Oompah Loompah

Guess what we had for dinner today...

Setting up housekeeping...for Abigail, that is!

Welcome to Abigail's kitchen!

Computer games!

Her favorite hat


Abigail has been very excited the last few days because she has two early Christmas presents (I've never been good at waiting and I figure we might as well let her play with them now since they're fun toys!): an already much-beloved and much-appreciated toy kitchen, courtesy of G'ma and Papa, and a miniature baby stroller (it's been her favorite toy at nursery and at other kids' houses, so after four months we figured she really DID want one and it wasn't just the novelty thing...plus we got tired of trying to stop her from dragging the big strollers around the house).

Anyway, we're glad that our table is in the dining room, because half of the kitchen is now The Domain of Abigail. As you can see, she has a pretty sweet setup with her kitchen and table, and her stroller (with her inseperable bunny rabbit companion Jelly Bean) is a permanent fixture between the two. Jelly Bean and Abigail have already concocted some yummy plastic meals which are delivered to Neil and me about every five seconds. The meals are then followed up by much vigorous pumping of the plastic sink spigot and slamming of the plastic 'fridge door (she immediately started stocking the fridge with little plastic bottles. It was really cute!)

It's just been fun to watch her! She's been stroller-ing all over the house too--she takes her stroller from room to room and loads up the seat with anything she finds interesting, which means that she can now destroy the house in about five seconds flat. Pretty impressive.

In other Abigail news, she did so many cute little things today that I'm just going to make a list:

1) When we were singing "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam," she ran over to the nativity and grabbed the Baby Jesus figurine to wave around whenever we sang "Jesus."

2) She figured out how to blow on a dandelion to watch all the spores float away.

3) She knew which one was our house when we came home from a walk (she took off sprinting for the garage door!)

4) I chopped zucchini up for dinner and let her put it in the steamer--she very carefully seperated each individual piece before placing it in, then pulled out any pieces I'd already put in which were stuck together and seperated them.

5) I got to watch her rubbing her eyes while she was helping me peel an onion--she couldn't figure out what was going on. I shouldn't have laughed, but it was really cute!

6) Her amazement and excitement when we took a walk this evening for FHE to look at Christmas lights in our neighborhood (if you've spent time with her lately, you know that "yights" are one of her favorite things right now!)

7) All the million little habits that I can't even explain but that just make me pick her up and kiss her--her insistence on having her sleeves rolled back down after we wash her hands, her determination to put on her own gloves, her sunny little personality and willingness to help with everything and everything--the way she giggles hysterically when I take her socks off at bedtime, the way she blows kisses, the way she folds her arms without even being told before we pray at meals and for family prayers...she's just an absolute sweetheart and such a blessing in my life!!

Fisher Price circa 1980s, anyone?

This morning we went to Toys R Us to look at play food and dishes for Abigail for Christmas (her little kitchen was delivered today without any accessories...which is um, not quite as fun). Unfortunately, the selection of available things wasn't anything like the quality that I remembered from my childhood! We ended up getting her some plastic food, and then I came home to search on Ebay...and I found EVERYTHING that I had when I was a kid! Even the kitchen! Check this out--Mary Beth, you will probably remember this just as fondly as I did: http://cgi.ebay.com/Huge-Lot-of-1980s-Fisher-Price-Dishes-Food-items_W0QQitemZ220053332188QQihZ012QQcategoryZ374QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Unfortunately, the bids are already out of my range (as I found out when I bid and someone immediately knocked my bid out). So I'm still looking--but please, anyone who is reading this, let me know if you see any 1980s Fisher Price dishes or food for sale! Especially the little blue plates with the flowers. :-)

Post Thanksgiving

We had a really great Thanksgiving--Mom, Dad, Elise, Rosalind, G'ma, Papa, Owen, Eva, and Julia all came to join us. And sixteen pies, due to a slight miscommunication about how everyone was bringing pies, not just each person who had been individually been asked. :-)
We had dinner at Great Wall of China on Wednesday night, a fabulous feast on Thursday followed by a rollicking game of spoons, and generally had a wonderful time together as a family.

