Cute Things that Anya Says and Does #5

• Slipped yesterday morning in the bathroom and exclaimed "Holy Crap!" Oops. Bad mommy.
• Last Saturday they made turkeys out of construction paper and a popsicle stick at Sunday School. She said gobble, gobble, gobble all the way home, and said "more turkey?" the next morning as soon as she got up.
• She loves to dance to Barney songs. Dancing involves running in a big circle in the living room.
• Truthfulness is hit and miss. When asked if she had a stinky diaper (which she obviously did), she paused to think, "hmmmm, don't think so."
• This morning, I took her up with me to try to listen in on a phone call that Sean was making to our lender. Anya started being too noisy so I had to take her back downstairs, and she was very upset about this. She found her play cell phone, flipped it open, said "hello" and then started some babbling with a tone like she was tattling. I asked her if she was talking on the phone like Daddy and she ignored me and held up her finger like we do when she interrupts us on the phone.

November Photos

Anya has started pointing to the camera and saying "Anya? Pitcher? Camra?"

She wants to pose, and asks me to take pictures while she colors, plays with her toys, or fake laughs. However, she really needs to work on her reaction when I tell her to smile. I have a whole sequence of very odd faces that are apparently what she thinks I mean by asking her to do that. I finally found that telling her to laugh results in a fake laugh that looks like a smile on film.

But then other times I catch her at just the right moment and get a shot that is so perfectly "Anya" she takes my breath away. I'm still working on photoshopping some more cute ones that I'll make public a little later.

It's very fun that she's starting to get into the whole concept of posing. Every day she does something new (and on occasion incredibly annoying). Just before her nap today, she looked up at me and sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" - every word, and even was sort of getting the tune!

Willow is starting to enjoy the jumperoo, and is making all sorts of cute baby noises! And some not so cute baby screams as she checks out her range. She will let loose with a blood-curdling shriek all while looking totally happy and angelic.

She is also taking to solids with a vengeance this month. It's a little scary to feed her - she tries to grab things out of my hands, and leans forward into a bite and snaps her mouth closed over it. This piranha style of eating is totally foreign to us but honestly, it's a pretty big relief!

There's going to be so much talking in our house before we know it - right now, Anya is supposed to be napping and all I hear from her room is a constant stream of babbling. I have no idea where she gets it from.

Click here to see the rest of the photos.

I'm really not kidding, this is the house...

Okay, so the house on Treemont that we were going to fix up had some much bigger problems than were apparent. The inspection was not good, so we had to take a pass on it.

We've decided that we should probably be looking at something as new as possible since we are the farthest thing from handy there is.

I looked at a house way back when we first started looking at houses, and had liked this one. The price has come down recently, so we put in an offer today! We are still hoping to sell our house quickly and have dropped the price down to $349,999. We would also be open to a rental situation, so as before, if you know anyone looking to buy or rent a great house please send them our way!

It's in West Salem, so not ideal, but it has room to expand a whole new lower level someday, a big yard with a creek at the bottom and is brand new with a lovely interior. This pic is old, there's a yard in the front now. Click here to see more.

I know, I know, you'll believe me when we actually move in, right? :)

Cute Things that Anya Says and Does #4

• Can count to 10 (first did it 10/26/08), working on up to 20 but it's kind of hit and miss
• Says "Hi morning, Willow" when she first sees her each day
• Puts on the Darth Vader mask, breaths like him, then pulls it off and says "that funny!"
• If Willow is crying, she will pat her on the back and say "Don't cry baby, don't cry Willow."
• When the dogs whine or bark, she says "enough!" in the same tone of voice I do.
• The other morning, she was singing the ABC's when I went to get her up (sort of). She has no concept of pitch so far.
• She really likes taking the Element places...when we walk outside she repeats "Take orange car?" over and over.
• Her favorite book is "SkippyJon Jones and the Big Bones". She likes all the books in the series, but that one is her favorite. She has it memorized and can tell you what's on each page with no prompting. I particularly like how she says "Hey Pickle Pants" "Holy Cabeza!" "Los Chimichangos" and "rrrrrrufff".
• If I tell her that a cat is Siamese, she says "Skippy Jones?"

Very Useful Blogger Tool

For those of you who are using Blogger for your blog as I do (Jake, Nat, Nicole I know for starters), I'm sure you've noticed how incredibly annoying it is to add pictures since it always puts them at the top. I googled for a solution on this, and found that Windows Live contains Windows Live Writer which makes posting and editing about a million times more simple - pictures go where your cursor is! It also lets you manage multiple blogs through one interface, it grabs your template so you see exactly what it's going to look like as you type and more.

Go to http://get.live.com/ to download. When you go to install, there will be a screen that lets you choose which programs to install - I would uncheck everything but Live Writer unless you really want some of the other stuff. Then you just jump through a couple of hoops to hook up your Blogger account and viola!

Happy blogging!