1st Birthday Celebrations! (Part 1)

Addie's birthday was a fun filled day! Here's a recap of what we did to celebrate -

The day before I made vanilla cupcakes with homemade strawberry buttercream frosting which we shared with friends at a dinner that night

On Sunday (via Skype with Nani and Grampie) and then on the morning of her birthday, Addie opened presents from family!

We had blueberry pancakes for breakfast

We met up with Daddy for lunch at Panera. Addie ate bread and macaroni and cheese!

When Addie awoke from her afternoon nap we went to Splash Cove where we met up with Alex. Adelaide had a blast sitting in the zero-entry wave pool and playing in the water sprays (but mostly trying to drink the water...)

When we got home we had dinner, sang, ate birthday cake, and then Addie opened her presents from us - a turtle car and a Disney princess Belle toy. 

And here are videos!

Singing Happy Birthday from Aggen Family on Vimeo.

Eating Her Cupcake from Aggen Family on Vimeo.

1st Birthday Celebrations! (Part 2)

Since Yia-Yia was away on Addie's actual birthday, a few days later we had another party complete with 'Happy Birthday' headbands, more singing, and party horns! Addie LOVED getting to eat cake again, and she got the concept of opening presents even more (although she still prefers to climb in the boxes that the presents came in).

Videos of our birthday party fun!!

Birthday Party from Aggen Family on Vimeo.

Silly Mom! from Aggen Family on Vimeo.

Aguante La Albiceleste!

With Argentina in the World Cup Finals this summer we snapped a couple of pictures of the niña dressed in her little soccer uniform that Alex got when he was serving an LDS mission in southern Argentina. And of course we had to have a soccer ball prop to go along with it!

1 Year Old

Adelaide Grace is 1 year old! 

I cannot believe how much she has grown this past year, and it has been fun looking back on old posts and seeing how little she used to be. My baby is now 1 and is a sweet, sassy, silly, sensitive, social little girl!

Accomplishments: Addie took her first steps this month (!!!), but has yet to actually start walking. She is a determined little girl and likes to do things are her own pace, so I am trying not to push her to walk as I know that when she is confident and ready she will do it. It is very exciting though when she does decide that she wants to take steps all by herself! She climbs up the stairs very quickly and now goes down by herself too, although we are always next to her to make sure she doesn't get too courageous and try to step down instead of scoot (yes, this happened...) Addie got 4 more teeth this month - the 4 top middle ones. It was rather funny as the side ones came in before her 2 middle so for a while there she looked like a vampire baby!

Foods She Liked/Didn't Like:  Still has her favorites, and now is getting more picky with what she will and won't eat. Still pretty good about eating what is in front of her and has yet to learn the art of chewing and swallowing before stuffing more food in :)
Discoveries: Adelaide's new trick is dancing! Whenever she hears music she'll start shrugging her shoulders and bobbing her head. It is really cute! This month Addie learned how to climb. One day she climbed into my lap as I was sitting on the floor and then quickly went from my lap and got herself up on a coffee table that I was next to. Now she wants to climb up on everything: the dishwasher, couches, out of the swimming pool and onto the lounge chairs, all over Mom and Dad, etc. She is a smart little girl and always closely watches what we are doing. One night Alex put a dolphin squirt toy into a cup and repeated this a couple of times. Addie copied him and has remembered this, so every time we show her the dolphin she looks for and grabs the cup and puts the dolphin right into it! And speaking of bathtime, she also discovered that if she puts her face right down into her bath water it is a much quicker and more efficient way to attempt to drink it. Gross.
Likes and Dislikes:  Addie loves playing with her Daddy when he gets home from work and their favorite game right now is sitting on opposites ends of the room and Alex hides and then pops out and come crawling really fast towards her - this has Addie roaring in laughter! Addie loves tagging along on errands as she can people-watch and wave. Her favorite is when we go to Sam's Club or Costco as she gets to eat samples too. Her favorite toys right now are a dump truck that she pushes around everywhere (she even makes a "vroom, vroom" sound while doing this!), and a baby doll that she smothers with hugs and kisses. She does not like wearing a bib or getting her face wiped off after dinner, but unfortunately this cannot be avoided as she is one messy girl during mealtimes and wears more food than she eats.
Memories: Splash Cove and sitting in the wave pool, Addie sitting on my stomach and tickling her while we both laugh, when she would do crawling laps during bathtime, laughing every time we play with the Jack-in-the-Box, when she giggles and talks during car rides, 1st Father's Day, going on walks after dinner when the temperature is perfect, blowing tummy raspberries after bathtime, playing "scoop &dump" with water outside (mostly dumping the water on herself), going a walk and seeing a rabbit.

