The Abbott Family Web Site

Robbie had his 1st birthday on Friday, May 7. He had a very fun birthday party that evening with both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. His sister and his parents were there too. (Sorry I’m so late in writing about it.) His grandpa and grandma (Steve’s parents) flew out especially to celebrate with him. We had a very nice visit with them and both kids were just thrilled to have them around for the week. We had the party at my parents’ house since they have the swimming pool and because my kitchen is still not completed from our remodel that was started in January. So much for a 6-8 week project. We’ll explain all of that as well as the addition we’re putting on our house in a future post. We are in the middle of the addition right now so there’s not much to report on except that so far it’s going much more smoothly than the kitchen, perhaps because none of it is through Lowe’s (where we got our cabinets).

Anyway, back to the birthday boy. We took him in for his checkup the following week and he was 29.5 inches tall (50th percentile) and weighed 18 pounds 10 ounces (3rd percentile). Looks like we have another skinny kid. The nice thing with Robbie, though, is that he will eat almost anything we put in front of him. In fact, right around his birthday, he decided he was not going to eat any more baby food and wouldn’t even eat the toddler food (like Gerber Graduates) that we had bought for him. If it wasn’t the same thing that we were eating then he didn’t want it. In some ways this is much easier since we don’t have to buy special food for him or make something different. In other ways it’s more difficult because I have to remember that whatever we are having is something that can be cut up into small pieces and doesn’t contain peanuts or shellfish (two things he can’t have until he’s two years old). Overall I’d rather he not fight us on eating big people food like Josie still does at times.

So far there is definitely a difference in raising a boy than a girl (besides the obvious). Robbie is much more active. Josie was content to sit in one spot and play or read. Robbie is all over the place. We were playing in the yard the other day and he crawled over to the slide but instead of going to the ladder (even when I helped him) he insisted on trying to climb up the slide. He has at least 5 words but definitely doesn’t gain new ones as quickly as Josie did. His babbling has exploded recently. This is all stuff I learned in school but it’s interesting to see it first hand. He loves blocks, balls, and playing peek-a-boo and patty-cake. He has officially taken his first steps but, like his sister, he refuses to walk if he thinks anyone is watching. It took a trip to Disneyland to finally get her interested in walking. Hopefully we won’t have to wait that long for him since we’re not going any time soon.

As for Josie, she is very excited about starting preschool in September. She loves to help me cook in the kitchen which also seems to encourage her to eat what she’s being served. We still struggle with feeding issues with her and the last time she was weighed she was still around the 3rd-5th percentile. She is perhaps the world’s slowest eater. She is very interested in learning to read and write and recently started drawing pictures of her family which vaguely resembled people. I was pretty excited to see that. She has quite a few imaginary friends who come to visit. They are always characters from Disney animated movies. For instance, when we have “Ariel Josie” in the house, then naturally her friends Prince Eric, Flounder, and Sebastian are around. She has full conversations with them and invites them to eat with us, complete with their own chairs and plates at the table.

That’s pretty much the run down of life right now. We’ll get some info about our remodel and addition up soon. And I’ll add pictures to this post as soon as I have time to sit at Steve’s computer and weed through them all. I at least wanted to get something written since I’m already so late.

Josie had her third birthday on Monday, March 15. She is every bit a grown up 3 year old. We took her for her first “big girl” haircut the Tuesday before. I had trimmed her bangs before but we had never had her hair officially cut. She loves her new hair do. On Sunday the 14th we had a big family party for her at my parents’ house. She had a Tinker Bell party complete with a cake I made for her. She had a great time playing with her cousins. She loves swimming so we had a little pool party after the main party and also took Robbie swimming for the first time at her party.

Grammy and I took the kids to the park for a special birthday picnic for Josie on Monday. She had a great time running around and playing on the toys. Robbie got to experience the playground swings for the first time and he loved them. By the time we left Josie had gotten brave enough to go down the big slide and climb up the chain ladder by herself. We took her out for a special birthday dinner at the Spaghetti Factory that night. Grammy was able to join us which made Josie very happy.

