5:30 am Update

I bought some shades for Lucy's windows that block out the sun. These are in addition to her other shades. I've created a virtual cave, and it's working!!!! This is the first time any of that stupid advice on the web and in the books has actually worked. Now, instead of Lucy waking everyday cranked up at 5:30am, she sleeps until at least 6:30, and sometimes even 7:30! So don't call me at 5:30 anymore. But, if you are up in the middle of the night, feel free, because we still haven't been able to correct that baby problem.

Now, is it just me, or does it look like Lucy's friend Andre, is, uhm, sharing something with her?

Lucy's 10 month birthday 7/19/06

Summer is flying by up here, complete with 100 degree days, car break downs and summer art classes.

Lucy is learning to like the beach, and since we live in the land of 10,000 lakes, there are plenty of them to choose from. As long as the water is warm, Lucy is content to sit at the waters edge and play. So far, no sand eating contests. I'm thankful for that since I've read it looks the same coming out as it does going in.




















My car broke down on the SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY last weekend as I was coming home from a relaxing evening with friends, AT 11:30 PM. It's a long story and I will spare you most of the unimportant details. The repair job was $2000. Very important detail - all the repairs were covered under a recall notice! Very small detail - we got that recall notice two weeks after Lucy was born and just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

I just finished taking a mosaic art class to learn a new technique. It was so fun to use my creative energy for something besides figuring out new ways to contain ever growing piles of poop in dirty diapers. Here's a photo of what I made:
















Lucy is very close to learning to crawl. It's painful to watch the process. I keep showing her how it all looks, but she doesn't believe me. This must be my first lesson in learning to back off and let the poor child figure it out on her own. And in case you are wondering or care or are ever up at 5:30am and need to get a hold of someone...Lucy STILL wakes up just about every night, and at 5:30am. It's so totally unreasonable.

New Brush

Heeding the wise advice of Lucy's friend Elizabeth, Lucy is now 100% on board with brushing her teeth every night. The only problem is that tooth on the top, is no longer around? I don't know where it went, or what to do about it, but I can't see it anymore. The rash around Lucy's mouth leads me to believe the teeth are festering in there somewhere, but since she won't let me put my fingers in her mouth (but she's totally okay with putting her fingers in MY mouth), I can't feel them either.

White Fang

Hey, I have a new white fang!
















And I'm quite happy about it.

Sorry Wisconsin, I'm not a Cheese Head

Let’s start this post off with a cute little photo of Lucy - my latest favorite as a matter of fact.















We went up to Ely, Minnesota to visit with friends (thus the reason I haven't posted anything in a few weeks). Lucy didn’t care much for her life vest, so that excluded any and all water events. Other than that, she was a little angel the entire time.

Now, onto my latest topic of obsession: Baby Allergies and more specifically, the allergies of my baby.

Lucy has been suffering from allergies, but since the introduction of Zyrtec into her diet, she is a different (much happier) being. The eye rubbing has diminished, the purple circles under her eyes are just about gone, and that rash she’s had on the trunk of her body, PRETTY MUCH HER ENTIRE LIFE, has miraculously disappeared. All this talk that babies can’t have allergies until their 2 years old is a crock. I have living proof that they can and do. I know she is allergic to dairy, and I’ve long suspected she’s allergic to soy (but she drinks soy formula because she can’t drink the dairy, and the non dairy, non soy formula we discovered when she was 7 months old tastes like burnt sour milk, so soy formula it unfortunately is). Add spring time environmental allergies, a little teething, and wow, you’ve got yourself one pissed off baby. I (heart) Zyrtec.

Yesterday she had her 9 month well baby visit. The visit with Dr. Doc was short and sweet, capped off with only one little shot, versus the 4 she had been getting at each visit. Dr. Doc told me to go ahead and give Lucy some cheese or yogurt, to which I quickly questioned, since we suspect she is allergic to dairy. She told me she would probably be fine, since those types of dairy have been processed (and since when is this a good thing), unlike milk. In the back of my mind, I knew this didn’t sound like a fun thing to do, but, I hung my thoughts on the reliable doctor-told-me-so excuse. How quickly I forgot that Dr. Doc would not be in the house to assist me should this eating experiment go wrong.

Lucy snarfed down that cheese faster than I’ve seen her eat anything as of yet. Dinner was a hit! We found something Lucy liked! Her body must know what she can and can not eat!

Fast forward 1 hour later.

