abby's world

so, abby has created quite the imaginary metropolis in our apartment, with various rooms standing in for school, her house, grocery store, hat store, shoe store, etc. The other day, brian and ian and i were in the living room, and she came in from "school, " and announced that she was going to her house. we asked her where she lived, and she said, "down a sunny dirt road, deep in people country!" this is the first line of every berenstain bears book, although for them it's bear country, not people country.

nothing much has been going on the past couple of days, so i'm pretty boring. friday morning is the pbs open house where abby will get to meet wordgirl. we haven't told her this, of course. brian and i are trying to figure out whether she'll think it's actually wordgirl, or what she'll think. or whether her head will actually explode.

in other news, ian has learned how to sit up from crawling/lying down. he's pretty happy about this. although, i think his sleep has suffered because of it, since he likes to practice his new skill. naps and night sleeping have not been good the past couple of days. we may be on the verge of a new sleep plan because of it, i don't know. all i know is that 8.5 months is old enough to be sleeping better than he is, and i don't want us to be reinforcing behavior that we don't want to continue. we shall see.

hahahahaha

ok, this just couldn't wait. this afternoon while ian was napping, abby and i were snuggling on the bed and talking about halloween. she asked what i was going to be, and i said i didn't know, and we went on to talking about other people's costumes. mason might be superman, etc. so, out of nowhere then she says, "you could be...ladyman!" i said, "what???" "ladyman!" "what's ladyman?" "ladyman's a girl AND a man!"

seriously, dc? marvel? you gotta get on the ground floor here. ladyman's going to be HUGE.

100!

wow, this is the 100th post on this blog! somehow i'm very surprised by that. here are some pictures! :)

we've had a pretty eventful past few days. on friday, we drove up to appleton for a surprise birthday party for my friend lora. grandma and grandpa rogers took us out for lunch as a belated anniversary present, and then we went back to their house. i had sat down to feed ian, and about 2 minutes later, james and hayden walked in! they decided to visit, mostly to play with abby. so around 3 or so, we left for the par-tay. lora's husband matt put it together, and all of us were surprised as well that she had no idea. it's hard to put one over on her, but we did it. :) anyway, we surprised her at her office, then went for a drink (giant tube of beer!), then to katsu-ya for dinner. brian and i had never been there, but it was excellent. brian had beef katsu (not willing to try sushi), and i had the chef's choice nigiri. not sure what most of the fish was, but it was delicious nonetheless. all of us also split a bottle of plum wine and a bottle of sake. thanks, lora and matt!! after dinner, brian and i headed back to menasha to put the kids to bed, then back to lora and matt's house for board games. it was a great night, and we had a lot of fun.

saturday, we headed back here bright and early for brian to get to work by noon. then, nothing much happened for a couple of days. :) yesterday morning, abby had an appointment with a podiatrist about her toenails. for those of you who don't know, abby was born with pretty messed-up big toenails. they're thick, discolored, and not really attached to her toe except at the base. the pinky toenails are similar. the middle three are fine, except they don't grow. i've never cut them. so, the podiatrist seems to think it's a fungal thing, but couldn't explain how she got the fungus in the first place, since i don't think i have fungus in my uterus. so, she took some clippings to send to the lab to check for fungus, but in the meantime we're supposed to start treating her for it with vicks vapo-rub, of all things. this is likely to be a long process, one that we hope won't have to involve removal of the toenails. because seriously? i don't think i could handle that. toenails skeeve me out big-time.

the last bit of news is that ian is officially crawling! he doesn't move very fast, but he's doing a great job. it's necessitated some changes in our daily life, though. abby hasn't quite gotten it through her head that he will take her toys if she leaves them on the floor. hopefully it won't take long for her to learn that lesson, since fits are thrown pretty frequently.

huit mois

ian is 8 months old today! to celebrate, he decided to wake up at the crack of dawn and not go back to sleep. needless to say, i don't approve of this type of celebration, and feel that a more appropriate celebration would be to sleep in. we've agreed to disagree on this.

current likes: eating, big sister's toys, getting into anything he's not supposed to, showing us our childproofing flaws, baths, going in the van, big sister's room, pretty much big sister anything.