11 Months Old

Accomplishments: Addie climbed up the stairs for the first time. We did not even realize that she was capable of doing it until she was halfway up! She also finally learned how to clap her hands and whenever we say "Yay!" she starts clapping.

Foods She Liked/Didn't Like:  Addie favorite foods to eat are bread, bananas, cheese, and avacado. Anything else she will eat without too much fuss but she gets very excited when she gets those foods.

Discoveries: Addie loves to imitate the silly faces that her Daddy makes and watching the two of them is hilarious.  She was really giggly this month especially as she got more tired around dinnertime, and discovered that whenever she would laugh we would usually laugh back and so she would keep giggling. 

Likes and Dislikes: Addie loves to go swimming! We are very lucky this summer to have a neighborhood pool close by and we try to go twice a week. Addie loves splashing in the water, but mostly she loves watching the other kids. She also loves going on walks in the stroller and we have lots of great shady paths close to us.

Memories: Having a family picnic and snuggling Addie on the grass afterwards, my 1st Mother's Day and Adelaide being extra sweet, wanting to share a cup of bath water with Daddy and have him drink it too, when Addie tried to knaw on my phone and I would catch her every time and each time she would crack up laughing, when I left her in the living room and went into the kitchen for 10 seconds and when I came back she was gone and I quickly found her crawling behind the narrow space between the couch and the wall, going to the zoo.

The Zoo

We went to the zoo when family came and had a blast! The weather was perfect, and Addie loved seeing all the animals and would point and babble at them! 

The polar bear

I love how they both have a leg propped up!

In "Australia" - that name is familiar!

Bird Exhibit

On the Zoo Bus

Looking at the animals on an African safari

She wasn't too sure about the orangutans ...

On the carousel 

Posing afterwards on the sea otter

5K Training

I signed up to do a 5K this summer, and race day is quickly approaching. Training has been going great, and I am really glad I decided to do this (so far...we'll see how I feel after the race!) I've been wanting to do a 5K for a while but finally went for it when I was researching things to do this summer in Kansas and saw that there was a race in the city we are in. I also came across this information at about 11pm, and decided to sleep on it to see if it still sounded like a good idea the next day! It did and so I decided to register. Now, I am not an athletic person. I was the nerdy asthmatic girl that rejoiced when Phys. Ed. was no longer a required course beyond 10th grade and I could take band and calculus instead :) So I consulted on social media, Pinterest, talked with friends, and found a program that worked with my life and seemed doable. I am using the 'Couch to 5K' training which is a combination of walking and running, and you slowly increase your running time until you are only running on your training days. The picture above is about two weeks old and now I am solely jogging and it is going great! I am no longer exhausted after running, and am getting close to that 3 mile mark. For the next two weeks my goal is to focus more on distance rather than the time run. Also, lucky for me there are many great trails nearby (with lots of hills which I love/hate), and since it has been getting so hot during the day Alex has been awesomely supportive and keeps a listening ear on the baby monitor while I go running once Addie is asleep so I don't take her out in the heat. I'll have to do another post after the 5K is done and let you all know how the experience went!!

And just for fun, I thought I'd include my set list of music that I run to. I am definitely a firm believer that  listening to music makes exercise fun and keeps you motivated when you feel like your legs are about to fall off!

