As I mentioned before, we had been making some small attempts to tell Addie about the baby that was coming. We pretty much assumed she didn’t really understand, and I was steeling myself for some intense transition drama (read: tantrums and meltdowns) while Adelaide got used to having my (and everyone else’s) attention split. But from the moment she walked into my hospital room, she’s loved that little baby, and has been gentle and protective.

In the weeks since we’ve brought him home, Addie has demonstrated that big sister instinct that surprised me from the first moment she met him. She likes to hang out near him when we’re watching TV, and sometimes climbs up on the couch and grabs the round pillow so I’ll put the baby on her lap.

I think she’s a little impatient for the day when he can play with her, and sometimes tries to hand him things as she’s playing with them.

The cutest thing ever, though, is when I asked her to help me feed him. I put him on her lap and had her prop the bottle up in his mouth. She LOVED this responsibility, and now, every time I feed him by bottle, she thinks it’s her job to help. Even pushes my hand away when I try to assist her. She takes the job very, very seriously.

Addie doesn’t like to get in the car unless she knows where “brother” is. When we took her with us to his first check-up, she did NOT like the doctor poking and prodding the baby. And every night, at bedtime, we lay the baby in bed with her while we say family prayer, and she kisses him on the head goodnight.

Make no mistake, Addie is happy to have a baby brother. She likes to rub his head and touch his feet, and say “Awwww…” (Yeah, I think she’s heard that a lot since he was born.) I have to remember these moments, because I’m sure, before I know it, they’re going to be fighting. But I hope they’ll be good buddies.

Little brother.

Big sister.

And say it with me, everyone…

Awwwww!

About a month ago (Tuesday, July 20), I had my 38-week pregnancy appointment with my doctor, and he talked me into scheduling an induction for the following week. I was completely freaked because I wasn’t quite ready for my life to fall into shambles again, but I was pretty done being pregnant. Jesse had a work trip scheduled for Tuesday – Thursday of that week, and although I was a bit nervous about it, after my appointment I told him it would be fine if he went. I had a lot going on for the next week, and I figured the baby would probably be, at most, a week early. So Jesse left that Tuesday afternoon for Wyoming.

As I probably should have anticipated (I mean, this is ME we’re talking about), the next morning, I woke up to a distinct leaking of fluid. Knowing that sometimes women can mistake that sort of thing, I didn’t immediately jump to any conclusions…however, I did call Jesse and tell him to head home ASAP. He had a six-hour drive to get home, so I pretty much refused to head into the hospital until he was about an hour away. It was pretty obvious after a couple of hours that the baby was coming, so we did head to the hospital…and yes, I did find it a little funny that I had to pack myself and my 2-year-old up and drive myself to the hospital to have a baby.

Turned out my water had broken, and by 8:18 that evening, Westen Paul Knight was born. And yes, Jesse made it in time. And…I don’t think I’ll spell out any of the other details, other than the fact that I did end up with a spinal headache and had to have a blood patch to heal it. Most painful headache treatment ever (but effective).

Anyhow, Westen was 7 lbs 3 oz., 19.5 inches long. He’s pretty darn adorable. The moment when I met him for the first time was pretty surreal. This tiny, perfect human being that we’d been thinking about and preparing for was finally in my arms. He had crazy dark hair. And dimples.

One of the most remarkable moments that happened while I was in the hospital was when Addie came to visit for the first time. We’ve been trying to tell her about the baby for months, but pretty much figured she had no clue what was going on. However, she was understanding more than I gave her credit for. The first thing she did when she came in the hospital room was to climb up on the bed and hold her arms out. Now, this kid doesn’t like baby dolls. She’s not that interested in other people’s babies. She doesn’t take care of her stuffed toys like other little girls do (they’re mostly good for throwing down the slide). But somehow she knew this was her brother, her baby, and she wanted to hold him. From that moment on, she’s been a surprisingly gentle and loving big sister. Who knew? (More on that in a later post.)

Now, for the name. Those who know me well do know that a certain USA-television-character-burned-spy was the original inspiration for his name. I went into the hospital liking Westen the best for a name, but once I saw him, I wasn’t sure he looked like a Westen. But in the end, we figured he would grow into any name we gave him…and he certainly has. Someday he’ll ask me where I got his name, and I’m not sure what I’m gonna say.

Little Westen is adorable, and a really good baby. Granted, my life is an endless routine of feedings, laundry, and attempts to sleep, but we’re adjusting fairly well. I think the second time around was easier than the first in some ways, and harder in others, but more musings on that topic later. For now, I’ll just share some pictures of this adorable face.

