Addy's First Christmas

Well Christmas is over but you wouldn't know it by the looks of my house! We got home late last night after four days of traveling and this house is now filled with the remains of cookie trays, candy platters, boxes piled high with new clothes, and bags filled with new toys! I'll see if I can remember this whirlwind of a week so I can fill you all in on our crazy Christmas week!

We kicked off our festivities with the SWAT team party on Saturday night. We had a blast but stayed out way past our bedtime. Especially since I still hadn't packed us for our four day trek across Texas. So Sunday morning we put it into high gear, and made it to Weatherford just in time for the Cowboys kickoff. - And that's all I'm gonna say about that game because I want to keep this cheerful. - Sunday was Riebe Christmas and it was so great to see all of my family that we don't get to see often enough.

 

We have a fun tradition that was started a few years back when it was decided, and rightfully so, that none of us need a thing anymore but there are tons of people who do. So the tradition became that everyone would pitch in $100 and we would play a dice game called LCR. We each choose a charity to play for and the winner of the game gets to donate all the money to the charity of their choice. This year thanks to my Sissy's winning, the Susan G. Koman Foundation will be getting an extra $1,300, in honor of my Nana!

Money, Money, Money

Monday was spent playing with Santa's littlest helper and stuffing our faces with more sugar. No complaints here! Monday evening we went to the Christmas Eve service at my parents church. The sugar plum got passed around all over the place and met a lot of sweet people who had only seen her on Facebook. Then we headed back to my parents house for our family Christmas.

Reading the Christmas story

 

Now, I know most children get spoiled on Christmas, especially when they are the first born grandchild, but not every kid has a grandmother with a shopping addiction. My kid banked this year.

The first box "she" opened had five gifts inside! Two pairs of shoes and three toys, and she still had thirteen boxes to go! Well that we knew of... Turns out there were two more that my mom accidentally mislabeled for Aarin and Ryan!

Wouldn't they look cute in these outfits though?

Plus the gift from her Aunt Aarin that had five different outfits in it! Addy-girl is stocked up for a while! We all went to sleep and waited for Santa to sneak in through the chimney, but were awaken by one crazy thunder, lightening, and hail storm. I bet you all heard the same stuff at your house, but it was soooo loud! Anyways we woke up Tuesday morning and opened a few more gifts from Santa, our stockings, and some Chanel from my daddy. Woohoo! Good job pops! We ate our breakfast and then packed up our things and headed west for Christmas number four in Abilene!

Rudolph showed up!

We had a delicious lunch at Ryan's aunt and uncle's and watched the kiddies open their gifts.

 

Then it was over to Ryan's dad's for more gifts! Addy-girl got to play all afternoon with her Aunt Kinsley and had so much fun. We stuffed our faces one more time with an awesome turkey dinner and then some relaxing by the fire.

 

 

Wednesday we had to head back home, but not before a stop to see both sets of great-grandparents.

 

We had so much fun with each set of families and we are so blessed to have so many people to celebrate Jesus' birthday with. I always thank God for sending His son to die for me, but sometimes forget that He was born for us too. I sounds cliche, but I do hope that everyone remembers the true reason for this season! Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Christmas In Austin

We started our Christmas a week early this year and I'm loving it! It's like we are getting two weeks of Christmas instead of just one day! Monday we headed down to Austin to have Christmas with Ryan's mom's side of the family.

 

We got there around lunch time, and the baby loving began immediately. We were all pretty excited for Addyson's first Christmas, but unfortunately my sugar plum wasn't feeling so hot. Actually she was feeling really hot and running a bad fever. She wasn't up for any playing and just wanted to be held all day. Luckily there was no shortage of hands waiting to hold that baby.

Uncle E time

About to fall asleep on MeeMaw

Uncle Bobby getting his time in

Lounging with her Mahwee

 

We sat around and talked all afternoon and then had a wonderful meal for dinner. Addy-girl enjoyed some carrots and got her first taste of chicken! She said it was delish :) --Thanks Grandpa Joe! After dinner it was time to open presents, but the littlest elf was just feeling so, so bad. She laid on her daddy's chest with a wet cloth to keep her cool while we opened her presents for her :(

Just pitiful

 

She looked at her things for about two seconds and then it was off to bed for her. But the rest of us enjoyed the night opening all of our gifts and snacking on sweets. Well, MeeMaw and I enjoyed snacking on sweets :)

The next morning was pretty low key. Breakfast, lounging around, and re-showing Addyson all the fun things she got! We had lunch and then headed back home.

My little doggie lover

Bubba's hat was just so interesting

Addy loves her new wash cloth!

 

It was a Christmas cut way too short because of work, but it was fun non the less. God is so good for blessing us with such a wonderful family to celebrate Jesus' birth with!

Wrap Buddies

Yesterday was wrap party day!!! No not Christmas gift wrapping, I'm talking about Addy-girl's helmet wrapping party! It was so much fun and now Addyson is so stylin' with her new "head wrap".

