of big events in between the last post and this one! Addie's "half birthday" and Tim's first Father's Day, our first tornados of the year, and a big move ...all in a few short weeks. No wonder it's been a struggle to find time to blog.

In between the big events, we've also just been living it up with the small events. These are some shots from playgroup at the pool.

My pumpkin = my melon
Calamari anyone?

Ava playing with her zooMcKenzie in her float

There's also been some serious soccer action in this house. We love the World Cup around here, and we just had to get Adelaide an appropriate viewing outfit.




Our "big move" wasn't actually that big of a deal. We just decided to move our bedroom downstairs. This was a good idea for a number of reasons. First, Addie is going to continue to wake up at night as long as I continue to feed her. Now that she's eating solids for dinner on a regular basis, she doesn't really need the nutrition of nursing. She just likes the comfort and the closeness, and honestly, so do I. However, I can feel that after six months of never sleeping more than a few hours at a time, I'm starting to deplete my store of energy. So it's time to AT LEAST drop the 1 A.M. feeding. The new "rule" in our household is that I don't get up with Addie at night unless it's after 4 A.M. She still wakes up often at night, and it's hard to listen to her cry, but she's getting better at soothing herself back to sleep. I just have to keep reminding myself that she very rarely nursed for more than 30 seconds at the 1 A.M. feeding. She would just cuddle up and go right to sleep. So she isn't missing anything except...well...me. Which just breaks my heart to type, but I know that at some point, I have to start caring for my health and well being also.

And interestingly enough, moving our bedroom off the main level makes it feel like more a "retreat". Our bedroom is now on the ground level and most of our daily life takes place on the kitchen and living room floors. So at night, we literally "wind down" by moving from the two top floors down to the bottom floor. It's a nice process when a metaphor becomes an actuality in your life.

The other plus is that I have my own closet now. Formerly, Tim was using the closet in our room and I was sharing a large walk-in closet with Addie. However, this had a severe downside in that if she was asleep I was effectively marooned from my clothes. Laideybug is such a light sleeper that there was no way in hell I could open up the closet, turn on the light, and root around for clothes without waking her.

So, I guess that's really enough about the move! Except that in typical fashion, I decided that if creating one mess (moving our belongings) was good, creating ten or twelve was better. So in addition to re-arranging our bedrooms, I also decided to gut our downstairs den in favor of moving my bookshelves upstairs. All well and good, except that I also decided that they were too crowded. So I have drastically reduced the books on the shelves in favor of more pleasing displays with my collection of bowls, baskets, and candles...which means that I have piles of books EVERYWHERE now. Oh well, it's a work in progress. And I'm finally becoming pleased with our living room upstairs. That's worth celebrating!

I don't think I can do justice to Addie's half birthday and Tim's Father's Day tonight, so I'm just going to post a few pictures of the Pumpkin and leave it at that. That's bound to be an emotional post, and I want to do it justice. In the meantime...

She's growing up!

Addie with her guardians and best friends, Indiana Jones and Rocky Balboa. They nearly always plant themselves close to her when she's down on their level.

She's starting to think about crawling!
Addie still loves avocado. I couldn't resist getting some shots of her making a mess with her dinner tonight. I feed her with a spoon but at the end, I usually let her experiment with feeding herself. The results are predictable, but I think it's good for her and I just pop her straight into her bath, so it's not a big deal to me. She obviously enjoys it too!
Mmmm...delicious fistfuls of guac!

A P.G. Post

Blogger decided to eat my first, heartfelt, post. So now I'm left with simply uploading images and trying not to let my fingers furiously type all the meaningless symbols that stand for censored curse words...#$#@&(%& ...ah, see, a few slipped out despite my best intentions.

So, back to the main story: P.G. It might mean any number of things. Here are the three things that it means in MY life.

P.G. 1: Pregnant.

And no, I'm not pregnant.

And...neither is Jen! She and David welcomed their beautiful son, Calum, into the world last week after a long, long, LONG labor. They seem like they're pretty much in love, so I think they're of the opinion that he was worth the 42 hours (eek) of labor.

There's the sweet little fellow himself. Beautiful.


And the happy family! So many wonderful things lie in store for you ...we can't wait to see how the next four years unfold as we go through this crazy residency/parenthood/hippie life together. P.G. 2: Play Group.

I defy you to produce a stay-at-home mom or dad that doesn't live for play group. It's a totally unique combination of group therapy, church potluck supper, daycare, and social club. I hope I made that sound wonderful, because it is.

I decided to take the camera along to last week's play group to record the terrifically ordinary images of kids playing with their moms and each other. Of course, they're Addie heavy, but I did manage to tear my eyes away from her to get a few snaps of the other kidlings ;-)

The whole crew (that was present that day, at least)

Riley, Kinsley, Witten, Addie, and Nolan


Miss Addie


Laughing at me...I guess I look funny with my camera.
NolanHere's play group in a nutshell. Kids look at toys, other kids take them away, while still more children watch the action. Witten is reclaiming his keys from Addie while Nolan cheers him on. I love Addie's affronted look.

Sari and Witt
So much love in one photo.
Nicole and Riley blowing bubbles with this cool pop up bubble deal.
Catherine and Kinsley and Witt calling someone. Baton Rouge? Nah, probably San Antonio or Austin for the Texans.

Riley and Nolan getting ready to go home. Love Riley's cap.
Same time, same place, but Nolan's smile is just irresistible.

