Too cute not to share

I saw this picture on cuteoverload.com and i just have to share it. It's too stinkin' cute not to pass on.

Addie's first Christmas

Because Sam spent all of his PTO during his month of nonstop flybacks, we needed to stay here for Christmas this year. It was a cozy christmas with just the three of us and we had lots of fun! We didnt feel the need to make tons of food for just me and sam, so instead we bought our favorite things to eat; we had shrimp cocktails on christmas eve, and a papa murphy's pizza today. We realize that our Christmas feasts were less than traditional, but we did make up for it in traditional snacks such as little smokeys, summer sausage, cheese log with crackers, and homemade almond roca. We are fat, full, and happy now.

Addie had so much fun today! She must have known it was christmas because she woke up at 8:30 today (which is 1-2 hours earlier than she usually wakes up). We started the day by opening presents, and spent the rest of the day watching Addie play with them and househunting on the internet. We got all giddy looking at realestate and making favorites lists on redfin.com (the coolest realestate site ever). Graduation is less than 4 months away now, this is too fun!

Amongst our Christmas spoils are a new rice cooker and a frog-shaped bath toy holder from becky and kyle, a great ladybug pushtoy for addie from the burkmans, and a donut maker and some AMAZINGLY cute homemade bath towels from my parents. Sam and I bought each other a Canon speedlite 430EXII flash for our camera and a diffuser (yay) and sam bought me a fancy foot spa that massages my feet (he's such a sweetie). Addie got a lot of toys from us, but the one she liked the most is the LeapFrog Learn & Groove Musical Table, that is one great toy! It's just the right height for her to stand and play at it, she loves it.

Here she is on her new ladybug pushtoy from the burkmans. I thought this was the most adorable thing I'd ever seen! She looks so big on it, I just can't get over it.

Enjoying the wrapping paper:

Check out the great towels my mom made for Addie:


Here's Addie reveling in her spoils:

Amazing how much trash is caused by a 3-person christmas. I dont even want to think about the mess we'll have when we have even more kids.

There are more pics at the picasa album.

Also, for anyone who didn't get it, here is our Christmas letter for 2008. I barely finished scrapbooking it in time, but I'm glad that I did it. It'll be nice to look back on our annual letters. Anyway, click on the thumbnail to see it, then click on the image to make it larger.

Sam, Addie, and I truly hope you all had a great christmas!

First time playing in the snow

So, I know we don't have as much snow as the Northwest has... but we definitely have our fair share. As of right now we've got about 6+ inches and it keeps coming. In between blizzards I decided it would be mild enough outside to let addie play in it some, she seemed to enjoy it, but I could tell she'd like it more if it were easier to crawl through.

She's a stander

So, Addie's interest in standing and trying to walk went from "mildly curious" to "deeply obsessed". She's pulling herself up on everything and standing constantly now and has started inching along the edges of things. I thought most of the things in the office were out of her reach, but nope! She finds a way to grab most everything now. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to install 5 foot high shelves in every room to keep my stuff safe from her grabbing expertise.
Her #1 favorite place to stand is in her crib... so I'm sure fun times are ahead with naps and night time. We put the bite guard on the front railing just in time- she loves to chew when she stands.

This was my first clue that I needed to re-arrange the office yet again:

Addie in Action

I took the time to upload some videos today.

She's been belly crawling for like 2 1/2 months... but rarely chooses to crawl on all 4s. I think she's just much more confident on her belly. All the same, I did get a video of her crawling on all 4s, and here it is for your viewing pleasure:


The next videos illustrate addie's interesting clapping capabilities. She doesnt clap both of her own hands together just yet... but she does take my hand, and clap her own hand against it. She did that for like 45 minutes straight last night. Of course, when I tried to get a video of it today, all she wanted to do was crawl around and only barely performed her cute new trick. I did get a bit of her doing it though.

She also quite enjoys foot clapping:


Here she is laughing. Addie's laugh sounds more like a persistent cough than a laugh, but it implies happiness all the same :)

Holiday fun

We weren't able to get together with Sam's siblings for thanksgiving this year, and half of them will be gone for christmas- so we got together yesterday and had Thanksgiving 2.0 to cover both holidays together. We did a present exchange, ate tons of food, took zillions of pictures, and watched Horton Hears a Who (which was very good). We had too much fun!!!

