Category: Tabitha

It has happened again! I blinked and she's knocking on the door of TWO YEARS OLD. What the heck? It feels like a long time since I did a Tabby update, but it's probably only been a couple of months. It's just that the months have been really busy!

She looks more like a little girl to me now than I can believe. The pigtails which she will now leave in and even requests (ditto pony tails) make her look so grown up. She's moved on to a size 6 shoe (what the heck!??!), although she's still lingering around 22 lbs and size 18 months. Though I did finally let out the elastic tabs on some of her pants.

The biggest recent changes haven't been physical though … no, they're mostly mental (developmental). She is talking like crazy and can mimic any word just about perfectly. Gone are the days of saying “sawr-sawr” for “sorry” and “shau-shau” for shower. Both are pronounced correctly and I hate it. And more than just pronouncing them, she uses them correctly! There is hardly a need or thought that she doesn't seem to be able to communicate to us, which is awesome. It seems to alleviate a lot of frustration with all parties concerned. And some of the stuff she comes up with floors me. A week or so ago when I lost patience putting together one of her little IKEA chairs, and grumbled about it, she patted me on the shoulder and said, “Mommy k?” She now also seems to understand the sad and scary tones of a movie (like Lady and the Tramp). Continue reading “Tabby at 22 Months”

Christmas was a decided success in our household. Miss Tabby got into the whole affair and rather than expending the energy to unwrap gifts herself, requested that they be “OPEN”ed by her many willing minions. She was enraptured by the kitchen Santa brought her (complete with IKEA dishes) and by many of her other thoughtful gifts. Purses and jewelry were a big hit and after things calmed down, books were hugely loved as well. She's also been wearing her “cute!” clothes the past couple of days, very happy to pick out a new outfit. The festivities on Christmas day were fun for her and she weathered the whole long day rather well despite a spotty nap, but by the end she was DONE.

Matt and I got lovely things as well. Matt got a cordless tool set and among others, I received a yoga gift certificate to the place just down the road where I can do prenatal yoga on Sundays. I am looking forward to that.

Best of all, the day after Christmas we received our check from the insurance company and I got a replacement car. It is even a bit of an upgrade (thanks crappy economy)! I am super excited to have my car back and Tabby even got a new ride.

We have spent this weekend hanging out with friends, getting Tabby back on her schedule, getting the house put back together and playing with our new toys.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Hard to believe we've been having cookie weekends for FOUR years now, but it has been that long. Every one has the same elements as ones past, but they are all quite different. This summer the condo was renovated so we got to use the brand new kitchen which was awesome. The kids are also finally at an age where they can really get into the thick of things and got excited about everything (and probably had mini sugar highs off and on all weekend).

One of the highlights for Tabby (I'm fairly confident in saying) was going out at night and walking through town in the snow. We'd planned to ride the gondola, but it was still early season and we didn't realize it closed at 3:30. The adults were much more disappointed than the kids who had no idea what they'd missed out on. They just loved tramping through the snow and riding on the bus!

Tabby had an awesome time playing with the boys all weekend and spending time with her extended family. She stayed up way past her bedtime, had the aforementioned overly sugared diet, and generally ran amuck. Baby bliss.

Weather wise, it was cold and snowy, just what you'd expect, but we lucked out in that both driving up and down were relatively smooth and easy. No white outs or driving blizzards or anything.

Did I mention how much the kid loves to do EVERYTHING we do? That would include cooking. So here, in another mom-of-the-year moment, I am letting her sautee onions. Go me. (Note: this was carefully supervised and complete with the requisite demonstrations about what was hot … please dont' call CPS).

That little one is such a personality and such a bright spot in our lives. She's awesome. Last night she took my boots and put them on her arms and then looks up at me and says “Abby Oggy!” Which roughly translated is “Tabby is a doggy!” Or in other words, she has swapped her hands for feet and she is now a doggy. I laughed for like two minutes straight and I'm pretty sure that she'll be putting her hands into my boots every time she sees them unattached to my feet.

In other news … it's been QUIET. Everyone must be every bit as busy as we are, running to and fro and hardly ever stopping. I'm exhausted. And of course I've got a wee cold that I'm trying to kick through copious amounts of water drinking and sleeping (what else can a pregnant girl do??).

And I'm in the last stages of Christmas shopping … I have like 90% of the “big” gifts we're giving out. Of course I need to wrap them. But I'm about 50% on stocking stuffers which are always harder for me. I am the crazy girl wandering up and down the aisles of Walgreens seeing what “fun” little items they have in stock.

This weekend we're off on our 4th annual cookie baking weekend. And I am so excited for it! It is a lot of work to get ready and definitely not idle once we get there, but it is so much fun. This year I want to take the kiddos up on the Gondola after dark and have hot chocolate. I think it will be a fun adventure for them.

I have loved all of Tabby's stages in their own way. Even the really hard first month where all I did was sit in a single chair in our bedroom and nurse her (and watch Law & Order) … even the cutting-four-teeth-at-one-time stage. So take it with a grain of salt when I tell you how very much I'm enjoying her at this age.

