Addison

We were riding to dinner last night and Jordan told Addison to tell me what happened during the day. She responded with "I hit Ellett." Greaaat! She then told me that she got a "pop pop" from her Nana after she hit Ellett in the face. She was very matter-of-fact about it. I asked her if she was going to hit Ellett again and she's like "Yeah!" I told her that it made Mommy very sad that she hit Ellett and she laughed and then fake cried. I hope that she was able to learn a lesson...

She's pretty bossy with Ellett although she loves him to death and can't wait to see him most of the time. We're working on learning to share-both toys and people! Addison has a mini-hissyfit if I hold Ellett or talk to him or hug on him. You could say that Addison is slightly jealous.

The other night we were watching the Backyardigans (because if Addison is awake and we are at home, chances are she's wanting to watch the Backyardigans) and Jordan had to leave to go to his friend Joel's house to help with a car. About 30 minutes later I was putting Addison to bed and she asked for her Daddy. Before I would even answer her to tell that Jordan wasn't home she said, "Daddy's not here. He's at Joel's house..." then "Daddy can't sing right now." My girl is just so smart. She picks up on everything and can talk so well! She just amazes me! (and no I'm not biased at all...)

Addison-ism's

My child is very vocal. Jordan and I were talking about her development and looked online to see some kind of stats on what a 21/22 month old should be able to do. It said they should be able to say around 30 words. I'd say that she knows well over 100 words and their meanings not including what she can repeat on demand. She says the funniest things as she's exploring her vocabulary and learning to form sentences. Here are a few things she's been saying that I want to remember. She really makes me laugh! :)

* While riding in the car, Addison apparently saw a bird because she suddenly says, "Bird! Tweet, tweet! Caaaw, Caaaw!"

* Addison labels most loud engine-y noises as airplanes (eh-paaane!) and looks up and says "upupupup in da sky!"

* We were on our way to the outer banks last weekend (a post with pictures will come soon!) we went across one of the long bridges over the sound to the island. All you could see was water and Addison looks to left and says "Wa-er!!" then she looks to her right and exclaims "TWO wa-ers!"

* Addison is learning to count. She's getting better with it but you have to start with One, two, three and she'll say four and five sometimes six or waits for you to say six then says seven and eight. The nine and ten don't normally happen, although she did she "seben, eigh, Nana" the other day, so that was getting close! :)

* Anytime we go past a pasture with pretty much any type of animal, Addison tells me that it's a "Moo-tow!" She loves Moo-Cows! and giddy-ups (horses), and bak-baks (chickens), and sheep! pretty much all farm animals!

* One of her favorite things is to request songs that she wants us to sing to her. When she's really sleepy and clingy she asks for "hush-il-baby" (Hush Little Baby). She asks for "E-I-O" (Old MacDonald had a Farm), "March!" (either If You're Happy and You Know It or Lord's Army which she also calls "yessir!"), "Sessame" (Jesus Loves Me), "Issy Spyr" (The Itsy Bitsy Spider ...she loves the hand signs and grins and giggles while you're singing!). I'm sure there are other songs she requests but I can't think of them right now.

* My little sweetie is repeating everything she hears now! We really have to be careful what we let her hear on the TV and the radio (or what we say... I don't really want my almost-two-year-old says "Dang" or "Oh my gosh!").

* This is one of the funniest things she's said...and so smart! We were sitting in my bedroom and Addison found a nearly empty ibuprofen bottle and started throwing it, saying "Addison fow it!". Jordan and I both scolded her about throwing and took it away from her when she continued to do it. She cried so I told her she could have it back, but if she threw it one more time, I would take it away for good. She nodded and held it tightly to her chest. She was walking around with it when she looked at me and says "Daddy said fow it..." She was totally making that up and testing me with it! We laughed so hard and when I finally stopped laughing, had to tell her that NO, Daddy did not say that she could throw it! Funny Girl!

* This doesn't really have a lot to do with Addison talking but she is getting close to being able to start the potty-training process. She sees me potty and has to get her little potty and set it right next to the toilet. She then sits on it and will smile up at me then pause for a minute and tell me "Addison pee pee!" Now, I have no idea whether she's actually peeing at that moment or not since she's fully diapered and clothed. But she tells us immediately when she poops and she is definitely interested in the potty process. I think in the next few months we'll really start to get serious about it. I'm not going to push it too much yet since she's not even two yet. My goal would be to have her potty trained by the time she's 2 1/2. We'll see.

