Catching Up

I am playing catch-up right now. The grandparents are itching for pictures, so these are from about a month ago.

This is AB's favorite baskets to play with . It is on the bottom shelf of a metal rack I have in the kitchen, and it holds all of my pot holders. She likes to throw out the pot holders and climb in. I do not know what the allure of it is, but this is absolutely one of her favorite activities.

Busy

Good grief. It has been a while since I last posted anything. I have been busy, we have been traveling, but I also was really just avoiding getting on our old computer. It is really slow. However, last week we made the trip to a big city and got our Mac fixed! We apparently misunderstood the terms of our warranty, and we still had about 100 days left on it. (Thanks Phil for clearing it up for us)

Our Mac is working again (for now) and is running on its third hard drive. We are hoping if it decides to terminate another hard drive that it does it in the next 98 days. KB almost had them convinced they should just give us another computer, but ultimately they did not fall for it. I have spent almost the entire day reloading everything onto our computer and e-mailing people asking for them to resend me all sorts of important e-mails that I need again. It is a bit embarrassing, and I hope that I do not have to do this again soon.

Anyways. Last week we flew up north to see our great friends Kristy and Jeremy. They were on this side of the world for a requirement for Jeremy's MBA program, and we were not going to pass up a chance to see them. We had a great time exploring, getting rained on, arguing with taxi drivers, and getting cheated by extremely talented salespeople - all great stories. Then on Tuesday evening Kristy flew back to our hometown with us. She is now officially our first friend to come visit us, which is super cool!

She was here for too short of a time, but we tried to cram as much fun in those two days as possible. This morning she flew back to join Jeremy and some of his classmates in exploring. She took a ton of great pictures, but of course I forgot to really take any. Here are a few from a party we had at our apartment. It was a camping theme, can you tell? I will share more with you when I get them from Kristy.

Thanks Kristy and Jeremy!

My Little Trixter

This is now I know for sure (other than the more ovbious reasons) that AB is truly KB's daughter.

On Friday two friends came over to watch AB so KB and I could go on a date. I was running a bit late and was just getting around to straightening my hair. If we are in the bathroom and the door is open, it is guarenteed that AB will join us. She loves to play with the door that separates the sink area from the toilet/shower area, weigh herself on the scale, and to attempt to open all of the drawers. Just as I walked out of the bathroom to talk to our friends, AB walked in. She shut the door and opened the drawer that is just on the other side of the door...effectively locking herself in the bathroom.

We were able to crack open the door by about 1/4 an inch, enough to see that she was enjoying herself. She emptied the contents of this particular drawer, beat on the toilet seat lid, unrolled toilet paper, and felt around in the trash - all the while I was absolutely freaking out! I kept thinking about my super hot hair straightener (thankfully the cord was not hanging over the edge of the counter), her trying to drink the toilet water or falling into the toilet, choking on something small, or finally figuring out the baby lock on the cabinet that holds bathroom cleaning supplies - you know, worst case type of situations.

We tried all sorts of things to close this drawer, none of which worked, especially telling AB to close the drawer. She just kept laughing at us. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably just 5-10 minutes, KB decided to see if he busted his way in, if the drawer or the door would win. We have broken doors in our apartments by just by pushing them open in places other than the handle, so we figured the door would loose. When KB was sure AB was playing with the toilet again he busted his way in. The drawer lost, and AB seemed disapointed that her free play time in the bathroom was over. Somehow the drawer still works. It all worked out fine, and mommy can breath again.

So Scary

I heard kids often copy their parents, but I never really thought it would come so soon. Yesterday AB snatched the DVD remote off of the couch, pointed it at the TV and started pressing buttons. Before I knew it, she had started up Beauty and the Beast (Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite movies. I wanted to be Belle). I was so proud of her that I turned on the TV so we could watch it together. She sat in my lap, eyes glued to the TV for a full 20 minutes. I do not think she has been that still while awake since before she learned to roll over. I felt so guilty afterwards though.

I am not certain how she picked up the TV remote thing so fast. The ONLY time the TV is on while is awake is when company is over and we really need her to play quietly. Also the ONLY thing she has ever watched is Cars, Beauty and the Beast, and yesterday evening she might have seen a little bit of New Moon - that is all I promise. I remember my child development classes, and remember what they told us about hard wiring your kids with a short attention span with TV.

Back to the copying thing. Wow. It really has shaken me into shape. No more telling the dog to "shut up" when he barks. I cannot say things are "soooo stupid" anymore, and being critical of my body has got to stop. I want her to be a woman of God, and I refuse to make things more difficult for her by not trying harder to be one myself.

Little Joys in Life

Today while I filled up AB's bathtub, AB discovered how to use our digital scale. Apparently there is no end in the fun an almost 15 month old toddler can have when they learn how to make numbers flash at them. She figured out that she must step on the scale to "wake" it up, and then step back on the scale to be weighed. Also, I can easily tell you that as of today she weighs 19 lbs; she is a wee little one.

My Computers are Working Against Me

I am sure anyone who actually reads our blog is tired of hearing about it, just as I am extremely tired of writing about it. Yet another hard drive has bitten the dust, has fallen victim to living in our apartment... it has abandoned us.

Our Mac, who I mistakenly praised a couple of weeks ago, has once died again. I was simply updating our blog. It froze, and it has not come back since. All we get now is a blank grey screen, and sometimes it gives us a little circle with a line through it (which can never be good). Also, it is making a clicking sound just like it did the last time the hard drive needed replaced. I have tried all the little tricks my brother can help me come up with, but nothing. Also, unlike in the US, when this country has some sort of holiday the Mac support offices close for days and days at a time, so I decided to bite the bullet and make the international phone call to the Mac offices in the US. Their offices were open on Good Friday, but after waiting for 5 minutes I was unceremoniously disconnected. This was a low-point in my day for sure.

Here is our predicament. The Mac was our primary computer, when it crashed the second time last year we decided to get a back-up computer, our Dell. Our Dell has now crashed twice and is awaiting a new hard drive. So, where does that leave us since both our primary computer and our back-up computer are out of commission? I am typing on my Dell Inspiron 5100 that I bought in August 2003, and to think I almost did not bring it with me.

We treat this computer like a fragile piece of work. We do not load programs on it. We absolutely do not attempt to watch videos on it. We do not surf the internet (um, maybe except to update our blog), and we delete anything from it that is not necessary. Last year when our Mac crashed the second time I tried to load our camera software on it. It of course froze, and it took about 5 attempts to even get the thing to start back up. Lesson learned.

Also, do any of you know anything about the Mac warranties? I am really asking for input. Our hard drive was replaced free of charge last year because we bought a 2 year Apple Care. However, it has been more than two years now, but it has been less than a year since they gave us a new hard drive. Do you think we got any kind of warranty with the new hard drive?

We do not know why our computers chornically crash. In the 8 years I was a computer owner before I came overseas, I never once had a computer crash, and now we are assaulted with them on a quarterly basis. Someone said something about power surges in our apartment possibly being the culprit, but everything else electrical in our apartment is fine; I am so confused. Maybe the huge power plants we live between have some sort of magnetic pull that messes everything up.

Regardless, unless Mac graciously fixes our computer for free, we will not be posting any photos on our blog until sometime in June when our new Dell hard drive makes its way to us. For the grandparents that also includes no Skype phone calls. Sorry.