Order indicates priority

We've been attending church pretty regularly for a few months now and before that it was about 8 months of attending when it was convenient. I'm certainly not going to talk about religion on this blog because I have my opinions and I know other people have completely different ones but I will say that we have really enjoyed these last few months of committing a couple hours a week to attending church service. Farrah goes to the preschool while we are there. She hates it when we drop her off but she has such a good time and it's fun to go pick her up and watch her from the door playing with all the other kids until she notices us and comes running over.

Our pastor was recently doing a series entitled "Who's on first." Basically speaking on all of the many priorities we have in our lives and trying to achieve "balance." I recently heard someone say that there is no such thing as "balance." But while you may not ever be able to achieve balance, you can achieve harmony. I think I agree with that. Even someone like me who works from home so that I can have "balance" finds herself flustered from time to time.
Anyhoo back to the series at church. One of the things that he said that really stuck out to me was "Order indicates priority." That was one of those "ooooh.... write that down" moments. I thought about it for quite a while. He suggested the reason why we attend church on Sunday mornings is so we can give our first hours of the week to God. Another thing he said was that you can say what your priorities are all day long, but if I followed you around all day and saw what you spent most of your time on and your money on I'd be able to tell what really matters to you. Ughhhh... thoughts started racing through my head about how I spend my days. I know I'm not perfect but I do feel like I'm a pretty kick ass mom, wife, friend, worker, etc..... however I started to think about ways I could improve.

Order indicates priority.

I get up early every morning and make my coffee and head down to the computer to check my facebook, blog updates, people.com... you know, the necessary stuff. If order indicates priority, I'm not starting off my date with much indication of what truly matters to me. So I've started making some small changes and I already feel better. First thing I do when my alarm goes off is spend about 10 minutes praying.... something I've never done. I would show up to church, hear about how people pray, think "oh that's nice," but never do it for myself. After I pray I come downstairs and do 10 minutes of exercise. I'm sure you're laughing right now but I have been so bad about exercising since before I got pregnant with Farrah so 10 minutes a day is a whole lot more than I've done in quite a while. After I'm done with those things, I make my coffee and surf the web until baby girl wakes up. I've been trying to be more "present" with her when I'm present. I somehow inherited a trait from my mother that requires me to be doing something at all times. I don't like to just sit. So just sitting with Farrah and watching her play without accomplishing anything else at the same time has been difficult. But dishes aren't my priority, returning emails aren't my priority. She is.

I know not everyone believes in God like I do, but in my case, I feel like I'm relaying to God what's important to me. In your case, it might just make you feel really good that you started off your day with some things that really matter.

Baby girl is just waking up. I'm off to snuggle with her..... my priority.

Rainy days

I heard once a long time ago that a study was done that found people's favorite season tends to be the one in which they were born. I'm a July baby so I supposedly should like summer the best... couldn't be any more wrong. I think I'm the only person on the planet that dreads summer coming. I'm like my dad in that I hate the heat. I get no enjoyment out of those 100 plus degrees days that go on for weeks without a break. Why anyone likes it I'll never know. Those closest to me know my favorite time of year is fall. I feel like we were kind of jipped out of fall this year because the weather stayed so warm so long. This past week seems like this delay in standard fall/winter weather has caught up with us. Lots and lots of rain. And I love it! When the weather is like this, it gives me an excuse to stay in with my kiddo and just hang out. I can't take her to the park or our backyard and let her run around so instead I get creative and come up with made up games, forts, arts and crafts, whatever I can think of to keep my little lady entertained. They always end up being the most fun days I have with her. They're days that make me stop and think how quickly time is going. Last year at this time she wasn't even walking yet. Now she's walking, running, talking, counting, painting, coloring (lots of coloring.) There are many times when I'm so busy trying to get stuff done that I wish she was a bit more independent and could entertain herself for just 15 minutes so I can tackle the laundry or return a phone call, but then there are days like this particular rainy day where I wished I could just hault time. No more growing for this little girl..... just stay the way you are. You're perfect. So here are some photos from that day. I braved a finger painting activity which actually was fine because the paint is clear and only shows up on special paper. And she loved it! She used every piece of paper it came with and every last drop of paint.
I just checked the 10 day forecast and the next 10 days = sunny. Hmmmmm.... not sure how I feel about that. Outside forts just aren't nearly as cool as living room ones.