Addie is officially (though, it seems like she always has been) a Daddy’s Girl. I don’t think there’s anyone she loves spending time with more than her dad. She wants to do anything he does, including working in the garage or on any household project…as long as it involves tools. This little cutie couldn’t care less for dolls, but certainly loves to throw balls, fight with swords, wrestle, and use tools like her dad.

Some funny Addie-isms:

• I thought kids hated having shoes on. But this kid LOVES her shoes, and cries when you try to take them off. Particularly her Keene sandals. In fact “shoes” is one of the words she can say really well.
• She does not like dresses. At all. She doesn’t mind getting dressed, as long as it’s not in a dress. I can’t really figure out why. (Loves jewelry, however. Go figure.)
• Addie still doesn’t talk a lot (at least anything that makes sense), but she’s getting really good at communicating with her cuteness. Oh, and I’m pretty sure she says “daddy” for both Jesse and me. I try not to take that personally. 

Addie turned 2 on May 25. I can hardly believe it! For her birthday, Jesse and I took her to the zoo for the afternoon. She loved it (of course)!

About a week later, we had a family dinner as a birthday party. The theme was Curious George. Yes, she loves that monkey. She got some fun presents, but I think her absolute favorite part of the party was all the balloons. I think I’ll remember that for the next 2-year-old birthday party! (Who needs presents?)

I feel like Addie’s growing up too fast on me. We recently switched her from her crib to a “big girl” bed, and she seemed so small for it at first. We spent several weeks getting her new room ready, which included painting, getting new furniture, and putting flowers up all over her wall. She was so excited about the bed, and slept really well in it for the first weekend. Then…she discovered that she could get herself out at any time. So for a few weeks we had a nocturnal visitor at various times of the night or early morning. After awhile, though, I think she figured it out and hasn’t left her room as often.

However, one morning, Jesse found this on the couch in the living room:

I was wondering if I’d ever find her sleeping on the floor somewhere, but this sure made me laugh!

For the past several weeks, Addie’s been going to a “preschool” daycare twice a week. At first it was really traumatic on all of us, but after a couple of weeks, she not only tolerated it, but she started looking forward to it. It was almost a bittersweet moment the first time she just smiled and waved goodbye to me as I left her. She’s becoming pretty social (finally!), and whenever I take her to her “preschool”, at least two or three boys yell “Addie!” excitedly when we walk in the room. She is beyond adorable, and we love her so much!

She’s going to make a great big sister! (Really, really soon!)

We hope you’re enjoying as much candy…

…and lovely springtime weather, like we are.

What a beautiful holiday this is, on so many levels. Happy Easter!

Okay, we did it the day of Halloween, so all the good ones were gone, but Addie still loved wandering around and picking out her own little Addie-sized pumpkin. 

Then we carved them. I did a Jack Skellington, and it turned out awesome.

  Then Jesse took her around the neighborhood for her first trick-or-treating experience. I think the whole knocking at doors and getting candy is something she was totally on board with.

Addie was a turtle, and really didn’t enjoy the costume (even though it was just a vest). But she was dang cute!

I digress.

Anyhow, this book is about the Salem witch trials. I wasn’t more than ten pages into it when I thought, “I have to go there.” Now THAT part of me is alive and well. Once I get an idea like that into my head, it takes a lot to derail me from my goal. Jesse gets a very limited amount of time off of work, and I get a ridiculous amount, so I knew he probably couldn’t go. But I needed someone to scheme with me. Someone who loved adventure as much as I do. Someone whose soul feeds off of wandering and experiencing and seeing things you’ve only read about or learned about in history class.

Yeah, I’m digressing again.

Anyhow, I got Kate on board (and I tempted her with Salem and old school Boston in October – our favorite time of year!). Then we recruited Melissa. And luckily, Jesse let us do it (I say that because if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t have wanted him to go without me). And Addie got well from about two weeks of illness just in time to head to Boston at the end of October.

It was a fantastic trip. It was the kind of trip that makes me feel alive. Or really awake to the world around me. (Like that quote from Joe Vs. the Volcano, “My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.” Traveling somewhere new, or even somewhere I love and can’t get enough of, makes me feel awake and in constant total amazement.)   

