"Habby, Habby, Habby" Birthday

Addie's face, post Birthday cake! Please note that it is in her hair, eyelashes, and up her nose. We had a LOT of fun watching her go to work on their birthday cake.


"Habby" is what Addie says now as she's tooling around with her new toys. It means "happy". If there is something better than seeing your one year old crawl around all day declaring how "habby" she is, then I wish you'd tell me. Personally, I can't imagine it.

Like everyone else, this time of year is incredibly busy for us and I have a lot of things I'd like to blog about for the sake of remembering them. That's going to require me to post fairly frequently, and I have a little bit of trepidation about getting it all done. But here goes.

So, Miss Addie is 1! I have quite a time getting her to sit still for pictures, so I'm starting to rely more on videos and "stolen" snapshots. As most of you know, she and Tim share a birthday, so this is a very special day for all of us. They have something really cool to bond over, and I get to be increasingly grateful that I'm not where I was a year ago. So we are all happy!

Here Adelaide is standing on her tiptoes to choose a bow for her outfit.

She does not like sitting still, as you can see.

Checking out her birthday outfit.

And yes, she is very "habby" and very active. If I had to try to describe her in one word, I'd choose "vigorous". She's very strong in her likes and dislikes and has definitely learned to make her opinion known to us. On the positive side, that means that her likes are delightful. She crows with happiness and has a HUGE grin and is quick to laugh and attack us with hugs and "kisses" (a wide open mouth placed on our faces).

She has also learned the art of the fake cry and the temper tantrum and she's pretty quick to display those as well. That's a little less fun and a lot more challenging to parent. We aren't exactly sure how to discourage her from whining when she doesn't have the words or the signs for complex desires. It's one thing to teach her a simple sign or word for "up" and another entirely for "but I really want to eat these tasty Christmas tree needles and I'm positive it won't hurt me. Just let me try". By the way, it is amazing how many pine needles have ended up in her diapers. And it really hasn't hurt her. So I guess she was right, in a sense.

Speaking of language, Addie can really speak quite well for her age. She says at least 20 words on a fairly regular basis. She goes through phases with her words. There are days that she repeatedly says something and then it will disappear for a few weeks, only to pop up again without warning. Current favorites are "wooooooowwww (wow)", "tool (cool)", and"hot", along with some serious outliers like "tie-guh (tiger)" and "dee (which stands for dirty, which I can only assume she gets from my combination of a Southern drawl and an attempt to enunciate for her, resulting in a word like durrr-deeee).

She does tend to be shy with her language around other people. It takes her a while to warm up enough to begin babbling. The real exception here is "hi" and "bye". Ads is enchanted by her ability to interact with new people this way. Everywhere we go, she tells strangers "HI!!!!" in her loudest voice, usually accompanied by a big wave. Needless to say, this is a huge hit. It cracks Tim and I up also, because she can be sitting on our laps and out of the blue, she'll suddenly say "HI!!!" to us, with a vigorous wave. She enjoys "bye" as well and likes to say to "Bye-bee, bye-bee" to every.single.person. when we're leaving a place.

Her birthday (and Tim's) was mostly wonderful. It was a Thursday, so Tim had to work, but I didn't have Calum, so I was able to really spoil Addie. I tend to encourage total self indulgence on birthdays, so I let Ads do whatever she wanted. This included 1) eating her oatmeal with her hands and 2) playing in the dog bowls (usually strictly not allowed). I've discovered that what my daughter really wants to do is make a huge mess. And then make another. And another. So that was enlightening for me, and fun for her. And Adelaide discovered that dog food really doesn't taste good, so we all learned something.

We had a lot of snow that day (shocking) , so we weren't able to get out quite as much as I'd planned early on in the day. I'd planned to take Addie out for lunch to Noodles to get her favorite mac n cheese and then to do some shopping. We settled for a quick Target run after the plow came through and a lot of inside fun. We took a loooooooong bubbly bath together and a delicious nap. That evening we met Tim for dinner at Chester's, one of our favorite restaurants downtown. We had a great dinner and then came home for cake and presents.

