What a difference a year makes!

For some reason, I've been feeling nostalgic lately about Adilyn getting so big so fast. I just feel like she's turning into a little girl right before my eyes. Tonight at bathtime I had a flashback of her in her little lamb towel, so I had to take a picture for the side by side comparison.

Mother of the Year?

So, I'm the first to admit that my daughter gets injured quite often "on my watch". I like to believe it's because we are always having such extreme fun that she happens to fall a lot. On Saturday, she went face first onto our wood floor and came up with a huge knot right on her forehead. She recovered quite nicely, no big deal. When she woke up on Sunday that knot had turned into a huge, but perfectly round bruise. It still didn't bug her, babies are so resilient...(thank God!)
I took her to her school today, and I told the one lady about the bruise. They are very conscious of injuries, so I didn't want them to panic when they saw it.
Anyway, when I picked her up, her "CruiserGram" (her little daily activity report) stated - "Noticed large bruise on the side of her forehead. She came like that from home." Wow, that stings! =)

Oh, Ike...

Although our experience with Ike was nothing compared to other people in Houston, it was still more than we expected. We are so far away from the coast, that we didn't think it would be much of anything. We were wrong. Here's a video of the night before anything happened, and you can see how strong the winds already were. This was about seven hours before Ike even made landfall.

We got Adilyn all set up in her "hurricane bed" - the pack and play in our master bath closet. We boarded up our back windows (just in case of falling debris), and we were all set to go.

The winds really picked up throughout the night. Finally around 3am, Cory and I both got up to look outside. It was crazy! Our pine trees were bending back so far, they looked ready to snap. The smaller trees were almost touching the ground. Branches were flying everywhere. It was a scary sight. We dozed off and on all night, but it was definitely not a good night's sleep. Adilyn woke up around 6am, and that's when we all kind of got up for the day. It was still really windy, and the eye hadn't come through yet as far as we knew. We surveyed the damage - there were fences down all over, many trees down, but no major damage, thank goodness. Our neighbors' backyard and the bayou behind our house - usually it's only about two feet wide and down about fiften feet lower.

Adilyn's "hurricane hair"...she was dirty for two days straight!

Our power had gone out around 10pm that night, and it was still out. We were listening to the radio and it was saying that it might be up to 3 weeks before people got their power turned on. It wasn't too bad in the morning because it was still really windy. As the winds died down and the humidity rose, it got pretty miserable. It was sticky and gross! Adilyn would not go to sleep, so her and I "evacuated" to my friend's house who had power.

We came home the next day. A Texas "cold" front had come in, so it was actually a beautiful day to sit outside and get to know all your neighbors, who you haven't spoken to in the 8 years you've all lived there. Inside, unfortunately was still sticky. Lo and behold, around 4pm we saw our first "light at the end of the tunnel" in the form of a Centerpoint Energy truck. Some transformers had blown earlier, so we thought for sure we were screwed! Anyway, after a truck coming and going, then another truck coming and going, we finally got power! It had almost been out for 48 hours, and boy, were we glad it came on when it did! =)

So, now as we survey our own personal damage - it's pretty minimal...an empty fridge, a couple boards off our chimney, a couple sleepless nights, a couple days off school (when I didn't want them), and some scary moments. All in all, we pulled through very nicely. We are extremely lucky and blessed once again.

Dirty and tired, but safe and sound...she's eating chips. :)

Dada is home!

Cory has been working out of town for over a month now. He usually gets to come home on the weekends, so when he is here, Adilyn loves to play with him, get silly, and get thrown around. He was bouncing her on her ball the other day, and she was cracking up!

Modeling in her future???

Sunday, we were at the pool for our last day of the summer. I decided to document it in photos (like I've done with everything else for the last 15 months). As soon as I got the camera out, she started working it...maybe she's been influenced by "America's Next Top Model". Here are photos for her portfolio for the baby Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Notice, like every good model, she didn't forget her accessories.