The first full day we were there, we went to Lexington & Concord and saw where the Revolutionary War started. It felt humbling to stand where so many events happened that we just take for granted. We visited the Paul Revere sites, the town of Concord, then the North Bridge sites (the “shot heard around the world” bridge – that park had the creepiest bathroom I’ve ever seen…random, I know). Then we visited all the literary sites in the area like Louisa May Alcott’s home and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s home. Kate and I had a memorable moment of running through the Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, searching for the famous writers’ graves. We found them, but not before it started to get a little dark, and we started to (delightfully) freak ourselves out. As usual (for my pace of running around and cramming things in), we got to our last site of Walden Pond close to dark so had to do some hurrying to see anything, but it was a beautiful day. We ended it at Dunkin Donuts, of course.

At the Paul Revere monument. Addie was such a fun little traveler.

Burial Hill in Concord. Cemeteries are one of Kate’s fascinations, so we made a point of going to a lot of them!  

Another one of Kate’s fav’s: the Double D.

We spent a day in Boston, following the Freedom Trail. It was a bit rainy, but beautiful and historic all the same. Then we visited Beacon Hill and visited the fanciest 7-11 (of course!) I’ve ever seen.

The obligatory “Burial Hill” – one of our first stops on the Freedom Trail.

The three of us girls at the monument of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The fancy 7-11…and Addie downing my slurpee.

We started our Sunday by going to church in Cambridge. Then we spent the rest of the day driving down through Plymouth, visiting the town where the pilgrims landed and established their colony, then driving up through Cape Cod. Cape Cod was beautiful (and lighthouses galore!), and I bet it would be even more beautiful in the summer! We stopped at the famous red-and-white lighthouse, and had a fun photo shoot at the “three sisters” lighthouses which had been relocated from the shore to a park. We ended the day in Provincetown. A WEIRD place. Just a funky vibe there. (Turns out the pilgrims landed there first, and even they found it weird and had to move on again to Plymouth!)

We just love this picture (outside the church) for some reason. What a stinkin’ cutie Addie is!

I used to be a real lighthouse fanatic, and still do find them fascinating and mystical somehow. Can’t explain why.

Addie seriously thought she was in a photo shoot. Could she be cuter? (This was on the steps of one of the “Three Sisters.”)

We spent our last day doing the really creepy stuff: exploring Salem. Being October, it was one big Halloween party! We started the day by stopping in Marblehead and eating lunch there, then went on to Salem where we visited the With Trial Memorial, then took a “haunted Salem” tour on a trolley. I must say, I love Halloween, and this has to be my biggest tribute to such a strange holiday yet!

On the beach at Marblehead.

Seesa and Kate at the Witch Trial Memorial.

On the ghost tour in Salem.

It was such a great trip, full of exploring historic sites (and a lot of cemeteries), experiencing new things, getting lost, and of course the inherent silliness and hilarity that comes from traveling with the girls. Thanks for such a fun adventure, girls!

(That was fun reliving it. *sigh*)

Oh, and I guess I should add that all of these photos are courtesy of Kate. Addie managed to break my camera on the first day with that magic touch of hers, so I didn’t end up with very many of my own. Thanks Kate!

Anyhow, in the spirit of being more productive in the evenings (instead of watching hours of TV shows like Scrubs, Friends, Burn Notice, or Psych and playing solitaire, or my new obsession, my old Nintendo Gameboy Advance), I figured I could get around to posting some stuff. Because if I don’t now, I won’t ever. (See, I really think blogging might be another one of those things that, when you do it poorly, you just feel guilty. Like scrapbooking. Or doing photo books. Or even just taking photos. Yes, all part of my Why I Suck at Blogging theory.) 

Anyhow, last fall we did a bunch of camping with family. In September, we did Zion with Mel, Kate, Steven, and Shawn. The boys all went and did the Subway, and the girls wandered around the park. Addie finally let me put her in her backpack for longer than five minutes. (Oh, and she single-handedly ate an entire bag of “natural” white cheddar cheetos during the trip. Who knew.)

At the end of September, we headed to Arches with the Forreys and Knight grandparents. It was sunny and warm, and then the wind (and sand) kicked up. The hike up Delicate Arch on our last day there was quite blustery, but of all of us, Addie had the best time on the hike. She sang and laughed and pulled my hair the whole way, even though the rest of us were just struggling to stay upright in the strong gusts.

Happy Camper indeed.

Everyone came back to our house after the camping excursion, and Addie had a blast playing with her cousins. (Well, ”playing with” is a bit of a stretch – but Maci and Jacob were good at entertaining her.)

And Aunt Beth gave Addie her first haircut!

