Georgia

We all made it. We are exhausted and worn out. All you need to know is that it has been warm and sunny and beautiful every single day since we arrived. In the 80's. We had to go out and buy Lucy sandals for her hot little toes, which she wears to play outside muliple times everyday. No hat, no coat, no boots. Georgia really rolled out the welcome mat for us all.

Tired. Must sleep. Here are photos:

Clint saves the day by driving one of the cars down with Ken. Here is the caravan.













Lucy's new ball













Do you see the barefeet?













The hair, honestly, it's lighter than it was when we arrived.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, all faithful readers, we finally have news to report. We have a moving date and a plan (sort of).

The house is SOLD. We like to boast that it sold to the first people that looked at it because it makes all that blood and sweat seem worth it. Someone liked our work enough to not only say it, but back it up with a big fat check. And in a housing slump. BRING on the next renovation project. Thankfully I have an entire photo album documenting the hell we lived through to snap myself out that type of thinking.

Ken officially accepted an offer for a new job in Alpharetta Georgia, starting, uhm, March 26th. Yes, March 26, Two Thousand and Seven. That gives us less than two weeks to pack it up, say goodbye, coordinate two cars and a drive a truck load of unnecessary crap to Georgia, get Lucy down to Atlanta via airplane (because although we might be crazy, we aren't stupid enough to actually attempt driving in a car with her for more than 30 minutes, much less two days), unload crap into storage unit, unload more crap into my parents house, and then take a little breath before Monday the 26th. We'll be camping out at the Wilkenloh ranch for a few months until we find a home of our own.

Grandma and Grandpa = Babysitters! FREE BABYSITTERS! I can taste the moments of freedom already.

Lucy and I are leaving on Monday, March 19th. So between now and then it's lots of goodbyes, and packing and this-will-be-the-last-time-we (fill in the blank). Here's Lucy saying goodbye to the water fall at the Mall of America. May I never have to step foot in that place again (because it's cold outside and what else do you do with a toddler who has to run everyday for at least two hours).




Cheers to warm weather, southern accents and lots of iced tea.

Dancing with THE star

As promised, a video of Lucy walking. And as a bonus, it includes footage of her latest favorite, dancing.



The words these days are flying out of her mouth like fire from a dragon's mouth. HI! BYE! All DONE! What's that? NO! Cookie, Kitty, Peas, Chicken/Turkey, Snack, Ball, Nite Nite (and if we are really really lucky, this is followed by her walking over to her crib - it almost gives me a happy heart attack each time).

Stay tuned for more important information. Things are happening around here, and fast. Soon, these Minnesota winters will be happy memories (because isn't everything better in retrospect)?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA

Here is today's forecast.

Bitter cold morning with windchills dropping down close to -40 this morning. Partly cloudy, with windchills continuing -25 to -40 throughout the day. Temperatures slowly creep up to zero.

Remember when the lakes were fluid? Remember when Lucy was a baby?

The New Lou

Someone came in last week and stole my cranky baby. I now have a toddler that is fairly content at spending time at home. She plays with her toys. She goes to bed at 7:30pm. She laughs and walks and eats food. I'm hoping this isn't just a stage because I'm really starting to like the new Lucy.

I've taken her off Zyrtec because I think it was affecting her sleep. So far, we are okay because it is, no lie, about zero degrees out right now. Hardly any type of airborne allergen can live in that temperature. I did give her a dose of Zyrtec last week after being off of it for a week due to uncontrollable scratching. But then I noticed Lucy stumbling all over the place. And I thought, maybe I should look up those side effects again (dizziness). And you know what - maybe part of Lucy's problem is that she's been drunk for 16 months.

While you think about that, take a look at the day in the life of Lucy. Eating meat (that was her 'bedtime' snack), eating homemade muffins and bundling up to leave the house. I hate hate hate the bundling up process. I'd document it here but you would either fall asleep from boredom, or kill yourself rather than hear the pathetic drama. And did you all know we are moving to Georgia? Well we are, so take - that - Minnesota, and your toddler hating winters!

Recovery

They say you have to hit rock bottom, before you can start the long road to recovery. I think last week was rock bottom. I had the stomach flu, Lucy had the butt flu. Ken was driving very slowly in a snow storm back from Iowa. In between throwing up in a bowl, I had the joy of changing diarrhea diapers. In between a few hours of sleep, I was up rocking Lucy back to sleep. And the after effects lasted for days and days. We both just didn't feel right most of last week.

And now we've moved to sweet, sweet, recovery. For the first time in 16 months, Lucy is going to bed at 7:30. 7:30. 7:30. And with nary a cry. That means I get almost 3 hours of pure freedom in the evening. I'm ashamed to say I spent most of tonight wastefully watching American Idol. And cleaning up toys and doing laundry and washing dishes and walking around not really sure what to do with my well earned freedom.

So now, three paragraphs into the post, I tell you the most exciting news of all. Lucy is finally walking! For about a week it was half crawling, half walking, but now it's almost 100% toddling around. I'm surprised to see her standing next to me with things in her hands and smiles on her face. She wanders around too, not sure what to do with her freedom, but very happy to have it.