What I'm enjoying right now is her personality emerging in an even bigger way. We're really getting to see her likes and dislikes and the way her mind works. She's very capable of communication now and able to mimic just about any word (with varying degress of accuracy). Matt and I speak the best Tabbese, of course, but most adults can make some sense of what she says. We've worked hard in instilling the manner words in her and so she says “peeeese” just about every time she wants something and it's killing – you try refusing a request at that age when the kid says please. And she will occasionally say an unprompted thank you as well.

She's really gotten into different activities lately. She's loving her art stuff … we use mostly the Color Wonder markers so I don't have to hover and make certain she doesn't draw on what she's not supposed to, but when we had time this weekend, she did some supervised painting (as shown). She's also hugely into “coo-king” with us. She loves to watch us chop and mix and the rest and ever since last week when I let her stir up the cornbread for the cornbread dressing, that is what she has referred to as “coo-king.” Mother of the year as I am, I even let her give a few things on the stove a stir (with hovering supervision) because she was so into it. That freaking stool is the best $130 I've ever spent.

She's 21 months on Thursday and I can hardly believe it. I am so looking forward to Christmas with her … it's going to be something else.

Miss Tabby has found a new love: tea. As the weather has gotten colder, I've been drinking more tea and in her quest to find out about the world and everything in it, she asks as usual, “What's that?” So I tell her it's tea. She wants some so I give her a sip (I drink herbal teas). Now she asks for it. And she is very patient about the tea ritual, because tea doesn't happen like juice … we put the kettle on. She points to the tea drawer (we have an entire drawer, 1'x2' or bigger dedicated to storing various varieties of tea) and she picks out her tea. I notice she leans towards the pink boxes (raspberry, strawberry).

We wait for the kettle to whistle. Meanwhile, she talks about Tea and the dog and books and we get a sippy all ready. She gets excited when the kettle whistles and I pour in the water and put in the bag. She watches while the water changes color and then I remove the tea bag and sweeten it with a little agave nectar. Then we put in three ice cubes. Then it's perfect. Still warm, but not too warm to drink.

It amuses me that my not even two-year-old loves tea. But why not, really?

Well we had a fab Halloween. It's amazing how much more fun holidays are again when you get to share them with your kiddos. Tabby was all about the Halloween this year. I know she didn't get it all but she knew something was up.

I picked her up early from daycare and we had a very nice nap. After nap time, we worked on dinner. Then she was thrilled to change into her costume. She got to “tricktreat” at her baby sitter's house and then at a bunch of houses around our neighborhood. While she enjoyed the “tricktreat”ing a lot, she got a bit scared by some of the masks and decorations. But she was very happy to come home and eat “can-e” and “mo can-e.” It was a restless night's sleep for her (the sugar? the scary things?) but she had a great time.

Dinner was also a hit, with us liking the new stuffing (craisins, wild rice, pine nuts) for the pumpkins better than the old. It was hard to even try the cupcakes after all the other sugar, but they were really good.

Matt, of course, spent all day carving his pumpkins.

That's Hillary, a pirate ship, Elmo (for Tabby) and devil Flanders. I think he seriously out-did himself. 8 hours on pumpkins, people. Gotta love him. More photos on Flickr.

Matt is out of town for a few days, getting some “face time” in at the office. So it's just me and my Tabby. We both have mixed feelings about Matt being away. We miss him like crazy and our schedule changes quite a bit, but we also hang out at home a lot more and it's just the two of us. Which is kinda fun.

Yesterday, I picked up a frozen lasagna for dinner and put it in the oven to cook while Tabby and I had a nice nap. When we awoke (well the alarm woke us since I got all paranoid about burning the lasagna and then burning down the house) dinner was ready and we trucked downstairs to enjoy it. There is not much in this world that Tabby likes as much as lasagna and she ate a pretty large portion.

After dinner, I started cleaning up the kitchen, but Tabby wasn't interested in what I wanted to do. She wanted to be held. She kept tugging on me and saying “Up, peees.” How can you resist that? We talked to Daddy for a while, sitting in our easy chair and she just sat on my lap and leaned her head against me.

After we were done, I decided we'd do something special … snuggly. So I grabbed a cup of milk and some cookies and took them upstairs. We changed into pajamas and snuggled back into my big bed (complete with ultra-plush pillow top and way too many pillows). There we sat for the next hour, eating a few cookies (Tabby fed most of hers to Loki, I noticed) and watching Little Einsteins (a request from Tabby).

Finally when it was getting late, I took her into her room and she had her meds and brushed her teeth and we got in the rocker for story time. She picked her favorite book, a giant book of pictures with descriptions written below. Love her as we do, Matt and I cringe when this comes out because we spend upwards of 20 minutes answering the “what's that?” question over and over. So Tabby and I played the “what's that?” game with the page on vehicles for about five minutes. Just as I thought she was about to move on to vegetables, she pointed to her bed and said, “Bed.”

“You want to go to bed?” I asked.

“No,” says she. Yet out of my lap she slipped and ran over to her bed and put her arms up. “Up, peeees.”

So I picked her up, gave her a kiss and a hug and got the same in return and settled her down with her dolly and froggy and water cup. “Ni ni.”