Happy Birthday Addie!!!

Two days after Christmas...ah, the stress level still high and excitement still brewing!

Addie turned 1!

It's so hard to believe that last year on December 27th, I was about to give birth to a sweet angel, unbeknownst to me. Of course, most of you know that my due date with the middle of January so we were completely surprised when Addie decided to make an appearance early (although I am still convinced that she was right on time and my due date was off!).

This year, the whole day was hers...filled with laughing, playing, celebrating, cake eating, and more present opening! Here's a little clip of her playing with her present from Uncle Jake at Grandma's house--FYI, my mom was unaware that I was taking a video!

After eating her birthday dinner of pizza hot dish (the MN version of baked spaghetti), we had family over for cake and ice cream. Her party didn't really have a theme, but I stuck with brown and pink since her birthday outfit was brown and pink (which I did obsess over finding that silly fabric forever!). She had a strawberry cake with chocolate icing and pink M & M's as polka dots all over. It wasn't the most beautiful thing, but it sure did taste yummy! Addie enjoyed devouring the cake and she was quite a fun little mess in the end!!!

Addie received many very nice gifts from family and friends and we are truly blessed to have so many people in our lives who care about her so much! Thanks to everyone for being part of Addie's life. We look forward to many, many, many more years of happiness with our little blessing!

And no, I didn't make it through the day without getting a little emotional! Tears of Joy!!!

Oh and I almost forgot-- in the middle of the festivities last night, she took 8 steps in a row! And today she has been walking from place to place more than ever...this is just the beginning and I'm ready for it!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Christmas couldn't have come soon enough this year! We were so excited to celebrate our first Christmas with Addie and it ended up to be all that we'd hoped for....Happy Birthday Jesus!

Christmas Eve service at church was wonderful and geared towards family so Addie was kept entertained by the children and wonderful pictures on the screen during the children's message. The music was beautiful and it was great to see lots of families gathered for worship. We sat in the front row so we were on our BEST behavior the entire time!

We celebrated with Chris' mom after the church service on Christmas Eve and Addie got an Animal Train toy that she loves! When we got home, she took several steps on her own just trying to follow it! Addie dove right in to the presents under the tree on Christmas morning, without any prompting from us. It was as if she had done this before! She didn't know what to do with all her new things and she was so excited to open each and every one.

Then we went to my parents' house to celebrate some more. She figured out that she was so good at opening presents, she would help everyone else open theirs too :) After a delicious lunch of lasagna (Addie loved it!), we rushed off to celebrate at Papaw Mike's house.

Presents everywhere! The car was jam packed full with gifts to and from family and we even had to leave some of the presents at our parents' houses. (We'll pick them up soon, when we can just clear out some space beyond all these toys!!!)

Even though she was sicker than a dog for Christmas, Addie enjoyed herself and can't wait until the next big celebration soon.....

'Tis the Season!

After lots of warnings and "advice" from other parents young and old-er, we took the plunge and put up our Christmas tree the first weekend in December. Now usually I am pushing Chris to get everything out the weekend after Thanksgiving, but for some reason my "hurry up and decorate" attitude was dampened this year by the little person in our house. I could only imagine how curious she might be about the Christmas decorations since she finds new things to "eat" and "play with" in my regular decor on a daily basis.

To our surprise, Addie has been wonderful with all of this. We accomplished a lot of decorating during her naptimes on that Saturday and she was SO funny when I went to get her from her afternoon nap and brought her out to see the lighted tree. "OOOOOH" she said in amazement. I stood her by the tree and asked her what she thought of it and I could just tell she wanted to touch it with all her little heart. She would reach out like she was going to touch it, then slap her hand back really quickly. So funny! Now that it's been around a few weeks, she's getting more brave and will actually take some of the ornaments off...but hands them right to me when I ask her to and we "redecorate" together. So basically I'll say "Bah humbug" to everyone who told us it was "going to be fun" in grumbly voices because we're loving every minute of watching her explore and test the waters when it comes to what she can and can't touch. Luckily, I do not have many breakables and she really can't hurt anything anyway so that makes life easier.

