I hope everyone enjoyed a very happy Christmas. We are in Maryland celebrating our very first Christmas here since moving to the East Coast 6 years ago and it will be our last Christmas here because we are in the process of moving to Colorado.

Aunt Linn and Aunt Libby were with us for Christmas, making the holiday feel very warm and special.

Santa and family were very generous this year, as with every year, but Abby definitely made out like a bandit more so than anyone else. Besides a lot of cute new outfits, her big ticket items included a Bounce and Spin Zebra, a Fisher-Price Learning Home, a giant version of her beloved La-La (a Boyds Baby Tickles the Lion), and - her favorite so far - a Parents Young at Art Drawing Toy.

A pretty tasty, healthy, quick and easy weeknight meal idea.

I had 2 large chicken breasts leftover from earlier this week and I wanted to feed 4 adults and a toddler. This recipe made it possible. It was served with sauteed broccoli (florets, thinly sliced onions, Tastefully Simple Garlic Garlic, sauteed in vegetable oil and a pinch of salt) and low sodium chicken rice pilaf (box mix).

Measurements are approximate.

2 large boneless chicken breasts
2 eggs
2 Tbsp milk
1 C sliced almonds
1/2 bundle of curly parsley
1 C Italian bread crumbs
1/4 C shredded parmesan cheese (optional)
1 tsp garlic powder (optional)
1 Tbsp Tastefully Simple Fiesta Dip Mix (optional - adds some spice)
salt and pepper (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Beat eggs and milk together in a shallow bowl.

Combine almonds, parsley, bread crumbs, and any optional ingredients together in a food processor. Pulse until almonds are roughly chopped and ingredients are well mixed. Pour into a separate shallow bowl.

Butterfly the chicken breasts and cut into manageable-size cutlets. Salt and pepper each cutlet, if desired. Dip each cutlet in egg mixture and then generously coat with almond breading. Place on baking sheet covered with aluminum foil or baking stone.

Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until breading is golden brown. Let rest 5-10 minutes before serving.

Before...


...and After

Today, Abigail had her very first haircut! Thanks to some quick tips (don't layer, just trim the edges) from Ms. Betty - Abby's teacher from her school in MD - I felt that I could attempt the cut rather than taking her to a salon.

Abigail was a really good sport about the whole thing and I was pretty happy with the final result.

At minimum, it took care of the flop of hair that kept getting into her eyes.

We are at the halfway point of our relocation family separation. While Paul is still here in Maryland, he is trying to sell our house in Clarksburg. Because of the holidays, the house traffic has dwindled. Is that a sign that there is no interest in the house? The house is priced wrong? That we're in the absolute worst time to sell the house? Maybe, maybe not.

The walk-throughs have received good feedback. For over a half acre in Montgomery County, the house is sitting on some good land. We got the house for a steal!!! And it is priced lower than we had purchased. Great location, convenient to shopping. A 3-car garage, massive gourmet kitchen, and my all-time favorite octagon shaped living room with dramatic windows, letting in loads of sun, facilitating my need to photosynthesize.

I love this house and I hope someone else will love it just as much.

Anyone interested in this house? PLEEEEAAAASE.....

You are in the audience at a small, intimate theatre, watching a magic show. The magician hands a pack of cards to a random member of the audience, asks him to check that it's an ordinary pack, and would he please give it a shuffle. The magician turns to another member of the audience and asks her to name a card at random. "Ace of Hearts," she says. The magician covers his eyes, reaches out to the pack of cards, and after some fumbling around he pulls out a card. The question to you is what is the probability of the card being the Ace of Hearts?

Read this very interesting debate touching on risk management and the effects of mathematical thinking mixed with human factor common sense.

I just spent the last two days facilitating a review team analyzing risks of a proposal. Two days of identifying risks in over a dozen areas ranging from program management to technical solutions and cost, yet no examination into the probability of the risk occurrence. The final assessment is the essentially the result of subjective opinions and the reviewers' "gut-feel," which is why only very seasoned veterans compose the review team!

With the skill-set of the employees, experience of the management team, and lessons learned from past performance, shouldn't a program be evaluated to be in a better state than perhaps a "green" program with no established means of handling similarly identified risks?

Our company is trying to instill more process and mathematical formulas into these reviews in order to come up with a better way to derive the overall program risk. I just do not see how that is possible without losing a lot of the human factor input in the assessment.

My daughter got tired of waiting on me. Apparently my skills aren't up to par. So see what she is able to do on her own, now!

She did indeed start peeling those oranges entirely on her own. Her facial expressions are priceless.


Orange from Cecilia Newell on Vimeo.

Abby made this at school. It is a Christmas gift for Paul and me. She chose the paint colors, poured them into the glass ornament, and inverted it to create the patterns.

Isn't it beautiful?!

