Six months ago today a little Addison was born...

Six months ago...
At 7:32pm weighing in at 7lbs. 7oz. and 21 1/4 in long, our little Addison was born!  She was our perfect little baby, everything that Dan and I had ever imagined and more!  It was on this day that we became a family of three.  This is my favorite picture...because it is our FIRST picture as a family.

I continue to have a difficult time wrapping my mind around the fact that time goes so quickly since Addison has become part of our family.  I remember listening to my hospice patients talk to me about how time literally passed before their eyes as they were facing death.  At the time I don't think I truly understood where they were coming from...and then our little Addison was born.  From that moment on my thoughts on life changed forever.  Life was not about the job, the house, or the car I drove.  Life was, in all ways, about my tiny little daughter I was holding in my arms.  She is truly a miracle and I now take every moment, breath in her sweetness, and will try to hold on to it as long as I possibly can.  Life in many ways is too short to take this time for granted and I am truly lucky to be home with her and embracing every moment I possibly can with my little Addison.

Today she is six months old...a whole half year!  I look at her now and imagine what the future has in store for her.  All the while I am also thinking that if the next six months go by just as fast as these first six months, I REALLY need to start planning her first birthday party!!  LOL!  We are so excited to see what the next six months have in store for our family! 

Happy six months Addie girl! 

Our First Play Date...

 On Saturday Addison had her very first play date!  It took a little while for Addison to warm up to little Nia, but eventually wanted to play with her!  This is really the first time she has been around someone close to her age.  Addie is exactly one month younger than Nia and she was about twice her size!  Addison kept trying to play with Nia's hair and Nia kept trying to rip Addison's shirt off...it was very cute!  At the end of the play date both were very ready for a nap and had a cry match!  We plan to do this more often as both girls are home most of the time with us mommas!

Here are some pictures from our day...
 

No one told us how hard it was to get two babies to take pictures...lol!

 

Look at them...holding hands!!

"I'm not going down without you, Addie!"  Addie went right with her!

And the famous hair playing.  Addison is always playing with her own hair.  It shouldn't surprise me that she had to play with Nia's too!!

Little Cheerleader!

GO PANTHERS!!  Addie is cheering on her Panthers tonight!  I had to share this picture of her with the pompoms I have!  I think that she was really disgusted by them...can you tell by the look on her face?!!

Our future little cheerleader...

or not...

Oh, and I had to put this one on here too!!  Here she is trying to crawl and I finally caught her on camera!  She is doing this a LOT now!  The only problem is that she moves backwards!  She will get the concept eventually...and then we will really be in trouble!

Have a GREAT night and GO UNI!!!

25 Weeks...

Today I felt lucky.  Lucky to have a healthy, happy, vibrant little girl.  Today I went with my family to my  brother, Max's JRA appointment in Iowa City.  JRA stands for Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.  Max was diagnosed when he was three years old and has been receiving treatment since.  He does very well and at his appointment today they also talked about weaning him off of his medications, which is GREAT news.  As Max was back at his appointment with my mom and dad, I sat in the waiting room of the pediatric unit with my other brother and my beautiful daughter.  I felt SO guilty.  Guilty that I was sitting there with a healthy child, while many other parents sat there with their sick children anxiously awaiting to be called for their appointment.  On the other hand I felt SO VERY lucky to have such a healthy little girl.  It reminded me of the time when we thought we may have to go through all of this with our little baby.  All in all it was a great reminder of how truly blessed we are here in the Garbes household.

On to FUN things.  Can you believe that our little vibrant girl is 25 weeks?   

Look at her!  She is getting SO BIG!  This week we have really been working on our hand and leg coordination for crawling.  She has started to lift her knees a little with her arms up now.  It was previously just one or the other.  I have yet to capture this because she only does it when I don't have the camera in hand! 

Playing with Addison is so much fun for Dan and I.  She loves it when mommy and daddy play on the floor with her.  Especially when she can crawl all over you or play airplane as in the pictures seen below!

Addison spends a lot of her time playing on the floor and has also gotten very good at keeping herself entertained, which is helpful when you need to get things done.  She LOVES to pound her toys on things or drop them on the floor, especially when she is able to make noise.  She rarely misses an opportunity for making noise and really enjoys the toys that do that for her more than one that do not.  She also loves to play peek-a-boo with either a blanket or her hiding behind something and popping up to hear you say "PEEK-A-BOO, I SEE YOU!"

Bath time has also become playtime for Addie.  She loves to splash around and play with her toys in the bath.  She likes it so much that she whines when mommy tries to wash her up because I am distracting her from her playtime!  In our last bath she was trying to play with her bath toys and the buttons on the washing machine, where I set her bathtub!

Her favorite word for the week is "ah-da."  Still has not said "da" twice in a row, but Dan is being patient with it and is pretty sure that "dada" is going to be her first word!  It's okay...I'll give him that one...lol!  She loves to do things with her mouth and making silly sounds, either by screaming or with her lips.  She loves doing her motorboat!  Although in this picture she looks like she is trying to fill her diaper, but she is really doing her motorboat...lol!

