Cats don't eat peanuts!

While visiting my parents’ house for Thanksgiving this year, their pets were constantly trailed by a very eager friend. Dogs love children; they relate to children. Cats, on the other hand, understand the chaotic nature of children and seem to generally steer clear of the certain torture they would undergo by associating with something below their sophistication level. Don’t get me wrong, I love cats, I just understand their need for safe boundaries. My parents’ cat Little Bit is no exception to this generalization but was brave enough to hang around within eyeshot of Abigail, much to Abigail’s delight and constant entertainment. Not knowing what to do with a cat, it seems as though Abigail settled on the main goal of trying to feed her. Here is Little Bit with an offering of play food cupcake:

Notice also the jar of peanuts behind Little Bit. When the play cupcake wasn’t eaten, Abigail decided that cats probably preferred to eat peanuts. One evening we were sitting down to dinner and noticed that Little Bit was sleeping in one of the chairs with about 10 peanuts laid out in front of her. Nice try Abigail!

(talking to Grandma about the cat)

Is style learned or innate?

Abigail picked out her clothes this morning. What do you think? Double layer of pajamas for a "high of 71" day?

Our cute cousins

I have to brag and show some pictures from Halloween of Abigail's cousins! Oh, and one crazy uncle :).

Okay, so I don't think these guys will appreciate being called cute. This is the one time of year they aren't so cute, it seems! The grow up so fast. One year, Buzz Lightyear, the next, scary skeleton or Jack-o-Lantern

New Photographer

Abigail and I had a little picnic in our back yard one fine afternoon in November. I wanted to get a picture of us and Abigail is not a fan of the camera these days (who can blame her with the momarazzi hanging around), but she did look in the right direction! Aren't we cute?

I have a remote release for my camera, which is cleverly hidden in the picture above. When we were done with lunch, Abigail wanted a turn taking a picture. She walked over to the camera and said, 'Smile Mommy!" I thought this was hilarious. You had to be there. Anyway, I was a little nervous about Abigail's abilities to press the button and keep the camera upright on the tripod, so I gave her the remote release to use. She thought this was the best thing since sliceable play food bread! (yes, I think I’m funny). She took around 50 pictures of me (clicking, looking at the result and imitating whatever face I had made) before she finally got comfortable to get in front of the camera herself. She would click the remote while looking intently in the camera and then run around to see what it looked like. It was so funny! Here are a few of the pictures:

Potty Time, Excellent! (with reference to Wayne's World)

So sorry about the delay in update. I will write more very soon, but I wanted to start off with: Abigail is potty trained!! YEA! She even wants to go all by herself, in typical two year old fashion. If I try to stay in the bathroom with her, she says 'MOOK MOMMY!' We have a short discussion and then she says, 'Please Mommy please mook. Out.' She is still hooked on treats for going potty, but I don't mind because we are finally dwindling the ever-growing candy bowl that sits around. Sometimes fruit snacks are still the treat, but she has learned that she sometimes prefers chocolate and suckers.

Abigail on Fritos and Bubble Wrap

When eating Fritos chips, Abigail said,
"Mmmmmm! I like it! Awesommme!"

Upon seeing bubble wrap, she said excitedly,
"Oh ho ho! Corns!!"

Our thought process is: She calls popcorn 'corns' too, so maybe bubble wrap is called 'corns' because it pops?

Baby James

The other night Abigail was playing in the living room with her baby dolls and she said very matter-of-factly, "Daddy! This is James. This is James." referring to one of her baby dolls (FYI- she says 'James' like she is a native Spanish speaker- 'Hames'). Now, just so you know, James is a man of the 21st century. Much like his close neighbors, the men of the 80s, he is not afraid to wear pink. In fact, he is the only baby doll Abigail has that does permanently wear pink. Up until this time, I had always profiled James as a girl, simply because he was wearing pink. Evidently, I am not as fashion conscious as he and Abigail are! Here is James:


Now, Abigail also has a friend named James. He comes to playgroup and is often at Beeson lunch on Tuesdays with us. If other kids are around, James and Abigail don't usually pay more attention to each other than the normal hello and goodbye and don't seem to notice all that much that they are playing in the same place at the same time. But when we go home, I hear about (real) James a lot. When we sing 'He's got the whole world in His hands' James is always one of the friends requested to be in His hands. Last week James had a boo-boo, and Abigail talked about it throughout the week. Also, she often wants to know if James is going to be where we're going (yes, you too Ruby, Maggie, Jonathan and Arwen). I hear that James talks about Abigail some times too. I don't know what they have going on, but it sure is suspicious! We figured out the other morning that while James was at his house, very distraught that he couldn't talk anyone into giving him a juice box (even though he had juice in his cup), Abigail was at our house, rocking her baby James with his blankie, singing to him and yes, giving him some juice from a bottle. Here is James:


I have to say, they do look a little bit alike!

