Making it up

Dangit! Missed a day already! Boy, when I posted on Monday that the madness really took off once the holidays were over, I meant it! It seems we've been going non-stop over here in the Faberlicious household. In any case, to make up for yesterday's missing blog post, I figured I'd post a few pictures - one for each member of the family. Except for the red-headed step-children. I've been a neglectful mommy and haven't taken any recent pictures of them. Although I can say that recently, when I've tried, they seem to have figured out what that camera-contraption is and instantly move out of range. They are very smart, for a couple of red-heads. (No offense to human red-heads. I'm just referring to the canine kind here.)

First and foremost, of course, we have Annabel. Her Ba Ngoai (that's maternal Grandma, to those of you who are new to the blog) gave her a beautiful little cloth doll that's kind of Asian-looking. I love it because I've been looking for one to give her, and of course most are hand-made (read "EXPENSIVE"). But this one is perfect because it's just her size, and it's soft, so she can sleep with it. She got another one from Grammy (that's paternal Grandma, to the newbies) for Christmas that she was sleeping with before she got this one. The only thing about that one, though, is that it has a plastic head which Annabel rolls on when she sleeps and then just ends up pushing aside. So that's the doll she plays with outside the crib.

Sooooo... the point of that whole explanation is to get to this photo, of Annabel sleeping with her new "Baby" in her crib. It's about the cutest thing I've seen! Of course, I know, I'm biased, but still, you can't deny its cuteness.


Baby might be a little hard to see, but do you see that mass of black to the right of Annabel's head? You can make out Baby's little eye on her face. And yes, I did turn on the light while Annabel was sleeping so I could take this picture. Didn't even faze her!

This next picture is going to be pretty random.


Meet Mark. This is my friend Renee's beta fish. Renee lives just down the street from us. Every Wednesday morning, after I drop Annabel off at pre-school, I head over to Renee's house for what we call "coffee talk." Renee just brews a pot of coffee and we catch each other up on what's going on in our lives. It's really nice girl-bonding time for me. As for the reason I'm posting this picture, I just figured that our dogs (she has SIX of them) get all the attention, so I thought I'd give Mark a little bloggin' love. He's really quite affectionate. Just seconds prior to this photo being taken, he was trying to kiss me through the glass. When he realized I wasn't reciprocating, he gave up and could not be talked into doing it again for the camera. So I got this shot instead. Oh well, they can't all be Nemo.

I was planning on posting a couple of Chris and what he's working on, but I guess I should save something to blog about tomorrow, right? Right. So have a good night, my bloggin' peeps.

Cheers,

Juuuuuust under the wire

Ok, so since it's technically 2 hours before midnight, the title to this blog post didn't require that many u's. Still, I thought it was more dramatic and attention-grabbing. Hee.

In any case, with Monday cometh chaos. All last week during the holiday, Chris was on stay-cation, so everything was done at a leisurely pace. Come Monday after New Year's, though, and it's all things back to their usual crazy schedules. So that is the long-winded version of why it's taken me so long to blog today.

Onto today's photo (which was actually taken yesterday):


This is my sweet daughter and her crazy daddy making razzberries for the camera. I love these fun daddy-daughter moments! They really fill the heart with sunshine. (yeah, that was a cheesy line). Anyways, promptly after my snapping the photo for which my husband obviously posed, he exclaimed, "oh no! That's not going on the blog is it???" Psh. As if he didn't know.

Cheers!
Cathy

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Giggling

Annabel has this odd new laugh, which cracks me up. It's like it's just air being pushed out from her gut. I especially love to hear it when her mouth is full. (btw, forgive the weird stretched look of the video... when you press play, it compresses to its normal size)

Testing, testing... Blogging from my phone!

So supposedly, Blogger has this function where you can send an SMS, MMS or email from your phone and it'll post to your blog. And it's a free function, as opposed to buying a blogwriter app from the app store. Of course the app is only $2.99, but these days, I'll pinch every penny I can get! So here's my photo post for today.



With Chris being on stay-cation all this week, Annabel has been loving every minute with her daddy. One of their favorite things to do is play the flight simulator game on the computer. It's a flight simulator for remote-controlled airplanes, not the real thing, hence the giant remote thing they are both holding. I snapped this on my iPhone while they were totally engrossed in their flight. I think with Daddy being at home, Annabel's love for all things remote- related has amplified. Lord help me. :-) Ok I'm going to hit send now and see how this thing works. Fingers crossed! Cheers, Cathy

ETA (that's "Edited to Add" to all you non-message boardy types): So it looks like the picture uploading from my phone didn't work, since all you see up there is a big, blank, empty space between the paragraphs. From what I can tell, my iPhone embeds the photo into the email, and the mobile blogging function only works if the photo is a separate attachment. Ugh! So I guess I'm going to have to shell out the $2.99 for the app after all. It better be worth it. Grrr....

Since I'm on my computer now, I can manually upload and post the photo I'm sure you've been eagerly awaiting. And here she is!

2010: Project 365

Hello Friends!

I have returned with a new resolution for 2010. Some of you may have read it on my Facebook status already, that I resolve to post at least 1 photo per day of our crazy Faber life. It may be a picture from that day, or the day before... it may be prettied up in Photoshop or hurriedly uploaded from my iPhone... it may be of our sweet Binkie, or the red-headed stepchildren, or something I cooked, or some other such random nonsense perhaps distantly related to Faber-dom... it may include commentary or not. But I still plan to do SOMETHING every day!