This week we have also started mixing organic baby food with her cereal to prepare to transition her into eating full baby food.  One the menu since Monday has been sweet potatoes and she LOVES them.  She eats her cereal so much better now, but who wouldn't?  In fact, I give her a bite, and before I even have the other one coming to her mouth, it is wide open!  Next on the menu will be carrots.  She hasn't reacted to the sweet potatoes at all...so we are off to a good start!  As you can see below she has also become pretty dependent with her bottle and eating.  We just have to watch her close, because she will start playing with her bottle instead of eating!

Addison continues to sleep throughout the night.  The time change caused a lot of havic in this house with her bedtime, but I think we have got it down now!  She goes to bed around 9pm and wakes up around 7am.  We put her to bed awake, turn her white noise and projector on, and in about 10 min she is fast asleep for the night.  It really can't get any easier than that!  We have really been working on her being able to put herself to sleep, so she doesn't depend on us to fall asleep.  It has been working very well!

 Happy 25 weeks! =)

All About Mommy... and Daddy...

Mommy:  I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that my little girl is going to be SIX months next week.  How did a half a year go by so quickly?  It truly blows my mind! With her turning six months I have planned to stop pumping at that time as well, but don't know if I can do it.  About a month ago I gave up my mid-day pumping and it was excruciating!  I was in so much agony and I am just getting used to it!  My milk supply has significantly decreased since then as well.  I think I might just see how things go and STOP setting time frames...I have found that they don't really work in our life any longer!

Daddy: Daddy is doing MUCH better!  The muscle relaxers make him very tired so he has been sleeping much of the day.  He said that he is going to stop taking them tomorrow because he can not stand to sleep the day away!  His eye is a little black and blue now and he is telling people that I beat him up!  We have 6 month pictures next week and I think I am going to have to postpone them because I always get family pictures done too!  I will have to talk to Nichole...maybe she can edit it out!?  I think these couple days of resting has helped out a lot.  He plans to return to work on Thursday if he is feeling better!

Mommy's Two Babies...

Yesterday was quite a day in the Garbes house.  As I have mentioned we put our house up for sale to move back to the family farm.  The house we currently live in has an 8-person hot tub that my brother really wanted before we moved.  Our Realtor suggested that we get it out before anyone wanted to look at it, and our first viewers were to arrive on Monday afternoon.  That left us getting it out on Sunday, so my brother brought his truck and trailer to move it to his house.

This was going to be NO easy job.  This hot tub is huge and you have to take out a false wall located in our garage to actually get the hot tub out.  When we bought the house we were told that you just had to unscrew the wall from the studs and it would come right out...this was NOT the case.  My two brothers could not figure it out so they waited for Dan to stop in between his work stops that he was making for the day.  Dan decided to get up in the garage attic, where half of it is finished and half of it is not, to check things out.

My grandma and I were in the house with Addison when we heard a HUGE bang and Dan yelling.  I immediately ran out there to see what was going on.  My first thought was that the wall fell on top of him.  He was up in the rafters, in the finished part of the attic looking at the wall, when he hit an unfinished part and fell through onto the garage floor.  It was like a ten foot drop.  Our garage is insulated so he thought he was stepping on the finished part.  None of the boys really know how he fell, but it was pretty bad.  I have NEVER heard Dan yell like that and it scared me to death.  After a few minutes my brothers were able to get him off the floor and into the house.  Dan began to be his joking self when he came in, stating that he was mad that he ruined his favorite pair of jeans.  I knew his head was okay (besides the gash in his forehead), but I was worried about broken bones.  We immediately called Dan's aunt who is a nurse to see what to do.  We decided to save the trip to the ER and let hims rest to see what happened. 

After a few hours of rest he was having a very hard time walking and his head hurt, but he felt a LOT better.  We decided that we would take him to the doctor on Monday.  It was SO scary.  I am just SO VERY happy that he is okay.  I don't know what I would ever do without my wonderful husband!  In the meantime, while Dan was resting, the removal of the hot tub continued.  It took almost the entire day and nearly 10 people to lift the hot tub out of the room and onto the trailer!

So today we took Dan to the doctor and he said that he was having a major muscle spasm.  Sent him home with a couple of pain killers, muscle relaxers, and ointment to put on his head.  He is off work for a few days because he can barely walk.  The next few days I will be taking care of my two babies (who right at this moment are napping on the couch together! Ha...I just decided to get up and take a picture of them!  Got to love technology these days!

What a day we had....and after all of this the people who wanted to look at the house backed out.  They drove out on Sunday and decided it was too far out in the country for them...ugh!! I am just so happy that Dan is okay - even though it is going to be like I am the only parent in the house for the next couple of days.  You don't realize how much you use teamwork until you can no longer use it!

So my BIG baby is going to spend the day getting pampered by momma and resting.  He is already doing a great job.  He suggested we get a little bell...you can imagine what my reaction was!  Addie even loves to sit on the couch and hang out with her daddy.  Here is a pic that we took this morning.

I am hoping that the rest of the week is not as eventful!  Addie and I are going for a girls night out with a couple of my friends tonight.  Dan says he will be okay...guess we'll find out!