More Farrah-isms

Note: Not one of my favorite pics of me, but it's one of my favorites of us together and this is what I typically look like at the end of the day... no makeup, bun, and big clothes. I just want to eat her up sometimes she so adorable (well most of the time)

Here's a few more for you. So.Stinkin.Cute!

She is obsesssed... no really it's a problem... with purple. I have no idea why. Colors were one of the first things we taught her but we taught her all of them at the same time really. No reason she would favor one over the others. The other day we went to go visit a friend and her son who's Farrah's age. He one of those collapsable tunnels and it was red, yellow and purple. Naturally she went to the purple side. As soon as her son or her dogs would go near the purple side she would FREAK OUT. No I don't think you understand... homegirl would shriek and start shaking and get red in the face. How do you explain to someone that your kid is straight obsessed with a color. Fun stuff.

She is now insisting that she has blue eyes... mmmkay... sure they're blue. She has beautiful brown eyes like her daddy and since she's such a daddy's girl I thought if I told her she had brown eyes just like daddy she would change her tune but instead she just pointed to her eye and said "Farrah blue eye" over and over and over until I acknowledged that yes, she has blue eyes.

Speaking of eyes, when we're driving and the sun gets in her eyes she would get fussy and I would say "just a minute baby when we turn the sun will be out of your eyes." So when we turned, she started saying "buh bye eyes... buh bye eyes." I finally corrected her that her eyes weren't going away, the sun was going away. Now everytime she says "buh bye sun eyes... buh bye sun eyes." I die.

Things Remembered

It occurred to me last night as I was watching Farrah play, I need to start writing down all the "little things." Recently I have just been in awe of her and I would be really sad if later on I forgot all of the things she amazed me with. In the moment I think I would never forget something like this, and yet, my memories of her at this time last year are limited. Of course I remember the big stuff like walking and talking, but I don't remember all the little things. And to be honest I don't really remember dates for the big things. So one of my New Year's Declarations (like that better than resolution) is that I am going to do a better job of documenting little miss Farrah.


So may I present you Farrah Lynn at 2 years and 1 month old. Sidenote: It's crazy to me that she's at a point where when someone asks how old she is you tell them in years not months. Time needs to slow down just a little bit so I have time to cope with all this change!

• Weighs just about 30 lbs and is 2' 11.5". She's a big girl. I remember the days when she was so light and picking up my cat required me to bend my legs so I didn't hurt my back and now my cat is nothing and Farrah's the heavy one.



• As evidenced by the last point we don't have any difficulty getting her to eat. Hmmm I wonder where she gets that from? Her favorites are Y-O-G-U-R-T (we have to spell it around here because if we say it she goes crazy), fruit/veggie pouches (the only way we can get her to eat veggies), cheese, bacon, pancakes, any carbs really and bananas. She's even started making this whiny face and saying "hungey, hungey" when she wants food. It doesn't necessarily mean she's hungry because she could've just eaten a fillet and still say that. ( I don't really give her fillet, so hold your comments.) When she finishes eating and wants more she says "mo hungey." Is it bad that all the cute things she says that are completely incorrect English are my favorite things she says and I don't want to correct her? One of the things I want to hold on to most.



• She loves her some Dora. Or Do-Do as she calls her. Although I don't know that this is something I could ever forget. Dora, Boots, Backpack, Swiper, and the rest of the gang are ingrained in my brain at this point. For her birthday and Christmas she got pretty much everything Dora ever made. I should have bought stock in Nick Jr before the holidays. Her Current faves are her Dora lipglosses and Dora underwear. She also loves wearing her Dora PJs and loves coloring in her Dora coloring books. She loves it all really. I try to limit the amount she actually watches because if it were up to her she'd watch it all day, but I must say, she has learned a lot from Dora.



• We're starting to work on potty training. If she was a little older I might be more consistent with taking her to the potty every so often but right now I just remind her when I see her going that she might want to go visit her potty but she always says no. She likes sitting on it and playing on it though when she's not actually going. She's really catching on to things we say and do because one time when she pooped and I took off her diaper I said "OHHHH" really loud when I saw the damage she had created in her diaper and now when I change her diaper on the changing table whether she pees or poops and I take her diaper off, she looks down and goes "OHHHH!" Silly girl.