See the rest of our december pics uploaded to the picasa album. There are TONS of new pictures here and here.

Santalaide

Addie got to meet Santa for the first time yesterday. She sometimes has a fear of beards so I wasn't too sure how much she'd enjoy meeting him, but she did SUCH a good job! She did try to pull his beard when she sat with him, but all I needed to do was sing her "Baby Adelaide" song to get her attention and bam! award winning santa smiles:

Here's her cute little face up close:

Here's the page I scrapbooked of it, click on it to see it full size:

And here's the siggy I made 2 weeks ago for my baby boards, it might as well get posted here too because it has the same theme:

Addie and her Daddy

Addie's always all-too-happy when Sam is home. I just love seeing them together, he's such a cute dad. He will do pretty much anything to get a smile from her. He has to work a bit harder for a full Addie smile than I do... but I think she purposefully holds out, just to see how silly he's willing to be for her. Addie's all about the ego, she fully understands the power her cuteness holds over those around her.

This changes everything.

I'm starting to think that I should have invested in the upgraded model of baby that includes a rewind button, or at least a pause button. Such features would be EXTREMELY appreciated right now.
Do you guys remember this addie? The one that was chubby, and you could lay her on the couch and she'd just stay there? Right where you put her? No mortal danger in sight?

How about this one, that was content to just sit in her blue chair and stare up at you for hours?

So at what point in time did that sweet little baby disappear? Where did she go? Will she ever come back? Can't I hold her again and chew on her chubby arms and cuddle her endlessly?
How, oh how is it that my little ladybug suddenly looks more like a toddler than an infant?! I'm pretty sure I got gypped somehow.

It all started to change with the crawling:


That seemed like a big change; everything about my baby-watching dynamic had to evolve. My view of Addie as a whole took a dramatic shift. She was no longer someone I could simply muse at, but also someone that I had to try to protect. She's been mobile for 2 months now and I've only just now become somewhat adept at managing a crawling, curious baby.
Her new talent she has been dedicated to perfecting for the past 2 days is already FAR surpassing any threat posed by her crawling antics. I now have a baby who pulls herself up on things, and has her mind set to mastering 2-legged transportation...

*side commentary: Aren't those just the darn cutest jammies ever?!*

To top it all off, she's got 2 teeth, with 3 more on the way!

*cue lori frantically looking for the pause button*
I honestly don't know how I can do this. 2 days ago, she was totally happy just to be crawling, but now she feels the need to try to pull herself up on EVERYTHING. She usually gets stuck on her knees, or she falls over while pulling herself up, but the few times she does manage to stand up all the way have all ended badly. She doesn't realize that her upright abilities are limited to STANDING. She's pretty sure that getting up on two legs also gives her the right to attempt walking, lunging, and jumping. I honestly am going to have a brain hemorrhage. If I don't answer my phone, it's because I'm in mourning; my carefree days of motherhood are gone.

Modified decorations

Though I really dont enjoy the process of getting all of the stuff out of the closet and setting it up in the front room... I absolutely love it how our place looks when it's all christmasy. Few things inspire more happies.



Addie has the tendency to crawl around and get into trouble. To try to counter this, we had to make some strange-looking modifications this year. Hopefully our elevated christmas tree will prevent addie from being able to put herself in the "certain christmas peril" that would ensue if it were at a level where she could reach it.




Here's hoping our efforts pay off.

Silly sleeper

So... now that the novelty of Addie sitting up on her own and crawling and whatnot has kind of worn off- I've realized I've totally shirked my "take cute pics of Addie" responsibilities. I know, I know... in what sick strange world is Lori NOT taking daily pics of Addie. With all of the hubbub lately though, my love affair with taking pics of Addie has had to go on the back burner. It's December this month though, so expect plenty of new pics to be posted to make up for my lull.

Anyway, on to the topic of this post: Addie is a silly sleeper. Addie has been able to get into sitting up position on her own for exactly a month now. She is SO proud of herself and thinks that laying down in any way is totally lame and old school- sitting up is where the action is. She is CONSTANTLY crawling a ways, then sitting up to enjoy her new view, then crawling a foot, then sitting up. Over and over and over. This meant that during nap times, I'd have to go in an lay her back down and whatnot so she could fall asleep. This last week I decided that I was done with that game, and she was just going to have to figure it out on her own. Here are the results of my plan:




When I put her down for her naps, she crawls, sits, talks to herself, and plays for however long... then apparently just slumps over and falls asleep- not quite remembering to lay down before doing so. Honestly, this girl just cracks me up. She's so bendy and flexible; she doesnt seem to mind- but I always flip her feet back out for her anyway, that other way of sleeping just looks horribly wrong lol.

