Baby, It's Cold Outttt siiide!

So far Adessa's favorite Christmas song, or at least the one she joins in and sings with, is "Baby, It's Cold Outside." She mostly chimes in on "cold outside" and it is so very adorable. She loves our Christmas tree, and waves to it in passing, says "Hi" and "Bye" to it, and enjoys decorating, undecorating and redecorating the lower layers of it's lovely branches.

Thanksgiving, quick, before it's Christmas!

Getting ready for a nap in our lovely room compliments of cousin Josh.

Color!? Color!? That's what I hear before Adessa carefully splays out on the floor to color.

Off and on with baby Alex's socks!

We have fish! Two goldfish and a betta. Feeding time is a highlight of our days.

This year we road tripped it down to Riverside to spend Thanksgiving with Calvin's sister and family. His parents came down, too, and we had a lovely time mostly just hanging out. We tried out their Wii,(I liked bowling!) and went to their neighborhood park every day (Adessa was in heaven) and ate ourselves silly. It was great!

Adessa surprises me all the time with words she knows, she pops them out at the right time unprompted and it is amazing to watch her. First language aquisition, developing right before my very eyes. Fascinating. She's also getting super frustrated when she can't communicate what she wants, or when she doesn't get what she wants even when she communicated it perfectly. I am assured this is normal, but it is a bit bone-jarring to see her so upset, red and puffy and crying, and not be what she wants or able to comfort her. We're getting better at helping her through it, and we also see the benefit of preventative actions: our little lady can only handle so much. Only so much stimulation, noise, action, interaction, etc., before she needs down time and to recoup in a familiar setting, if possible. Good things to learn. 8)

Halloween, quick! Before it's Thanksgiving!

Major events going on around here, I've got to keep up! Halloween was pretty darn fun, actually. How amazing to find that holidays are exponentially more wonder-filled when experiencing them close in hand with a tot! Adessa didn't mind being dressed up (she made a lovely Tinker Bell) and thought it was great that we were visiting so many people. She (logically) thought that we were going to go inside every door we knocked on to trick-or-treat, and I got to see some very nice entryways and halls as I retrieved her. (The girl makes sense, so far in her experience when we go up to someone's door, we go IN!)

Adessa's now 17 months old, and talking up a storm. Her more surprising words, meaning it still surprises me to hear her use them correctly: belt, bug, cake, eyebrow, dirty, wash, home, watch, cook, cereal, meat! (loves meat), toast, jam, ewwww (as in, gross), and fish. Especially fish!

Ever since we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the girl just loves fish. She sees them everywhere, in anything that's slightly triangular. So our game lately is figuring out where she sees something fish shaped when she starts going nuts about fish.

We're doing a "Music Together" class for her first birthday, and she loves it. She tries to do the motions, loves the instruments, and jingles the jangles off the best of 'em. Very fun.

She concentrates hard on her self-appointed duties, like putting her socks on. (She has gotten a lot faster at it, but isn't consistent. Sometimes the effort is too great for her and only one sock makes it on. We're still pretty proud, though. I think she's ahead of the sock curve, not that there's any competition!)

I'm feeling so much better as I'm through the first trimester, everything about being a mom is easier, these days. Thank the Lord!

Adessa, Gwen,(lion) and Ryan(dinosaur) getting ready to trick-or-treat. We got them to sit still by feeding them-- which had them all in one place-- but made it difficult to get a good picture.


Yay! Dessa and Daddy. Calvin got off of work in time for some of the treats.


Wearing the Tink costume to a harvest festival. While she quite happily rode horses at Skylake, here I had to ride, too. Bonus!


Her dazzling smile. She is wonderful, full of sparkly smiles and glee.

Bonus Pics

Here are a few more, since I'm behind:

Hear no evil...


Speak no evil...


Smell no evil.

Blog stuff, Part 3, and finally: some pics of Adessa

Here's one more blog that's dear to my heart. I lost the address but it's now in my favorites, it's found!  Sweet godson Alex's life and times are recorded here.  He's already featured in our blog, and his mom Amy is my lonnnnnnng time friend (since she was born, lo those many moons ago, as our parents were friends back in the D-A-Y (circa 1976.)  Here he is: www.babycastillosblog.blogspot.com

And now, what I'm sure will be a refreshing respite from my ramblings, pictures of Adessa: 

No more posing for the camera. Now, when asked to smile, she gives me this:


Riding around the pumpkin patch with (second)cousin Henry.



Perched on pumpkins with friend Gwennie. (No, the pacifier didn't leave her mouth the entire time.) Kind of fun to think about, last year when we went, she couldn't even sit on her own and had to be propped against the pumpkins for photos. Progress!



Happy to be home and digging in her garden (consisting of last years old potting soil and empty pots--she loves it!)

