My mom gave Abby a Halloween card today:
Your very first pumpkin,
your very first "Boo!"
Your very first autumn
and first costume too...
I didn't just carve one pumpkin this year. I carved three: a family so to speak.
Even Grandpa stopped by...
But in the end, all Abby wanted to do was to play with all of the candy. MINE! MINE! MINE! Our greedy little monkey.
Today, Abby was entertaining herself pretty well so I decided to try and get some work in. I was typing away when I noticed that strange silence once again, and then a... "riiiip!" I knew that she had gotten into one of her books and ripped out a part of the page. I peered over, saw a piece of a pop up book in her hand. I took it and scolded her, "No!" I went to my room, taped the piece back in by which point she knew she had done something bad. She was following me around crying. I walked over to the living room and said, "Come over her!" She crawled back to me crying with tears streaking her face. I was ready to make up with her and I was going to show her the book when I noticed that right behind her was my dog, Aki. I forgot that I also scold Aki in exactly the same way. She came up to me with her ears pressed against her head, apologizing for a crime she was sure she had committed. I kept saying, "Not you!" but she was so insistent on making up with me that I just started to laugh. Abby sat on my lap while Aki laid down next to me and we read the ripped book together.
This past week was incredibly busy for me with a lecture I had the opportunity to design and teach! It was on how Handspring developed their operations. I really enjoyed the process of bringing together a lecture and thinking through how best to present it to the class.
This week, Abby went back to Mary Jo's daycare. I think she really does like it there but she is so sad to see us leave her. I'm convinced things will be better especially because the other kids there seem so nice. On Thursday, Abby had to go in to get her flu shot. In the afternoon, she seemed incredibly sluggish and by the evening she could barely move. I handed her to my mom and not 2 minutes later, she had projectile vomited at least three times. We were incredibly lucky to have had a sheet on the couch so nothing was ruined and we just had to throw the sheet and all of my mom's clothes into the wash. Poor Abby looked like she felt a lot better.
Lucky for her, this meant she got to have popsicle. Abby hates Pedialyte but LOVES the Walgreen's generic pedialyte popsicles. She loves them so much that she cries when she finishes them:
Also this week, she made a habit of cruising the furniture with something in her mouth. Sometimes she also likes to crawl around the house with a sock in her mouth (behavior I believe she learned from Aki, my parents' dog). I've decided to take pictures of the former but not of the latter for fear of really embarrassing her in the future.
With a straw...
After she tore the pig's tail out of her pop up book...
The big lesson for me this week was: when I hear silence, there is most definitely something going on. I was sending out some emails on Monday when I noticed that Abby was not making her characteristic ruckus. Alarmed, I looked over to where I had spotted her last, only to find that she had extracted the entire box of Kleenex and put it on the floor: 
Lastly, we have the all important Menlo Park Halloween Parade photos. Abby went in her full monkey costume. The #1 lesson I learned is that when you buy a costume from Old Navy, you will spend some significant portion of your time at the Menlo Park Halloween Parade avoiding other kids wearing the exact same costume. Still, she looked just like my little monchichi...
This weekend, Albert's mom came for a visit. I'd been looking forward to this weekend for some time because we were planning on attending the pumpkin party at a professor's ranch on Highway 1. Anyone who knows me knows that I love the last 3 months of the year ... LOVE them. Last year, 8 months pregnant, I ran out of a lecture at 7PM to get to Whole Foods on Halloween in search of the perfect pumpkin to carve. This year, I learned my lesson and set out to get my pumpkins at this party a good week early.
Steve held a fantastic barbecue during which we explored his ranch. We came home with 4 pumpkins in preparation for our Halloween extravaganza.
It's been a while since my last update and I've actually started getting messages from friends asking me what happened to my blog and what is going on with my life... Really? People actually read this blog?!? I'm not fooling myself. I know you all come only for the pictures. All of these words are "blah blah blah"... filler. I know. I've even noticed that at times, Albert takes photos of what I think is Abby and me. Later, I find that the picture looks like this:
Is that the way to treat the love of your life (at least until this munchkin was born!). It seems like not much has happened in the last two months but I take a closer look at all of the stuff that's happened in between and I realize I've been delinquent in reporting the highs and lows of the last few months.
After my mother got home from Japan, we ended up looking for a more stable daycare for Abby and we found Mary Jo's family daycare. Abby has been twice and I have a feeling she will adjust really well to this environment. She will have the same friends the days she goes to daycare and Mary Jo just feels like a sweet motherly type.
Abby is looking forward to days when she will have greater mobility and freedom. We think she'll be walking in a matter of a few weeks but I feel like I've been saying that for a while now. Albert claims to have seen her first three steps but given that she hasn't made anymore independent steps in the last two weeks, I'm going to chalk it up to a very active imagination. Until then, I'll put up this photo which Albert will likely claim to be the last time Abby drives a car until she's 30. 
Abby also had her first illness. She came down with roseola shortly before my mother came home and while Al was off on a business trip. She had a really high fever and ended it all with a rash that covered her body. When healthy, Abby is not particularly cuddly. She is more active / squirmy. She has places to go and things that must be put into her mouth. What I discovered is that when Abby is sick, she is the cuddly girl of my dreams... except that she spends the whole time groaning. She sits in my lap but is constantly saying , "oooooh" as if she were in excruciating pain. It was particularly sad when I put her down in the hallway, called to her from our living room and expected to see her padding along on all fours the way she usually does. When I didn't see her come around the corner for a few seconds, I went to look for her and found her resting her head on the floor. So sad!
She was better for a few weeks and then came down with a cold. I have to take the blame for that since I had a cold around the same time too. She has finally turned the corner and we're hoping for healthy days for at least a little while. In particular, I'm really looking forward to the trifecta of holidays starting off with Halloween! We can't wait to post the pictures!