Not too long after this trip, we headed to San Diego to go camping at the beach with the Noltes and Knight grandparents. We do this trip every year, and someday, Addie will love the beach. Once again, however, the sand freaked her out, and this is the closest she and I got to actually spending time on the beach itself (lasted about 20 minutes), and this was as close she could stand to be to the sand. (In her defense, she was at the beginning of what you might call a train wreck series of illnesses, so she just wasn’t a happy kid in general.)

Addie was happiest when she got to ride on the bike with her dad. And I’m sure her dad enjoyed that part too. We sure look forward to this trip every year!

Addie didn’t get much of a traveling break after that (maybe a couple of weeks), but I’m going to save that for Part II. 

I think an episode of Psych is now in order.

Last month, I took Addie to Boston with two of my sisters (Melissa and Kate). I’ll do more on that later, but the part of the trip that’s on my mind tonight is our visit to Plymouth. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard about “Plymouth Rock” since I was in elementary school. For some reason, up until a month ago, I thought Plymouth Rock was the name of the beach where the pilgrims landed – or at least the name of the cliffs around them. I didn’t realize that it really was…a rock.

I was a little disturbed by this, maybe because I had never thought of them landing at Plymouth - it was always Plymouth Rock. But it gets better. Apparently it wasn’t until over 100 years later that a priest visited the site and decreed that this was the rock that the pilgrims tied the Mayflower to when they landed, and pretty much declared it a historical artifact. So, basically he guessed. And I’ve grown up believing in the significance of “Plymouth Rock” when really…who knows?

I started getting a little worked up thinking about how what we assume is history may not be true, and that history can really just be a series of stories made up or adapted by the people who tell them. So what is true, really? 

Well, the cynic in me kind of enjoyed dwelling on that. But then Kate pointed out the sign by the rock.

I guess I wasn’t the only one with a bit of resentment about the fabrication of history, but this statement made me stop complaining. I looked around that beach and the surrounding land where the pilgrims landed, and did feel a sense of gratitude. Okay, it didn’t matter whether this rock was of any significance or not. The fact that was important is that they braved the journey, and that they stayed. The two previous American colonies were financial ventures, and they did not last. But this hardy group of people came for another purpose, and came with their families to find a new life. And I’m grateful they stayed.

(Photos by Kate.)

And it really is no bad thing to be founded on a rock. Happy Thanksgiving!

Addie generally loves her bath,  but only barely touches the toys I put in the tub with her (so why I keep putting them in there, I don’t know). She prefers to play with cups and blow bubbles and splash (who wouldn’t?). But one day she decided to gather up her ducks and hold them as tight as she could, like a big mama duck. She held on to them so tightly, she wouldn’t even let me take them when I tried to drain the tub. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop laughing.

Then a few days later, Addie disappeared into the bathroom and was quiet for awhile. You’ll probably think I’m a bad mom for not worrying about her for awhile, but, you see, Addie has never had any interest in the toilet or toilet paper. I guess I knew she would eventually, but I wasn’t really prepared to find this when I went to check on her.

I guess she was trying to take care of them. Ducks do belong in the water, so she had that part right. She’s so dang adorable!

More posts coming!

Over the 4th of July, we had an impromptu reunion in San Diego with these guys:

(The whole Knight clan!)

Addie particularly enjoyed spending time with these guys:

(All the Knight grandkids!)

And Jesse enjoyed being with these guys:

(The Knight siblings.)

At the end of July, I left Addie with Jesse and my mom (thanks, guys!) to go on the Magical Mystery Tour of Northern California with these guys:

(Steven, Mike, Dan, Kato, and me at the Winchester Mystery House.)

We drove to San Jose in one car, stayed in one hotel room, and had a 4-day-long dose of crazy togetherness. We visited the Myster Spot…

And Capitola…

Along with the Winchester Mystery House and the Santa Cruz boardwalk (where we broke the log ride…you think I’m kidding). It was pretty much silliness start to finish, and the craziest part was that we weren’t sick of each other when it was over. I wonder if we’re growing up?

As for the star of the show, her summer has involved a lot of…

Swimmin’

Chillin’

Playin’

Campin’

Walkin’

Smilin’

Growin’

And drinkin’ (apparently).

I wish I could post all the other silly pictures I have of her, recently, but she seems to always have some of my underwear around her head or in her hands. She is getting so big, and is just busy, busy, BUSY all the time these days! She surprises me almost daily with the things she does, and is constantly making me laugh.

Maybe I won’t be such a slacker now, but no promises.