That said, I'm really tired (it was also our turn to have the kids over for babysitting night and we had a little potty-training accident), so this is the end of this post. But we should have enough leftovers around here for weeks...fortunately the girls polished off seven pieces of fruit tonight between the three of them! Yay for toddler appetites!

Highlights of the past few days

1. Recieving a surprise house-warming package from Uncle Kevin and Aunt Pam: a cookbook for me, a do-it-yourself fix-it guide (to everything possible!) for Neil, and Where the Wild Things Are for Abigail! So incredibly thoughtful, and it arrived just when I was feeling very sick and doldrums-esque.

2. Abigail helping (or as she says, "hup") me make dinner by placing green beans in a saucepan after I snapped the ends off. She discovered halfway through that they tasted yummy, and would say "hup! Yum!" and bite a piece off of each one, then carefully put it in the pot. I thought it was hilarious, but Neil quickly put a stop to the taste-testing when he came in.

3. My visiting teachers bringing pumpkin cookies and fortune cookies, accompanied by a "general conference haiku." The fortune cookies were stuffed with quotes from conference. I have really amazing visiting teachers--they are so thoughtful and sweet!

4. Neil surprising me by coming home from work early to clean the bathrooms and mop the kitchen floor. What an amazing guy.

5. Taking Abigail to the library for storytime and coming across a "$1/bag" book sale, where it's one dollar for an entire brown paper grocery sack of books. This is my kind of library!

6. Abigail proudly stringing her own dyed pasta shells on a piece of yarn to make a necklace. She picked out all the colors, and then strung three all by her very own self (and wanted me to do the rest).

7. Abigail's three-and-a-half hour blissfully long nap today, followed by eager consumption of snack and dinner to reassure me that she was not sick and hence napping a lot--just sleepy! Probably another growth spurt...

Sick day

The hard part about being a mom is...you can't call in sick.

I got whatever Neil had yesterday and it seems to have hit me a bit harder, probably because I'd previously strained my back last week. Fortunately, however, Neil was able to go in a couple hours late to work today (which equated to a blissful return to bed for me. Honestly, I started to cry when I realized he was going to go to work and leave me with a fever, a headache, and a screaming toddler. Kudos for the merciful husband). I felt a lot better when I woke up, although still not quite in the pink. So I took Abigail over to Andrea's house, since she had graciously agreed to watch Abigail for a bit while I went grocery shopping (nightmare pre-Thanksgiving rush trip with incredibly packed store).

Abigail was really good today--she ate her lunch well and napped for three and a half hours, which was about the best gift anyone could have given me. So I was able to take (another!) nap.

Speaking of naps (primarily interrupted ones), one of the definite de-perks, if I can term it as such, of our new house are the yip-yip puntable dogs owned by our next-door neighbors. I really dislike small dogs, largely because they are SO NOISY and seem to have a Napoleon-like complex about proving how, well, noisy they can be. Our neighbors have two Chihauhaus (or something similar) which also just had puppies a couple of months ago. So every day the yip-yips invade our lawn, leaving unsavory presents behind, and run in shrill barking circles around our house. If we're in the kitchen, they'll run up by the patio and just stand there barking. Abigail, of course, thinks they're fascinating, but I could do without the barking and the nasty little piles they leave behind EVERY FEW HOURS.

I really hate those dogs. I am so tempted to borrow that beebee gun that Dad used on Mutt-Mutt.

Anyway, that's my day today. I really hope I feel better tomorrow, largely because I am such a maniacal neat freak normally and I never clean much when I'm sick, and I'm really stressed now because we have everyone coming over for Thanksgiving! Aaahh!! At least I vacuumed up Abigail's chocolate graham cracker crumbs this morning, which apparently constituted the majority of her diet yesterday.

pictures

Proof of everything Mom told us about how TV is mind-numbing...

