Easter Bunny

We got Addy's picture taken with the Easter bunny on Saturday. She LOVED him! She was so excited about it. First, she saw one at My Gym in the morning. He walked in behind us and she just smiled and waved to him. Then while we were in line at the mall for a picture she kept waving at him again! She was so excited. A little too excited to actually look at the camera! I really had to try hard to get her to look somewhat in the direction of the camera and her smile was usually gone by that time! Silly girl. At least she wasn't scared of him!


Flashback to last year when she was 3 weeks old sitting with the Easter bunny:


Oh how we love this girl!

Birthday Presents!

Addy got some really great gifts for her birthday. She's really been having fun with all her new toys and books. Our living room looks like a toy store! We love it though. Here's some pictures of her enjoying some of them.







We're still going to My Gym. She's much more comfortable there now than she was the first time. She's not overwhelmed by any of it anymore! She loves bouncing on the trampoline and climbing any steps she can find. What she doesn't like is hanging from the trapeze bar or the rings. A couple weeks ago she tried the rings and her face turned red immediately and she looked scared to death. So she got down and she was shaking! Poor thing. I wasn't sure what it was that scared her, or if it was hurting her. I felt so badly for her! So yesterday they had that set up again and I thought I'd see if she wanted to give it a try and as soon as the teacher tried to get her to grab onto the trapeze bar, she started shaking her head "no" and waving her arms. She totally remembered that she did not like that the last time! So no big deal, I just wish I knew what it was that she doesn't like about it.

We've been working on eliminating the bottle this week and switching to regular milk. It's going pretty well. I'm not sure how quickly most kids transition, but we're down to just one bottle at bedtime now and we only started eliminating a bottle last Tue. I must say, I really miss her taking a bottle! I've heard so many people say it's so nice to get rid of it, but I'm really missing it! I think we're going to keep the bedtime bottle around a little while longer, at least until I feel like she takes the regular milk more naturally. So far she takes it, but if we offer water too, she'd take the water. So needless to say we haven't been offering water as much the last couple of days. It's getting better and easier for her each meal, I don't think dropping 3 bottles in 5 days is too bad.

Happy 1st Birthday Adeline!

I can't believe it's been one year already! I've been reminiscing since yesterday about what we were doing "exactly" one year ago! My water broke at 8:15 a.m. on March 22, but Addy wasn't delivered until 7:36 a.m. on March 23. Despite the delay, it really was a good experience! We were so thrilled to finally meet our Addy we never let her go to the nursery except for her daily check up with the pediatrician. We wanted her in our room with us, and we loved every minute of it. Such a blessing!


And one year later, our Addy is still as sweet as ever. She's growing more independent by the day. She knows what she wants and likes and what she doesn't. Her vocabulary is coming along, too. She says "dada" ALL. THE. TIME. Definitely her favorite word. She also says "mama", "ba ba" (bye bye), and "na na na" (no... always said 3 times and with MUCH expression!) Elmo always catches her attention, no matter what she's doing. She really likes her puzzles and LOVES books. Absolutely loves them. If there is a stuffed animal on the floor, she will often go over to it and snuggle with it. In her crib she has 2 burp cloths, 3 pacifiers, 3 stuffed animals and 2 decorative pillows, which she actually uses! Addy is in no hurry to start walking. She cruises along the furniture really well, and stands unassisted, but won't take a step without hanging on to something or someone. She likes to walk if we're holding her hands, though. I think she knows she can get around so fast crawling, that she just prefers that for now.

We took her in for her 12 month well check yesterday. She remains at 90% on the scale for height at 30.5", and has slipped a little to the 65th %ile for weight at 21 lbs 10 oz. Everything is right on track, she's doing exactly what she's supposed to be doing for her age.

Here are a few pictures from tonight. We celebrated with Grandma & Grandpa E. We had a great dinner, dessert, and a bonfire! First one of the season!




Last Saturday, we had a birthday party for Addy. Both sets of grandparents were here and we had our neighbors and some friends over. We had a great time visiting with everyone. Addy got some fun toys, books, and clothes. She is such a blessed little girl to have so many people lover her so well!








She was actually interested in opening her presents and cards...for a little while. She did really well. She certainly loves playing with her new toys and "reading" her new books. She won't really sit still long enough for us to read to her, she prefers to just flip through the books on her own. :)

We had a lot of help from our parents getting ready for the party, and we couldn't have done it without them! I'm especially grateful that some pictures ended up on our camera!

Happy birthday to our sweet Adeline! We thank God for you every day. We love you so much!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here's a picture of our sweet Clover in her clover shirt!


For anyone who may not remember why our blog is titled "Our Sweet Clover", here's the story...When I was pregnant with Addy and didn't know if she was a boy or girl, we came up with a nickname to call "it". We also didn't want to reveal the baby's real name until she was born. Since my due date was close to St. Patrick's Day, March 19, we decided on Clover. So, for the duration of my pregnancy we referred to her as Clover.

