Annie loves Mac n Cheese

We have been trying to make much more of an effort to let Annie feed herself lately. Which is not very easy, considering: a) she's very messy, b) she frequently spits out her food, c) she frequently throws her food, and d) I'm a bit anal retentive, so having food thrown all over kind of makes my skin crawl. But we're working on that.

The pics of Annie eating were taken on last Thursday, I had stayed home with her because she had an ear infection and some other stuff, so we'd thought we'd relax for the day. At lunch time I made her a box of Annie's Mac n Cheese - nice organic, whole wheat pasta. And boy is it good. So while we were eating, she was in her high chair and I was sitting next to her, I was starving, and these shells and cheese were pretty tiny, so as I got to the end of my bowl, I may have just stuck the whole bowl up to my mouth to shovel in the remaining shells like a pig. Well guess who was watching, because no sooner did I lower the bowl from my mouth when I see Bananas' bowl heading straight towards her face with shells streaming everywhere! I've just learned a very good lesson about little eyes watching and repeating what they see! And for the rest of the meal, that's how she ate her mac n cheese. I guess it could have been worse.

The top pic, you can kind of make out Annie and mommy getting close to some birds in Davis Square. The last time I mentioned Davis I talked about all the hipsters around. This time, the picture is so far away because immediately to Annie and Karen's right were these amazon hippie leftovers in full on parkas (it was 70 and sunny that day...), with an entire loaf of bread feeding the pigeons. It's always something...

Playdate in GP

I've been patiently waiting for my co-blogger to update some of these posts... but it's been a week! So I'm going to make up what happened.

When we were in Michigan, Annie got to meet Mommy's friend's niece, Lydia. Annie and Lydia played, chatted, and had a great time. In the second pic from top you can see Lydia slapping Annie on the back, Annie just told a really funny joke. And in the bottom photo Annie is asking Lydia where she got her earrings.

Annie + water = loads of fun!

We were in Detroit last weekend for the wedding of our good friends Carmie and Steve. The wedding was great, and the reception was at the Detroit Athletic Club, where you probably remember is where Karen and I had our reception. I have some video to post later, so I'll cover that in another post.

Annie had such a great time with Grandpa and Grandma Drummy! She is such a champ, she loves everyone, and Grandma Drummy even got her to nap for almost 5 hrs one day, soundly defeating my previous record! Karen and Annie flew out Thursday morning, and I joined them Friday evening. The weather was beautiful, and Annie got this new bathing suit!

On Saturday before the wedding we took her to the park, where they have this great children's splash area. There's a small wading pool, and then all these sprinklers and other fun things that spray water out! I'm happy to report that Annie loves the water. I can't tell you how many times she got sprayed in the face, and she just laughed it off! At one point Annie and I were under this sprinkler just getting drenched and she's laughing the whole time. I think showers might be in her future soon! And she even put her head under water... Which, wasn't exactly her doing... She was sitting on my lap in the wading pool and I looked away for a second and next thing I know her head is under water! I quickly pulled her back up, and there was a smile on her face! That's one easy going kid!

Leftover

I don't know how I forgot to post this photo! It's our favorite from the weekend of Annie in her lifevest before heading out for a boat ride.

A day in the life of Annie Bananas

So people ask me all the time, what's a typical day like for Annie Bananas? Well, there's two answers- there's a typical week day where AB goes to daycare and we go to work, and then there's the weekends. I'll cover both.

The photo above is from a week day, you can tell because: a) I don't wear suits on the weekends(I'm not Alex P. Keaton), and b) AB has her pants hiked up, her keys, and her purse -- she means business! During the weekdays, AB has been waking up in the 5-5:30am territory. Which is not ideal. So what we usually do is one of us makes a bottle and gives it to her in the crib, and then we hope that after she finishes the bottle she will fall back asleep until 7. This is 60% effective. If this doesn't work, Annie comes into bed with mom and dad and usually is playing in between us while hitting one of us on the head with her hands and kicking the other one. Or she's standing, pounding her hands against the headboard laughing the whole time. Sesame Street starts at 6, and that will semi-entertain her, but around 6:40ish Elmo comes on, and the minute she hears him start to sing she pays very close attention. I think her favorite part is when Dorothy asks Elmo a question and Elmo asks a baby (if you haven't seen it, it's actually pretty funny because no matter what baby Elmo asks, the answer is always the same -- nothing!).