Christmas comes early this year

Well, we've had an interesting weekend thus far. On Friday Neil and I spent our date night at the gym, which ended up being really fun! We rented a couple of movies on the way home and picked up Abigail a little early and had a mini movie marathon, which was a fun little pre-birthday thing for Neil. On Saturday we cut Neil's hair, went to the post office to send off Steve and Marilyn's Christmas present (which sounds like it may get there in time for Easter--the post office wasn't too confident about the reliability of the Mongolian mail), and then went to the mall to get Neil some new shoes.

The shoe battle has been ongoing for some time--Neil is wearing the same shoes that we bought about a month after we were married, and I admit they've held up incredibly well. However, the intervening four years has put some serious wear and tear on them, and they now have holes through the soles (Neil has been insisting that he doesn't need new shoes until it snows). Fortunately we found some that he liked at a store that we had gift cards for (from several Christmases ago!) so we didn't even have to spend anything, which was exciting, and also meant that we had enough extra from the shoe budget to go out to lunch for his birthday. We went to a Chinese buffet (the one where Elise got her takeout this summer) and it was really good--incredible variety and pretty good quality, and much less expensive than some of the other restaurants in the area that we like. Abigail tanked up on french fries dipped in sweet and sour sauce with a side of Jell-O...at least she ate something, I guess.

We also went to get our Christmas tree last night, courtesy of our realtor. We had a fun time--we got to pick one out and cut it down. We were a little disappointed in the selection--they had five blue spruces on the whole farm and we were planning to go with one of those, but--well, let's just say none of them had found a home for a reason. So we ended up getting the least shaved and trimmed tree of the other variety (I'm not even sure what it was), which meant that we had some pruning to do when we got home (and it's still a little lop-sided), but we preferred it to the perfectly triangular ones. And it was ENORMOUS--it reminded me of that story where the tree top gets cut off and all the successive animals get a piece of it for their own Christmas tree. I think we cut off about a foot from the top.

Anyway, we had a fun time--they built up a bonfire and then we took a hayride to a nearby light display--and then we ended up decorating the tree when we got home. The result of which is--we just went ahead and decorated the whole house for Christmas, since we didn't want to have to get all the boxes out again. Not that we have that many decorations--mostly just the living room--but now it will be, um, decorated festively for Thanksgiving. Oh well. I love Christmas and I've been playing Christmas music since the beginning of October, so I don't mind! :-)

The sad part of the weekend is that Neil started feeling not too well yesterday and got progressively worse throughout the day. When he woke up this morning he was running a fever, so he went back to bed. I eventually decided to stay home with him instead of going to church, since I was worried about Abigail infecting the nursery if she had whatever Neil has, plus she has been so incredibly cranky the last week that I thought it might be nice for her to have a restful day at home. And mostly I didn't want to leave Neil alone!

We've had a good day so far--Abigail and Neil watched Blue's Clues while I showered, and when I came out they were both singing and clapping along (Neil somewhat feebly). I'm not a huge fan of letting Abigail watch a lot of DVDs, but I do like Blue's Clues, and she's learned quite a bit from it so far, so I guess it's okay every so often. It was really handy today!

While Neil rested, Abigail and I played with the nativity and read stories from the children's Book of Mormon Stories. She was a lot calmer than she's been the past week, so I'm glad we had some quiet time at home, and it was a really peaceful morning sitting there talking to her about Jesus and his family and Christmas. She loved the nativity (when I was explaining who all the people were and got to Mary and Joseph, she picked them up, put their faces together and made kissing noises. Very cute) and sat still for four chapters from the BoM storybook, so it went well! She also ate her lunch today with less fussiness than usual and went down for her nap peacefully, so I am hoping that we are getting over some of the crankiness. To do her justice, we had a wretchedly busy week, and I felt pretty cranky myself by the end of most days!

I do have a ton of pictures from this weekend, but the batteries in the camera ran out, so I will post them when I find some more!

Power struggles...

Abigail is learning about...independence, to put it nicely. We have been having lots of adventures around mealtimes these days, primarily revolving around a child who does not want to wear her bib, sit in a high chair, use a fork, and eat the prepared meal. She is definitely learning to assert herself.

