Now you are three

Dear Adeleigh,

I can't quite believe it. I remember the day you were born as vividly as I remember two minutes ago. And look at you. Now you are three.
We carry on simple and thoughtful conversations. We give lots of hugs and kisses. We teach each other everyday about love, about being vulnerable, about facing our fears. You can tell me that you love me without me saying it first. You amaze me everyday with your compassion and genuine concern for others. With your knowledge and comprehension of the world surrounding you. Like this evening, when you explained to me that we needed to get a screwdriver out of Daddy's toolbox so that we could put batteries in your toy. I assumed Daddy had said that to you just minutes prior, but he hadn't.
You make your Daddy and me laugh everyday and one of our favorite things is hearing your giggle. We also really love your freckles. We love that you say Mommy and Daddy are your best friends, because you are ours too.
We may not always show it, but we love that you face our fears. Like yesterday, when we were having family photos taken and you decided to start climbing a tree.

Photo by Jessica Loucks

HeartStrong Photography

We didn't even know you could climb trees. We love your confidence and your artistry in everything you do. Even if you fall down and roll across the room doing it, you are not afraid to get up and try it again. You are a strong independent little girl. But we love that you still need us. We need you too.
Adeleigh, you have taught your Daddy and me what family is all about. We didn't comprehend the magnitude of its meaning until you.
Happy Birthday, Little One.

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine

This evening, I made a phone call to DISH network to adjust our service programming. I went into it fully expecting to hear sales pitch after sales pitch as to why I should justify spending entirely too much money for hundreds of channels that we never watch. Here is a small glimpse into the conversation with my new friend from DISH:

Me - "Hi there. Our 3-month promotional period is about to end, so I would like to change our plan to the basics before we get charged regular price. We'll take whatever is cheapest."
My friend - "Okay, Ma'am. I understand you would like to get rid of over 160 channels. Can I ask why?"
Me - "Yes, we are trying to cut back on our finances as much as possible since we're about to have a baby."
My friend - "Oh how exciting. Congratulations. I remember that feeling of excitement and anxiety, all at the same time. We have a son that keeps us up at night. We are very tired. Is this your first?"
Me - "It's our second, so fortunately we have been through the sleepless nights and know what to expect."
My friend - "Oh yes. There will be many nights where you are up with the baby. Wouldn't it be nice to have so many channels to choose from late at night? Or to have the cartoons for your other child to watch while you tend to the baby?"
Me - "Oh no. We're good. We won't miss all of those channels. We hardly watched many of them."
My friend - "Okay, well we have a Baby TV channel for only $5/month."
Me - "Baby TV? What's that?"
My friend - "It's the number one program for babies and toddlers. Even your new baby could watch it. Are you considering making this purchase?"
Me - "No thanks. We need to cut back and only want the basics."
My friend - " Okay, well if you are sure. Then I will go ahead and issue that change for you."
Me - "Thank you."
My friend - "Sure, Ma'am. Congratulations again on your baby. And please don't forget to take your vitamins. Have a great night."

I hung up the phone and laughed. I told Phaeton that my new friend just reminded me to take my vitamins.

Phaeton - "That's good advice. Did you take your vitamins?"

Come to think of it, I forgot to take my prenatal vitamin this evening.
Thanks, DISH friend!

Rody & Adeleigh

For every year of Adeleigh's life, we have taken a memorable photo of Adeleigh with her good friend, Rody. Rody lives inside Dandelion Toys in Old Town and oftentimes we find him resting towards the back of the store.

Here is the first time they met.

Love at first sight is an understatement.



Here she is on her 2nd Birthday, riding Rody off into the sunset (after kicking Abe off, of course) -

This evening, we found our good friend resting under a table and were excited for their reunion.

We're not sure if Adeleigh underestimated the strength of her own bounce, or if Rody just needed some alone time. But while trying to re-capture the moment of their first meeting, this was what happened -

Not just once, but 3 times -

For whatever reason, their chemistry was a little off this evening. But, Adeleigh is tough. There were no tears. So, we just moved on and walked across the street for something that never disappoints - ice cream.

:)

6 years

Six years ago today, I married a guy who I met in a bookstore café.

He’s the guy who sat frozen in a 60 degree hospital room for over 40 hours while I was in labor. He never left my side. And he never once complained about it.

He’s the guy who caught our daughter with his bare hands and will forever mark that as the proudest moment of his life.

He’s the guy who every night, night after night, is there to brush Adeleigh’s teeth, read stories with her and help tuck her into bed.

He’s the guy who allows her to crawl in between us in bed each night because he knows how much I love having her there. And when he repeatedly gets kicked in the head and throat, he silently steps out and sleeps in the other room.

