Friday, December 31, 2010

Last weekend with the snow, Abbi was excited to go outside and play a little bit. She can definitely say the word snow, and when she saw it outside, she had to get out there. With her hat on and new coat, we couldn't find her gloves when she wanted to be outside, so these had to do. She didn't seem to care though.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

I'm sure everyone that reads this knows this, but - Grandmom, actually Abbi's great grandmother, watches Abbi twice a week. Two weeks ago Jenn and I joined Abbi and Grandmom after work to make Christmas cookies. Here you see Abbi and Grandmom looking at the Cooky Book.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Have I mentioned that she says doggie, all the time, and very well? Well she does. Jenn got her two stuffed Grinch toys for Christmas. She got Abbi the Grinch, and his dog Max. Here you can see Abbi enjoying a little kiss from Max Christmas morning.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

I'm always happy to see Abbi play with other kids. We have no idea if we'll have another kid or not, and so with it just being Abbi right now, its important for her to interact and play well with other kids. So when opportunities like we had a few weeks ago come around, we're very thankful.

We went to Ocean City with friends of ours and their 2 and half year old daughter. They seemed to have a good time playing with each other over the weekend. One morning they were playing peek-a-boo with me and I got this picture.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

This kids hair just keeps on growing. We've had it trimmed twice to get it out of her eyes, but now its right back where it was before. We're trying to figure out how to style her hair so that its out of her face, but at the same time, we're trying to let it grow out so that she can pull it back into a ponytail. Regardless, she currently looks like a kid out of the 60's with her little mop top dew.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Finger painting isn't what I'd like to think it used to be. What I remember finger painting to be was this huge mess that involved real colors and making a huge mess (so much I had to say it twice). Now Crayola has this "color wonder" stuff that keeps the color off the wrong things. Basically she puts this clear paint on her hands and then it only appears on specialty papers. Its really pretty cool stuff, and you can see her doing it here.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

For some reason, Abbi loves to stick her head between the railings on the stairs leading upstairs. She thinks that its incredibly funny to put her head in there and then wait for us to see her and then she laughs really loud about it. Its so cute to see her do it, I just hope she stops before her head gets stuck.

Monday, December 13, 2010

If last month she was "learning" the word "no", then this past month she has mastered it. Amazingly, and in a cute way, she says no with a bit of a Baltimore hon type accent. She says no to just about everything, sometimes joking and sometimes she means it. Although if she means to say yes, she never says no. One such case would be "Abbi do you want a waffle", she would never say no to that.

She's also learned how to get into more things. There are a few stools around the house and she's learned that she can move them around to help her get better access to taller things. So as a result she's into even more and being told to stay out of even more.

She's starting to put words together as well. She loves to tell Max no, in the form of "No, Max!". I think she likes to tell him what to do because she can't really boss anyone else around just yet.

There haven't been a lot of other changes to speak of, other than her hair. We took her to have her bangs trimmed about 6/7 months ago, and then trimmed about 6 weeks ago, and it seems like they've regrown in 6 weeks what previously took 5 months to grow, its crazy! She looks prettier and prettier every day, and definitely gets smarter and more fun each day. Its tons of fun with her!

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Jenn bought Abbi a Ravens jersey at the beginning of the season and after about 12 weeks of seeing Abbi wearing only purple I'd had enough. So when we went out doing some Christmas shopping I decided to get Abbi a Redskins jersey as well. So here you can see Abbi and I wearing our jerseys together, watching the Redskins loose another game. Its fun to see her in a different color at least!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

My mom asked a few weeks back when I was going to provide some pictures of Abbi playing with her kitchen. So a week or so ago I took the time to ensure I had my camera out and ready when Abbi was playing with her kitchen. Jenn moved up the height a few weeks back when Audrey was here with her playing and we haven't moved it back down yet, which consequently doesn't seem to have stopped Abbi at all.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

While visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, Abbi got good time to play with them and the toys that they've collected for her to play with. One of the toys they have for her is this little rocking horse you can see here. Once dad showed her how to use it, she loved it. As you can see from her face, she was having quite an enjoyable time.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Quite a few months ago Abbi learned how to blow a Raspberry. But it was relatively recently that she realized she could also blow them onto our furniture. I took this picture of her blowing a Raspberry onto our chair. She's definitely cute, and also laughs at herself afterwards, and of course looks up at us to ensure we're paying attention.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Last week with the time off with Abbi and Jenn I took the opportunity to get a lot of pictures of Abbi. One morning before heading out she was eating some crackers and sitting in her chair. So I grabbed the camera and snapped a few pictures of her. For whatever reason I decided to stand just above her and take a picture and she smiled right at me. I really like the perspective of this picture of her. She's got such a bright personality and I think it really comes out here!

Monday, November 29, 2010

Last week when Jenn and I were both off we raked up enough leaves in the front yard one day so that Abbi could play in them. Its not that she asked to play in them, but we were hoping that she might enjoy it. She played for about 5 minutes or so and then her interest seemed to wain so we went inside to do other things. But speaking of interest in things, yesterday while we were watching the football games, Abbi spent at least 30 minutes, I'd say maybe 45 playing with some Mr. Potato Head toys. We have this huge collection of stuff someone gave Jenn and Abbi just sat and played on her own, completely content for a very long time!

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The last few days I've been able to spend quite a bit of time with Abbi, and now that Jenn is off from work until Monday we'll all be spending a good bit of time together as a family. Yesterday we spent time together playing with Abbi's DUPLO LEGOs. I bought them for her quite a while ago and she wasn't to interested in them then, but as she's getting older her interest does seem to be increasing which is fun to watch.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Saturday morning Abbi was playing in her tent and apparently Max was playing wit her. I wasn't able to see any of this first hand because I was thankfully sleeping away upstairs. But also thankfully, Jenn took a few shots of them. Apparently Max was going in and out of the tent with Abbi. I'm sure it was a sight to see!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Abbi's having a bit of a rough week. She's been recovering from the laser treatment last week, and then two days ago she started showing signs of a cold. By yesterday morning she was in full blown cold mode with a runny nose and congestion. So that's still going on today and probably through the weekend. Nothing a little childrens Tylenol can't help fix, but its still hard to see her not so happy.

As for this picture, the other day at Chick-Fil-A Abbi decided to help herself to some of Jenn's tea. Its cute to see such little hands grab on and hold onto a huge-o cup.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Each morning Abbi devours something. A banana, cheese stick, cereal or in this case, blueberries. She loves foot and loves her fruits too. She was chilling on our bed eating her blueberries this morning while I finished getting dressed. She sat patiently eating and when she was done, she made sure I knew and we headed downstairs get on with our day.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Jenn works with Abbi each night on reading books. I remember when she first started reading they were often upside down and she didn't look at the books very long. Now she has a concept of what the proper way up is and she actually seems to take a few moments to take in the content on each page. Here you can see her looking at one of her books before bed.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

This time, I'm much closer to the 13th than I have been in the past! Abbi turned 16 months old this past Saturday and just like every other months, she just keeps getting bigger and smarter.

I think the biggest difference for Abbi this past month is her speech development. We've put a larger focus on it for her and she's reacted positively to it. I posted earlier this month she's learned to say "uh-oh" most of the time with proper context and this past weekend she really developed the word "no", unfortunately. She's also got a form of "sock" that she says, and she has her own word for Max, we're just not entirely sure what it is. So she's making good progress, and hopefully she'll get more recognizable words out as we go along.

In other motor development, she's been very interested in coloring the past month. With Jenn's help she's learned how to color pretty well, and it looks like she favors her right hand. She can hold big or small crayons and color on paper, and just about anything else. One big hurdle right now is to get her to color ONLY on paper.

In addition to learning new things, we've had to step up the commitment to timeouts for her. She's still hitting and of course getting into more and more things she shouldn't. She takes the timeout well, usually just standing in the corner patiently waiting to be told she's done. She always shows remorse when she comes out of timeout, so I do believe it is having some positive effect.

