Knowing Laurie in real life, I cracked up when I read one of her recent posts about how a commenter accused her of having marshmallow brains on her blog and demanded more substance.  Nothing could be further than the truth. Imagine my surprise when I got a comment yesterday from someone complaining that my blog had deviated away from the reliable baby updates and mothering crap and she was going to stop reading for awhile. I think that goes to show that we just can’t win! If you post thoughtful or intellectually stimulating (aka posts that aren’t about poop and drool), then you turn off some and if you post all about the poop and drool, you turn off others. Good thing most of us bloggers do it much more as a way to document our children’s lives and less as a way to appease or appeal to other’s. Lucky are we if we kill two birds with one stone but it sure isn’t a goal when we sit down in front of our computers.

That said, I have been meaning to post an Addy update! Now that she’s a big kid, there is little documentable change from month to month that would be worthy of its own monthly update like I used to do. But it’s been awhile so here goes….

{get used to seeing this background, it will become very familiar!}

She’s now 28 months old. She’s 25 lbs and 36″ tall.  That puts her at over 75th percentile for height but under 10th percentile for weight. What does that mean? She is hard to fit for clothing! ha. I know I’m not alone here - a lot of our girls suffer this same fate. Thank goodness for dresses and adjustable waist pants!  Her feet are finally growing and she now fits in a size 6 shoe. Yay!

The biggest new change in our lives is that she is no longer napping. At all. She has gone all week without naps after a week of one hour naps (after an hour of trying to get her to sleep). I can definitely say you can not tell at all that she’s missing a nap and that the one measly hour of sleep she was getting was more frustrating than relieving. I know we won’t miss the one hour it took to get her to sleep each day either! Still it is more of an adjustment for me than her. I had a whole rhythm to my day and now it’s all screwed up. I find it is suddenly 4pm and I haven’t done the things I usually do at 1pm when she naps and then it’s too late, it’s almost dinner and then bedtime. The girl just does not need a lot of sleep. At all.  I’ve been really REALLY wanting to compensate by getting her to sleep earlier at night. Her usual bedtime is 8pm and it is super-hard for us to get her bathed, teeth brushed and in bed much earlier than that. And honestly she doesn’t seem to NEED to go to bed earlier. I just thought it might be a nice added bonus since we no longer have the nap luxury. I still just can not believe we have a no-nap household. crazy.

{my crazy-haired girl}

She LOVES tv but did not miss it on vacation at all and when we were around tvs showing kid shows she didn’t want to bother. So clearly tv is her boredom crutch. Take away the boredom and she doesn’t miss it at all. She LOVES puzzles and is getting pretty good. She LOVES building things with blocks. She still LOVES looking at things through binoculars and magnifying glasses. She loves loves loves her daily bath and now loves to blow bubbles in the water and have her hair washed by laying back in the water. Just a few weeks ago I blogged about how she never has her hair washed without complaining. Now she lays back and oohs and aaahs about how great it feels. Oh and she really loves cutting things with scissors. A lot. We have to be VERY careful not to leave anything but her safety scissors around because she will experiment on ANYTHING to see if she can cut it. But most of all, more than anything, she loves ANYTHING that Noah has. It does not matter if it is garbage he is carrying over to the trash can or a plain piece of white paper. If he has it, she wants it.

She is chatty, but does not talk our ear off like Noah (which is a nice change). She’s at that stage where she often tries to use big words but uses them entirely wrong. She asked what a basket of potpourri was in my bathroom this week and I told her it was just a decoration. The next night at bathtime she said “Can I see the experiments?”. It took me a few to figure out she means decorations, not experiments! ha.  Although she can still sometimes be hard to understand she doesn’t use baby words anymore. Today she cracked up when I explained about some of her old pronunciations of things (that often Noah still uses because they were cute and catchy!). She said “I used to say ‘you’re wuppy’? And now I say ‘you’re welcome’? That’s so silly!”. And just having that conversation with her made me a little sad. she is SO big now.

