Big Girl

We've been casually potty training Addison since she was about 19 months old. We started out slowly with just the introduction to her "big girl" potty as she became more and more interested with us going to the bathroom. We haven't pushed it at all because she's in mother's day out twice a week and they require diapers at her age whether she's potty trained or not. About 2 months ago we bought her big girl panties and she LOVES them. She'll wear them occasionally while we are at the house and is pretty good about getting to the potty when she needs to go.

About a week ago we went diaper-less all day and she only had 1 accident. We even ventured out to go grocery shopping with no diaper and she pottied twice when we were there!! After the second time, she looks me dead in the face and says, "Mommy, I really don't want to wear diapers anymore." Um, excuse me? She was dead serious and I have to say that, with the exception of school, she never wears diapers anymore and has had 2 peepee accidents in 4 days!

Fast forward to today...I went up to check on her mid-nap to make sure the temperature in her room was ok and the second I opened the door, I saw a cute, naked, squishy baby tush! She wasn't kidding when she said she didn't want to wear diapers anymore! I reluctantly covered her up without putting her diaper on...we'll see what happens!

My conversation with Addi today:

Me: "Addi, do you want Mommy to have another baby?"
Addi: "No."
Me: "You want to be the only baby?"
Addi: "Yep."

I LOVE THIS GIRL

Well, the time has come to convert Addi into a toddler bed....she finally climbed out. Our little monkey has been hiking her leg up over the rail for a couple of days but, tonight, she finally got all the way over :(

Bed time is about to get real fun.

I was flipping back through the blog and realized that I don't have any pictures of Addi and her Nana at the farm! They go a couple times a month so Nana can see Petey (her horse) and Addi can "play" with all of the animals and see her Auntie Ann. She LOVES the horses and there are a couple of adorable rabbits that she has gotten very interested in. Addi is such a Nana's girl and they have such a blast together at the farm!

Addison made her first appearance at Raidergate this weekend! It was so great to be in a college atmosphere again and Addison had a FABULOUS time being the center of attention. That girl is a social bug! She hung out at Raidergate with us for almost 2 hours before it was time for her to go home with Papa and Grammy and for mommy and daddy to go to the game! Unfortunately, the Raiders lost but we had a great night out with Lindsey and Helio!










Sharing her tortilla with Hunter





How Raidergate has changed...

So many posts, so little time.

I have so much to catch up on that I have to back date a few posts. If you haven't been here in a while, scroll down!

Addi had her first day of school today! She LOVED it! She was really excited to go because we kept telling her all week how much fun school was going to be and that she got to take Petey (her horse) and the "pac-pack" (backpack) with her. She is OBSESSED with her backpack. She wants to have it on her all of the time and she'll just walk around saying "pac-pack." Charlie took her up for registration a few weeks ago and she got to play on their awesome playground so we made sure she knew she was going to get to play on the playground again at school. When we dropped her off she whined for a nano second when we said we were leaving but as soon as we told her she was going to stay there and play and mommy and daddy were going to come get her later she was just fine. The teachers said she didn't nap very well (they forgot to give her her paci) but she didn't cry the whole day! When we went to pick her up she showed us all of the neat toys she had gotten to play with and she didn't want to leave.

When you leave a toddler alone....

Just a few pictures of our sweet girl...

Addison went pee pee on the big girl potty today!!!!!

Mom and I took Addi to Fiesta Texas today to see the new "Wiggles World" attraction they built. Addi loves The Wiggles so we thought she'd really enjoy it....not so much. She wasn't really thrilled by any of it (as you can see from the pics) but it she did enjoy the first 10 seconds of driving the big red car! It was just too hot and they had the splash pad closed. We definitely wore her out though...she fell asleep when I carried her out to the car...

Well, Addi had her first timeout today. She is usually an exceptionally well-behaved toddler and very mindful of what you're telling her but for some reason, today was an exception. She's just starting to push her limits and see how far she can go but usually if we tell her no firmly, she'll drop whatever she's doing and run up to us with a sad look and give us a hug (how's that for a guilt trip?). But, today at dinner she kept throwing her vegetables and I told her "no" multiple times. I looked at her straight in the face and said "don't you throw that again, mommy said no" in my best "'aren't I a big scary mommy?' voice." Well, don't you know she looked me right in the eye and dropped her green bean on the floor. So I picked her up sat her down in the corner and told her she was in timeout for throwing her food and not listening to mommy. She sat there for a second and stared at me then started to giggle and get up. I put her right back down, told her she was in timeout for a minute and then her waterworks started. She does NOT like it when mommy and daddy get mad at her. So she sat there for a whole 45 seconds until I told her she could get up and tell mommy that she was sorry. She hopped right up and ran to me and gave me a gigantic hug and cried :( Then she wouldn't let me put her down for 5 minutes. My sweet girl.

Since our girl will be 18 months old in 2 days (gasp!) I wanted to jot down a few things she's got going on! It is unbelievable how much has changed in just 2 or 3 months.

She really has a new word every day. We're up to 53 words right now. She's not really making 2 and 3 word sentences yet with the exception of "help please", "up please", and "thank you". (At least she's polite huh?) We're working on counting right now and she's got 1 and 2 down without any help. She's not really interested in getting past 2 though! Every time I say "three" she says "no." She's repeating letters of the alphabet right now and will say A, B, C, D, E, O, and G. She's just learned how to say her name too and it is so so cute. I'll ask her what her name is and she gets really coy and quietly says "addiiiii". Her favorite words right now are duck, uh oh, no, yeah, back pack, elmo, and ball. EVERYTHING is a duck. Thankfully she pronounces that word very well :) She's identifying people in pictures really well too. We're housesitting for my parents this weekend and they have a ton of pictures on the fridge and she ran up to it today and screamed "ABBY!". She just adores her cousin! She's getting really good at matching shapes too. She's got the shape sorter and a couple of puzzles that she really doesn't have a problem with any more. I think her favorite thing to do right now is stack things. She does it everywhere too. When we're at the grocery store she'll find the biggest thing she can find on the bottom shelf and pull as many out as she can and either stacks them or lines them up in a row. She also loves running right now. It's so cute because she'll crouch down and look at us and wait for us to say "1, 2, 3, GO!" and then she'll take off running and giggling. I'll have to video it and put it on here because it is adorable!