The last few days have been long, to say the least. We've been really busy and I've been very tired. On Wednesday Andrea and I went to Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and the mall with the girls, which was really fun, but also exhausting, since I went home and started painting and sanding all the decorations I spent the morning buying. Then we had playgroup, then the missionaries for dinner, then a nativity meeting (which was frustrating in itself. I need to learn to be more patient with people who are not as organized as I think they could be). I was still exhausted Thursday and Abigail ended up watching a lot of Blue's Clues episodes. Poor kid. She was angry because I left to go to a (completely fabulous!) enrichment meeting and Neil put her to bed, so we had a rough night trying to keep her in bed.

I am looking forward to our date night tonight--I skipped my morning workout so we could go work out together this evening. It sounds weird to say that's what we're doing for our date, but I think it will be fun! Mostly I am excited to have some time with Neil, since this was yet another awful week of midterms.

Bandwagon!

In the words of the friend who I stole this from, yes, I am bandwagon-jumping, but I have been having fun reading other people's and guessing which one I might be. Plus, it's also really fun to write and be all cryptic about it!

You may tell 11 people whatever you want.

No names. Just say how you feel.

1. You are the sunshine in my day. Nothing is better than a good-night kiss from you, and we will read stories and draw pictures forever.

2. I am so worried about you. I haven't seen you in a long time, but I think about you almost every day and pray that you make choices that will keep you happy.

3. I hope we can become better friends. I really look up to you a lot and you seriously crack me up, but I don't know if we'll ever develop the kind of closeness I hope for.

4. You were part of some of the best years of my life. You really shaped a lot of who I am today and our friendship is the one that I measure others by. Plus--I never look at chocolate muffins without thinking of you and our discovery of their outward acceleration when a car is moving over 100 mph. Whatever happened to that road trip journal anyway?

5. Honestly, I don't know what's up. I'm really not trying to be rude, but I don't think this thing is in either of our best interests. I think it's time to let go and let bygones be bygones, but I'll never get up the nerve to actually say it.

6. It's interesting--we said we were best friends, but we never had anything to say to each other. What's up with that?

7. I love you to pieces. Remember the pool drain episode when I'd known you like...two days? Honestly. You are crazy, woman. I miss you so much!!!!

8. The older I get, the more I idolize you (in a good, non idol-worshipping way). You really do have all the answers, and I call you all the time just to feel assured that someday I will, in fact, turn out okay.

9.It's sad when I look back and think about the whole thing. It took me so long to get over the whole mess, and for what? I really don't know. Don't judge the book by its cover.

10. It's one of those things where I smack myself in the forehead and say--why? Yes, I can understand to a certain extent. But really, you should have known better.

11. You are the best thing that's ever happened to me. What would I do without your level-headed sense of reality and responsibility? Sure, I miss the good ol' days of 2 am movies, but you've really stepped up to the plate in a way that blows me away. I love you for that and a million other things.

Mongolian Call-out

Tonight for Family Home Evening we worked on assembling a Christmas package for Neil's parents, who are halfway through a mission in Mongolia. Abigail and I had a really fun time buying the package contents today at the store, and then we wrote letters as a family later in the evening.

When we were done, we checked the shipping rates to Mongolia. Eek! We may have to rethink some of the things we were planning on sending--I never even thought about weight! Right now we're running at about 11 times the cost of the contents for the shipping charges...but don't worry, we'll get it figured out. :-)

In other news, Abigail and I had a very mommy-daughter intensive day today. She is becoming more and more clingy in the last few weeks, which is nice to see her being affectionate, but also a little sad because she has pulled away from Neil a bit. Probably the natural consequence of seeing him two hours a day and seeing me for 14, but still sad for him! But we had fun together today going to the grocery store (Abigail loves loading our groceries onto the conveyor belt), folding the laundry (Abigail can pull out her socks), and going visiting teaching. We spent the rest of the day in her room building block towers, making up stories about the stuffed animals, and reading snippets from a wide variety of books. She really had a blast and I was happy that we had a little more free time today to just hang out and relax together.


