A Visit to Colorado: Jumping, Eating, (not) Sleeping

I had a few more pictures from our trip to Colorado that I'd like to share with you.

On Friday, Dale, Adelaida, and I were walking through a shopping area and saw something that caught our eyes: a store front with the name "Jumpin" and what appeared to be several giant blow-up bouncy castles inside. We were intrigued and walked in, and sure enough it was a store filled with giant blow-up bouncy castles! It was relatively empty (three or four other kids there), and their pricing scheme was so tempting (parents get in free; kids under 2 only $4) that we paid our $4, removed our shoes, and evaluated the different bouncy castles to see which one we wanted to try first.

There were traditional bouncy castles...


...and giant slides...


...and obstacle-course-style bouncy castles (complete with two kids who wanted so badly for Dale to play with them!)...


...and even a toddler play area with a small plastic playset and teeter-totter.


We had fun, Adelaida had fun, and it was well worth the $4 admission fee!

Another very notable part of this trip was Adelaida eating. We taught her the sign language for "eat" so that she can tell us when she's hungry. She's been using it for about two months, but while we were in Colorado she suddenly started using the sign all the time! We thought at first that she might just be testing the sign out -- using it frequently to confirm that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between her signing "eat" and us giving her food.

That theory was blown away when we saw how much she was eating each time she signed. She was really hungry! Our typical day would be: Adelaida wakes up and wants to eat, we feed her for about an hour, she plays for half an hour, Adelaida says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, she plays for half an hour, says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, and the whole process repeats. I really think she spent more time eating than she spent awake and not eating!

The fact that she was eating so much during the day made the night-times a little more understandable. Adelaida has always had a tendency to sleep poorly at night when we are traveling: she wakes up frequently, and since we are generally staying with friends or family, we are more likely to get her out of bed and nurse her rather than let her get back to sleep herself. This trip was no exception, and the first night we were on the road I nursed her three times in the middle of the night. The weird thing was that she was ravenously hungry all three times! Even after eating so much during the day, she still wanted to nurse for nutrition rather than just for comfort! The nights got progressively worse until the last night, when Adelaida woke up to nurse six times in the nine hours she slept. Dale and I were exhausted! The frequent night nursings continued after we came home, and we put up with them as long as Adelaida's day-time appetite was so large; for about a week now she's been back to a more normal appetite, so we've been weaning her back to one nursing at night, and last night she slept the entire night without nursing (she did wake up one time, but went back to sleep by herself). I'm really looking forward to regular uninterrupted sleep again!

A Visit to Colorado: Superbowl Party

When we made plans (in October) to visit Colorado, we consulted many calendars to find a weekend that would work for everyone involved, but somehow neglected to consider the Superbowl. So we found ourselves in Colorado for Superbowl weekend, where Brooke and Dave graciously accepted when we invited ourselves to their Superbowl party :)

The party was a whirlwind of food, laughter, reconnecting with old friends, playing with the kids, babysitting a stuffed cat (the babysitter kept "losing" her, but somehow kept being asked to babysit again!), and a third-quarter princess parade (fortunately the television was mounted relatively high and the princesses were all very short!).

Oh, and a football game that I'd rather not remember.

I think the pictures speak for themselves this time, so here they are:

Adelaida sat in the middle of the floor and played with balls while Mackenzie, Elise, and Alexa pretended to be lions (or tigers? or dogs? some four-legged mammal.)


Adelaida and I were proud Colts supporters -- which of course prompted several other, formerly undecided, party-goers to cheer for the Saints.


Part of the princess parade: Gentry, Kylie, Elise, Alexa, and Anna pose in their princess (and Avelanche cheerleader) finest.


Another shot of the princess parade: Anna, Gentry (I'm not sure how the drill made it into the parade?), Kylie, Elise, and Alexa


One of the princesses left her tiara on the coffee table, and Adelaida immediately latched on to it. She knew it was supposed to go on her head, but never quite got it on correctly. She didn't poke her eyes out, either!


Dale found a fellow FCB-supporter in Levi.


Dale is watching the game; Charlotte is watching Adelaida; Adelaida is watching the bigger kids.


Looking back on the Superbowl party, I remember it very fondly, despite the disappointing outcome of the game. Only a fun group like we were with could make such a tough Superbowl loss a good memory!

A Visit to Colorado: Visiting with Friends and Family

After a rather harrowing start, we began our visit to Colorado by flying to Denver for a grand total of $100, for all three of us, round trip. Go Southwest!

