Adeline's Birthday Celebration

In the morning, Adeline's pawpaw arrived with a very special present.  Adeline understands the concept of presents now, but she tears off one little piece at a time, folds it, and hands it to someone close by.  It's cute but time consuming....

A swing!!!

I made this sheep cake...in honor of the stuffed sheep that has now become Adeline's choice companion.  It's hard to see in the picture, but the sheep's face is a bowl cake on top of a round cake, so it has a three dimensional look.  The cake is covered in marshmallows and cocoa puffs.

The birthday girl with MORE presents!!!

Adeline is very into giving kisses right now, and her cousin, Dominick was all about it!  We were cracking up...which probably egged them on more.  Too cute!

Of course, books are ALWAYS a welcome present around here.

Adeline also loved this stroller and bed for her baby doll.  Of course, she thought she had to crawl IN the bed.  We had a good laugh watching the process.

Cousin, Madison, arrives...time for more kisses!!!

Four cousins all coloring together.  

Time for dinner...all Adeline's favorites.  PIZZA!!!

CAKE!!!

Bubbles....such fun for all!!!

At the end of the night, we found Adeline reading books to her pawpaw (who was sound asleep)...

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!!!

My Baby Girl Turns 2!!!

Adeline Kate---2 Years

Favorite Foods---pizza, ice cream, all fruits, dried cranberries, noodles, peas

Favorite Books----The Great Gracie Chase, Little Critter books, all things Sandra Boynton, Where's Morris Mouse, Where the Wild Things Are, ABC books

Favorite Stuffed Toy---For a long time, this was her bunny, but that has recently been replaced by her sheep.  She's also very attached to a blanket that my grandmother crocheted.

Favorite toys---BOOKS, balls,  puzzles, her shopping cart, coloring, jumping house, anything with buttons that plays music

Favorite activities with daddy---Dancing, singing songs, being tossed in the air, hide and seek, riding on daddy's shoulders as he runs, general roughhousing.

Favorite activities with mommy--- helping mommy with EVERYTHING, reading books, dancing.

Cute Sayings---"I don't KNOW where it is!!!  I find it (looking under the couch).  There it is!"  "I love you too!"  "Where's Adeline?  I can't find her" (mimicking us playing hide and seek with her)  "No thank you, I don't like it."  "Go to church and sing songs?!?"  "Oh my goodness!!!"

Personality---very gentle and sweet, a rule follower (for the most part), able to rationalize and explain things to her, loves to cuddle, social

Recent things she's learned/ developmental milestones---Alphabet song, holds writing utensils appropriately to color, talks mostly in sentences, counts to 10, knows shapes and colors, improved abilities with puzzles, beginning to pretend.

Nighttime routine---Bedtime between 7 and 7:30.  Some nights mommy gives you a bath.  Mommy changes you.  You kiss mommy goodnight.  You are given your paci to sleep.  Daddy reads you books, prays with you, sings a song or two, rocks you, and lays you down.

Wordless Wednesday

This one's for you, Pawpaw

Grandpa (pawpaw) gave Adeline this tractor for Christmas.  She liked the little animals that came with it, but for some reason she was afraid to sit on it.  It took some time, but now she's all about it.

Sunday Finest--Two weeks worth

We got a new camera!!!

You may or may not have noticed that the quality of my pictures has drastically improved recently.  Through a generous gift certificate, we were able to purchase a new camera.  And it's awesome!!!  Here are just a few examples...

Now I just need to get Adeline's "Sunday Finest" from the past two weeks posted...

Sleeping Beauty

Friday Fun

Because I couldn't wait for Wordless Wednesday to post this one...

Too much sugar is NOT a good thing...

Thought it might be time for another pregnancy update...well an update of any sort would probably be welcome at this point.  sigh...

To clarify things for the random strangers who will probably never read this:

1.  I am due in mid-May

2.  Yes, I can, and will in fact, get bigger (and that's okay!)

3.  I am quite sure I am not carrying two, but thank you for asking.

Okay, now that we've cleared that up, we can move on to other news.  Many of you can relate to that ever pleasant glucose test that is one of the downsides of being pregnant.  For those of you who are not aware (and who missed my status update on facebook last week), let me splain..

You go to the lab, you drink some nasty extra sweet stuff that tastes like orange soda on steroids, and then they take your blood an hour later to see how your body digested the sugar.  This is a screening tool, and if you don't pass it, you need to take the LOOOONG version.  I did not pass.  Don't panic, I didn't pass it with Adeline either.  Ahem, this leads us to how I spent my ENTIRE Friday morning.  The long version takes almost 4 hours.  You have to fast, so I ate nothing after dinner on Thursday evening.  I got to the lab only to find MANY other people who felt a need to come to the lab on that particular morning.  I waited about 20 min for them to call my name.  Then, they take a fasting blood sugar level.  The results from this test took almost 45 min to be done.  Once again, I was given another even larger dose of said orange nastiness.  They then take your blood after 1, 2, and 3 hours to check how your body processes the sugar.  That means after 4 blood draws, feeling like I stole too much candy from grandma's candy jar, and having only enough time between the hour stretches to run the shortest of errands, I was finally released at 12:45 only to find I had grabbed the WRONG tupperware container out of the fridge and was NOT finally going to devour the delicious lunch I had packed for myself.  On a positive note, I got quite a bit of my book read in the waiting room, and I PASSED THE TEST!

