You Capture - Lines

This week's challenge was Lines. So I had a few pictures to use that I took a week or so ago, but I decided this morning to shoot a few before leaving for work as well - just so I could officially say I captured my captures this week. :)

Spaghetti!

kitchen window

My baby is turning ONE on Saturday!!! Here's some ribbon for her party favors.

the first snow of the winter from our back porch

And these are the shots I took previously - but I liked them enough to share. Here's some graffiti from downtown Boston....lots of lines all over!

and then I looked up and saw this -

If you have a camera (professional, point and shoot, camera phone, whatever!) and can push a button - you should join the weekly challenge. Next week's is about your favorite holiday decor - and that should be fun, so seriously, go jump in. Go check out the rest of the entries for this week too!

light switches

Abby has recently discovered the power and awesomeness that is - the light switch. She's enamored with them.

And, as it turns out, we have a lot of them. You don't really notice how many light switches you have until your child tugs on your pants with arms up in the air waiting to be lifted so that they can 1) see the light switch 2) flip the light switch...or at least try to, she's ok with flipping it up, but not so much back down..and 3) point to all the other light switches in the room demanding to be brought closer to each one. We have 7 light switches in our living room, 12 if you include the ones around the corner in the hallway. 14 if you include the ones by the back door. 30 or so in the house total. And she doesn't pass any of them now without pointing to them and making her little excited noises.

It's the first thing she does in the mornings now. I walk into her room, she stands up in her crib looking over the rail and points to the light switch. When I pick her up out of her crib, she continues to point and "ask" about the light switch. After we get dressed, she leans out of my arms towards the light switch. She does the same thing as we pass each one going downstairs. Her high chair sits right below 2 of them - which has become pretty distracting during meals.

But you should see her face when I take the time to let her play with one of them. She gets SO. Happy. Just pure joy and glee. And when you think about it - lights are pretty awesome. Who doesn't like light? And Abby, still being relatively new to this world, just figured out to make light whenever she wants. I guess I can kinda see why she likes it so much. To her - it's like magic.

So when I look at it that way, I guess it make sense. :)

In other news, it's snowing and raining and windy today. Gross. I'd rather have snow than rain, but I'd rather have rain than a snow/rain mix. Just pick one. I hope everyone else is snuggled up warm somewhere. Happy Wednesday.

Dear Abigail

Abigail,

I decided today that I wanted to write you this letter to talk to you about books.

I was inspired to do this at some point this afternoon while we were driving around town and you were sleeping in the back seat. I started thinking about the books that you like, and then I started thinking about the first books I remember reading and loving.

When I was little, the first book I read by myself was called Stone Soup. I remember being so proud of myself when I finished it, and my mom made a really big deal out of that accomplishment. And rightly so.

Your uncle Michael and I read a lot of Bernstein Bear books - those are about a family of bears that get into all kinds of shenanigans, and sometimes they teach you how to handle real life situations too. As I got older, I went through a phase where I loved horse books and I read this whole series called Thouroughbred. I remember carrying those books with me everywhere. I sold them at a yard sale eventually - and I almost cried when somebody bought them. I remember going up to the lady and telling her that they were really good books and I hope she enjoyed them. In hindsight, she probably wasn't buying them for herself. Your Aunt Jennifer used to read to me when I was younger and I always loved that. She read me the Narnia books (well, some of them), and some other classics. Sometimes its nice to have somebody read to you.

So, Abby, here's the thing. Books are good. They are good for entertainment, and they are good for your brain. I hope you grow up to appreciate them. It would make me very happy if your bookshelf was always full. I hope you grow up to understand that books have a kind of energy about them. Especially really old ones. Books have a certain smell, and there are few things better than finding an old book and admiring the worn cover, yellowed pages, the smooth crisp paper and wondering to yourself who else has held the same book 100 years before you. Who else has read those pages and what did they think about it? What I'm trying to say is that books have a life of their own. And they should be appreciated. If you've inherited any of my genes - you'll get what I mean someday. It's harder to explain in writing than I thought it would be.

It's my job to make sure that you're exposed to lots of books as a child. It's a little bit daunting sometimes. I find myself determined to introduce you to all the classics so that you are a well rounded and productive member of society. I'm not sure that any official research has been done that connects Dr. Seuss familiarity with life success - but I'm going to do my best to cover the basics just in case. There are just a lot of books to cover - and you're going to love them.

So tonight, we took a detour and headed to the library before going home. I let you pick out some board books...this means I read you about a dozen of them and we checked out the two that you showed interest in - one was full of bright colors and baby's faces and the other one was mediocre until you found that the last page had a snowman on it...then you got excited again and demanded to read it over and over. After that, I took you to the Christmas section and we picked out a big colorful version of The Night Before Christmas. It's a classic and I hope you let me read it to you every year. **

And so tonight, before bed, You sat with me in the chair and drank your bottle while I read that story to you for the first time. You were completely relaxed and enjoyed looking at all the pictures. And I enjoyed watching you.

And so, sweet girl. I hope you grow up to enjoy reading - I promise I'll do my best to help you. And if you do - I promise you won't regret it.

Love you.

Mommy

** I asked if they had A Cajun Night Before Christmas and was told that it was at another location and they could order it for me. And for those of you who are not my siblings - this is the book I looked forward to hearing every year. My sister made the best voices - or at least we thought so at the time - At 7 I'm sure I didn't know what a Cajun accent should sound like, but I liked the one she did. That book holds a lot of memories for me too. :) Silly as it may be.

goodnight

It's been a busy day.

