Growing

Living with a one year old has been relatively good. That's what I seem to remember at the moment, since she's sleeping and I have some time to myself. No teeth coming in, everyone is healthy and the weather isn't bad. I did take her off Zyrtec for a week and she's been sleeping through the night - which of course she won't now because I've acknowledged the bliss. I'm fairly certain there is a direct link between the lack of Zyrtec and the understanding that humans sleep through the night. The saddest part of this post is that I had to break down and give her some tonight, although I cut the dosage in half. She's scratching a lot, and some of her rashes are starting to appear. Those red circles under her eyes have returned too. A woman in a store today told me she looked tired. I told her she wasn't tired, she just has allergies, and she felt horrible and apologized and made up some story about how everyone thinks her son is tired all the time too because his eyes slant?? I'm not even going there.

And I did forget that she is on some sort of liquid protest. At one point this week, she drank 1 oz. in a 24 hour period. I have every type of 'sippy cup' known to mothers, and yet she refuses to drink out of any of them. We are back to bottles in front of the TV and in the car seat. On a good day now, she'll drink almost 10 oz. But the food this kid is putting down on a daily basis - it's impressive. Remind me of this when she won't eat next week.

Other than sleeping through the night and not drinking, Lucy has been very busy flipping through her books, playing with dolls and pushing carts and baskets around the abode. The cuteness factor, at times, is unbearable. As is our groovy couch!

Happy 1st Birthday Lucy!

Today is Lucy's real first birthday. If it seems like we've been celebrating for over a month, we have! This weekend we had another gathering with a few friends and Lucy got another birthday cake, sans eggs and dairy. She had no problem consuming large amounts of frosting.
















Lucy's second day as a one year old, today, Setember 20th, started at 4:30am. She wouldn't go back to sleep, so I took her into the family room to crawl around and do whatever you do with a kid at 4:30am. Immediately, Lucy crawled over to the DVD cabinet and started pounding, and I really mean pounding on the doors. She wanted to watch Baby Einstein at 4:30am. What the? How did this happen? Then, after we fell back asleep after 6am, the neighbors woke us up at 7, building their new garage. I tried to make coffee, but forgot to put in a filter. Lucy refused to drink anything until noon, which equals bad mood. We went to the Dr. for Lucy's 12 month appointment, where she had to get a finger prick and a shot. The finger prick bandaid came off (in her mouth) in the exam room. I didn't notice, but the doctor did and fished it out of her mouth. Lucy then bled all over my white shirt. The shot capped the rest of the day off with a fever and less than desirable mood. But here is the good news. NO MORE FORMULA! I don't have to feed my child powder out of a can anymore! Day three and soy milk, here we come!

Potty mouth

Ken, left in charge of Lucy, quickly realizes how fast a baby can find the simplest of pleasures in the most mundane everyday items. Like eating tampons.














Things are spiraling out of control.




















She even climbed an entire flight of stairs this evening (with a spotter), in approximately 1 minute.

Getting My Drool-On

If this line of drool isn't a sign your baby is teething, maybe I should have considered that possibility when she was up for 4 hours in the middle of the night. As a result, the consumption of coffee reached an all time high today.















In other developments, she can climb stairs! Concrete ones at that!

Eleven and a half months

Lucy is more than 11 months old now, coming up on the big 12! Back when I was younger and single and childless and ignorant I used to ask people how old their kids were and they'd tell me something like 1,456 months. I'd roll my eyes internally and think, damnit, just tell me how many years because I hate math, especially dividing by 12 and carrying those extra numbers and why does it really matter anyway, just tell me 2 or 3 or 5 or whatever! But now I know. Everyone one of those months is earned and matter and are full of so many firsts and important learnings. Crawling, teething (and no one every fully prepared me for this milestone), disovering doors - slamming doors, standing up, throwing food, grinding teeth, snorting glees of hello and the list goes on. If you just said she's 1 or 2, you'd feel like you were cheating your child of hard earned life lessons.

We celebrated Lucy's 'first birthday' a month early with family. My parents were in town from Georgia and it seemed like the best time to get all the family together for the big celebration. My mom came up with the brillant idea of a rice crispy treat cake for Lucy, since she can't consume most of the ingredients in a real cake.

All going well, mom putting fire in front of baby.













Mom convinced she'll 'figure it out' and blow out the candle herself.













Quickly blow it out, but not in time. Baby's tender hand covering the flame burning her flesh.













Grandpa brushing the tears of pain away.













This is a might fine cake, even though my mother let me burn myself to get it.













The big first birthay is September 19, 2006. That's when she'll be 12 months old, and I'll say she's one year old for just that one month. After that, it's back to number 13.

Stomach Sleeper

A night nanny would still be nice, but I guess I'm just getting used to being up for 2 hours in the middle of the night. How in the world I got a child that doesn't like to sleep is truly a medical mystery. The wakings are getting shorter, like last night, only one. But I still lay awake for what seems forever waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So many firsts and new adventures it's hard to keep them all straight. Lucy's crawling like a semi normal baby now - forward. But she still drags one foot underneath her, and I've resorted to putting a sock on that foot to help with the scab that has formed on her ankle. Those front teeth are really starting to show now, and it looks like she'll have a nice big gaping hole between them.

We found out Lucy is allergic to anything that tastes good, so it's up to me from here on out how to feed a child who can't eat dairy, eggs, soy, nuts or peanuts.

This was going to be a detailed post, but Lucy has woken up in the middle of her nap, sitting up of course, screaming her exhausted head off.

Here's a photo of Lucy sleeping, for the first time ever on her stomach. That lasted for only about 15 minutes, but it was still cute.

I need a night nanny

No picture of Lucy today. It's 3:30 am and I'm tired and can't get to the photos right now. If there were a photo posted here, it would be of Lucy sitting up in her crib (note, new skill), screaming her head off. Ken and I would be standing in the corner unsure of what to do.

Lucy is teething, she has a cold (and so do I), and now she's figured out she can actually sit up on her own in her crib - at any hour of the night, all night long. It's been a sleepless weekend. Last night I was up with her for 2 hours in the wee morning hours.

Update - I think she fell asleep. I'm outta here.

Miss Sassy

Look who pulled herself up onto the dishwasher today. Ken will be so excited! He just can't wait for Lucy to start climbing into the dishwasher and sitting on top of the door.

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.