3 Months Old

While I think the above is a great picture, below is one of her smiling.  She is really difficult to catch smiling in a picture.  She becomes too interested in the camera or her reflection on the backside of my iPod.  This isn't one of her really big smiles, but it is proof that the child is happy and can smile.

The pictures were taking after a feeding.  We started in the red shirt; then she threw up so we went to the purple shirt.

Celebrating our 7 year anniversary

We left Addie at home with Andy's parents to go dancing in LA at the Cicada Club.  It worked perfectly that they were having their dance on Dec. 30 so that we didn't have to drive on New Year's Eve; the dance even finished at 10:30 so we were able to be home at a reasonable time.

This was Addie's first attempt at bottle feeding, and it didn't start so well.  We tried it out the night before and the day of to make sure that she would eat.  She basically screamed the whole time and wasn't happy with the different things that we tried.  We sure were glad that Mary Beth knew several ways to try to make Addie eat, but none were overly successful.  Thankfully, Mary Beth called Cici who gave us more suggestions.  Finally, once the milk and bottle nipple were warm enough, the little girl was content to gulp down lots of milk.  GO TEAM!

We even had snow that day which made me nervous about the roads coming home late at night.  But it stopped snowing and the baby ate while we got ready and ate our dinner at home.  We jumped in the car, got to LA, and walked into a beautiful Art Deco building.  We had a nice time although the two dance floors were small and there were a lot of people.  We missed the large dance floors of DFW where there was room to be crazier on the dance floor (okay, Andy wants to be crazy; I want to have fun without drawing attention to ourselves).  It is hard to do much when you are hemmed in on all sides.  We really loved the dress code for the event though.  We were on the lower end of dressiness.  There were lots of tuxes and evening gowns; some people even came in full vintage clothing (including hats!!  I love a lovely lady's hat.)  You know that we were thinking we totally could have dressed up more.  We both love to get all gussied up, but we tone it down and still wind up being slightly overdressed most of the time.  Now we know that we can pull out all of the stops at the Cicada Club.  Hopefully we can find more places where that is the case.

Thanks Jimmy and Mary Beth (Jimbo and Marme) for watching Addie on our first night out!

Meeting the grandparents - Part 1

My father and step-mother came out to visit the weekend before Thanksgiving so they could meet Adele. They asked to be Grandpa and Grandma.  I'm expanding that to Grandpa Willie (his name is Nelson; a friend affectionately refers to him as Willie) and Grandma Margaret (this is to deferentiate between her and my deceased mother Grandma LeAnn).  We'll see what Addie ends up calling them.  We had a great visit with them!  Here are a few pictures from there time here.

first meeting

second day with Grandpa & Grandma

They brought this outfit for Addie; it says baby's first Thanksgiving.

three generations

such a cute turkey!

Addie was done with pictures by this point!

No Santa visit

We decided not to visit Santa this year.  It was initially in our plan for December.  Once I started thinking about all of the kids (sick and well) who visit Santa at the mall, I realized that his suit has to be covered in germs!  While Adele has much stronger neck muscles now, she would still be snuggled into his suit and right up next to all of those germs.  So, we'll just make do with a family picture by our Christmas tree.  I'll put it up when we take it.

Einstein diaper

I forgot to post this several weeks ago.  Addie has grown a lot since I took this picture.  She's now 12-13 pounds and about 23 inches.

It says "I'm a genius" and has all sorts of math and science stuff on it. I figured if we were going to try out this type of diaper, we might as well get the fun print. We realize that she could very well rebel against our chosen disciplines so we're enjoying this while we can.

4 weeks old

Happy Halloween

Andy's birthday

Andy had a busy 31st birthday.  We painted the first coat in our master bedroom...it was really HOT with no AC and windows open for ventilation.  Then we got ready to head into town for an early dinner and a movie.  He got to have a sampler of Belgian style beers which he really enjoyed even though he didn't finish all 6 of the samples; he would have been spitting drunk if he had...  I thought it was great that he even got carded...what a way to celebrate 10 years of legal drinking...  Yummy dinner and a free dessert of a chocolate brownie with ice cream.  Then, we got to see the new Batman movie which he has been dying to see since it came out.  We just hadn't had time to go to the movies until the vacation, but I talked him into holding off a week so that it could be part of his birthday.