Here she is taking her chance at touching the tree...SO serious!
We are anxiously anticipating the excitement of Christmas morning when Addie has her first experience opening presents. I'm sure it will be so much fun and I'm also sure I'll cry with joy. She better get lots of practice on Christmas day because two days later she'll be celebrating again for her own birthday. I have told many people that I am in denial that she's already going to be 1! It seems like yesterday we were hanging out in the hotel, I mean hospital (The Women's Hosp. is SUPER nice and I had a HUGE room!) waiting for her to be born. Another flood of emotions for me on her birthday as well! Forget Mother's Day in May---my true Mother's Day celebration is going to be December 27th!!!

Along with all the other things that keep me busy during the Christmas season, I have been super busy making Addie's stocking, Christmas outfit and dress. My dear mother is giving me the hardest time about Addie's dress simply because I am the type of person who HATES dresses. I am more of a pants kind of girl myself. I harrass my mom all the time about putting me in little fancy dresses when I was younger. The dress I made for my sweetie is not fancy by any means, but it does include a built in pettycoat--(if you don't know what that is, it's just an additional layer to make the dress more "poofy"). It turned out to be adorable and it even matches her stocking. She'll probably only wear it once (maybe twice), but the fact that it's finished and was a heck of a lot cheaper to make than it would have been to buy is all that matters to me. We're (being me) still pondering which outfit she should wear for our Christmas card picture--it might turn out to be the pants outfit (that's actually a dress with pants that match underneath--she's wearing the pants and shirt in the top picture). So, I'll include some pictures here of her in her "fancy" dress incase they don't make the cut for the Christmas card.

Gobble, Gobble

I just realized it's been almost a month since my last blog---whew, we've been busy! Lots of changes to mention since October...Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving felt like it lasted a whole week and I'm still not sure I'm ready to get back to the daily grind and I know Chris would agree with me on that one. We enjoyed spending lots of family time together over the last week, including getting together with extended family and eating lots of delicious food!

Addie woke up on Thanksgiving with big goals in mind...she decided to start walking using her little "mail cart" I received at one of my baby showers. She hadn't been interested in trying to walk behind the cart until this point, she only played with the little envelopes and things on the cart. So...since this was the most exciting thing that has ever happened on Thanksgiving (being it's her first), we took the cart with us to grandparents' houses so she could show off her new talent. She walked around delivering the mail to everyone and she sure was a big hit with the family!

Among all the attention and napless days, Addie got to try several new foods. Cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, a real green bean (yes, just one), pumpkin pie, and TURKEY of course. No, she didn't throw up and yes, she still slept through the night despite the extra sugar! I think she had lots of fun trying out everything!

She now has FOUR teeth on the top (and still just the two little guys on the bottom). I must say she is quite a different little lady with teeth. Her smile is different and she just looks more grown up. Getting these teeth in has been a treat, including a trip to the doctor's office late last Wednesday with a scare of a fever and pulling ears (we were sure she was getting her first ear infection right in time for the holiday). Addie checked out with a clean bill of health, other than the usual teething adventures.

Talking and imitating is another one of Addie's newest tricks. Besides the typical baby babble, Addie has expanded her vocabulary and actually tries to imitate me and say words I say. She's really good at "what's that?" and "who's that?" which both come out "whsat?" And she just LOVES to bark at Joe and it might be the funniest thing she does. She gets down on hands and knees and barks back at him when he is barking for a treat.

Alright, enough Addie talk for this one...Here are some of the pictures from the last week.

Halloween-y Festivities

I must admit that two weeks ago I was not planning to have Addie dress up for Halloween (I know, I know, we'd miss all the fun--but I thought it might be a waste of time since it's not like she's actually going trick or treating!). I thought of a quick costume idea that didn't involve much effort on my part and it would certainly be cute for pictures, even if no one sees her besides her mommy and daddy.

