Not so sure about this cold stuff...

Annie experienced her first snow this weekend. Here she is building a mini-snowman on her high chair tray!

And this is her new smile. I think she's mostly excited that she doesn't have to sit on the table in a strange-looking turquoise thing to eat her food anymore! (Thanks, Westons!)

More posts to come this week... and happy 8 months to Annie!

It's Easy to Pay!

I rather like this newfound daily blogging as my outlet, but y'all are going to wish I wasn't blogging every day when you see how many random stories I have!

So several months ago, Matt and I finally broke down and got the internet at our house. It's a little slow, but that's what you get when you buy the cheap internet. I've been paying our bill via snail mail because I just hadn't gotten around to setting up an online account, but when my billing envelope touted "It's easy to pay online! Just visit Ab&c dot com," I thought I'd go ahead and set it up. (For anonymity reasons, let's just call these companies AB&C and BellNorth.) So I visit Ab&c dot com and it tells me I can't set up an online account because I don't have AB&C local or long distance service, which is correct, but completely irrelevant in my opinion. So I email customer service to let them know that it really isn't so easy to pay at Ab&c dot com.

Customer service emails me back to explain that I actually need to go online to bellnorth dot com to request an "online registration code" before I can actually register and when it asks me for the last 4 digits of my social security number, I should use 0000. That should take me to an error page, but then when it asked for my social security number, I should enter 8031 (again....not my SS#). After doing this 3 times, I decide to just use the last 4 digits of my SS# and it ends up working.

Unfortunately, I still have no registration code. It tells me they can call me in 10 minutes and give it to me via my BellNorth phone number, but that if my BellNorth phone number is only used as an account number and not a landline number, I will have to choose a different method to receive my code. Since ours is, in fact, just an account number, I must choose a different method. But there is actually only one other method to receive my code.... in the mail!

So here I wait to get my online code in the mail so that I can then go back online (to Ab&c or Bellnorth?!?) to enter my online code so that I can finally set up my account and pay my bill online. I'm thinking AB&C should probably change their envelope flap to say "It's nearly impossible to pay online at Ab&c dot com so just save your time and energy and keep mailing us a check."

Wouldn't it be cute if I had a picture of Annie talking on her little toy cell phone to post along with my random story? I don't, but here's a picture of Annie enjoying her bath time crab!

In my personal opinion...

Winter squash is best when worn!*

*It just took 2 hours to load the video in the previous post and it's not coming up for me. Can anyone see it?**

**TWO HOURS! That's how dedicated I am to this blog.***

***TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY. Don't get to used to that.****

****Unrelated note: I was grocery shopping today***** with a head-to-toe-pink-clad-Annie and an elderly lady (she was 85. I know because she told me.) stopped me to ask me hold old Annie was and to tell me that I had a cute little brown-eyed boy. I politely pointed out that she was a girl (and decided not to point out that she has blue eyes), but then the lady kept on trying to get her to laugh by saying "Hello Mr. Brown Eyes!" over and over again.

*****Speaking of grocery shopping.... I didn't have a blog at the time this happened, so I didn't really have an outlet for sharing this. I've long heard that when you're pregnant you have "fetus brain" or "pregnancy brain" or something of the sort. Basically that you are forgetful and can't find things, etc. I always kind of figured that it was just an excuse for flighty people to blame their problem on something else for 9 months, but I'm a true believer now.****** (Are you still reading and wondering how the grocery store triggered this random story?) When I was 6 or 7 months pregnant, I went to the grocery store, bought a grocery cart full of groceries and pushed my cart back out to my car in the parking lot. And my driver's side car door was WIDE OPEN. Not just unlocked. WIDE OPEN! As in I just popped open the door, grabbed my purse and took off inside the store without ever thinking to close it....much less lock it! Thankfully my laptop was still sitting in the back seat and I went on my merry way, all the while acting like I meant to leave my door open. It makes loading groceries so much faster, right?

****** If that incident didn't make me a believer in "pregnancy brain," maybe my booking two different roundtrip flights to San Diego for work should have. I went at the beginning of February and apparently booked one flight in December and one in January. When I flew out to SD I never questioned that I had two tickets under my name when I checked in at the Southwest Terminal. Not until I was returning home did I look at the screen and think "Wait...why do I have two tickets?" So I did what anyone would do and I called Southwest to let them know that there was a glitch in the system and it had accidentally booked two roundtrip flights for me to the same location. The nice Southwest lady politely said she would credit my account for one of those flights (and then probably yelled over to the person in the cubicle next to her to laugh about the crazy lady she just helped who booked two seats on the same flight.) A couple weeks later I found both my confirmations in my inbox.

I'm losing track of all the asterisks, but while I was pregnant, I also for the life of me could not remember to put stamps on my outgoing mail. I would always drop my mail in the bin at work and it happened so frequently that eventually the post man would just walk over to my desk and hold out my envelopes for stamps.

I'm a bit chatty tonight, so if you're still reading, you deserve another picture of Annie!

Mom... I just need a little alone time!

Annie recently graduated from her baby bath tub into the big inflatable rubber ducky bath tub (complete with squeaky beak!). This video is from the very first time she was in it and she was enamored with her new bathing spot and her new bath toys. I just laugh when I watch this video.... she totally ignored me the entire time (about 10 minutes!) she was in the tub because she was too busy splashing and playing!

Rewind

My friend Lauren just blogged about Halloween, giving me the freedom to rewind back to November 5th and post these cute pictures I took of Annie on our bed. (Thanks, Lauren!) She was definitely posing for the camera that day! AND I just uploaded all of our pictures from the last 2 months onto the computer, so I should be able to catch you up on Annie within the next week or so.

You know those chores that you just hate doing? For me it's hooking the camera up to the computer to upload pictures. I know...ridiculous. I just timed myself. It took me less than a minute to find the camera and cord, plug it in and upload. My other hated "chore" right now is that I need to update our pre-set thermostat to the right time and update when it's pre-programmed to come on and off. I literally could reach out and touch it from where I'm sitting at the kitchen table right now. But I've decided I won't touch it. Or update it. At least for now. One hated chore for the day is enough, don't you think? I don't want to overexert myself for the day.

On to the pictures....