ONE big party!

One year ago today I ended up on bedrest in the hospital after my water broke after only 29 weeks and 6 days of pregnancy. Six days later Adele was born, and today we got together with friends and family to celebrate her first incredible year of life!

Grandma made an incredible cake, and beautiful cupcakes...

We had the party at Grandma and Grandpa's and I thought I'd make life easier by getting sandwiches from Subway instead of trying to make a ton of sandwiches, after all there is a Subway right next to their house. Unfortunately I had a blonde moment and didn't check the actual location of the Subway I ordered from. We discovered this morning that it was, of course, the wrong Subway. Luckily it was not too much further... it would have been a disaster if it had been in the wrong state!

Adele was given some lovely gifts, and had so much fun opening them!

It was wonderful to get together with so many of the people who have been so important to us in the last year, and who have cared about and supported us as Adele grew bigger and became the sweet little smiler that she is today. We are so grateful to have you in our lives!

The snow that's coming, and snow from the past...

We've had some snow and ice and dangerous driving conditions already, but I'm getting nervous for tomorrow. The forecast is nasty, I need snow tires for my car, and I have places to go. I'm trying to cheer myself up by remembering the good things about snow... but other than how pretty it looks though a window when you're in a warm house, I'm not really a fan.

Ali came to visit us in Michigan in 2005, and we all drove up to Minnesota together to visit Ben's family for Christmas.

Two things stand out in my memory from that trip. The first is that we wanted to give her an awesome Chicago style deep dish pizza experience and stopped on the way home to get one near Chicago, not realizing that they sell them half baked for takeaway and you are meant to cook them at home... we knew it was risky trying to eat it in the car anyway (we couldn't stop because we had Brodie with us and couldn't leave him in the car) but trying to eat it half cooked was quite the challenge. We thought that the restaurant messed it up, but we learned later that everyone knows you're meant to finish baking it at home! Not a good experience!

The other thing that stands out is this... further proof that snow is a dangerous playmate.

My favorite part of this video, after the spectacular wipeout, is the small child (Ryan?) hurrying over to make sure she's ok!

I hope tomorrow's snow related experiences will be less unpleasant!

She Sits! And the other one wees!

Adele had her first visit with the physical therapist for early intervention this week, and by the next day she was sitting unassisted for much longer than ever before! The PT gave us some different techniques to help her practice sitting and tummy time, and it looks like they work!

She still has work to do, but this is huge progress for her! She is using her muscles to balance more and using her hands for support and to push herself more upright. She's a super star!

We're working on having more tummy time, which strengthens her muscles and helps her to sit and roll over from back to front. She is not a fan of tummy time and rolls over to her back immediately. One of the things the PT noticed was that she prefers to roll to the right (Zoolander, you are not alone!) and to prevent this, suggested that we lie her against the couch to either force her to practice rolling left, or just work on being on her tummy more... she's not super impressed with this, but it helps!

The variety of things that the therapists want to see her doing that she's not doing yet is kind of overwhelming, but I am so incredibly pleased that she's already making progress. In addition to this, she has also begun using the 'pincer grasp' to grab little pieces of food. She's been choking frequently on non-pureed food recently so the only tiny chewy foods I give her are puffs, which dissolve really fast, but as soon as she discovered them she was a big fan. Sometimes she even gets them into her mouth!

Fiona is going through a non-cooperative phase, so it's been really hard to get any good pictures of her. Her big news though is POTTY TRAINING!! She has been in underwear all day for a week now and has not had any accidents. The liquid kind anyway. We won't talk about her poo issues :-/ Still, despite needing to work on that a little, I am so proud of her! It's been a long process, but she has suddenly developed the self control of a camel, and can go for far longer than Ben without going to the bathroom. It's still terrifying to take her out in public, but she's doing great!

Also, I made her a hat :-)

They are such amazing little girls!

Happy Birthday to Ben!

It's Ben's birthday today! I won't embarrass him by telling you how old he is but let's just say that if you multiply 4 by 9, he'll be that old two years from now. And yes, I double checked that with a calculator...

He took the day off work, and the girls both went to daycare this morning, so we got to hang out just the two of us! You might think that would be a good opportunity for some romance, but instead we went to Target and then I did some work while he nagged me to hurry up so we could go to lunch. And what a lunch it was! There's a sushi buffet next door to where he works that he has been excited to take me to, but it doesn't go well with kids and it's kind of pricey... well today was the perfect day to go!

(I didn't take this, it came from here, but ours looked very similar)

You order what you'd like off the menu and they bring it to your table, and then you just keep ordering more and more food until you're making this happy groaning noise and sneakily unbuttoning your trousers to give your tummy more space. It was so yummy!

Fiona gave him Toy Story 3. She was excited about it - it has a dinosaur on it!

I'm sure she'll be up bright and early tomorrow morning to watch it with him :-)

We had a party at his parents house - jointly with his Dad who is having a birthday next week. We had pizza and.. ICE CREAM CAKE!! Mmmmmmmm YUM!

I think the best part of the day for Fiona was licking ice cream and frosting off the candles...

And the best part for Ben was choosing a new phone for me and then getting to "set it up for me". He's been really excited about it and finding out that it was released today made this the best birthday ever. He's funny.

Happy Birthday Sweetie! We love you!

11 Months

Guess who's 11 months old today...

This girl!

She's still working on her phone skills though...

She seems to be starting to feel better. The cough is less frequent and she's mostly back to being her usual happy baby self. She's still pretty congested, but her appetite is better and she's sleeping better. Not well, but that has nothing to do with her being sick ;-)

Happy 11 month birthday tiny love!