It's been a busy week so far, but super fun, too. Grandma E. is here! She came into town yesterday and Grandpa E. is coming on Friday. Grandma and Grandpa L. will be coming for the weekend, too, to celebrate Addy's 1st birthday. Our sweet girl is so blessed to have so many people that love her so well!

Unfortunately, Addy has an ear infection again. Her nose started running pretty good yesterday and today it was noticeable to Grandma E. that her hearing wasn't very good in her right ear. So we took her in this afternoon to see the doctor and she has an infection in the right ear and signs of one starting in the left ear. Poor girl. We're hoping the antibiotic will help her feel better quickly.

1 Year Pictures!

Oh, we had so much fun getting Addy's 1 year pictures taken yesterday! We had some taken in her Easter dress and some taken in her little birthday tutu! SO FUN!








She was on a bit of a sugar high after this! She did really good digging into the cake, though she never smiled while eating it! I was thankful they let me use their big sink in their printing room to clean her up! Poor thing, I didn't think to bring a towel to dry her, all we had was paper towels! She was great.

Can't believe it's almost been a year already. Time is flying!!!

Back From Vacation

We just got back from taking our first vacation alone as a family of 3! We used our timeshare in Donalsonville, GA. It's basically in the middle of nowhere! When we planned this vacation a while back, we intended to meet my cousin and her family from Ft. Myers there and this was a location equal driving distance for us. Unfortunately, they weren't able to join us.

We had a really nice time, it was very relaxing. We drove there last Friday and got home late on Tue. night. Even though there really wasn't anything to do, Steven and I both agreed we could've used 2 more days there! We were on a house boat, a first for us, and we really did enjoy it. This place is perfect for anyone who likes to fish. Apparently they have lots of tournaments there, too.

This was our first car trip with Addy. We weren't sure what to expect. We borrowed a DVD player from some friends hoping that Addy would like to watch movies. She'd never watched a movie before. She has a talking Elmo that she likes to play with at Wendy's house, so we also got some Elmo movies from some friends of our's. Worked like a charm! She loved watching Elmo! One of the Elmo movies was about favorite kid songs and there was a barbershop quartet that sings the song "Sweet Adeline"! We thought that was so cool! What wasn't so cool is that we had the Elmo song in our heads constantly. :) We also brought some Boz movies and she loved those, too! She really did great in the car.



This is some of the houseboats lined up. If you look closely, Steven is in the picture standing outside the one we stayed in.


One thing we did a lot was take walks around the resort. It was great. Addy really enjoyed them as well, and she would often put her arms up like she was on a roller coaster!


We learned that there were alligators in the water and often seen by people at the resort. We even saw pictures of alligators that had been caught in the area of the resort. They were HUGE! The two biggest gators they had pictured were 15 ft. and 13 ft. long. We saw 2 gators while we were there, one real one and a statue of one! It was pretty cool to see the real one, especially since it was just a baby and only about 3 ft. long!




We went to Seminole State Park and played on a playground there. Addy loved the bridge the best!



The houseboat had a really nice porch and deck off the back. We enjoyed looking at the water and watching the sun set out there. It was just so peaceful!




On Monday we drove to Tallahassee to visit my mom's brother and sister that live there. We had a great time! It was a beautiful day and we really enjoyed visiting them and seeing the city.



Notice a trend here? Getting Addy to actually look at the camera and smile at the same time is NOT easy these days!!! She always seems to be one step ahead of the camera! Or maybe it's that we're always one step behind her?

Anyway, that was our vacation and we had a wonderful time. Being in the middle of nowhere with the ones you love is a great place to be!

Restricted

Since the stairs at our house are constantly calling Addy's name and she doesn't seem to hear our warnings to not climb them by herself, we've had to put a gate up to keep her away. She is not happy about this.



Now, every time the gate is open she rushes over to get through it before we can close it again! Funny girl.

We let her climb the steps when we're right there with her, and when we weren't right there, we tried to instruct her to wait for us. She just thought it was a game and giggled as she completely ignored our instructions, thus the gate!

Addy Goes Bowling

We met some friends for some bowling yesterday, and we had a lot of fun! Addy did really well and kept herself busy watching everyone around her and especially checking out all the bowling balls. Here's some pictures of our fun:




Rex needed a break, so he let Addy take her own turn at bowling!



Rex was very sweet and gave "baby" Addy some love :) She's not too much smaller than him!



So the bowling was fun and all, but we also had another first...a not so fun one...Addy threw up all over herself while we were bowling. She was eating Goldfish crackers and had too many in her mouth and started to choke. I cupped my hand under her mouth and told her to spit it out. And she did. Along with the entire contents of her stomach! YUCK. This was the first time I've had to deal with real vomit from her. Thank goodness I had an experienced mom there to help! I was sort of frozen in not knowing what to do first because there was just so much of it. And, Addy was trying to eat the Goldfish that she had just choked on. GROSS. So gross. Lots of napkins and wet wipes and a new outfit later, we were good to go again.