Addie is going to be a ladybug for Halloween--and thankfully, we already had a black turtleneck and tights to start out the costume. I bought some red tulle and black felt at Wal-mart and made this darling little tutu (with black dots of course) to complete the costume. Addie enjoyed playing with the scraps of tulle as I made the tutu, it was pretty cute.

Good thing I went to all the trouble of throwing something together for the sweetie because the library teacher asked us to dress the kiddos up for Born to Read Babies time today. Addie was hilarious when I first put her tutu on her...she just sat there, like "Mom, I can't move!" until she realized the big, puffy, red stuff would move with her. Her boyfriend Gage was a bumblebee so they looked incredibly cute together! Her other friends Jonathan and Lora were Tigger and a lion. The kiddos all looked so adorable! They even got to make a special craft for Halloween. Addie was interested in eating the stick on ghosts and witches more than anything. It was a fun experience!

I ended up finishing the Halloween pants (and shirt) that I mentioned in a previous blog. All that practice paid off because the outfit turned out SO cute! I am already excited to look for Thanksgiving and Christmas prints to get going on some more outfits for special occasions! This type of stuff sells for big bucks on ebay so you may see my creations up for auction one of these days when I get bold enough to go for it!

A Day at the Pumpkin Patch

I'm a little late on this blog, but the camera battery was dead and I couldn't blog about the pumpkin patch without including pictures! This past Saturday, we took Addie to Mayse Farm Market to visit the pumpkin patch. Although she was too little to play in the corn maze, she had some fun going on a hayride out to "the patch" to pick our very own pumpkin. As you'll notice in the pictures though, she was not willing to show much enthusiasm about the big day (we were there right around naptime, oops!).

We picked out several other pumpkins and gourds back at the store and we even spied a GREAT BIG pumpkin outside, bigger than Addie!

I can't wait to go back to the farm market next year when our little one will be running around and can enjoy the bigger kid activities more--for now, we're enjoying our little crawling bundle.

Mommy-made Pants

I've been feeling "crafty" lately, but have not been really motivated until yesterday. I woke up with a "sewing bug," and I sure don't get those often. You see, my mom bought this pattern and adorable Halloween material to make Addie a pair of pants for this season and I decided it shouldn't just sit around and wait until next year. So before ruining perfectly cute fabric, I decided to practice using some of mom's "stash" (which I will inherit all one day anyway--and it's A LOT, let me tell ya!). Mom picked out a few prints that might be fun to try--not to mention, they are truly from when I was a little girl and I actually had a dress made out of some of it when I was about 2 or 3 (so we're talking 24+ year old fabric here!).

I returned home to get started during Addie's naptime and I was just sure I would get these done in time for her to try them on upon waking. Haha. I've done several quilts and other blankets of sorts, but this would be my first GARMENT (other than making doll clothes without a pattern when I was younger). First off, I'm totally not good at following directions or visualizing how something is put together on my own--probably why I'm a good teacher because I understand how kids with attention problems and learning disabilities feel! I am a "Do-er" and have to either learn by my own mistakes or have someone show me exactly step-by-step how to do something. Neither of those methods were working for me yesterday. At one point, I threw the pants down and surrendered by calling my mom. She could tell me exactly what I did wrong before I even explained my problem (apparently, I'm not the only person in the world who has ever experienced this issue).

Once I got myself straightened out, it was a breeze. I finished the pants after Addie went to bed last night and she tried them on this morning--ADORABLE, if I do say so myself. There will be several pairs to follow now that I know what I'm doing. Here begins another obsession for me--finding fun material for pants and coordinating shirts for my little lady!!!

Future Quilter!"Window Kiss"--thought this was too cute!