Addie got a block table and some books and toys and clothes. She didn't know quite what to make of the whole "present" thing, but she loved her new toys. Here is her slightly confused but pleased face as we opened up one of her presents.

And she loved cake. Boy, did she love her cake. Lita (short for Abuelita) and Grandpa made Dad's favorite "Bonnie Butter Cake" and Addie was a big fan.

Here she is seeing the cake for the first time.

And here she's seen enough...

The Great Crawl for the Cake is on! Here she is, examining her cake.
And the sugar rush is beginning

Here it is, full on sugar hitting her bloodstream! Opening up a present. Love this one.

We didn't actually do cake and presents until Sunday of that week because I got some variant of Ebola on Friday. That put a slight damper on the rest of our birthday plans, but luckily Tim and Ads stayed healthy.

We also had a party on Sunday evening for Tim and Addie. We are SO grateful to our friends that made it out after a crazy weekend. It meant a lot to us to celebrate with our "family away from family". Inexplicably, I didn't take any pictures of that gathering OR of Tim and Addie, the birthday folks, together. I don't quite know how that slipped my mind and I can only blame my Ebola. Betcha I never let another birthday pass with THAT happening again!

And for the multimedia portion, here is Adelaide eating cake. I offered to film Tim as well, but he wasn't interested in that. :-)

The Backlog! Part 1

First of all, of course my baby is one now! That's another post though. For now, I'm just going to post some of the videos that I've had saved up. I've been 1) very busy and 2) very sick (stomach bug) so I'm a bit farther behind than I want to be at this time of year. Thus, the post short on words but long on multimedia...


First, some pumpkin carving. When I look back at this video, it's hard to believe how beautiful our fall was from here in the depths of bitter winter. BTW, snowiest month EVER recorded in Rochester. Words fail me when I try to describe how I feel about being part of this historic occurrence.




And some more pumpkin carving. Please note Tim's concentration with his electric saw. I was trying to get a video of Addie riding the center turntable, but it didn't work out.



I'll address more of the backlog later on...for now, it's time to tackle those last few Christmas chores.

The Blizzard of 2010

It snowed here this weekend. Although that's a bit of a mild understatement. It's as if Noah would have come off the ark and said "Yep, we had some rain." Allow me to paraphrase Noah...we had some snow.

About 20 inches, give or take a few. With howling winds and some sub zero temperatures thrown in for good measure. "I am Nature, hear me roar."





And I got stuck in a snowdrift. At the end of my own driveway. Which was good and bad, if you think about it. Good, because all I had to do was trudge about 10 feet inside with Addie, so she didn't get too cold. And bad, because you know, it was about 10 feet from my front door. I'd like to think that takes a special talent. Fortunately, my neighbor managed to free me and get the car back in the garage. (If you are wondering why I was heading out at all, let me just say that I was supposed to be at a brunch for spouses of interviewees this weekend. Needless to say, I didn't make it.)

My neighbors are great. They snowblew (? snowblowed? used a snowblower on?) my driveway, which was lovely, as Tim was mostly gone the entire weekend. They are big, burly no-nonsense men with large trucks and snowblowers that could tackle a glacier. Two of them headed over to me and my fruitlessly spinning wheels and said "Are ya stuck?" to which I just replied "This is exactly why you don't bring a North Carolinian to Minnesota." They guffawed (really, they did, it sounded exactly like "guffawguffaw") and said "North Carolina is probably looking really good right about now." Well, yes, good sirs, it does.

After that, I pretty much stayed holed up for the entire weekend. I did trek outside for about five minutes with Adelaide to get a few pictures. It was literally five minutes because it was about -10 at that point.

My little penguin, cold nose and all

It was really hard to get a picture of her with her mouth closed because she kept saying "Wow! Wow! Woooooowwwwww!" I'm not sure if she was delighted (Tim's genes) or horrified (my genes.)