I think that about sums Abbi up at this point. She still runs around, everywhere, and loves the dog to death. The other day at dinner she decided to sit on him and see what he would do. He let her sit on him for about 30 seconds before he decided he'd had enough. Its just like the e-trade commercial, only I support her riding the dog.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Yesterday Abbi had another laser treatment that went pretty well. This time she does seem to have a bit of swelling, which I'm sure by tomorrow or Sunday will go away. This morning she's already looking better than yesterday which is really good.

As for the treatment, this time when we got in the room she started to cry. We're not sure if she knew where she was or if it was all of the new people kinda in her face. Its also a pretty small room. Once they got her in position, she calmed down a tad, and during the actual procedure (again, its about 30-60 seconds total) she was quiet. Jenn was able to stand next to her head and help her along as well.

Hopefully we'll continue to see improvement for her. I spoke to the doctor before she began and asked her to specifically target the portion of her birthmark closer to her mouth in the hopes of lightening that some as well. It seems they usually start closer to the ear and don't get as much near her mouth, so hopefully this will work well.

And finally, enjoy this picture of Abbi pushing her shopping cart around our living room!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

About a week or two ago Jenn taught Abbi how to make this face. So now whenever something happens this is the face she makes. It tends to go along with her saying uh-oh these days.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Abbi has this tent. She loves it. I'm not sure why, but she loves it. The other night she was playing in it and running back and forth between being inside the tent and over to the stairs. She would go into her tent for a minute or so and then emerge with this huge smile on her face and go through her routine all over again. She's really an awesome little girl!

Monday, November 8, 2010

This past weekend Abbi discovered how to say "Uh-Oh". Its clearly her new favorite phrase/word. She says it well and usually with context. However, she is prone to saying it at random as well. So thankfully we're now able to add another word to her list of words. She also getting pretty good at a rendition of "mine" as well as "ock" for sock. There's also some form of "look" coming out in the form of "ook", we think.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Abbi definitely has an independent streak in her. When we went to the farm she went off looking around touching things. There are times when she doesn't want anyone, she wants it to be just her in her own way. And then there are times when she isn't satisfied unless someone (usually Jenn) is holding her. Ahhhhh kids.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

This picture implies that Abbi and Audrey were having some kind of standoff about the balloon last weekend. In fact they were just getting ready to chase each other up and down the hallway. Abbi was chasing after Audrey who was running around wild with happiness about her balloon.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Abbi really seems to like the outdoor playset that Jenn picked out for her. She's playing on it quite a bit, and I'm sure once the lull of late fall and winter ends, she'll be very anxious to get out there and play on it some more.

I realize that I haven't really shared much in detail about Abbi in the recent weeks and its not that I don't want to share, its just that she is progressing like normal. Each day we work on new words with her, and try to reinforce the words that she already kinda knows. We're struggling to get her to consistently say the same things, but there are things she can easily say like ma or mama, da and dada, doggie, look and I'm sure a few others I can't quite think of.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Jenn commented to me on Sunday as we headed home from church that she enjoys getting Abbi dressed up for church each week, something fun about having a little girl. She definitely looked very pretty on Sunday, pretty enough for me to take a picture of her! Here you can see her standing outside the building smiling at someone, not me of course, but at least she's smiling.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Abbi was Cinderella for Halloween. Saturday we went to a kids party at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace. The hookup was a connection with Jake's parents who live up there. Abbi seemed to enjoy herself and after the party, Audrey and Abbi had a ton of fun running around the house together playing!

Friday, October 29, 2010

In this picture Abbi is playing with the iPad we have. Jenn was probably showing her how to do something, which Abbi then negated by her obsessive use of the home button. She definitely knows what she's doing when she plays with the iPad, but when she presses the home button and exits whatever she was doing, she doesn't know how to get back to it.

I wonder as she gets older what her level of technology proficiency will be. I love tech stuff and so does Jenn. I mean we both have laptops for personal use, so its not that far off before we get one for Abbi. We've actually got a little netbook waiting for her! I get excited thinking about the ability to teach her things I know well and imparting that knowledge to her.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Here she is having her head stuck through the hole of a pig body. There's not much else to this. She seemed to have a good time at the farm last weekend, so long as she was fed and not tired. Which by the end of the trip she was both hungry and tired, indicating it was time to go.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Its been almost 2 weeks since Abbi turned 15 months old. It seems I'm getting farther and farther from the actual day of the month when I get around to writing these.

