Opening presents

Ada's not quite got the hang of the whole opening presents thing. We tried to break her in easy but we'll have to see. After one party, I'm not sure she's got the hang of it. You be the judge.

First she eats the box. Then she stares at it.

Then she tries to help.

And finally she grabs the one piece Rick missed as if to say "Daddy, you missed a spot."

I'm sure by week's end she'll have it down to a science.

Grandma Ba and Grandpa Rich got her an awesome mini rocking chair. Perfect for a mini-me.

Make cleaning fun again!

As I mentioned previously, Ada hates the vacuum. She screams and throws a fit when we turn it on. In order to get her to like it when we clean house, Rick devised a new game. We like to call it the Ada Mop. It looks more like daddy powered speed skating and isn't very effective at cleaning the floors beyond the hallway, but it does make for a much needed laugh break.

On my own... kinda

Here is our attempt at having Ada stand on her own. I let go of her and she is okay for about two seconds and then... down... down... down she goes. It must be instinct to slowly lower yourself straight down until you are ready to stand on your own. This has been a very entertaining stage for us. Her other latest tricks include crawling in circles, following the dust mop, and screaming at the vacuum cleaner. All happen to be extremely entertaining.

Moral of the story: Children are SUPER entertaining once they get close to a year old. And even more fun at parties.

Happy Birthday Ada!

Dec 19th came and went without much excitement. More shock that my angelic little baby is one and pride that we made it this far as parents without any visits to the ER. Mix that with a slight bit of concern since her birthday is the kick-off event for a family filled week of party, party, and, you guessed it, party. 2 work parties, 4 Christmases, 2 birthday parties for Ada, all within 10 days. At least they are all in Chicago or Sycamore. Had we mixed in some air travel, I'd be well on my way to an intervention of some sort.

But we did celebrate her birthday. Not in the traditional get the kid naked so she can shove a cupcake in her face and you can spend twenty minutes cleaning it up sense. Instead, Ada had a small Chicago birthday party with a few friends and family that we could fit into our tiny city condo on a cold winter day without making everyone sit on the floor. The only incident was we ran out of beer. How does that happen at a 1 year old's party? I'm not sure. But the beer run was successful and the party didn't miss a beat. Or did miss a beat because I never actually put music on... hmmm... and we never actually sang to her. Rick and I serenaded her early on her bday with our sad rendition of Happy Birthday. I strongly feel a kid should only be tortured in small doses and that was plenty for one weekend. She's got enough coming to her this week with Christmas and then her family birthday party next Saturday. We'll see how it all pans out and use it as a guide for next year.

Moral of the story: Everyone we've met with a birthday around the holidays has advised us to make a big deal out of a separate birthday so they don't feel slighted. Wish us luck with that.

Baby free weekend

It's about time we had a weekend without Ada around. We waited 51 weeks to do this. She's been nursing and I didn't have enough milk to send with her for more than a day. The opportunity came up for us to ship her to Sycamore for the weekend and we jumped on it. This isn't the first time I've been away from her for 48 hours though as I ventured to Minneapolis earlier this year for an extended weekend. Rick's gone a few days without seeing her at some point, too.

So we did it.

I drove Ada out to Huntley so we could make the exchange -- really so I could spend way too much money at the Banana Republic outlet since the whole store was 40% off--and Rick's parents met Ada and I there around noon. We had lunch and poof, the adventure began.

Rick and I had set a few goals for things we wanted to get accomplished over the weekend. I wanted to go on a date and get to ride in the front passenger seat of the car --I normally sit in back with Ada-- Rick had a holiday party for a co-worker, I was hopeful that I'd be able to run errands and get a manicure/pedicure with Aunt Anne, of course I needed to set aside time to wrap presents, and if I was lucky, I'd get to my list of things to mend as it continues to grow. We also decided this was our chance to build shelves for our basement storage unit so that all of Ada's baby stuff would fit. Yep. We were ambitious.

