Happy Birthday Justin!

Continuing with our now nine-year-old tradition, we ignored yesterday's Hallmark holiday and celebrated Justin's birthday with homemade pizza and a blazing German chocolate cake. Only this year we had the added fun of watching Abby try to figure out what she thought of all those candles.

Happy birthday sweetie!

My Funny Valentine

What started as a fun little Valentine's Day photo shoot suffered a slow descent into madness this morning...



Maybe she's mad because it's her dad's birthday and she shares her mom's distaste for overlapping holidays. Oh well...happy Valentine's Day to everyone who's eating heart-shaped chocolates instead of birthday cake today!

win·try mix [wĭn'trē miks] - noun

It occurs to me that not only are the accents different, but certain words and phrases have entirely different meanings in Georgia and Virginia. Take wintry mix for instance.

In Georgia...
Meaning: Chance of rain with temperatures possibly dropping into the low to mid-30s.
Effect on residents: Rush to the grocery store to purchase bread, eggs, milk and salt for sprinkling on the driveway, then quickly return home stay inside until the extreme weather passes. If it does rain, or if there are any reports of snow flurries within a 30 mile radius, do not leave the house under any circumstances.
Road conditions: Unknown. Few will chance driving to find out whether the roads are safe or not.
Side effects: Power outages, school closings.

But in Virginia...
Meaning: Sleet and snow with temperatures dropping into the low to mid-teens.
Effect on residents: None. I've never seen a demographic so unfazed by weather before.
Road conditions: Wet, salty and drivable.
Side effects: Floors of homes and businesses strewn with melting ice and road salt.

Personally, I prefer the stay-at-home-when-the-weather's-bad kind of winter. But that's the difference. Our friends and neighbors here don't view this weather as bad. In Virginia, a wintry mix simply is.

What's the opposite of The Quiet Game?

Abby was quite the entertainer last weekend while her grandparents were here...and we confirmed the fact that she has no problem being the center of attention.

With a silver spoon in her ... nose?

My grandpa taught me how to balance a spoon on my nose. And now we're teaching Abby. She's a quick learner.

Watch your step

Maybe I'm getting used to the chill in the air, but something about the weather today made me want to be outside in it. So after bundling up myself and Abby (which takes considerably longer) we headed outside for a stroll on the very popular Reston paths. A five minute walk brought us to a lake frequented by an insane number of very noisy, very messy geese. Abby loved it. And dodging the goose poop in a stroller with eight wheels made for quite a fun adventure.

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. )