Elise was very patient with Adelaida and enjoyed walking around with her

On arriving in Colorado, we reconnected with an old friend. Dale and Andy had worked together at Boeing in Los Angeles several years ago and have kept in touch since then, despite Dale moving to Albuquerque and Andy moving to Denver. When we told them we would be in Colorado, Andy and his wife Kim invited us to their house for some playtime with the kids (they have a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and a one-year-old girl) and dinner. We really enjoyed spending time with them and their kids and hope to see them again when we're in Denver.

Anna and Alexa couldn't get enough of Dale's rough-housing!

After dinner and lots of fun with Andy and Kim, we drove up to Loveland to spend two nights with Dave and Brooke, who we had last seen this time last year, when Adelaida was two months old and their girls (Elise, Alexa, and Anna) were four-and-a-half, three, and one-and-a-half. In addition to good opportunities to catch up with Dave and Brooke and to let the girls play together, we arranged for babysitters for both families, and Dave and Brooke joined us on a double date filled with fun and laughter!

Janet holds both Adelaida and Ian, who is two months older than Adelaida

No trip to Loveland is complete without a family get-together, so we met Charlotte, Aunt Karen, Aunt Janet and Uncle Steve, and Janet's daughter-in-law and two grandsons for lunch. It was a short visit, but we were able to spend some time with the family and let them see Adelaida -- a whole year after Janet and Karen had seen Adelaida last, and she had certainly changed in that time!

Adelaida plays with a straw while sitting on Karen's lap

We enjoyed seeing the family for lunch and wish we could have spent more time together, and to seen Dale's cousins who weren't able to attend the lunch. But, with only three days to see everyone, we were happy that Charlotte, Karen, Janet, Steve, Elizabeth, Evan, and Ian were able to meet with us on such short notice.

Adelaida and her Mamaw

After two nights with Dave and Brooke, we spent two days and nights with Charlotte. Adelaida loves her Mamaw and was really excited to see a whole container full of toys that she'd never played with before. We left Adelaida with her Mamaw while we went out on a date with Dave and Brooke, and I think both Adelaida and Charlotte had a good time :)

The short weekend was actually packed with other activities, which I'll post about later.

A Visit to Colorado: Prequel

Last October, Southwest offered incredibly low fares: $25 per person one way between Albuquerque and Denver! We couldn't pass up the opportunity, so purchased tickets for early February. We made the trip last weekend, marveling every few minutes that we were flying to Denver and back for a grand total of $100.

Adelaida watches Dale shovel snow during a previous snowstorm

The trip started out rather inauspiciously. We were scheduled to leave Thursday morning. On Wednesday, Dale went to work as normal and I stayed home with Adelaida, who was recovering from a pretty nasty stomach virus and wasn't yet able to return to school. The snow started falling early Wednesday morning, and by noon the freeway had been closed due to inclement weather.

(For those of you unfamiliar with our home, we live in the East Mountains outside Albuquerque, literally across a mountain range from the city. Albuquerque and the East Mountains are connected by two roads, I-40 and Old Route 66, which run parallel to one another just a few feet apart through the Tijeras Canyon pass. When heavy snowfall or bad weather threaten the pass, I-40 and Rt 66 are often closed -- sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for up to three days.)

So, Adelaida and I were at home in the East Mountains; Dale was at work in Albuquerque, we were scheduled to leave the Albuquerque sunport in less than 24 hours, the freeway was closed, and the snow was still falling.

We've had a very wet winter; the snow started in mid-October and we've had snow on the ground almost continuously since then, with a brief snow-free period at the end of November

I was worried that the freeway wouldn't be open in time for Dale to come home that evening, and he had to be at work early (like 4:00am early) the next morning to work a bit before we left. Also, we had to take the pups to the kennels in Moriarty (even further east from Albuquerque, and an area that often gets a lot of snow) before going into Albuquerque. So, I hastily packed up clothes and toiletries for myself, Dale, and Adelaida, gathered items for the pups, and decided to leave Wednesday afternoon to avoid getting stuck at home.

The only problem: I was already stuck.

2:00pm: I first tried to drive out the driveway, which ended up being a bit of a mistake. I didn't wreck the car or anything, but I came pretty close a few times. Upon leaving the garage, our driveway has a significant incline terminated by a 90-degree angle. So, we have to drive up a hill, then turn left at the top of the hill to continue out the driveway.