We then shower, taking turns watching as Annie plays on the floor, crawling around either trying to get into the bathroom, exit the room, or climb up the plant stand. Fun times! Then one of us takes her to daycare, which is about a ten minute drive from our house, and after dropping her off parks at the T station. The other person picks her up and brings her home. At daycare Annie gets breakfast, lunch and a snack. They do a lot of art projects, sing songs, and lots of playing. There are lots of toys that Annie gets to play with there. Not to mention they have these padded areas where she can climb around and bounce all over.

We usually get home around 6 from daycare, then it's a mad rush to make dinner (I should say, Karen make dinner), feed Annie, bath (every other day), and then bed around 7pm. Annie usually is no problem going to bed, which is nice, because after she's down then we eat and hang out until our bed time.

On the weekends... She has been following the same wake up schedule, and we still try giving her a bottle and cross our fingers (and close our ears) that she will fall back asleep. We're pretty relaxed though, so if she wants to get up, one of us gets up with her and we play. On the weekends AB usually takes two, two-hour naps. One in the morning, about 2-3 hrs after she gets up, and then one in the mid afternoon. We go for lots of walks and go to the parks. She loves to go to the grocery store with Mom, and she's getting pretty fond of Costco (the samples don't hurt either!).

4th Festivities -- and BIG news

We spent the 4th up in NH with the Kattmans. The weather held off, somewhat, and only rained for a few hours in the afternoon. Which gave us the perfect opportunity to take a nap, very needed since AB got up at 5:30 that morning... It was a lot of fun in NH on the lake and I took some video of the fireworks. Oh yeah, and I did this all on my super iPhone!

And now for the big news... On Sunday Annie took her first unassisted steps!!!! Wow! And the best part was she did it in front of both of us, and we didn't have to hear that she took them at daycare and we missed them! We worked on walking for the rest of the weekend. She usually will take a few steps on her own now, and then fall to ground and resume her very fast crawl.

No work = Fun day in the city!

We had a great day off Friday, both Karen and I were off for the holiday. And, it wasn't raining! So we took Annie downtown to do some shopping and of course, grab some lunch. We were in Back Bay and Karen had some errands to run. She convinced me to go by agreeing that we could get greek food for lunch since I had been jonesing for a gyro. We went to Steve's, http://www.stevesgreek.com, on Newbury street. They have some of the best greek food in the city, and it's very reasonable - which is great. We thought we were in the clear since Annie had fallen asleep along the way. But of course, right when the food came guess who woke up! Annie Bananas. So we gave her some fries and some of our meals and she was a champ. Afterwards we got some ice cream and walked through a farmer's market. We had a lot of fun and were so happy to be outside without any rain!

I fought AT&T ... and I WON

It's been a bit touch and go at the Ferguson house this week. As you may remember, I received an iPhone for Father's Day, however, there were some kinks to work out. Mainly that since Karen was not listed on our account she had to open a new one and also received new pricing on the iPhone. So now we were stuck with 3 lines, and 2 different plans. Last Monday (6/22) I thought we had everything worked out, and we had been told by AT&T that all we had to do was: 1) I needed to order an iPhone under my name, pay full price, and then they would credit me the difference, 2) Karen had to return the one she bought (which still has come in btw), and then finally we both had to go into the store and we could get Karen on the account and receive the discount that she receives through work. Sounds simple enough, right? Well since I'm blogging about this, I think you know I ran into some hiccups along the way...

I called Monday to see if the credit had been posted since I picked up my phone last Friday. The first representative I spoke to informed me that there were no notes on the account, and there were no early upgrades or rebates for iPhones. I asked for a supervisor. Same thing. I asked for another one. Same thing. We went back and forth, and I was floored at their treatment of me. No one would bother to pull the call and listen to the fact that I did exactly what their person told me to do, and why should I be penalized? Now I had to go return the phone, and be without one, or go through that hassle? I don't think so. So I asked to speak to the next supervisor, who was the "Office Manager" but doesn't take inbound calls. Someone will call me back within 24-72 hrs. Wow, what great service. So for the past few days I've been readying my case, waiting for this person to call me. My main points are as follows:

1) I did what I was told, and it's the company's responsibility to make sure its employees know their policies and make up for their mistakes, etc.

2) I would need a new phone, so they offered to give me a discount - why since they wouldn't give me the credit on the iPhone? And why not just give me the credit so I can keep the iPhone.