He’s the guy who sits with his hand resting on my belly every night, so he can feel our son moving too.

He’s the guy who tells me and shows me every day how much he loves our family.

He’s the guy who loves to remind me that I am his soul mate.

Six years ago today, I married mine.

The baby has allergies

Adeleigh has a lot of ideas when it comes to her baby brother in utero, including -

He likes to jiggle.
The baby has allergies. And when his allergies make him cough, he covers his mouth with his arm. Smart boy.
He gets out of his crib and walks across his room. (His room = My uterus)
When she pokes my belly button, it makes him giggle.
She can hear him.
He wants out.

~~

I can't wait for the two of them to meet :)

Like a fishy

This week, Adeleigh started swimming lessons.
Here she is the day before her first class, 15 miles away from the swimming pool -

And here she is the day of, 15 feet away -

Her least favorite part of swim class is laying on her back, but she's getting more comfortable. My least favorite part of swim class are the last 2 minutes, when the teacher instructs us to submerge our children's heads under water. I was the only parent during the first class that didn't do as instructed. Call me ridiculous, but I feel cruel dunking my unsuspecting daughter's face in chlorine water. I don't even like dunking my own head under water. And I feel cruel enough during bath times when it gets in her eyes. I've consoled her on numerous occasions when this happens, or worse yet, when water accidentally gets up her nose. That is the equivalent to the end of the world.

Since I wasn't mentally prepared to have to purposefully do this, I told the teacher that I couldn't this time, but that I might consider it for the next class.

The next class, Phaeton joined us in the water. As the last 2 minutes approached, I took a deep breath and told Phaeton I really needed his help.
The teacher instructed us to submerge our little ones. All of the other seemingly stress-free parents joyfully dunked their children under the water once, some of them twice.
My blood pressure rose.
I told Adeleigh what we were going to do.
Then, her wonderful daddy went under water to show Adeleigh that it was okay. When he came up alive, she grew the biggest grin and giggled. Then we told her that next she was going to do it with Daddy. She took a deep breath with Phaeton and I dipped her under water and quickly pulled her up.
She was a little shocked, but still smiling. She wiped her eyes and we attempted it again....
She was a little shocked, and came up coughing. She clutched onto me, whining about the water in her eyes and I immediately started apologizing and heading toward the towels.
Phaeton reassured the both of us that it was okay and that I didn't need to apologize to her for what just happened. So although it's still my least favorite part of class, I suppose I am getting a little more comfortable. And so it seems that we are all learning a thing or two with these parent/tot swim lessons.
He was right. She was fine. And once her eyes were clear again, she felt very proud of herself for going under the water - twice. And I felt better for having let my guard down enough for these few moments and allowing her to do so.

So, we celebrated with our sunglasses on and enjoyed vanilla lavender milkshakes in Old Town -

Not all animals need heads

Recently, Adeleigh was given some hand-me-down Barbie dolls. We found them while unpacking the garage and decided to pull them out for play. They lasted about 5 minutes in their original condition until Adeleigh decided they needed something - - -

*Warning*
Image may not be suitable for girls who love their Barbie dolls completely intact -







Not only did she promptly rip both of their heads off, but she also calls them her "animals". And she still plays with them.




Some may find this disturbing.
But, Phaeton and I think we may have a budding feminist who doesn't appreciate inhuman representations of women. And now without their heads, their dimensions of height to body mass index are slightly more accurate.

The pink ones are for her

Today -

She spent the day in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard playing in the sun, sprinklers and slip 'n' slide with her cousin, Ashton.
We got a little sunburnt. Oops.
We celebrated her Aunt Amy's Birthday and ate way too many brownies.
(We might still be eating brownies.)
She napped for a whopping 30 minutes.
We questioned her ability to stay awake throughout dinner.

Within minutes, we watched her go from half-asleep to running around the restaurant in circles.

We drove home with all the windows down. She loves that.
We took a stroll around our block and watched 3 pre-fireworks shows put on by some of our new neighbors.
Then, she had us pretend we were walking through the jungle, looking for monkeys in the trees.
We questioned her ability to stay awake for the big show at the lake.
So, we decided to stay home and set up blankets by our upstairs windows.
We had an [almost] perfect view of the entire Lake Loveland fireworks show from our bedroom.
She decided that all of the pink fireworks and smiley face fireworks were made especially for her.
We decided that she was right :)
~

We only wish this was the view from our bedroom window...

And we only wish that we took this photo -
(Photo credit: Loveland Reporter-Herald July 4, 2013)

Happy 4th of July!!!

Pregnancy Brain - Incident 35

It happened again. My poor husband.