Another month older and another month smarter and more experienced. She's been working at cutting 4 more teeth this past month, and has 2 of them through the gums. She's been working on all 4 incisors at once, and now has the top 2 to use. She's only got the bottom 2 left and then her "2 year" molars. She's got a lot of teeth!

I mentioned last month that she was growing out of her size 4 shoes and into some 5's. Well, she's growing out of those too. We've been looking at getting her some size 6 shoes, that she'll definitely be in by the time she's 16 months.

She's starting explore more in the bathtub during bath time. When she was younger she just kinda sat there, and even once we pulled out the baby tub and went with the big tub for her, she just kinda sat there. Now she kinda runs around the bath tub having tons of fun, splashing and playing with toys.

Around the house she's everywhere. She's in everything, that hasn't changed. We finally got some child-prevention items to keep her out of some of the cabinets because she was making it to messy. She eats like a champ still. She loves fruit which is awesome. Instead of wanting all kinds of junk food she wants fruit like apples, grapes and assorted berries.

We've been working really hard with her on her speech the past month as well. She's still struggling to get much out that we can identify, but her talking has picked up considerably and she'll hopefully break through soon. She's got ma or mom, and da down. She knows doggie and we think "no way" as well. She has really good recognition of words, its just the repetition we're working on.

This is another picture of her looking cute as always that we had taken a week ago. The photographer suggested a stool which we knew she'd love, and as you can see, she did!

Monday, October 25, 2010

The other day Abbi and I were upstairs playing. I was getting some clothes together for our visit to my parents and she was playing in the laundry basket in the room. Its cute to see how she interprets everyday things in completely different ways.

Friday, October 22, 2010

I have a habit of making fun of things. This morning, my little girl was no exception. For those that remember the 80's the way I do, it may have been more an homage to what I remember than making fun, but then again, I was probably just making fun of her.

As soon as I saw her, the word Cheetara came to mind. This was the name of one of the characters on the cartoon Thundercats. It was a girl character, that was, yup a Cheetah basically. With Abbi's little print pants I couldn't help myself!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

At the beginning of the week I posted my favorite picture from this past weekends photoshoot for Abbi. I figured today I would share Jenn's favorite. Jenn really likes the smile on her face and overall, just how cute she looks.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

We've noticed that Abbi is actually starting to play with other kids a bit more, and not be so single minded. I'm not saying they are sitting playing house together or anything, but she is more knowledgeable of other children and the nature of playing and sharing.

This past weekend after dinner I snapped this picture of Audrey and Abbi walking to the car while holding hands with Jake and Ange. Its cute that they both want to hold hands with one another.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Abbi got her first body paint this past Saturday. We expected it to be face painting, but it turned out that the line we were in, they did wrist/hand painting. Which I personally think was a bit better since I don't think Abbi would have sat still long enough for it.

Jenn decided to get a butterfly painted on her wrist. You can see here her initial reaction to having it finished, and in the top I added a little close up of the butterfly, since you can't really see it in the big image all that well. She seemed to enjoy it, and didn't try to rub it off, so thats good!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Apparently quilts are all the rage as gift ideas for new babies. We received the quilt you see in the background from Jenn's Aunt Pansy, I think she's a great Aunt, but I'm not sure. I do know that she is 90 years old, so its an awesome heirloom gift for Abbi. We also just recently got a new quilt from another great Aunt of Abbi's, my Aunt Velma who made her a quilt, I'll have to share a picture of that next week.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

A few weeks ago we ordered Abbi a playset for her to play with in the backyard. It finally came in last week and this past Monday I went with Granddad and picked it up. It only took about 20 minutes to put it together. Here you can see Abbi's first activity with it. Going up the slide! She really seems to like it and hopefully she'll get a good amount of use out of it.

