Birthdays!

Over the past couple of weeks we have been celebrating our family’s “Birthday Season.” Today is my birthday (my first 29^th birthday to be exact!). Ten days ago on the 17^th Dave turned 29. Our nephew Turner turned 2 on the 21^st and Dave’s brother turns 22 tomorrow. And there are several more birthdays in March.

Celebrations and gifts for Dave this year: On the 16^th we received a cake from Dave’s family. He also got an I-Tunes gift card from Tuana. Saturday we invited family over for dinner and had some really yummy stakes. I made him a chocolate cake from scratch with chocolate icing. Dave enjoys grilling so he made dinner. Lacy gave Dave a new set of cufflinks. Rose gave him a CD (John Mayer). Dave bought himself some boots so those were his gift from me, even though I didn’t pick them out or anything. To make up for the lack of surprise, I got Dave some candy as well, and I haven’t even eaten it at all. Sunday we went to my folks’ house for dinner. We had what was supposed to be kaluha pork but it ended up being barbeque pork. We had another cake, yellow with chocolate icing. Dave received an I-Pod from my parents (that we still don’t know how to work!).

On to me. We ended up doing the celebration with my family on Sunday and yesterday with Dave and the kids (and Tuana). Sunday we had fried chicken (though I really wanted Hawaiian Haystacks) and I received a gift card to the mall for $200. I also received a promise of a new closet organization system! YAY! Dave decided to celebrate my birthday yesterday due to the fact that he is starting a new job today and doesn’t know what time he’ll be off. He had some training for cyanide and that ended early in the day, so Dave went shopping for me and also picked up the girls so I didn’t have to (that was a surprise that I didn’t figure out until I was at my car going home!). When I got home, Dave started giving Lacy presents to give to me. It was a themed birthday this year—from Lacy, a chocolate cookbook (unfortunately it is not made OF chocolate, only about how to COOK chocolate); from Rose, a new set of heavy duty stainless steel measuring spoons, including a 1/8 and ¾ tsp measurer, rectangular in shape to fit in little spice jars; from Dave a nice set of heavy duty stainless steel measuring cups, including a 1/8, 2/3 and ¾ cup measurer; just when I thought he was done, Dave surprised me yet again with a brand new super sharp and wonderful chef’s knife (Henkels brand) and honing steel. It cuts like a dream! I already sliced my finger on it @@ Dave made some yummy ricotta and spinach stuffed chicken for dinner, and served it up restaurant style with appetizers and the whole nine. We didn’t have cake because we were all caked out at this point. This morning I dropped off the girls and Tuckerby had a present from his family—an Alton Brown Good Eats DVD collection—3 DVDs in all. I’m not sure how many episodes that is. I guess everyone’s telling me something—I’d better get cookin’!

I have no pictures of our celebrations because frankly it is boring to take pictures of adults turning older. Perhaps next year we will take pictures because we will be officially ancient.

Finally... pictures!

Ok something really weird just happened. I was typing the title and I don't know how it happened but the title I put up there changed to "Chicken Aversion." What the heck!

Anyway, I got some pictures on my computer finally! So here are some recent ones for your viewing pleasure.

More Rose milestones: She started dancing and kissing yesterday! She leaned in to Dave to give him kisses several times and was bopping along to some music. It was way cute!
Lacy and her cousin Allison

Kitty Cat Rose showing off her mermaid pocket diaper made by yours truly

Soooo tired!

Lacy did Dave's hair. Isn't it cute?

Lacy pumping, just like mommy!

WOW there are a lot of Rose milestones lately!

And here are some more!

Rose cut her second front top tooth Tuesday. She is working on the two side top teeth as well. Now there is a grand total of four teeth.

She is also pulling herself up and is starting to cruise around the furniture. I sure hope I don’t have an early walker on my hands! Lacy walked just after her first birthday and that was plenty early for me. Rose is barely crawling and I want her to get that experience for a few months before she ventures into the walking arena.

We had a GRATE Valentines Day. We were surprised with treats from Tuana in the morning. There were two cuddly soft bears, the lighter one is Rose’s and it is named Nutmeg and the darker brown is named Cinnamon and is Lacy’s bear. I had to name them for her because she just wanted to name them “bear!” She is so uncreative with naming. All her babies’ names are Rose, Allison (her baby cousin), Jesus (all the talk of Baby Jesus during the holidays, you know!), or just Baby. Usually just Baby. So I had to suggest some names for her bears! Yesterday evening, after surprising me with some flowers, Dave took me out for sushi at the Sushi House. I put a review on the Abersold Family Blog. It was yummy! Dave’s dinner was raw and mine was cooked. We also went to the bookstore, and bought a few movies at Hollywood Video. Tuana watched the girls for us. It was nice having a few hours without them, although I was feeling a lot of guilt after being gone all day and then not 30 minutes after I get home, leaving them once again. Oh well, I have a three day weekend coming up to make up for lost time.

Lacy had trouble falling asleep (again). But I did have fun reading her several books last night. Bedtime is our special time to reconnect. But once we’re finished with the reading and the hugging and kissing and nursing, she screams and cries and gets out of bed. She hates going to sleep, but she needs the rest!

Holy Hannah! Kids' stats

Yesterday at the doctor's office, I weighed Rose and the nurse weighed Lacy (it was an appointment for Lacy after all). Well, Lacy weighed 25.5 pounds and Rose weighed nearly 21 pounds! Both girls were fully dressed. I was shocked! Lacy didn't hit 21 pounds until she was nearly 2! Granted Rose started out heavier than Lacy (9-6 versus 8-5) but I was still shocked. I guess Rose is a good eater! She drinks like 4 bottles a day at Emily's (about 20 or so ounces) and she nurses a lot at home so I'm not completely shocked. Some babies are only drinking about 25-30 ounces a day. Rose almost has that beat just while she's at the sitter's!