At her check up last week she had actually grown! She is now 27.2 pounds and 35.5 inches. That puts her in the 10th percentile for both height and weight. That means she grew from the 3rd percentile in weight last year to the 10th!! We were very happy with this news. It looks like forcing her for the last year to eat has finally paid off. We’ve had many nights of screaming or being sent to bed over the last year while we battled with her to get her to eat. Now, she will actually eat small amounts of food while at a restaurant and eat a small serving of whatever we’re having for dinner at home. It may seem trivial, but it’s a big victory for us. Her doctor was very impressed with how verbal she is. As we say, she talks in monologues. She was able to answer all the safety questions as well as count and sing most of her ABCs for the doctor.

I’ll leave you with one last cute picture. Robbie had his first ice cream cone the day after Josie’s birthday. As you can see, he really enjoyed it.

Steve’s parents visited over Thanksgiving and we all went up to Seattle, WA for the weekend. On Saturday we went to Apple Cup, the annual football game between the University of Washington (Go Huskies!) and Washington State University (Skin those Cougars!). In case you hadn’t guessed, it’s a bit of rivalry between the two schools.

It was a great game and UW won with a score of 30 to 0. That’s the first time UW has skunked WSU since 1964!

On Sunday we went into downtown Seattle and visited the Space Needle. Josie really enjoyed the ride up to the top and was very unhappy that we weren’t going right back down, and back up, and back down.

We had a picture taken before we headed up. It’s not too bad, although Robbie is almost invisible beneath his hat and with the baby carrier covering up a big part of his face.

We found out that Santa is at the top of the Space Needle in his rocket sled. Robbie got to sit with him first and he really seemed to enjoy himself.

Josie joined Robbie with Santa, but she wasn’t quite as thrilled. We think it’s because she was really over tired and starting to come down with a cold. But we still got a picture of the two of them with Santa.

More pictures and stuff about the visit will be posted later. We just wanted to get this up now.

From the too cute to not share department, we present Josie and Robbie modeling the latest in children’s eyewear. I was working in the garage yesterday when I walked in and found Robbie laying on his mat looking like this.

I then noticed Josie had on her pair and realized she dressed her brother up.

It appears she is learning to share! It’s either that or that they are both preparing for the inevitable fact that they will have to wear glasses at some point. With their genes it’s pretty much a given.

For those that are wondering, they are Mr. Potato Head glasses.

The Clark County Fair happens at the beginning of August every year. We went for the first time when Josie was a baby and had so much fun that we’ve made sure to go back every year. This was Robbie’s first trip to the fair and I think he enjoyed it as well as a 3 month old can.

Josie got to meet and pet several animals that she’s never seen up close before. Here she is with a calf that was being shown:

Here she got to pet a baby goat:

Here is a bunny that was on display:

And here she is with “Freddy the Fire Engine”. Ok, Freddy isn’t really an animal but he certainly had personality. He could move around, blink, and run his siren. She was convinced he was “Thomas” as in the train and she was actually rather scared of him although we all thought he was cute. He even squirted water on us, which on that hot day felt really good. To this day, she will occasionally talk about “Thomas” (or sometimes she calls him Freddy) and how he scared her and squirted water on her.

The last thing we did was go in the exhibition hall to see what had been entered in the competition. I entered a couple of things I crocheted this year just to see what they’d say about them. I actually won first prizes on the hat and bib I made for Robbie. I was going to enter the booties also but that morning when I was sewing the buttons on I realized I had forgotten to make a buttonhole in one of them. Oops! But the bonnet and bib were well received.

And here is a picture from Robbie’s baptism that shows the blanket I made for him before he was born. It is a set with a hat and booties also but the booties were too small for his big feet and when he wore the bonnet home from the hospital everyone thought he was a girl so I told him I wouldn’t make him wear it again. But the blanket was something special that I made for him to come home in and also to use at his baptism. I decided not to enter it in the fair, although I’m very proud of it, because I was worried that there was a chance it wouldn’t come back to me or could be damaged while on display.

And finally, a picture showing one of Josie’s favorite hobbies right now. She is really enjoying building “castles” whether out of blocks or Legos or even Tinkertoys.

Well, it only took me 2 months to write this post so you can probably expect to see our mid-September trip to Leavenworth, WA, around November. I’ll try to do better though!