So many words and sounds have started to pour out of Abigail's mouth. At 17 months, she is putting 2 to 3 words together to construct sentences. For the last two weeks we had the following exchange a few times:

"Outside?"

"You want to go outside?"

"Go...outside...snow."

"Yes, snow. Brrr."

"Brrr."

"You have to put on a coat first."

"Mine coat." [points at my coat] "Mama coat."

"Yes, I will put on my coat too."

Abby's latest favorite game has been identifying what's mine and what's hers. I take her lion and say, "Mama's lion!" and hug him close. She grabs him from me and says, "No. Mine La-La." She has not learned "my," but she picked up "mine" from daycare, obviously. But it's neat to see her using it as a possessive pronoun, replacing "my," rather than solely as a direct object that "mine" is.

90% of her language progress I attribute to daycare. She is quite a bit behind her classmates, many of whom are closer to 2 years old, so they are very verbal and I know Abby is trying to mimic and catch up.

Of the nonstop words and sounds that come out of Abby's mouth, though, we can only understand 10-15%, yet it's obvious when she looks at us that she expects we should understand 100%.

Oh, an interesting story about Abby finding different ways to get her ideas across....she came to me in the kitchen last weekend and very clearly said, "Juice?"

I understood her, but was just stunned for a second because it was the first time she had used it. I didn't react immediately.

We blinked at each other for a couple more seconds. Thinking I probably didn't understand her, she repeated it louder, "Juice?!" This time, adding the sign language for "juice."

"Oh, you want juice?" As I opened the fridge, she chuckled like Woody Woodpecker, telling me she was satisfied that her message had been clearly understood.

My office held a book fair last year and I found a set containing four of these "My Chunky Friend Story Book" books - the ladybug, elephant, tiger, and fish.

I bought them for Abby who was 6 months old at the time. She liked chewing on the ladybug book.

Today, I usually have to read all four of these books at least 2 times each at a sitting. Her favorite is still the ladybug book, but mainly because the ladybug and her friends join hands to form a ring to dance and sing and we always sing a song on that page.

Each book has a nice rhythm and rhyme. The pictures are vibrant and happy, yet uncomplex. I can see why it appeals to my daughter so much.

If only I can find these books locally, I think they would make fantastic gifts for infants/toddlers! So far, I can only find them through amazon.com.uk.

I'll definitely be attending all book fairs with an eye out for these great books and if anyone out there has spotted them, please share the location.

The Cure-All Ointment is really what Simmons Paw Paw Ointment ought to be called. Paw Paw - I found out - is what the papaya fruit is called in Australia/New Zealand.

My brother recently spent some time in Australia and brought home a tub of Lucas' Paw Paw Ointment. He wanted us to try it on Abby to see if it could help her eczema condition. Apparently, EVERYONE in Australia uses Paw Paw Ointment for just about EVERYTHING related to the skin. Sounded like quite an exaggeration, so I Googled it and found this:

Papaw or Papaya we all know as a delicious fruit, but the beneficial qualities of Papaw greatly aid the skin.

Lucas Papaw Ointment may be used as a local topical application on the following:

Abscesses and boils
Bruises and burns
Carbuncles and chafings
Cuts and cysts
Dry and Cracked skin on hands and feet
Gravel rash and heat rash
Insect stings and mosquito bites
Open wounds and pimples
Scalds and sunburn
Swelling associated with injury
Splinters and thorns
Tinea and whitlow
Nappy rash and cracked nipples
Temporary relief of the symptoms of dermatitis and eczema

We tried it on Abby's legs and within a couple of days, we found her legs to be as soft and moist as I could have ever possibly dreamed! And this just after moving to Colorado in November with its 0% humidity.

I was convinced...however, I wanted to find a different version of the Paw Paw Ointment which did not contain Petroleum Jelly. I figure the less non-natural stuff she ingests, the better. Since the will be applied all over he body, including face and hands, she was sure to get some in her mouth sooner or later.

We found Simmons Paw Paw Ointment online at ecobabe.com.au for a fantastic price, even with shipping/handling to the U.S. I ordered 2 tubs.

Simmons' all-natural ingredients are: 51mg/g fresh fermented pawpaw Rhus succedanea wax, glycerine, canola oil, hydrogenated castor oil, beeswax, corn starch

Abby's eczema has not returned at all on her arms and hands. She still has a habit of scratching her knees if they're exposed, so sometimes she will get a rash after a scratch during a diaper change, but liberal Paw Paw application or a small amount of 1% hydrocortisone takes care of it immediately.

She recently had a bad diaper rash incident because of cheap diapers and the rash wouldn't go away with our normal Desitin or Boudreaux's Butt Paste. It got to the point where she ended up with painful blisters. Two applications of the Paw Paw Ointment and the blisters were healed! The rash had completely disappeared after just ONE application.

