Catching up.

We've been busy! Here are a bunch of pictures to show you what we've been up to:

Taking care of baby dolls.


Adessa is an earthy-crunchy mom, and exclusively breastfeeds her baby.


We've been going to birthday parties!! Here's Gwen, Danny, and Adessa at Danny's first birthday party. Adessa can say "Hap-birthday" and sing most of the song, and loves to play birthdays, with imaginary cake and candles to blow out. Fun, since we've a plethera more birthdays coming this season.


Cooking!
Sporting our Grandma-Beck-Made matching bumble bee aprons, we are cooking now! (Yes, yes, I know, it's baking!) Cookies!


Measuring. Most of the ingredients made it mostly into the bowl.


Stirring. (She now stirs everything, her Cheerios, yogurt, soup, whatever)


Tasting the batter, the best part.


Adessa also helped make and taste smoothies. Lots of messy yumminess.


...And her winning grin. It's rare to photograph her giant smile. I'm convinced that digital cameras are the worst thing for photo albums ever, as I always capture the moment right before or right after she gives a dazzling smile. She smiles when she hears her favorite songs, when there's anything sweet to eat, and especially when she sees herself dressed up in the mirror, like...


...when trying on my earings.

Time for more pictures!

And... it's a girl! Baby #2, night-kicker, daytime-thumper, belly-stretcher, heartburn-contributer... is a girl. 8) The hunt for a name begins, and after "Adessa" and the instant yes-ness of the name, we're having more trouble with a second girl's name. We're trying out A names, with three syllables to go with Adessa, and trying out fancy unique names, and trying out saints names and biblical ones, maybe to tweak like we did with Adessa. We'll keep you posted and alert all when we land on the right one. Meanwhile, my belly grows and here's Adessa:

"Hold you!? Hold you!?" is both how she asks to be held and how she asked to hold baby Alex. He seemed more pleased with the arrangement than she, in the end.

Daddy and Adessa checking out what's cooking on the stove.

Admiring herself with glasses on. It's become difficult to get a picture of Adessa smiling. I'll work on it for blogland, and for posterity, but she'll say "smile!" when she sees a camera without smiling at all.

At the beach. (Kind of obvious, I guess. I think those may be Jesus's footprints)

Christmas

Lots to write! I'm eating Adessa's Lindt chocolate reindeer whilst I type, to aid the creative process. (She enjoyed it, too, in the wrapper, she just had no idea it was edible. One of my better stocking stuffer plans, fun for the whole family.)

Christmas was great. We had a cozy family time, followed by a larger family time, and it was all around fabulous and fun. We are so thankful. Calvin had Christmas off, and the few days leading up to Christmas, so we were saturated in togetherness and love, and basked in it. All this thankfulness and feelings of blessedness caused a familiar reaction for me: fear. As Calvin went back to work the day after our lovely Christmas, I made myself cry (okay, well, I AM pregnant, remember) thinking about how sad it would be if he died on the job the day after Christmas. Or what if Adessa died, or if I died... it was no wonder that I was crying, really. I go through phases of similar scenarios in my head often, I think it's part of being a law enforcement spouse. Another officer's wife calls it "pre-grieving", we try to prepare ourselves at all times, for the just in case. Of course, you can't prepare yourself anyway, and worrying does no good, unless it just helps you to enjoy the present moment and be so glad for what you have. As I was trying to express this to my parents, my dad gave me this gift from the Psalms:

Psalm 127
Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
to sit up late,
To eat the bread of sorrows;
For so He gives His beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a Heritage from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of ones youth.
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them;
They shall not be ashamed,
But shall speak with their enemies at the gate.

Ahhhh!! The first section is exactly I needed to hear, though it is still hard to trust and let go of my fierce watchman tendencies. The second part reassures me that the Psalm was indeed meant for parents, though I have yet to figure out the last part about enemies at the gate. So I am thankful, for all that I have, and also so incredibly grateful that the Lord builds my house, and the Lord guards my city!! (So I've stopped eating chocolate and am crying again.)

A quick story about Adessa: (Because this blog acts as her baby book, as well as the life and times of Adessa and our family.) On Christmas Eve, the local fire department drives around the community with Santa waving to kids from a decorated fire truck, loud-speaking Christmas cheer all over our valley. Adessa likes trucks and lights, so when I heard the gravely "Ho-Ho-Ho, Merry Christmas" over the loudspeaker, I called for her loudly (was it a yell?) and went thrashing around the house trying to find her and get my shoes to try to catch the truck. She came running, perhaps at the urgency in my voice, and I scooped her up, no jacket or shoes and we dashed out into the rain. As I'm running after the truck's lights through the waterlogged tree leaves on the side of the house and in the substantial rain and near total darkness, with me laughing and trying to explain to Adessa what on earth we're doing, I finally tune into the word she keeps repeating as I run: "Scared. Scared." Ohhhhhh. Whoops. I stop trying to catch the truck, stop trying to explain, and scurry back inside where we belong. Poor girl! She was quickly reassured (especially by her dry, warm daddy) and then she spent a half an hour, truly, 30 minutes, trying to process the event. She told daddy over and over again, inches from his face--how she communicates when in earnest--the details of the story. "Running, mommy, wet, lights, truck, scared, raining." is how she told it, again and again with the words in different orders. Awwwwwww. Sorry to scare you, bunny girl! It gave me pause to think about the grave new responsibility of parenthood that comes with her increasing awareness. Yikes.

18 Months Old!

That would be Miss Adessa, one and 1/2 years old. It was on Friday, December 12th, and... what a nice day I had with her. She's had a miserable cold, and shared it with Calvin and I, and she has been miserable, it seems like for a few weeks.  She wouldn't play on her own like she normally does, and would follow me around asking to be held ALL THE TIME and crying about everything and throwing fits.  The crying and throwing fits sound like normal toddler behavior to me, and I was just kind of getting used to it and feeling like I'd figured out how to ride them out, when... Friday, she got better!  She felt better a few days before that, played and had more energy, and then on Friday we had smiles and playfulness and laughter and cheerfulness!  Amazing! It was so nice to enjoy her, to enjoy being with her and to see her cute personality again. Sheee's back! (Hopefully). Since Friday we've had some tantrums, but overall she's agreeable and nice to be around. 
We have some quickening happening in my belly to report, also!  For about a week I've been feeling the tiny kung-pow of Baby #2.  He/she seems to be active, as I feel him/her frequently, and as the last time I went in to hear the heartbeat, we could also hear the chop chop of movements in my womb.  Pretty exciting! 

Enduring a visit on St. Nicholas's lap.



This was the face she made even before she figured out I would let her eat candy off of her Gingerbread House. She loves it and visits it often in her laps around our house. Sadly, she was unable to help me make it because I put her down for a late nap after a GIANT fit when I cut off her candy intake during the making of the houses. Maybe next year!

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.