Anya likes her some oatmeal, oh yeah. I take a mug of oatmeal in the car on the way to work each day, and often I will give Anya some. I’ve never, however, given her some oatmeal of her very own. This morning Anya looked at me and said, “Yo, Mom, I want oatmeal. Why don’t you put it in that groovy frog bowl Auntie Kimmie gave me?”

I thought this sounded like a great idea, so I made up a wee batch of oatmeal and put it in her groovy frog bowl and gave it to her along with the matching froggie-green spoon. Anya dug in. I helped a little by spooning some into her mouth from time to time and by giving her helpful hints linke, “Don’t blow raspberries when you’ve got oatmeal in your mouth.” Soon the bowl was empty, and Anya had worked up such an appetite eating her oatmeal that she needed a bottle.

Another month has gone by, and another year. Wow, it’s Anya’s second year! I hope she remembers to start writing 2008 when she signs her checks. She:

+ Has tasted avocado, broccoli, cheerios, pickles, gingerbread, oatmeal, banana, biscuit, and green beans. I can’t really say if she actually ate any of these things, but she hast tasted them. Her favorite appears to be pickles.
+ Is sleeping through the night more often.
+ Went to her first party.
+ Talks like a Mogwai. We can no longer feed her after midnight. Among her new words are: hallelujah, poopoo, doodoo, dadadadadada, i love you, gagagagagaga, and diediedie.
+ Sighed at me with exasperation. I believe I was putting toys on her head.
+ Experienced her first Christmas.
+ Gets angry / frustrated when she can’t reach what she wants. (And according to DCP, she steals toys from the other baby and scoots away so the other baby can’t reach the toy, and then the other baby yells at her, and she just sits there and chews on the toy and cackles.)
+ Has a pincer grip that would make a baby lobster proud.
+ Has been doing lots of crunches to get her abs of steel shiny.
+ Continues to work on crawling.
+ Finally outgrew her 3-6 month clothes (Maybe she outgrew them a while ago and was just scrunching her feet into them. I don’t know.)
+ Met her half-brother.

Edited to add:
+ Got her first tooth! (I can’t believe I forgot to write that! It’s so sharp and pointy!)

Cabol said we should write down our New Year’s Resolution, I guess so then when we don’t follow through we’ll feel more guilty.

Kenny resolves to do more origami every day. Then he will become an Origami Master and live in a little temple in Japan and catch bees with chopsticks.

Anya resolves to learn to crawl. Then she can find all the hidden bunny poops to eat with her pickle skins.

Andy (me) resolves to go for a walk whenever he feels the need to be snarky to Cabol. I will be ready for a marathon come February.

Cabol resolves not to eat donuts every day, and not to give Anya or me to the gypsies.

As Supreme Ruler of Absolutely Nothing At All, I do hereby decree that henceforth all holiday cookies be given in dough format.

Why? Because apparently 98% of the world’s population prefers raw cookie dough to actual baked cookies.

This morning I delivered to my coworkers the 40 dozen or so frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls I’ve spent the last two weeks making. The idea was that everyone gets overwhelmed with treats this time of year, so this way people could bake up some cookies later when things weren’t so crazy and they had a hankering for hot cookies. (Also, it saved me having to bake the cookies myself, which I admit was a really big factor in the dough decision.)

From what people have been saying to me, I think most of those dough balls will never make it anywhere near an oven. These people are cookie dough freaks. “YAY! You gave me cookie dough! I love cookie dough more than anything in the world! Cookie dough rocks!”

It truly and honestly never occurred to me that people would think I was giving them dough. So, if it’s the thought that counts, and the thought was “bake cookies later when holiday treats run out,” and everyone thought the thought was “oooooo dough,” then were the gifts failures because the thought I had wasn’t the thought they thought I had?

Bonus Question of the Day: Did you know that avocado stains (fabric, not babies)?

