An Everyday Adventure

Though she has a renewed passion for “Rock-A-Bye” recently (not just the song but also being rocked in our arms over and over and over) there are only memories left of her time as a baby. Our sweet little girl is now 17 months old.

She doesn’t sit still long enough for us to simply stare at her like we did in the past. Our evenings have become more fun as we play with her dollhouse, take her doggie on a walk around the house and put her stuffed animals in her highchair complete with bib when they are hungry. She loves story time in the evening and tries her best to copy us when we add actions to the stories. She will start spinning in a circle when she wants to play “Ring Around the Rosy” and she will do it over and over until she can’t stand up anymore!

Abigail is a baby no longer but we wouldn’t want it any other way!

All these photos were taken while we were waiting for Terry and my dad to complete the Flying Dutchman Ghostly Gangplank at the Mall of America.

Terry is at the uppermost section on the right side and my dad is in the middle of the photo about to go across a diagonal section (he’s pretty hidden though). They had a great time but said it was a little scarier than it looks once you’re up there!

It’s a great deal though, only $6 to enter and you can stay on the course as long as you want. If you want to go up multiple times per day an unlimited pass is only $10. Next time I’m going to go up too!

I guess I’m due to give a little Abigail update since it’s been over a month since I gave you any pictures of her.

She’s up to 10 teeth now 4 on top & 6 on the bottom. Also, a child at daycare used their teeth to make an imprint on Abigail‘s arm yesterday. That’s all I have to say about teeth. Oh, and she still loves to brush her teeth at night. Speaking of brushing she loves to use my brush on her own hair and Terry‘s but I haven’t let her near mine yet.

On a side note, I have been knitting but I haven’t taken any pictures so you’ll just have to trust me on that one.

So back to Abigail.

At daycare she made me the cutest handtowel for Mother’s Day. Not a great picture of the towel but the cutest pic of Abigail! It’s her footprints in a heart shape!

One really neat present she got from my parents for her birthday was a doll I received as a present for my first birthday!

My mom washed, fixed, restuffed & added a belly button.

She does really like it despite her expression in the photo.

We got a free 1st birthday cake from Lunds & Byerly’s.

She also enjoyed that. Mostly just the frosting though!

Abigail helped Trevor open his birthday present from us and then got inside it (with a little help)!

We took a walk in the park near our house about a week later.

We found a stick later to give her to play with and she had lots of fun tapping & poking Terry‘s shoulders with it.
She also loved the swings!

Memorial Day Weekend we spent camping at Terry‘s mom’s house. We had a relaxing weekend. You can read about the one part of the weekend that was less relaxing here.

Isn’t this a great picture? We worked on teaching her how to throw the “donut” to Hershey that weekend. She’s getting it & it keeps them both entertained!

She is looking like a big girl trying to get past the barrier in front of the stairs. She’s wearing big girl clothes too!

We went to a graduation party in Isanti for a cousin and she managed to get in a swing here too! She also had two of the worst almost overflowing dirty diapers within a half hour of each other while we were there!

This past weekend we had a wedding to attend near my hometown. It was outside and the weather was gorgeous!

My sweet Abigail wanted to run  around rather than sit (who can blame her after a 3 hour car ride!) but she paused long enough to get this picture taken.

These two have been friends for a long long time and all of their friends & family were so happy they finally saw what we’ve seen for years!

What a joy it is to be married to your best friend!

Terry summed it up best on his blog so I’m just going to add some new pictures.

Not too messy!

A new chair & some farm animals.

Ready to open her presents.

Enjoying her birthday supper at CiCi’s Pizza.

Having fun at the Tax Cut Rally.

After feeding herself some oatmeal a couple days ago.

Trying to stowaway in Grandma’s suitcase for a trip to Hawaii.

Both Mommy & Daddy are so proud of all you have accomplished in the last year!

Last night from about 5:45pm until 11:30pm I was in the kitchen cleaning & cooking like a good wife.

After spending much more time than I intended removing the skin, fat & bones from 1 chicken leg quarter I fully realize why boneless, skinless, chicken breasts are more expensive. While my hands were covered in chicken goo I asked Terry for a quick hand getting a frying pan down & the garbage closer to me. Then I remembered Terry saying Abigail was playing in her room and my thoughts immediately went to her garbage. It has a lid but Abigail has been really curious about it and likes to pull on the edges of the bag.

Terry hurried around the corner to see Abigail standing up next to her garbage pulling dirty diapers out and tossing them on the floor. As soon as she saw him she tried to close the lid but she had already been caught! I really chuckled from the kitchen while terry deposited the diapers back into the garbage, washed both of their hands and firmly closed the door to her room. I wish we had had the camera ready because I would have loved to see the expression on her face! Abigail is really good at emptying containers, her other favorite is the laundry basket!

