Beauty and the Beast

Abby and Sterling hung out in the cafeteria tonight. It was very cute!

Neither of them had napped well today, so you can see they were quite tired. It is hard work being a baby.Our little Belle!

Pumpkin Pie!

Every fall I see those pie pumpkins in the store and think how fun that would be to try and make pie from scratch. This year I did it and had a blast. I don't remember the last time I dug my hands into pumpkin goop, roasted pumpkin seeds and made the house stink! There are currently two pies cooling on my table. Now comes the dilemma - do I taste a piece? In my cookbook pies are not listed under desserts, they have their own section and I'm thinking it would qualify more as a vegetable. I really want to know if it tastes better than pie made with canned pumpkin. How much sugar could one little slice have? Hmmmmm.

I love the fall - it's my favorite time of year!

Rattle Feet

Last week I bought Abby some footed pants that have rattles in the feet. This was seriously one of the best purchases ever. She will sit for as long as we let her and just look at her feet as she kicks them, try to grab the rattles and make noises at them. We finally figured out how to have a "relaxing" dinner in the cafeteria. Ok, so there is nothing relaxing about eating with 400 college students, but at least I can eat with 2 hands now!

Screeching Saturday

I think Abby is having a contest with herself today to see how high she can screech - all day long! It's been a while since I posted so here's some updates: Last Sunday was baby/parent dedication at church. Eugene and I committed to taking on the great responsibility of rearing our daughter to know and love her Heavenly Father. The greatest gift my parents gave me was the knowledge that God loves me and that Jesus died to save me from my sins. Now Eugene and I have pledged to give this same gift to Abby.
We have continued to implement rice cereal into Abby's diet and she now likes it! She is a very interactive eater and tries to grab the spoon, getting food everywhere! We are currently feeding her right before bath time :)
Work was starting to be too much for me, so I prayed things would change and that day my boss asked me if I needed help. I now have another staff helping me 10 hours a week! It is such a blessing to work for an agency that takes care of its employees.

This week I learned that baby socks can clog a washer hose. I also learned that if the washer breaks down on the day your diaper pail is full you get to go buy disposable diapers to use until campus care gets around to fixing the washer! Not sure if it's a good thing or not, but campus care was very quick and fixed our washer the next day :)

I love watching her sleep!

Baby/Parent Dedication

Abby was helping Daddy with his Calculus. x = milk/teddy

pumpkins being harvested

What's so funny!

Last night, Abby was tired, really really tired. Normally when she is really really tired, she cries a bloodcurdling sonnet. Not last night. Last night she acted like her mom. When Christie gets really really tired she gets gitty. Things that have no humor value to them at all send her into a laughing hysteria. Well, Abby spent about 15 minutes giggling at everything. Whether it was my walking into the room or out, Christie making noise or just being silent, whether we were paying attention to her or not, something was deep down to the depths of giggle funny. That makes a dad's heart melt.

So I have no picture. I'll just leave you with the mental image of a happy tired kiddo who could not control her laughter.

Cereal Failure

I could not keep Abby filled up today, so we decided to try rice cereal. At first she eagerly reached for the spoon, but after tasting it and shivering from disgust several times she decided the napkin was much more tasty.

Grandpa Terry!

Eugene's Dad is making his annual migration from cold country to warm country and has stopped to visit us for a little while. Abby immediately took to her Grandpa and we are also enjoying spending some time with him.

Pumpkins!

We have the most beautiful view right now. The prison people planted pumpkins this year instead of corn and so we look out to fields of orange. The pictures didn't really turn out that good - I'm going to try to take more later.

My little pumpkin!

Today

Nothing real exciting to post about today, but I figured if we didn't get some new pictures of Abby up on the blog soon we would have some upset Grandparents! Enjoy!

She had this sad look all day. Not sure what was wrong, but hopefully she will be happy again tomorrow!

Baby Eliah

Our friends Damion and Jolene had their 4th baby just 2 months before we had Abby. When he was just a few days old he had to have heart surgery due to a clogged valve thing (that's my official medical terminology). At his 6 month check-up the other day the doctors found more blockage and have to do another surgery, some kind of balloon thing. Eliah has a cold right now, so they scheduled the surgery for Oct. 29th. He needs to be in perfect condition so no virus spreads inside. Please pray for Eliah, Damion and Jolene and the rest of the family - for comfort and strength. Please also pray that the surgery will be successful so that he won't have to have open heart surgery.This is Damion and Eliah visiting us when Abby was born.

11 years ago!

It was 11 years ago today that Christie and I started dating!

This is the anniversary of one of the greatest days of my life. Thanks so much for being my best friend, my loving wife, and now an amazing mother!

Stroller Rides

It's getting colder here in Oregon. We had a nice sunny afternoon, so I took advantage of the few days we may have left to go on a walk. Abby loves looking at the trees.

And I love this!

Flying Baby!

Clean Sink and a Guilty Mom

Yesterday I started to Fly! I must say, I love how my sink looks :) However, I should never have eaten those cookies. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but the last 2 nights Abby has woken up 2 times with gas. So, it looks like I'm back to a sugar-free diet for now. I was reading on babycenter and some brilliant "expert" wrote that thrush usually just goes away on its own. I wanted to pick up the computer and throw it out the window. I think I'll go shine my sink now.