It’s getting hard to get Anya’s monthly photo taken. I want to be able to see out the window, so I can track the seasons as she grows, but it’s dark when we leave in the morning and dark when we get home at night. I’ve been waiting until the weekend to get a photo and post this, but why wait? I’ll just update the post this weekend with a photo!

What was Anya up to this last month? She has:

+ Learned that it’s funny the way Mommy goes “AIE!” when baby sticks her hands in her diaper area during changing time.
+ Also learned that it’s fun to undo the velcro fasteners on her diapers. (Possible coming attractions for next month: Anya learns to undo her diaper and then stick her hands in her poo!)
+ Perfected sitting. Mostly. Except for when she topples over. At random? On purpose? I do not know.
+ Graduated from baths to showers.
+ Charmed every living being on the planet with her Smooshy Face of Ultimate Cuteness.
+ Tasted soy milk, napkin, tissue paper, and ribbon and consumed yams and pancake.
+ Toyed with the idea of crawling. She’ll tolerate being on her tummy now, which makes practicing crawling easier. She needs to work on her upper body strength, though. I’m thinking of getting her the “Arms of Steel” video.
+ Fed herself her bottle.
+ Hung out in a highchair at Hardee’s (and munched on said napkin previously hitherto mentioned).
+ Rode her Daddy’s childhood rocking horse.
+ Opened her first Christmas present (and munched on said tissue paper and ribbon previously hitherto mentioned).

Edited to Add:

+ Explored a mall and learned all about clearance items.
+ Been tailed in an antique store as a possible shoplifter.
+ Had people fly in from across the country and across the planet just to see her. (Not really just to see her, but don’t tell her that since it will be bad for her ego.)

Question: How do you know your mommy really loves you?

Answer: You ask her to brush the flour off the gingerbread cookies you made for the office holiday party, and she does.

Question: How do you know your baby really loves you?

Answer: When she sees you, she makes a squooshy face.

Last night, Andy and I were discussing what we could give folks for Christmas. One person we know, who shall remain anonymous, is really uptight and could use a chill pill. As we sat in the living room pondering gift ideas, Andy noticed that one of the “Special Deals of the Day” at amazon was a fancy-schmancy vibrator.

I said, “We should totally get X a vibrator.”

Mom and Dad were surprised amazon sold them. (Didn’t I mention my parents were there, too?)

Andy said, “Yeah, there are tons of them. Let’s see.”

So, Andy did a search on vibrators and pulled up the previously mentioned tons. He started remarking on some of the more interesting ones. “This one is a bunny. This one is ribbed for your pleasure. Hey, there’s a jumbo deluxe kit! And, ooo! Look at this one — it’s the Super Duper Model. It’s black!”

Dad jumped up and said, “I want to look too!” He went and got his computer and started looking at amazon’s vibrator section. Soon, he and Andy were browsing the entire adult section, and they continued to announce to the room their findings. “Look, here’s undies with a vibrator built right in! And a remote! We could give the undies to X and the remote to her SO! HAHAHAHAHA! Look at this book about which knots work best for bondage!”

Andy got bored eventually, but Dad kept browsing the list of items. Every 15 minutes (Andy timed it), my dad would announce an item: “Butterfly Crotchless Thongs!”

It was a bit odd to keep having my dad talking about this sort of thing, so I employed my newly found parenting skill of redirection.

“Hey Dad, do a search on wood sushi!”

“Sushi? You don’t like sushi.”

But he couldn’t resist. He searched for wooden sushi and came across the really cool wooden play food I’d been oogling all week. Dad kept up the announcements, but at least now it was stuff like, “Wooden sandwich set! Wooden birthday cake!”

Here’s what Anya had to say about all this:

This was a big week for packages for Anya. She received gifts from her Grandma Diane, her Aunt Rebecca, her Great Grandma Swokla, and her Great Aunt Linda. When assembled, the packages made Super Package Tower O’ Fun ™. It’s the coolest present of the season. All the babies want it.

Sometimes, the baby makes some strange faces. Sometimes she is possessed. I can’t explain it, and I’m not sure I would want to know the explanation even if I could.