Lucy pukes all over herself – hair, pj’s, and our lovely white turned dirty white rug. Hives start to appear on her back and shoulders. She’s lethargic, obviously unhappy and laying in her bed moaning. I call the doctor hotline, the very nice triage nurse asks me questions all while Lucy is screaming into the phone. She decides it’s NOT the shot she got earlier in the day, but not quite sure if it is the cheese. I KNOW it’s the cheese, but am rest assured she’ll be okay. She even tells me to feed her yogurt next time instead of cheese, because that might be okay. Yeah, like I’m EVER feeding her dairy again? Lucy vomits again, this time getting me again and the couch. I call Ken and tell him to get his overtime working ass home.

It seems as soon as she got all that nasty cheese out of her system, she was fine. One laundry basket full of clothes, towels and baby pajamas, one stained couch and two puke puddles on the rug later, all is back to normal.

No Diary for you miss Lucy. And all I can think of, what would this little episode have been like had she not been on Zyrtec (an antihistamine), already? Once again. I (heart) Zyrtec.

New Revised Definition of a Hike

Now that we are done with the house work, we have time for fun things, like spending 3 hours spreading mulch all in and around our yard. To celebrate the completion of another project, we took off the afternoon and went hiking. As usual, Lucy was a champ and loved every minute of the hike. She wore herself out and actually fell asleep while drinking her bottle before bed. Those of you who have ever been around during bedtime know the rarity and joyousness of this small gift.

Back by popular demand - more photos of Lucy!


Lucy in motion

I'm gonna get you suckas

In the beginning...


The moment you all (mom and dad) have been waiting for...the final unveiling of the newly painted house (from 4 angles, no less). But first, let's look back just a wee bit on that day we first bought this house, way back in April of 2004. Whenever I see that picture of us standing next to the 'for sale' sign, I just think - ignorant suckers. We had no idea the mess we had just bought. Look at those smiles on our faces. Just be glad I didn't have a blog way back then, because it would be full of blood, sweat and tearful stories. This house has been completely renovated - that includes 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 kitchen and everything else in between. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. We are 'done' for now. No more big projects, no more PAINTING. We've probably gone through about 50 gallons of paint on this beast. The 2 main floors are completed, as well as the outside. We'll do some more landscaping here and there, and someday, and that someday isn't soon, we'll finish the basement. But for now, we will enjoy the fruits of all our labor on the back porch and enjoy the summer (and fall and winter and spring) away.

Drum roll....
















Shutters custom ordered by me, custom constructed by Ken.

















That's our garage. I know, it looks like a play house, but we can actually fit 2 cars and all of our 'stuff' in there.

















Our garden is on the left. That's the porch where you'll find us drunk.

















And that's just the outside. The inside is full of ghastly before and stunning after photos too!

Party Girl

Don't you want to invite this baby to your next birthday party? Look how much fun she's having, and she didn't even get to bowl.

We went to our friend Ivan's birthday party today. Ivan associated being a 'big boy' with bowling, and now that he's three, he's a big boy. So, there we all were bowling on Memorial Day in honor of Ivan's third birthday. No tears were shed until 1 hour and 40 minutes into the party when one of Ivan's friends tried to open one of his presents and he firmly told her, 'No, No, No'. I considered it a very successful afternoon.

Lucy has officially moved out of her infant seat, and into the big car seat. That means I don't get to lug her around in her little bucket anymore, even when she's sleeping. It's been a hard few days for us all. Lucy does not like to sit in the grocery store carts. I don't like having to wake her up every time she falls asleep in the car. Neither of us like this 97 degree weather. I know, at least it's warm, right? But couldn't we ease into this whole summer thing. Two weeks ago I was painting the house with a wool hat on. Yesterday it was honestly 97 degrees.

P.S. Note the tooth. Do you see the tooth? There are two now, but you can only really see the one.

New photos

While we've been painting the house, Grandma has been working equally as hard taking care of Lucy. We've been busy, but I've gotten enough grief about Lucy's Shriner photo, that I had to take a break and put up these new images I took yesterday. Lucy has a new smile, that shows off her new lower tooth. You can't see it, but we don't tell her that.

Photos of the house will come in time. I'm waiting until we are completely done, for the full drama of the before and after image. But my first words of wisdom on painting a house are - RENT A PROFESSIONAL GRADE SPRAYER. Best $100 we've ever spent and we painted the entire house in one day. The trim is another story. Taking the trim from black to white has required three coats, and that equals three days. The house certainly is yellow. I'm not sure if the old school neighbors appreciate the brightness we have brought to the block. They've been living with drab white/off white/dirty white on this street for more than fifty years, so it might take another fifty for them to appreciate color.

