Indoor Playground With Drew

Mom took me to the indoor playground this past week... it was a blast!


My friend Drew came to play at the park as well. He was down visiting me from West Lafayette... again... I think he has the hots for me or something... at least that's what I thought after he kept trying to hold my hand!


He was quite the gentleman though, and let me drive... even though I think my driving skills made him kind of nervous!


I hope he comes to visit again soon... I miss him already!

11 Months

Wow, now we are officially in the home stretch of finishing up Lucy's first year... We will be celebrating our little St. Patty's baby soon! I can't believe how fast things have gone! When Lucy used to be up all night and was nursing round the clock, I honestly thought I was so ready for her first birthday to come, but once we got into the swing of things and Lucy started sleeping more time started going by way too fast!

This month Lucy continued to sleep well, 12-13 hours every night and 2 naps a day totaling 2-3 hours (sometimes even 4 if I'm lucky!) She goes down really well for me, and will put herself to sleep, but we've had trouble getting other people to put her down to sleep. This hasn't been a big deal so far, but I'm hoping we can get that figured out so Ben and I can have our first night away from Lucy in the near future!

We haven't had a night away from Lucy yet because I am still nursing her during the morning and evening. This month she gave up the middle of the day feedings, I tried offering her formula but got worried that she wasn't consuming enough (I don't think she really liked it) so I went ahead and switched to whole milk a little early (which she loves!). I was a little sad to give up those two feedings, since my goal was to make it to 1 year, but I was actually able to keep the morning and evening feedings and haven't lost my supply. My plan is to officially take those two feedings away when she turns a year... and then pat myself on the back for nursing my baby girl for one whole year! I stopped pumping around 9 months since I could never get much milk out, so I've felt a little stuck at times, knowing I needed to be home with Lucy every evening. So, while I'll miss nursing Lucy and the closeness that comes with it, I'm excited to have a bit more freedom.

Lucy's personality has continued to blossom this month, we have such much fun playing together and she laughs all the time now. She loves playing peek-a-boo, especially when I sneak up on her and loves wrestling around on the bed. She especially loves getting a horsey-ride from mom or dad (below) or getting to ride on our shoulders or back... and I mean she LOVES to do those things, to the point where she throws a little tantrum when we take her off or won't put her on our back... so glad we introduced those things to her!

She also loves dancing still, anytime music is on and continues to carry a baby doll or stuffed animal with her wherever she goes.

People continue to comment on how happy Lucy is and how much she smiles... I always tell them how lucky we are! And how nervous I am if we ever have a baby that isn't as happy as Lucy. Friends will be with us for a whole day or over a weekend and say, "I never even heard her cry once!"... and I realize how much I take that for granted! She loves people and loves to smile at every person we pass in the grocery store and especially loves other children.

Her vocabulary is expanding and I think I've made out the following words: mama, dada, nigh-nigh, hi, bye, dog... although she's still pretty inconsistent with using them.

No doctor visit this month, although we did take her to the med-check one night because I thought she had an ear infection. Fortunately Ben's mom was working so she got us right in to see the doctor, only to find out there was no infection but she was running a fever. The fever ended up lasting for 4 days, with no other symptoms except for an extra cuddly/fussy baby... at one point I thought maybe she had meningitis and yelled to Ben that we needed to call the doctor immediately! Of course, I was over-reacting and had been researching a bit too much online and Lucy was actually fine :)

11 Month Photos... a cuddly baby girl...


All smiles as usual...

Happy Valentines Day

We had a lot of fun celebrating Valentine's Day this year - I made breakfast for Ben, complete with a fruit smoothie, egg casserole and heart shaped toast! And I intended to surprise Ben at work with a dressed up Lucy, but he was in meetings, so instead we took lots of pictures...

Lucy and my Valentines Day together...


Dressed up, ready to go surprise Daddy


Getting the chocolates ready


Inspecting the wrapping carefully, this has to be perfect!


Making sure all of the chocolates are in there... you have to shake the box really hard to get a good count...


What? Dad's in meetings???

Fine, I guess we can't go see him... we'll just send him this text to let him know what he's missing out on:




But wait! Mom, come over here... look at these nice flowers Dad left us


Wait... is that a carnation I see? I thought Valentine's Day was about getting roses???


Ok, well, at least they included the leaves, those are my favorite part of flowers anyway.

Game Night!

I won a free game night package from Coffee-Mate, so we invited friends over and had a blast, drinking coffee, playing games and staying out of the snow and ice! Couple shots from the evening...







Coffee-mate supplied the creamer, games and samples/coupons for everyone to take home. What a fun night!

I Whip My Hair Back and Forth

I've got a serious subject I want to talk about... some people have been asking about my hair growth and wondering where all my hair is, so I've got to clear this up.

I've got tons of hair! See...

Look at it all standing up back there. I think I'm almost ready for pig tails.


Phew! It feels good to get that off my chest.

Snowed In

Well, we've been locked up in the house for the past couple days, so I don't have any fun trips or activities to report on, but I've taken about a million photos of Lucy with my iPhone over the past week, so I thought I'd share some here and record some of Lucy's favorite things to do right now. Sometimes the quality isn't as good, but the iPhone actually takes a pretty decent picture... and I have it on me all the time, so I find I'm getting lots more shots of Lucy in action.

I thought this velor jumpsuit from my sister was just too cute! And it made me think of Lucy as a little cheetah girl (since we've been watching a little bit too much of Keeping Up With the Kardashians lately). The baby doll she is grabbing for is one of her favorite toys. She likes to kiss it, rock it, hug it and carry it around the house... precious.


happy baby


Lucy loves to play with Ruthie's bones


And will sometimes even give them back to her... but usually she's taking them, or pouting when Ruthie takes them from her (note the dog nose in the corner). Sometimes she'll even "throw" them to her, a new trick she learned this week.


no explanation here... just one cute baby


Lucy has now mastered opening cabinets (sigh), which leads to this pantry getting dumped out often and also led to her finding the recycling trash and grabbing a sprite can before I noticed it!


Lately she keeps pointing outside, usually when Ruthie is out there, but other times she just likes to go up to the window and look out... I think she is starting to feel the cabin fever too!




I think I've forgotten to mention this on the blog yet, but this girl LOVES her some TV. We rarely have it on for that reason, but once a week when I need to clip her nails I pop in a Baby Einstein DVD for 5 minutes to get her to sit still. This week, I walked away for a second and snagged a couple pictures of her, but the pictures don't show just how still she was. I've never seen this girl sit completely still doing one thing for more than 5 seconds, but the TV had her full attention.


Lucy is a really good eater and still typically likes to feed herself finger foods, but we've been working on using a spoon. She's really good at taking the spoon out of my hand once I've loaded it up and getting it to her mouth... most of the time. This night, I was on and off the phone and not playing close attention, until I realized what a mess there was! Woops!


Speaking of being on the phone, maybe I've been on it too much lately because now Lucy likes to "talk" on the phone too! She holds it up to her ear and talks gibberish into the receiver.


My iPhone may be "her" favorite Christmas present. She loves to carry it around, especially when I turn music on it, and "talk" on the phone, dance with it, and look at pictures of herself on it... Usually she is carrying it and another toy around the house with her. Seriously, I think she is almost always carrying something with her, if not two somethings. This goat, Elmo, Big Bird, a stuffed bear and her baby dolls are her favorite things to carry around...


I love her faces in the above and below pictures - above I think she is screaming something (pretty typical) and not sure what she is doing below... what a ham


Last couple pictures, I tried to grab a couple shots of her "hugging" and "rocking" her stuffed animals... seriously so precious!