Here is Abigail with both of her babies. The other baby's name is 'Baby Doll.'

With a Limp

We have a drawer at our house that has ear plugs and golf tees in it. I think they all ended up there together because they were little things that needed keeping SOMEwhere. It sounds really weird now that I'm writing it down, but it doesn't change the fact that we have the strange drawer. The real story is that Abigail sometimes gets into this drawer and takes the tees and earplugs out to tote them around the room (since little things in general are a favorite of Abigail's, and who can really resist the temptation to squish those spongy earplugs? I think maybe she likes the challenge of trying to carry them all at once.) Yesterday I noticed that she was sticking the end of a tee into the side of her shoe, just moving it around. The day before she had stored some 'pennies' in her shoes for safekeeping, so it wasn't a surprise to see her sticking the golf tee in there. She wasn't really putting the tee all the way into her shoe but more unconsciously itching her foot while she watched a bit of Blue's Clues.
Anyway, a little while later we were downstairs and I noticed that Abigail was walking with a bit of a limp. I thought, 'That crazy kid DID put the tee in there!' I chuckled to myself and stopped her to check it out. Once I started to take off her shoe, however, Abigail starting yelling, 'No, no, no, no!' in a frantic, worried voice, on the verge of tantrum tears. By the end of her nos I had succeeded in taking off her shoe and almost any intention of having a talk about not shouting no was gone from my mind, for in her wee little shoe I found, not one golf tee, but EIGHT. And not just that, there were TWELVE earplugs too! I was laughing out loud and little Abigail was crying at the loss of her treasure. I made the poor kid put her shoe back on without the added cushion. At least she still had the sucker I had given her a little earlier, life wasn't all bad.

Growing up is easy to do

Abigail is growing fast!

October 2006

October 2007

October 2008

October Pics

Our October pictures are up! Click on the picture to see them:

Also we have pumpkin patch pictures here:

Voting

Today we all got to go vote together!


(waiting in line)


(checking out her 'I voted' sticker)

I have to say that I feel discriminated against. They let everyone who didn't have a last name starting with G or H vote right away, but the G and H-ers had to wait in a long line. What could they have against G and H-ers anyway? Is it that when signed, the letters look like guns?

G H

Who knows. I don't think it is because all of us with G and H last names came all at once. There was definitely a conspiracy going on.

(The terribly long G & H line. You can barely make out the tables at the front, where all the other voters just walked up and grabbed their ballots. I took this picture discreetly, so as to not be attacked by the lady on the far left, who already looked quite disconcerted)

You know how when you vote, you go into a little table thing with secrecy walls on the side, so no one knows who you're voting for? Well, that's not how we do it here in Alabama. I left the sign-in table with my ballot, went to sit in one of the many chairs haphazardly and closely placed around the room (realizing that I needed to find my own pen) and voted right in my lap! I don't take too great of an offense about it, I just found it comical. I'm pretty sure the guy who watched me put my ballot in the machine knows everyone I voted for too. I wouldn't be surprised if he was a savant that they were using as an exit poll person- he knows exactly how many votes there were for each candidate on the list! Maybe this was just the way they did it at my polling station and other Birmingham places are more traditional.

Truthfully, I'm thankful for the right to vote and that I really am not discriminated against! Now I just have to hope that my vote doesn't get lost on a rainy highway...

Let's see if I can do this and Halloween

Some of you, maybe all of you who are reading this, have asked to have more stories of our lives. I'm going to see if I can fulfill that request here! If I succeed, it will be the first time I have ever 'journaled' for a consistent amount of time without being graded for it. Right now my goal is to write something every 1-2 weeks. Now on to the stories!

For Halloween this year Abigail was an angel, I was Sarah Palin, and Jake was Jake :)

We woke Abigail up early from her nap to try and go trick-or-treating before it got too late. Abigail is a sleeper and not very happy when you wake her up early! I had explained to her before what we were going to do, but of course she didn't quite understand it. But by the time we got to the third house she had warmed up from her grumpy after-napness and understood the concept of free candy very well! She was so excited about all the 'treats!' Ever since then she has been carrying her pumpkin pail around with her wherever she goes, emptying and sorting her candy, talking about it and putting it back in the pail.

(the original haul)

This morning she made a pile of 'daddy's' and 'abby-ails.' (I'm still tring to decide whether to take offense or feel complimented that she didn't make a pile for me) It seemed to be sorted mostly by color. Brown and blue things went in Daddy's pile and Abigail got all the purple, red, yellow, orange and pink things.

(busy sorting)

But the funniest story having to do with Halloween candy (so far) happened when Abigail had all her candy spread out on the floor looking at it. She was talking to herself about the candy and I was sort of listening while making dinner. Then she laid down on top of her candy with her arms outstretched and said, 'I wullve yeou! I wullve yeou! Which, translated, means, 'I love you! I love you!' SO cute! You'll have to use your imagination for that one, because I don't have a picture :).