I have been using the Ointment for chapped lips, dry cuticles and knuckles, and bags under my eyes! The stuff is fantastic.

What I like most about Simmons' vs Lucas' Paw Paw ointment is that it smells delicious - not so Vaseline/Carmex-y - and it is a softer consistency that absorbs into the skin a lot quicker, which is essential with a toddler constantly on the go.

Maybe Santa will bring us a couple of tubs of Simmons Paw Paw Ointment for Christmas this year.

When the water was draining after Abby's bath tonight, I heard, "Clink! Chunk!" Followed by Abby going, "Uh-oh...."

Looking down, I saw these parts at the bottom of the tub.

Uh-oh, indeed. The knob that you pull to redirect water up and into the shower head had been pulled off by Abby and the connecting parts had fallen out of the tub faucet.

I didn't even know what you called this assembly. Luckily, my dad was able to fit all the parts back together in a jiffy while I was getting Abby dressed.

Meanwhile, I felt compelled to get educated on what exactly this was, so that I would not have the "uh-oh" feeling again if it were to happen in the future. Google results taught me that what Abby had disassembled was called a tub shower diverter and the parts are put together like the figure below.


The trick is knowing which way to insert the black valve. The valve works by allowing water pressure to push against the hole, forcing it out slightly to stop the water from flowing. Therefore, the valve needs to be inserted so that water can get between it and the spout gate (the little plastic white cap connected to the stem).

Being an engineer, I of course took apart the diverter and played with it to make sure I could put it back together again properly....and I did.

Nice. I feel prepared now.

A few weeks ago, I told you about Abby's obsession with Clementines. After dinner every night, she still signs for up to 4 Clementines.

Side note: I've been using the American Sign Language - ASL - Browser to learn new signs to teach Abby and I accidentally mixed up the sign for "Pear" and "Orange." Probably because the sign for "Pear" looks like someone taking off the peel for a fruit, which seems to make more sense as the sign for "Orange," but who am I to say. Regardless, Abby's version is a clenched left fist with the right hand picking off the peel, and it's very obvious what she is asking for.

Last week, my dad brought home a bag of pummelos and Abby went bananas! She didn't think they were oranges, but she kept asking us to "Buo" (peel) them. She can barely lift these giant grapefruit cousins, so ended up rolling and kicking them around the floor.

She loved them!
And what's great about pummelos is that if you are careful removing the peels, they can make fun headgear before they shrivels up! :)

There was a sale of microSD cards this past weekend and I picked up a 2 GB card with adapters for $8.99. So, now I finally have a means of easily moving the photos on my cell phone onto my computer!

We have Verizon Wireless and I have a simple LG phone that allows external memory. Over the past year or so, I have taken a few pictures here and there with the camera on the phone, but I rarely took the trouble to send the pictures out or move them to a more permanent location.

If I ever needed to move a photo from the phone, I always sent a picture message, which costs 10 cents each to send. Too much for this cheapskate! I know I could have taken advantage of the Verizon service, My Pix Place for free, but I couldn't be bothered.

Now, I simply stick the microSD card in my phone, select and save all of my photos onto the card, plug the card into my computer, and pffft! - just like that - everything taken care of.

Here are some fun photos I found on my phone.

From Space.com article, November 24, 2008:

NASA astronaut Don Pettit loves his coffee. So it comes as no surprise that he found a way to drink coffee from a cup, instead of the traditional straw, on his recent trip aboard the International Space Station. Drinking any liquid in the weightless environment of space could be a messy affair. With hot coffee, it could be a potentially scalding affair. So astronauts use silver pouches and plastic straws to sip anything from water to orange juice to Pettit's beloved space java. "We can suck our coffee from a bag, but to drink it from a cup is hard to do because you can't get the cup up to get the liquid out, and it's also easy to slosh," Pettit told Mission Control while sending a video of his new invention to Earth. Pettit used a piece of plastic ripped from his Flight Data File mission book and folded it into a teardrop-shape that's closed at one end. Surface tension inside the cup keeps the coffee from floating out and running amuck. "The way this works is, the cross section of this cup looks like an airplane wing," he said. "The narrow angle here will wick the coffee up." The result: space coffee in a zero-G cup. The theory behind the novel coffee cup is the same one used by rockets to draw fuel into their engines while flying through weightless conditions in space, Pettit said. "This may very well be what future space colonists end up using when they want to have a celebration and do a toast," Pettit said. Click here for a video of Don Pettit's space coffee cup.

I realized a couple of days ago that Abby has been learning to use a spoon at daycare and that she's starting to do pretty well. So, tonight, I wanted to see how she would do with some congee. I'm so proud of her! She seems to like switching back and forth between using her left hand and her right hand with no real preference for one over the other just yet.


Spoon Skills from Cecilia Newell on Vimeo.