And once again it’s time for another Abbott family update. We’ve had a busy time recently with family visiting, going to the Clark County fair (another post will be coming on that), celebrating our 5th anniversary (YAY US!), and dealing with a pretty bad infection.

Robbie came down with a nasty staph infection which started all over his head and was starting to creep down his torso. I called and talked with the very unhelpful nurse through the advice line on Sunday Aug. 16 and she was convinced (over the phone and even though I told her my mom is a nurse and thinks otherwise – mom was thinking impetigo) that he just had cradle cap and baby acne. We got him in to the doctor on Monday Aug. 17 and the doctor thought he had a reaction to something I ate (which I can’t figure out) which caused a flare up of eczema which he scratched and contaminated with staph that quickly spread. It spread way too quickly to be baby acne or cradle cap. The clincher for us was when I started getting the same rash Sunday evening on my breast where he had scratched me while breastfeeding. I don’t think baby acne can spread to another person. (Excuse the sarcasm) Anyway, mom was right and we’ve been on antibiotics since Monday 8/17. Mine cleared up quickly since it was so small an area. Unfortunately his was covering about 1/2 his body by Monday evening and about 2/3 by Tuesday. But slowly it started to go away. His scalp is back to normal except for some occasional cradle cap. His face is what showed it so bad and he’s still got rough red splotches all over his cheeks and chin but they are improving. At least he’s not contagious any more which makes it much easier to take care of both him and Josie at the same time. Steve stayed home for several days to help out and decrease the chance of giving it to someone else or bringing something new home while Robbie was fighting the staph.

Robbie now rolls from his tummy to his back (he started that at 7 weeks!) and from his back to his tummy (started that in this last week). He is definitely talkative and coos during much of his awake time. He has such a big grin that covers his whole face. It’s hard not to smile back at him when he’s smiling at you. Josie is as busy as can be. We had to buy her a toddler bed this week because we think she’s still a bit small for my twin bed (which is rather high off the ground) and she couldn’t be trusted in the convertible crib that my sister lent us. You take one of the sides off and it’s basically a toddler bed. But it still had the three sides to it with slats. She started getting her foot wedged between the mattress and the wall through the slats. That wasn’t too much of a problem. We just pulled her out and talked with her about not doing that. The problem came the last couple days when she got the lower portion of her leg up and over the back railing and wedged against the wall. I’m guessing she was trying to climb. Our fear was she would lose her balance and fall back on the bed before we got her out and she’d break a leg or hip, or that she would get stuck and push against the wall which would move the crib (it’s on wheels) and she’d fall forward behind the crib and land on her head. So we decided to just buy her a regular toddler bed and she loves it. It’s her “big girl bed” and as she says “it’s just my size!” She’s very interested in the alphabet so I’ve been working with her on flashcards and her little magna doodle to try to learn some of the letters. No real progress yet except that she’s interested. She does love to count though and can get up to 13 or 14 before missing a number on her way to 20. She has recently become enamored of some of the Disney princess movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast”. And we finally watched the Tinkerbell movie which she loved. In fact today she asked for a “Tinkerbell ‘do” so I did my best to put her hair in a bun like Tinkerbell.

We spent August 21, our 5th anniversary, at Spirit Mountain Casino in Grand Ronde, OR. We spent the afternoon playing slots and a little 3 card poker. Neither of us had very good luck. Then we went to the Dave Koz/Brian Culbertson concert featuring Peabo Bryson. Except for sitting in front of speakers which made our ears hurt, it was an excellent concert. We enjoy jazz and throwing in Peabo Bryson, who did Disney theme songs to Beauty and the Beast (title song) with Celine Dion and Aladdin (A Whole New World) with Regina Belle, was a real treat for us. Of course, he didn’t sing either song, but we enjoyed his hits that he did sing. We came home that evening and then headed to Bonneville Hot Springs Resort and Spa on Saturday. My parents kept Josie for us and we took Robbie with us. The resort is up the gorge about 45 minutes from us. It was a nice little getaway. We had a natural hot spring hot tub on our balcony which made my skin so soft. We took a short hike to a view point on the river on Sunday and got some nice pictures. We were very close to Bonneville Dam so we were able to see it from our vantage point. It was a wonderful weekend.