This picture was taken in early December, which was the last time we could see any amount of ground through the snow!

I measured the snow when I started trying to get out, and we had eight inches on the driveway (the driveway had been plowed after the last storm by our wonderful neighbors, so the eight inches was all new). I tried a dozen or so times to get the car up the driveway and around the bend, but never managed to have enough momentum to get all the way up. So, I put the car back in the garage and started shoveling the driveway. I focused first on the hill and the curve, assuming that if I were able to get up the hill and around the curve, I'd be able to get out pretty easily.

4:00pm: Ninety back-breaking minutes later, I had a reasonably wide track shoveled up the hill and around the curve. (Adelaida was taking a nap at this time, so I was able to work unimpeded.) I got back in the car and tried again, and after several unsuccessful attempts found myself at the top of the hill, pointed toward the driveway. Success! Afraid of losing my momentum (I'd learned a valuable lesson on the cross-country truck trip of 1998), I continued toward the driveway and got about fifteen feet before getting stuck. All the time that I had been shoveling the driveway, the snow had continued falling, and since I hadn't shoveled anything beyond the curve, the rest of the driveway had well over a foot of snow on it. Our car apparently has a clearance of less than one foot, and when I got out to look at the car, it had a pile of snow in front of it up to the hood. I had been "plowing" the snow with the car!

when people hear that we live in Albuquerque, they often think of a desert like Phoenix: hot and dry. In fact, we have a pretty substantial winter and often get a lot of snow; in March 2005 we got 36 inches in one storm!

By this point I had shoveled about 20% of the driveway and didn't think I could shovel the remaining 80% before our plane left the next morning, but I really didn't want to be stuck so I started shoveling again. So, I called a neighbor and asked him if he could plow our driveway; he was willing to do it, but wouldn't be available until about 5:30, so I got back to work with the shovel. This time I decided to just scrape off the top four or so inches of snow and leave the rest, except around the tires where I had to get down to the gravel.

5:30pm: After another hour of shoveling snow and "rocking" a car all by myself, the car was free and I was able to get it out to the end of the driveway. I didn't want to put it in the road (we're at a curve and I could just see someone losing control at the turn and sliding into the car), so left it a few feet in the driveway. By the way, Adelaida had woken up just after I got the car stuck, so she spent most of that hour playing in the back of the car while I shoveled snow!

Maggie and Murphy struggle through snow as deep as they are tall

Finally I was ready to leave, almost. I still had a few things to pack from Adelaida's room (I didn't want to pack them while she was sleeping), then had to carry all the luggage out to the road, take the pups out to the road, and finally take Adelaida out to the car. It was 6:00 and I had been trying to get out for over four hours!

The pups' kennel closed at 7:00, so I had to get to Moriarty within an hour, which I was able to do -- just barely. The kennel is usually about a thirty-minute drive, and I admit I was a little scared to be driving all alone (with a baby and two dogs who wouldn't stay in the back of the car) on deserted roads, some of which hadn't been plowed very recently, in the dark in a snowstorm. Visions of getting stuck in a remote area without cellphone coverage haunted me on that drive. As I passed several vehicles stuck in the snow on the side of the road (or right in the middle of the road, on at least two occasions) I also really missed having a functional all-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive vehicle.

I got to the kennel at 7:00, dropped the pups off, and drove back into Albuquerque (normally a one-hour drive), arriving at almost 9:00 that night. I was hungry, exhausted, and very sore, and Adelaida was hungry. I'm sure neither of us was very pleasant to be around that evening! Dale had gotten a hotel for us and was out picking up food when we arrived. We basically brought all our luggage in to the hotel, ate (and food had never tasted so good!), and went to sleep. Dale got up early the next morning to go to work; I slept in a little longer, then rearranged and repacked our luggage, picked Dale up at work, and drove to the airport.

It was a rough beginning to what turned out to be a really great trip -- but more about that later.

Her First Tumble

Our loyal readers may remember that we started teaching Adelaida how to go up and down the stairs about two months ago. She caught on very quickly and soon was going up and down the stairs like a pro.

As Adelaida got better at going up and down stairs, Dale and I became more complaisant about watching her when she was on the stairs. We still didn't let her go up or down all by herself, but sometimes went up at our normal pace while Adelaida slowly made her way up the stairs behind us. And we never did put a gate at the top of the stairs.

