"It Was Just Something That I Had to Get Through, to Get Me to You"

Had an interesting conversation with my sister today about someone who showed up at her ward for church.

I sure wasn't expecting it, but in reflecting on the conversation, I have never been more grateful to swing at and miss a curve ball thrown in to my life a few years ago.

I love my husband more than I ever knew I could love someone.  I am incredibly grateful for the man he is, and the person he's always been.  He is my everything, and literally the best decision I have ever made.  He is so many things, but most of all....he's mine.  I sometimes think about where I would be had a previous decision played out in my life the way I thought it would the first time around.

I don't like it.

Everything I am, and every good thing about me, is made better because of you.  I love you, Robbie.

The Best of the Best

 Robbie is the best. Serious.

Also my sister/doula, Talya.  She pretty much rocks.

My dad worked hard all day.

Light-touch massage is heavenly.

Fresh goopy baby is the best feeling in the world.

Baby Adelyn being de-gooped.

8 lbs. 1 oz.

Also the best?  My midwife, Machel Knowles, and my ridiculously rockin' nurse, Renee.

Better than the best?

This.

'Nuff said.

PaMa and PaPa kisses.

PaPa is a total sucker for his grandbabies.

Grandma Allred is too.

 Dax seeing baby Addie for the first time.

 He LOVES her!

 Not kidding.  He wouldn't stop giving her loves.  He still does this.

Eventually, he got bored and played "Wosie"

(Ring Around the Rosie) by himself for a while.

 Our little exhausted family.  Don't worry, I really looked that rad.  Not even scared.

 I love this shot.

Addie's first bath.  Apparently, parents aren't allowed to help anymore.

So this is us, taking pictures through the thick glass.

 We're diggin' the blonde.

The view I had all day.  It pretty much ruled.

Daddy can't get enough of her, either.

Addie all ready to go home the next afternoon.

Here we are....a family of FOUR!!!

Birth story to come....but some people (ahem....Erica) were getting impatient for pictures.  :)

D-Squeezy's Birthday Numero DOS!!!

It was actually two weeks ago....but I'm ALMOST caught up on the blog.
Welcome to Dax's birthday photo hodge podge!

When we began singing "Happy Birthday" to him, he looked around the room, noticed everyone was watching him, and immediately slapped his hands over his eyes until we finished singing.

He can't see us, we can't see him, right?

He WOULD NOT put the sippy cup down.

Of course....it WAS full of Grandma's specialty:  Chocolate Milk!

He held it and tried to drink while he opened gifts from his grandparents:

Buzz bedsheets, Buzz blanket, Buzz backpack....you get the drift.

It was a "Buzz Day" for sure!

Our "big" gift to Dax was THE Buzz Lightyear.

Quite possibly, it was the most excited I've ever seen him.

He ran around the room showing it to anyone who would listen 

(grandparents were especially good for this)

and pushing button after button after button.

Over. And over. And over. And over again.

Yeah....we knew it would be that way....but his reaction was totally worth it.

Also, Buzz's buttons no longer work.

And we're ok with that!

On his actual birthday (the party was a few days before), we opened the rest of his gifts.

Turns out we were right when we figured he wouldn't care about anything except Buzz.

These particular puzzles are a current favorite toy.  He likes to take each wooden puzzle piece and yell,
"Mommy, watch!"

...and proceed to forcefully throw said wooden piece to the ground and watch it bounce.

Gotta love him.

If only he would put them back when he was done.  We're working on that.....

Aside from the Block Puzzle Book below, he also received a new addition to his My First Book of Mormon Stories collection.  We love those!!

And, just because he's so stinkin' cute.....a few more of the little 2-year-old.

Whom, I might add, is currently acting like the stereotypical 2-year-old.

Awesome.

It's a good thing we know how cute he is normally!!

He Speaks!

As cute as my young son is, he's always been a bit stubborn.  From his labor and birth, to where, when, and what he wants to eat, to a whole host of other things.  I don't know where he got it from (feigned confused face).

So it was with the words he would speak.  We would get on occasional "da-da", an even less-occasional "ma-ma", "de-de" (thank you), and a few others.  However, he was never lacking with his "NO, Ma-Ma!", "uh-oh" or "car".  So though we knew he had a whole host of other words in his vocabulary, he would communicate only with grunts and throwing things.

Not my favorite plan.

Well, two days ago, he suddenly began to speak!  Not yet in complete sentences, but he has added a whole bunch of words he has rarely or never said before.  Hallelujah!

We now commonly hear: "Car-ee" (Carly--Thanks Daddy!), "eat", "drink", "bye", "please", "more", "down", "why", "belly", "baby", "tee-s" (teeth), "'sye!" (outside) and a few others.  He will now actually repeat words when we say them instead of staring at us like we were comic relief and laughing hysterically. 

With a boy who will only do things on his own time....I fear the future could be a bit scary for us.  But maybe by then, he'll be able to speak....even if we don't want to hear what he has to say.

Birthday, WHAT???

I'm still not sure how an entire year has passed since we welcomed our sweet boy into our lives. Regardless, we still love him to pieces, and he truly is the light of our lives!

Dax currently will climb up/down any/everything. Serious. He still refuses to walk, thinking it's a big game. When we let go of his hands, he literally laughs so hard he falls over, which makes us laugh too. We're probably perpetuating it, but at least we know he's still normal!

He became a champ at going up/down the stairs, but just when we were starting to feel comfortable letting him go unassisted, he decides he wants to walk up/down! No more crawling (on the stairs at least!) for him.

He loves to help mommy and daddy, especially with laundry, dishes, or Mommy's Etsy business. Anytime mommy and daddy are doing something, he wants in on it too, and makes sure to do whatever he can to be there! He's even successfully opened the oven while we were broiling chicken. What are we going to do with him????

