Two big events today

Today was a special day. The most memorable thing that happened today was that Anabelle said her first prayer. With Maria's coaching, she said our family prayer before we put her down tonight. Another memorable thing that happed was that I got an email from the Fulbright selection committee today saying that they had chosen me as a Fulbright Scholar, which (if I accept it) will send us to Rehovot, Israel for 9 months to work at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Big Eater Bunny!!!

The local YMCA put on an Easter egg hunt yesterday, and being starving students we made sure to go gather some comestibles to tide us over until the next paycheck comes in. Unfortunately, Anabelle didn't understand the dire situation we're in. She was the first kid to the playground where all the eggs were stashed, but as far as egg-gathering goes, she started off bad. First, she'd just met this giant, fluffy bunny that was giving hugs to little kids. (notice how Gabe tries to get the Easter bunny's attention, but fails because Anabelle monopolizes his attention)

She was in love, even after he kicked her and knocked her over.

Then, she looked at the eggs on the ground first like she didn't know what to make of them. Then it seemed to click, as if she realized "Hmm... big plastic eggs on the ground... I bet there is candy in there!" Then she dove for one. In stead of gathering a whole bucket-full first, she insisted on cracking open the egg, trying to open the candy wrapper, then giving up and shoving the whole thing, wrapper and all, into her mouth. This process occurred over and over again... I think she managed to get a few eggs. While other adults weren't looking, we shamelessly threw a few more eggs in the bucket. However, it all ended when she saw the bunny again, and went to monopolize his time and hugs, until she drove him away. She chased him a while until I intervened...

Tori is Two too!!

So, Anabelle's cousin, Tori, celebrated her birthday this past Friday. As we got ready for the party we told Anabelle that Tori was now six years-old. This bothered Anabelle, a lot, a whole lot. She kept saying "no, no, no, Tori two. Not six." She repeated this several times and since we would not agree with her she burst into tears. We finally appeased her by telling her that we would settle the question of Tori's age by asking Tori herself how old she was when we got to her party. Once at the party she was having too much fun eating cake, dancing to High School Musical karaoke and playing dress-up with Tori's old ballerina outfit.
Tori and all her guest had a blast singing to HM and Anabelle was quite the disco queen (she gets that from her mom).

Two!!

Over the past few months, Anabelle has been learning what birthdays are: 1) They usually occur at the community rooms for our apartment complex, 2) they mean games and contain food that is oh so good, yet that she can only handle a few bites, 3) many of her friends are there to play with her, and 4) there are lots of toys there that she cannot touch. It has come to the point that often as we walk past the community rooms that she points at them and says, "birthday? birthday? Where'd it go?" Anyway this past week as we told Anabelle that her birthday was coming up, she would get excited. When it came on Saturday, she loved it even though it didn't really contain any of the four points previously described. Anyway, to explain, we were all really sick this past weekend (especially Maria). We'd promised to take her to Sea World all during the previous week, so since she was acting fine (only had a runny nose) and I was feeling okay on Saturday morning, Anabelle and I went there for a few hours in the morning. Anabelle loved it there. When we first got there, I took out the map and showed it to her, and asked while pointing at the various exhibits on the map, "What do you want to see first?" So of all of the animals at Sea World, what did she want to see first (and keep asking for after we saw them)? Yes, you guessed it, the Anheizer-Busch horses! So the first thing she saw on her first trip to Sea World was a horse... go figure....

After that we visited the penguins, the beluga whales, polar bears, walruses, and dolphins. Anabelle loved them all. Her favorite moments were: 1) watching the penguins and then trying to walk like them, 2) watching the video in the arctic exhibit, and 3) showing the dolphins to her new freind, "Dude" (a stuffed turtle I bought her that she promptly named after the turtles in Finding Nemo). She loved Sea World and was really sad to leave... good thing I had bought a year pass that day!


We had originally planned on inviting all of her friends over for cake, but since Maria was really sick (and Anabelle and I weren't 100% well either) we canceled it. However, to not have her miss out on her birthday, we got her a little ice cream turtle, put candles on it and let her go.

She loved her ice cream turtle, but she made sure to tell Dude "No touch ice cream!" We also let her go at the presents. She got several Curious George books, but what she loved the most was a big stuffed Curious George from Grandma and Grandpa... Dude didn't get nearly as much attention the rest of the night.