{serious face}

She plays well by herself a LOT of the time but loves to cuddle up and read a book (FINALLY!) or watch tv or play puzzles with us. She will ask us to play with her or she’ll say “Talk to me” when she wants attention but she has a really nice healthy balance of entertaining herself and wanting attention. She LOVES playing imaginary games. She’s social and outgoing but not in a attachment-concerning way. She’s very careful to feel out other kids by gently sort of gliding up to them, touching them lightly to measure their response and, if it’s positive, they are best friends. If it’s negative, she just moves on. Unfortunately her tactics for gauging adult friendship, thanks to her insanely immature Uncle Joby, are to walk up and hit, smack or poke new adults, giggle and see how they react. Thanks Joby!!! Once she makes a friend, young or old, it’s a friend for life. She often tells both of us parents and her siblings that we are her best friends. But that’s a title she gives to anyone she truly loves. She has LOTS of best friends!!

I wrote recently that after several weeks of sudden fear of going into her beloved gym class by herself we finally just pulled her. We took her back down to the parent-child class and also enrolled her in a ballet class elsewhere that is also parent-child. She is in *heaven*. She absolutely loved being in both classes. She feels confident enough, with a parent nearby, to venture out on her own and strut her stuff independently. She learns SO much in each class and practices almost obsessively all week. She is just so SERIOUS about the things she learns. I don’t know if it’s just that she’s a natural athlete or if that’s her personality about learning. When she’s older and has other learning opportunities that are more academic and less physical I’m sure we’ll find out!  Meanwhile *I* feel so much better since I just did not feel comfortable with her being in a class by herself at such a young age. I feel like we will know when she’s ready. And at least with her new dance class, we are encouraged to sort of back away and allow her to participate independently as she is willing and able. Our awesome dance instructor shared that for some kids this happens at 2 and others not until 5, which has always been my theory but is infrequently shared with teachers/coaches/instructors! It was a relief to hear someone be so realistic in their expectations of little kids.

{sitting on the window ledge}

Remember back when she turned two and I said we were FINALLY done potty-training? I totally lied. Well not intentionally - I thought we were done. But we weren’t. And now I am convinced she will NEVER be potty-trained. This week I finally caved and did the unthinkable: I pulled out the M&M’s. Bribery has never worked for her before but I’m desperate.

She knows all her colors and EVERYTHING is about colors these days. She asks frequently what our favorite colors are and talks about the color of EVERYTHING. Color is very very important to her. She doesn’t know any letters and still could care less about counting but she does love to try to sing the ABC song and figure out how to count on her figures. Very cute.

Her ‘ears pierced’ as she calls them are all healed up. She is very happy about that and we are looking forward to getting some new earrings this month to try out. She still talks about her earrings at least once a day and constantly CONSTANTLY talks about MY earrings and how they are the same as HER earrings but mine are bigger. Incidentally, my ears eventually got used to earrings again and I haven’t taken my out in weeks. Anyway the point is the girl really freakin’ loves her “ears pierced”. I’m so glad we did it.  If I’ve learned one thing about this little girl it’s that when she knows what she wants, she doesn’t let down or give up EVER and when she gets it, she doesn’t let you forget about it! The earrings are just the most recent example but by no means the first!

{crazy reflection of her ball in her eyes}

Oh and probably a big one (for me) since my last big developmental update is that she is no longer nursing. She hasn’t nursed in two months. I took her to a LLL Toddler meeting and that was the last time she nursed! Now she has all kinds of questions about breasts and nipples and bras almost like she is discovering them anew. This has happened with every single one of my nurslings when they are finally weaned. Its like they all of a sudden notice the human breast for the first time, like they forgot they were attached to it for the last several years! LOL It’s an amazing phenomenon, I know I’m not doing it justice in this explanation. But suffice it to know it is one clear way to know that she won’t ever nurse again. I’m not nearly as sad as I thought I would be. We’ve moved on, together.