In other addie news: It would appear that standing and walking are the next things on her "list of things to do". She has pulled herself up on things multiple times now, and we frequently have to physically bend her in half to get her to sit down after we let her stand. The girl just loves to stand and jump. Unfortunately, she also likes to lunge at things out of her reach while standing *yar*. With all of the faceplants and bruises that crawling has elicited, I don't even want to think about her standing and walking. I'd rather her to just stay in the cute, reasonably safe mobile state she is in right now for a few more months- but who am I to blow against the wind? *props to those who know the song reference there.*

Here's one last pic of Addie. This is how I found her as she woke up from her nap the other day. Isn't she just the cutest?:

To Sam

I just wanted to say how much I love my husband and all he does for me and Addie. He is truly my favorite person in the whole world and is hands down the bestest husband ever. He makes me as happy as a Lori could be... and really- what more can one ask for in life than that?

To my blogging public who aren't Sam, comments are of course welcome (as always), but dont feel obligated to leave a comment on such a short little post. I just felt like posting how much I love my amazing husband, that's all :)

Crazy excited

This is me in general right now:

So... my head is still spinning a bit from the big news of last week. I havent been this excited since I found out I was pregnant. When we got married in august of 2005, there were two big dates I was looking forward to; both of which sounded ridiculously far away: 1) Getting pregnant in August of 2007. 2) Finding out in November of 2008 where Sam would work after graduation. I seriously can't believe that so much time has passed so quickly and that both of those "big dates" were totally fulfilled in the most wonderful way possible. Also, a cool coincidence came out of our plans: Sam graduates with his masters on the same day as Addie's first birthday, so April 24th will be a HUGE celebration for us indeed.

To satisfy my happies, I have spent the whole week looking at real-estate in redmond and looking at pictures of the NW. I honestly didn't know just how badly I wanted to move back there until it became a reality. Here are some of the pics that got me so stinkin' excited...
Seattle is 15 miles from Redmond:

Here are some more of the area, including lake Sammamish:




I guess I'll have to swap out Mt. Rainier as my "big mountain to look at" instead of what I saw all growing up, which was Mt hood. Mt Rainier is a fine replacement though:

Then I just loved this pic because it is so representative of how pretty EVERYTHING is in the NW, even boring things like highways:

All of those images were just some that I found from googling images of "redmond washington" or "seattle washington" and they made me all warm and squishy.
Though real-estate in Redmond is a bit more expensive than it is in portland, it's still more reasonable than I expected. For a general idea, you can get a 2000 + sq ft home built in the 80s or 90s for about 500k. We will probably "play it safe" and rent for at least 6 months + after the big move so that we can know just how much money we have month to month before we make any huge commitments. We also want to take the time to find the best community and school districts, and the perfect house for us. I would much rather just jump the gun and buy something right away... but Sam's much smarter and patient than I am, so I'll just follow his lead :)
Anyway, I just wanted to chime in that I'm totally thrilled in general. Microsoft seems like a wonderful company to work for, and I just LOVE knowing where we're going to be, and have actual numbers that I can plug into my excel spreadsheets as I plan our future. I totally love the idea of all of our kids growing up in the northwest and having all sorts of cool outdoorsy things to do whenever they want; skiing, hiking, hanging out at the beach, boating. Anything they want to do is way close and I just love that. More than anything Im just excited to be surrounded by green again.

In other news, addie turns 7 stinkin' months old today, can you believe it?!!! I held a little 5 week old baby at church yesterday and it made me realize just how huge and grown up addie has become. I'm already just so excited for when I get to have an itty bitty baby again; but alas, it's still a bit too soon for Addie to be a big sister.
Now that we dont use her infant seat anymore, Addie sat in the shopping cart all by herself for the first time this last week. I wasnt sure if she'd like it or not, but she wound up LOVING it. She thought she was on a carnival ride the whole time; kicking her feet and bouncing with excitement. It was too funny! Here's a pic i took with my cellphone: