Anna has 4 toy cell phones that she loves “talking” on. Today, we went to the Verizon store because I had to setup my own plan and get myself off of the business plan at work. The guy in the store (who was of no help) gave Anna a display phone that he wasn’t using anymore. It’s maroon and looks and feels like a real cell phone. If you didn’t know it was a fake you’d honestly think it was real. It’s pretty cool actually.

Anyway, we pretend to talk on the phone a lot and she likes to “call” Daddy, Grandma, Emily or whoever is on her mind at the moment. She’ll usually hand over the phone to me so that I can talk to them too and my conversation will go something like “Hi Grandma! …. Oh really? …. Uh huh …. I see… Oh ok, here’s Anna.” So it looks like I’m having a real conversation.

Well today she’s started having conversations that go something like this:

“Hi Daddy, how ya doing?”
[pause]
“uh huh”
[pause]
“Ok, see ya later.”

She’s so funny. It’s really funny the things they pick up.

She found a headband thing tonight and put it on herself. Doesn’t she look FABULOUS?? :-p

My host is giving me 3 months of free hosting.  I guess that’s supposed to make up for losing pretty much everything?  I don’t know.  It helps I guess…

Seriously…  I’ve been with two different web hosts and both have had the server crash that all of my sites happened to be on and both times all of my data was lost.  So so frustrating.  I understand that these things happen but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating.  ALL of the posts on the mommy board I run…gone!  All of the photos in my enormous album…GONE!  (Thankfully I do have the photos backed up locally, but I still have to rebuild the entire gallery and re-upload everything.)

Gosh, it’s just so frustrating.  I shed many a tear today over this.

Well, I found a small light at the end of the tunnel in looking at my control panel tonight.  When I went into where all of the MySQL databases are stored, lo and behold they were all still there!  So all of the blogs that I host…the data is still there!  Granted, it’s from a backup from 3 days ago, but that’s better than losing everything.  I was able to reinstall WordPress and get my blog back up and running pretty quickly.  The pictures are gone but I’ll remedy that when I get around to reinstalling the gallery.

Unfortunately, I still lost the forum stuff since that wasn’t housed in a MySQL database, but I’m sure my chatty ladies will fill the board up pretty quickly again once I can re-install it.

I still may have some words with my host to see how they can “fix” this for me (a free month of hosting or two).  We’ll see.

I’m done with it all tonight though.  I’m about to hit the sack.  I’m just glad I at least got something up and running.

Anna went and sat on the Easter Bunny’s lap today while we were at the mall. She wasn’t too sure of him at first but then warmed up and we got a few cute pics.

…and thanks Nani for the dress! Anna looks so cute in it. :-)

Well, Anna is just under 2 1/2 years old and we have decided that it was time for her to give up the pacifier, or her “mana” as she calls it (where she got that name for it, I have no idea).  She’s only been using it for naps and bedtime for a long time now (it doesn’t ever go downstairs anymore) but we’ve been wanting it gone for awhile now.

So we concocted a story about a “Mana Fairy” who would come and take her manas (pacifiers) to other little babies who need them and in exchange, the “Mana Fairy” would leave her a present.  (Yeah, I know…way to bribe the kid, huh?)

We’ve been prepping her for a few days to get her used to the idea and I made sure she knew that her nap today would be the last time she would have it.  Before bed tonight we rounded up all the pacifiers and put them in a little gift bag I found and put it out on our front porch in our milk delivery box.  We told her that tomorrow morning there would be a present there for her (a Mickey Mouse activity doll thing that I picked up at the store the other day).  She did great rounding them up until it came to putting the one in her mouth in there.  She cried a little and didn’t want to let go but I could see she was really torn between wanting a present and wanting to keep the pacifier.  In the end, the present won (thank God!).

She asked for it once when we got back upstairs, but I distracted her with a book and she didn’t even ask for it again.  Maybe this will be as easy as pretty much everything else with her.  We’ll see how the night goes.  She’s still falling asleep but she’s not asking for it yet…so that’s good.  [crossing fingers]

We had such a great time in Puerto Vallarta. It was really hard to come home to rainy Seattle. I have a bunch to write about but am too lazy to do it now…but I do have a BUNCH of pictures from the trip. I took almost 900 and am still going through them. Here’s the link to the album on my gallery though if you want to take a peek. Here’s a purty sunset to tide you over until I write more. ;)

Talk at ya when I get back!