April Fool's

Let's play a little game, shall we? Guess which one is false.

1) When I was in eighth grade, part of my pinkie was amputated.
2) Neil proposed to me after we had been dating for four weeks.
3) I didn't accept until the next day.
4) My favorite colors (to wear) are black and red.
5) I couldn't stand playing with Barbies when I was a kid.
6) My family had pigs named Sir Francis Bacon and Olivia de Roast.
7) I didn't know what a Twinkie was until I was in high school.
8) In college, I was a teaching assistant for honors physics and biology.
9) I did not cook with onions, garlic, or mushrooms until Neil and I had been married for several years.
10) I did not start running until after Juliet was born.

this lil' girl

A few days ago, I was reading Peter Pan to Abigail. We turned the page and the main picture was of Peter playing on his pipes. Abigail turned her big brown eyes towards me and said joyously "Oh Mommy! Look, hot dogs!"

Yesterday on our walk she said "Thank you, nice nice man" to the gentleman who invited us to walk across his lawn and look at the stone lamb that Abigail was baaing at from the sidewalk.

And today she found a pen under our pew in church and informed me that she had found "a Mommy crayon."

And here are our you-share-with-me-I'll-share-with-you pictures:

Abigail zipping herself into Juliet's carseat ("Look, Mommy! A boat!")

Abigail putting her underwear on Juliet ("Baby Dooey-yet, you wan sum big girl pannies?")

website woes

Anti-procrastinator that I am, I updated and finalized my course website for my summer section about two months ago (classes start Monday).

Wouldn't you know it? The server crashed and destroyed all the sites for summer courses (and what's more of a concern to me, the fall and winter courses as well, which means I will have to start utterly from scratch next year, a very unpleasant thought). Fortunately, some bits and pieces were cloned over, but I still had to retype everything to get the formatting to work correctly, since the HTML coding was doing strange and exciting things like not even showing some lines of text in the code but refusing to delete them in rich-text format. Fun fun. It's still sort of ugly, and I don't like the new server too much, but it works (and if you visited the link, you will probably be ecstatic that you are neither teaching nor taking this seven week writing marathon!--although you also probably can't see most of it without being signed in as a user). Fortunately, my loving husband volunteered to spend his measly amount of free time watching Abigail for an hour and a half before she went to bed so that I could finish it all up. Neil, you rock.


Moving on...I've loved reading about Mary Beth's mouth-watering dinner concoctions, so I decided to post about what I made tonight, since it was super fun to make (and I took a picture, but it didn't really do it justice, so no picture). Anyway, it was "pantry meal night," which is my weekly or biweekly attempt at clearing things out that have been lingering on the shelves of the cabinets or fridge for a bit, so tonight we had spaghetti with a jazzy sauce based on sauteed onions and garlic, to which I tossed in some capers, pepper flakes and sun-dried tomatoes, then finished off the lot with diced tomatoes and tomato sauce. We topped it off with grated Parmesan and parsley, and it was just divine, as were our baby-lettuce-thinnings which we ate as a salad. I admit, most of our pantry nights aren't very exciting, but this one was, which made it fun for all of us.

Today Abigail and I took a loooong walk--are you ready for this?--with no stroller and no carrying, we walked a full mile! (Andrea, we tried to surprise you guys, but you must have been out!) :-) It took us an hour and ten minutes, but it was a lot of fun. Abigail wore this dazzling outfit culled from her dress-ups and insisted on bringing the baby doll that Elise gave her this weekend (and by the way, the marker on the doll's forehead is quite distressing to Abigail. She keeps pointing to it and saying "No color! No-no! No color!"). It actually worked rather nicely having the doll along--Abigail occasionally decides that she is a "big girl" and "no hold hands," but was easily convinced that we should each hold one of the dolly's hands since she was a baby. So the three of us walked along quite happily, with lots of sunshine and time to answer "Wus dis, Mommy? Wus dis?!" questions in great detail, which are now the most frequently heard form of communication around our house.

We rounded off our day with a trip to the doctor's office (for me) where I once again was exceedingly grateful for Abigail's patience and general good nature, since we waited about an hour for a five-minute appointment. Fortunately we had plenty of books and snacks, so we passed the time quite pleasantly; then we went to the library and waited until Neil was done with work so we could all go home together.