We woke to a winter wonderland. It snowed last night and the city was sparkling white this morning. It was nice because the skies were clear and blue and the combination of those two things always makes for a nice day.

I had hoped to take some Abby pictures in it - but we simply couldn't find the time today. It was a busy day.

I got a lot done, but not enough done. I never get *enough* done. There's always more. Always.

But, I got a lot done, and that's good. We set up a bed in the guest room so that our guests can now have somewhere to sleep - this included getting the bed which included me driving with a mattress strapped to my car.

I found Abby a birthday gift. It's second hand and I found it on Craigslist, but I found a few wooden puzzles that I just fell in love with, so I'm happy that she'll have something from her mom and dad. We went and picked that up after having lunch, which was after church and after driving aimlessly for 30 mins while Abby (and Kyle) napped in the car.

After all of that was done I went grocery shopping. I came home in time to put Abby to bed. Then I got to sit down and relax. Kyle and I watched a few shows and at 11pm it was time to start cleaning. An hour later, the dishes are going, the rooms are tidied, the counters clean, the trash is emptied and I'm tired.

This week is a very busy week. Very busy. Wish me luck. It doesn't help, of course, that I would rather spend my days concentrating on Abby's birthday or my brother and sister visiting. But, I have too much to do between now and then. I know it'll get done though - it always gets done.

Anyway. It's Monday now so I'm calling it a night. Sweet dreams y'all.

I was pretty excited to pull out Abby's santa hoodie vest today.

I tried like 20 times to get a picture of her looking at the camera - but she wouldn't stop looking at the snow. :)

randomabbyosity

my blog. my made up words. :)

It's a cold grey morning here in Boston today. I know, I know, big surprise, right? It was in the 60s a few days ago, and that was a big surprise. We soaked up the sun every moment we could spare because we know winter is about to strike. Aaaaaanny minute now.

In fact, it may even snow on Abby's birthday - which would be kinda neat in that "Oh, look, snow is so pretty, but I hope the guests can still drive in" kinda way.

I think the reason it takes a year to turn one is because that's how long us moms need to cope with the idea. :) I'm coming around. Honestly, I feel like Abby is already one - she's certainly no longer a baby. The party will be just that - a celebration to acknowledge the fact that she's growing up.

Kyle and I have had very busy weeks and I'm afraid that the next few weeks before Christmas are going to be my busiest yet. In sum, I have a month's worth of cases to get done in a week. And yes, it's just as busy as that sounds like it would be. We've found ourself discussing Abby whenever we get a moment to talk. I'll pick him up from work and drive him to class and we'll discuss when we want to start giving Abby milk and how to wean her off of bottles. I'll see him for 10 mins before I leave for work in the morning, and I spend that time telling him about all the cute things Abby did yesterday. Right before bed, I might remember to tell him about the party food plans. So, even though we still are mainly ships passing, we make a point to share as much as we can to each other.

Hopefully next semester will be a little lighter for us both.

Anyway, I forget what I wanted to say originally now....oh, about her party maybe. Just that I'm very much looking forward to it, and that she's grown up so much over the past few weeks.

Abby has added a lot of new inflections to her voice now. Really, it seems like she has the inflections of conversation down pat - we just need to work on words. And sometimes, it sounds like she's saying words, and then I'm not sure if she's *really* saying them or not. Like yesterday, she wanted me to carry her around and she kept pointing at things and saying "Whassis" - which, of courses, sounds like "what's this?"

She really tries to say "yellow duck" every time she sees the picture in her book. And we've recently discovered that she loves snowmen! Loves. She has a book with a picture of one and she tries to say "Sssssshoan" when ever she sees it. The other day, a picture of a snowman came on the tv and Abby FLIPPED. She was all bouncing up and down and pointing and yelling - making it very clear that what she was saying was "omg! Do you see it? Mom! Do you see it??? It's a snowman!" So, of course, I started looking through her books for other snowmen pictures and she points them out everytime.

I have NO idea why she likes them so much. It's pretty random... but I'm kinda looking forward to maybe building her one this year.

What else? She hates water. I tried to replace her juice with water and she gives you this look as if she's completely disgusted. She sticks out her tongue and throws the cup away. We're working on it.

She's also changing her naps -I'm kinda thinking she's trying to go down to one nap - but I feel that it's kinda too soon for one nap. Either way, she's going down later for her 1st nap - around 10:30 instead of 9. I'm trying to get her to go down again at 3, but she doesn't like it. I need to go look at my sleep book again.

Oh - this was funny. We don't have cabinet locks (yet) so we've been telling Abby "no" and shaking our head when she tries to get into them (or anything else she's not supposed to get into) So now she does this thing where she will point at it, look at you, and slowly shake her head. And she won't touch them. So yesterday, I'm getting out a pan from our cabinet and it's kinda stuck, so I've got my head in the cabinet and Abby comes up from behind me and slams the door on me. I get out and look at her and she's sitting there pointing at the cabinet door shaking her head "no" Hahaha. Hilarious. She's like a guard baby.

All righty, enough random ramblidge for one morning. We're going out later today to look for cabinet locks and some other muchly needed things. I hope you have a great Saturday.

Oh, one more thing - my blog friend Tanna lost her sister in law last night to a hard fought battle with cancer. She was very young and its very tragic. I now many of you follow her blog as well, and even if you don't, I know she and her family would appreciate your thoughts and prayers during this really difficult time.

Ok. I'll leave you with a few pictures off the phone.

Kyle picked out this adidas suit for Abby when she was 2 weeks old. He's been looking forward to the day she can wear it for a year now - and today it made its debut. We just thought the wii tennis racket was the perfect touch.

diaper head

bed head. :)