What You Doing?

Abbi often asks me and Jenn "What you doing?". I expect thats what she was saying here. She's been in an extremely inquisitive phase for the past few months, and she just keeps asking more and more questions. She loves to sit on this stool and either eat her snacks, watch and talk with Jenn, or just in general wreak havoc. What gets me is that she'll ask a question, then ask why, and even with the answer to her question, she'll ask again "Why?". Gotta love it.

Crazy Sunday Eyes

I took this picture, and a few others, for my parents. They bought her this dress, and when Jenn put her in it and reminded me who purchased it, I figured I should take a picture so they could see her in it. As for the crazy eyes, that's her things at this point. If you ask her to smile she closes her eyes up real tight, so when you ask her to open them, well..you get this.

Snow Face

Saturday, after the snow was done coming down, I went outside with Abbi to take some pictures down along the path that runs behind our house. Abbi was completely involved in the idea of eating the snow/ice. As you can see here, this is just one of many pictures I took of her eating mouthfuls of snow. We had a good time running around with Max and playing in the little bit of snow we got. The amount didn't seem to matter at all to Abbi, it was just as fun as if there was 4 feet. Which hopefully she won't get to experience for a long time.

Two Half Celebration

Last Friday Abbi turned two and a half. So we decided after dinner to head out and celebrate with her. We didn't really have a reason, or need, but it was fun to celebrate with her. We went to a local Ice Cream shop, Daily Scoop, that serves in-house made ice creams. Jenn got something peanut butter, and I got black walnut, which they never have, so it was delicious. We asked Abbi what she wanted and she choose to simply get gummy bears, no ice cream. But of course, Jenn shared with her and as you can see, she enjoyed some ice cream!

Helping

Last week when I was working in the new nursery getting it painted and setup, Abbi wanted to help paint, of course. So Jenn got out some clothes for her that would be ok with paint on them, and Abbi helped me paint for a little bit. I helped her paint a bit on the wall, and then I let go and she went on her for for a minute. She enjoyed it, but also go bored quickly. This is one of those pictures I'm glad to have so that in the future I'll be able to show her how she helped paint her little brothers room.

Ravens Fans

Sunday we had the Sofinowski's over to watch the Raven's game with us, which of course meant that the girls were off and playing most of the time. The bulk of their time was spent down in the basement, wrecking the place. They had a great time, and it was nice for us adults to have some time, well, as adults.

I took this picture after the girls exchanged Christmas gifts with each other. Its a cute pic, but I can't get over their immense desire to squint their eyes this ridiculous amount.

2.6 Years

She's 2 ½, and she can tell you that she's "two half". Its amazing. I'm constantly amazed and proud of her, all at the same time.

She's really starting to latch onto some of her colors, which I think is due to the fact that she is now obsessed with the Disney princesses, especially the ones that she met. She has various toys with them on them, like a memory game, valentines, and other toys. She will sort them based on who she met at Disney and who she didn't. And she's very specific about it. If a card has two people on it, one she met and one she didn't, then she will put that in the "didn't meet them" pile. As for colors, like I mentioned, because of her obsession, she's really keen on blue, pink and yellow.

Also in the last month was another Christmas with Abbi. This was her first Christmas in which I think she was "aware" of what was going on. We had played up Santa, and she had seen the presents slowly mounting under the tree. Christmas morning she was excited to get downstairs and open stuff up, and just like every other kid, she wanted to open stuff and play with it if she found it particularly interesting.

We've also been working with Abbi on different things to try and get her ready for her brother's arrival/presence. About two weeks ago I started putting her to bed each night, in the hope of getting her ready for the fact that Jenn will most likely be busy with the baby more often. We also tell her that I'll pick her up when she asks Jenn. This is more because Jenn's not supposed to pick her up, but also because she won't really want to hold both kids at once. I think regardless of what we do its going to be an interesting transition for Abbi, hopefully a painless one.

Finally, since I figure this is the last month that I'll have just one kid, my little girl. It causes some reflection. I can't really remember life before Abbi, and I'm sure once our son is born, I won't really remember life with only one kid. But I want to. Hopefully when I go back and look at these posts that I've written over the last 2 ½ years I'll be able to remember what it was like. Jenn likes to say that Abbi softened me up, which I definitely agree with. I'm glad that we're having a son. I'm really happy that Abbi will always be my little girl, and that she'll be the only one I have. Not to say that I wouldn't have loved to have two little girls, but this way she doesn't have any competition. And I like it that way.

Bundled Up

On Sunday Abbi and I were outside taking down the Christmas lights (she was helping collect the light clips). After we finished she wanted to play to we played with chalk, rode her bike, bounced a ball and played some basketball. Since it was kinda chilly out she was bundled up nice and warm. Also cute, is how much she loves her "rainbow" hat that you see here. As she says "my daddy picked this out."

Smiling

The other day Jenn and Abbi were playing in Abbi's "house", which at the time happened to be our mud room. Abbi was sitting on the little piece of furniture we've got in there, and Jenn was on the floor. Thankfully Abbi let me in with them so I could take some pictures. This one she's looking at Jenn and I just think its a really nice picture of Abbi.

Tearing In

I shared a picture before of Abbi at her play table, but I like this picture of her unwrapping that gift. The table was surprisingly easy to get into the giant bag. It was one of those bike bags, and it was more than big enough to hold her table and chairs, that she loves.

Princess Abbi

Our last day at Disney we spent the afternoon at Magic Kingdom. After seeing Santa we did a quick change of clothes for Abbi and put her in her princess Belle dress she wore for Halloween. We then stood her up in front of the castle and I took some pictures. As soon as she was done, back into her t-shirt she went. We wanted to get a picture of her with it since we brought it with us and she at different times did express "some" interest in wearing the dress. Either way, I think its cute.

Camera Time

Christmas Eve was spent at my wife's grandmothers house and I took my DSLR with me in case I wanted to take pictures. I then left it at her house and had no nice camera for Christmas Day at our house. So Christmas Eve night was a scramble to find one of our older cameras and get it working. In the end, I went with my iPhone for ease instead of one of the older cameras.

I say all of that to explain that the camera in Abbi's hands is one of those cameras. She then decided to take pictures of everyone after dinner on Christmas. The funny thing to me was that when I offered to show her how to use it properly she wasn't interested, and when I offered to put batteries in and make it actually work, she was again, uninterested. Also amusing, she insisted on using it somewhat backwards. The looked through the actual lens as the camera hole, it was very cute to watch.

Carousel

Abbi loves the carousel. LOVES it. So we rode it several times while in Disney. This one at the Magic Kingdom was no exception. Thankfully the lines were short while we were there, and she rode it I think three times. Clearly she loved it, check out that smile!