I know I say this a lot, but I can't believe how much Abigail is growing and learning, and how curious she is about everything AND how much she listens to my explanations. For example, she doesn't like the lid of the toilet to be up, so she used to drop it from its highest point whenever she saw it open and relish the ear-splitting crash it made. About a week ago, I realized that instead of saying "No! Don't do that!" I needed to explain exactly what it was that I wanted her to do instead, so I bent down and showed her how to "close it softly." We haven't had any open toilets in the intervening week and I had completely forgotten about this little two-minute incident until this morning when she ran into the bathroom and said "Oh! Potty open! I kyozz soffee?" and then proceeded to veeeerry carefully let down the lid, then looked up at me proudly and said "Good job?"


I can't believe I'm blogging about a toilet lid, but I was very impressed with how eager she is to learn and to please me. It's good to remember that the things she does sometimes which drive me crazy are just her way of exploring her world, and she really does try so hard once we've taught her a principle.

Huh

Note to potential Abigail feeders--her face is allergic to Thousand Island salad dressing.

That's really weird.

First haircut

Lots of pictures for all of you who only check this for pictures (Elise!). I finally put new batteries back in the camera.

Anyway, as you can see, we celebrated the demise of the Mullet of Glory over the weekend. It's now been replaced by a more-or-less neat little bob that makes her look rather frighteningly less babyish and much more like a little kid, or at least a baby whose parents have noticed that she had weird hair and finally finally did something about it.

On the "growing up suddenly" front, Abigail walked into the dining room yesterday where I was grading papers, and sweetly offered her face up for a kiss, indicated that I was to put her back-pack on her back, then told me "Bye bye, Mommy. Go car pack pack school. Bye!"

She's also growing increasingly attached to "baby doh," which Rosalind gave her for Christmas. Baby doh spends her days being force-fed bottles, driving recklessly through the house smashing into walls, and goes down for a nap with a blanket over her face every fifteen minutes or so. I'm not sure what this says about Abigail's feelings towards my parenting style.

Children's Museum

Here are some pics from our visit to the Children's Museum...



Driving--one of her favorite things to do these days!

Dancing in the Playscape area

She's not quite certain about tunnels yet...

This thing was really cool--you turn the handles and the little car moves along the track. She thought it was awesome!

I think Neil enjoyed all the bulldozers and trucks more than Abigail did...

Her favorite part of the museum--playing in the Falls Creek watershed. She was SOAKED after we left the creek and boat area!

Fishies!

Dressed up like a fish in front of the blue screen--there was a video camera that then broadcast her onto a TV with other fish in the background. Pretty nifty.

Coming out of the submarine

End of the morning--looking at the T. Rex (several of them!)

It was a nice little break, and we spent a fun three hours or so there. We'd been planning on doing it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it was good to finally get around to it (and get the pictures up!) Abigail had a good time, but she was pretty worn out by the time we left. She's not really comfortable with little kids that she doesn't know, so the parts of the museum that she most enjoyed were the parts designed for elementary school kids, since they weren't as crowded and hectic (to do her justice, I thought the preschool area was pretty insane myself!)

In other exciting news, our niece Mikal was baptized today (Saturday). Unfortunately we weren't able to make it up there to be with her (area exam studying! argh!) but Neil called her this evening after dinner and she sounded really thrilled. We are so happy for her! She is such a sweetheart.

This weekend was pretty typical--Neil spent most of it studying, although we did have date night last night, which was fun. We ended up just hanging out at home (the weather was awful, and all our plans were for outside things), but it was nice to eat a leisurely dinner and spend a few hours just talking without any pint-sized interruptions. We finished up with a quick jaunt to Krispy Kreme and then watched A Man For All Seasons after we put Abigail to bed. We're really looking forward to the end of the area exams when Neil will have more time--hopefully we can swing up and go to the temple and visit Caleb and Juli's family, especially since they may be moving this summer or fall!

Mine Papa?

Today in church Abigail was looking over my shoulder during the opening exercises, and she caught sight of one of the ushers through the glassed doors. He had graying hair, glasses, and was about the same build as my dad, and she went crazy! She was jumping up and down, yelling "Papa! Papa! Papa!" Unfortunately, when he turned around, she was pretty sad. So she will be excited the next time she sees her grandpa!

Our fun news today is that we got a free mattress and box springs from someone in the ward--they had three frames and a mattress/springs that they were giving away, so hurray, we don't have to buy a bed for Abigail now!