Donkeys, Fall Festivals, and Termites

First of all, sorry for the random playlist that doesn't work in the middle (or is it still at the top?) of my blog. I was trying to be "techy" and upload (or is it download?) some of my favorite songs for you to enjoy as you try to concentrate on reading my entries. I figured out how to put it over on the side, where I really want it, but now I'm not sure how to delete the one that is just taking up space on this beautiful page! Mikey!!! Help!!!

Donkeys are fun and interesting animals, right? Well, Addie got to meet her first Donkey friend on Wednesday. You see, one of her Godmothers lives out in the boonies on a gorgeous chunk of land where it's okay to own a donkey for no good reason at all. Linda, I'm not saying it's a bad idea to own a donkey, I'm just not sure why you do--but I LOVE IT (the idea of having a donkey, that is)!! Anyway, I was just thinking the other day that Addie has never seen a real horse--we didn't make it that far down at the county fair this summer and we didn't get around to taking that carriage ride at Cade's Cove I was hoping for on our vacation. So she met a donkey...forgive me, I've forgotten his name! Sweetest donkey I've ever met though!

There is good reason why we were so far out of the city at Linda's house this week---the 100,000th annual Westside Nut Club Fall Festival is going on this week on Franklin Street. Now for those of you who are not from around here (and it's not really the 100,000th annual, but it's been around for a long time!), you need to know about this festival. It's not just any old carnival or Fall gathering...it happens to be the 2nd largest street festival in the US (1st is Mardi Gras)! Impressive for a city like Evansville, huh?

There are hundreds of food booths with items such as Fried Oreos, Chocolate covered bananas on a stick, Haystacks, Pronto pups, Chicken and Dumplings, Fried Green Tomatoes...basically anything fried and not good for you. It was heaven last year when I was 6 months pregnant! The good thing about the fall festival is that it's close by: approximately 4.5 driving minutes from our house, 2 walking minutes from Chris' work, and 1.5 walking minutes from our church. The bad thing is that it's close by: approximately 4.5 driving minutes from our house, 2 walking minutes from Chris' work, and 1.5 walking minutes from our church. We're excited about it the whole week before it's here and by about Tuesday (the 2nd day), we're over it, Chris especially. Carnie campers line the streets down by Chris' work and it is just no fun to navigate around that area when people are trying to park places they shouldn't, etc. Enough of my babble.

Here is Addie during one of her 3 outings to the Fall Festival. We only went one evening (Monday) and the other two times were at lunch when it was less crowded (hahaha, no such luck).

Today is Friday and it's just been one of those boring, ho-hum kind of days around here. Addie and I have caught Chris' cold and we are both a bit stuffed up and congested. In fact, she is just waking up from a 2-stage, 2 hour nap. 2-stage meaning that she woke up after the first hour and I rocked her back to sleep for the second stage. She seems happy now, despite the dried, crusty snot beneath her precious nose. I'm going to invent an aspirator that has as much strength as an electric breast pump, for goodness sake!

So this afternoon amidst playing some of the usual games like "crawl over Mommy" and "chase the dog across the room," she decided to eat the coffee table. My mom is deathly worried that she is going to injure herself on the corners of this thing, but I say, "Lookout coffee table--there's a Nonner on the loose!" I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about termites eating us out of house and home in the literal sense, we have Addie to do that!

Who Pooped in the Park?

Yep, that's right...I've solved the mystery of the animal poo we saw while hiking on the Grotto Falls trail in the Smokies. I'm sure so many of you who saw our vacation pictures have been losing sleep because I didn't label the poo picture with the type of animal from which it came. Well, I've been doing my research both online and in the book, "Who Pooped in the Park?"

For a minute while we were hiking on the poo filled trail, we were just sure it was bear doody (kind of wishful thinking because we wanted to think a bear might be nearby, but not actually visible). Then we thought it might be llama poopers because apparently they use llamas for transporting goods on this very trail and it is not uncommon to encounter them on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays close to dark. Nope...not bear or llama doody.

After looking at many pictures and reading about animal "scat," the more formal name and a little nicer to say than poopy or doo-doo, I've concluded that it must be deer scat. I always thought deer poo was smaller than these piles, but I guess not.

