The Trip Out West in Pictures

Len and Adara headed out west last week to visit with his parents. They were away for 9 days. Here's some pics of the visiting with family.

The other cutie, is our niece Jericha.

From the pictures of this angel you would never guess what a hellion she was. Len offers this advice "Never take a 10 month old baby (major separation anxiety time) away from her mother,into a different time zone, with people she's never met and expect to get any sleep whatsoever". He was pretty exhausted by the time he got home. Bella was going to bed at about 11pm and getting up for the day at 4am, with one or two bottles in the middle of that sleeping time. Fortunately Len's family was patient and happy to see her anyways.

Happy 10 Months Baby Girl

Happy 10 months Adara my sweet monkey! And welcome to the world of the bipedal!
Yep, that's right you decided to take your first steps (three of them in a row, actually) on your 10 month birthday. I'm sad because you decided to do this trick while a quarter of the globe away from me in Alberta. I'm happy cause you rock rockstar and I'm ridiculously stupidly proud of you! I'm proud like no other baby has ever walked before kinda proud! You (of course) pulled out your walking tricks because you needed to get to your daddy, right now! Sometimes crawling just won't do!
It's been a busy month for the whole family little one. I went back to work but you seem to have taken it in stride reasonably well. You and daddy have worked out your own system and you seem to be having a lot of fun.
This month you are becoming much more toddler-y then baby like. (you can't say baby-y, it works even less well then toddler-y) You're super curious about the world and can't possibly slow down to wait for us.
This months major events have included
1) crawling around for an hour on the floor of a Sears while mommy and daddy desperately tried to buy a dresser and mommy got nasty looks for being a bad mamma
2) Camping in the freezing cold, pouring rain
3) Crawling around in the mud at the campsite, while no one gave your mommy nasty looks 'cause their kids were as dirty as you
4) Giving up baby food, in favour of anything on our plates. Sausage, chicken, tomatoes, curried potatoes, whatever it happens to be, you'll take it, as long as it came from our plates
5) Opening the patio screen door, throwing your toys out onto the deck in front of you, crawling out, and closing the door behind you. Often. Whenever no one's looking... which of course never happens in this house...

Less charming new things this month include crying desperately, while lying on the floor with your head down, whenever your father or I leave the room. Dude! We are right here, but sometimes we gotta go to the bathroom! I promise that we'll be back.
You've also taken to sobbing desperately every time we pass a playground and don't stop at the swings. We don't even have to go past the playgrounds now, you know where they are and start crying when we take turns to avoid walking past them.

But generally speaking, you're pretty cool right now. Quick with smiles and giggles, you love to be the centre of attention and preferably the life of the party.

Right now you're off seeing your Stannard family, and I couldn't be happier that they finally get to see you. But I miss you terribly and can't wait for you to come back. I'm so proud of you baby girl, and can't wait to see what the next two months leading up to your first birthday hold.
Happy birthday Bella!

The Rain in Spain...

We went camping for the first time with Adara this weekend. It rained. Alot. This happens literally every single time we camp, so I don't know why we thought it would be different this time. Len and I went back through and realized, that yes, it has rained every time that we've camped. This wouldn't be weird if we camped for weeks at a time, but we've only ever gone out for a maximum of three nights!
So, anyhow, we had a lovely friday at the Elora Gorge with Kristen, Greg and Liam. Liam and Adara rolled around our huge new tent (palatial, truly ridiculous!), we made an awesome camping meal, had a campfire, all good. Adara went to sleep in the pack and play in the tent like there was nothing to it. Then it got cold. REally cold. See your breath cold. And she completely went ballistic at 1 am and Len and her ended up driving around in our massive rental truck (GMC Sierra) from 1 am until 7am, in order to keep her warm and asleep. They ran out of gas at a gas station at 5:30 am and had to wait for them to open! My poor wee family. I was asleep. Don't judge me, time flies when you're sleeping! I thought that they'd just gone out for a few minutes!
At 7 am, Len crawled into bed and Greg and I took over keeping baby warm duties. I took her for a huge walk all wrapped up, hung out in the bathroom (heated) for a very long time, and played on a swing. Then we came back and Greg had tea made and bottles clean and a tarp ready for her to roll around on.
We all had a lovely time until 11 am when the rain started. And never stopped. actually, it stopped this morning at about 7 am. The baby was too cold and too wet and it was irretrievable. We were supposed to go to the Fergus festival, but ended up ripping everything down in a torrential downpour and packing up to go home. Len and Adara and I drove through hail three times on the way home and almost ended up pulling over and stopping due to visibility several times. But we made it.
After everyone ripped down their tents and threw them in to the trucks, Gregs last words to us were that he wasn't camping with us again until we stopped doing rain dances. Fair enough. :)

The Shingling Fairy?

My sister, her husband and their son (who's 8) came this weekend to take care of Adara so that Len and I could have our first overnight away since she was born. Len and I left on Saturday and drove leisurely to Kingston, stopping in many antiques places on the way. In Kingston we had a beautiful fine dining experience and went to a movie, two things that are impossible to do with Adara right now. We based our weekend around "things that can't be done with Adara".
In the meanwhile, Kristen, Greg and Liam arrived, bringing copious amounts of food and beer with them (all of the meat and cheese variety, my family's favourite two food groups!) In the course of 36 hours they collectively took care of our baby, did two loads of laundry and shingled our new garage! These are the kind of babysitters that everyone should have! The laundry fairy and shingling fairy variety! My sister has asked me to point out that their services are not for hire as several of my friends blogs indicate a strong need for laundry and odd job fairies! :)

As you can see from the pictures, Liam and Adara had an awesome time! They played far rougher then she's every played, and we could tell when we came home that Liam has become Adara's "favourite person". He is the source of all fun and games as far as she is concerned.
Everyone played so hard, that this is how they looked on Sunday morning. I love this pic. Adara is fitting right in with her family, lounging in front of the tv on a sunday morning while figuring out their plans for the day.
I noticed in writing this that there are no pictures of my sister and Adara. Tells you a bit about who was taking all of the lovely pics, huh?
The whole weekend got me thinking about family and how lucky I am. Friends too. In the past year everyone has really been putting out a lot of effort to make sure that we're ok with our new family life. Thanks guys, you all rock!