Big Girl Car Seat

I remember Wil bringing Addie's car seat up to the hospital room so we could load her up to go home. She seemed so tiny and fragile in that huge seat! I've never seen Wil drive so carefully or so slowly as he did on the way home. I don't think I've ever watched the other cars on the road as closely either!

Fast forward a little more than nine months and she no longer fits in the once ginormous seat!

My baby is growing up! It was time to make the switch to a bigger, convertible car seat. We bought the seat last week and took it to the fire department today to make sure we installed it correctly.

Here she is ready for her first trip in her new, big girl car seat. It's amazing what a difference nine months makes!

Baby Gate

There is no good place in our house for a baby gate. Despite this fact, we try to keep Addie out of the kitchen for a few reasons.

• First, she LOVES the garbage can, and while I recently disinfected it, I have a very real fear that she is going to crawl up to the garbage can one day and lick it!
• Second, she LOVES knocking over Elvis's water dish and splashing in the spilled water! In fact, I usually know when she's going for his dish because just a few seconds before she gets there, she starts breathing really heavy out of excitement.
• Third, I think it's dangerous to have her underfoot when we're cooking.

In order to accomplish the challenge of keeping Addie out of her favorite room in the house, we have resorted to creating makeshift baby gates between the couch and the wall. These baby gates are made out of toys, chairs, end tables, car seats and storage boxes.

This video is of Addie trying to make her way through the baby gate we constructed out of her car seat.

Our current baby gate is made out of our Christmas storage boxes. I think it looks like she's trying to help us carry the box to the garage! :-)

The funniest part of the baby gate experience is how upset Elvis gets when we block the walkway between the living room and dining room/kitchen area!

You should know the baby gates we construct are typically half the height of our couch, or less. Elvis could easily jump (and sometimes even step) over said gates. Instead, he stands in front of the gate and whines and whimpers and even howls because he is trapped. A few times, our brilliant dog has even gotten a running head start and jumped straight over the back of the couch! Seriously, if he can jump the couch, I promise, he can jump the baby gate, but for some reason, he refuses!

Music to My Ears

The best sound I've ever heard!

Snow Day Two

Saturday, we packed up our things and headed back to our sledding hill for more snow fun!

We even found a good spot to build a REAL snowman!

Sourpatch Kid

Addie tried lemon for the first time at dinner that night! It was a moment I simply HAD to capture for posterity!!!

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

We stayed overnight at the Ramada in Flagstaff. Addie quickly discovered this mirror and made a new friend. She crawled over to see her friend every chance she got!

And the video...

Snow Day One

On January 30, we packed up our belongings and all of our warmest clothes and headed up to Flagstaff for a snow weekend! We were prepared for a blizzard, but it turned out to be a beautiful day in Flagstaff. We were almost sad we didn't get to wear all of our cold weather clothes!

After more than an hour of searching for a sled, we finally found one at the Flagstaff Bashas, who would have thought Walmart and Target would be out of them. It was worth the wait, though!

Isn't she the cutest baby you've ever seen in your ENTIRE life? (Alright, so I may be a little biased).


Addie seemed to really enjoy sledding. She made happy squealing noises while going down the baby hill we found.

I actually thought this hill was going to be too flat for sledding, but it turned out to be just perfect for my chicken self and for sledding with a baby.

We tried to build a snowman, but the snow had melted and re-frozen too much where we were, so this sad little snow homunculus was the best we could do. This is the only halfway decent picture we got before Addie broke off his arm and started waving it around. That's my girl! :-)