Shriner

The final decision for the house color is yellow. We both actually came to this decision together. The exact shade of yellow is slightly different than the one listed below. I went to a yellow house in our neighborhood to ask the color/make/model of the shade on their house. No one was home. Backup plan was to pick up rocks from around the garage that had been splattered with paint. We took these to the paint store and matched the color! It was a genius day. Only problem now is that it's STILL raining. No painting happened this weekend, nor do we see it happening in the next couple of days. Instead, we've been torturing Lucy with her toys. She doesn't seem to think becoming a Shriner would be a good idea.

House VOTE '06

This weekend we are taking on yet another home renovation project. This should be it until we decide to do something with the basement. Everything else is pretty much done. And when I say everything, I mean everything. But, this is a big one and we need a bit of help. No, I’m not begging people to come lend a hand (although that would be a nice unintended outcome of this posting). I just want your opinion as to what color we should paint the entire outside of our house. Just typing that daunting task makes my body shiver at the impending dread of this project. Grandma is coming to town, so we’ve got Lucyland covered. Last weekend we ‘prepped’ the house. Now we are just waiting for it to stop raining and to make that one last final decision – color.


It’s really down to just two. The baby shit brown color is out. Partially because I think it’s ugly. But also because when people come to our house for the first time, I don’t want to have to describe our house as baby shit brown, or a browny sort of green, or that brown color you’d see on some HGTV sort of show. I just want to be able to say, we live in the yellow house, or the gray house. So the color on the left is out. The trim color is going to be white. We have these stylin’ fancy white windows (aka vinyl replacements), we want the trim to match. So white trim, and YELLOW or GRAY? I like one color, and you know who likes the other. Your vote could be used as ammunition for either one of us to persuade the other onto our side. So vote carefully.

And no comments on our gorgeous siding, please. I already lost that battle.

Baby loves grass

We've investigated every inch of this house with Lucy as a distraction from the monotony of baby life. Toys are different toys in various parts of the house. Songs have a different ring when sung in the bathroom (duh), vs the kitchen. Every book has been read, every item shown to Lucy with glee in hopes she'll take to it like a new toy (and she does). Hard to believe, but I almost felt like I was running out of tricks to entertain. Kind of pathetic, I know, with an 7.5 month old baby. That's why we are all so thankful we can now go outside on a regular basis. If Lucy is in a bad mood, all we do is take her outside and her senses are bombarded with stimulus. Trees, birds, wind, sun, flowers. And today, I introduced Lucy to mother nature's trump card, GRASS (the legal kind of course people). She played with that stuff for a LONG time, but not too long, as to lose the novelty. We'll make sure to use that distraction up before she starts eating the great green blades, which could be soon. Lucy's starting to sprout a little tooth! Stay tuned for photos of the big entrance.

Suck this!

Today's entry was going to be about how Lucy passed another big milestone, how she's sitting up on her own now, hardly falling over at all, looking so good, blah-dy, blah blah blah. But something SO much better happened. Another milestone that TOPS sitting up. I've been waiting, hoping for this to happen. And I was lucky enough to catch it on film (I did have to leave her unattended on the changing table for one itsy bitsy minute while I ran to get the camera - luckily she doesn't really care for rolling over too much).

BUSTED!



Who..me? I wasn't doing anything, really.



That toe sucking moment was worth all the crying and screaming it took (on both of our parts) to get Lucy down for her afternoon nap. One hour of hard work, followed by 30 minutes of baby sleep, followed by another 20 minutes of screaming, followed by another 45 minutes of baby sleep. This kid doesn't like to sleep, but she sure is a good toe sucker. She's going to go far in life, I can just tell.

Cheerio Camo

We can't find the Cheerios on either the high chair or the floor. I can't decide if this is good or bad?

Farmers Market

Another big first in Lucy's life - her exposure to the Minneapolis Farmers Market. She doesn't realize it yet, but Ken will be dragging us here every weekend. He can't get enough of this place. We walk around and around, pick up plants, looks at veggies and dodge the crowds. More often than not, we don't really come home with anything. He just likes to go and 'look'. But always, on the first visit of the year, we come back with loads of stuff, and eagerly chip away the ice chips from the dirt to plant. It took us years to learn, but planting tomatoes in April (no matter how big the plant), just doesn't work in Minnesota. This year, all we had to show for our inaugural visit was a small container of raspberries that were grown in Mexico and this picture.

