A Day in the Life

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!

I made a goal to do a baby scrapbook for Adelyn’s first year of life, and just 14.5 months after her birth, I finished it! I’m proud of myself, and just hope that I can continue to do this with all my kids. I think it is a nice memory book for her baby days, and she already loves to look at it. She says “baby” over and over again, and points out “mommy” and “daddy” too. Here are some of my favorite pages.

This little monkey…

Adelyn

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

Strawberry Bread

I think she likes it.

Best Advice I received after I gave birth to Adelyn:

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

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!