Trapped in the truck!

I just wrote a letter to the editor of The Olympian about my experience, so if it's published I'll link it. I can't believe this happened to me! I was so careful to make sure that the car was unlocked while I ran inside to get my girls. I left the keys in the truck so I could have less stuff to bring in and out of the house. There's already too much stuff with carseats and backpacks and the like, so I leave everything non-essential in the truck, especially since they live in the country. Somehow when I strapped my girls in, the automatic locking button was pushed and they were locked in the truck. I don't know if it was my backpack that hit the button, or if Lacy did it, but no matter. They were locked in along with the keys. Fortunately, they were in no immediate danger, but they were scared and hungry and it was dark outside. After calling Dave about the situation, I decided to call 911 for help. While talking with the 911 dispatcher, she was shocked that Lacy was unable to get herself out of her carseat to unlock the door, and acted like that was something all 2 year olds should be able to do. She went on about it for a minute, so I said, "I have really good carseats." Isn't the point of carseats to restrain your children so they can't get out of their carseats and put themselves in danger while you are driving? She also told me that the police would only be dispatched if the engine of my vehicle was running, and there are "no exceptions" to the rule. I really hope this isn't true, because if it was 90 degrees outside, I would expect that the police would come out to assist me. Am I paying them taxes for nothing?

Eventually, the dispatcher called out the fire department to assist me, telling me that they would probably have to break the window to get in the vehicle. The fire department responded quickly, and the firefighter on the scene called a locksmith for me and tried everything he could think of to unlock into my truck. In the meantime, Dave (who was on his long commute home from Seattle) called his friend Chris to go to our house and grab the keys, as we had some spares on our key rack by the door. I'm so glad that I insisted we use that so we don't lose our keys! Chris got there way before a locksmith could have, so the firefighter called off the locksmith so we wouldn't have to pay them a dispatch fee since Chris was on his way with keys.

Lacy was so scared during the whole ordeal, and Rose was screaming for most of it. Eventually she cried herself to sleep, poor thing. That's the first time she's ever done that! I talked to Lacy and stayed right with her. After Chris arrived and we got the girls out, I cuddled Lacy for a few minutes before we went home. My friend Tuana has been staying with us, and she ordered Chinese for dinner so I thankfully didn't have to worry about making dinner that night! She was going to watch the girls while I went visiting teaching. Maybe there was a reason I wasn't supposed to go VT tonight, I don't know. I do know that I have a hard time dealing with the sister I was going to teach, because she is a "system abuser" and once talked to me about how she has never had to pay for electricity and that she's glad she finally moved to an apartment with a washer and a dryer so she won't have to pay for laundry anymore either. She talked with a bragging tone in her voice. That conversation really made me uncomfortable, because at the time Dave and I were struggling and I couldn't imagine using the tactics she used to get free stuff. I was on WIC and that was about as far as I would go at that time. Dave thinks I should ask to not have to visit teach her on account of how uncomfortable she makes me feel. I think I should teach her so that I can get over myself! Anyway, I'm rambling now. I should start getting ready for work! I just finished a pint of Ben & Jerrys (not the whole thing, there was about 1/3 of it left) so I'm ready to get all our stuff ready now.

Oh yeah, to make my day even better yesterday, Dave got motor grease on our brand new carpet. Right in the middle of the carpet. And now our brand new car won't start.

Recent Milestones (Rose)

Really quickly, since we have guests over:

This week, Rose has learned to

• Crawl (though she still has need of improvement in this area)
• Clap her hands
• Wave good-bye
• Get herself off the potty when she's done (not necessarily a good thing since the potty will tip sometimes as she gets off!)
  

Last week or the week before, she showed she was able to get herself to a sitting position. And I think she is currently cutting her second top tooth.

Still having technical difficulties with downloading pictures to my computer. Bummer.

New Car

We bought a new car today! It is a 2003 Kia Rio with 1000 miles on a new engine and still under factory warranty. It has nothing automatic and no a/c, but it is a nice car with no dents or dings and a nice stereo. My camera isn't working, but here's the Craigslist photo:

Technical Difficulties

I'm having some problems trying to download pictures to the computer. I'll try to download them somewhere else but in the meantime you're going to have to deal with no pictures. Bummer.

I've been sitting in at the director's office this week. It has been so boooooring! The phone rings maybe three times an hour if I'm lucky. Then people are either thinking that GA is a general information agency which is NOT at all what it is, or they're phone solicitors looking for the IT director or trying to sell me their paper product. Whatever. I can't wait until I'm back at my regular desk!

Lacy has a horrible cold and has been having nightmares because of it! The other night she woke up screaming for her daddy. It was pretty scary for us since this is the first time we've dealt with nightmares before.

Over half of Dave's crew got laid off because the worksite he's on is dangerous. Dave is the most junior guy on the crew, but he's a hard worker and he knows his stuff so they kept him on. They're desperately trying to make sure that Dave and the other guys on his crew have work for the next two weeks with this company because they are so fast. If Dave is off of work for even a couple of days he will find another job with the union (not hard with an experienced asbestos abatement technician). They want to make sure he stays with their company so they'll probably temporarily transfer him to another jobsite. Dave has several leads if they can't keep him working, though. He really likes this company and he hopes they keep him working.

I have another story about the layoffs but I need Dave to tell it to me... I need to get it just right for posterity! I'll post again in a day or two when I have some extra time. For now, I've got to sign off. I'm sewing some training pants for Lacy & Rose.