Baby Tea just doesn't have the same ring

We made it back from Atlanta, with only 30 minutes of screaming on the airplane. I was happy she slept for the first 2 hours, but could that have something to do with the Benadyrl she sucked down before we boarded? Add that to the list of things you never thought you'd do...like today when I licked some sticky substance from Lucy's cheek because I knew if I came towards her with a wet wash cloth she'd scream and she was in such a good mood I didn't want to ruin our blissful afternoon. Back to the Benadryl...she does seem to have horrible allergies and the doctor told me to do it, so don't freak on me just yet.

I've been withholding a very important update, because the ramifications are huge. It could change everything...it has changed everything. Best to just come out with it. I can't drink coffee anymore. Or soda. Or consume chocolate. Well, I could, but I'd have a horrible gut ache and I'd feel like someone was stabbing me in the back. Seems the days of an iron stomach and tasty beverages are over. And the irony of it all, is I just inherited a wireless laptop. You know, wireless laptop = hanging out at cool coffee shops with Lucy and, consuming caffeine. I've been off the stuff for 2 weeks now, and that gallbladder that I was sure needed to be removed hasn't bothered me once. Oh, except when I ate that fire hot burrito last night and feel asleep with a bottle of tums in my hand. I'm hoping this is only temporary and I'll be back on the sauce soon. In the meantime, I guess you'll find me and Lucy at the park. She loves those swings!

WTF

The latest and greatest of all of Lucy's faces. What does this mean?

Shine On

Do you see the sun on that babies head? We’ve found the orange orb here in the 'burbs of Atlanta and are enjoying it immensely! It’s like Lucy has just discovered another world, like we’ve landed on a new planet every time we step outside. She just stares at the trees, likes to watch them blow in the wind. Her eyes follow the birds flitting from place to place. Big smiles appear on her face as the wind blows her hair. And her little feet (sweaty though they are), wiggle with delight at the novelty of being outside. Minnesota winters are hard on everyone, even little babies. Lucy and G-pa are doing the happy dance in celebration of Spring.

Top Five

Lucy, like most babies I assume, has her special quirks – the things that make her unique and at times, make our lives interesting, difficult, funny and confusing.

Here’s my list of the top 5:

1. I’ll start with the latest, first. It took a long time to figure this one out. But in the past day, I’ve used it at least 4 times. The only way to get her to drink her bottle when she’s most hungry and out of her mind, is to put her in her car seat. So much for snuggling with your baby during feeding times. This is probably an extension of her refusal to breast feed after 3 months. That car seat has turned out to be one of her most used items. We’ve used it for sleeping, eating, pacifying, swinging and strolling. With any luck, she’ll start to drag it around like a blankie one of these days and demand to sleep next to it in her crib.


2. You can’t take her clothes off of her, or give her a bath with out her digging her dagger fingernails into her stomach and legs. Try giving a slimy baby a bath AND hold each of her hands at the same time.

3. When put in her crib, she sticks her legs straight up into the air and slams them down onto the mattress over and over and over, until she’s moved herself down the entire length of the crib. She’ll do this for 30 minutes, if that’s how long it takes her to fall asleep. She must have abs of steel underneath that thin layer of baby fat.

4. When she’s mad, like really mad, she starts spitting like a camel. Charming.

5. But her best and cutest as of late, is that little tongue she likes to stick out when thinking about smiling.

Day Light Saving Time!

At least Lucy is starting to become more predictable, something she didn’t excel at before. She did get up at 4am…but that was several days ago and I’ve already forgotten the details. Several naps and mornings and nights have passed between then and now. We are actually excited about daylight saving time that arrived last night. Yes, we do lose an hour of sleep, initially, but in the long run it gives us the illusion of more sleep, since she’ll be waking up an hour later.

Lucy and I are getting ready to head to G-ma and G-pa Dubya’s house on Monday. I don’t know why we bother to pack anything, since we always come home with twice as much stuff as we left with. I’m looking forward to sunny days, coloring easter eggs, and ice tea. You also can’t beat the endless exposure to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.


We’ve stooped to a new low, as Lucy has discovered she likes Baby Einstein videos. The video does have a ‘repeat’ option, but we haven’t gone there yet. Strangely, it is somewhat comforting to know that option exists.