This baby is quite active...kicking all over the place!  I love it.

We are in the process now of deciding where we want to give birth.  We would like to try to have a natural, unmedicated birth again.  Adeline was born in the military hospital, but she was delivered by a family practice doctor who knew and agreed with our birth plan, and we happened (after a lot of prayer and knowing the master planner) to get the best nurse in the world.  Family practice is no longer doing deliveries there, and my nurse is in midwifery school, SO that would leave me with whichever OB happens to be on call the day I go in labor.  We decided we would like to try going to a midwife practice, and we went to tour one last week.  We were pretty excited about it, but we have heard some stories since then that were a bit disconcerting.  We found another place that is across the street from a hospital, but they said they don't take our insurance.  After making a few more calls, they will take our insurance, but we need the referral to be approved by Tricare (military insurance).  Please pray that God will give us clear direction and wisdom over which facility to choose, and that He would work out all the financial details.

Our Love Story---Part 3

After a series of LONG emails, where I assured Patrick that I did not have high relationship/marriage expectations, and that I thought it was going to be hard to get to know each other, even in a friend capacity, if we were not intentional about spending time together, we started spending more time together. (was that really one sentence?)



Patrick had very limited culinary skills. His diet consisted mostly of pasta with Prego, cereal, and sandwiches, with the occasional shake-and-bake pork thrown in. I volunteered to teach him to make stir-fry to add a little more variety to his mealtime options. The day we planned to get together was BEAUTIFUL, and one of the first warmish days of the year. He decided we should scrap the cooking lesson, grab some food at Boston Market, and head to one of his favorite spots along the river for a picnic. We took a frisbee, some cards, etc. What? Friends can have picnics along the water....right? Well, as it got dark and the stars came out, it was time for another relationship conversation. It went something like this...



P: "I really want to date you."

L: nothing.....I still didn't know if we were having the I-really-want-to-date-you-so-we-have-to-spend-less-time-together conversation again or if this one was different. So I waited to see what else he had to say.

P: Somewhat discouraged by my lack of enthusiasm, he goes on to explain that he DOES in fact want to make a commitment to date me. I can't remember all the words he used, or how I responded (except that I somehow said yes). But, then came the best line EVER...

P: "I know you don't give your heart away very easily, but I want you to know that from this day forward I am in active pursuit of your heart."



Gasp! Yeah, I know, I MELTED....he stole a little piece of my heart with that line.

Our Love Story---Part 2

And this is why I rarely do series of posts...I feel too much pressure to get the next one posted, and it doesn't usually happen in a timely manner. Sorry to keep you in suspense for a few days...

Now where was I...

Ah, yes, Patrick was NOT calling me. Turns out he was in fact interested, but he was trying to be cautious. He wanted to get to know me and not rush into a "relationship." He did eventually call me, and we began emailing and spending limited time together (mostly in groups). As Sarah and Jason expected, we did have several friends in common. There were a lot of people at our church that were our age, and every Sunday, a group would go out after church to play volleyball, have lunch, go hiking, go swimming, or participate in some other fun group activity. We both started going to these outings more regularly. I was attending a Christian Fellowship group at Hopkins (that my roommate took me to after I moved to the city having never met her or seeing our apartment....another amazing God story I'll have to post sometime). Patrick went to Hopkins for undergrad and was working there on a research team when I met him. He attended this group at some point during his time there, but had stopped going. He conveniently started going again after he met me....

Eventually, we had our first "define the relationship" conversation. It didn't go quite the way I expected. Patrick really wanted to continue being friends, but he wanted to guard against spending much time together alone. He wanted to be careful not to lead me on, and I think he really envisioned us being friends for a while and then waking up one day to discover we were in love (sort of the Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye type philosophy). Problem was, we were already attracted to each other! However, we backed off talking so much on the phone, limited emails, and tried to just spend time in the groups I mentioned.

I guard my heart pretty closely. I was attracted to Patrick, but I was careful to not get attached to the idea of us becoming a couple. A friend from high school came into town and invited me to dinner. We went to Ruth's Chris (yeah, not such a cheap night), and I think it just about killed Patrick. We continued as friends for a few months (occasionally having a repeat conversation about not spending too much time together), and then something changed....

Wordless Wednesday---She can play dress-up with anything...