Well, Laura has added another word.....she now says "baby" when she is hungry.  This may sound odd, but it isn't quite as odd as one might think.  We talked to Cheryl at daycare and it turns out that we all ask Laura something like, "do you want something to eat, Baby?"  So, "baby" is her word for hungry.  Andy and I had noticed her saying it when we put her in the highchair at home, but we really thought she was babbling.  She wasn't babbling, she was talking!  I think that she was actually saying "baby" before she said "mama."  I can't say that for sure though....it's so hard to tell when they actually say a word.

Laura is also getting tall.  She can now reach things on our nightstands.  She is pretty good when you tell her "no" or ask her not to do something.  This is really nice because like most babies, Laura loves ripping a magazine to shreds.  I pile my magazines on my nightstand until I have time to read them.  Currently, there is only 1 magazine on my nightstand, but usually there are many.  She is cruising all over the place as long as she has something to hold on to.  She isn't quite ready to let go of the furniture and us yet.  All the crawling and walking has really made a difference in her baby fat.  A couple of months ago, 18 month shorts were tight on her.  Now, her 12 month shorts are loose on her.

In teething news, she is getting 2 bottom molars.  Generally, babies don't get molars until around 18 months.   Apparently, someone forgot to tell Laura's baby teeth that fact.  Fortunately, she hasn't been too crabby with them.  She has been waking up pretty consistently around 5 a.m., but I'm not sure that is teething related.

In my news, Blizzard Entertainment restored all three of my World of Warcraft characters.  I lost very little from my main character and my 2 lower-level characters were completely in tact.  I was told by the game master that dealt with my account problem that Blizzard had "taken appropriate action against the other party involved."  I'm not exactly sure what that means, but let's hope this never happens again.  I have taken every security precaution that I can.  Andy and I are back to running our characters together!

I hope everything is good with all of you!  Life in the Kassel Household is going very well. 

Well, for those of you who don't know, Andy and I play a computer game called World of Warcraft (WoW).  It is what is known as a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game).  I started playing with Andy back in February.  Andy has always been a big gamer, but me not so much.  I watched him play WoW for a while and I started to think that it might be fun.  We have a group of friends who also play and so I gave it a shot.  Andy was very helpful from the beginning and we always play two particular characters together.  Long story short, I now have three characters on a player-versus-player server and I really love it.

Well, as of yesterday morning, my account was either hacked or some other weird thing happened and now I have NO characters on the Dunemaul realm.  I contacted Blizzard Entertainment and Andy spoke to one of the Game Masters.  It is just a waiting game while the people from Blizzard do their investigations and hopefully get my characters back.  The only character I really want back is my Warlock, Phamyn.  Lots of people have said that Blizzard can get everything back, but it will take time.

What am I telling you all this for?  Well, I'm angry.  I feel violated.  I LIVE on the Internet.  I shop, I search, I get news/information, pay bills, etc. all the time.   I'd rather shop on the Internet than go to a store.  In fact, I buy a lot of Laura's clothes from Oldnavy.com.  Yes, I pay shipping, but it is just so much easier!  The selection is better and often the clothes are cheaper online.  If it didn't cost so much to grocery shop online, I'd even do that and just have the groceries delivered.  It's not that I'm lazy...it's just the ease and convenience of it all.  Why go spend hours wandering around a mall, when I can get what I want in 10 minutes by sitting at my computer?

Well, after this has happened, I'm freaked out.  Fortunately, if my account was really hacked, they couldn't get my credit card number, which would have led to a whole other set of problems.  For those of you who don't know, I am very, very anal when it comes to giving out account information.  I just don't share that information.  I also don't download anything off the Internet, I keep minimal programs on my computer, I never open attachments from people I don't know, etc.  I am so careful when it comes to security issues.  That is what makes this very frustrating for me.  According to the WoW website, I did everything correctly.  As soon as I realized there was a problem, I changed my password.  Then I sent the first email to Blizzard, followed by another email to another section of Blizzard.  Hopefully, everything will be resolved very soon.  However, getting everything back will not change the fact that I'm angry and I feel violated.