One of the big changes in our house is our naptimes and bedtimes. We've always held her to help her to fall sleep. We tried to change that 3 or 4 months ago in hopes that she'd be able to get herself to sleep without us just because "it's something they need to figure out how to do on their own". She wasn't really too thrilled about it. We gave it a good month or so but it just wasn't working and when we decided that Addi might be the only baby we ever have, we decided we want to get all the snuggles in while we can! Well, the past few weeks she's been really squiqqly and wormy just because she's getting too big for us to hold her the way she used to (sigh :( ) so she's really had a hard time falling asleep just because she's so uncomfortable. So mommy started taking over sleeptime duties and we may have just figured it out. Daddy still reads her her books right before bed and then I come in to put her down. I've been just snuggling her for a few minutes to get that last little bit of energy out of her and then when I think she's ready I'll ask her if she wants to go lay in bed. She usually replies with "no" and a big snuggly hug. Then I ask her if she wants to go lay in bed and mommy will sing her a song. "Yeah". (Don't ask me why my sweet little girl wants to hear my awful singing voice!) So I'll lay her down, snuggle Petey (her horse) up to her and sing her a song and rub her tummy. Then I tell her that it's time to go night night, I love her, and I'll see her in the morning. This immediately causes her to stand up and grab on to me. So instead of picking her up like I usually do I say "big hug night night" and give her a big hug and ask her to lay down for mommy. Works every time :). Then I tell her again that it's time for night night and I tell her how much I love her and that I'll be downstairs. Then I leave. Usually you would insert shrilling screams at this point but ever since we started that routine there has not been one. single. sound. I have no idea why this has worked. I did notice though that when I started telling her where I was going to be while she was sleeping things started to turn. So, other mommies of babies that love to be held to get to sleep, there is hope!!!

I apologize for how long winded this post has gotten. I don't really write in Addi's baby book so I'm planning on having this blog printed into a little book as a keepsake of our sweet little girl. She really is the biggest blessing and every single day, multiple times a day, I can't believe that she's mine.

Addi wanted to take Baby Girl for a walk...luckily Baby Girl is VERY patient :)

Addison and her Daddy water the grass together every morning. I took a couple of snaps...

I yelled at Addison for the first time today.

Then I cried.

Ah, motherhood.

FOOTBALL IS HERE!!! Finally! There were some serious football withdrawls in this household.

We took Addison to Cowboys' Training Camp today. It's so nice that they have it in the air conditioned Alamodome and we don't have to sit outside and sweat for an hour. Addi had a pretty good time! She clapped when everybody else clapped, yelled "ball!" when she saw the balls flying in the air, and definitely turned some heads in her little pint-sized Tony Romo jersey :)

We went to the museum today with Great Grandma Tonya, Auntie Anne, and Aysia. They had some kind of interactive exhibit going on that was a little too difficult for Addi to enjoy. She had a great time outside though and in the tree house!

Fingers crossed...Charlie may have an AMAZING opportunity on the job front!!!

Happy 4th of July! We spent the fourth at The Johnston's farm again this year for the third year in a row. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite traditions. The first year we went we announced that we were expecting little Addi. The second trip Addison was just 4 1/2 months old. What's funny about that trip though is that I distinctly remember 2 different groups of people there. Those with kids (grown adult kids don't count!) and those without (Addi was only 4 months old so she didn't count...no running around yet!). Those of us without kids sat inside in the air conditioning or on the porch underneath the fans having good conversations and enjoying our cold beers. Then there was the other group...I remember watching 10 or so little kids running around the pool and swimming with all of the parents sitting in lawn chairs around the pool watching them with their trusty adult beverages in hand and Mom Braden telling Charlie and I, "just wait...that will be you next year." Sure enough, Addison had us around the pool ALL DAY LONG. We were officially thrown head first into the mommy and daddy crowd.

The morning of the fourth Addison went to her first parade. She held interest for a little while but it was ridiculously hot and nap time was quickly approaching so we had to cut the parade a little short. None the less we all had a great time and Papa and Poppo really outdid themselves with the barbeque. Thank you Chris and Gayle for a wonderful weekend!

Addi's first solo ice cream cone

Check out our little swimmer :) Please excuse my annoying voice!

Just some recent pics of our sweet girl

my girl loves her some fashion.  we took advantage of a HUGE sale at Carter's yesterday and i had to do some serious restraining to keep from spending $200.  they have an adorable new line that actually resembles something that i would wear!  i got addi this adorable brown, green, and white skirt with a cute matching t-shirt and she wore it today to go shopping with me and nana.  

after we got ready for bed tonight addison walked over, grabbed her new shirt and gave it to me saying "on" in the sweetest little girl voice.  so i put her shirt on her and she walked over, grabbed her new skirt, brought it over to me and says "on?"!  it's the first time she's shown interest in her clothes and my heart just smiled from all of her cuteness.  needless to say, she wore her new outfit over her pj's until it was time to get in bed.  i can't believe how quickly she's growing up.  her daddy is in big trouble if addison inherits her mommy's shopping genes :)