Our staircase is set up very nicely in that it has three landings, separated by three to five steps each; we reasoned that if she were to fall, she would fall at most five steps before getting to a landing, which would probably stop her fall. We also kept the foam pad at the bottom of the stairs so that, if she did fall, she would fall onto a foam pad rather than the tile.

About a week ago, I was working at the computer in our bedroom while Adelaida was playing in the bedroom next to me. She became bored with the toys I had for her in the bedroom and soon crawled over to the door. She played with the door for a while (she loves to open and close doors), then crawled through the door toward the staircase. Our bedroom door is directly at the top of the staircase, and Adelaida sat on the floor outside the bedroom in such a way that she could lean forward and see me, or lean back to make me hidden behind the wall. We played peek-a-boo like this for a while, Adelaida giggling every time she leaned in to see me.

Adelaida rolled down eight steps before stopping at a landing!

I was very aware of her sitting at the top of the staircase, but she was enjoying our peek-a-boo game and is very good at going down the stairs, so I wasn't worried. Then I heard what sounded like a bowling ball rolling down the stairs. I looked out the door, couldn't see Adelaida, and was running down the steps before she even started crying. She had fallen down the stairs, rolling down eight steps (and past one landing) before stopping at the second landing on the staircase.

After a quick check to make sure she had no broken bones, I started making funny faces and nibbling on her belly, and within a minute she was laughing and had forgotten all about the fall. She crawled back up the stairs and has since gone up and down the stairs several times without any hesitation.

Note: the picture of Adelaida on the landing is a dramatization taken later; the last thing I was thinking about when she fell was taking a picture of her!

An Adelaida-Sized Chair

For Christmas, Adelaida's Grandpa and Grandma gave her a chair of her very own. It is a beautiful chair, pink and purple with green accents, a ruffly base, and a butterfly. It suits Adelaida's personality perfectly!



The chair is exactly the right size for Adelaida. That's not to say that she doesn't have extra room sitting in it -- there's plenty of extra room, and her feet don't even reach the end of the seat, let alone touch the ground. She'll be growing into this chair for several more years. But it is just her size in that it is too narrow and too short for me or Dale to sit in, and neither Maggie nor Murphy has tried to sit in it yet!

Adelaida's favorite way to use the chair so far has been to climb on it. She can climb from the ground up to the seat, and if the chair is against our couch, can climb from the seat onto the arms of the chair and up to the couch. This has opened up a whole new exciting world for Adelaida, and she often climbs up the chair onto the couch only to slide off the couch and onto the ground and repeat the entire process.

Occasionally, she surprises us by climbing into her chair and then turning around and sitting in it, as if she realizes that sitting in it is the chair's intended purpose.

A Parkes Family Thanksgiving

Uncle Richard helps Adelaida and Elizabeth play with legos

We had a very special Thanksgiving last year (yes, over two months ago!), with a house full of several special visitors for the holiday. Adelaida's Mamaw, Uncle Richard, Aunt Laura, cousin Elizabeth, and cousin Sarah all stayed with us for a long Thanksgiving weekend. As always, we took lots of pictures and I wanted to share some with you here.

Sarah shakes Adelaida's maraca

We spent a lot of time just sitting around the house, letting the girls play with each other and playing with them. Both Sarah and Elizabeth enjoyed shaking Adelaida's maraca!

the three cousins play with legos together

Dale shows Adelaida the giraffes at the zoo

The weather was beautiful, so in addition to the normal Thanksgiving activities -- cooking, eating, and making turkey leftovers -- we also took a walk around the loop and went to the zoo for an afternoon.

Elizabeth loved pushing Adelaida's stroller through the zoo. She took it from each exhibit to the next, while Dale carried Adelaida

I'm not sure who enjoyed the zoo more, the kids or the adults. We saw an adorable baby orangutan, some surprisingly active rhinoceroses, a seal that swam directly into an underwater wall (ouch!), a very young Asian elephant, and a playful baby chimpanzee.

Uncle Richard, Sarah, and Mamaw look at the animals

The chimpanzee was the most fun, and we spent half an hour just watching the chimpanzee jump off a barrel, swing on a rope, and try to land on her parent's back. She fell so much, but was so fun to watch!

Aunt Laura helps Elizabeth look at the animals

The best part about the zoo was that it was almost empty. Very few people were there, so we had almost every exhibit to ourselves.

the men and the girls pose for a photo at the zoo

back at home, Mamaw and Adelaida play with the stacked rings

We had a great visit with the Parkes family and look forward to future Thanksgivings with them!