I'm getting into this blog stuff! (Part 2)

I've been spending a small chunk of time online.  Even with countless hours, however, I have become no more computer savvy than when I started. So I can't do fancy links to the amazing people who's blogs I frequent. Here are my favorite blogs: 

http://www.andrewmatessa.blogspot.com/  This is the blog that got me started, I was inspired by my dear friend Barbara's lovely blog about raising her son, Andy.

http://www.livinglifewithspice.blogspot.com/This blog is a fun one from a friend I went to elementary school with who soon after moved to Arizona. She's very candid and funny, an old Mt. Hermon girl, Holly.

http://sarahburkett.blogspot.com/Another high school and youth group friend, Sarah, blogs about being a mom (to almost 3 kids!)and records the funny things her munchkins do and say. Cute!

http://www.therollins4.blogspot.com/This blog keeps us up to date on the best man from our wedding, Dusty, and his wife Arin and their kiddos, Anson and Ella. And from Arin of the last blog, I got tagged!  This means I have to list 6 unspectacular quirks about myself and tag my blogging buddies. Here goes!

Rules: 
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
List 6 unspectacular quirks you have.
Tag 6 bloggers by linking them.
Leave a comment on each taggee's blog to let them know they've been tagged.

(Sadly, I have no idea how to do this.  I even tried but couldn't figure out how to link it, soooooo... friends, who are hopefully sometimes reading this blog, this is your only notification: You're tagged!! (If you want to be.) I hereby tag:  Sarah Jo, Barb, Holly, Amy K(don't have your blog address at all...resend as I haven't seen the updates!).

Unspectacular Quirks:

1. I greatly enjoy crunching fresh pine cones, redwood cones, or even leaves under my feet while walking around our neighborhood. I will go quite out of my way for a good cruch.

2. List making is one of my favorite things to do.  I have lists on small pieces of paper all over the place, mostly just writing things I need to do down is all I need for peace of mind when there's lots going on. 

3. I have to exercise in exercise clothes.  Especially tennis shoes, but I can't (and don't) consider it exercise unless I have on my sporty clothes.

4. I am an adamant night showerer.  I can count on one hand the number of times in my life I've showered in the morning. I don't sleep very well unless I go to bed clean.

5. Highlighters make me happy.  I just love color coding stuff. I use them at home, (on my lists), at school, I make the students use them, and my daily planner is beautiful with highlighted information.  Sometimes I just sit back and admire it. 

6! I read four or five (or more) books at a time.  This is probably because some of them I think I should read, for edification, or parenting, or school, and I don't go through them so quickly as the ones I just read for fun. That's it! Unspectacular! Quirky!

I'm getting into this blog stuff! (Part 1)

Just a few to share with you: http:/www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com I don't know how to do links, but type it in and go there! Everyone! I was laughing until crying, chortling to myself trying not to wake up napping Adessa the other day. The woman finds pictures of real, professional cakes with hilarious spelling errors or unintended outcomes, then writes super funny descriptions and explanations of why she considers it a "wreck." I also enjoy: http:/fakeinterviewswithrealcelebrities.blogspot.com, something about the lady just makes me laugh. There's a lot of time to be spent blog-watching, I'm finally catching on.

Getting into blogs means: the house is a mess, chores are left undone, I spend hours listless and still, I have difficulty sleeping, I'm not eating well, I feel nauseous often etc. Actually, that could also be because... drum roll please... I'm pregnant.

I guess this is going to be kind of a big blog, really. Comparatively to other blogs. Maybe I'll do a few parts, so as to give readers a break. Yep, 9 weeks or so pregnant, due May 11th. The baby and Adessa will be about 23 months apart (EXACTLY), Adessa's b-day is June 12th. Crazy! I had my first ultrasound to look at the tiny peanut's heartbeat, and it was going strong, praise God! (That's a good sign, means everything should statistically go well.) I have felt much sicker this time gestating than I did with Adessa, which I think is not just in my head. With Adessa, I felt like: "Oh wow, I feel terrible: how wonderful! I'm pregnant." Now I'm just thinking: "Oh wow, I feel terrible." Not that I'm not so excited about the second kiddo, no way, it is different though to have already been through it.

Adessa is doing well. I'm realizing that while I always love her, there are some points in our day when I don't really feel the mama-love so intensely. I think this is normal, and am trying to process it as so. I still kiss her a bunch because she's really soft, and I'm sure she can't tell that I'm not feeling so enamored of her. It's the back arching screaming thing I'm not so wild about, or the whining and crying that has urgency but no resolution because I can't figure out what she wants. Again, I think it's normal. And I think partly it's because I'm pregnant. Patience is minimal. Before, I could put her needs first and make sure she was absolutely and completely taken care of, but I'm less interested in doing that when I'm feeling nauseous and tired. Hmmmm.

On the other hand, she continues to have her sweet and darling moments and there are days where I am loopy with love for her. The other morning I was breast-feeding her in bed, and she was barely awake but said: "Thank you." before rolling over and going back to sleep. Yesterday, I gave her the top half of a banana and set about washing the dishes. A few minutes later she was sitting near my feet playing with a doll and the banana was nowhere to be found. I asked her several times where the banana was, she's normally pretty good at "where" questions, but to no avail. I picked her up to find the banana squished under her buns, she sat on it! This is sort of funny on it's own, but the background story is Adessa's fascination with sitting on things. She is experiencing her world right now by, yes, sitting on it. She carefully arranges her doll, pillow, activity center, puzzle, the bathroom scale, a piece of paper,mini-piano, whatever, and then slowly backs up to it with her rear end lowered, leading to her target, and sits. If she isn't exactly centered, she starts all over again to make a better sitting attempt. Quite funny. Apparently she got squared away on the banana the first time.