Now back to the chicken. I didn’t do a very good job cleaning the bones so I decided to make some chicken stock out of my leftovers. Basically you put some water in a pan toss your chicken bones in with whatever else you’d like (veggies, spices) and simmer for 4 hours. I started with 2 quarts of water,  1 chicken leg quarter with most of the meat off and realized I didn’t have any fresh veggies in the house. So I tossed in some dried onions, 1 clove of garlic, some basil, thyme & celery salt. I ended up with about 1 quart of liquid when it was finished at 11pm last night. I let it cool for about 1/2 hour and then poured it into square plastic freezer containers.

While the chicken was becoming stock I watchedTerry of House, most of 24 and baked 9 dozen monster cookies. Terry brought 2 dozen to work today for a friend’s birthday and I hear they went pretty fast!

Abigail also turned 11 months yesterday. We’ve taken her to a couple of parks recently and she loves the swing! She just laughs and laughs and laughs! She moves really fast and we have to keep a much closer eye on her now.

Here are two pictures so you can see how much she’s changed. In the first one she’s 3 weeks and the second one she’s 10 months 3 weeks.

Yes, that is the same sweater!

Cross posted on AbigailPearson.com.

Our sweet Abigail is 10 months old today.

In the last month Abigail has become increasingly mobile.

• She now crawls, climbs & cruises on the furniture.
• She can get off her toy car by herself.
• Go from crawling to sitting to standing in a matter of seconds.
• She walks along our new furniture and the kitchen chairs at daycare, even getting stuck under the table one day this week!
• She discovered the “circle” in our house and has taken to doing laps with daddy in the evenings. On Wednesday night she made it around 7 times before getting tired (or was it daddy that got tired? )

This post will have a very small amount of knitting in it since I only finished one thing this month! A pair of socks.

These were knit using Knit Picks Felici in Mixed Berries. Knit Picks changes the colors of Felici it offers and I picked this color up on closeout.

I managed to get the stripes to basically match on both socks besides at the heel and toe but I’m pretty sure that is because the the stripe length was different and not anything I did. I started these January 3rd and finished them February 21st. They are a basic 64 stitch sock knit on size US 1′s. The recipient  requested shorter cuffs so I obliged with a total cuff length of 5.5inches. I did an eye of partridge heel (at least I think so–I didn’t look it up I just did what had previously been described as one) and took a quick glance at the Yarn Harlot’s basic sock recipe so I didn’t have an uneven heel turn.

I have been working on another pair of socks that will be finished this week. I had hoped to get them into this post but last week was not great for knitting progress. I think the rest of this month will be relatively quiet.

Next weekend we will be spending some time with my family for a birthday celebration and then at the end of March daycare will be closed for a week while her family goes on vacation. Terry & I will be covering a couple days and then Terry‘s mom is going to help us out too. I’m sure Abigail will think it’s great fun to have mom & dad stay home and have Grandma over too!

We knew our sweet Abigail was growing and her doctor’s appointment on Friday (2/13/09) confirmed just that!

Abigail weighed 26lbs 11ozs and measured 29.75 inches tall! She’s also got at least 6 teeth. When we stick our fingers in there to count they usually get bitten/chewed on so it’s not  safe to check very often!

Sorry for the blurry/grainy picture but it is a good representation of our evenings. Abigail loves to crawl off our laps and explore everything!

And here is a preview of our green President’s Day weekend! Can you guess what the theme was?

Cross-posted on TerryPearson.com and AbigailPearson.com

Abigail turned nine months old yesterday. We are very excited that she is growing so fast.

The last three months have brought many exciting changes in her life, including:

• New Daycare – She began going to a daycare in Eagan, and she loves it. There are two other kids that are close to her age and she adores them. One of them is older and one is younger. Everyday she comes home with a smile on her face (As a side note, she often also comes home with dirty clothes from some pretty amazing diaper blowouts!).
• Solid foods – Not too long ago, Abigail had barely eaten solid foods. Three months ago, solid foods were somewhat of a novelty for her. Now, she has three meals a day that are solids. She loves the pasta baby foods like “Lasagna in meat sauce.” She is also a big fan of Pizza crust (she shares with her daddy), Pancakes, Kix, and Crackers.
• Crawling – Yep, that’s right. She is now moving around the house. She began crawling like a normal crawl on Wednesday, February 4th. Before that, she opted for the “scoot and roll method.”
• Church Nursery – Abigail is now spending Sunday morning in the church nursery. Now that she is becoming mobile, this is a great location for her.
• Weekend away from mommy and daddy – She got to spend a whole weekend with her grandma (Kathy Pearson) while her mom and dad went up to Two Harbors. This was the first time that both of us were gone overnight from her. She did great.

Abigail has 3 teeth, she’s working on her 4th and she is so close to figuring out how to crawl! She waves all the time when we pick her up from daycare or come home from work. She is an awesome baby and we are so happy we get to love her every day!

Hey Uncle Trevor…don’t worry, I think I can pay for supper. One chicken nugget will fill you up right?