Hello, again, friend of a friend.

So...it's been awhile since I posted....here's my life in a nutshell up til now and

we'll carry on from there, 'kay? You don't have a choice but I wanna make you feel like you do.

2009 -

- October-ish - got my ileostomy removed and my intestines reconnected. Booyah. Yay.

- November-Decemberish - moved in with Tony, Miranda and Sadie in their basement. Set up a nice lil pad for myself.

- Recuperated and enjoyed "on my own" living.

2010

- December - went to Gatlinburg with Sam to celebrate living/Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever

- February - Went on a scavenger hunt and ended up engaged - my Sammy is very creative :)

- April 02, 2010 - GOT MARRIED. See, Sam? I remember the date!

- Summer 2010 - hung out, was pregnant, went to Canada, had fun

- September 8th, 2010 - Had the most beautiful little girl in the world. Her name is Abigail Margaret and she's perfect. She got borned at 1:23am and weighed 5 pounds 11 ounces, 19 inches long. This is her (at birth...taken by the lovely Aunt Alex). She looks kind of like a space alien (like all babies do) but a particularly beautiful one :)

This is her proud daddy holding her after her first bath (2 weeks):

And this is her most recent photo (9 months old):

She gets very animated about her food, as you can see. She's usually pretty pacified and calm. VERY HAPPY. I don't know what we did to get such a happy little girl but we did something right....or very lucky. I'm banking on the latter, honestly. She eats well, hardly ever fusses or cries, and loves talking to herself. She especially loves talking herself to sleep.

So the past nine months have been pretty much baby oriented with some news here and there but mainly our lives are baby-centric and we are PERFECTLY happy with th

at. We've had our lives get way too interesting way too quickly and now that I'm completely recovered and able to have a beautiful healthy little girl, it definitely p

uts things into perspective. Such as, boredom can be AWESOME. We LOVE boring days. Abby is very adept at entertaining herself or playing with us so if we have things to do

, she's cool in her playpen but we bring her out a lot to play with us, too. Sam's been hard at work but they have a definite bond that is solid no matter how many hours he puts in. It's precious!

Big non-baby news:

- Sam got a promotion at work

- I got into college (English major)

Haha - yeah, that's about it. But if you've read any of the previous posts on this page (especially the rambling morphine-laced ones written by yours truly), you will understand how blissfully happy and simple our lives are right now. We have a wonderful group of

friends, supportive family members, and a great life. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I think with

my accident we're more appreciative than we would have bee

n otherwise so I wouldn't trade what's happened to me for anything

too - it's given me a sense of gratitude for all that I have/have been blessed with.

Here's more pics of Abby (not that you asked for it but she's cute and it's my damn blog). This one is of her at about 3 months with the dachshund sweatshirt her Aunt Katie got her (because we have 2 dachshunds):

This was her very first swim a few weeks ago at her Boppa and Emmy's house (my parents). LOVES the water. She gets super excited and splashes.

This one is very near and dear to my heart. My husband is a HUGE Thor fan and at Free Comic Book Day, the uber talented and wonderful Tressina Bowling did this for us:

Awesome, huh? LOVE IT. I have about 50,000 more pics but it'd take forever to post them. Just accept that my baby is cute/awesome. She solves things LOGICALLY. It's pretty amazing. Ok, I'm just being bias but I love bragging about her - everything she does is phenomenal. I hope I'm not one of those mothers that can't take off the rose tinted glasses and tell when their kid is being a little bastard. Sam's more pragmatic than I am so he's my litmus test for such behavior. I think maybe I need to go to Chuck E Cheese where Katie works and sit down for an hour so I can tell how NOT to parent because, My Lord, that place is RIFE with examples. Granted, there are good parents in there but mainly it's just people who don't want to watch their children and expect the employees of CEC to do it for them.

The main thing I've heard with parenting is to be consistent, be firm, be clear, and maintain a united front as parents. Drives me nuts to see parents keep sayin over and over "if you do that ONE MORE TIME..." and the kid does it and then they repeat "if you do that ONE MORE TIME...." Yeah and what? All your kid is learning is that you're a spineless pansy that won't discipline them at all. Katie's kick ass because when she'd watch her nephew Keller, he'd act up and she'd take him out of whatever place they were at and take him home. He's an angel and a really neat kid. See? Cause and effect.

There's this one thing called "affirmative parenting" or some such bullshit. Basically you don't EVER say "no" to your child. Uh...no. No no no no no. My kid is going to hear NO so many times it'll make her head spin. The theory behind this "yes" parenting is that kids don't know what want vs. need is so if they ask for something, they must NEED it because they don't understand wanting. So...if little Junior asks for a chocolate sundae for dinner, he must NEED it, right? He wouldn't ask for it because it's a sugary treat, correct? Yeah...whatever. Making your kid the boss or your best friend seems to be the worst possibly way to go about things. We'll see - I'm still young in this parenting stuff but honestly? A lot of it is common sense. Don't put the baby in the washing machine. Don't leave the kid at home alone. Don't put the kid in a hot car with the windows up alone. You'd be surprised how many people don't know these things....their parents probably used affirmative parenting....

Alright, my back is out and I need to lie down. More news later on how my experience with reiki healing goes (Mom says it's a good idea and she's done it - so why not? Can't hurt me anymore than I'm already hurting...stupid back pain).

NIGHT!