I'm excited for tomorrow because Andrea and I are going to take Elise and Abigail for a trip to Hobby Lobby, a Michaels-esque craft store. Last year Kristin and I bought a bunch of wooden tree ornaments and then had a little "date night" with our husbands painting ornaments and it was really fun! I doubt Neil will have the time to do it with me this year, but it will be a good project for me in the evenings while he does his homework.

Speaking of projects, I'm thinking I may make Abigail some beanbags for Christmas--she really had a blast with the ones at the ward children's Halloween party. It will be a bit interesting, since I don't have a sewing machine, but I have lots of time, fabric, and beans, so I should be able to work something out!

Also speaking of Christmas, I found another toy today that I'm adding to my wish list for Abigail (although I might actually buy this one). When we were visiting teaching today, Abigail was playing with one of the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics toys, and she absolutely loved it. I did some research on it earlier this evening and was pretty impressed with the online reviews and awards it's been given, so we may think about getting it. Basically, it's a magnetic thing that attaches to your fridge and acts as a docking station for other magnetic letters. When you put the letters in, it sings the name of the letter and then sings the songs that that particular letter can make (i.e. "A is for ay, A is for ahh"). She played with it for about an hour and was sad to leave, so we'll have to see!

Heaven on a Sunday...a la Paul McCartney

Today was a lovely nap-filled day. I think I slept for about four hours, which was a much-needed sleep chunk. Abigail, oddly enough, decided to run wild and crazy in her crib for about two hours until Neil finally hung blankets over her windows to black out all the light (I was already sound asleep at that point).

Abigail did something really adorable in sacrament meeting today. We've been working on teaching her to fold her arms and bow her head when we pray (and then to say Amen at the end). Well, for the opening prayer Neil had his arm around me and Abigail was sitting between us, so he didn't fold his arms.
Abigail looked up and realized that Daddy wasn't being reverent--so she stood up, dragged his arm down, folded his arms, then sat down and folded her own. It was really cute!
We've had a really nice relaxing day, which is especially nice after the stressful week we had last week (and the equally stressful one coming up. I realized that I have an appointment--aside from work and normal errands--every single day, which doesn't sound like such a bad thing UNLESS you have a toddler to take along. Plus I have stuff in the evening on three days, which is also a bit stressful). On a happy busy note, we got a letter from the real estate agent through whom we bought our house inviting us to a client appreciation Christmas party. The main feature of that party is picking out and cutting your own Christmas tree--for free!--which is exciting for us because otherwise we probably wouldn't get a tree this year, since they seem pretty pricy. So we're looking forward to that, although it means we will have a tree before Thanksgiving!

No creative title!

Yesterday was a long day!

I was thinking yesterday morning about how frustrated I was after my prenatal class that they didn't address any aspects of actually recovering from childbirth (they just said "You may experience discomfort" which meant "You can't walk for a week" in my case) but how it have been nice/funny to address some of the other repercussions of parenthood.

For instance, by 11:30 yesterday I'd spent an hour at the gym, ate breakfast and read scriptures with Neil, got ready for the day, made breakfast for Abigail, did a load of laundry, vacuumed the house, took Abigail to the library, and spent half an hour at the playground. A pretty respectable morning's accomplishments EXCEPT for the fact that I got up at 5:30 to do it all! It just takes so much longer to do everything now, and that was kind of a shock at first...

Speaking of shocks, when we were at the playground I had this sort of paralytic moment of realization. Abigail was climbing up onto the playground equipment via one of those "nets" made of metal bars and chains, which is just about her favorite thing ever (she would climb up, then run down the stairs so she could climb up the net again. Completely ignored the swings and slides). But she wanted to do it all by herself, and she could with no problem. So I was standing there sort of spotting her in case she fell, and it was weird and scary to realize that this is what
I'll be doing for her for much of the next sixteen years...letting her do her own thing because she's old enough and able enough, but I'm still afraid that she'll get hurt...but I know it's a necessary part of her development to push away from me and do things on her own.

Not that she'll be making any life-altering choices in the next few years, but still...I'm so used to thinking of her as my baby!