We have had my 24 week appointment and glucose test scheduled for the last 8 weeks. I have been preparing for this moment. I made arrangements to get off work early and have coverage in my department. I had consciously been reminding myself that today, of all days this pregnancy, is the day when I can't just munch on a bag of chocolate chips throughout the day. I wouldn't want to skew any results or anything...I had also regularly been reminding Phaeton of my appointment on Tuesday the 18th, in case he wanted to come.

Phaeton - "Oh yeah. Thanks for reminding me. I am going to make arrangements so that I can go with."
Me - "If it's too much trouble, you don't have to go to this one. I'm just going to drink a big glass of orange sugar water and have my blood drawn after meeting with the midwife. I'll be fine."
Phaeton - "No honey. You know I always want to come to your appointments. Plus, I want to hear his heartbeat again. I don't want to miss it. I'll make it work."

So he did.
And the way he had to work it out was to go in this morning at 7am, leave for our appointment at 2pm and go back into work from 6 to at least 10pm to process his inventory. Not an easy day he arranged to attend my appointment.

Then I went and screwed it all up.

My coworker brought in my favorite Starbucks drink, which happens to contain a large amount of sugar. And without thinking, I gulped it down, whipped cream and all. It was 3 hours until my appointment. With my coworker sitting across the desk from me, I stared at my empty cup and said, "Thanks for the drink. But &%$#. I just realized I have my glucose test in 3 hours. I can't believe I forgot. Think it'll be okay?"
She laughed and said, "No way. Look at all that sugar you just drank. You should probably call your midwife."
I did. My midwife said, "No way. We'll have to cancel your appointment. We'll get you in this Thursday instead."
I couldn't help but whisper a few expletives at myself. Now it was time to break the news to my loving husband.
...[crickets]...
He didn't get mad. At all. And he told me that he would still be there on Thursday. And every single coffee shop in town knows not to make my drink that day.

I love my husband.

Pregnancy Brain - Incident 29

It was midnight, in our second week of living in our new home. We were still living out of boxes and I was feeling out of sorts, overwhelmed with how much we still had to unpack. We had just laid down for bed and Phaeton was starting to snore. I had just realized something and felt the urge to tell him immediately -
"Hey, Honey. I just realized that all of our closing papers are with the ultrasound photos, ultrasound DVD, camera and external hard drive. I can't remember where all of that is. We need to find it."
Phaeton - "Seriously? You woke me up to tell me that? Do we need to find it right now?"
Me - "Well, no. But tomorrow probably."
Phaeton jumped out of bed - "I'll go do it right now."
Me - "Seriously? You're amazing."
Phaeton - "No, I'm not seriously going to do it right now. I'm getting my ear plugs. Good night!"

Every day for the last week, I've been looking throughout the garage and reminding Phaeton that I still haven't found those VIP items, insinuating that I would like for us - er, him - to work tirelessly until they are found. Every day, he's been looking through the garage, moving all of our unpacked boxes around, unable to find them. Today, we did quite a bit of work in the garage together and they were still nowhere to be found. He even spent extra time in the evening, opening up every single box and scouring inside to see if he could find anything I had been missing.

He broke the news to me -
"Hey, Honey. I just looked through every single box and none of that stuff is out there. We just might have to consider it all a loss and start over. Maybe the midwives will have a copy of the photos and DVD we could get this week."
I wanted to cry. "You just looked through every single box out there?"
Phaeton - "Yes. And all throughout our cars. I'm sorry, Honey. I couldn't find any of it."
Me - "Okay. Thanks for looking."

I started to mourn the lost items, especially the ultrasound photos of our new baby, feeling like I barely had any time to look through them. To get my mind off of it, I decided to wind down and clean up Adeleigh's toys in the living room. I opened up the doors to the entertainment center to put the toys away. There, in a cabinet that hadn't been touched in two weeks, were all of the things I'd been missing. All of it.
I pulled it all out, with the biggest smile on my face and started admiring the ultrasound photos. Phaeton walked in the room and just stared at me
.....[crickets]......
I looked up at him.
Phaeton - "Seriously? You found it all just now? Where was it?"
I was embarrassed to tell him.
Me - "Ummmm. It was right here. Inside this cabinet. I must have put it here to keep it safe the day we moved in." I laughed. "Oops."
Phaeton - [silence]
....[crickets]......
Me - "I'm sorry, Honey. Sorry for reminding you everyday for the last two weeks. And sorry that you looked tirelessly through all of those boxes for me tonight. What can I say? Pregnancy-brain.....tee hee hee....Love you."
Phaeton laughed. "You reminded me more than once everyday for the last two weeks. Just wanted to remind you. Love you too."

He's a good guy.