Addison is BEAR-ly One!

Addison’s birthday was a sweet celebration indeed!  Growing up, my mom was THE party planner! Our parties were themed from the invitation to the take home gift. Keep in mind that this was before the days of Pintrest!   Addison's party would be no different!

Naturally, we started planning Addison’s birthday in January. My mom, Melody and I had so much fun preparing for Addison’s birthday, from making paper flowers, to sewing table runners, to tying bows around the necks of bears, to icing a bear cake!

Take home gifts for Addison's friends

Addison had so much fun and seemed to know that the gifts were for her and she was the center of attention! Her friends (and ours) came over to celebrate and everyone had a really good time.

Coloring on the picnic table



Hugs for good girlfriends!  Addison and Ella

Cousin Ethan pushing Addison in "Sally" the car

　

My sister moonlights as a cake decorator. She spent hours piping icing on the bear smash cake. I think Addison appreciated her hard work so much that she didn’t want to destroy it!

She was in this position for HOURS...but the finished product was worth it!

Not a fan of cake but a big fan of the Happy Birthday singing!

I know Addison won’t have a single recollection of her birthday, but having loved ones come together to celebrate this special milestone will never be forgotten by us!

Look how much she has changed and grown in such a short year! I feel like just yesterday we were in the hospital together!

We had some much fun celebrating Addison’s birthday! It was a special day filled with people who love her so much!

Amen and Pass the Butter,
Marcy

Our baby girl is ONE!

Addison is now ONE! Of course she has changed tremendously over the course of the year, but that is to be expected. She grew, she developed, and she got cuter with every waking day.

Addison loves to play and she thinks it’s fun to feed Snoop (and so does he)! She likes to share her toys and likes to put her toys in bags, buckets, and containers...and then dump them out again! She also discovered the (loud) sound pots make when you bang them on the floor.

This month we battled a couple of weeks of sickness. After an ear infection and case of croup, we are happy to have our girl healthy and back to her normal happy self. She now weighs 17.6 pounds and is growing like a weed.

This month we enjoyed Easter festivites. 

The Easter bunny is not so bad...as long as mom and dad are close by!

Growing up, I remember Easter as one of my favorite times of the year. We loved preparing for Easter by waving our palms at church. This meant (1) a cute new outfit, (2) waving of palms down the aisle, and (3) palm "window shades" for the car ride home. This year not only did the excitement from my childhood come back - Addison had a cute new dress and we waved palms during the processional - but more importantly I reflected on the amazing sacrifice we were celebrating - the start of a week in the life of Jesus that would change our eternal lives forever. Praise the Lord! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

Ready to wave my palm!

Growing up, I remember waking up Easter morning to find our special baskets filled with gifts from the Easter bunny. Last year, Addison fit in her special basket. This year, she was excited for her gifts.

Addison Easter 2011, Easter 2012 

Growing up, we celebrated Easter with a huge egg hunt at my Memaw and Papaw’s with my sister and 6 cousins. Every year we would hunt eggs, empty our loot - cheerios when we were little and coins for laundry while we were in college - and re-hide/hunt the empty eggs all afternoon. Addison enjoyed a hunt at school. She really cornered the market on the rubber duckies!

Easter morning was bright, sunny and warm. We were happy to have Honey in town. There’s nothing like our church on a Sunday morning with such a vivid reminder of just how important Jesus’ death and resurrection was for our salvation. He lives!

I have enjoyed sharing our monthly adventures over the last year with you, our friends, family, and followers. While blog posts may no longer come on a monthly basis, we will continue to post and keep you updated on the goings on of our life.

This last year has definitely proven that parenthood is absolutely the best adventure ever! Happy birthday to our sweet girl! Stay tuned for birthday party pictures!

Amen and Pass the Butter!
Marcy

11 Month Update

As she approaches her first birthday (can you believe it?!), Addison is showing plenty of signs of leaving babyhood behind and becoming a more independent toddler. She no longer likes to be rocked at night, she is standing up on her own, and she’s showing signs that she will be walking before her birthday.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

At daycare, she is no longer is entertained by the baby toys and has learned how to "scale" the play area wall. Because we have a dare devil baby, Addison was moved up to the Wee Wobbler classroom as of April 1^st. We loved the teachers in her baby classroom and I’m trying to find a way for them to follow her until she graduates high school. They have loved our girl and shown her love while we have been busy at work. What a blessing they have been for this working mother.

In terms of play, Addison can now join in on games like patty-cake and peek-a-boo. She is also showing signs of independence holding her own bottle and feeding herself much of her own dinner.

Addison and her daddy LOVE the bathtub and bath time has become a ritual for them. I love to sit outside the bathroom and listen to them laugh, blow bubbles, and splash. We can’t wait to take our water baby to the pool this summer!

This month, we were excited to learn that Addison’s newest cousin will be a baby BOY Erwin! Eli will be here before we know it! We are so excited for the new addition to our family!

It's a...

Swimming with Dads

We were also thrilled to welcome Addison’s newest friend, Hadley Hamm, on March 18^th. We are so excited for Ty and Ashley and the adventures we will have with our girls.