It finally snowed here in Minnesota and that gave us the chance to put Lucy's new Christmas gift to good use. She loved being pulled around - fast.














Stay tuned for videos of the walking wonder.

Video Highlights. And yes we are getting our mo-nays worth out of her Christmas PJ's

As promised, a video of The Lucy Crawl. But first, an explanation and an apology. The video is sideways. I don't have the super duper editing version of Quick Time, which would allow me to rotate my video. I'll get there someday when I feel like waiting to download the file and pay $29.99.

Now, why would you walk when you can speed through life THIS fast on your hands and knees. The other skill not captured on video is when Lucy crawls like this, she can also hold something in her hand. Multi-tasking!



And as an added bonus this evening, I give you not one, but two videos. Lucy, sliding down the stairs. Many hours a day are spent monitoring the stairs. Sorry, but it too will put a crick in your neck. It was either this or no post at all. Yeah, I thought so.

Happy 2007

We all scored from Santa and are happy to report not one gift return! Because isn't that what it's all about anyway? Not having to go back to the mall until the next holiday season?

All the stuff that seemed like a good blog entry lasted too long ago to write about in detail now. But here are the highlights.

Lucy slept the entire way to Atlanta. That was her Christmas present to us, because she hasn't slept like that since. After she got the tubes, she was an angel from heaven for 3 days. Then.

Lucy got the flu in Atlanta, and we were all thinking, what's her problem? Then I got the flu when we got back, and I'm on the phone with Ken asking him to come home form work early because I can't deal! I'm just now getting over it after 6 days. Then.

More molars coming in, so our child has become, what we lovingly call her, Lucifer.

New Years Eve. Bor-ing. Asleep by 10:30.

Tomorrow is Ken's birthday!

That's a quick summary of the past two weeks. Pathetic, I know. But here are some photos to make up for my lack of creative writing this evening.


I was trying to put a caption above each picture, but this website has changed some of it's Html language and I don't know what's going on. So, the following captions should apply.
1st photo: The excitement of Christmas Eve
2nd photo: The crash at the end of a long Christmas day. But isn't this what most of us feel like at some point during the holidays?
3rd photo: Back at home, Lucy enjoys her new 'counter' high chair.

Tube-day

For Lucy's 15 month birthday today, we gave her what every kid her age wants. Tubes! One for each ear!

We were all prepared for doom and gloom. Long screaming car rides to and from the 'surgery center'. Claw marks on our (OK, mostly my) face. Puke on my body and a half listless child laying on the floor whimpering as we let her watch Baby Einstein until the DVD melted.

It all started out just as we had feared, with a 5am wake up cry. I was able to get her back to sleep, although in a position that completely prevented me from gaining another wink before the 7:30am appointment. At 7am I whisked her from her warm cocoon to the warm car in the garage, braced for 30 minutes of screaming in morning traffic with no food, no drink before the morning procedure. But she just sat there. Sat there looking out the window. Putting up no fight at all. And that's pretty much how the entire morning went. Smooth as a Slurpee on a warm summer day. Hardly any crying. We even stopped at Target on the way home to fill her post surgery ear drop prescription. If Santa is watching, and we know he is, Lucy is SO going to score BIG on Christmas morning.

Bad Hair

We've officially entered the baby bad hair days of Minnesota winters. We have no snow, but it's plenty cold and the static cling is unmanageable. The hats and hoods, and naps and barrettes and snot and food and static cling are really taking a toll on Lucy's frock. We haven't found a good solution - yet.


















We put up a Christmas tree, and surprisingly, it's still standing. I thought Lucy would dive into the spectacle and wallow around in the tree sap. We've been fairly vigilant at keeping her away. Now she spends part of her day, broadcasting the word NO! at the top of her lungs - like we yell at her and scream NO! every other word all day long. But, this means she can hear, and she's not going deaf from repeated ear infections and fluid build up - good good news. We go to the ENT on Monday to talk about the possibility of tubes. Oh please Mr. Dr. Doc, take pity on us all (especially Lucy) and put tubes in this poor kids ears. She's been much better lately, but that's because she's on antibiotics ALL the time.

To beat the Christmas crowd, we took Lucy to the, um, Mall on Wednesday and got her picture taken with Santa. As you can see in this picture, Lucy is so much happier these days. She was intrigued with Santa and spent most of her time touching his beard. Another successful Santa picture. I am so proud.

Walking Turds*

The big news to share is Lucy took her first step. There are other things I'll discuss, like the turd I found today on my kitchen floor, but I'll stick with walking for now. Lucy took her first step yesterday at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Atlanta. And then today at home, she took 2 steps. At this rate, she'll be walking by Christmas. Perfect timing for the destruction of tree ornaments. It will be sad to see the crawling go, as Lucy has the most unique crawl of any child I've seen. It always makes people smile. Someday, when I'm feeling ambitious, I'll post a video of it. For right now, enjoy Grandma and her grandkids.
















The Thanksgiving holiday (hold on, I'll get to the turds, be patient) was complete with more Lucy sicknesses and an expensive trip to CVS. We have new antibiotics, inhalers and new antihistamines to add to her medicine cabinet, but I think she is finally on the mend. I honestly think this poor child has had a recurring ear infection for months and I naively blamed her pain on teething. The guilt.
