* I'm getting ready to make the switch to a size 4 diaper for her. She's been in a 3 for probably over a year now and it still fits pretty well but it starting to get kind of snug so I think the 4 will definitely be more comfy for her!

* When she's running away from me or doing something that she shouldn't be I'll call out "Addison Kate!" and she repeats it, which is just super cute! "A-i-son Tate!" We got her to say Addison Cline for a while and then she would say "Mommy Cline, Daddy Cline, Nana Cline, Papaw Cline" (all of which were right)"then "Grandee Cline, Papaw Cline, Kyla (Lyla) Cline" (which were not right, but it was cute!)

She's such a sweet girl and has started asking for hugs when she's saying goodbye. It's really cute and I am so hoping that she will continue to become more and more snuggly! I love some sweet Addison snuggles!

All About Addison

(Yes, I have an Addison Obsession. And, Yes, she is the only thing I have to talk about...ever) Addison is becoming such a big girl! She is so sweet and just hilarious to watch. Here are some Addison-isms:

* She can answer you when you ask what her name is and you can actually tell what she's saying (for the most part anyway...sounds kind of like "Aa-i-sin" if you say it really fast). She used to say "Addie (Aa-EE)". Where's my baby gone?

* Last week Jordan, Kyla, Addison and I went out to eat (Chang Thai-new Thai place we discovered which is so, so good! Addison spent the whole car ride saying "Chang Thai!" in the cutest little voice) and on the way home Jordan burped really loud. Kyla responded with an enthusiastic "Niiiiice!" to which Addison promptly repeated. Kyla and Jordan thought that it was hilarious so they kept making themselves burp so Addison would say "nice!" Thankfully she hasn't really done it since so I'm hoping she forgot it (unlikely). We're (or rather...I'm) working on her saying "excuse me" for burps. She knows that when you poot you say excuse me (or "moo me" in Addison-ese). If some around her poots and she hears, she'll suck her breath in and look at you really wide-eyed then laugh, say "moo me!" and then she'll say "Mommy (just for example sake) poo poo!!"

* Addison has a new facial expression that we call her mirror face. She stands in front of the mirror and raises her eyebrows as far as she can and brings her chin against her neck (creating multiple chins) and smile. She holds this face for a few seconds then laughs very dramatically at herself and then repeats the process. This girl is DRAMATIC! Can't wait until her teenage years! (Can you hear my sarcasm?)

* Addison knows how to group our family and friends into pairs or family units. We can ask her "Who does Pat (my aunt) go with?" and she'll say "Giiiinnn!" (Glenn-my uncle). She does this for most of my aunts and uncles or couples that we know. At night when we put her to bed she always prays for everyone she can think of. It's cute because I'll prompt her with a family member when she runs out of people to name and she names the rest of their family. I'll say "Lori" (Jordan's sister) and she repeats (La-wee) then says "Ellett" (Eh-it), "Conner" (Non-nah) and "Brent" (Bent). She looks at me and waits for me to repeat the name before she goes to the next one. We do this with lots of our friends and family. The first name out of her mouth is always "Sylas" (Sy-iss) then "Banyon" (Mam-in) sometimes followed by "Kirby" (Lob-ee) and "Dustin" (Ust-in). Then at the end she always says "Amen!" (several times)


* Speaking of "Amen", this Sunday Addison stayed with me for most of worship (as opposed to going to play in the nursery) so she was in the auditorium for the closing prayer. She stayed quiet and folded her little hands and squeezed her eyes shut, peeking out at me every few seconds. After the man leading the prayer said "amen" and before it got loud with everyone starting to talk, Addison yells "Aaaammennn!" out into the silence. Everyone start looking at her and laughing so that's all I heard about for the afternoon. It was really cute and only a little embarrassing!