Honey spent the last part of her spring break with us and made Addison her nap mat for school. She will certainly be the cutest baby in her class (even while sleeping)!

This month we have also been busy at our house. We put our house on the market and found a new house we loved. Rather than wait for our house to sell, we decided to take a gamble and put a contract in on the new house, hoping our house would sell in the interim period before closing.  I am such a worrier and the idea of two mortgages really weighed on me until I was reminded to turn my worries over to the Lord.  At our church’s Wednesday night Connect service, our pastor reminded us to turn the weight of our worries over to the Lord and to symbolically leave that weight, a rock, at the foot of the cross. I prayed over my rock that our house would sell and the Lord would give me peace with the move from our home we love.  I took my rock to the alter and felt some peace that night.  The next day, MY PRAYER WAS ANSWERED!  We are closing May 4^th on the old house and 18^th on the new house! We are thankful to the many answered prayers for the sale of our house in a quick 3 weeks!

This month, we are reminded that the Lord has promised to answer prayer. "Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Matthew 7:7. What an awesome God we serve!

Amen and Pass the Butter,

Marcy

10 Months!

Addison is in the double digits! How is this possible? Time is going way too fast! So what’s our precious girl up to at 10 months? SO MUCH!

Our increasingly mobile baby continues to test her boundaries. Addison can progress from sitting and crawling to standing and cruising (while holding onto furniture). We know that her first independent steps are close at hand!

Riding with Ethan

Addison’s language continues to develop too! She now makes meaningful gestures including waving bye-by and clapping. It’s so stinking cute! She can say - and really mean! - mama and dada. She never ceases to melt my heart! She can repeat sounds and blow raspberries.

There are so many new and wonderful things that she does every day that I could keep writing until my fingers were numb! She has such a sweet disposition and is honestly the most precious thing on earth. We are so blessed.

This month we battled our first sickness when Addison came down with RSV. She was an excellent patient and took her breathing treatments like a big girl. After 3 days away from school and some extra snuggle time, she was good as new!

This month, we took our little Valentine to the Tech v. A&M basketball game. She LOVED the excitement of the game!

We also celebrated with our friends Chet and Dancey who revealed that they will be having a baby GIRL in June! Blessings on the Creels!

This month, as we now find our curious little girl beginning to test her boundaries (dog bowl, electric plugs, toilet, etc, etc, etc), we have been reminded of the importance of discipline and consistency, even at this young age. Our verse for the month comes from Proverbs 13:24, "Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children. Those who love their children care enough to discipline them."   I am a softy and will need to recite this to myself for the next 18+ years.

Amen and Pass the Butter,

Marcy

9 Month Update

This month, we are celebrating Addison’s "in and out".   It is hard to believe that Addison has been in this world for as long as she was in the womb!

The best word I have to describe Addison these days is BUSY! This child is just zooming past milestones, and we are chasing behind her trying to keep up! She is very good at standing and pulling herself up. She babbles up a storm and is a big fan of peekaboo.

There's our first tooth...bottom right!

This has been a busy month and there’s so much to catch up on, so here we go!

Addison’s first Christmas was wonderful! She was so festive throughout the month that she looked strange in colors other than red and green! There is one thing certain...Addison is one very loved (and perhaps slightly spoiled) girl!

The following week, we headed toward the hill country to celebrate New Years. First, we were off to Llano where we met Honey and dropped Addison off. They spent two days at my Uncle Ray and Aunt Patty’s house with cousins Luke (5) and Corbin (3) (my cousin Chris and his wife Carolyn’s boys). Ray, P, and Honey had fun chasing kids around Llano!

Hamm family nativity!

Baths are fun in the kitchen sink!

Party in the bed!

Aunt P gave Addison her first haircut...Honey kept her safe (and comfortably asleep) through it!

While Addison was having fun in Llano, Clay and I went to Fredericksburg to spend a little adult time. We stayed in a great bed and breakfast, the Clover Haus, that my Aunt Patty decorated. Aside from enjoying a good night’s sleep and using 2 hands to eat dinner without having to feed a baby, we had fun at Walt Wilkins’ birthday concert at the Auslander Thursday night, a wiffle ball game Friday morning, and pub crawl Friday night.

Saturday we picked up our girl and headed to Gruene. We did all things Gruene - stayed at the Gruene Mansion Inn, ate at the Gristmill, and listened to music at Gruene Hall. Sunday we spent the day at Gruene Hall where we met up with Uncle Zack, Aunt Jen, Ethan, Pops, Mary and Megan for our third annual trip to the New Year’s Day Hair of the Dog concert. Addison loved the music and was a big hit in her head phones!

Monday we packed up and headed west. We drove 980 miles and rang 2012 in right!

After our busy Christmas and New Year, we haven’t slowed down in 2012! This month, Clay had a milestone, turning 30 on Friday the 13^th! We celebrated with friends, and their babies, over dinner at the country club. We’re excited about the upcoming decade; I know it will be his best!

This month, as we begin our new year, the verse we have meditated on reminds us to "Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed."  Proverbs 16:3.

Happy New Year and Amen and Pass the Butter!
Marcy