After Bath Time

Making Faces

Funny Face

Sweet Girl

Necklace

Look a Tree

Dressed to the Nines

Little Shadow

Look Birdies

Playing House

Just the Two of Us

Daddy and Addie

Clap for my Song

As you can see from the number of photos that I felt were worth of sharing on the blog I LOVED the lens.  I guess I will have to start saving those pennies until I can afford my own.  I hope you enjoyed all of the photos as much as I liked shooting and editing them.

1. Hiding things from Mommy. Zac was asking for some Neosporin a few days ago, and I had just seen in the day before, but it was NOT where it was supposed to be. I couldn’t find it anywhere! Later that day, I saw Addie pull it out of a drawer in the spare room closet. Also, last week I handed a Chip Clip to Addie to play with, and 30 seconds later, it was gone. I didn’t know where she had put it. I looked all around the kitchen, all to no avail. Today, I watched as she climbed into the cupboard with all the pots and pans, and retrieved the Chip Clip, and played with it for awhile. She sure knows how to stash the goods where Mom can’t find them!

2. Two word phrases! She is starting to string words together, especially when she really wants something. Her newest phrases are “More grapes,” “Bye Bye Grandma,” “Thank you Mommy.”  So simple, but it is so fun to see her associate words and phrases with things she wants.

3. Grapes. Obsessed doesn’t begin to describe her feelings for these little purple treats. She is in love.

4. Songs. She LOVES the piano and whenever we go in that room she says “Song, song, song” over and over until I allow her to play with me. Also, she now knows that the computer can play songs too (iTunes), so she asks for songs whenever I am at the computer.

5. Babies. She has been obsessed with babies since she could say the word, so no big surprise there. She loves to look at pictures of babies, on the computer, my phone, her baby album, on the camera, on the walls of our house. I had to hide her baby scrapbook because she was tearing it up, she was looking at it so much. Maybe she loves babies, or maybe she just loves to look at herself. Vain baby.

6. “Play”. This is what she says when we’re in the family room and she wants me to turn on the TV. Zac and I got Super Mario Wii for Christmas, and she loves to watch us play it. She gets to hold her own controller, so she loves feeling like a part of the game. But now she thinks that every time the TV is on, we’re going to play.

7. Elmo. Why does EVERY kid like Elmo so much? Is it his silly voice? Or the fact that he is a red furry puppet? Or the fact that his name is easy to say? We watched an Elmo movie with her one day, and she hasn’t let me forget it since. I could have a nervous breakdown thinking about how many times I’m gonna have to watch Elmo for the next few years. It’s starting.

We spent the weekend in San Antonio, where it was nice and warm (50s and 60s). Juliana was singing in the Texas All-State choir! Good job Tootsie, we are proud of you! We had a good time walking along the River Walk, listening to Juli’s choir sing, and following Addie as she ran all around the downtown area.  If you are going down there in the near future, ask us where NOT to eat, because we never had a good dining experience. (Except Fogo de Chao, which is always awesome, I assume).

Needless to say, Addie’s nap schedule has been crazy off, and I’ve decided that this week, we’re just going back to 2 naps per day, since she seems so tired all the time when we try to do one. I think I was trying to push her a little to hard, and maybe doing it a little more gradually will work better. Maybe next week, when Zac’s home and I have my sanity back:)

This week she started sleeping in later in the morning, causing us to have to push her morning nap back about 30 minutes, so I just decided that she might be ready to go down to one nap per day. So far, it is not going well.

Day 1: Adelyn wakes up at 8am. Yay! I decide that today is the day for one nap. So we eat breakfast, play, and go to Going Bonkers with some friends to kill some time until “naptime”, which I’m not even sure when it will be. Probably sometime around noon, I think. So after we get home, we eat lunch, and I put Addie down for a nap, which she resists. Maybe she’s overtired. Or maybe she’s just 15 months old, and that’s what she’s supposed to do. She sleeps for an hour and a half. Well, that’s okay, but that’s how long her naps were when she had 2 naps per day, equalling 3 hours of sleeping. Oh well, I’m sure she’ll learn how to sleep longer than 1.5 hours soon.

Day 2: Again she wakes up at 8. Good job! Zac is out of town, so mommy gets to sleep in with Addie this week. We go to the mall this morning to play on the playground there with some friends. She is pretty tired by the time we get home, so she goes to bed around noon again. Once again, she sleeps an hour and a half. Hmmmm, maybe it wasn’t a fluke last time. Or maybe I still need to be putting her down for another 1.5 hour nap. We’ll keep trying.

Day 3 (today): Wakes up earlier this morning: 7:30. What am I going to do with her for 4.5 hours when it is SNOWING outside?? Yes folks, it has snowed all day here. Which is fine, if I had any sort of snow gear for her to wear. Which I don’t. Which means we cannot go outside. At all. So I put her down a little early, 11:50am. I’m confident she will sleep at least 2 hours, she is really tired. 12:25, she awakes, screaming. Really? 35 minutes today?

I went up to soothe her twice, and right now (12:55), she is quiet, so I’m praying that she fell asleep. The poor girl needs her sleep, and her poor mommy needs her to sleep. I can’t imagine why I am doing this while Zac is out of town for 2 weeks straight (in Hawaii no less). Lucky him. I’m sure we will get through this transition phase just fine, but right now I’m doubting, just a little. Wish me luck! We want to see less sad baby and more of this:

Peyton Manning Is Amazing

Andrea just told me very depressing news. I am scheduled to fly to Hawaii for work on Super Bowl Sunday. I will be flying when the game is on. I am so sad and I didn’t even realize it until right now. I am not going to be able to see my hero Peyton Manning beat the pants off the N’awlins Saints. And I am not going to see Austin Collie (BYU almost-alum) win a Super Bowl in his rookie season. Looks like I am going to have to bit torrent the game and watch it on my computer. This stinks.

