Brance, Lauren & Haddie

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.

Just in case yesterday’s post might have confused anyone…she is Daddy’s Girl!

It’s spring in Virginia and the weather is wonderful outside.

I know we haven’t posted anything in a while, so I thought I’d put up some recent photos.

Haddie and I have been sick all week. Today is the first day we’ve both felt good enough to be outside. We’ve both still got a little bit of a runny nose, but we feel much better.

Lauren had a wedding shower at the church tonight so Haddie and I had a Daddy Date. I told her we could do anything she wanted, and a walk outside was the answer. She didn’t actually say that, just indicated it.

She has been talking a LOT recently though. She can now say: Haddie, keys, teeth, eye, ear, puppy (her favorite word, and she knows what it means), mommy, daddy, ball, baby, etc.

Anyway, here are the pictures. The first two are from a family walk in the park last weekend, the rest are from Haddie’s Daddy Date this evening.

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.

Normally I would go to work today, regardless of the holiday. I usually don’t take holidays off unless their big ones, like Christmas. This morning though it was snowing so I decided to “work” from home today and spend some time with my girls.

I took a couple pictures of the snow. Then a little later I noticed Haddie playing with her doll. This is kind of new. Up till now toys were nothing more than chew things. Recently though, she’s starting to notice things for themselves and really play with her toys. I thought it was so cute to see her picking the doll up and looking at it from different angles, that I had to grab the camera and take a picture. The doll eventually ended up in her mouth, but it was cute for a couple minutes.

In addition to playing with her toys, another fairly new development is standing. She’s been standing while holding on to things for quite a while. A month ago I noticed she would sometimes let go of whatever she was holding onto, in order to fix her pacifier or something. As soon as she realized she was free-standing, she would fall. In the last week or so she’s begun to free-stand constantly, and grin about it.

Isn’t she adorable?