Dale's Program Lases a Missile

Note: this post has a video, which may not come through on email or Facebook. If you can't see the video, go to our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/

Many of you know a little bit about the program Dale works on; for those of you who aren't familiar with his work, here's a brief synopsis, as I understand it:

The program is designed to shoot missiles out of the sky. Presumably, the missiles will be launched by bad guys and aimed at good guys. This works by having a very large airplane (a modified Boeing 747 that contains a laser instead of seats and such) detect a missile after it has been launched, track the missile as it flies, and shoot a very high-power laser at the missile to make the missile blow up before it reaches the good guys.

Sounds simple, right? Well, Dale explained to me that it is actually a very complicated problem, for several reasons:
1. The missile is moving, and the airplane is moving. So the laser airplane has to track the missile as both are moving, at different velocities and in different directions.
2. The missile is a pretty dark item -- it isn't as if the missile has headlights that the airplane can "look" at; instead, the laser airplane has to illuminate the missile in order to see it, and has to continue illuminating it as both are moving in the atmosphere.
3. The laser airplane is really far away from the missile (more than 50 kilometers), and the missile is pretty narrow (a few feet across). This is like seeing a motorcycle (without its headlights on) from over thirty miles away.
4. The laser has to travel across that distance through the atmosphere, rather than through a vacuum. Every molecule of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon, and carbon dioxide that the laser encounters will distort the laser beam slightly, making it pretty diffuse by the time it reaches the missile. To compensate for this, the laser has to be extremely powerful as it leaves the laser airplane and Dale's group has to apply "atmospheric compensation" to the laser to correct for that.

More information about the program can be found here: http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/index.html or at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Dale has been working really hard lately to demonstrate that the laser can illuminate, track, and fire a high-powered laser at an actual missile for long enough to blow it up. And recently, they did just that.

Here is a video showing the airplane firing a laser at a missile. The missile is the really bright dot that starts in the lower left; the airplane is the bright double dot that starts in the upper right of the screen. You should be able to identify the laser. The video was shot in the infrared part of the spectrum; the laser isn't visible to the human eye.



By the way, this was a demonstration of the capabilities of the laser, with a missile that wasn't armed and was launched by the US, from the US, toward an uninhabited part of the ocean. No bad guys were involved in the making of this video.

And no, the laser cannot be used to pop popcorn. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius)

Walking!

Note: this post has two videos, which may not come through on email or Facebook. If you can't see the video, go to our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/

One day near the end of December, Dale and I were sitting on the floor while Adelaida walked around a coffee table. I was sitting pretty close to Adelaida, and as she rounded the coffee table toward me, she let go of the coffee table and walked toward me, all by herself!

She had taken some independent steps before, but only when she was walking with me holding onto her and I let go of her. This was the first time she had let go.

We spent the next week trying to get her to repeat this amazing feat, and within two weeks she was comfortable enough walking that she'd walk from the coffee table to the sofa, or from the sofa to her music table. And of course she got lots of practice walking from Dale to me and from me to Dale.

Adelaida has a particularly adorable way of holding her arms up as she walks towards us; this often culminates in her falling into us with a squeal of enjoyment. Such fun!

Here are two videos of her walking to Dale from her music table. These were taken in the first week of January, and Adelaida wouldn't stand at her music table at all -- she was so excited to walk to Dale! She has gotten quite a bit better in the past three weeks and can end her walk by standing rather than falling into us :)





Adelaida is now officially a toddler.

One Year Old

(Yes, I know this post is quite tardy -- in fact, Adelaida is now over 13 months old! -- but wanted to reflect on our first year with Adelaida, our first year as parents.)

This is one of the first pictures of Adelaida ever taken. She was in the NICU, between 6 and 12 hours after being born. She had already removed her intubation tube and was breathing oxygen through a nasal cannula. She had electrical sensors on her chest and finger, and needles in her hand and umbilical cord so the doctors could draw blood and keep her hydrated through an IV. Her face was puffy from the medicine they gave me during the labor, and she was lying in an impersonal bassinet with electrical equipment all around her rather than in her momma's or daddy's arms. But despite all that, she is still smiling! This was definitely a sign of her very easy-going personality.

By the time she was four days old, Adelaida had been released from the hospital and was adjusting to her new home. This was her first Christmas Eve, a quiet day spent at home with us and the dogs, all of us adjusting to our new roles. This was also when I discovered I loved to dress Adelaida up! Doesn't she look adorable in her little black and pink dress?