As a bonus she is now slightly more interested in having her picture taken and she is VERY interested in having videos of herself taken. I can convince her to take nice pictures just by asking and now, if I’m REALLY desperate, I can fake-cry and she’ll totally pose and ham it up for me! Hurray! Unfortunately we have ONE -read it - ONE east-west facing window in our entire house. I’m mentioned before that it’s like a cave in here. I hate it and it sucks for photography. But today I got Addy to play by the window so I could take some pics. I can’t WAIT until the bugs go away and the head kicks down another 10 degrees so we can finally get back outside again. I miss taking pictures and we all miss the fresh air.

{smiling AND looking into the camera - a whole new way to take photos!}
Well that’s about it! See? I can still ramble incessantly about drool and poop with the best of ‘em! ha.

If you read Kelly’s blog you probably know we spent the last several days hanging out on Florida’s east coast with some really amazing mamas, their husbands and just beautiful children for our own little Heritage Camp, babystyle. I know I keep saying it but how lucky am I?!! Sooooo lucky, I know.

So back in the spring when I went to Denver, Kelly was also supposed to make that trip but it didn’t work out. In its place, Laurie graciously offered her family’s summer place as a hang out this summer if we were willing to make the trip. To add to the allure, as if that alone wasn’t enough, S. lives locally too. Somehow (I honestly can’t remember but am SO glad it worked out) Jena got brought into the mix and there you have it - the fabulous five! ha. All together we were actually 22 strong. Crazy, huh? It was seriously SO much fun and we are already conspiring and planning another MUCH LARGER blogger get together somewhere more centrally located because there were so many other bloggers and AP’s we would have loved to have in the mix. So look for details on that soon.

Kelly did a really awesome job summing everyone up. I think I only mixed up Addy and Lucy twice this time! haha. I know at laest one other person unrelated to either girl also mixed them up once, so I feel justified

These are an amazing group of women who are sooo smart and soooo freakin’ hilarious. I swear I have not ever laughed so much in my life. We had LOTS of hours of long chats long into the night which left us with like 2-4 hours of sleep a day. ROUGH! I’m so not a college kid anymore, apparently! But I would not do it differently because it was just so much fun.

The Dads are totally amazing husbands and fathers. they are smart, super-helpful, hands-on and just fun. I love them all and love seeing such good fatherhood and husbandhood (husbandry?!?!) in play. Case in point, Addison totally loves Travis (who she calls Tabitch - haha) like an Uncle. She just adores him and that’s something she reserves for VERY few people. We are one lucky group of women! We missed Kelly’s husband and S’s husband who both had to work but I am positive that they are just as awesome.

The kids….wow!!!! They are all so beautiful and radiant and amazing to me. It is so neat to me to see the products of the parenthood of some parents I truly admire. My kids really loved them all and had such a great time and so did I.

Highlights for me:

* tidepooling with my boys

* collecting sand dollars, starfish, crabs and shells with my kiddos

*hearing my kids excite over spotting tiny sandsharks in the waves and huge tortoises in the dunes.

* big huge waves, real white sand and clean ocean water

* watching the dolphins from the deck in the wee (for me) morning hours.

* long talks about politics, religion and boning the neighbors

* ruining the olympics into the wee hours (so sorry Kel!)

* insane games where the kids do nothing but run back and forth and crack up.

* seeing someone’s kiddo walking hand in hand with someone else’s parent

* being able to talk adoption and ethics endlessly without being intrusive, getting weird looks or boring people to death. Speical bonus for  me was talking adoption with Jena, who I work with at VVAI, live and in person. How cool is that?