I know, I know, it's pretty sad that I'm blogging about animal doody, but this has had me puzzled since we hiked this trail. By the way, the book, "Who Pooped in the Park?" was purchased by my dear mother out west and it refers to the animals of the Grand Teton National Park...but I'm pretty sure most deer have similar looking poopy regardless of their location.

One GREAT BIG Week!

Wow, it was really a HUGEMONGOUS week in the life of little Addie Ruth and our whole little family too. It all started last Sunday when the darling beauty was baptized at church. As you see in the picture, she is more than blessed to have THREE wonderful Godmothers (who are her PGAs (Prayer Group Aunts) and Fairy Godmothers also). Her latest "Addie-ism" is holding her hand up in the air towards the ceiling like she's giving a true "Praise the Lord" kind of shout out...and that's exactly what she did throughout her baptism. A classic that thankfully was caught on video and we will have forever and ever. Priceless. Soon after little sweetie was baptized, Mommy and Daddy frantically finished up some last minute packing and we headed south to the Smoky Mountains for our first family vacation. So far, this was the most wonderful vacation I have had (sorry Mom and Dad, but other than all the responsibility and planning, being on the parental side of things seems to be much more enjoyable than when I was a kid!). Addie survived the drive down there, other than the last hour in the car the first night when she cried so hard so worked up some vomit (and I'm talking the big KID kind of vomit, this is no longer the little baby "spit up" version of sorts!). Good thing the car seat cover is washable!!!

The first day in Gatlinburg, we ventured to the Ripley's Aquarium and it was pretty cool. I'm not sure it was $45 cool (call me a tight wad, I don't care), but we all enjoyed looking at the different sea creatures and I especially liked the sharks that looked like they had hedge trimmers growing out of their mouths. After all the excitement at the aquarium, we made our way up to the top of the mountain (one of them, not sure which one though) to our cabin. It was WONDERFUL...although we didn't end up spending much time there.

On the second and third days we spent time hiking on three different trails in the gorgeous mountains: Abram's Falls in Cade's Cove, Grotto Falls on the Roaring Fork Tour, and Laurel Falls. All three trails were completely different from one another, except they all had the end result of seeing some kind of waterfall. Abram's was the most challenging, but completely satisfying and Chris' favorite. My favorite was Grotto because the temperature changed at least 5 degrees (I honestly have no idea how many degrees, so this is a ballpark guess) by the time we made it up to the falls. Our least fav was Laurel just because it was paved and it sure didn't feel like we were in "true nature." The falls were beautiful though. Addie rode in the Ergo carrier (another MUST HAVE for parents and I know I could make a commercial for them and sell them along with Fuzzi Bunz!) and she was quite content the entire time we hiked. Chris did all the lugging of her and I thank him for that...but I surely think all that Daddy sweat she was drenched with by the end of each hike created a stronger bond between them. She turned into a true Daddy's girl over the course of this trip. :)

We made the long haul for home on Thursday after stopping to get some of that wonderful foothills taffy Chris adores so much and letting me get my Gymboree and Baby Gap fix at the outlet stores (I tell ya, that wore us out more than the hiking, no kidding!). Grandma and Aunt Minky will appreciate this one...We were home-free (about an hour and a half away) when suddenly I got the urge to fail as navigator and cause us to miss our turn because I just couldn't stay away from Paducah (where the quilt show is in April every year). No really, it just so happened that our turn was where we stopped to eat dinner and neither of us were looking for signs after that deliciously scrumptious Wendy's food. Oops!!! So we turned a 6.5 hour drive into 8, that was totally expected with a 9 month old (although she didn't have anything to do with it, for crying out loud!).

