Something old, something new

This morning I threw caution to the wind.

Ignoring the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, I put a toy in Abby's crib for her to snuggle with while she napped. And snuggle she did.

When I left her, she was on her side, playing with this soft little baby doll that her Nana gave her for Christmas. When I returned an hour later, she was sound asleep, still on her side, one hand holding her thumb securely in her mouth, the other holding tightly to her doll.

With naptime over, we moved to her changing table to...uh...take care of business.

There she found a new friend in an old toy that her Mimi made for me when I was a little girl. Undeterred by the fact that her new toy was in fact a 25-year-old stuffed cat, Abby proceeded to try to devour it. That's our girl!

This vertigo has gotta go

In her ongoing efforts to provide me with new blogging material, Abby has added a new skill to her repertoire this week.

Almost sitting.

Not sitting, mind you. Almost sitting.

There's a big difference. Actual sitting would mean I could take more than one picture like this one.


But with almost sitting, I have no more than three seconds after letting go of her before her poor equilibrium takes over and leaves me with only this shot:


We're still working on perfecting the ab strength and balance skills required to maintain an upright position flying solo. Until then, I guess I can expect lots of motion shots of Abby toppling over.

For the fellas

I'm about to cross a couple fine lines here, so I'm going to be very, very careful.

Fine line number one involves the pledge of confidentiality I've made to all the women I've ever been in a covenant group or Bible study with. I will not break this pledge in this blog entry. But I might come close.

Fine line number two involves being careful not to grumble about my husband or my marriage. If, when you're done reading this, you think that's what I'm doing, you're wrong. I love my husband, and I love my marriage. They are, in fact, my two favorite things. (Don't worry, my daughter is very next on that list.)

Now it's time to tie those two fine lines together. I read this article on loving your wife today and felt obligated to pass it on. In all the time I've spent getting to know the hearts of my married female friends, I've come to realize that we all deeply desire to be loved by our husbands. Seems like a no-brainer, right? But the author of this article hits the nail on the head by clarifying that this desire is in fact a yearning to be not just loved, but cherished. What a great word. What more could a woman ask for than to be cherished by her husband? For in this one word, we are cared for, provided for, loved, honored, respected, encouraged, and constantly reassured of his love.

So for the the sake of all my married girlfriends, I'm passing this article on in hopes that their husbands will read it, and that they will constantly seek out new ways to cherish their wives. (Come on guys...these ladies are some of my best friends. You and I both know how great she is...so why not show her?)

You can read the article by clicking here.

Blue eyes cryin' in the rain

I've heard you learn something new everyday. So here's today's something new for me:

Apparently, blue eyes are a recessive trait, and the recessive gene must be inherited from both parents in order for it to happen. Why is this worthy of mention on familyoffish.com? Because 10 out of 10 strangers in the grocery store agree that Abby's eyes are her best feature, and I've found they are by far her most complimented one. (Personally, I think her best feature is the fact that she sleeps almost 12 hours a night...but in our brief check-out line encounters, the eyes have it.)

So since Justin's dad and my mom both have blue eyes, there's a good chance our baby, despite her hazel-eyed parentage, could indeed keep these steel blue eyes that make adults swoon over her whenever we're out in public. (Or who knows...maybe she'll surprise us all and turn out to be a brown-eyed girl like her mama was growing up. )

Bon appétit, bébé!

So it's not quite as delicious as our store brand Crisped Rice Cereal, but Abby seems to love the new baby rice cereal adventure we've taken her on this week. She's slowly but surely learning that the spoon has something yummy on it, and that it's not just another toy to chew on. These rice flakes must be pretty good, because she lunges forward pretty deliberately to get at the spoon when it comes toward her face. She hasn't made too big a mess so far, but she does have a tendency to blow mouthfuls of rice mush at us if dinnertime gets too exciting. Which it often does. It's hard not to crack up when someone this cute smiles at you with a face covered in baby cereal. Next stop...vegetables!

Thanks for the hat, Marissa!

I'm starting to realize something about our new home. It gets cold here. Real cold. And it stays that way.

It was 7 degrees outside when we woke up yesterday. That's right, single digit: seven degrees. The condensation that formed on Abby's windows has been frozen solid for the past four days, completely obscuring our view of the snow-covered golf course behind us.

We've all got opinions on the weather here in the Fisher household, ranging from Justin's "Okay, maybe I do need a winter coat" to Christina's "This weather sure does make those Ugg boots more attractive." Even Abby seems to have something to say about it, and although she lacks the words to effectively communicate at the moment, her face when we bundled her up for church said it all: "If it's so cold outside that I have to wear this hat, then why are we going outside after all?"

Don't worry Abby...the neighbors tell us we've only got two months of freezing weather left before Spring hits.