* Addison is very much a girly-girl. She loves purses, chap stick and playing tea with her tea set. It's so cute to watch her carry her purse on her arm because it won't stay on her shoulder, so in order to keep it from falling off her little arm, she walks (or rather, she runs) around with her arm up, hand raised. She keeps little nick-knacks in her bag, such as multiple chap sticks, a stick of baby sunscreen that she calls her BIG chapstick, a Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) tiny figurine, Tigger figurine, one of her baby dolls' bottles, and some fake credit cards. She likes to empty everything out and then put it all back in. She also makes anyone who visits our house come to her room and sit down ("Nit Nown" while patting the chair) at her tiny Pooh Bear table so that she can serve them tea. Her favorite thing is for you to say "More, please" ("Mowe, peez" she repeats while grinning) to get a refill from her tea pot. It amazes me how she knew immediately how to "pour" the tea from the pot into the little pink cups and give it out to her "guests". It must be ingrained in her female DNA or something.

* Something else that amazes me is how she plays with her baby dolls or stuffed animals. She was doing one of her puzzles the other day and had her kitty cat with her (by far her favorite of the "babies", the one that she must have along with her night night (blanket) to go to sleep at night) and held the puzzle piece handle in the kitty cat's paw and put it in its spot. Then she looks at the kitty cat and said "Thank you, kitty cat!" (Nay noo, Tiddydat!) then repeated it several times to me including the sign for "thank you" until I realized what she was saying. Now she says it all the time. She also plays tea with her kitty cat by propping it up in the chair and passing the tea cup to it and taking it back saying "thank you kitty cat" and "more please." When I'm rocking her at night (between naming people in the ongoing nightly prayer) she sips on her milk. She has to offer it to her kitty cat and night night, as well as me and the rest on the toys across the room, while she makes sippy noises as we all "drink" her milk. She thinks this is funny but also uses it as a bedtime-delaying tactic. she definitely has a good imagination. She also likes to put chap stick on all her toys (but not really because it's rolled down too far in the tube).

She does tons of funny, cute things and I can't remember them all but I hope these gave you a smile or laugh for the day. :)

Post I Can't Seem to Finish

I don't know all the different places/directions this post is going to go, but I'm sure it won't be organized. I've been working on this post for the past 2 weeks and just can't seem to finish it...


It's been a while since my last post. I don't have any good excuse for not writing besides not having time or just not feeling it. I do feel like I'm in a better place than I was a couple weeks ago. I'm still healing and grieving but I'm not consumed by loss and sadness anymore. I have moments that I'm really sad and let my mind wander, thinking of all the things I should be preparing for and worrying over. I still think of things that I was going to have to do before February when the baby came but then I catch myself and those thoughts are immediately replaced by emptiness and slight bitterness. I'm not angry at God and I have accepted my situation, but that doesn't mean that I don't still feel disappointed and frustrated. I've been in the middle of conversations with friends, talking about babies or the second child or future plans and I have to really think before I say things. I was in the mindset of having another baby in February for almost four months and its hard to just make my preset thoughts change overnight. I know I've had a month to adjust but things still hop into my head at any given moment. I'm still feeling the sting at times.


I've been thinking about timing of when to plan for another baby. It still really stresses me out. Although my last pregnancy was not 100% planned (it was 100% wanted) and caught us a bit by surprise, I was very content with the spacing God was giving us between children. Now, after I had decided that 21 months was going to be a wonderful age difference between Addison and Baby #2 and that it was exactly what I wanted, I have to accept that that is no longer in God's plan for our family. I still would like to have our kids close in age. That leads me to trying to decided weather I can handle the stress and worry that I know would come with being pregnant again right now or wait a little while. I also have the added stress of paying for the miscarriage and D&C (which from the Insurance explanation of benefits, looks like its going to be nearly as much as having Addison. lovely. It costs as much to have a tiny baby taken from you as it does to birth a healthy, full-term baby) and wondering how long that will take to pay that off before we'll have more hospital bills with the cost of having another baby... The financial aspect doesn't bother me as much as the emotional horrors that await me when I'm pregnant again (It will be a long, stressful, worrisome 40 weeks when it happens). Jordan is more caught up on the financial side. It's a lot to think about. I'm praying for guidance.