I was searching through the pictures, and came across a cute picture of Catie and the guys pouring our concrete, and I think the concrete came out really well, at least in my non-professional opinion. Except some weird people wrote their names in it.

I also found a cute picture of Anya and I…except in the original, my eyes were red. Not just your usual redeye, but bright, glowing, demon-red. Anya’s were fine. Ironic.

Anyways, the whole reason I was going through pictures was to find some of the pizza we’ve been making lately. We finally cleaned out and seasoned the cast iron pots Cabol found in the garbage back when we were still in Michigan, and tried using them to bake the pizzas in. They come out perfect, nice and crunchy, and never ever stick to the pan. I think I’m in love with cast iron.

Last weekend we got to host some visitors from the cold and icy north: Kc from MI and Kim and Catie from Norway. For some reason, I only seem to have photographic evidence of Catie’s visit. I do recall trying to get pictures of the adults, but perhaps they snuck into my camera and did some deleting. Or perhaps I was using Kim’s camera. Either is possible because I do have memories of using Kim’s camera, and Kc is very devious when it comes to photos of herself.

While these lovely ladies were here, we had lots of yummy food…

Played with the critters…

Fed the bees…

And got concrete…

Kc had to leave on Sunday to get back to work. After we dropped her off at the airport, Kim, Catie, and I … went to the mall. It started out as a simple quest for a garlic peeler (they make those?) and ended up as an adventure in clearance shopping. Kim really knows how to shop the clearance stuff. I was in awe. I was also in awe of the crazyness of people. I saw at least four people take strollers onto escalators, and I think only one of those people took the baby out first. I was also approached by a kiosk lady who faked interest in Anya to try to get me to buy “stretch mark remover.” Uh lady? Look at me. Do you really think pregnancy-related stretch marks are a problem for me? Anya was definitely an attraction in her sling. Even one of the escalator-stroller mommies asked me about the sling. “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?” In one store, a teenage boy with a few of his friends said, “When I have a kid, I’m getting me one of those!” And at a kid’s clothes store, I surprised the cashier when I turned towards her and she realized it wasn’t me making those weird goobly sounds, “OH! There’s a PERSON in there!” I love that sling. I also loved shopping with the gals even though the Disney store doesn’t sell the glittery green shoes in my size. (When I asked the sales guy why not, he replied, “Honey, they don’t sell them in my size either!)

On Monday, we decided to go to town to hit the thrift store and get lunch. Too bad the thrift store is closed on Monday. I thought perhaps we could try Ray’s for lunch. Ray’s is this place that looks like a biker bar…big sprawling gray building with a rock facade painted on the front. It was voted best burger in Floyd, and it’s always packed on Friday nights when we drive by. It really does appear to be a family joint. Why oh why does it look like that, though? It needs a makeover I think. The locals would probably boo at me for the idea, but really…that place looks scary. Anyhow, Ray’s is also closed on Monday. We ended up at the Blue Ridge Diner…a place I have not yet been. The food was okay…typical diner food. After we ate, we visited the General Store and oogled cast iron cookware, and Catie instructed a fellow about how they speak Norwegian in Norway. Next we decided to visit one of the galleries, but it was…yes…closed on Monday. Instead we went into what appeared to be a little antique shop but was really a huge shop. Kim was on a mission to find a few things, and so we looked through the entire store. I guess two women with little kids raised the proprietor’s shoplifting antenna because we were followed most of the time we were there. The day still seemed young when we said farewell to our watcher, and I went back to the car to change and feed Anya. Kim and Catie went on to visit some other stores. Turns out things close in town around 5:00 on Mondays, though, so we headed home.

Tuesday morning, the gals packed up in a hurry and ran away because I thought Anya had pink eye (and they were planning to leave then, anyhow). It had appeared at daycare about a week ago, so when Anya woke up with goopy eyes I figured she had it. I’m not sure if she did, but she did get a fever and had a sad day. I think she is finally teething.

In conclusion, Kim and her family need to move to the States, and Kc needs to make my mom cinnamon rolls.