Picture taken after her birthday treat of frozen yogurt!

Happy birthday sweet girl. You are 1!!!

What an absolute gift you are. The fact that God chose me to be your mama still gives me butterflies. I get excited when I hear your sweet voice in the morning and I thank God He gave me another day with you. Honestly, I cannot fathom where the last 12 months have gone, but I will say that I have attempted to soak up every minute of you. From the moment you were born my heart felt as though it would burst out of my chest, so much joy over you, this healthy, beautiful baby girl. I watched you sleeping that first night and laid my hand on your chest to feel you breath. I have held you close more hours than we could ever count and I am secretly grateful for all those midnight and early morning feedings… in those moments I begged God to make time stand still for I know all too well how quickly those days pass. You have already grown so much and I am desperately trying to remember all those sweet moments that I swore I would not forget.

• Your name is Adelee Elizabeth but over the year we have called you Adee girl, Adee Grace, and Baby Dee Dee.
• You have more than doubled in size and have had big milestones like smiling and rolling over and crawling and standing and taking lots of steps.
• You are quite fearless little one and you have quite the temper. Eek.
• You prefer not to cuddle unless you are really, really, really tired and in that case you will snuggle right into mommy’s chest and just rest… as if you have come home.
• You are passionate and sweet and smile at every single stranger in the grocery store.
• You wave and say ‘Hi!’ at anyone who will look in your direction.
• You squeal with delight over things like bouncy balls, pink tea kettles, mirrors, shower doors and your brothers.
• You seem to always know exactly what you want… and what you do not want and you are very good at making those opinions known.
• You have developed your own sign language and we know exactly what two hands waving in the air means – “feed me now.”
• You say “dadadadada” about a million times a day. Just the other day you added ‘ducky’ and ‘bless you’ to your vocabulary as well.
• You lay your head on your highchair when you are sleepy at dinner.
• You love the park swing and it makes you giggle uncontrollably.
• Speaking of giggling you have always been so smiley but getting those giggles out took some work.
• As a baby your tummy made you sad for awhile but once you got a little bigger you were the best, most content little thing. When you were sad I would hold you real close and sing to you and in just moments you would settle down.
• Even now you love when mommy sings and dancing is one of your favorite things… although it looks more like bouncing.
• The first six months of your life you graciously let me hook you up to an apnea monitor so that I could sleep at night and not be terrified of losing you.
• At 12 months old you have 4 teeth. Two on bottom that came in around 9-10 months and 2 on top that finally popped through at 11 months.
• You love to eat (like more than your brothers can eat!) and there is nothing that you don’t like. You don’t really have a favorite food yet you just seem to like it all.
• Just within the last month did we finally get you drinking out of a cup and to this day you have really never enjoyed a bottle.
• You don’t like getting your diaper changed and mommy equates it to wrestling a pig. You are a quick and strong little thing!
• You give mommy kisses, like drooly, gross, open-mouth kisses that make me erupt in laughter.
• You have been on a plane at least 8 times, to California once and Virginia 3 times.
• You have been on countless road trips and slept in million different places.
• We play this little game of peek-a-boo every single night with your pink blanket that has your name embroidered on… you giggle and squeal and throw the blanket off which then forces me to scoop you up and give you a thousand kisses.

There is more. So much more I could say. I pray that I get the privilege to watch you grow and to continue to be a student of you, learning how God has made you unique and so very special. I want you to know that more importantly than all those sweet milestones and fun character traits that this year you have been loved. By so very many.  By your mommy and daddy and brothers, by your aunts and uncles and all your cousins, by your grandparents and by so many friends. You are loved by God and although I have many prayers for you, mostly I pray that your heart loves Him too, that you know Jesus. That you grow to know Him more every day and that He binds your heart to His.

A little peek into Adelee’s first year of life.

Eleven Months.

And because I wanted to remember her like this forever. I sat in her room last night, on her birthday and captured her just playing. Into everything. Moving all over the place. Climbing. Dancing. Crawling. Taking lots of steps. Smiling. Waving. Saying ‘Hi.’ What a joy. She really does love that teapot. And herself in the mirror. 😉