Brance, Lauren & Haddie

So Lauren is gone tonight (and tomorrow) at the Extraordinary Women’s Conference, leaving Haddie and I home alone.

Shortly after she left we both got hungry so I nuked a bowl of Spaghettios (with meatballs, of course!), and we chowed down. Man that kid can eat! She ate half of them. Playing peek-a-boo in between bites.

Then we went to the church and completely rewired the stage getting it ready for Sunday. The first Sunday with our new worship leader. I wanted to make sure everything was going to work properly, so we checked all the lines and labeled everything carefully.

Then we printed bulletins and folded them.

Then we came home. She was tired, but…she was saying “eat” over and over again. I couldn’t see anything else so I fried us up a couple eggs and made us each a slice of toast, filled her water cup, and made myself a glass of chocolate milk (in a frosty glass – there are some perks to being the daddy!).

Again, she was chowing down. She was hungry and eating too fast. Three bites from being done (with a whole egg and slice of toast), she chomped down good and hard on her own tongue and started crying something terrible.

I jumped up and got her out of the highchair and hugged her good. She had tears running down her face and haltingly said, “pa…pa…paaappy…” I gave it to her and she settled down.

I cleaned her up and then she picked all her toys up, singing her “clean up, clean up” song the whole time. Once the living room and her room where clean, we got her ready for bed, she put her dirty clothes away, and then we read Psalm 108, prayed for Mommy, and then she went right to sleep hugging her elephant and kangaroo (known affectionately as “Roo”).

She’s so cute. I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful little girl. And a wonderful wife, even if she did leave us to fend for ourselves tonight. She’s already extraordinary, I don’t know why she had to go to this conference!

Here’s a few photos I pulled off the camera this morning. The first ones are from a week or so ago when “PaPa” was here for a visit. We had dinner at Nana and Poppy’s house and Haddie got to play in the pool. She loves the pool.

Next up are photos from our living room with Haddie making a mess out of her cereal. Daddy’s not as good at feeding her as mommy is. Mommy insisted on pictures of the mess before cleaning it up.

And finally, this morning Haddie decided she needed to wear my shoes around the living room. Isn’t she cute?

After talking with our dear friends Fred and Phyllis from church, I feel encouraged to post more often.  Sometimes it feels pretty pointless to post to our blog, because judging by our feedback it seems like very few people even check it.  But if Fred and Phyllis faithfully read and don’t comment… maybe there are others .  If anything it’s nice to have a record of our family’s happenings.  And so I’ve decided to make it my goal to try and write one post over the weekend and at least one post during the week.  We’ll see how well I do… time will tell.

Haddie makes Brance and I laugh these days.  She does the funniest things.  Today while in her room for her nap, we could hear her all the way out in the living room saying her own name over and over again.  I’m not sure what that was about, but it was pretty funny.  We’re always wondering what must be going on behind those blue eyes to make her do the things she does.  ”Haddie” isn’t the only name she’s saying either.  She loves to say “mama”, “dada”, “nana”, “papa” and “Holly” which comes out more like “hah-wee”.  Of course her favorite word is not a name at all,  it is “puppy”.  We took her to the St. Louis zoo the beginning of this month while in MO shooting a concert DVD for Clear Blue Productions.  It was amazing; you’re not going to believe it… the St. Louis zoo was a zoo full of nothing but puppies.  Black striped puppies, puppies with beaks, puppies with humps, leopard spotted puppies etc. etc.  Yeah, you got it.  Every.single.animal. we looked at was a puppy to Haddie!  It was pretty cute.  If I remember correctly Haddie’s cousin Katie went to a zoo last year that had nothing but kitties . 

My cousin Seth and his cute baby girl Caleigh had dinner with us last week.  Here are two pictures from that.  Haddie and Caleigh were both starting to get a little fussy by the time we decided to take pictures.  The other pics are Haddie “helping” me with laundry this week .  She loves laundry… pulling it off the couch, putting it on her head and pushing it around in her plastic wheelbarrow.  You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Lauren and I just needed to get outside the other day, so we took Haddie out to the playground here at the apartment complex. It was a bit chilly so we put her hat and coat on her, but we had fun on the swings, the marry-go-round and the jungle gym.

Here are a few pictures I took this morning of Haddie playing in the living room. I am so thankful that I have the opportunity to stay home with our little girl to see all her little expressions throughout the day. She is my constant companion, following me all over the house as I do my chores . I know this stage won’t last forever, so I’m cherishing every second of her enjoying being near her mommy. I’m so thankful for my little Haddie bug.