A Gaggle of Gifts

Well, Lucy just had her first Christmas. Boy, it was the real deal for that kid. I dressed her in Christmas garb (thanks to various consignment sales around town) all week, and boy was she cute!

She even woke us up at 5:58 on Christmas morning. How do they know???? We all slept in our Christmas pjs (thanks to my mom!) and made for quite a picture on Christmas morning.

Of course, Lucy didn't really sleep well the night before-not due to major anticipation, as she is only 10 months (AHHH) old. She actually has another double ear infection and bronchitis. She's been on an antibiotic for 6 days and is now worse. I know you are all shocked that she is sick! HA HA HA HA! We'll be at the doctor first thing in the morning by the way. Yes, I'm paying 50 bucks to get in on Sunday. Why? Bryan has pneumonia, and well, maybe she does too. Fingers crossed that she just needs a different antibiotic. We'll see. The saga continues...

Now, back to Christmas...Bryan and I didn't get her a ton of presents. Many reasons for that-

1. We are SOOOOOOO poor right now

2. She is only 10 months old

3. She likes bags and boxes more than her toys most of the time

4. Did I mention how poor we are?

We got her a little phone that we can record messages to her on. She LOVES phones. She is currently obsessed with putting everything up to her ear or your ear and wait for someone to say hello. It thrills her. You can imagine her excitement when she got her very own phone. She of course wanted me to play hello with her immediately. See below for her cuteness:

We got her some phonics fridge magnets too. I know that they are for older kids, but I'm convinced my kid is pretty highly intellectual, if not Mensa material, so I sprang for them. I must confess I hope that they help me get dinner fixed too. You know, a little something to occupy her mind while mommy burns something. It will be great-I hope.

After our little family Christmas at our own house, we loaded up in our jammies and went to mom and dad's house. My grandma was in town, and it was a great time with my small, sweet family. My grandma was totally in love with everything Lu did, even the way she sneezed! It was sweet. Lucy had figured out what presents were by the time we got to mom and dad's, so she immediately checked out the tree. She was amazed and ready to dig in. It was soooooo cute to watch her grabbing at the bags!

She loved the gaggle of gifts she received. I think she was in overload most of the day. There were lots of things with bells and whistles. She was in baby heaven. Some of my favorite moments were when she reached down and kissed her new baby doll and glow worm-she is such a loving little girl!

Perhaps the best part of the day, however, was when she layed eyes on her new rocking duck...

My parents wanted her to have some type of rocking horse. I LOVED mine (Marvin) as a kid, and they knew she'd just love one too. Seeing as how she is currently OBSESSED with ducks, I did some research and found a rocking duck. It quacks. It rocks. It is so cute! Lucy TOTALLY LIT UP when she saw that thing. It was great! I mean, look how stinkin' adorable and happy she is!

After all the gifts were open, we ate and sat around fat and happy. We read some of her new books with her, let her play on her ducky some more, and Lucy discovered that she was an expert tissue paper shredder. It kept her entertained for hours. Good thing we bought her all those gifts, right?

All in all, I'd say our first Christmas was a huge success. It's not over yet...Bryan's family will be here next week to do it all again! Lucy is going to think opening gifts is now an every weekend deal. Boy is she in for some disappointment.

Last but not least, here is a cute picture of her being her crazy little self.

I have a feeling I'm in for a few parent-teacher conferences.

It Finally Happened

So it finally happened. You know, that moment when you are stuck in traffic and your child is screaming bloody murder in the back from her car seat? That moment. It totally happened on Tuesday. It was not fun. I even got the "Bless your heart" look from a woman driving a mini-van who had pulled up beside me. My guess is that since she was in a mini-van, she'd been where I was. Probably multiple times.

When I picked Lucy up from baby school, she was mad at her teacher. Long story, but she never got over it. As I was strapping her in to her new snazzy Evenflo carseat, she began to fuss. Dang it. I started to sing the trusty "ABCs" but she didn't care one bit. I started the car and pulled out, but to no avail. The screaming would not stop. I tried trusty song #2, "The Wheels on the Bus." No luck. She screamed and cried and screamed and cried and...(need I go on?)