P.G. 3) Parental Guidance Suggested

Now, I don't actually have anything to say about Parental Guidance. I just wanted to try to find some way to mention that Addie and I had lunch with her Mimi (Mary, Tim's mother) and her Gigi (Mary's mother, Tim's grandmother) before Mary left for the summer. Addie was teething and kind of ornery, so there was a lot of entertainment required. I'm sure we were all exhausted when we left, but it was still nice to see them.

I do have some photos of that meeting that I'll have to download and then upload later, but for right now...here's a pretty fair representation of teething, folks.

And speaking of parents, here are a few random shots of Tim and I with Addie. Just because this post wasn't QUITE long enough ;-)

Addie and I in Lanesboro with the lilacs. If you've ever wondered how stories of local ghosts get started, well...viewing this photo might give you an idea.
Tim and Addie in their undershirts. Adorable.

Weekend Excursions

What a wonderful weekend we had in our little corner of Minnesota. I love weekends anyway...even the most ordinary weekend is cause for celebration in my mind. Even when I'm not working, the weekends just feel different. We move a little slower around here on Saturdays and Sundays. I stop worrying about cleaning the house, making sure that I've done all the errands, filling the cupboards with food, then cooking that food, doing the eternal loads of laundry, keeping up with the yard work, playing with the dogs, making myself presentable, working out, keeping up with my blog, being good company for my husband, and oh yes, taking good care of my baby, which includes making sure she is always fed, dry, clean, happy, and intellectually stimulated. Just typing all of that is tiring.

So it is with great relief that I surrender to the weekend and my urge to do ...nothing. Except enjoy life. We lay in bed together as a family and laugh at Addie's antics. We sleep late AND we take naps. We cook if the spirit moves us, and snack if not. We nearly always find time to sit on someone's porch and drink and chat with our friends. We watch television. We watch movies. We watch our baby. We smile, we laugh, we have random conversations about random things and enjoy the fact that we're not trying to squeeze necessary and relevant information into our few hours together.

Essentially, ANY weekend is a good one, but add a holiday into the mix and it becomes a reason to really live it up. So we did. This weekend we left Addie with Mimi and Steve for an afternoon and watched a movie together...only our second one since she was born! I'm a bona fide movie lover, and I got a little bit emotional at the sight of all that overpriced candy and oversized portions of popcorn and soda. You think I'm kidding but I'm not. I love my daughter endlessly, but a break every now and again is not a bad thing. And when you can get a huge white cherry icee in the bargain...well....words fail me.

After the movie, we picked Addie up and went over to the Brogans for our first cookout of the weekend. We sat out on their back porch and laughed and talked and ate delicious cookout type foods until our sides creaked. I lolled around in a lawn chair and enjoyed the heck out of the brilliant people that we're lucky enough to call friends and Addie slept while I rocked her in car seat with my foot.

This is Addie in her sunhat and watermelon dress, ready for some fun in the sun. It's impossible to capture in a picture, but the smell of sunscreen on baby skin is one of the best scents on the planet. It's summer and innocence and love and newfound joys all in one delicious whiff.
This is her new pose whenever I say her name. "Addie! Aaaaadddiiieee!" And she looks at me like "Yes?" with this adorable little head-cocked-to-the-side stance.

I included this picture because you can see her prized dimple in this one. It's hard to capture in a photo thus far...but this fleeting little dimple is #56 on my list of "Things that Make Addie Adorable".

And then Tim let me sleep in on Saturday. Bliss, bliss, bliss. I slept until 11 Am. It's impossible to describe how wonderful extra hours of sleep feel until you've been consistently denied sleep on a regular basis. That was such a gift. Thank you, husband, thank you, for the chance to recharge my batteries.

And then we took an impromptu trip to Lanesboro, Minnesota. Impromptu road trips are quite possibly one of my favorite things on Earth. To me, there is nothing that says "WE ARE ALIVE" quite like rolling the windows down, singing loudly, and discovering this beautiful country. I think Addie quite enjoyed herself also. She sang also, loudly and with feeling....the words weren't very diverse but she had a lot of emotion. "Ohhhhh, ohhhhh, OHHHHHHHH, ohohohohohoh, ohhhhhhh", something along those lines.

Lanesboro is a lovely little town on the banks of the Root River. It's got some serious biking trails, and the Root is great for tubing and kayaking. I can't wait to come back and float down the river when it's a bit warmer. The town itself is full of interesting shops and restaurants and b-n-bs. We wandered around for a while and enjoyed the scent of the lilacs and the breeze.

Here are some tubers on the river, if you can see them...it's a bit far away.

A bridge on the Root River Trail.
Addie's pudgy little hand exploring the flowers. She loves the great outdoors and likes "smelling" the flowers aka "attempting to eat them". Tim calls her hands "little sausage casings" and I think that's a great description. Her skin is actually taut. So cute. She loves having her fingers nibbled, which is a good thing because I find these fat little paws irresistible.
And on Memorial Day itself, we had cookout #2 with friends in the park. I should have taken more pictures of that one, but it was basically a repeat of our earlier cookout, with the addition of an intense bloodsport deathmatch...er, I mean, a friendly volleyball game. Here's a quick snap of Addie with her Daddy at the picnic. Addie is a bit tired in this one, but Tim is happy because his team is winning. This was between matches and before he sacrificed the skin on his knees in pursuit of victory.




All in all, a fine fine weekend. Life is pretty grand.