Peek-a-box

QUESTION:
What do you get when you combine one empty box of diapers, one patient baby, and one fun dad?


ANSWER:
A little game we like to call...Peek-a-box.

Please...no more paparazzi

While the sky let loose about four inches of snow on our neck of the woods yesterday, Abby and I stayed inside where it was warm, and she only put up a little bit of protest to my efforts at taking her picture in her fuzzy pink winter jammies.

Meanwhile, this southern girl is still getting used to the fact that winter weather advisories actually mean something up here in Virginia. When they say "chance of snow" here, they mean serious business. Thankfully, snowplowing is actually something people are employed to do where we live, since, unlike in Georgia, life doesn't come screeching to a halt when the first flake hits the road. I must say, there's something delightfully winter-y about seeing this kind of view from our front door. I guess next year Abby and I will have to go shopping for some cute pink snow boots. (And maybe we'll get her a pair, too.)

Learning to spell

It's official. Abby's the smartest four-and-a-half month old in the whole world. How do I know? Because she can spell her name. The evidence is right here in this video, as she knocks down these beautiful letters my friend made for her in the correct order, every time (with only a little help from dad). Oh, and the laughing? That's because she gets a huge kick out of knowing she's so much smarter than the rest of us.

That's not where I usually put my groceries

So just why are my groceries strewn about on the floor like that?

I have discovered something that has the potential to revolutionize the way I do grocery shopping. I'd never heard of this until we moved up north, but apparently it is quite common here. In fact, I've passed by trucks advertising this new wave of grocery shopping almost daily and did not, until recently, understand their significance. So why are my groceries on the floor?

1. I did not bring them inside.
2. I did not drive them home.
3. I did not stand in line to pay for them.
4. I did not meander up and down 16 aisles to find them.

I have discovered online grocery shopping. And I think I love it. I log on to the website of my grocery store of choice, type my list into their search engine, and viola! The website brings up every option I would otherwise be looking at on the shelf and allows me to click on my choice of bread, produce, canned goods and more. In just 20 minutes, I had completed my grocery shopping. In my pajamas. At 10 p.m.

But this service is not without its costs. The $50 minimum order, for one. But, since I spend an average of $50 a week on groceries anyway, this may not prove to be a problem. Then there's the $7 delivery charge, and the four-hour window during which I have to be home to receive my groceries. But when I weigh that against the cost of having to haul Abby in and out of the car in this frigid weather, it may turn out to be a convenience that is worth $7 to me. Perhaps not every week, but I can definitly see using this service again in the future.

I've gone over the ways I can justify using this service, and have come up with the following:

The economical argument: Shopping online not only allows me to comparison shop and purchase the least expensive option much more easily (Clark Howard would be proud), but not wandering up and down every aisle and instead having to search for specific items on my list by name eradicates any chance of "bonus" items appearing in my buggy, and thus in my budget. (Did I really need that Starbucks Ice Cream?)

The environmental argument: Having my groceries delivered to my door keeps my gas-guzzling SUV off the roads, and probably helps out global warming or the hole in the ozone somehow. Therefore, online grocery shopping makes me more popular with my tree-hugging friends.

The domestic policy argument: Staying home and paying to have my groceries delivered creates jobs. Someone has to walk through the store in my stead and pick out my food; someone has to load the truck; someone has to drive the truck. My online grocery shopping is good for the U.S. economy.

The domestic engineering argument: While hubby is off at work, it is left to me to manage and maintain this household and our daughter. Shopping online frees up time that can be devoted to other wifely duties, such as laundry, cleaning or blogging.

The mommy argument: By the time I get myself ready, make my list, get Abby ready, warm the car, change Abby's diaper, get her dressed again, find my list, find my purse, strap Abby into her car seat and get on the road, a half an hour has elapsed, and I'm not even at the store yet. Upon arriving I must: find a spot near the buggy return so I can minimize the time Abby is exposed to the cold while I transfer her from the car to the cart, settle her down since she's being awakened in the middle of her nap for this excursion, navigate a buggy whose front wheels I cannot see over the carseat through the aisles and around boxes of new products that have not found their way from the floor to the shelves yet. Once I've found (almost) everything on my list and have backtracked countless times across the store, I have to stand in line behind all the other moms for whom afternoon naptime is the best time to run errands. Now put Abby back in the car, load the groceries, return home, bring in only those items that would otherwise be ruined by an extended stay in the back of the Blazer, and leave the remaining groceries in the car where they will sit until Justin gets home from work. Because it's time for Abby to eat again, and she's crying, and I have other things to do.

I'll have to try it out a couple of times before I'm convinced, but it's looking like online grocery shopping may become on of my new loves.