Anyway, it was a great birthday, despite us all being sick. The only sad part was that this morning as she woke up, and walked out to the front of our apartment with BaBa, George and Dude in her arms, she went to our table, pointing at it and said in a very sad, longing way, "Where'd the birthday go?"
Anyway, so if you see Anabelle now, ask her how old she is, and she promptly spout out "TWOOO!!"

My birthday

This post is mostly for myself, so I can remember how special my birthday was this year. So Feb 26th was my birthday. More so than any other year, I really felt cared about this year on that day. I just had many people do thoughtful things for me. All of my family members contancted me that day, like usual, but old friends also wished me a happy birthday (e.g. Craig Thulin, Marco Antonio, etc.). In addition, the undergrads that work for me also signed a card and put some really thoughtful comments in it. One of them (Paul) also baked a whole bunch of cupcakes for me. The best part of the day, though was the afternoon/evening, when Maria surprised me by taking me out to go roller blading in Pacific Beach. We also ended up playing with Anabelle in a little park near there. It was a lot of fun.
We then dropped Anabelle off a friend's house and then went out to eat. After picking Anabelle up, we had a little cake, which Anabelle loved helping to blow out the candles and eat. All in all, it was a great day!

Maria and I have finally succumbed.... thanks to the National Science Foundation

Over the past few years, Maria and I have scoffed at all of the people shutting themselves out from everyone else by putting those hideous white iPod plugs in their ears. Even when I won an iPod nano 2 years ago at a scientific conference, I immediately sold it, saying "my PDA does the same and more, and we need the money anyways to pay for diapers!" (I won it right before Anabelle was born). Well, I got some funding from the National Science Foundation that provides me a small amount of money to buy supplies, equipment, books, or anything pertaining to my research. Well, with one of my purchases we got a $150 gift certificate for use at the online Dell computers store. However, almost anything of interest to us at the store costs much more than that (e.g. computer monitors (>$200), a canon rebel camera (>$500), etc.). Then we noticed their little menu of mp3 players, and we started thinking... Maria goes to the gym 3-5 times each week and she'd love to listen to music and/or audiobooks during her workouts... In addition, I have a program that takes text from the internet and generates an audio file, as if someone was reading it to you, and so in my nerdiness I was thinking "I could take scientific journal articles, online textbooks, and books from LDS library and listen to them while biking to school, watching Mulan and Toy Story 2 with Anabelle (for the 10^nth time), or while washing the endless pile of dishes in our sink!" So we blew the $150 on two mp3 players. Maria wanted one with which she could look at pictures, so she got the Creative Zen V plus, while I got a bare-bones Creative Zen Stone. We love them, but Anabelle has felt left out. She keeps saying "Mine iPod! Mine!", even after we keep telling her that they are not iPods, rather less trendy and more reasonably priced and more versatile mp3 players! I'm surprised that she is almost 2 and still can't tell the difference between an iPod and a Creative Zen mp3 player! If she keeps up at this rate, she'll never fit in with the cool kids.

Anabelle, Tori and me playing SingStar...

There's a karaoke game for the playstation, that's kind of like Dance Dance Revolution. At Bennett and Jen's place tonight we all rocked out to songs by Erasure, Cindi Lauper, RunDMC, Madonna and Starship. Anabelle especially loved sucking on the mic and occasionally singing "row row row your boat" or "rain rain go away." Maria, as usual, "couldn't sing" but still managed to get a higher score than anyone else, while I just caused everyone else pain. For that reason, you may wish to shield the ears of any youthful listeners to protect their hearing.

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for the Valentines Day Gift!!

When we checked the mail tonight, Anabelle was excited to see a package. She made sure we knew it was hers by pointing at it and saying "Bababelle's!" I helped her open up the package, and when Anabelle saw a small, but very nicely wrapped gift inside, she went nuts. She told me that the envelope with a card was mine (and insisted on it even after I showed her that it had her name on it... kids... jump to conclusions before even reading first) and began to open the Valentine's day gift sent by Grandma and Grandpa (even though it was Feb 10th today... I guess she didn't want to wait four more days). It was a really cute book on family love. We read it together as a family and had a great evening. Thanks Mom and Dad!