18 Month Check Up, Update and Ear Infection

Addie turned 18 months old on May 26th!

Things have been so crazy with the end of the school year that I have not had an opportunity to post. We have big changes for summer. Daddy attends a professional development next week at the UofA , it has a nice stipend so Mommy said he could go. He finished up the 2nd portion of his National Board yesterday with a four hour long essay test. Please pray that he passes because it is a HUGE pay raise for us! For the summer, Mommy will working in Decatur and Gentry on Monday and Wednesday, seeing both school kids and some private kids from school that wanted summer services. That turns into extra money for debts and fun stuff like vacation. On Tuesday, I will be working for a friend that has a clinic right here in Centerton. Jeremy and Addie will be spending these days together. On Thursday and Friday, I have enrolled Addie in Gymbo classes at Gymborre. She will be going to Art and the Play and Learn time.

These are the things that are coming to mind right now that she is doing:

• CLIMBER!- You are very adventurous! You can climb on top of the dining room table, fireplace step, back of the couch, and just about anything else!
• EATING!- Not as good of an eater as you once were. You are enjoying "dip, dip" which is ketchup. You are good at staying hydrated and drink very well. Sometimes you request "Sweet Tea and Pepper" No I do not give these to you but sometimes you steal a drink of Mommy's!
• SLEEPING- Well I guess we all have our battles and this is one I have not chosen to fight! When you sleep all night in your bed, we are super excited; when you don't, we go get you and you sleep with us.
• TALKING- To have a mom that is an SLP, most of the time no one can understand you! But you do have excellent vocabulary. You enjoy naming all the people in the room and the animal sounds. You say no in the sweetest voice ever. However, you all but refuse to ever answer yes. You have started a grunting phase which is making your dad a crazy person.
• GROSS MOTOR- I guess your climbing ability is your big jump in this area. I am still concerned about your feet turning in. We have an appointment on Friday with a podiatrist.
• COGNITIVE/LANGUAGE- I am so amazed at what you understand. For example, tonight I said I want to see that paper and you just brought it over to me. You are trying to count to three. You can identify and kinda name these body parts: head, hair, ear, eye, nose, mouth, tongue, beard, belly, arm, finger, leg, knee and toes/feet. You will do the following activities when requested: dancing, marching, fast feet, circles, swimming, jumping (which is also gross motor). You love to identify objects and who they belong to, you have began sorting all the laundry by Mommy, Daddy, and Addie
• GAMES- Your favorite has to be chase and hide and seek. You are enjoying your shopping cart and love to push it around the house and place all your items on the table and then check out! You kinda resemble a bag lady!
  
• OUTSIDE- You are loving your backyard. You enjoy playing in the water. We are going to buy you a sand and water table but haven't yet. Your firetruck is out there, lawnmower and a big basket of outside toys. In the front yard, you love the rose bushes and enjoy watering all of our plants. Checking the mail with Daddy is another favorite.
• 18 month Checkup- You went to see Dr. Harmon today and got your first MMR shot. He seems to think that you feet are going to correct themselves. He looked in your ears and apparently your allergies have turned into an ear infection. This is your first one in 18 months. You have an antibiotic for 10 days hopefully, that will take care of it. You don't have to go back until you are 2!

We are so proud of you and amazed by your learning everyday!

Finishing Up School!

We want to wish our precious girl a Happy 1/2 Birthday!

She was 1 and 1/2 years old on May 26th!

We have been super busy with end of the year so I am hoping to
get caught up this weekend with a big blog about all that she is doing!

Our family always enjoys our summer but we have lots of transitions
to summer: work schedules for Mommy, week long science inservice for
Daddy and National Board Testing for Daddy.

Please pray for Addie and us as we change scheduling and move to a new
routine for the summer!

Yeah Kris Allen!