At least I can eat pancakes with coconut syrup while I watch to ease the pain!

Adelyn

has eaten almost half of my loaf of Strawberry bread, and she still wants more (“bite?”)

Strawberry Bread

I think she likes it.

Enjoy every minute, because they will fly by. Right after she was born, I felt like the days were not flying by. They were dragging. Lack of sleep really takes a toll on the body and mind, and for me it was no different. I was counting the days until she slept through the night so that I could be a normal, functioning person again. But I remembered this advice and tried to enjoy at least one thing every day. Now it has been over a year, and each day brings something new: a new word, a new facial expression, a new skill. And I can’t help but love every second I get to spend with my little Addie. She constantly brings a smile to my face, and I don’t miss the days of newborn-ness, because I didn’t let them pass me by without enjoying them too.

Best Advice from the pediatrician:

Babies are resilient. The thing I love about our pediatrician is that he doesn’t try to push a certain parenting style onto you. He literally said to us, “you are going to do what you feel is best, so just go for it”.  And to a scared new mother and father, this was a little unsettling. I was looking for a list, “do this, don’t do that, be careful of this, this is the right way to do blah, blah, blah”. But as time went by, his advice gave me freedom to do what I thought was right, not what he thought was right.  If I wanted to let my baby cry it out, I wasn’t a bad mother. If I wanted to rock her to sleep, I wasn’t spoiling her. And babies are resilient. They will survive on little more than sufficient food and lots of love and attention. They don’t need certain toys. They don’t need to be protected from every single germ, every single child wanting to touch them, every single cry that they emit. This news relaxed and reassured me that everything may not be perfect, but everything was going to be fine.

Santa's Helper

Ticklish?

At 14 months, Addie is still a little small for her age, but she makes up for it in personality. This girl has got spunk! She talks all day long! She is not making phrases yet, but once or twice I’ve gotten her to say, “Hi Daddy”. Her newest skill is running. She runs back and forth in our family room, and falls down almost every time she tries to stop. She also likes to try to pick up her food with one finger. She has found that if she licks her finger first, she can pick up cheerios, raisins, and pieces of bread with her index finger. She looks at me and says “Wow”. I, of course, am amazed. She eats everything and one of her favorite words is “bite”. This means she is hungry, and no, she is not willing to wait to be fed.  Someday we will need to curb the habit of eating all day every day.

Other items:

We think her hair may be red.

She has 12 teeth, and the molars were seriously hard on her. Diaper rash, runny nose, and crankyness for 6 days straight.

She loves Gma and Gpa Brassfields dog, Sierra. Sierra is terrified of Addie, and Addie chases her around every time we are there.

She LOVES the Fancy Nancy books. Every time I put her to bed she requests “Nancy” by name, so we end up reading “Nancy” multiple times every day. We need something new…

She loves to brush her own hair, and sometimes brushes Mommy’s hair while she’s at it.

She has started to get MAD when we take things away from her. Are tantrums ahead?

Brushing her hair

]]> http://zandrea.taylorfamilyconnect.com/life/best-baby-advice/feed 1 http://zandrea.taylorfamilyconnect.com/life/holiday-season http://zandrea.taylorfamilyconnect.com/life/holiday-season#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:43:32 +0000 Andrea http://zandrea.taylorfamilyconnect.com/?p=1113 It has been a whirlwind holiday season! We had Thanksgiving at our house, since both of our parents took off to go to Utah. We had some friends over for dinner, and it was a blast! It was a lot of work to host Thanksgiving dinner, what with all the cleaning, cooking,  finding and setting up tables, chairs, tablecloths, cute centerpieces (yeah right), and navigating all this with a busy 12 month old.  And when I rejoiced that Zac would be home from work that day to help me, he said sweetly, “Actually, there is a turkey bowl game that day”. Translation: I’m going to play football. Peace out.

BUT everything worked out well and we had a good time eating and playing Catchphrase and watching football an chatting. Sorry there are no pictures. I guess that was not on my priority list that day.

Since then we have been in CHRISTMAS mode. I am excited for Adelyn’s first Christmas! She loved playing with the wrapping paper while I was wrapping presents, so I think she’ll be a lot of fun when it comes to actually opening them. She has been pretty good about not messing with the Christmas tree too much, although she has removed a few ornaments brought them to me. I’m watching her pretty close these days. She got her own nativity set, which she loves to play with and calls all the little people “BABY!”

Here she is in front of the Christmas tree. You can see a couple of her teeth: she has 9 now. She is still jabbering away, and mimics us constantly. She is adding words to her vocabulary all the time these days.

In front of the tree

She has REALLY become a Daddy’s girl also. When Zac leaves for work, she flips out and cries. It’s like she can’t stand the thought of spending all day alone, with Mom. It only hurts my feelings just a little, because the look on her face when he comes home from work is priceless.  When she hears the garage door open, she looks at me and says, “Daddy!” and then she’ll run the to back door to wait for him. She lights up and giggles and runs to him when he walks in.

Little grin

We are spending Christmas with the Brassfields this year, so we’re here in Dallas. Right now it is snowing outside, and they are predicting that we’ll have a white Christmas. This would be the first white Christmas I’ve ever had in Dallas! Exciting!

We are so grateful for the Christmas season and the time we can spend as a family, reflecting on the blessings that have come to our lives through our Savior, Jesus Christ. We hope you all have a Merry Christmas!