The new car seat is nice, yes, but it prevents me from seeing her at all. I can barely reach her (as I write this I feel a lecture coming on from Bryan if he reads this-"You shouldn't be TRYING to reach her in the car. ALWAYS pull over." Has he been talking to my mother?). Anyway, nothing helped, and traffic was heavy. I've heard about these special moments from other kids with friends, but have never experienced it before now. Lu is generally quite happy (chatting about dada or singing lalalala) or totally passed out in the back seat when we are in the car. I just finally tried to ignore the child screaming her head off in the back seat as best I could. Don't know if that was right, or something the perfect mommy would do, but hey, it worked for me. Tuesday had already been a REAL LONG day.

When we finally got home, she was still grumpy for the next hour or so. It was not fun. Eventually, after throwing some soft blocks about 235 times, her mood improved. Perhaps anger management is in our future...

Snot and Stuff

Do you know that on average, a baby will get 10 colds in the first year of life? That is a lot! And according to the doctor, Lucy is right on track to be average! Couldn't she be below average for this one time???? She is 9 months old and is now fighting her 7th cold. Yay. She's had the croup and 4 ear infections too. I was beginning to panic about this as I held her in the pediatrician's waiting room the other day, but was assured by the doc that she was totally normal. Great. Do you know how much I hate that nasal aspirator thingy? We call it the booger bulb. I twitch when I think of having to pull it out of the medicine cabinet and torture my child with it. We've now added nose spray to the mix too. Lucy is not fond of either as you can imagine. I now have her latest cold. Happy holidays. I am going to buy stock in Lysol.

On a lighter note, Lucy had Christmas pictures taken at school the other day. They turned out to be total crap. I was very disappointed. They couldn't get her to smile. HUH?! Have you met my child? She smiles and chats with EVERYONE! Then, I met the photographer. Uh, perhaps taking pictures of children was not her best career choice. She would be better with non-living, still life type things. Anyway, the pictures were crap, but I bought one anyway. Looking back, WHY DID I DO THAT? After looking at the crap picture for days, I decided to have a little photo shoot of my own. Have you met my father? It is in my genes. Ok, I digress...I set up a little area in the hallway, dressed little doodlebug up, and wham! AMAZINGLY CUTE PHOTOS. That other chick really does need to find a new job. Lucy is the easiest photo subject ever. She LOVES the camera. Here is the proof:

Our Snow Globe

Lucy is 9 months old. She's crazy and we love her. She is fascinated by snow globes. This morning when we woke, it had actually snowed! We were in our own little snow globe.

As for other things happening in our snow globe...

Lucy has 4 teeth (two on the top and two on the bottom). She is an expert crawler and is pulling up and scooting on EVERYTHING. She's already had several head bumps, and one near black eye. I'm sure we're not done with that. She wants to walk, but is just not there yet. Her vocabulary is VAST. She says mama, dada, mum-mum (my mom's gma name is "Mumsy"), Sadie (the dog), book, duck, bye-bye, hi, bubble, up, uh-oh and more I am sure that I'm forgetting. She says A LOT, and she always says it pretty darn loud.

Lucy is BUSY all the time. She is a very curious and active baby. She gets into EVERYTHING and has quickly learned the word NO. In fact, I think she believes it is her middle name-at any point in the day you can hear me saying, "Lucy...NO." I think it is good to be curious. She loves ducks and books. I think they are her favorite things. She is slowly trying people food, but is very dramatic and just gags on it most of the time. It is pretty entertaining to watch. She still loves baths and squeals each night as she watches the tub fill up.

We recently had her 9 month check up. They make you do this little question sheet to see where your child is developmentally. She scored 14 months. Duh. We knew she was smart. She weighs 20 and a half pounds (73rd %) and is 30 inches tall (95th %). She will imitate most anything you do, including this funny little machine gun sounding laugh. The doctor was very impressed with her. He said (and I quote) "She is perfect." Now, I know she'll have plenty of not perfect moments in her lifetime, but for now, I'll take it!

A few days after this doctor's appointment, I picked her up at baby school and got some good news. Apparently she needs to be moved to the next step up infant class a little early. It seems she is a bit more advanced than the other babies in her class-DUH. So for the next few days she spent time in the infant 2 class with the 12-16 month old kids. When I picked her up on Wednesday, they told me to forget what they'd said about her moving to the infant 2 class. I was a bit bummed, but ok. Then, came even better news...She needed to be moved to the TODDLER class in January. WHAT?!? It seems as though she is more advanced that the majority of the kids in the NEXT step class, and so...she will be moving up with all of them in a few weeks. I'm not bragging, but...SHE'S BRILLIANT!

