March 28

Addie's first birthday...in pictures!

She woke up...

Drank her bottle...

Played by the dog...

Went to the library for story time, where she got to play with the parachute...

And bubbles...

Took a nap - no picture for this one.

Played in the Portrait Innovations lobby while she waited to have her One Year Old pictures taken...

Sang If You're Happy & You Know It Shout Hooray while eating dinner...

Opened presents...

Got super excited about her new socks (mommy and daddy buy the BEST presents!)...

Tried on her fancy new tennies...

Put on her new jammies and went to bed.

It was a pretty great day!

Ketchup, Katsup, Catch Up

Oh man, I've been a blog slacker...here's a quick, catch up post to bring us to today...which is what I really want to post about.

In the last two months...

Wil got in a small accident coming home from work in my Corolla. It looks like no big deal, except the car bounced into the curb and the wheel on the other side is bent at an angle. It doesn't take much to total a 16 year old (1996) Toyota Corolla with more than 150,000 miles...

We had way too much fun with the rental car the insurance provided for a couple weeks! Who knew satellite radio would be so awesome?

Then we finally settled on a 2003 Toyota Highlander as the newest member of the Gonzalez family. Would you believe insurance is actually cheaper on this car than it was on the Corolla?

Elvis learned the joys of hanging out by a baby's highchair.

Wil got new work boots.

Elvis learned the only good time to have a baby around is when she's in a high chair.

We checked out a book from the library called Tails Are Not for Pulling. Addie loves it...but apparently she doesn't understand it...either that or she's trying to act it out.

Pet's are for petting...

Not pulling...

I stopped pumping when Addie turned 11 months old (HOORAY!). I'll spare you a picture of this one.

Addie celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a Gonzalez Family tradition - green breakfast. For her, that meant green formula.

We built our first family fort. We tried to put sides on our fort, but Addie just pulled them down, so we only had a top on our fort. Addie LOVED it!

Elvis developed a complex and couldn't decide if he'd rather be outside and safe from the baby, or inside where the baby could potentially be eating.

Addie figured out how to get into the cupboard. She wanted to bake a cake!

I'm sure there's more, but these are the highlights of life in the Gonzalez household since January.

The Way We Sleep, Part Four

This makes me want to pick her up and hug her...

I never knew a little girl could be so in love with her stuffed animals! She has to take at least two to bed with her every night, and when I go to get her in the morning, the first thing she does is grab her animals before I lift her out of the crib! She even crawls around the house with one in each hand. Oh, how I LOVE this little girl!!!

High of 71

All summer long, I ask myself WHY we live here. All winter long, I ask myself why people live anywhere else!

It was 71 degrees today, so Addie and I went to the park to play in the grass. We had a great time crawling after each other, and while Addie was enjoying the new experience of grass, I enjoyed experimenting with my camera.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the day...

It's a monster...ROAR!

Hi!

Cria - That's Zoologist for Baby Llama

My aunt and uncle live practically next door to the Wildlife World Zoo. When they moved into their house, I remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever that you could hear the lions roaring at the zoo from their backyard.

One of the llamas at the zoo recently had a baby (did you know, baby llamas are called crias?) that it rejected shortly after birth. The zoo needed someone to take care of the baby llama (whose name is Durante) while it was growing, it has to be bottle fed every four hours during the day, so they called a neighbor and friend of my aunt and uncle. Long story made a little bit shorter, Durante is living at my aunt and uncle's friend/neighbor down the street's house.

Last weekend, we went to visit Durante because he's super cute and how many times do you get to meet and play with a baby llama?

Addie thought he was pretty cool (after all, he did look kind of like a fluffy, slightly taller Elvis), but Durante was not quite as sure about her.

I'll bet even fewer people can say they've ridden a baby llama! Addie's bucket list...check!

And...Asleep

It's exhausting to be a baby!

A Very Hairy Tale

Addie was born with a lot of hair...hair that has continued to grow and grow and grow. We LOVE her hair! So it was a topic of much debate and discussion about when/how we should cut her hair for the first time.

Finally, her bangs were so long she could barely see through them...and we felt bad. As much as we didn't want to cut her beautiful hair, we thought she deserved the gift of sight.

BEFORE...

Addie had her first hair cut Tuesday, Jan. 17. Wil was the hair cutter extraordinaire (I am SUPER chicken about that type of stuff...if Wil hadn't been willing, I probably would have paid to have them cut...I'm that chicken!).

After...

She can see! It took us a couple days to get used to the new bangs and to feel like she looked normal with shorter bangs. I LOVE being able to see her beautiful blue eyes all the time!