We had a nice surprise visit from Grammy this week. She had to come up and do a reset for deodorant with her friend before the shareholders meeting. So she came up Tuesday and worked from 10pm to 4am! YUCK. Addie went to Anna's and then Grammy came to pick her up around lunch. We were so thankful for Grammy this week because Addie had a fever and diarrhea and just wasn't herself so Grammy spent the rest of the week here keeping Addie for us. At first we thought it was teeth but then her fever got pretty high. I am pretty sure she had a bug. She seems to be feeling better. She also seems to be developing some 2 year old fits. There has been lots of screaming, crying and tears and some really good acting on her part as well.

So we were all watching American Idol and super excited when Kris won! I put my hands up and said Yeah! Addie started mocking me so Mom got this picture of us. I look kinda silly but Addie looks precious!

Pictures below

I uploaded these pictures on the smaller image. If you want to look at them close up you can double click and it will appear bigger!

Outside Work!

This blog post is not about Miss Addie, it is about landscaping and angry Daddy and dogs.
But we thought we would start it off with some cute baby feet in flip*flops!

This is a picture of our new beautiful recycled tire mulch! We love it!
It cost a lot more than the regular mulch but it is suppose to be good for 10 years, not fade or float away! Note to self: It takes way more than they claim on the bag!
Ideally, we want to get rid of some of the bushes that came with the house landscaping and replace them with something else, but after 22 bags of mulch there was no more $ for that!
And it was kinda too late to dig them up!
We will work on that in the fall and next spring.
I would like to relocate them to the backyard where they can try to survive the dogs.
Daddy got angry with Mommy during this process because after load number 1, she made him wait until his stipend check came before load number 2 came.


This is the tree that came with the house. If you will remember back to January there were pictures of Jeremy out hammering the ice off of it! We put a ring of pavers around it and planted some sweet potato vine there. Hopefully, it will take off soon. During this project, Daddy got upset because Mommy sent Daddy to the Lowe's and he didn't think that he knew what she wanted but he did an excellent job.

Last summer, I dug up some monkey grass from a work friend and planted it in front of our green electrical box in our yard. Bigby has enjoyed leaving his mark on it all winter. But if you look carefully it is turning green and growing! Jeremy wanted to plant trees and I encouraged him to be patient. Wal*Mart marked there trees down so we got these 2 trees for $5 each! Jermey and Brad planted them and then we went out 2 days later to put some little pavers around them and this is what we had:

A tree that had been gored! No bark about 8 inches all the way around the tree!
This is what made Daddy the most mad! You may ask yourself how did this happen:
It is about 85 pounds of red shakiness with a 7 inch long tongue!
I took this through the window so it is not the best picture.
Daddy said we were giving her away, Mommy said No
Daddy said we were setting her free, Mommy said No
Needless to say, Bella still lives here

Parker Came to Visit!

This is Addie and Parker on the couch before Sarah, Brad and Parker had to leave. They came to visit for a graduation.

Parker still in his jammies, Addie sitting on the fireplace.

They both really enjoyed the outside and both really needed a bath. This is our first co-ed bathing experience!
Addie taught Parker to climb onto the fireplace and she is reading him a book.

Addie pushing him in the firetruck or maybe pushing him out of the truck!

Just Playing with Mommy

Addie and I had to stay home from school one day last week because she had some severe diarrhea and a super raw tooty fruity! Stupid, I know but that's what we are calling it right now!
We had a luncheon planned for the girls at work for their birthdays so we made an appearance at that! Came home and took a great nap while Mommy cleaned the house!
This is later in the evening while Mommy was trying to fold laundry. Addie enjoyed putting Mommy's panties over her head and the towels too. We can throw all the laundry of the couch faster than you can turn around!








This is Addie sitting in her basket in her room reading a book! I am sure you can tell how this ended but the basket flipped over and Daddy happened to catch her with his foot!
















I walked into the living room and she was laying on her belly watching TV. Super cute. By the time I grabbed the camera she jumped up. But still a cute little picture. By the end of the day, our poops had slowed down and our bottom looked a lot better. We went back to school but we still have some not normal bowel movements!







We found the Mr. Potato Head in Mommy's therapy box in the garage and so we have been working on that.

















We can put the hat on and the shoes on. But we get angry at the other parts. We will have to keep working on that!