Happy 8 month birthday Adelyn!!! We love you!!

Rested.

Ahh, sleep.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to hear Adelyn complaining in the other room and thought "What time is it? Maybe she's hungry?". I look at the clock - 6:30am!! She'd slept straight through from 10:30pm to 6:30am.

Today, Derek and I woke up feeling even more rested. Why? Because Adelyn slept from 7:15pm-ish until 6:30am. I fed her and then surprisingly, she (and, not-so-surprisingly, we!) went back to sleep until 8:30am. That's my girl!

It seems as though Ferber's "progressive waiting" method worked well and she is now capable of soothing herself back to sleep! ::knocks on wood:: I guess she just needed a couple of weeks to get settled into the routine. She barely fusses when we put her to bed now! Up until two nights ago, she was still waking up twice after we'd gone to sleep, but now... All I can say is please let this continue, please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top! We like feeling awake during the day! We like getting more than 3 or 4 consecutive hours of sleep! Yaaaayyyy Addy!

Note: As many of you know, Addy loves loves looooves her pacifiers. Loves them. We've discovered that a great way to keep her calm when putting her to bed is for her to have one in her mouth (of course), and one in her hand. She just lays there in her crib, holding the second paci. It's so funny. I guess she considers it a backup in case she loses the one in her mouth? She eventually drops it, and the one in her mouth falls out, but I guess having two pacies in the crib doubles her chances of finding one in the dark and putting it back in her mouth. Ha! I'd really like to replace the pacifier with a different type of lovey, like a blanket or a stuffed animal, but we'll cross that bridge a little later.

Time for some pictures!

After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?? :)

"I like to pull my tights!"
"Hey Daddy, check out my spike!"
"Isn't it nice?"
"This is the new hairstyle."
Playing with her Pooh Bear train.
Look at those eyes.
Love this girl, love this face.
"I like my rings."
"I'm a jedi in training, Momma. This is my lightsaber!"
"I drive trucks."

"Now I'm a magician, and this is my wand! Alakazam!"

Scaaared...

Tonight was scary. Tornado warning for our county. Tornado sirens going off. Tornadoes popping up around us. I was petrified.

Because I'd never been in anything like this before. And because my daughter, our little angel, was in the front room asleep.

Derek was at the fire station, so I was home alone. He thoroughly prepped me for the worst-case scenario, so I knew what I needed to do. We prepared the "safe room" (Derek's closet - the only "room" with no windows and a decently solid door), so if I needed to take shelter, all I had to do was grab the babe.

Thank heavens we did not need it. I didn't need to dash into Adelyn's nursery, tuck her to my chest and dive onto the closet floor as the walls shook around me (like I pictured in my worst nightmare). Instead, I sat on the couch, glued to the TV, watching the breaking news about cloud rotation and a potential tornado moving from Kilgore into downtown Longview, just miles from where we are in White Oak. Luckily, the cloud rotation weakened to the point where the tv station went back to regularly scheduled programming (ha, that's when you know things are calming down). The rain has eased up over our house, Addy is still asleep, and my blood pressure has lowered back down to normal. I think we are in the clear.

I guess this was my introduction to East Texas weather! I wouldn't mind waiting a long time before experiencing this again.... a loooong, long time.

We've discovered another favorite food: mashed up carrots! Addy tried them today, and boy, she put them away like nobody's business. Apparently she only likes orange colored foods.

Also, I guess we can modify what I wrote yesterday - it looks like Adelyn may decide to start crawling sometime soon! She was pushing up with her arms today and curving her back as if to tuck her knees under. Who knows, it could be just around the corner!

Oh, and we're watching "Planet Earth Extremes: Summit to Abyss" on Discovery HD, and can I just say WOAH. It is amazing. How did we ever live without HD before?? Haha. But seriously, the "Planet Earth" series is breathtaking.

Updates

I wrote a long post two days ago with all sorts of Adelyn updates in it, and for some reason it didn't post. Grrrrr... I couldn't bear typing it all out again right after that, so I'm just coming back to it now. I'll try to remember everything I had written. Here goes!

As I mentioned, Adelyn was sick over Christmas with her first major cold, which was no fun for any of us. We took her to a clinic on new years day and discovered she had an ear infection. She was prescribed amoxicillan and that cleared it up, but she experienced some nasty side effects that made her almost as miserable as before, poor bug. She's all better now, thank goodness.

Being sick definitely changed her eating habits. All she wanted to do was nurse (which is understandable), and she completely lost interest in solids. She's slowly regaining that interest now, but she has a selective palate. Favorites: squash and sweet potato. Least Favorites: everything else. Ha! She hates pears, tolerates peaches, used to like prunes... she still eats rice cereal, particularly the apple flavor. I gave her orange slices a few days ago and she had fun sucking all the juice out of them. Hopefully this means she's regaining an appetite for a variety of foods! Oh, and she drinks out of a cup. No sippy-cup for her, she's a big girl!

No sign of crawling yet. Addy prefers to roll around in order to get where she wants to go. She is getting really good at standing though! She tries to pull up, but gives up before her heiney can get off the ground, funny girl. Gotta build those arm muscles!

Standing like a big girl, chewing on the handle bar of her Pooh Bear train.

We haven't been very good about taking pictures lately, we've been so busy unpacking and getting settled. Here are just a few pics, all taken with our cell phones.

Crazy hairs!

Crouched in a chair while visiting Great-Grandmother and Great-Granddad Dollins in Gladewater, TX.

Adelyn and Great-Grandma Zivney.
Playing on the swings! Addy thinks they are tons of fun :)

woo hoo!

We *finally* have internet in our house. Now I feel reconnected to the outside world, haha!

I'll upload pictures of Addy and our new house soon. For now, it's time to relax on the couch with the hubs. An hour and a fifteen minutes of crying tonight before Adelyn fell asleep... that makes for a tired Momma and a tired Daddy.