Dear Baby Girl,

Or should I say, Toddler Girl?  No, the rest of the world might classify you as a toddler now, but you are still my baby and will always be.  Last night, after you went to bed, I snuck into your room and just stood over your crib and watched you sleep.  You are such an angel - such a precious gift from God.  I didn't know my heart could get this big.  I didn't know that I could love something, someone, this much.  I'm not sure you will ever comprehend the joy you have brought into our lives.

You start most of your mornings now by babbling in your crib around 6-6:30am.  The first thing you say when I open the door to your room is "meh".  I'm not fooled.  You are not trying to say "momma", you do that quite well, but you are asking for milk.  I can't even change your diaper before bringing you into our bed to nurse.  Even though I'm ready to be done nursing, I'm going to miss these morning moments so much.  If Daddy didn't yet get out of bed to workout, we all play for a few minutes.  Your latest favorite thing to do is to play hide and seek under our sheets.  We then eat breakfast (cheerios, blueberries, and "ehh, ehh" aka eggs, usually made for you by Daddy.  After we kiss Daddy goodbye (yes, you kiss now, but it's more of a lick of the face), you play until your morning nap around 9:30.

Oh girl, how you still NEED that morning nap.  The tantrums that everyone told me to expect have started and they test my patience.  You can't see it now, but I really do know what's best for you.  If I take something away, it's out of love.   And I can't figure out why, but you think I'm trying to kill you when I change your diaper or try to get you dressed.  I assure you this is for your benefit as well.  You've got a little attitude on you and you are going to be handful, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  Here is your "Oh no you didn" face.  awwwww snap:

11am -2pm is our free time, where you are usually a perfectly content little human being as long as you are not hungry and can walk around.  Actually, you are almost running and rarely sit down.  I can get you to sit and "read" a book for a total of 30 seconds - I counted today, in case you were wondering.  You don't like to be held anymore unless it's right before a nap or bed.  This makes me a little sad, but I know that you just want to explore.  You smile all the time and it's infectious.  I can be in the worst mood, and you can bring me right back to joy.

Your afternoon nap is usually the longest and I'm able to get a lot of things done.  You usually sleep well because we've either went to play group, run errands, went to the pool, or storytime at the library.  I have to do one outing with you a day, or....well, it's a not a good day.  You need stimulation.

We have one more nursing session for the day when you wake up from your nap and then it's onto more playtime or errands.  We eat dinner, have a bath every other day (you still LOVE the bath) and then it's a book and bedtime.  I still sing "Silent Night" to you every night.  Sometimes Daddy joins in and we make it a duet.  I'm not tooting my own horn or anything, but I was the lead in my highschool musical and voted "Most Likely to Win American Idol" as my senior superlative.  I think you like my voice???  You are down by 7:30 most nights, and I always go into check on you even though we have the video monitor on.

I took you to your new pediatrician for your 1 yr visit today.  Of course, you have surpassed all verbal and physical milestones.  You are 31" tall (95th percentile) and 22lbs 11oz. (75th percentile).  You have an average sized head, but I'm pretty sure you brain is bigger than average :)

Your words:
mama
dada
jada (you are trying so hard to get the "j" sound right and it is SO cute)
ehh (egg)
meh (milk)
ba (ball)
and I think you are starting to say "up".  It just sounds like "ah" though, but you do say it when you raise up your hands to be picked up.

You have 6 teeth and the cutest little gap in between the front 2:

You point and go "dah" at pretty much everything.  You can give high fives, touch people's noses, and point out your turtle clock in your bedroom if I say "Where is the turtle".  Daddy taught you "where are the lights".  Man, you are smart.

Daddy and I both agree that you are going to be something AMAZING when you grow up.   You already are amazing and special.

Happy First Birthday, my angel.  I love you more than you will ever know.

Love,
Mommy

P.S.  You've had a camera clicking in your face since the moment you came out of the womb.  Seriously, daddy got a picture of you crowning.  ha.  Here are a few more photos of your special one year session by Mommy.  Daddy was the assistant and had you cracking up the whole time.

1st Birthday Cake Smash

In case you were wondering, she had a fabulous day.  I'm way too emotional to write something today, so perhaps tomorrow.

My baby, my sweet, sweet, baby...the day you were born will forever be celebrated by many.

We love you so much.

It's Coming

And it makes me sad and happy at the same time.

Kicked out of Playgroup

I feel like I have the problem child.

I've made it know that Adalyn is a big baby.  She towers over her baby friends, even the boy ones.  And since she started walking at 10 1/2 months, she is practically a runner as she approaches the one year mark.  I took her to a meetup of a new mom's group today and within 10 minutes, I was carrying out a screaming toddler having a tantrum.  She was running up to the other babies, stealing their toys, throwing them and laughing (such sweet giggles though), and then screaming at the top of her lungs when I would take anything away from her.  When did this happen?!  How did this happen?!  All of the other moms were pleading with their eyes for the two us to leave.  And so we did.  And I cried the whole way home.  To be fair, the average age of the babies in the room was around 9 months or so, but I still couldn't help but feel like I had the child who couldn't play nice.  I know she is just discovering the world and testing boundaries, but man, I think I'm in for it.  As my parents oh so kindly put it when I was telling them about how she hits me (yes, she hits me), "payback is a b____".  Apparently I was the same way.  She is a ball of energy just like her momma.