Warm-Up: Pump Up the Jam - Technotronic 

(The only reason why I use this song to warm up is that it is 5 minutes, but can we all just agree that it gets old pretty quick?)

Girls Chase Boys - Ingrid Michaelson (nice and slow to start)

Good Riddance - Green Day

The Middle - Jimmy Eat World

Empire State of Mind (clean version)- JAY Z & Alicia Keys 

Hey Ya - OutKast 

(I hear that this is the perfect running song as it has the magic number of beats per minute that correlate with a natural runnning step yaddayaddayadda...)

Always Be - Jimmy Eat World 

Brave - Sara Barielles

Fire - Ingrid Michaelson

Months 9 & 10

(These posts are way, way, way late. Yay for catching-up on blogging during naptime!!)

9 Months Old

Accomplishments: Addie started sleeping through the night and taking regular naps again. Yippee! She also became much better at pulling herself up to a standing position. She waved goodbye for the first time when Alex left for school one day and it was the cutest thing! Her  bottom two teeth finally came in and her smile is so cute.

Foods She Liked/Didn't Like: Same as last month. We got more adventurous at the end of this month and tried egg yolk and cheese, both of which she loved!

Discoveries: The swing! While we had to bundle up to go outside, Addie loved walking over to the park and being pushed on the swings. Also, moving boxes were THE things to play with. I quickly decided it was pointless to pack until about a week before we moved out of our apartment since she would take any chance she got to pull everything out of the boxes. 

Likes and Dislikes: Addie and Alex are the best of buddies. She is so happy whenever he gets home for the day and never wants to leave his side. It is rather cute :) Addie also loved going on walks (when the weather was actually warm), reading books, blowing raspberries, and grabbing Daddy's water bottle that had a straw and trying to drink from it. We got a jumperoo this month and at first she liked it, but then would get upset whenever I tried to put her in it. She definitely preferred playing on the floor and being able to move wherever she wanted to. 

Special Memories: When Addie was having a combination of a meltdown and laughing episode at dinner and Alex called her a nutty girl and then proceeded to do this weird thai-chi-hand-movement/breathing thing to calm her down (apparently the apple does not fall far from the nutty tree...), giving kisses and hugs, wide-mouthed smiles (see the pictures above), writing postcards to cousins and doing painted handprints on them, when she tried to eat her sock that she had pulled off at dinner, taking naps in my arms at Church. 

10 Months Old

Accomplishments: Learning to put herself back to sleep when she woke up early in the morning-a real treat for me! She also would let go of what she was holding onto and would free stand for a couple of seconds. 

Foods She Liked/Didn't Like: Addie loved bread and tortillas. She did not like pureed baby food as much and wanted to be more independent and eat finger foods whenever she could.  

Discoveries: She started paying more attention when we would read books and would point at the pictures and on rare occasions even kiss her books! She also realized that her catch-all bib could be manipulated so she would tilt it up and then open her mouth and pour all the food that was in it into her mouth! She also discovered that Mom is pretty fun to snuggle with :)

Likes and Dislikes: Addie LOVES Bathtime! We started bathing her every night before bed as she was getting a lot messier during the day with eating more solids. This girl is hands-down her happiest in the bath! She has these bath flutes/recorders that you fill up with water and then blow into to play music. She got it right away and would play these flutes during the full duration of her bath. It was HILARIOUS to watch (especially the faces she would make while playing them)! She also loved going to library time and watching other kids. She will light up whenever she sees other babies and is a little social butterfly. She did not like sitting on the grass!

Special Memories: The rare moments where she wouldn't squirm and sit still on my lap, when she peed on me both before and after a bath and then refused to let me clean her up and scurried all over the floor with her nakey bottom in the air, moving into our new apartment and painting it while trying to juggle naps and playtime, seeing other kids at the mall play place, watching her sleep. 

Imitation

Our goofy daughter has been making these very silly faces lately and I could not pin down where she would have picked it up from. I quickly put two and two together at dinner when I witnessed this-

(sorry for the camera work that pans too fast & is a bit shaky- I was trying to capture the both of them!)