So what did we accomplish? No much. We went to a quick dinner and a movie-4 Christmases was cute and funny. We were home by 9:30. You know us-- wild and crazy! Then we slept in-- Until 8:30 or was it 9 am? Hmmm... I made pancakes and Rick measured and drafted what we'd need for the storage units. At noon he was ready to go to Home Depot... but we can't fit all that stuff in our civic. Hmmm... Aunt Anne? Can we borrow your CRV? (Ha ha ha...) So we drive up almost to Evanston to trade cars with Anne. We get to Home Depot at 2, get the wood, get out to the CRV and the Home Depot guy measures the car. Nope. You need to rent the truck. So I go in to rent the truck and thankfully I had my insurance guy's number - James Taylor with Farmers Insurance --He rocks!- in my cell phone because I didn't have an insurance card with me and Rick had the one from 2007 and our previous Insurance agent. Jim happened to be at work and faxed the card over. We got the truck, Rick and the guy loaded it while I did paperwork. Tick tock. Tick tock. It's 3:45 when we get to the house to unload. Rick called our neighbor Lee -- who also rocks -- to help us unload the truck, in the rain since it started raining as soon as we got the wood outside, of course. And it's icy out. We can't get the truck into the back lot due to the ice so it is hanging halfway into the alley and ticking off our neighbors. Sorry about that. Half hour of unloading wood in our golashes - Rick in wet tennis shoes - we get it all into the basement. We return the truck, return Anne's CRV, and return home at 4:45 to order a burrito (since we skipped lunch), park the car, and sit on the couch to watch Jurassic Park as we digest - oh yeah, perfect movie to aid digestion.

Now it's 6:30. Rick still needs to make a dessert or appetizer for the party so he walks to the store as I finish the movie -- and all of the scary parts ALONE mind you. We make a batch of puppy chow -- corn chex with chocolate, peanut butter and butter melted and covered with powdered sugar -- got showers, got dressed and cabbed to the party so we didn't have to have a designated driver.

The party was nice. Got to meet fun people and drink fancy martinis. At 11:30 we both started yawning and were home, in bed by midnight. Sad. I know. We just don't have it in us anymore.

Sunday morning we got up at 9, ate cereal, wrapped presents, cleaned the house and left to meet Ada and my family for lunch in Wheaton at 12. We started off going the wrong direction (90 instead of 88 --oops--old habits die hard), but made it and had a wonderful afternoon.

So what did we get done, not much. I still have errands to run. We have a pile of wood in the basement that needs a full day of two people hacking at it to make anything resembling shelves, and my mending pile is still collecting dust. But I did organize my knitting stuff. We'll get to that other stuff on the list... eventually. Until then, we have the memory of a nice weekend with just the two of us.

And now I just keep saying "What did they do to her? She looks like a toddler now. Where's my little baby?" I know it didn't happen overnight, but it sure seems like it did.

Moral of the story: It's good to be kid free every once in awhile. It helps you reset, take a break, and realize just how much you love the little munchkins that bring so much drama to your life.

Ada's blog entry...

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The deception begins...

Today we tried to tackle a few more solid foods with Ada. She was eyeing my apple and a chunk of cheese so I decided to give it a try. I chopped up a sampling and put some of the Gerber banana puffs on a plate for her to try. Then I returned the knife to the kitchen so no one got hurt. When I returned, the cubes of food were strewn all over the floor. Yuck. So I scooped them up and dusted them off. They didn't qualify for the five second rule but a little dirt won't hurt her. She licks her hands after crawling all around the house and has recently been trying to eat the toilet so this isn't so bad if you think about it. And how many of them is she really going to eat?

Being the smart mom that I am, albeit a bit delayed, I moved her to the highchair, locked her in and secured the tray. Then I redistributed the cubes of food, dusting them off as I went, and showed her how to eat them. She did eat a few, but she mainly just picked them up and pretended to eat them. Here I'm thinking she's had a good amount of food and then I peek down past the tray, onto her lap. Deceiving little booger! She's neatly stashed away 90% of the food on her tray. So I picked the slivers of food back up, now mushed and slobbery, and we try again. The food disappears off the tray again and after one more round of replacing the food from her lap to her tray, I finally give up. By now she's got a party in her pants and can't sit still. We'll try again later.

Moral of the story: Starting a baby on chunks of food is kind of like giving a cat or dog a pill. You won't know if it made it into their bellies until later when you find it on the floor under the table, next to your favorite pair of house slippers that are now decorated with tooth marks.