I love this little girl though.  We had a fun weekend and Adalyn had plenty of time to play with kids her own size.  Saturday morning, we went to a goodbye party for our really good friends that are moving to PA.  At the goodbye party, our friends discovered the gender of their newest addition.  I had the honor of being the ONLY (well, okay, Andrew saw the icing) person who knew the gender, as I was the baker of the gender reveal cupcakes.

I ran off to visit my gallery showing and run errands for her birthday party, and then the three of us went out for dinner at the diner in town.  Have I mentioned how much I LOVE our town and our new place?   The center of town is just a few minutes walk, and we justified the icecream after dinner by counting in the 1/4 mile stroll back home.  :)

Sunday morning we headed out off to church (right on time at 10 minutes late) and then we met friends at the pool in the afternoon.  Oh how I love Summer.  Baby girl does too.

Ironing

It's my least favorite chore.  Seriously, I would rather clean our toilets and shower than have to iron our clothes.  But, I also HATE to wear wrinkly clothes.  I love the end product; I just hate the work you have to put in ;)

With my work schedule getting more and more crazy as the event approaches, and my photography business starting to have a steady schedule, Andrew has been helping out with household chores a lot more.  He doesn't mind ironing.  I think he actually gets satisfaction out of the making of clean, straight lines.  For this, I am grateful.

I am also grateful for Our Father's love.  I'm grateful for His mercy and grateful for His awesome power that has the ability to take our messy and wrinkly lives and turn them into something good, smooth, and beautiful. His love is my iron....does that make any sense to you?  Because it does to me.  The process of straightening out the lines can take forever and seem cumbersome.  But, when He is done, you are left with clean and smooth pants to wear.

(This is all making sense to me, but I'm not sure if my thoughts are translating well at 7:45am and an unfinished cup of coffee)

The Lord pointed out one of my wrinkles to me this weekend.  He is currently in the process of ironing it out.  I can't wait for Him to be done.

And then comes my favorite bible verse.  The one that we all need, all the time.

James 1: 2-4:

² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ....except wrinkles :)

2 - 12 hour road trips to Michigan

So, are you wondering how it went?  We were originally going to leave last Tuesday night around Adalyn's bedtime (7pm), but a friend (hi, Nicole!) suggested that I sit in back and feed Adalyn her dinner and then we could be on out way a bit earlier.  We left at 5:30 since there was no traffic in sight.  We liked this idea because it would put us in Michigan around 5:30am, and it would be easier to go back to sleep if it was still early in the morning.

All was going well until 7:30 rolled around and Adalyn still hadn't fallen asleep.  I decided that I would try and nurse her while we were driving.  Don't worry, I kept her in her carseat, but unbuckled myself and strategically leaned over to give her a umm, drink.

Then, thinking that I was the distraction, I decided to move into the front seat.    Our plan was to stop for our dinner when we ran out of gas.  We knew there was a Sonic in PA, and right around 8pm we pulled into the drive in.  I was smelling poop and since Adalyn was still up, screaming at the top of her lungs to get out the carseat, I took her out while Andrew ordered food.  I headed into the bathroom to find NO changing table.  Crap.  and there was lot's of it.  And all up her shirt.  And then there we were, with a screaming baby in the front seat trying to get her shirt off without smearing poop all over her face.  People in the drive though line headed of us were just shaking their heads.  I think they thought we were beating her or something.  And then we ran out of wipes in my diaper bag and had to dig though our pile in the back of the Jeep.  We cleaned up, ate our food, and Adalyn eventually fell asleep around 8:30.  The ride was painless after that.  I took over from 1-4am and Andrew finished up the drive.

We had SO much fun.  There was no way that little monkey was bored for even 5 minutes.  With aunts,uncles, a grandma, great grandma and grandpa, and lots of cousins, she had constant attention!  This was fabulous for Mommy as well.  I actually got to read a whole novel!!!!  And not just any novel, but my very good friend's first ever novel.  She is going to be famous and in a a year or so, I will be back bragging about how I read the first draft!

We swam, jet-skiied (Adalyn too!), paddle boarded (yup, she stood on one too), and Andrew and I got to go on 2-15 mile bike rides all by ourselves.  My cold had kicked in by our 2nd day, so I only got in one run, but man, do I feel rejuvenated.  We celebrated Andrew's mom's birthday and Adalyn even got a few presents and some cake.

The ride back was thankfully uneventful except for traffic in Ohio due to an accident, but Adalyn slept almost until the bitter end.

Here are some pictures!  P.S.  I forgot to watermark these before uploading.  Please don't steal our images.  All images copyright of www.acubedblog.com