Abigail did really well today with the 11-2 meeting time, but it could also be because she slept in so late. I sure felt sympathetic for the nursery leaders today--it's hard to have a bevy of little kids who really just want to nap.

Puppet time

Today Abigail's activity of choice was singing "Little Bunny Foo-foo" with her finger puppets. It's fun to watch her bounce the puppets around, then smack herself on the head with them at the part where Little Bunny Foo-Foo is bopping the fieldmice on the head.

It was a nice quiet home day today--we read lots of books and Abigail fed me all kinds of interesting plastic meals. She had a fun evening with Quincy and Elise (the Westovers babysat her tonight while we went to pick up the Williams from the airport).
Unfortunately, Neil now has our circulating cold--let's hope it's finished before school starts Monday!

Firsts

We had a couple of "firsts" today--some good, some not so good.

On the good side, Abigail said her first more-than-two-word phrase. We were in a parking lot, and the car next to us pulled out, and she said "Car go bye." Sophisticated, I know, but it was very cute (plus she waved bye-bye to the car).

On the not-so-fun side, Abigail refused to eat dinner today (chicken saag), so we tried Neil's theory of "if she's hungry, she'll eat, if not, she's done." It was both stressful in that I worried about a malnourished child (not that one meal will do that much, but she hasn't eaten well today) and also nice not to spend an hourpreparing various mini-meals and coaxing her to take just one bite. She didn't seem too hungry after "dinner," which may have been the ear infection, but she sure threw a big "I want to be out of my chair" tantrum. It's frustrating--she loves something one day and won't look at it the next. I know it's all part of being a toddler, but as I was explaining to Neil the other day, it's hard for me because it's at the point where literally the best thing that can happen to me all day is Abigail eating breakfast without complaint. Fun fun.

She did do one pretty cute thing during dinner--I kept telling her to eat just one bite and then she could have whatever she wanted, and so I held up my finger when I said "one." She would very solemnly look back at me, hold up one finger, and say "two."

Grandpa and the Geese

I wish I had some face shots, but here's Abigail with her daddy, granddaddy, and great-granddaddy feeding the geese the day after Christmas (we were at lunch at a restaurant which overlooks a lake full of swans and geese). Abigail really had a good time. It's cute--she keeps looking at pictures of my dad and saying "papa!" anxiously and looking around for him. Hopefully we will be able to see them again soon!

We had a rough day here today. It's amazing how much Abigail's mood can affect everyone, and she was sure cranky. She literally cried from the moment she got up until we put her to bed tonight--I have no idea what was wrong with her today. I think it may be a compilation of the fact that she's a very regular little child and her schedule has been pretty haywire this week, added to which I had an awful headache this morning and went back to bed after an hour or so to try to sleep it off, and she WANTED HER MOMMY and screamed and banged at the bedroom door until I reappeared. But I was asleep for about half an hour, so she had long enough to really get worked up. Nice to be loved, but it was not a fun day. I think it made Neil excited to go back to work, so maybe it was a good thing in one way after all.

Happy memories

No, this isn't a recent shot, but I was going through old photo files tonight, and since this is one of my very favorite pictures, I wanted to put it in my little virtual journal. I think this was taken when Abigail was about two hours old. It's hard to believe she's almost two years old now--it has really flown. She is such a delight and I can't imagine being without my fluffy little blonde companion.

Speaking of "happy" memories, my sisters drew a smiley face on Abigail's hand while we were visiting last week and told her it was called a "happy." Since then, she has insisted upon having a "happy" on her hand constantly (today she wanted one on each hand) and throughout the day will periodically cry out "happy! happy!" and show me her hand. It's pretty endearing.

Today was a better day on the sickness front. I reduced my nose-blowing toilet paper consumption to a mere half roll, and felt well enough to take an hour and a half walk with Neil and Abigail in the afternoon. We're having unseasonably warm weather here, which is a bit frustrating since it's December and we wish there was snow, but it's also nice to be able to spend time outside. Hopefully tomorrow we can go to the playground.

In other exciting news, I got some curtains for the dining room today. I know, I know, curtains are pretty boring, but they were exciting to me! Now we have more privacy at night, plus they sort of pull the whole room together and make it look more polished and formal. (And they're dark red--did you even have to ask?)

Mullet of Glory

That's pretty much all I have to say for today.

pictures

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

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!