Miss Mary

"If I had money like you Miss Joy, I'd done go to the beauty parlor to get my hair done."

This comment really put things in perspective for me as I thought about Miss Mary's life as a single woman, whose job is keeping the Athletic Department clean, where Mat and I work. I am so blessed to have a husband, who has a full-time job, a beautiful baby girl, and a job myself. I really don't have money to get my hair done at the "beauty parlor", but it was interesting that she thought I did.

Athletic Department

Mat and I usually see Mary every morning when we go into work. She is such a hardworking sweetheart. We are both enjoying our jobs, for the most part. My job averages out to be about two hours a day, five days a week. I mainly shuffle papers from person to person and keep track of the athletic budget. I share an office with two other ladies, the men's golf coach, and the assistant director of compliance.

Soccer season is now over for Mat, and we are both looking forward to the off season. Mat's job will now involve more recruiting, which Abby and I can join him for, fund raising, scheduling games, off season training, and much, much more! Mat is thinking about possibly starting an optional bible study for the team. I think this would be wonderful!

Abby, Mat, and I have all had cold/flu/throw-upy yuckinees the past week. During all of this, Mat was away for two overnight trips within six days. This was hard on all of us, especially for Mat when he had to drive home six hours with a fever. Abby has learned to Moo like a cow, which sound like, "boooooo". She's also become surprisingly picky when it comes to food. I'm hoping this is only due to not feeling well. As I type, she is poking her cantelope and mushing her cheese, two of the foods that she still loves.

New Pics and Tricks

We finally have our computer back after 9ish days of living without it! In the mean time, I've been catching up on reading, Mat's been busy traveling with soccer, and Abby's been learning new tricks such as kissing the baby in the mirror and suctioning her ear to my shoulder after a shower. I've uploaded Abby's 15 month pictures have been uploaded, Yay! To access them, click on the link to the right, as usual.

Baby Signs

We started teaching our baby, Abby, sign language around nine months of age. She was a little too young for this, which I didn't realize at the time, so I gave up and thought she was just too stubborn. When she was around twelve months, I saw an 18 month old doing the sign for please before he was given food. After seeing this, I thought to myself, "hmm, maybe I should try and teach Abby again." I started out teaching her please before she could have her animal crackers or other snacks. At first, she wasn't too happy about it and made her emotions evident by throwing a mini tantrum every time I made her sign. Once she mastered "please", we moved on to the words "food" and "more". I thought the essentials would be best to start out with.

Abby began picking up sign language fairly quickly and uses the words she knows on a regular basis. As a parent, it makes communicating so much easier for me and her. She is now up to 11 words, at 15 months of age, including, "please", "thank you", "more", "food", "pacifier", "up", "taste", "milk", "hi", "hot", and "come", with a few more on the way. We are in the process of teaching her "water", "juice", "mommy", and "daddy". The only words she is verbally able to say clearly are "Mama" and "Dada". Signing gave her the chance to communicate where she would have otherwise not been able to.

I have found that she learns best when I focus on one word at a time and use the word as much as possible until she masters it. Of course, when she learns a word we get really excited and tell her what a good job she's doing. There are many sources to help out in teaching a baby sign language. I prefer looking the word up online, where it is free and easily accessible. Once I have a new word in mind that I would like to teach her, I go to the American Sign Language Pro (ASLPro) website and teach myself how to say the word in sign language. I then begin to use the sign language whenever I am giving Abby that object or doing the action. I will also take her hand and show her how to do it. Babies signs look different than when adults sign, so I'm always watching for Abby trying to sign. Now, whenever she wants her pacifier, I have her say "pacifier" before I will give it to her. She is now to the point where she comes up to me and does the sign for "food" if she's hungry, "all done" when she's finished eating, "up" when she wants to be held, etc.

I would encourage any parent wanting to more easily communicate with their baby to give sign language a try. It has made our life easier and has definitely been worth it.

Have any questions? Leave us a comment, or even if you don't have questions, we love getting comments :)

New Shoes

We're still on our church hunt, and ready to find a home! We went to another new church today, but it is still not one to call our own. Abby had a wonderful time playing in the nursery, and they were even kind enough to change the poopy diaper that she had when we dropped her off, te he he. Or, maybe it was that they couldn't stand the smell...hmmm.

I feel like I haven't seen my baby all day. After church she went immediately down for a nap, actually she fell asleep on the way home and slept until two. Once awake, we swept her immediately away to Aunt Jolynn's and Uncle Randy's house for an evening of dirt, dishes, and dinner. Meanwhile, in the phelps family vehicle, daddy and mommy were off to Chesapeake for a little Best Buy, Babies R Us, and bread sticks. I know it's pathetic, we went to Babies R Us on our date, but it's not everyday that we're close enough to pop in, plus we had a gift card.

Abby at the Harrell House

While at Babies R Us we bought Abby two new pairs of shoes, because hers are getting too small and we wanted to keep her little tootsies warm. After bringing the baby back home from Giant Aunt Randy and Aunt Jolynn's house, she went exploring in the shopping bag and pulled out her new shoes. She was so excited about the new shoes, and couldn't decide which to wear, so she ended up with one fuzzy pink boot on her left foot and one dusty pink Converse like tennis shoe on the right.

The New Fuzzy Boot

Favorite Pastime

Lately, Abby has been enjoying eating crayons. At some point she was coloring and sneakily hid a blue crayon somewhere where mommy and daddy couldn't find it. She's a little like a dog hiding it's bones, but I don't think she remembers where she puts things, she just happens upon them every so often, such as the case with the blue crayon. I thought she was to the point where she enjoyed coloring with the crayons more than eating them, but apparently she enjoys them equally. All this to say, I found her today with bits of blue around her mouth, pursed lips, and a refusal to open her mouth. When I was finally able to pry open her mouth, out popped the crayon, and down went Abby into a helpless heap on the floor.

Church

We've been looking for a church since we moved, and still haven't found one that we feel like God is telling us to make our home church. So far, we've been to five, three Baptist, one Assembly of God, and one non-denominational. For the most part, the churches have all been very traditional. It has been difficult being away from our Brookside Family, please pray that we find a church soon.

**Quick commercial break: Garfield just snuggled up to Squirt and they're sleeping together on the couch. Sooo Cute!**

My aunt and I were shopping on Saturday and when we checked out, they asked for my phone number. Of course, I started with the area code, 909, and she almost wet her pants, because she was from Rancho Cucamonga, and moved back east to start a church. The location of the church is about 40 mins. away from our house, but we're still going to check it out. We've also been invited several times to join a Sunday school class at a local church for a 40 day program. We may go to that, not sure yet though.

Abby Antics

During dinner tonight, our little Abigail began waving at the fruit fly that was buzzing around her high chair. I didn't even notice the fly, but I always have to remember that everything is still new to her. After dinner I was using the restroom and when I came out, I found the baby girl standing on the dining room table, in the dark, because she had climbed up there to flip the light switch off, her new favorite activity. I even had all of the chairs pushed in, so she had to pull the chair out before climbing up. What are we going to do with our little acrobat? I was reading "Where the Sidewalk Ends" to Abby, while she was having her bedtime snack, and I was reading a poem that went through various animals on a farm, as soon as the word, "dog" left my lips she was up and barking. She's a very good little barker, and an almost better meower.