So home at 8:45ish on Thursday night and then turned right around and left for New Harmony to go camping on Friday afternoon. What were we thinking??? Actually it was a great "introduction to camping with a baby" as our friends put it. We were so lucky to have borrowed my uncle Tom's 1986 (yes it's almost as old as Chris and I) Viking pop-up camper. Boy, it was an experience to remember. We definitely couldn't have done it with Addie without the camper. Out of firewood and running on a few hours of sleep, we decided that one night of that was enough and we headed home on Saturday afternoon to enjoy our own beds for a change.

Among all the busy-ness this past week, Addie has decided to start crawling on her hands and knees rather than doing the army crawl. She also pulls herself up to standing in the pack-n-play...and the final new trick goes something like this: "How big is Addie?---So Big!" She finally gets it and realizes how silly Mommy and Daddy are for thinking it's so hilarious!

All in all, we had a truly magnificent time and I'm sad that vacation is over. We created so many memories just in this one week that will be cherished forever. There will never be another "first family vacation" again in the lifetime of the Knight family. Big cheesy smile :) THE END--whew!

A Little of This and That...

Alright, I feel as though I've been MIA in the blog world lately so it's time to catch up. I've been quite busy the last week or so because I actually SOLD some things on eBay and it got me all in a tizzy. (Not a bad tizzy I might add, it was very exciting, yet time consuming!) I listed and sold 9 items amounting to a grand total of nearly $90! It was exhilerating!!! Really it wasn't all that exciting, but it was enjoyable to watch things that have been taking up space in our small house go to a good home where they will be loved. For a few hours on Tuesday, our house literally looked like one of those pack and ship franchise places; boxes of all shapes and sizes everywhere! Addie was in heaven finding all kinds of new things to get into!

Speaking of the little darling, she has been just a joy lately, despite the fact that she's working on getting some more teeth! I have been accused by my husband of not following through with my best intentions about keeping track of the little things she does that are fun and new to us...so I have decided that rather than try to find a non-existent place to write them all in the baby book, you all get to read about them.

First of all, she loves to help me with the laundry. Since I feel like I should be getting paid by the hour to do the laundry, I try to find ways to make it more fun (for both of us). Addie sits in the laundry basket as it glides on the floor to and from the dryer to get new, fresh loads and then she plays in the basket full of clothes/towels/diapers, etc. handing me items to fold. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of leaving the nice, neat folded piles alone, but anything to make it interesting for mama.

Recently, when we read books she turns the pages on cue for me. She started this yesterday morning and did it several times throughout the day, so we'll call it one of her new tricks. It's darn cute, if I do say so myself! She absolutely LOVES books, period. We have been going to the library for "Born to Read Babies" the last couple weeks and she really enjoys seeing other kids and doing all those "sing-songy" things. Although I will say that it happens to be right in the middle of her morning naptime so she does create quite the emotional show now and then.

She amazes me more and more each day when we go outside to watch for butterflies, hummingbirds, and chickadees. The first time I saw her looking out the window at a butterfly, I couldn't believe she really saw it. Now, it seems like she sees them before I do sometimes! Even when she is sitting on my lap facing away from either of the bird feeders, if I say "Look Addie, there's a hummingbird at the feeder," she'll turn around quietly and watch it. If I whisper something to her while we're watching the birds, she'll "whisper" right back to me (of course this doesn't work the same way in church!). I read somewhere recently that babies at this age (around 9 mo.) understand a lot more than we give them credit for...and I am a true believer of that as I watch her take it all in!

We've got a big weekend/week ahead of us--Addie's getting baptized on Sunday (FINALLY!!) and then we're leaving for the Smoky Mountains that afternoon. Chris is especially in need of a vacation and I can't wait to get away from the daily routine and spend time together as a family in the mountains. We are excited to hike the beautiful trails and see nature from a whole different view. I am probably the most excited for Addie to go someplace she's never been and to experience all sorts of new things. Hopefully I'll have a lot to write about when we get back. Until then, I'll be doing laundry, doing more laundry, packing, doing last minute laundry and repacking, and getting us all ready to go on our first "family vacation." Yeah!