A ponytail!

I was actually able to get Adeline's hair in a ponytail! It seems like her hair is growing pretty fast. It didn't look this good for very long though. Adeline will be 20 months this week. It seems as though she is aproaching the "terrible two's" very quickly. She is still the fun, sweet, loving girl she has always been.... but with quite a few more tantrums and independence. There are days where she is already picking out her clothes and shoes and will not accept anything else. My latest battle (what a surprise) is her eating habits. Some days I feel like she hardly eats anything. She grazes throughout the day and eats bits and pieces, but that is about it. I swear if someone else were to take her for the day, she would probably eat for them. I think she is just rebeling against me. I am worried since she is already so little.... she needs to be gaining weight! I even tried to give her a Chocolate Breakfast smoothie thing, because the doc said it's good to give them those since they have a lot of calories. She didn't want ANYTHING to do with it. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice on getting their toddler to eat? Do others have this problem?

Virginia and South Carolina

This past week was Abe's Spring Break, so we decided to head to Lynchburg, Virginia to visit Abe's good friend Rob. We had a lot of fun hanging out with him. Some of the highlights were: ( I have a slideshow below showing all these highlights)

-shooting a bow and arrow.... not easy! Abe had to completely help me because it was so hard. My arrow ended up hitting into a tree pretty far up and away from the target. I suck.
-I shot 3 guns. I shot a 22 pistol with a silencer on it, and then two others that were both huge semi automatic guns... not sure what kind. Abe pretty much blew up half of a tree with one of them. Pretty crazy.
- Rob's snakes. Probably not a "highlight", but it was for Adeline. She Loved them. She always asked "Ob" (Rob), to take her to see the "sssss". I walked in to the snake room to find Rob, Adeline and 2 of his very large snakes out and they were playing with them. Kind of freaked me out.
-Appomattox: civil war site.... Adeline was a little grumpy and independent, but it was still fun.
-D-day Memorial: This place was amazing!
-BlueRidge Parkway: This was an amazing drive through the mountains and you could look down into the valleys and see all the different areas. It was so pretty. While we were on our drive, we stopped by a little river in which Adeline loved! It was cold, but Adeline didn't care at all. She loved walking in it.

From Virginia, we drove down to South Carolina and got a hotel in Myrtle Beach. The beach was actually a lot nicer than I expected. It wasn't very warm, so we didn't spend very much time outside. Luckily, our hotel had an indoor water park, so that is where we spent our time. Adeline was obsessed. I will post a video of her crying to go to the "waee" (water). That is all she wanted to do.... ALL the time.

We had such a fun time hanging out with Rob and going to the beach. After 26 hours of driving though, we are happy to be home!!

Adeline swimming under water once again....


Adeline whining for us to take her to the "Waee"

Spring? (& photography)

The weather has been so nice the past couple of days. We have been able to go on a hike and play outside a lot. I really hope that it continues to stay nice. Last night Adeline ran around in our backyard until it was time to go to bed.

This morning Adeline's friend Catherine came over to hang out and play. They are moving next week and we are so sad!! Hopefully our paths will cross again since we are both in the Military.

Today I also watched my friends kids. We do a baby sitting exchange so that we have two hours one day every two weeks to do whatever we want. It is really nice. Since it was nice today, all the kids played in the backyard and on my neighbors porch swing.


As many of you know, my dad, sister and sister-in-law are all professional photographers. I have decided to follow in their footsteps and start my own little photography business. It is nice to have a bunch of family members to help me out and mentor me! I just started a blog to post my most recent pictures on. The website is: www.nicolebarkerphotography.blogspot.com

When you give a 19 month old a Graham Cracker with frosting....

THIS is what you get....




oh no

The weekend

Last night we had a ton of fun with our friends the Huber's. We went bowling on base and had a lot of fun. Adeline and her little friend Allie both bowled as well. It was so cute because after each of them would bowl, they would run up to each other and give high fives. I didn't think Adeline would care that much about bowling, but she loved it!

They walked around all night holding hands


After bowling, we went to dinner at a nice quality restaurant, Chick-fil-A. We went there because there was a play area that Adeline and Allie could play in. It was nice because it was about 9pm, so of course there were no other kids there because they were probably all at home sleeping. They had such a blast. Adeline would crawl up to the tubes and then I would hear a big bang because she pretty much would jump down the slide and fly down. It was hilarious watching them. It is fun to see how good of friends the girls have become.


Today it was so WARM! I can't wait for Spring/ Summer. Hopefully it won't snow again soon now that we are getting excited for the warmer weather. This morning we went on a bike ride with our friends. They totally kicked mine and Abe's butts on their road bikes, plus we are totally out of shape. It was a lot of fun getting out and enjoying the weather... and a good workout! We stopped at a park in the middle of our ride so the girls (Adeline's other close friend Catherine) could play on the playground. They are moving in the next month and I am going to miss them so much!!! Well, time for bed. We are tired and our butts hurt from the bikes :)

I was so good at updating my blog and this last week I have been pretty horrible. I was going to post last Friday, but my neighbor was over at my house with her dog, and her dog chewed my computer cord in half. So I have been without a computer the last several days until now.

A couple of posts ago I blogged about Adeline's new friends (the 2 goldfish). Let's just say... Adeline's OLD friends. We only had them for a week and then they both died. I hurried and flushed them down the toilet before Adeline saw them floating in the water. I am pretty bad at keeping things alive. I fed them everyday and changed their water, so who knows what happened.

Last Wednesday was my birthday. Just another ordinary day. Funny how that happens when you get older. I was very impressed though because Abe actually made me a cake!! That has never happened before. Usually I make my own cake on my birthday. Our good friends watched Adeline so that we could go out to dinner and eat as well. Overall, it was a good day.


Adeline is becoming quite the character. She is always making goofy faces, noises and doing funny things. She LOVES to show off. She is starting to put two words together. She will say, "Chloe bed", or "night night mama". We are pretty sure that she said "I love you Chloe" the other day. She is also becoming very independent. She won't even sit in her chair anymore to eat. She has to sit on the bench, or on a big chair. She most of the time arches her back and screams if I try to attempt to put her in her own chair.

We have been teaching Adeline to count " 1, 2, 3, GO!" So Adeline always says, " 2, GO!", "2, GO". She will chase Abe around saying this until he spins her around. It's pretty funny.

Adeline was doing great at potty training. Last week I went FIVE days without changing a poopy diaper. It was wonderful. Almost every day she was 100% accident free. I wish I could say the same about this week. On Sunday it seems like it went downhill. When we are away from home at a store or something, she always tells me she needs to go and keep her diaper dry. But if we come home and she has a diaper on, she is being very stubborn about going in the potty. Who knows. My goal is to have her fully potty trained though in the next two months. She should be, because she seems like she totally gets it and is very close.

Tonight our neighbors brought over a doll house for Adeline that they wanted her to have. It is so adorable and Adeline loves it! She played with it all night. We are so lucky to have such good neighbors and friends here.


Here are a couple pictures that I took tonight that I thought were cute :)