It's an eeeevil little toy!

(As of December 28, 2008).

Hello, All. It's a good day. Christmas has come and gone. The foot of snow that shut down Kitsap Peninsula for nearly a week is melting. My house isn't that messy. My baby is happy. My husband might get off duty early. Pastor had a good sermon this morning. It's a good day.

Yes, you read right. My husband is now home from the boat. He got home just in time for Christmas, and he brought gifts from the orient for us.
In return, we had gifts from American for him (that's a Broncos jersey if you don't know your football colors). And BooBoo (as I'm calling her right now) just enjoyed the wrapping paper.
I have only one complaint. It's this toy. . . . See this year was Niki's first Christmas, and I told my parents that I thought Niki needed toys with working parts. So far, so good. We got her a couple of wonderful toys, and they got her a couple of wonderful toys, but they also got her this "Learning Toolbox," which in itself isn't bad. It has light up shapes that she's supposed to hit with a little hammer rattle, and it counts outloud when when she hits it, or it names shapes and colors. Very educational, and she really likes it.

But it also does this little bit of positive reinforcement: it plays "This old man, he played one; he played knick-knack on my thumb" to encourage the baby to hit the lighted shape again. Now some of you will remember that a few years ago when Barney the Purple Dinosaur was at his peak that Barney took that tune and sang "I love you; you love me; we're a happy family" to it, and mischevious children took that and twisted it into death threats. I dreamed about chasing Barney with a baseball bat all night last night. I kid you not. I woke up thinking "Where did that come from? Why do I hate Barney so much?" Then BooBoo hit the lighted shape, and it all came back to me. I So I think I might pull the batteries out of that toy. It's a danger to my sanity.

Baby's first snow.

The first snow of the season came last night, and church was canceled this morning. My friends in flatter and drier climates would laugh to think that church could be canceled because of an inch of snow, but I assure you, around here it's a necessary precaution. Quite apart from the fact that the peninsula is mostly hills and the snow turns to snot as soon as the temperature approaches 30 degrees, people around here only get the chance to drive in snow once or twice a year, and each county keeps one (count 'em -- one) snowplow for situations like this. So our elders did the responsible thing and called off the morning service, and all the kids shouted for joy and went out to play in the snow.

Now I lost my taste for playing in snow when I turned sixteen, but since Niki had never seen snow before, I thought I would put my poignant dislike of cold and damp aside and let her get her first taste of winter. She seemed struck by it when I held her up to the window to see the new white world outside, so I bundled her up in several layers of clothing, her hat and mittens, and her Halloween costume, which is a close to a snowsuit as we have right now, though if global warming continues as it is, we may have to invest in a real one. Then I took her outside and put her down on the porch where the snow is cleanest. She wasn't too sure about this white stuff at first. It was cold, and it moved when she tried to touch it, and it stuck to her fingers.
She sat there patting it for a while. Then she leaned in another direction and patted that snow for a while. She rubbed her hands on her legs, leaned over and looked at the snow up close (I have all this in a video, but it would take forever to load).


Then she looked up and grinned at me. Look at how red her nose is.

All in all, I think Niki liked the snow. She was still happily playing in it when I decided that the cold was too much and brought her back inside.

Baby's new friend

Well, she is definitely her father's daughter. At the age of nine months, Annika is showing an affinity for computers that rivals anything her mother ever felt before college and therein the necessity of getting along with computers. She's always loved the keyboard with its black and white buttons that move, but now that she can see the blinking lights on the tower, she's hooked. She's even found out where the power switch is and turned the computer off while Mommy was blogging.

I know the pictures are a little blurry, but see if you can follow me here:

"Well, ma'am, what you seem to have here is a pretty basic computer problem. I see it all the time. I'll have it fixed in no time."

"Let's see, I'll just need to reattach a couple of cords and make sure everything is hooked up properly. You wouldn't believe how many people have their speakers hooked up to their subwoofer." (Yes, she's unplugged my speakers too.)

"Hmm, that didn't work. I'm going to have to turn the tower off, take off a panel and get right at the hard drive." (No, she's never actually done that!)

"There you go, ma'am. Good as new. Not bad for a first time, huh?"

Still growing.

And she's off, and nothing's going to get in her way! No, she's not actually crawling yet, but she is digging in drawers and climbing furniture and helping me wrap Christmas presents and pulling herself up in her crib. I'm beginning to think that she's going to forego crawling altogether and go straight from scooting to walking.

Our table has iron bars on the under side. I cringe every time she gets near one because she already has two bruises on her forehead from running into them, but she thinks they're great fun. This is Annika on her way down. She was halfway over the bar when I grabbed the camera.
She loves the drawers on the bottom of the china cabinet. She crawls out of her room in the morning and goes straight to the drawers and pulls them open and jiggles the handles and pulls all the stuff out.

'Tis the season of rustling paper, tape, and scissors. What baby doesn't love paper, tape, and scissors?

We've started some new foods too now that she's older. I thought we were supposed to avoid dairy products until one year, but the authorities ( Drs Sears, family doctor, my mother, and my mother-in-law) agree that babies of nine months can handle yogurt. Of course, feeding baby yogurt and letting baby feed herself yogurt are two different things. I was a little tired last night, so I just let her have the whole yogurt cup. Doesn't she look like an abstract painting? I'll call it arte enfant (would that be correct? I don't speak French.). What do you think?

Baby's first Thanksgiving

Hi, y'all. Happy Post-Thanksgiving. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

Niki and I spent the weekend with Seth's folks down in Oregon, where Niki was, of course, the star of the show, but she had a pretty good supporting cast. It was wonderful to see everyone down there and to watch Niki actually interact with people. She does a lot more of that lately.

The actual Thanksgiving meal was held at Pake and Beppe's (grandpa and grandma's). Beppe cooked us a mountain of food and was very concerned when we didn't eat more than half of it while we were at the table. Niki with Beppe, whose namesake she is. You can see the box of leftovers in the background. That shows you how much food there was.

This is my father-in-law. He is a man who believes in good food, good spirits, and good company. In short, Thanksgiving is his holiday.

Niki playing with my mother-in-law. Niki was so much more social and playful this time around. She played with everybody, which really surprised me because lately she's been in a "mommy-or-nobody" mood.

The high chair was at least thirty years old, and had no crotch bar to hold Niki up, so she kept slipping down throughout the meal. I don't think she was very enchanted at the prospect. However, she did like the little bit of turkey and carrots that she got.

Shy of the camera no more, she positively seeks out the opportunity to get her picture taken.

Niki exploring her Christmas present from Beppe.

Niki playing patt-i-foot with Auntie Alice. I call that her hobgoblin grin. Doesn't she look self-satisfied?