For date night we had a shopping spree, which a few years ago would have filled me with delight, but now post-Abigail post-house purchase and in-grad-school was sort of a panicky process. We had to get some more clothes for Abigail, who is growing like the proverbial weed, but we didn't find much, so we're hoping that some extra tights and a couple of shirts will hold her for another few months (I think we'll be going for the mini skirt and tights look for her for the rest of the winter...that kid has the LONGEST legs for her age and all of her dresses are inching up!)

We also went to Lowe's to finish off our 10% coupon, since we needed to buy a lawnmower and various other house things. We found a lawnmower that we liked and then wandered over the cabinetry and storage section, since both of us have been cursing the laundry room setup ever since we moved in. Essentially--there's no storage or hooks in the laundry room for things like detergent, chemicals, coats and gloves, etc. There was a cabinet set that we'd seen two months ago that we really liked, but it was quite a bit more than we wanted to spend, and there was another one that we thought was pretty ugly, but was about $30 less. Well, we noticed that there was only one "nice cabinet" set left, and the box had been torn open so that the exposed pieces were dirty and scratched. So we asked for a reduction, and since it was the only one they had in stock, we got it for 20% off the original price. We were pretty happy, especially since about thirty seconds with a sponge took care of the damage!

So that was our post-date night project last night--Revamping The Laundry Room. It was not the most exhilarating project--we didn't finish until about one in the morning, partially because the silly people who installed the previous lame wire half-shelves in the laundry room used bolts that flanged out behind the wall, so we had to hacksaw the bolts off to avoid ripping out big chunks of the wall. And then when Neil got ready to put the cabinets up, he discovered that the wall was bowed outward.

I am so so glad I am married to an intelligent problem-solving man who takes everything in stride! I now have a beautiful cabinet and hook filled laundry room, courtesy of my awesome husband!

Discipline!

Discipline for me, not for Abigail, that is.

I've been indulging myself by wish-list dreaming about what I want to get Abigail for Christmas...a toy kitchen, a train set, a miniature baby stroller, baby dolls...argh. Dang IKEA website and their tempting toys...

I don't really mind (well, I do, but not too much) being on a really tight budget for Neil and I, because we understand that we just bought a house, etc., that's our present for years to come and all that sort of thing. And I wish we could go out to dinner or to movies, but it's okay, because we have other things to enjoy...like a house.

And it's not that Abigail ever asks for more toys (for one thing, she can't say "more toys" yet), but that is the one thing that frustrates me--I see so many exciting things that I wish I could buy for her, and I worry that she needs more age-appropriate toys. The rattles don't quite cut it any more, and that type of thing comprises the majority of our toy stash.

So this is a good lesson in self-discipline for me. It's easy to be virtuous and pass up a new shirt because...I'm trying to think when the last time that I bought a new shirt was. Um...ok, 17 months. So I'm not exactly in the habit of self-indulgence there. But it is really hard to restrain myself where Abigail is concerned. I just need to figure out how to keep her happy and interested in stubby crayons and baby chew toys...

Maybe just a very small train set.

The Mommy Ledger

I realized today that I've created a sort of "Mommy Ledger" toting up all my deeds for the day. It's sort of akin to the Food vs. Exercise Ledger in which I mentally compute whether I end the day with guilt for the chocolate cupcake (with or without frosting? pre or post 8 pm?) or whether the elliptical time + walk with Abigail cancels it out and leaves me ahead.

The Mommy Ledger is based on a comparison with the Perfect Mother, a fairy godmother-type creature who always has extra diapers, disinfects toys after use, and can seamlessly re-attach broken crayons. The Perfect Mother should not be confused with the Perfect Wife (who vacuums every day before her husband comes home) or the Perfect Homemaker (who uses the leaves from her trees to paint fall-patterned linens for the Thanksgiving table).

The Mommy Ledger, in short, tells me if I've been a "good mommy" or a "bad mommy" today. For today's credit side, we have...

• spent an hour and a half at the playground
• took an hour-long walk in the afternoon (fresh air and opportunity to point out puppies, trees, houses, cars, fire hydrants and other toddler points of interest)

but on the debit side, we have...

• took an hour-long walk in the afternoon (selfish desire to go outside and talk with friends)
• turned on The Emperor's New Groove for half an hour for Abigail while I made crescent rolls and chopped vegetables.

