these are the days to remember

I need to blog for my own sake. My memory is terrible and I want to remember this first year of Addelyn's life in as much detail as I can. I sat down today and started writing in the albums of pictures from her first year. I realized how soon I can forget the little things that I never wanted to forget! So I'm going to try harder to blog and to journal and to keep track of the little things. We'll see how it goes!

Last weekend (Saturday, November 22nd) to be exact, Addelyn took her first steps. Well, these were the first steps that Mom and Dad got to see! I'm thinking she may have taken a few at Ilenes but Ilene is just too sweet to really give me the details. Ever since then, day by day, she has gotten more daring and as of today- I've seen her take about six steps in a row before falling hard onto her padded little bottom. She especially loves to venture around our sectional. She is almost running around it, with her one little hand holding onto it. Then every once in awhile- she gets daring- and lets go and takes a few steps. It is fun to watch. I also watch with a bit of apprehension as I know that within days or weeks she will be even faster and into more things than before! Nothing is safe!

Addelyn has a new cousin, Trae Thomas Hoskinson. He arrived on November 10th to proud parents Matt (Mark's brother) and Nicole. We drove to Cherokee last weekend to see them. He is a little sweetie and it was great to spend some time with the crew. Addelyn wasn't too interested in Trae but did pat his head a few times- she had more fun watching Ty (age four) run around. I wanted to hold Trae forever though. I can hardly remember when Addelyn was a little cuddly baby. In fact, was she ever a cuddly baby? Nope, once she had head control, she didn't want to lay her sweet little head on me at all (even in the middle of the night). Sigh.

This month we also got the opportunity to see family on my side. My cousin, Teresa, her two kids, William and Sophia, and my aunt Maria came to visit. Teresa and her husband and kids live in Houston, TX and Maria just moved to Spain (where she is originally from) this year. They took a road trip and came up to Iowa. It was so much fun to hang out with them. The kids are growing so quickly- Sophia is three and William is two. They have TONS of energy. Addelyn was entertained by watching them!

Addelyn also experienced Chucky Cheese for the first time during my brother, Tanner's birthday party. I'm hoping Chucky Cheese doesn't exist once Addelyn is old enough to care. That probably would be on my list of least favorite places to go so I'm hoping she won't beg me to have a party there someday. Is that horrible of me?

Here are some pics from the last few weeks of our life! Enjoy!

William, Addelyn, & Sophia at Great-Grandma Lois Stewart's house

The new game...peekaboo where Addelyn is the one that "hides."

She loves Daddy's hats!

Grandpa Dar and Grandma Kathy

Awww...the whole crew!

Trae Thomas Hoskinson

Born November 10, 2008

smoke alarms?

Okay, this is just going to be a weird post. I am warning you now. As I laid in bed the other night, I started thinking about my daughter, fast asleep downstairs. I usually do my best thinking when I am wide awake in bed and Mark is fast asleep (usually if I drank any caffeine and can't fall asleep.) Recently I can't drink caffeine after 5 p.m. or I am UP! I have a little list next to my bed to make notes for myself or add to my To Do list. I should just get up but somehow that makes me feel like I'm going to be more tired the next day so I instead lay there and wait for sleep to come.
Sorry that was a sleep tangent. Back to the purpose of this post...I started thinking and realized that I have never once checked the fire alarms in this house since we have moved in. What if a fire started downstairs? Would we even know before it was too late, especially with Addelyn's bedroom so far away from ours? Do we have fire extinguishers anywhere in the house? Gosh, I think so...not sure though.....
These thoughts made it to my list to check in the morning. I considered doing it right then and there but realized Mark and Addelyn wouldn't probably appreciate the alarm testing at midnight. Yesterday we did some testing of the fire alarms (which I realized are definitely not located in some VERY important rooms like the kitchen and in the basement near the furnace). Some of the alarms had no batteries. Some were dead.

Glad that random thought passed my mind. I think the Diet Pepsi at night is a good thing for me once in awhile. Keeps me on my toes....

the life of an eleven month old....

Hard to believe Addelyn is almost a year old! To best give you a picture of what Addelyn is doing these days, here are some pics and explanations from the life of an eleven month old.....

She doesn't like to sit still and smile for these monthly pictures. You should see all of the pictures that were taken trying to get ONE good shot with the paper included. She loves to play with these little colored balls that she is trying to eat in the picture. They can be found in random spots, hidden throughout our house. Her new realization is that small things fit into larger things. I often can't find my eye drops, my cell phone, and random items and will find them in shoes, baskets, toy bins, etc. I love to watch her development and realize that this is part of her learning of how things work!

She is starting to look like a little girl, not a baby. Need I say more, just look at this picture?!

It is fun to watch her with other babies and little kids. She often plays by herself but is usually very interested in what other kids are doing. She will crawl right up to them and often pulls herself up, using their bodies. Or the other little ones will do the same to her. She will pat their heads, babble, and often scream. Wonder what goes through her mind? And the minds of her little friends?
In this picture above, Kacey, one of my best friends from college, is visiting with her son Grayson. He is about seven months older than Addelyn and is a little sweetie.

She is cruising along the furniture quickly. She isn't walking yet, but sometimes takes a daring leap and lunges from one thing to another. She is a quick crawler so often finds it is much easier to crawl from Point A to Point B. She does like to stand for a few seconds at a time without holding on to anything. She will stand there and laugh and laugh. She thinks she is pretty cool. :)

She smiles a lot and laughs a lot. So much joy!

She loves meal time. She does pretty well with her sippy cup these days. She also uses the sign language for "more" and lets us know when she wants more. We will ask, "More green beans?" and if that isn't what she wants she will shake her head no. It has been great to be able to communicate with her about her food likes and dislikes. Right now, our biggest struggle is her love of cottage cheese. She could eat it non-stop. We don't feed it to her all of the time but she saw it on Mark's plate the other night and wouldn't stop whining because she wanted it. It is pretty funny. We have learned that we need to feed her everything else first and end with the cottage cheese if that is on the menu for the night!

She is into everything and anything, especially the things we don't WANT her to play with. Here she discovered the pads and tampons when I left her alone for probably two minutes. I had to laugh. She also loves taking the toilet paper off the roll. The garbage is fun too. I am curious to see how the Christmas tree will work this year.

She LOVES her new scooter from Grandma Stewart. She thinks she is pretty cool when she rides on it. She is pretty slow going forward but can fly backward! Sometimes she waves like she is in a parade.

She is sleeping well these days for the most part. She goes down around 7-7:30 p.m. and sleeps through the night and wakes up anytime from 4-6 a.m. for a bottle. She then will sleep until 7 or 8. Mark and I truly enjoy our sleep so we're thinking we have a child who feels the same. Hopefully this lasts!

That is about it for eleven months. We can't believe how quickly time flies. I look at our little girl and hardly remember what it was like to rock her in my arms as a little baby!

trick or treat

For her first Halloween, we took our little pumpkin around to visit her grandparents. She hated the hat so we were missing the stem on the pumpkin most of the time! She still looked pretty cute. We went on our tour of Iowa (or so it felt) and stopped in Perry, Ackley, & Steamboat Rock. Addelyn of course came home with much more than a bucket full of candy (you know how it goes when grandparents get involved!)