• Speaking of things she says, her vocabulary has really taken off. She tries repeating all the words we say to her so even if she doesn't know what it means she can still say it. Here are some of my favorites that she doesn't get quite right but are so adorable I won't correct her just yet: Yogurt=Water... don't know why because she used to say it correctly. Water=water so apparently in her mind 1 word means 2 things. Anything she likes she puts the word "mo" in front of to indicate she wants to do something again or wants more of something. For instance if we're running around the house together and we stop she'll say "mo run." ADORABLE. Some of my very favorites came on our recent trip to LA to visit my hubby's family. She has 2 uncles, Uncle Vartan and Uncle John. They became Ah-bee-dah-bah and Ah-buh-dah. In her head that must have been what she heard. And we referred to her Grandma as Nana but she decided to call her Ba-Ba so Ba-Ba it is.



• I know every parent thinks this about their kid but she is incredibly smart. Like incredibly. These may be things that every 2 year old is "supposed to" be able to do, I'm not really sure I'm behind on my parent books but last night I was watching her in complete awe which is what inspired this post. She knows all the letters and numbers. I still haven't got her to say the complete alphabet or count from 1-10 straight although I'm not convinced she doesn't know how, but she recognizes every letter and number which almost seems like it would be more difficult than just reciting back a sequence of sounds. She has this magnet board with all the letters and numbers on it and yesterday she was pulling them off one by one and saying what it was as she was pulling it off. Didn't matter if it was a letter or number. She pulled every last one off and only messed up on one. Then we were reading a book that just has a bunch of small pictures and the matching word. The first page has all the body parts. I would say what it was and she would point to where it was on her body. She knew all of them. Then we got to the page with the animals. She loves animals so I knew that she knew what all of them were so I asked her what sound each of them made and she knew all of that too. She knew all the colors and we recently started working on shapes too. The last page was shapes and I was surprised that she knew all of them because we just started on that one. One of the shapes was a crescent so I didn't think she'd get that one but she looked at it for a minute and said "moon." I was so proud of her I gave her the biggest hug. The things that get a parent excited, I swear.



• As I mentioned in the last point, she loves animals. Her favorite is still cats. Must get that from my mom. Don't get me wrong I love cats, I mean I have 3 so I must, but she looooovvvvesss cats. When she goes to my mom's house she gets excited to see all of her cats (she does animal rescue). She knows all their names and will run over to them and get down to their level and just hug them for as long as they'll let her. It has to be genetic but I think the fact that she has been around cats and a dog since she was born has helped her have no fear of animals.



• She has her moments but for the most part she is such a sweet girl. You can tell she really cares about people and animals. The other day someone was setting off firecrackers behind our house on the bike trail and our dog Jimmy Choo got scared and started wincing and getting all shaky like Chihuahuas do and Farrah went over to him, crouched down and stared at his face and started petting his back and said "Ok Jimmy. Ok Jimmy." I hope all the moments like those are things that stick in my mind for a long time.

Moral of the story, I am so in love with this little girl. I now understand what a Mother's Love truly is. There will always be meltdowns, moments of frustration and tantrums. But in the end she is more important to me than anything else in this world, and every decision I make is to ensure she is safe and that she thrives. I can't wait to watch her grow and see what she's interested in. In the meantime, I'll keep writing so I'll keep remembering.

Top 11 of 2011

Please excuse the appearance of my blog... I'm working on some changes but I made some temporary fixes to get rid of the Christmas background in the meantime.

I came across another mommy blog that was doing a contest where you can win prizes by posting your favorite 11 pictures of you kid(s) that you personally took. While I think the whole prize thing is cool, I mostly just wanted to look back on this amazing year with my kiddo. She's the best. So here they are, in no particular order.

Thanks for the memories 2011.

Family Photos... Warning: Picture Overload!

Just wanted to remind you what our pics from last year looked like.

Just in case you forgot how cute my baby was in 2010.