On to lighter things. (I really didn't mean for this to be a downer post. And I really do feel better overall but there is not a moment that goes by that I'm not thinking about it in some aspect.) So I think I might have caught the Pandora bug. No, I'm not getting sick. For those of you that don't know what Pandora is (first, go to website and browse) it is a brand of jewelry. What I am particularly interested in is the bracelets with beautiful, interchangeable beads. They can be quite expensive, if you buy them new from jewelry stores. That's why I am looking on Ebay! I'm not really all that concerned about having the "real" thing and I'm okay with the cheaper options that are available. I can see this turning into something that will be time consuming. I'll have my co-worker, Sonya to thank for that. :)

Addison has been such a mess! She has a huge personality and really is starting (or continuing, rather) to talk a lot. She calls me Momma and sometimes Mommy (although normally when I'm trying to get her to say Mommy, she say Yummy-she is a total food-oriented baby!). She calls Tripp "Bip" so we'll hear her saying "NO, NO, Bip!!" She's starting to say GranDee and Grandpa. She still says Dadda (occasionally Daddy), Nana, and Pawpaw (for my dad and Jordan's dad). She's also started to say Ellett ("Ay-Yett") and tells him to come on (Ellett is her 10 month old cousin that Gena keeps also. They are together 3 out of 5 days per week). It's really cute to hear her try to imitate what we say. We laugh at her and she just grins so big and is so proud of herself. One of my favorite parts of the day is when I'm driving Addison home after picking her up in the evenings. We talk and sing and make faces at each other in the car (in the mirror-don't worry, I'm a very careful driver). I just love seeing that little face crinkle into a grin and hearing that adorable little voice sing along with the songs I'm singing, especially after I've been away from her at work all day. We enjoy going on walks in the evenings with Daddy and "Bip". We have a great, shadowy area to walk near our house and try to take advantage of the slightly cooler weather right before the sun goes down. Addison just chills back in her stroller and takes everything in. I'm so glad that she likes to ride in her stroller.

We've been staying pretty busy and its been fun. I mentioned in an earlier post that we now have a car lot. That has taken lots of time, but its been fun because we both enjoy spending time with our business partners, Kirby and Dustin. Kirby works with Jordan and we've been friends with her and her family for several years now. They have two boys, Banyon-4 yrs and Sylas-2 yrs (They are 20 months apart. It was neat for me to see kids at almost the same age difference ours were going to be.) The boys and Addison play pretty good together. Addison and Sylas are almost exactly one year apart and they don't always know how and when to share things. Banyon is definitely the older sibling and likes to be in charge. They have had to play and keep each other occupied while we try to figure out all of the in's and out's of selling cars. We've already sold several, too quickly to keep anything on the lot. It's really exciting to be involved with the starting of a business, especially when it has a lot of potential to do well (we think it does, anyway!). Our official name is Pay Here Auto Sales. We chose that to highlight the fact that we will finance cars if you don't have the cash on hand to buy it. I won't bore you with all of the details, but it's definitely been a learning experience. There are a ton of papers that have to be filled out (and notarized) (and all done exactly the way the DMV wants it) and it was certainly intimating for the first sale. It's been fun so far!

I guess that's all I have in me right now. Hopefully I'll be back before next month (and with some more interesting happenings).

Addison Video

(I'm hoping this works...) Here is a video of my sweet Addison. She was such a happy little girl this evening before bedtime. She was so funny in her exersaucer. She just kept nodding her head. We'd ask her a question and she just look at us and nod like crazy. Or her little music thing would play and it looked like she was headbanging to it or just kind of trying to dance. Where do they learn this from?? She is just so, so adorable.

Please excuse my annoying laughter on here. I really hate to hear recordings of my voice. It's also my baby voice, so it's really high-pitched.

Enjoy!

Dada

So, this morning Jordan was downstairs holding Addison. I came down from getting ready and noticed that I was running way late and that Jordan would need to take Addison to my mom's since he has less of a drive to work. So I asked if her could take her and he kind of ignored me and we were both just looking at Addison. She was being so good and just standing in Jordan's lap when all of a sudden she looks up and says...

"Dada".

Jordan and I locked eyes and stared at each other in with shocked grins on our faces. Finally Jordan asked, "Did she just say Dada!?!" I told him that she sure did, clear as day. Then he asked if I thought she knew what she was saying. I told him that as much as I would like to believe that she did, I really don't think she's old enough to know what it meant.

So who ended up taking her to my mom's?

That's right, her Daddy!! She sure knew how to get him to do what she wanted!! He is SO wrapped around her little finger!!

I'm sure that every single person that has crossed paths with my husband today knows that his little girl said "Dada" this morning as her first word. So cute!!

Now I'll have to really work with her to say MAMA!!