*awesome fried shrimp

* babysitting finjin, cuddling her to sleep and hogging her as long as I could

* playing with lucy on the last day when it was quiet and she totally turned on her charm, jackson’s sweet loving on the last day, seeing samuel and noah playing in waves together (also on the last day! hmmm sensing a pattern here), getting bailey to talk to me about earrings and stuff (again, final day), khai’s hysterical camera poses, Shane’s awesome crawl straight into the ocean over his head without fear, S’s daughter M’s precious bonding with Addy during out trip into town, S’s daughter A’s hysterical laughing competition with Addy, S’s son L’s pure joy and energy that just makes you smile all the time. These are some totally AWESOME sweet, adorable, smart kids. I love them all!

* watching kelly’s natural parenting and strong connection with Lucy, seeing Laurie and Travis tag-team parent their 3 tinies without seemingly ever getting frazzled and just rolling with the punches, basking in the peace and love humor and patience that Jena and Sheldon parent with and finding inspiration in the patience, grace and joy that S seems to meet every day with despite some extremely challenging days that are hilarious to hear about and read about on her blog but would definitely bring out the worst in me as a Mother, I know! These paernts just inspire me in all the best ways to be a better, more connected, more joyful, more appreciative mother.

{Addy & M.}

Things I could have skipped:

* Dalton got pierced straight and entirely through his fingernail by a crab. Yeoch!

* Noah, Teegan and I all got colds (no, Em and Lee, this was not your doing!! It was much too soon and we had already begun to feel funky before we even left NC!)

* Dalton was out waveboarding on a higher-wave day and a shark swam up to Dalton. It was NOT a shark attack - haha. That would be the fish tale portion of this tale. But it was big enough (close to as big as he is!!) and close enough that he decided his waveboarding day was over. ha. Tony asked the life guard about it and he was all “Oh yeah, I saw that shark. Its no big deal”. haha. For landlocked midwesterners, however, its sort of a big deal!!!!

* the sunburns. oh the sun burns. The number of sunburns I personally have endured just this summer along is ridiculous. I don’t know what I was thinkig but I imagine it was something like “I live in Houston, we have a pool, we are outside allll the time, i’ve already been suburnt several times so I should be safe”. Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. Thankfully this was by far not the worst sunburn I’ve had this summer and I felt pretty much fine within 24 hours. Noah, on the other hand, endured his first ever sunburn and I feel sooo bad about it. I took SUCH huge efforts to protect his lily-white skin and blond head for the first 6 years of his life and just totally screwed up. He did use sunscreen but not soon or often enough. Poor kid.

Despite those few minor things, this was the time of our lives. Thank you Laurie and Travis for opening your family’s home to us crazies!!!!

More pics:

{Khai}

{Miss Sassy Pants}

{Lucy loving on Finley}

{playing with Lucy - peekaboo!}

{Jack}

{Finley}

{Crazy Khai}

{Jena the Book Whisperer}

{Shane - wave-bound}

{chasing down the flying balloon}

{photographing the photographer}

{more balloon chasing}

{ring around the rosy}

There are sooooo many more! When I get home I’ll go through them and post-process and do another big picture post.

Charelston and the Citidel is the setting of some of my all time favorite books. I have had a love affair with this place all of my adult life but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to go. I LOVE it here. It is so beautiful and charming and rich with history. The shopping and food is incredible, the architecture (like Pittsburgh) makes me keep my camera in my hand at all times.I wish I had WAY more time here.

It rained for our entire drive to Charelston which sucked but then it cleared up once we got here. We did the lame tourist thing and ate at Bubba Gump’s but the food was REALLY good. Then we went to the waterfront and played on the peer, watched the dolphins, enjoyed the AWESOME weather (it was probably only 70) and enjoyed the sunset. It was really relaxing and enjoyable which was perfect because I hit some sort of “get me away from everyone, my family is draining me dry!” bad mood all day. So it snapped me out of it. The boys loved looking for and catching little tiny crabs and Addy just loved running around and jumping.

This morning we’re going to go do a tiny bit of window shopping and then grab some ice cream and head off for our next destination - FLORIDA! I can not wait to get there!!!!!!!!!! So today will be all driving, all day, and then settling in.