Oh family pictures how I love you. I'm working to get to a place where I can have our pictures done more often. I would do them every month if I could but that would be a little rough on our budget right now so once a year will have to do. Farrah's birthday is in December so it just happens to work out to get our Christmas pictures/Farrah's birthday pictures done in one swoop. Probably one of the few advantages of having a December birthday :)

For reasons I don't really feel like getting into, I can't post these pictures on facebook and I'm super bummed because they turned out amazing and I want to proudly post them on my page and update my profile pic, but alas, my blog will have to do. Everyone that really matters anyways reads my blog right? ;)

So here they are in all their glory. A huge thank you to Gustavo Fernandez who took these pictures. He has an amazing talent and if you're in the bay area I would definitely recommend him. www.gustavofernandez.com

What's in a name?

2 years ago today, at 3:25pm Farrah Lynn came into the world and forever changed our lives. She has taught me about selflessness, patience, and what true joy is. I thank my lucky stars everyday that God chose us to be her parents. We are truly blessed.

I received a suggestion from my Mother-in-law that I blog about Farrah's name. It hadn't occurred to me that I never really explained how her name came about, and the significance behind it. And what better day to explain how Farrah became "Farrah" than on her birthday.

Soon after we found out I was having a girl, we were up late one night watching TV. On came a show that many of you may know on MTV.... 16 and pregnant. I know... classy, right? It was the first season and a new show and the episode that came on was following the story of a high schooler named Farrah. "Hmmm.... what do you think of the name Farrah?" I asked hubbs. He thought about it for a second and I thought he was going to say it was "Ok" which I knew was code for I hate it but instead he said, "I think I like it!" So we decided to put it on our list. But for some reason after that, no other name seemed to compare. I became drawn to that name. I knew I didn't want to name her something super popular so that she would go to school with 5 other girls with the same name. I also knew I didn't want to name her something totally made up or weird so Farrah seemed like the perfect compromise. Something unique, yet something people would know how to pronounce and have heard of before (although trust me people still manage to butcher it... not sure what rock they've been living under.)

So when I was about 6 months pregnant we decided that the baby that was cookin in my belly was undoubtedly Farrah. I looked up the meaning of the name and it was "ironsmith." First coincidence. It just so happens that Ironsmith is the translation of our last name which is an Armenian name. I've also always had a thing about horse shoes. I believe they bring me good luck so I have a couple horse shoe necklaces that I wear when I need extra luck, so now I think of Miss Farrah as my good luck charm.

Now to back track a little bit. Back in December of 2005 my maternal grandmother passed away. It had been a rough couple years for her and I hadn't seen her in about 2 years and we were very close. Her passing was very sudden and unexpected. She was in the horse business and went to horse shows and was a very successful trainer. She probably had hundreds of horses in her lifetime. So when I was about 8 months pregnant my aunt called and said she heard I was naming our girl Farrah. I said that we were and she said, "did you do that because of Grams? (my grandma)" I didn't know what she was referring to and she then explained that in my Grandma's life with all of her horses, her favorite one was named Farrah. I had never heard of this before so it took me by surprise but I know now that all of this was leading up to the biggest nudge from above when Farrah was born.

I was due November 29th. Farrah had other plans and decided to hold on until just the right moment. Farrah was born December 3rd, 2009. 4 years to the day from the day my Grandmother passed away. That day seemed like everything came full circle and I knew my grandma was there that day looking down with pride at her first great-grandchild.

As if there weren't enough coincidences, when Farrah was about a year old I was thumbing through an US magazine (again, classy I know) and there was an article about the girls from the show 16 and pregnant. They talked about the girl Farrah that started the whole thought process about the name. I had never heard her full name before.... I just knew her as Farrah. Turns our her full name is Farrah Abraham. Abraham is my husbands name.

So there's something special about this name.... about this girl. I know she's destined for great things. So people as all the time if I named her after Farrah Fawcett (who passed away right before she was born.) It's much more complex than that and I don't have time to go into it, so sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say it was someone else. I recently asked my husband, what if we had never seen that show? Or if it didn't exist? What would we have named our daughter. And he replied "Farrah." I think I agree. It just seems like she was destined to have this name.

So happy 2nd birthday my sweet Farrah. You are loved by so many people. Those who have passed on and those who are still with us.