Back in the house, and I wanted a few shots of her in her oh-so-cute hat.


All Addie wanted to do was grab the camera. Here she is, on the move.
And of course, she wanted the hat off. I'd say she gives her hat about 10 seconds before she takes it off. Silly girl. Of course, she now has a "big girl" carseat (in which she look soooo tiny) and she can't really get her arms up to her head to remove her hat. So mostly it falls down over her eyes and she rides around with a virtual blindfold. Every time we reach our destination, I start laughing to see her with her hat starting right above her nose.

What Goes Untyped

Sometimes I hate blogging. Maybe that comes as a shock, but I have a feeling some of you can understand exactly what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, I mostly love my blog. It's this incredible living document that allows me to record all my memories of our family time right now. In fact, my blog feels like a member of my family...not on the level of a person, but like a beloved family pet. One that I don't manage to feed for weeks at a time. Minor detail, that.

But yes, there are times that I hate doing this. And honestly, it's not the things that I write about that drive me crazy. It's the things that I don't write.

Sometimes its because I started this, and if I don't fully commit to it, it hangs over my head. Like a small voice saying "PRECIOUS MOMENTS ARE GOING UNRECORDED!!!!" in a not so small way.

Some of it is because I have times when I want to rant about something. Like...oh let's just pick something random....winter that lasts for half a year. Mere coincidence, of course. But I don't do it, because some folks that follow this blog are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome native Minnesotans and of course, it might be offensive to them to see someone politely questioning their sanity why people enjoy this climate. I've always thought that you needed a REALLY good reason to hurt someone's feelings, and total honesty on a blog is just not good enough unless it keeps you from stoning the local snowplow.

The biggest reason though is that some of the heaviest things in my life don't belong solely to me. They belong to other people, people I care deeply about, and it just isn't my place to share my feelings about their stories with the greater world. Even though those stories might affect me deeply. Even though it might be all that I can think about at times.

We've all heard the phrase "the elephant in the room". This is like "the spider in the Web." I coined that phrase, feel free to use it. ;-) Bad puns aside, I think most amateur bloggers try to avoid sticky threads. You know what I mean by sticky threads. The things you would never put on the family Christmas card letter. "Judy started her freshman year at Yale where she is apparently majoring in binge drinking if her grades are any indication!!!" The ones that don't avoid those threads are the best bloggers but I'm not sure they have much domestic tranquility. Which, as I continue this bad pun/metaphor, makes the rest of us careful little ...um...well...insects, I guess...that live to blog another day. And there is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes it feels so false to me, to paint a picture of only the light in my life...though I truly thank God that the light nearly always overpowers the dark.

A lot of this post is whistling in the dark, because in truth, I am suffering deeply for a loved one at this moment. If you don't know the story, don't worry, it doesn't concern anyone you care about. Well, besides me, of course. If you do know, then you know, and you too have been grieving. It is not my story, and I have no wish to tell it, so please don't ask. I can't blog about it, but I wanted to acknowledge the pain of it. It was keeping me away from this blog, out of fear of the consequences of acknowledging it. So here it is, acknowledged and respected. And now it can move on its way.

And while there are things I can't publicly grieve, there are some things that I can publicly celebrate.

Sisterhood. Both the blood and the chosen kind. Thank God for the richness of womens' friendships in good and bad times.

My husband, my best friend.

Trips home. They restore my soul. Something in me is intrinsically tied to that bit of red red earth right in the heart of my native state. It's the mental equivalent of pajama pants. Your "day" pants might look amazing and you might enjoy the heck out of them, but you breathe a little easier in your cozy pants.

And my baby girl. She's 11 months old and sassy as she can be. Her various pictures and videos deserve a post of their own. So for Addie fans, just stay tuned. I have a bit of a backlog to address, and I will do that, I promise you. She's still amazing and she'll get her just praise in due time. :-)

In the meantime, I am focusing on prayers for peace, mercy, and grace for those in need of healing.