And finally, the T-U-R-D. Somehow, not one, but two turds found their way out of Lucy's diaper and onto my kitchen floor today. For all I know, there were more and Lucy gobbled them up thinking it was hamburger she threw on the floor! I am not prepared for this. And if you recall, our kitchen floor camouflages everything, so there may be more. I bought new diapers today, more expensive ones with turd flaps. I really hope they work. I never thought I'd be a person who'd have turds on my floor. My house is CLEAN. I don't do floor turds. I can handle poop, and puke and all that other baby stuff just fine. But random turds landing like land mines on my kitchen floor? Please, please, please don't let my child be one of those kids that rips off her diaper and 'plays' in her poop. Next to a child that doesn't sleep (got that), my biggest fear is a poop player.


*This post is a pre-dedication to the much anticipated potty mouth phase.

JUST IN! I took the time (5 whole minutes) to post a video. Here is Lucy today, Wednesday, walking for the first time behind one of her carts.

Gallons of Motrin

Teething, teething, like 4 molars teething AND a DOUBLE EAR INFECTION. Poor lil Luce. I need some drinksssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

Bye-Bye

Seems it's been more than 2 weeks since my last pathetic post, which was basically just a picture. I've been busy doing 'consulting' work and traveling back and forth to Atlanta to visit my family. My last gig involved planning an event for a non profit organization I worked for several years ago. The keynote speaker was none other than Al Franken, a fact I think drove my parents almost over the Republican edge (conveniently located in North Fulton County, GA). To my defense, I did not line up Mr. Franken, that was done before my arrival. I just got to work with 'his peeeps'. Unfortunately, I did not have the forethought to take a photo with Al. But, my friend Amy did! When she updates her blog with photos, I'll include the link (for those that care, and interested in reading a much more entertaining blog than mine).

Lucy, oh yeah, her, how could I forget! Still not walking yet, but thinks about it once in awhile when she's not pushing every button she can find in the house. We bought Lucy her first laptop, which is basically a toy that has lots of buttons.














As you can deduct, Lucy LOVES buttons. The phone is especially tempting.














If you ask her what an owl says, she'll give you a big Whoooooooooo. If you ask her what a dog says, she'll give you an equally enthusiastic, whoooooooooooo. She'll finish Old Mac Donald Had A Farm with an Eeeee, Eyeeeee, Eeeee, Eyeeeee...but she hasn't mastered that last ooooooooooooooooh. I think she calls me, mom, Mimi. And she finally (finally) will wave bye-bye, sometimes. I always feel like such a failure when the ladies at the grocery store wave bye to her and she stares them down. They always ask her age, and then finish their own question with something like 8 months?

No lady, she's 14 months!

She just doesn't feel like waving bye-bye right now.

Standing Duck, Hidden Dragon

Happy Halloween
Quack Quack

13

We are back to months everyone. 13 months now. In celebration of her 13th month of life, Lucy drank out of a sippy cup. And she picked it up herself and then held it and then DRANK OUT OF IT. Only once or twice has Lucy ever felt she should stoop to the lowly level of holding her own drinking vessel. And that was only because I propped it up for her and convinced myself she was doing it on her own. So she drank out of her own cup, and then we went to the grocery store. That was it for the day. Exciting times.

Day Off

Ken took Lucy to his mom's house on Saturday, for the night. Let me say that again. I had 22.5 hours of time to myself. With no baby. And it was wonderful (thank you Grandma Sue). I went out to a movie, dinner, a party. The store, the farmers market. The house was sparkling. I slept for 8 hours in a row with no interuptions for the first time in over a year. I crammed it all in and the time away was just right. When Ken and Lucy got back on Sunday we went to pick out our pumpkins. The squirrels will love them, eat them, destroy them in a matter of days, but it was still a fun day!

My cell phone, it takes pictures!

The snow starts flying today and everyone is all depressed, saying things like, “Sure is cold out there”, and “I’m not ready for winter”, and whatever other generic weather comment you can think of on your own. We all know it will warm up again, the sun will shine and we will still get skip around outside before the bottom really falls out in November. Get another cup of coffee people.

Ah yes, Coff-Ay! Filler up! My play group friends and I decided to meet at the coffee shop today (the weather – it’s BAD) with the play area for tots. Evidently, EVERY other mom in the hood had the same idea because it was MASS CHAOS. At one point, no exaggeration, I counted 20 kids. I’m sure I missed a few due to back hallway toy heists and for fear if I took my eyes off of Lucy for more than three seconds she might become a casualty of war. The most exciting part of the whole event was that I captured one small image on my cell phone camera. And then I emailed to myself. And it worked! I’ve learned nothing new in the past year that doesn’t have to do with babies. I am quite proud of myself for figuring out the features of my 1.5 year old cell phone, despite the fact I wasted away half of a precious baby nap in the process.

This is Lucy and her pal Oscar. We were the first to arrive, thus were able to stake out our territory. You can’t see it in this picture, but you have to believe me. The numbers were impressive. Much more so than the photo.

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.