Babymoon

I apologize in advance for the arrangement of the pictures.  I thought that I had them done nicely, but blogger messes them up between the typing of the post and the publishing of them.  I would go put together something nicer for all of you, but I have way too many dishes left to wash now that the kitchen renovation is complete!

We've heard or read many recommendations to enjoy the last little bit of time before we have a baby.  We knew that we couldn't stay at home or we'd end up doing stuff.  Since Andy has been doing lots of work at the house and lots of extra days at work, we wanted to have a relaxing time together so we decided that rather than doing several small laid back weekends, we would do one big trip.  We decided on Carmel, CA based on what we had heard about it and my sister's recommendation (she lived there for a while).  We ended up going to a vacation rental rather than a hotel for 5 nights (Saturday - Thursday).

Andy & I decided/remembered that we hate the first day of a trip.  We inevitably bicker and snap as we try to gather and load everything without leaving the house in a state of disaster while sticking to our schedule.  This trip started no differently...bicker, snap, schedule blown to smithereens...  But we finally made it out of the house, had a late lunch in Cambria (near the Hearst Castle), drove the highway along the coastline, drove through Big Sur in the dark and fog, and finally made it to our rental to unpack and head to bed.

We had a fabulous plan for Sunday brunch that also went down the drain.  Andy discovered that although he packed the suitcases and loaded the car, his jeans and long sleeve shirts didn't make it to Carmel with us.  They were left hanging in the closet at home.  You might think that wouldn't be a problem in the summer, but it never got above 70 degrees while we were there.  So, Andy was really annoyed that he only had one pair of shorts and workout shorts and pants.  He needed a run to work out some of that frustration.  After he bundled up in multiple layers, I made sure that he had his phone and the GPS for the run.  If only those measures had been enough....  He ran along the highway until "pulled" over by the highway patrol because you aren't allowed to run there.  He was directed to the trails that he could run on.  These twisty trails kept going and going and....  After two or two and a half hours, I tried to call him, but his phone went straight to voice mail.  Since this has happened before, I decided that I wouldn't worry until the run had lasted three hours.  Apparently, Andy had tried to find a pay phone but was unsuccessful.  Thankfully, he did find another highway patrolman (who'd heard about him from his partner who "pulled" Andy over at the beginning of the run) who let him use his cell phone to call me.  He finally made his way home after a little over three hours.  This was his one and only run.

On Monday morning, Andy found a Ross store so that he could buy a pair of blue jeans.

Otherwise, we tried to do a little bit of walking around town and eating.  A few days we even got to enjoy some entertainment (Bach Festival concert, play).  We had a lovely few days!  Thankfully, the skies were bright and clear on our drive back home Thursday.

                          
our rental in the fog

the view out our windows when it was clear

(although it looked much better in person that the camera shows)

 beautiful beaches and scenery all around

 

 

      

 

tons of wildlife

a loner

the beautiful Cypress trees

the famous lone Cypress tree along 17 mile drive

         

 

us out on the town

 deer on the Pebble Beach Golf Course

Yard work

That title isn't fair when your "yard" is 3.5 acres.  Andy had to meet certain guidelines laid out by the fire department since we live in a high fire risk area.  I guess that nothing had been done on the property for a few years, because Andy worked hit butt off and still isn't finished.  Among the regulations are grass/weeds under 3 inches for 200 feet from the house, getting rid of dead trees and bushes, and trimming up trees so that he can walk under them.  The tree trimming meant that he had to get a new toy, a chainsaw.  He got to work on that so that we would be ready to take all of the trimmings to the free chipping day provided in the area.  Here is what we took to be chipped.

Unfortunately, this is what is left with no more free chipping days.  I think he's going to rent a chipper for a day to get rid or all of this and mulch around the trees.  At least in the future, the growth shouldn't be this out of control each year, and we have lots of firewood and fire starter for the winter.

There are also piles of firewood and fire starter in the barn that Andy cut up and kept rather than chip everything.  So, we should be set for fires in the fireplace this winter!