Also - Abbi went to the doctor yesterday, so you can see her updated stats on the side now. She's up to 25 lbs, and gained another inch in height, putting her up to 32.5 inches!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

I think all kids love to be tickled, but I know mine does. Jenn took this picture, with a few others last week one evening. Abbi is super cute in the way she does things. In this case, I was tickling her and she would sit back after each round to "reset" her position and indicate she wanted to continue to play. She's awesome like that!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Last night Abbi had a chance to meet Ray Lewis. She instead fell asleep. Oh well. This picture is from our trip to Port Discovery. You can see her sorting through some of the building block pieces while I pose over top of her!

Friday, October 8, 2010

When we went to Port Discovery they had a room set aside for kids that were Abbi's age. She was able to play pretty much anywhere in the place, but this room had more things her size and also kept out the bigger kids.

One thing she found were these little pianos, which of course she had to have both of. It was cute to watch her play with them, and its always nice for Jenn and I to see Abbi take an interest in music, something we both hope she'll want to pursue.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Abbi loves Max. Max tolerates Abbi. I would think after all the food she's given that dog, that he would love her at this point. But then again, when a 25 pound person sits on your back and jumps up and down on you, that might be reason to not like you quite as much.

Abbi plays with Max a good bit, and hopefully as she gets older and he learns to like her more, he'll want to play with her. I still think he's a little bitter that we had her and took away from his time with us. Slowly but surely though, after almost 15 months, he seems to be adjusting to having Abbi around.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Not really any story here. Just a cute picture of my little girl and her Aunt Christine!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Abbi is working her way through life, looking cuter every day. Not much new to report on her, but she's just pretty much amazing. She's smarter every day.

Last night Abbi and I were upstairs and Max was at the bottom. So I told her to tell him to come and she gestured different from her wave to him and called for him to come up. Amazing. This is a picture of her from church two weeks ago.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Last night we went to Chick-Fil-A for some free food. After we ate we took Abbi to the playplace for the first time. After a minute of some hesitation she headed over to the "toddler" section and played for a few minutes. Once she was bored with that, she decided to go ahead and climb around in the rest of the area with the other kids. She climbed up a bunch of steps and then came down through a slide all on her own. Jenn and I can't really fit up there, so she was all on her own.

Jenn was incredibly proud of her for being confident and doing it on her own. Abbi of course loved it all, so she then proceeded to go around the loop a few more times. It was really cute to hear her coming down the slide as she was laughing and enjoying herself all the way down.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Abbi's been walking long enough now that Jenn and I don't really remember the crawling stage all that much. She runs around the house like she's owns the place, and really never resorts back to crawling. This picture was taken on May 30 this year, and it honestly feels like ages ago. She was a lot easier to keep track of back then, and certainly it was much easier to keep her out of things. However - I wouldn't trade where she is today for anything.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Isn't she cute. I took this last night. We headed out for a few minutes, I needed something from the car, so it was a good opportunity to let Abbi explore outside a bit. She's been working really hard at figuring out how to manage the front steps. She doesn't like to scoot down them because it scratches her up, so she's working on taking careful steps and using the railing to keep herself up. She does really good, but can't quite get down the last step thats extra big. But she is doing fantastically with the others!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

This is my new favorite picture of Abbi. She looks to freaking cute here. That big beautiful smile on her face. She's looks adorable. I was outside taking pictures of stuff and so she was outside with me, wandering around on the deck checking things out. She was engaged pretty good with the ladder and then I started snapping pictures. I got this one while she was under the ladder, clearly super happy!

Monday, September 27, 2010

Here is a compilation video of Abbi enjoying different aspects of Port Discovery two weeks ago. She definitely had a good time!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Last Friday we met up with the Sofinowski's so the girls could enjoy some play at Port Discovery, a self proclaimed kids museum downtown. They are running a special on the third Friday of each month where you can get in for $2, an $11 discount.

Abbi had a great time running around playing with anything and everything she could get her hands on. She played really well with the other kids and it was encouraging to see her interact so well with them. This is a picture of Abbi having way to much fun with a fake steering wheel!