One month after Adelaida was born, we had settled into a bit of a routine in which we did all the things we were going to do anyway, accompanied by Adelaida. I hadn't yet realized that I could leave her while I left the room (even for something as quick as taking laundry out of the dryer), so she accompanied me almost everywhere!

Dale and I became much more comfortable and confident as parents by the time Adelaida was two months old. She was also becoming much more confident as a baby and developing a personality all her own. She loved to look at colorful things and often fell asleep in my or Dale's arms. Adelaida also started sucking her thumb when she was two months old, so could soothe herself when she was upset. And, she was so adorable with her thumb in her mouth and her fingers around her nose!

Three months old is a wonderful age for any baby, but for Adelaida three months was a great age for several reasons. First, we realized that she needed more sleep in the evenings that we had been giving her. She was a much happier baby after getting an evening nap! Second, she was sleeping through the night more consistently, so Dale and I were also sleeping through the night more. What a difference a full night's sleep makes! Third, by three months old Adelaida had started smiling at us and getting excited when we made funny faces or did silly things. That extra bit of interaction made her such a fun baby!

When Adelaida was a little over four months old, she started going to school a couple of days a week. This allowed me to do some work toward my degree and introduced Adelaida to a world in which there were other children her age and caregivers who weren't her momma or daddy. From the very beginning, she loved her school and loved her teachers! I felt very comfortable with the school we had chosen, but still missed her during the day.

When she was five months old, Adelaida learned to sit up by herself. This opened up a whole new world to her and she loved to sit and play with toys. She was becoming a very independent baby, able to entertain herself easily. I still loved to dress her in adorable clothes!

In her sixth month, Adelaida began to babble and laugh -- both beautiful sounds for a baby to make! We often spent entire evenings just doing silly things to make Adelaida laugh. One of the things I'll never forget is Adelaida laughing while Dale held her upside down and nibbled on her ears. She thought that was so funny!

Although we had started feeding her a couple of months earlier, by seven months old Adelaida was becoming quite a proficient eater. She was able to both pick up finger foods pretty well and get them into her mouth! Adelaida has always been a very adventurous eater -- she will try anything we put on her tray and generally likes new foods.

When she was eight months old, Dale and I were ready for Adelaida to start crawling. She was also ready to crawl and frequently got frustrated with her inability to move toward a desired object. Although she couldn't crawl, she was beginning to be able to communicate with us. We had been using limited sign language with her almost since she was born, and at eight months old she started signing back to us. Her first sign was "nurse" and for about a week I was nursing her about once an hour -- I tried to nurse her every time she signed "nurse," and she was practicing signing pretty frequently.

Adelaida learned to crawl around her nine month birthday and it was so liberating for both her and Dale and me! Even more so than when she learned to sit up, crawling opened up a whole new world for her. Suddenly, she was able to see something she wanted and get to it, and she could decide which toys she wanted to play with (for the first time, she rejected a toy I set in front of her in favor of a different toy that she had to crawl to get to). This was a very exciting time for all of us. (And I still enjoyed dressing her in beautiful clothes!)

Crawling didn't last very long as Adelaida's preferred form of motion. Within a few weeks after she learned to crawl, Adelaida learned to pull herself to a standing position against furniture and liked to "cruise" along furniture and along the wall to reach her destination. At ten months old, she also enjoyed walking by holding on to our hands (a little hard on our backs, but she had so much fun doing it!).

Adelaida has never shown any stranger anxiety -- she has always been happy to be held by anyone (Dale, me, friends, family, or complete strangers) and isn't bothered by me or Dale leaving her with other people. For a while, I was concerned about this (Didn't she want us to be around? Did she even recognize us at all?), but soon realized just how wonderful a trait this was. After all, Adelaida never cried when we left her at school or with a babysitter, and she loved everyone we introduced her to. At eleven months, though, Adelaida started to get so excited when she saw either Dale or me, that we knew she recognized and loved us!

Twelve months seems like such a long time, yet our first year with Adelaida has flown by so quickly! Just a few days before her first birthday, Adelaida cut her first two teeth and began taking independent steps. She gets excited and frustrated (and displays both emotions strongly, although we see excitement much more frequently than frustration) and loves her momma and daddy. She can babble and communicates several thoughts to us using sign language. She has learned both how to grasp an object and how to drop it, and enjoys doing both! And she loves Maggie and Murphy, and they both love her. So much has changed since our first days at home with Adelaida, just twelve short months ago!