Thus, the question of the day is does the playground cancel out the movie? Or perhaps even give me advance credit for tomorrow? Double points for going to library storytime AND the playground tomorrow...

Elise's play

Well, we had a really fun weekend up in Michigan! We got there early enough on Friday that we could stop by the auditorium before the show, and we watched Abigail chase the on-stage cat around the makeup counters. I also got to talk to the drama teacher, which was fun, since I worked with her all through high school, so it was neat to catch up with her and with her family. She really is an incredibly talented woman, and the show this weekend was definitely incredible.

The show was The Diary of Anne Frank, and Elise played Anne's sister Margot. Elise was, of course, incredible, as was the entire cast. As always, Kathy Mulay's shows never fail to impress. This one had me crying for the majority of the second act. Very moving.

Abigail really had a good weekend--she spent Friday night jumping up and down on her grandpa's stomach, which she thought was about the coolest thing ever. On Saturday we went to Neil's favorite restaurant in the world (Shwarma King Buffet), so they were both happy in their different ways! :-)

Our "word teaching" with Abigail is going pretty well. We have started to practice letters too, and she can now make letter noises, if not say the names well (i.e. "aah" "bahy" for A and B...sort of a French little baby). She delights in pointing to things like eyes and nose and mouth...but only on other people, since she will stick her little fingers into my eyes and yell "Eiz!" She will also point to her own nose, but usually she sticks her finger inside her nose, so we're working on that too...

No nap!

Since I am basically using this as my journal, here is a new Abigail-ism.

When I was putting her down for a nap today, she was very distressed and didn't want to go to sleep (and still doesn't...). Instead of shaking her head no, she tried a new tactic: she grabbed my shirt, pulled me close, threw her arms around me, and looking up imploringly said "Happy, please? Happy? Happy? Please happy?"

I'm not exactly sure what she meant other than "no nap" (presumably Abigail is happy? Abigail will be happy if no nap? Mommy is happy with Abigail?) but it was pretty darn cute.

On another note, Neil's NSF application is submitted...yay! Two down and one to go!

Abigail's asleep...

Abigail decided to sleep in today, which means I can hopefully wrap up Neil's NSF fellowship application and send it off before she wakes up--that would be a huge weight gone!

I've been feeling really crummy this week, so I haven't gone to work out Wed. or today, which means I then feel crummier because I feel lazy, but I haven't wanted to aggravate my sore throat or nausea gasping for air on an elliptical, so...we'll see. Poor little Abigail has not had a very fun mommy to play with all week...mostly a mommy who lies there and watches her play.

I did get my teaching assignment (tentative) for spring yesterday. They asked me to teach a section of tech writing and one of business writing, so it will be more work as far as planning out the tech writing course, but at least I have taught that in the past so I basically know what's going on! The hard thing is going to be that I'm teaching from 7:30 am until 10:15 am, since I wanted a T/Th morning block of classes, and the pickings are getting slim (although they did bump me up ahead of all the grad students, which means I had, oh, about 300 more options for open times. But T/Th classes are a hot commodity, and they don't have many tech writing classes to begin with). So I'll be getting up at 5:30 pretty much every day next semester, which could be interesting!

Since I've been sick, nothing too exciting has happened in the last couple days--just normal things like go to the library for storytime (Abigail shredded her craft as soon as we got home), go teach, etc. I did invent a recipe for dinner last night that turned out really well--I stuffed chicken with a mixture of spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, onions, pepper flakes, and parmesan cheese (I cooked it all first, then put it in the chicken) and made a mushroom pilaf to go with it all and it turned out really well. Both Abigail and Neil loved it, so we'll probably do it again. But that was really the most exciting thing that's happened in the last few days.

We're going up to Michigan tonight (to see Elise's play tomorrow--she's playing Margot in The Diary of Anne Frank) for which I am really excited! (It will be nice to have Abigail around other people--hopefully she will give me a bit more space. I love her, but I do relish five minutes here and there without a small blond fluffy head hugging my leg).