I found out about a great place called 360 Wraps through our PT. They are a car graphics design business that started up a non-profit on the side to help out some cute babies that had to wear ugly helmets. A few years back a man whose son had to wear a DocBand contacted 360 Wraps and asked if they could wrap a medical helmet just the way they wrapped helmets for race car drivers. They gave it shot and stumbled into a line of work that would keep them busy for years to come. After doing a tiny bit of research, they learned how expensive the bands are and that insurance doesn't cover any of it, so they wrapped the baby's helmet completely free of charge. Not knowing how prevalent brachycephaly and plagiocephaly are, the owner encouraged the dad to spread the word, not thinking that he would ever wrap another DocBand again. Now this January they will wrap their 1,000th band! They were even featured on CBS.

Word spread extremely fast from one mom to the next, and 360 Wraps could barely keep up. 3 years later they've got their process down to a science. They created a non-profit organization and called it Wrap Buddies. They essentially have a "wrapping party" and bring in around 10 families once a month to makeover these babies helmets all at once. In 2 hours time all the babies are rocking new and improved bands!

Here are a few pics from our wrap party!

Here is our "before" shot. This is what the template looks like before it goes on the helmet. We picked out a design and they measured her helmet before getting started. The blue that's above is for a little boy, and the bottom sliver shows another little girl's.

Here, the girls are priming the helmets and the guys are getting started with a band. And yes it was potluck, so we all had lots of yummy food to snack on while we waited!

This is miss priss playing with her new friend Hadley, and trying to steal an iPhone out of Hadley's diaper bag. Daddy doesn't approve of stealing little girl...

(and neither does Mommy for that matter)

This is Tyler. He put Addyson's helmet on a stand and started the process of stretching, heating, smoothing, stretching, heating, smoothing...

Smoothing...

A little stretching...

And I could never get a picture of him heating with the blow torch because he went so dang fast!

Final touches, trimming up the edges.

 

And the finished product...drum roll please...

Ta-Da!!! Cute huh?



Here's the back

She was jazzed

 

While we were there we got to see a sweet little girl named Maggie get her walker wrapped! She has two prosthetic legs, but she didn't need those wrapped because she had them completely decked out in rhinestones!!!



 

It's such a great thing that this company is doing for these sweet babies and their families! Since this is a non-profit, Wrap Buddies can accept donations and if you would like to help them continue wrapping DocBands you can do that HERE.

 

Here is one last pic of my sugar plum, and the owner of 360 Wraps, Tommy Strader

 

 

God is so good for putting people in our lives who use their talents, equipment, money, and time to help bring joy to others.

 

8 Months Old

Happy Birthday Addy-girl! She's done it again. She's another month old and I still don't like the idea of her growing up :( But I guess I'm going to have to get over that because she's not going to stop! Here's what's been happening this past month...

 

 

I guess our biggest change would be the DocBand. My sugar plum got her newest accessory the week of Thanksgiving. She's only had it on for 3 weeks and I can already see such a big change! The sides of her head are already evening out and the back of her head is starting to round out! She has been a little champ through the whole thing. She doesn't seem to mind it one bit, but she does play with it some. Hopefully she'll only have to wear it another month and then we'll have this behind us! This week we are going to 360 Wraps to have Addy's helmet decorated. Don't worry I'll make sure to have a new post to tell you all about it!!

PS-this is the shirt that got ruined by blueberries :(

Eating, eating, and more eating. I can hardly keep up with this girl! She still has her milk every 3-4 hours during the day and also eats three meals a day. We haven't introduced too many new foods this month. Only blueberries, broccoli, cauliflower. She let me know that she's not a huge cauliflower fan, but who is? We have tried quite a few new snack foods and she loves them all! MumMums, teething cookies, yogurt drops, and lil crunchies are all favs. They're perfect for keeping her entertained when we're at a restaurant and she's getting restless! She's normally pretty clean while eating, but a few nights ago she stuck her fingers in her mouth, after I had just given her a bite of carrots, and then used her carrot covered hands to rub her sleepy eyes...at least she was getting a bath after this meal.

The Real Carrot Top

 

 

She also got her first tooth this month! Followed quickly by the second one! I knew it was coming soon because the day before it popped through she practically slept the day away. Poor baby did not feel good and ran a fever as well. Tooth #1 came in on Monday and tooth #2 showed up on Thursday! Ryan already thinks she has his teeth, lol. You can barely see them in this picture, but they're there! Sharp little things too!

Showing off her toofies

Sleep is still going good, praise Jesus! Three 30 minutes naps a day, and only waking up once at night! I'll take it! Unfortunately our baby monitor quit working and I haven't gone to buy a new one, so it makes it a little harder to hear her if she's crying. But I make a good work out of running up and down the stairs checking on her all day long! Our bed time routine is still the same and it definitely works for her. With the DocBand we have to wash her hair every night, and lucky for me she loves bath time! It's so much fun to watch her splash around and play with her toys!

Clean Girl

Last month she had started crawling and this month she is practically a speed crawler! The girl can move. She very quickly figured out how to get from room to room. She loves crawling down the hallway and feeling the different textures of the carpet and tile. I haven't bought any baby gates yet, bad mommy I know, but we don't have too much she can get in to. When I'm in the kitchen I'll turn our end table to block her in a little bit. Now she has figured out how to crawl into the table, but she hasn't learned how to get out. I sent Ryan this picture saying she had locked herself in jail. She cried and I laughed-mean momma.

Help!

 

 

God is so good for chosing me to be the mommy to this precious girl! I love her more and more every day!!!