He jabbers, and jabbers, and jabbers all day long. Robbie has successfully taught him to say "Aw, man!" and Daxson continues to say things that really do sound like real phrases. Once, I asked him if he was ready to be done with dinner so we could put him in the bath, and he said, "NO!"

Great.

He keeps us constantly entertained, and we laugh and laugh, and laugh at our little man and his antics. We love that when he hears us laugh, he starts up right along with us!

Oh, he melts our hearts, and we think we'll keep him!

TEEFS!

We discovered this about 5 minutes ago. Surprise!

And, I'm Done!

After weeks and weeks of deliberation, I have finally decided to wean Dax from breastmilk. I really feel/felt strongly about breastfeeding my baby, and am glad that I have made it this far, but it has become so difficult in so many ways.

I am grateful that I never had any latching/supply issues, and Dax always seemed to thrive on it (I mean, check out the pictures, for heaven's sake! That kid's a block!), but it has become so wearing on me that it has started to make me angry whenever he's hungry. I don't like that at all.

I don't feel that my baby should have an angry mother whenever he has a basic need that should be met...and that's it in a nutshell.

I am still working on losing my supply (not all that rad, btw), and truly hope that it happens quickly, because it is uncomfortable! But we have been feeding him formula for about two days now, and he has not had a single issue. I am so grateful for a baby that is so flexible! He is the best little man a mommy could have, and he's all mine!

I'd love to hear any thoughts or comments anyone has regarding this (so long as no one tells me I am a bad mother...I don't really need that at all, it was a big enough struggle to come to this decision anyway), so please comment!

Also, if anyone out there has any formula that they won't use that they are willing to share, I'd love to take it off your hands!

Lots of Stuff!

Warning: LONG post and TONS of pictures!

These pictures are in a pretty backward order...but hopefully you'll get over it. This was Daxson's first track meet. He watched as his daddy threw shot put and discus at the Davis Alumni Meet. According to the official results, Robbie won the discus and came in fifth in shot. Unfortunately, the camera battery died, so this is the only picture of the event. Please notice the school spirit our little man is showing. We bought this onesie specifically for track meets.This is Dax's new best friend. They have much in common. They talk to each other, and show each other their hands and ears. It's pretty stimulating conversation!
Dax started eating solid foods a few weeks ago. He LOVES chocolate, bananas, applesauce (though he thinks it's pretty sour), and he likes avocados, but they do mean things to his belly. As for the picture below, popcorn is a family favorite, what can I say?

The last weekend in February we headed to St. Louis for a fun trip. We had originally purchased the tickets for a leadership convention, but when that fell through, we just decided to go anyway since we couldn't get a refund on our hotel. It was quick, but it was a fun time!

This is us at the top of the Gateway Arch. It was a really windy day, and it swayed a lot. It was hard to stay upright holding a 20 lb. baby and wearing stilettos on a steep surface!
This is the view from the top of the arch. Our hotel was the one on the right.
The Gateway Arch.
While we were waiting for the little elevators to take us down, we listened to a group of young college girls talking. They were hilarious! The conversation went something like this:

girl one: Where do you guys wanna go next?
girl two: Somewhere lower.

later on...

girl two: I can't figure out exactly what this arch is all about. I know Lewis and Clark were trying to find a way west, but I don't understand how this arch could have helped. I mean, it doesn't cross the Mississippi River, so I don't know what they used it for!

(us: ummm.....trying to hold back incredible amounts of laughter!)
When Robbie went to get Dax out of the car, he opened the door to this:
He was sucking on it like normal, didn't think anything was wrong! It was too bad that when we started laughing at it, he smiled too, and it fell out. Oh, I love him!

While in St. Louis, we also went to this really neat place called the City Museum and World Aquarium. It was so fun! We decided that it was a kid's dream, but a worrying parent's worst nightmare. Everything inside was so fun. The entire place had tunnels, nooks to sit in, things to climb on...anything. It was a building-sized jungle gym! Most of it was made with recycled material, such as this wall of glass bottles.
And this wall made of gears.
And this wall made of the trays that keep the food warm in cafeterias.
It's a butt! For real. An entire section of the building was a cave that had things carved into the walls, such as this butt.
This was another wall. These fish are human-sized. It was so neat!
This was the view looking up from where the caves went down another 3 stories. The swirly thing you see is a seven-story slide. So fun!
Another part of the museum was the World Aquarium. There were all sorts of fun animals such as this shark.Daddy and little man outside the shark tank.This is me petting the sting rays. So cool!
We couldn't get Dax to smile, so Robbie thought he'd match Dax's face instead. I love him!
The most fun part of the museum was the free gift we received just inside the door. There was so much poo in that diaper, I basically had to bathe him with baby wipes to get him cleaned off. Also, we were so awesome, we didn't bring an extra outfit, so we took the onesie off, and he had his little belly hanging out of his poopy shirt the rest of the day! We're up for the Awesome Parenting Award this year....
This is the view from the outside of the museum. That is an actual plane and school bus that they have rigged into the maze of a building. If you look closely you can see that there are people climbing all over outside the building. It was just tubes made of rebar. McDonald's Playplace has got nothing on this!
This is Daxson and his daddy playing back at the hotel room.
Bath time! He LOVES his baths!
No, we didn't shave him a mohawk. The little man has lost nearly every shred of hair he had when he was born, and it's growing back invisible. Except for that patch, it's so blonde, it's hard to see without the sun reflecting off of it!
Anyway, that's what we've been up to. I've got some videos to post soon, and am working on making our townhouse clean enough to post pictures. It's getting closer all the time, but not there yet!

Enjoy!