Sarah is having me help her learn how to edit all of the blog. She sure has gotten addicted to this blog. Maybe I could get her addicted to rubbing my feet every night..... ha ha! We may have to get a second computer the way we keep fighting over computer usage! Wow! Hope everyone likes the new style!
Sunday I decided to try something new - I put Abby's hair into a ponytail. Now, we've been doing the little half-ponies for awhile, but I was going for the whole ponytail. As cute as it was, it made me sad because she looked SO GROWN UP! :o( I'm just not ready for all this...
Abby said two new (albeit very similar) words tonight. She was walking around saying "baby, baby" and pointing to her doll -- YEA!! A little bit later, she started screaming and I said, "No, Abby!" and she said "Babby." She can say her name! Her cousin Megan calls her "Babby" and it's so cute!! The rest of the evening when I would say her name, she would repeat "Babby." SO SWEET!!
Since we need to work on our budgets (monetary and caloric) we decided to challenge ourselves to NO EATING OUT for the next week. This includes even stopping for a drink at Sonic. I will update you next week and let you know how we do! For our 'last supper' so to speak, we went to Shorty Smalls and used some gift certificates my sister gave us. We split a bbq pork salad and a Monte Cristo sandwich. For those of you (like me) who had never heard of that sandwich, here's a description from the SS website:
Slices of ham, turkey, Swiss and American cheese sandwiched between Texas toast then battered and deep fried. Topped with powdered sugar and a side of raspberry sauce for dipping.
Sounds disgusting, doesn't it? Strangely, it was really good. I'm a fairly picky eater (not nearly as much as I used to be) and I liked it. Weird...
Thursday we went shopping to get Zac some new clothes. We've both lost 35+ pounds (working on more!) and need new clothes, but this paycheck was for Zac to get some stuff. At JCPenney, we got him two new pair of dress pants, three dress shirts and some new dress shoes. Then we went to Old Navy for two pair of shorts and two shirts. My hottie husband is looking mighty fine these days!! :o)
Abby is doing some funny stuff now. When music comes on, she will spin herself around in a circle and/or make fists and shake her arms up and down. It's sooo cute! We're still working on getting her to talk ("use your words" is what we tell her) instead of just saying "uh! uh!" and grabbing toward what she wants. She has developed a slight interest in the potty, especially if she comes in the bathroom while I'm there. We'll probably get her a little potty in the next few weeks, just so she can start checking it out. I can't believe we are approaching potty training - EIK!!
I don't see how single moms do it. I was just in the middle of having a pity party for myself and realized that. I put in my 40 hours at work, then come home and work some more, trying to do all the 'normal' wife/mom stuff - cleaning, laundry, cooking, etc. And in the middle of all that, I try to put in a little quality time with my child. HA.
But, in trying to get out of my pitiful funk, I realized that I at least have someone who comes home at night and will take out the trash or put some dishes away. (He used to cook, but now he comes home too late...lol). There are a lot of parents that are doing it alone - and they have all my respect, because I don't think I could do it.
Then there's the stress I (and probably all moms) put on myself about Abby maybe not being 'up to par.' Maybe if I could stay home she would be talking more, learning more, blah blah blah. Why do we women do this to ourselves?
Sheesh.
Abby's 18 month checkup was last Thursday -- technically she was already 19 mos old, but oh well. Zac took her, since he was off work and I wasn't. Here are her stats:
Height: 34.25 inches (94th percentile)
Weight: 27.5 lbs (82th percentile)
I can't believe how fast our girl is growing! 19 mos old and almost 3 feet tall - craziness!!
I've put in some pictures of Abby from yesterday. I was cleaning house because we had some friends coming over and the weather was GORGEOUS so I had the doors and windows open. Abby was sitting on the back steps calling "DaDa! DaDa!" Then she would babble a little bit and just sit. It was so sweet to see her just enjoying the goings on of the backyard. We should all take time to enjoy the simple things and truly be as humble as the little children.
As some of you may know, we had some crazy weather last night in Central Arkansas. This morning I noticed we'd even made the national news. (We never make news for anything good...hmmm).
Anyway, I knew it was going to storm last night but I had no idea that it would include tornadoes and such. Zac got home late and we were watching all the radar stuff on Channel 11. My mom called and told us to switch to Channel 7 because they were forecasting tornadoes for Gravel Ridge (our neighborhood). Zac watched for a few minutes and saw that the storms were SURROUNDING our neighborhood. He told me to put my shoes on and he grabbed Abby from her crib. We have a storm shelter in our front yard (crazy, I know) so we went outside.
Zac opened it up and got in, then I ran out (through the POURING RAIN I should add), handed Abby down to him, then got in. He closed the door and there we sat in our concrete underground box, with each other and a flashlight for company. EIK! Four years in this house and we've never had to get into that thing. Luckily Zac cleaned it out last year so it was not too terribly bad. We could hear the pouring rain, the storm sirens and a few REALLY loud claps of thunder.
Poor Abby was shaking and whimpering, but she was a real trooper. She hardly cried at all. After Zac made a few phone calls -- couldn't believe we actually got reception down there -- I started singing hymns to Abby to calm her down. Zac said a prayer and that helped her, too. She laid her head on my shoulder and I rocked her. We were down there for about twenty minutes. My mom finally called and told us that the storms were past us; they were watching it all on TV in their den, so they were close to their basement space. So we came back up and went in the house. We kept watching the weather because there was another line coming, but thankfully it went way around us. Abby was all wound up, so it was about an hour and a half before we could get her back to bed.
This morning it took me an HOUR to get to work -- normally a 20 minute drive. There are three ways out of our neighborhood and two of them were totally blocked. Of course those were the first two that I tried! The NLR airport was blown to smithereens...airplanes smashed, hangers with the roofs ripped off. Trees were uprooted just a few miles from us. Houses had trees laying on top of them. It's so crazy to think about -- I've never been so close to the actual 'path of destruction' before.
I've included three pictures of storm damage that was within HALF A MILE of our house. I'm going to try and take some of the storm shelter so everyone can see our concrete box. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father was looking out for us and kept us out of harm's way. I'm also grateful for a quick-thinking husband that stays levelheaded in emergencies....I would be a wreck without him!!