Here We Go Again

Well, I'm blogging again. For all of you who used to follow us, you know that one fateful day a few months back, my beautiful blog got erased. For you fellow bloggers, you know how life shattering this can be. All that hard work! All those hours! So...here we are trying it again. New blog, new title, but it is sure to be just as good (if not better than the last). It might just be one of the best things you've ever read.

Here is a smattering of what you missed if you didn't read the last blog. If you did, it's a good review...

I hated being pregnant. We'll start there. I puked for 22 weeks, even on drugs. It was awful. I

didn't have morning sickness. I had 7 a.m. sickness, 10:30 a.m. sickness, noon sickness, 1:30 p.m. sickness, 3:00 p.m. sickness, and so on... I could barely get out of bed for weeks. I was miserable. I gained 35 pounds. Not too bad. I thought I looked pretty good actually, but looking back at pictures I see that I was a little round in the cheeks. I'm not Santa, so this was not actually a good thing.

I went into pre-term labor at 34 weeks, but it was stopped pretty quickly. I was put on bed rest for a few days, but luckily I was on Christmas break from school. When I was SUPPOSED to go in labor, I didn't. We tried two weeks in a row to birth Lucy, but to no avail. My body rejected, actually scoffed at, Pitocin (spell check please). It was like, "Hey, drugs... you don't scare me." Lucy had to be extracted via c-section. It was the easiest thing I ever did. You'd think that would make me want another child, but HA! You'd be wrong. I still haven't forgotten the 22 weeks of non-stop puking.

The first 8 weeks of being a new parent were SO HARD. I'm sorry, all of you who say it is magical are LIARS and you should be ashamed. I cried, I worried (an irrational amount), I didn't eat OR sleep, Lucy had reflux, breast feeding was the worst experience (besides puking for 22 weeks) of my life. It really wasn't pretty. I don't know how much I showered or actually wore clothes (real clothes people, not sweats) during that time, but I can assure you it was probably less than 10 % of the time. We had no clue what we were doing and weren't sure if we'd ever survive. If it weren't for my parents, I'm not sure we would have. However, our kid was pretty cute. So...we supposed she was worth it.

After week 12 rolled around, we kept waiting on LuLu (or Stinky, or Lucy Goosey, or Little Bit, or Bitty) to start sleeping through the night. I mean, we'd made it 3 months on hardly any sleep, now was our time right? Everyone kept telling us that week 12 was the magic week. I was now fully addicted to coffee, and Bryan was trying to lay off caffeine, but HA! That did not happen. Neither did the sleep. We waited...week 13 nothing, 14 nothing. This went on until 22 weeks (the week I started the new school year), and she finally decided she might sleep about 11 hours. SWEET LORD! It was magical.

Months 4 and 5 brought not only sleep, they brought many changes. Lucy was so much more ACTIVE and LOUD. She was smiling and happy ALL THE TIME. We were starting to actually LIKE this whole parenting thing. We started her in Baby School (I refuse to say DAYCARE) in August and that totally sucked for about 2 weeks. However, our child has never met a stranger (wonder where she got that from) and is VERY social. She LOVED baby school, so we relaxed a bit. She has great teachers (I realize I am jumping around from past to present tense, but you'll have to forgive me, as I don't really care about grammar tonight). She was taking good naps, was well adjusted and was eating like a pig. We made the transition from "SAHM" to WORKING MOM! It was actually easier than I thought. Plus, they PAINT with the babies! Can you believe that?! There is NO WAY I'd paint with her at home. She's definitely in a good place.

Months 6-9 have been a blur. They are going so fast. Looking back we've had her first St. Patrick's Day, Easter, July 4th, VACATION at the BEACH, Labor Day and Daddy's 30th, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. Lucy started crawling and talking up a storm. She cracks up like a crazy person and she LOVES taking baths (which she once feared like I do flying). She got TEETH! So cute! She's been a blast to have around. What the heck did we do before her? We must have been soooooo bored! Below are some of our favorite pics of her.

That brings us up to now...and our WILD CHILD. She's a trip! Maybe I'll post about that tomorrow.