Abby-Doo turns 2!

On October 12th, Abigail Jean celebrated her two year anniversary from when she was born.  I can't believe two years has passed by already!  

Abby putting up 2 fingers (pay no attention to my bedhead! Or hers for that matter!

And now we're dressed and can take a decent picture!  

I'm trying to upload a video of Abby singing "Happy Birthday", but I'm having difficulties.  Picture a child in her pajamas, very much like the child in the first picture, and then picture her singing "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear everybody, happy birthday to me".  

Update:  It's been almost 2 months since her birthday and she's still singing "Happy Birthday" to various people/stuffed animals.  She'll break out into song at any time.  

Deluxe Dux

This summer my Dad's side of the family had a week long family reunion.  It has been WAY too long since the whole family got together.  I think the last time was nearly 5 years ago at my wedding.  But I'm not counthing that because even though we were all present and I have pictures to prove it, I didn't get to hang out with them a lot (I was busy getting married!).  Plus we've added a new family member (Abby) to the family, so it was time for a reunion.

We all traveled to Duxbury, Massachusetts. Which, we found out/realized afterwards that the Davis roots settled in Duxbury after coming over on the Mayflower ship.  How cool is that?  I have paperwork to prove it too!  
But back to the reunion...

Firstly, Abby is proving to be an excellent traveler.  So far she has flown 6 times (3 round trip flights) and she has slept the last 3 of them.  LOVE.  I'll take a sleeping toddler on a plane any day.  Despite my cramped leg, foot, butt, arm, I loved having her sleep on my lap.  At one point, I had to go to the bathroom badly and she transferred to Brent (and then I climbed over them to get out) without even waking.  Fantastic!  

We met up with everyone and moved into our house.  All the kids (Carver (10), Jacques (8), Rowan (7) and Alex (5) all played fabulously together.  It was fun watching them all.  Rowan had a motherly tendency towards Abby and Abby ate it up.  Every morning Abby would wake up asking for Rowan "Where's Rowan", she'd ask.  But it'd be more "where rowant" since Abby likes to put /t/ on the end of words that end in /n/.  (Don't worry the Mom in me is wigged out, but the SLP in me knows that it's completely normal).  

We did all sorts of fun activities...

• We traveled via ferry into Boston to go to the Aquarium and ride the Duck Tour.  
• We walked to the Miles Standish monument and climbed the tower to view out over Duxbury.  
• We had a beach day - the whole family lounged on the beach and read, made sand castles, collected shells, and played in the cold water.  
• We had a rainy day one day - so it was a pretty uneventful quiet day.  Sometimes those are good days!
• We had a pool day - we all trekked over to Anne and Mark's house for a full day at the pool.  We stayed there at night for a cookout and a fireside chat.  
• We played silly Minute to Win It games - it was a hit with the kids!  
• We ate lobsters for dinner one night - delish!
• Even with our large group of 18, we managed to eat out all together a few times, rather successfully if you don't mind me saying...

My Uncle Grier compiled everyone's photos from the whole trip and picked out the best to make a great YouTube video - you can watch it here.  And you can watch the second half of the photo show here

Potty training...already?

And so it begins...  She's initiating this next stage proclaiming that she wants to sit on the potty with her diaper off.  

Tuckered out

Brent posted this to Facebook with the caption of "Sleeping never looked so cool"

Love this little girl!

Zoo trip #3

Abby and I went to the zoo for the third time this summer with a friend of mine and her two boys.  Each time we go, we see different animals and do different things.  We had never been to the petting zoo area at the zoo, so Abby got to brush a goat.  She didn't like, however, feeding the goats.  You had to feed them through the fence or allow the goats to put their front paws on the fence and feed over the fence.  That was too much for Abby.  She'll just brush goats, thanks.  

Poor Brent misses out on all the fun we're having this summer!  :(

While the cat's away, the mice will play!

Contrary to what this blog tends to make you think, but Brent and I are together a lot and spend plenty of family time together.  With that being said, Brent went down to Lake Cumberland with his buddies this weekend for a last minute guys' trip.  I guess that makes me the nice wife (that's what Brent tells me anyway) since I "let" Brent participate in all these golf outings (he had 3 in a 10 days!), a guy's trips and any other activities that take time away from our family.  Really, though, I have to admit that I really don't mind that much.  Despite the fact that I am Mommy 100% of the time, I kinda look forward to my time alone (when Abby is napping or down for the night).

So far this weekend:

• Abby and I had a picnic lunch at the park with a co-worker friend and her daughter.  Rosie and her daughter, Lyla, met us for a 2 part date.  The first part was lunch and playing on the playground and the second part was going to The Cone for ice cream and riding on the coin operated rides.  The weather was gorgeous and it was fun to play outside enjoying the cool July breeze.  
  