And just for fun, here are some pictures we had taken at Yuen Lui portrait studio before Robbie’s baptism. His gown is one that my grandmother bought while my mom’s family lived in the Phillippines around 1960. She hung onto it for years and was going to get rid of it about 10 years ago when mom decided to hold onto it. We’re glad she did. It’s all handmade and just beautiful.

That’s all for now. I’ll be writing another post soon showing Josie meeting some animals at the Clark County fair in August. And keep your fingers crossed and send good thoughts to the Huskies this Saturday. They open their season against LSU Saturday night. We’re all hoping for a good showing!

GO DAWGS!! WOOF WOOF!!

It really has been the best of times. Yes, having a newborn in the house can be tough and we’ve had our moments of meltdowns (all of us!), but we really have been loving it. Robbie is such a joy for us. He is 8 weeks old now and smiling up a storm. He has a smile that envelopes his whole face. He started rolling over from his tummy to his back at 7 weeks. That was a bit of a shock for us. He is growing well and has a nice little double chin to prove it. He also tends to sleep for 6 hours at night before he wakes up to eat. Then he’ll go back to sleep for another couple of hours, so sleeping is starting to get better. Josie seems to really love being a big sister. First thing in the morning when we get her up she wants to go see Robbie wherever he is. She also likes to come with us when we change him and tries to help by putting his binky in his mouth whether he wants it or not. She is very gentle with him and gives him kisses, hugs, and loving pats on the head or back. Her transition wasn’t as hard as I feared. I think the hardest part has been wanting me to read her stories at nap or bedtime when I’m feeding Robbie. I enjoy doing it when I can but I haven’t figured out how to nurse him and read to her yet. We’ve had to work with her on letting Steve read to her, but we still have occasional meltdowns over mommy reading to her. I’m getting better at timing Robbie’s nursing so it doesn’t coincide with her story time but it still happens on occasion. We really do feel blessed with both of our children. We have been very lucky and feel like we have the perfect little family.

We’ve had a very busy 8 weeks. Besides all of us getting to know our new little one, we had Steve’s parents visit for 2 weeks. We really enjoyed having them out here with us. Josie loved having them here with her and was very excited when they’d come over. She misses them quite a bit and calls them often on her play phone. We also had Robbie’s baptism on June 14. It was a lovely, very personal, service. We really enjoy our new priest and church (Holy Redeemer in Vancouver). He was so easy to work with and really made the ceremony special. We were sad that one set of his Godparents, Mike and Stacey Ivancic (friends of Steve’s), couldn’t make it since they live in North Carolina but we were thinking of them. We were honored that his other set, Kathleen VanAltvorst and John Daniels (friends of mine), were with us on that day. We had a wonderful family party afterwards at my parent’s house. It was a beautiful day to welcome Robert Conrad John Thomas into our Catholic family (John and Thomas are his baptism names given to him by each set of Godparents).

We also used part of the time that Steve was home on paternity leave to do a small remodel we had been talking about. We have 3 full bathrooms in our house, one of which is never used as a tub/shower. We also have a laundry room that we’ve had to turn into mostly pantry because there is not much storage in the kitchen. That made the washer and dryer hard to access. We decided to take out the tub in the bathroom at the opposite end of the house from the bedrooms and turn it into a half bath, half laundry. The washer and dryer fit perfectly in the space. We had a construction company come in and take out the tub, fix up the water and electrical connections, and do the drywall. Steve did a wonderful job putting in laminate flooring by himself and installing cupboards over the washer and dryer. We now have a very functional and easy to access laundry room. As I said to Steve the other day, no one likes doing laundry but I don’t mind it anymore. In fact I almost enjoy it because it’s so much easier.

[caption id="attachment_348" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Laundry room before 2"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_345" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Laundry room after"][/caption]

That pretty much sums up what we’ve been up to. We’ll try and keep things better updated. Since Robbie was born I’ve only sent one email and am lucky if I can check my email once a day. The only reason I’m taking time to update the website is because I started at 5:45 this morning when I couldn’t sleep. Hopefully I won’t have too many mornings where I can’t sleep but it worked for this update.

Here are some gratuitous pictures that we thought we’d share from the last few weeks.