80's pride......

Below are the shoes Trey demanded yesterday for his "back to school shoes" and then a picture of J.O. sporting a similar pair in the 80's.

Let's just hope that sweater doesn't come back in style!! (sorry J.O.)

All about Addison....

1st wall done!

work in progress!

Constant sight around here! Addison digging food out of the pantry......


Does it get any cuter than a baby with a mullet and Minnie Mouse "drawers" (as Trey calls them)

All of these pics were taken with my phone, so the quality is terrible. Her room is my latest project that my dad helped me with. I have always felt it was too plain and I finally got around to doing something about it! My wonderful dad added the chair rail and I am painting the stripes. I hate to "toot toot" but I love it! (for those unfamiliar with "toot toot" it means tooting your own horn. Amy and Josh got J.O. and I hooked on that phrase.

I feel like Addison is in that stage of doing new things all the time so I need to do a post on what she is up to! I'm sure Trey will creep into here somewhere too though!

She will be 18 months old on the 29th and I really CANNOT believe it. To say the second goes by much faster than the first is an understatement. For one thing, I think they are just carted around so much more from the start that you always think of them as being older. There's not as much time to just focus on them when they are infants because you still have "life" going on even from the beginning. I mean, don't think Addison was deprived or anything though. According to her and the way she acts, we all live in her world. One thing that I have always heard is that girls are more mature than boys from the start and do things earlier and I have to say that is true!! Addison talks as plain as day and can pretty much say whatever she wants. Trey didn't start talking like this until much later. She also has an interest in potty training but I'm just not sure I'm ready yet! It is to the point of embarrassment though because we will be in public and she will start bellowing, "PEE-PEE, PEE-PEE" and I will just say ok and try to ignore her. (she won't go on big potties so I really don't have a choice!) Then she starts trying to pull her diaper off so I try to distract her with other things until she forgets. I'm going to have to start working with her though because she hates being wet and I simply can't change her diaper after every single times she pees! (I mean, diapers are expensive and I am unemployed here.)

Another big milestone we reached was that she sat in her chair and watched a complete Baby Einstein movie without getting bored!! I actually got to load and unload the dishwasher and clean the kitchen. She has never had an interest in cartoons or movies and I really wish she would every now and then. I know there are awesome parents out there who don't let their kids watch t.v., but I'm not one of them. (These parents also probably don't let their kids eat sweets or hot dogs and that's not happening around here either.)

Addison still loves to sleep and gets so grumpy is she doesn't get lots of sleep at nap or a good nap during the day. Just last night she was ready for bed at 6:10 and is still asleep at 7:30. She just requires a lot of sleep and I have a feeling I know who she gets that from! I could sleep a ton if I was able to.

Addison is a very girly girl too. I think we could be in trouble when she starts picking out her own clothes. She wants her toes painted all the time, loves to carry purses and demands a bow when we walk out of the house. She also has 2 or 3 babies at all times and never leaves the house without "Rosie". I see lots of baby strollers and doll houses in our future.

I am finishing up my second summer session of school and it's awesome. I love doing homework in my free time and late at night when the kids are in bed. I also love being in class until 9 two nights a week. Not really (obviously), but I know I will be glad when it's over!

St. Louis!

The Stadium
Not too sure about Treys smile here....

So excited to go!!

We went to St. Louis over the 4th weekend and had such a great time. J. O. has been wanting to go see the Cardinals play for awhile and we decided to take Trey and make a weekend of it. We also decided that Addison would appreciate staying with Cece and PJ better and having their undivided attention. I have to say that although I missed Addison while we were gone, she wouldn't have had fun at all. Trey LOVED watching the "carnibals" play. He even begged me to go back outside when I was trying to kill time in the air conditioning. Thankfully a guy J.O. does business with got us seats in the club section so we could run in and out to snacks and bathrooms fairly easy. The next day we headed to the zoo and that place was awesome. I am not a big zoo person because I just don't see what all the excitement is about. It's a bunch of stinky animals that sometimes come out of hiding for a few seconds. Plus it's a million degrees outside. However, the St. Louis zoo was pretty great. It was also free. Little Rock could take a few hints from them.

That night we went down to the arch to watch the fireworks. Supposedly there were 100,000 people there and I'm gonna guess that 99,000 of them were drunk. We stayed there looking around for a few seconds but when a woman came and stood directly in front of us wearing a bandanna for a shirt I decided it was time to go. I looked at J.O. and asked if he wanted to go watch the fireworks from the comfort of our hotel parking lot. He agreed very quickly. (the woman was pretty close to him and dangerously close of busting out of the bandanna...) So, we headed back and plopped in the back of the 'ole van to watch the show. (If you remember, my back seats fold down like a couch...won't find that in a Tahoe) We headed out the next morning and were all ready to get home and pick up Addison. Trey told me Monday morning that he was ready to go home and get his baby and dog!

The only bad part about our trip was our hotel. I wouldn't even really say it was bad, but not what I thought it would be. Apparently the hotel remodeled one section downstairs and then took a ton of pictures of that space at different angles and posted pictures of it. It was very nice in the lobby but the rooms were terrible! We requested a space for 3 people to sleep. I even had a specific conversation with the clerk about getting a room big enough for all of us. She assured me one bed and couch was plenty big enough for 2 adults and a child. We had a king bed and a couch bed which was great except for the couch bed was literally at the foot of our bed. The room was tiny! Also, the patio door was broken so we couldn't go on our patio. This wouldn't have been a big deal except we needed to move some of the furniture from the room out there to have walking space! Then, there were NO sheets to be found to make up the couch bed. I called to the front desk and they were going to send some right up. Well, 45 mins later there still weren't any. I called again and the guy asked if it was an emergency. Um, well yeah. So then, I marched down to the front desk and he assured me they were being taken up there right now. Nope. So I started stalking housekeepers until a very nice lady found what I needed.

Addison is doing good and growing like crazy. She is currently obsessed with baby dolls and carrying them around everywhere. Today when I was getting Treys haircut she found a disgusting old baby in the toy bin and immediately snatched it out. She wrapped her pink blanket around it and put it on the floor patting it's back. It was really cute if you could look past the infested baby she was handling. Her temper tantrums are still in full swing. Last Sunday I made her put the baby down when it was time to leave the church nursery and she let out a huge blood curdling scream and laid on the floor to throw her fit. I'm so used to these that I just started to walk out but I noticed all the teachers jumped and stopped what they were doing to look. So then I tried to act shocked at her behavior and like I had never seen it before. Her and Trey fight all day but if one of them isn't around they miss each other so much. Trey spent the night with Cece and PJ not too long ago and Addison walked in his room the whole time he was gone yelling, "bubba and Tey."

My first semester of grad school is behind me and I have found that my study habits haven't changed much. The only difference is in college I procrastinated because I wanted to sleep in and be lazy and now I procrastinate because I am so busy all day. However, it hasn't been too bad and J.O. has been such a great help. I am looking forward to having it behind me though!