current dislikes: getting his diaper changed, face-planting on the floor, getting his face wiped, sleeping past 6am (or 5:15 in the case of today).

the sleeping thing has improved slightly, but not in the way i wanted it to. he had been waking up in the middle of the night to eat, then sleeping till 6 or so. now, the middle of the night feeding is pretty much gone, and it has been replaced by getting up earlier, and usually not going back to sleep after feeding. i.don't.like.it. not one bit. brian and i have a complicated system of who gets up with him on certain days and who gets to sleep in...obviously, today is my day up with him.

the good news is that he's a very happy baby. still very mellow and laid-back. although he has developed a new sound of happiness that sounds remarkably like a pterodactyl. that part's not so mellow.

i'll add a pic to this later, once the day has gotten going a bit more.

oh, and i also wanted to add that abby has acquired another imaginary friend to join the ranks of sarahpaula, roto, and hinko. this new one is named janie two-later. i don't quite know where that name came from, but it's pretty funny. janie calls on the phone a lot, and they have some pretty in-depth conversations that i'm not privy to.

7/13/02

6 years ago today, brian and i got married. for me, it was a day filled with unrelenting nausea, david bowie, and cult classic films. for brian, it was a day filled with eating. tonight there will be lasagna, caesar salad, garlic bread, and our bottle of "special occasion" wine.

happy anniversary to us.

banana bread

choice abby quotes from the past couple of days:

scene: bedtime, abby gets to choose the song we sing. she chooses "five little pumpkins", but specifies that she would like it to be "five little BIG pumpkins" instead.

me: (singing) "five little big pumpkins sitting on a gate. the first one says, "
abby: (pause) "we're big pumpkins!"
(those are not the right words.)
me: (laughing) "the second one says, "
abby: "we like to live in houses!"
me: (curious as to where this will go) "the third one says,"
abby: "we like telephones!"
me: "the fourth one says, "
abby: (looking around the room) "we like...beds!"
me: "and the fifth one says,"
abby: "we like...books!"

and the song continued and ended as normal from there. that's the first time she's made up her own words to a song...she's pretty good. :)

scene: lunchtime, abby dawdling.
"hey mom, you wanna know what i'm gonna do when i get older?"
"sure."
"KUNG FU!"


we also have halloween all planned out already. abby had planned on being an octopus (i don't know why, so don't ask :) ), but has thrown out that idea in favor of being wordgirl. wordgirl is the main character on a pbs show of the same name...she's a superhero of vocabulary! ian will be playing the part of wordgirl's sidekick, a monkey named captain huggy face. i'm thinking this halloween's going to be pretty good.

one song glory

so, guess what? monday morning the doctor's office called, and said that they had sent my x-rays off to a radiologist, and he had indeed found a fracture. however, the fracture was such that it didn't need a cast, just a sling. so, i'm still going through some pain, and even went back today to see what was going on with it. nothing's changed, but the ortho guy apparently said i shouldn't wear the sling anymore to prevent stiffening. so, i have a broken arm that i'm just using as normal. hurts like hell, but whatever. sigh.

in other news: abby has changed the name of her restaurant. it is no longer food food go to me, unfortunately. the new name is housey how house. don't ask me why, i don't know. she'll spend a lot changing her signage, i'll tell you that.

i've gotten several internet freelancing jobs in the past couple of days...writing, and also working as a human ask jeeves kind of thing with a company called chacha. nothing pays too much, but it's something at least.

brian is back into the swing of things at work, and has finally discovered a coffee drink he likes. coldbrewed caramel mocha. apparently he's been downing these things like water, so he's been a bit caffeinated.

ian is still not crawling. he moves around in his own way, but i really thought he'd be full-on crawling by now. his new favorite place in the house is abby's room. he's always disappointed when we go down the hallway and turn into his room instead. he LOVES her little people and little people vehicles, and luckily she doesn't seem to mind sharing them with him.

kishi likes being outside on the patio.

there's your family update. :)

one last thing: i've got all our minneapolis pictures on the computer, but am having snapfish issues. anyone who wants them via picasa instead, please let me know.