Now, I know that since you're reading this blog, you know me in some form or fashion. And you know that, far from the gorgeous, put-together front that I always have on, I am not perfect. So you'll have to be a little forgiving if I miss a day here or there. I'll just have to resolve not to miss more than that.

So on with it, you say! All right, all right. Here's the first picture of 2010, and of Project 365.


Annabel wishes everyone a very Happy New Year! She's awake from her nap now, and since I spent most of it updating and redesigning this blog template, this is all I can post for now. Enjoy your day, and see you tomorrow!

Finally! Another product review! thinkbaby Trainer Cup

Just a quick post to let you all know that I finally did another product review on my other blog, Geared Up Mama. One of my resolutions for 2009 is to be better at updating my blogs. Since that's out there now, hopefully it'll hold me accountable!

Anyway, the review is for the thinkbaby Trainer Cup, pictured to the left. In my quest to find the best and safest sippy for Annabel, I've bought a few, which I'll review on my other blog.

Hope everyone is doing well and having a great 2009 so far! More pictures of Annabel, coming soon!

Cheers!

Foto December

So I have some photo blogging to catch up on for sure. Annabel is growing like a weed, and it seems like she hits a new milestone on a daily basis. As Chris likes to say, we feel "cognitive dissidence" because on the one hand, we are so excited to see her do new things. But on the other hand, it means she's growing up so fast and too soon will not be our little baby anymore, which makes us a little sad and wistful. Oh well, we just have to remember to treasure every moment with her. Fortunately, we live in the digital age, which makes it easy (and cheap!) to take thousands of photos and capture hours and hours of video of her.

Annabel has been crawling for several weeks now. She's got the army crawl down pat! And she's also learned to pull herself up. At first it was to her knees, but now she's getting all the way up to her feet and using her toys to walk from one end of the living room to the other.

We'll start off with a video that Chris took of Annabel awhile ago when she first started crawling. She got under the exersaucer, and Chris is encouraging her to get herself out.


How about that ending? I guess we forgot about the 30 minutes after eating rule!

She seems to particularly enjoy getting UNDER things. Here she's under the coffee table.

Annabel gets a better view of her singing stage toy by getting up on her knees.

And, crawling into the coffee table again...

We catch her under the coffee table again! She tests the distance to the ground...

"Think I can make it Mommy?"

And there she goes!

Another favorite spot for Annabel -- under the exersaucer!

As you can see, she doesn't have much trouble getting out from under it anymore.

In other walking news, Annabel's Ba Ngoai bought her a fun walker. This wasn't originally on my list of must haves for Annabel, and our pediatrician has said they are quite dangerous. But, I think it's like what they say about bath seats -- you just can't leave your baby alone in them. As long as we're not letting Annabel run amok in her walker unsupervised, it's safe.

And I gotta tell you... Annabel LOVES her walker! She loves being able to follow me around in the kitchen. She frequently gets stuck and is still getting the hang of it, but she's really enjoying it nonetheless.

Our little cutie pie in her walker.

The toy on the front of this is called "The DJ." Annabel spins some tunes and says "Take it away, Mommy!"

Ever the curious one, Annabel tries to figure out what makes this thing go. Is engineering in her future?

Moving on! Annabel goes whizzing around in the walker. Hmmmm... maybe RollerCoaster-geneering is more likely in her future.

On the eating front, we've added Cheerios and Gerber Puffs to her finger food repertoire. And she is loving them! We're probably creating a monster, but whenever she gets fussy, all we have to do is put a few Cheerios within reach, and she is effectively distracted from whatever was making her mad.

The other new thing is, all of a sudden, Annabel is a GREAT eater. For most of late November and December, eating her meals would take at least 30 minutes. On the bright side, we burned lots of calories ourselves from all the singing and dancing that it took to get her to open her mouth. However, just in the past week or so, she has become a very enthusiastic eater. It could be because at her eight month mark, we added meats to her menu (chicken and turkey so far, and no, I haven't cooked those for her yet). Still, even her vegetarian meals are gobbled up with zeal lately. We're pretty sure she's having a growth spurt.

The faces she makes when she's eating crack us up.

Annabel's accuracy rate is pretty erratic. On a good day, she'll get 3 out of 5 directly into her mouth without us having to hunt for the dropped ones (in her lap or chair). When she's feeling lazy, she'll get maybe 1 out 5 and push the rest overboard for Baylor and Macee to gobble up. (They LOVE her mealtimes now!)

Goal! A Cheerio makes it in!

Annabel is also an on-the-go eater. The other great thing about this walker is that we can take the toy out and put Cheerios and Puffs in the tray.

Yummmm... drive-thru.

LOL! I just love her expression in this one. Maybe she ran out of Cheerios and is waiting for Daddy to give her more. Impatiently, it appears.

She has her Cheerios now, so she's happy again!

And finally, I'll close with this video of Annabel. Since she's always on the move, she hears Mommy and Daddy say "No no, Annabel!" quite a lot. So, she's learned to give us a dose of our own medicine...



Our New Year's post coming up...
Cheers!