3) If I returned the iPhone, they could no longer sell it as new and would take a loss on the resale, so again, why not just let me keep it.

4) What about the accessories I've purchased, opened, and used, why should I be out that money as well?

I have a whole sheet full of talking points for this person, and today I learned I won!!! How did I learn that, not because someone called. I happened to log into my account thinking I should probably make sure our bill is paid so they don't try and use that against me when imagine my surprise when June was paid for and there was a remaining credit, that equaled the price difference I had been looking for.

The main point of this post is that there is always a way to get what you deserve, and when you are dealing with someone in a call center, you have to know how to work the system. Here are some tips:

1) There's always something that can be done -- Never accept the first answer from the first person.

2) Be polite, but firm. Always write down the name, and time you spoke to someone, and make sure they know you are writing that information down. That alone will improve your chances of getting better service by at least 40%.

3) Keep going up the chain until you get the answer you want. Two reasons, the first, because you never accept the first answer, and secondly, because the more people you speak with, the higher the chance one of them is either going to make a mistake you can use to your advantage, or give you what you want.

4) You know you've gone high enough up the chain when the employee starts getting cagey about tranferring you to the next person or giving you their name. This is paydirt, make sure you follow through.

I'm over the rain

This has been our life for at least the past month. It has been non-stop and unrelenting rain, rain, fog, rain, and more rain for as long as I can remember... It's impossible to get out of bed in the morning, and it really stinks! Last night at 4am we were awakened to the sound of not only a thunderstorm, but hail. And I'm talking about some big pieces of hail raining down...

The building in the middle is where I work, and you can't even see the top of it. Also, for some reason my building has its own weather system, as you get closer you become engulfed in fog and it's raining. Weird. I think that happened in Ghostbusters... Who you gonna call?

Oh yeah, and here's the weather for today:

You may need that ark: Heavy rains, flooding in forecast
July 2, 2009 05:04 AM
By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff
Eastern Massachusetts is getting a pounding from the rain today, with thunderstorms hurling lightning to the ground and dumping buckets of rain. Roads are turning into ponds and some small streams are expected to overtop their banks.

The National Weather Service is warning of heavy downpours and urban and small stream flooding in eastern Massachusetts as an area of thunderstorms rolls into southeastern Massachusetts and the Boston area.
Meteorologist Charlie Foley says the boomers could bring one to two inches of rain by mid-morning.

The weather service issued a flood advisory saying that the rain could produce ponding in low-lying areas – including the areas under highway overpasses -- and push some small streams to their brims and even cause minor flooding.

The weather service said that just before 8 a.m. thunderstorms were moving northeast into southeastern Massachusetts and the Boston area, while other thunderstorms were already sweeping through north central Massachusetts.

In Hopkinton, firefighters battled a two-alarm fire this morning as a big storm rolled through. The attic fire was at 18 Daniel Shays Road, a fire department dispatcher said. In Upton, a man was reported hit by lightning. In Medway, lightning started a fire at the Medway Community Church at 193 Main St., when it hit the steeple, a fire dispatcher said.
Trooper Thomas Murphy, a State Police spokesman, said Route 20 at the Route 122 overpass in the area was flooded, disabling cars. Otherwise, he said, there were no reports of fender benders caused by the deluges.

"There will be some slowdowns with the heavy rains, obviously, and the rush hour commute," said Murphy.

The forecasters warned that the storms were producing frequent cloud-to-ground lightning and urged people to get inside or in a car or, if caught outside, to stay away from isolated tall objects like trees and avoid open areas like ballfields or golf courses.

The forecasters say more rainfall can be expected through this evening, with some areas getting up to four inches or more in a brief period of time.

I'm a walkin' yessirree

For her birthday Annie received this walker from Magga and Pappa. As you can see, she's taken to it quite well. What you can't see it that she only has one speed behind that thing, and it's a full on sprint! In the third pic from the top, you can kind of tell, basically, I took that pic as she was coming full-steam ahead at me! She loves running behind that, and so far the collateral damage to the apartment has been minimal. Although when Lillie was here, there was a moment when Annie had Lillie pinned against the wall as they duked it out over who got to use the stroller.

I'm sure we'll get lots of use out this, and if the weather ever clears up I bet it'd be great on the grass, where she couldn't sprint as fast!