• Abby and I went to play at a friend's house.  Andrea and her two kids, Xavier and Juliet.  We played in their backyard where there was a blow up bounce house, a sandbox, a water table AND a baby pool.  After the initial apprehension of the bounce house, Abby quickly became efficient in climbing in and out and bouncing in it.  I think several times too, all 3 kids were playing at 3 different stations.  We then stayed for dinner and the adults enjoyed Indian (YUM!) while the kids ate kid food.  
  
  
  
  
• We ran errands - Meijer, Kohl's...Abby is a great shopper!  
• Abby took an early nap - like 2 hours early!  I didn't fight it and just let it happen.  She slept for close to 2 hours, so the girl needed it.  And she managed to stay kind the rest of the day until bedtime.  I was worried she'd be a crankpot in the evening after napping too early.
• Abby and I had a spontaneous date with Lily (and Heather and Ryan) to the Cone (again!).  They were up in our neck of the woods and called us up for a ice cream date.  We can't turn down ice cream and a chance to play with Lily!  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Story time

I have loved taking Abby to the library this summer for storytime.  It has been our Tuesday morning routine for the past several weeks. The librarians there do a great job of putting together a theme and finding books, chants, dances and simple activities to keep a child's attention.  

Abby has also loved picking out some books for us to check out.  And by "picking out books", I mean Abby pulling random books off the shelf and me having to place them back on the shelf and then I find 10 books that I think she'll enjoy and shove them into a bag as somewhat as quickly as I can.  I noticed this week that she knew what direction to run when going to the children's section of the library.  

Abby's Language Update

Abby language has burst again and it is so fun to watch!  She's beginning to put two words together spontaneously and even imitates 3-5 word phrases.  

Spontaneous 2 words:
Hi Mommy
Hi Daddy
Hi Lacey
Hi Elmo
Elmo sleeping 
No poopy
No _______ (whatever it is we're asking her what she wants or to do)
Blue cup
Mommy's cup
Daddy's cup
Abby's cup
Mommy's spoon
Daddy's spoon
Abby's spoon
Mommy's shirt
Daddy's shirt
Abby's shirt
Mommy's chair
Daddy's chair
Abby's chair

Are you seeing a pattern here?  It's cute and this is what our dinner conversation consists of - labeling what all the colors are of our food, plate and utensils and who they belong to.  Abby continues to learn signs.  Her latest signs that she uses regularly are:

blue
black
change (as in diaper change)
dirty
car
socks
shoes
beer

She is beginning to sing songs to herself too.  I've caught her singing ABCs and Twinkle twinkle (which by chance has the same tune as ABCs).  She also likes to sing/chant along to Five Little Monkeys and when it's time to say "no more monkeys jumping on the bed"...she actually attempts to say it!  I have it on video, but it's not letting me upload it.  But be rest assured, it's darn cute!  

Third Week of Summer

The third week of summer started out eventful and then turned a different kind of eventful...

Tuesday began by going to the zoo with my friend Jill and her two boys.  It was raining and so we were on the fence with whether we should actually go or not.  I'm glad we did because the rain cleared out quickly and it was gorgeous!  

After the zoo, Abby crashed in the car on the way home and continued to take a good nap before our evening activity began.  Abby went to her first Reds game!  

On the way down to the Reds game she ate 2 1/2 chicken nuggets and several french fries
(Thanks Mc D's).  Then while we were at the game she ate her dinner I had packed - hot dog, string cheese, strawberries, blueberries and an applesauce pouch.  She also had a few peanuts and some pretzel from neighbors.  Not to mention a sippy up of milk on the way down and then a whole sippy cup of water while she was at the game.  Needless to say, she ate a lot of food!  And guess what happened?  She woke up in the morning and displayed her food all around her crib.  Greaaaaaat.  I don't think it was any allergic reaction, I think she just ate too much.  

Abby and Daddy got to go to the pool together (without Mommy).  That's still a work in progress...  Abby isn't comfortable in the water, but I think we just need to expose her more often.  Abby is a cautious one so she's not the type to just jump in without fear (I may count my blessings later...).  There were tears and lots of clinging to Daddy.  

A couple days later, we went to the pool again and there was improvement in Abby's attitude towards the H2O.  It also helps that Lily was there (who's not as cautious and more dare devilish) and Abby is a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of gal.  So she was jumping in and was even wearing Lily's 'water wings' and loved gliding through the water.  I promptly bought some off of Amazon when we got home.  

This summer is shaping up great! Abby is getting to experience lots of things and I'm enjoying sharing it with her!  

Swimming

Abby enjoyed playing in the swimming pool on Saturday afternoon.  I was shocked to see Abby dumping water over her head.  She's been going through a phase where she doesn't like water running down her face, but maybe we're on our way out of that phase.  Even though the blow up pool lost air and I attempted to blow it back up 3x while in use, it still worked as a pool.  I added some cut up sponges and measuring cups to the water and I'm pretty sure those were the biggest hit of toys played with in the pool.  Score!