11 months old - a stats post

We're just a month (a little less at this point) away from the "big birthday!"
Lucy's getting excited...she's picked a "theme" and has started ordering supplies and even has her outfit ready to go!

At 11 months old, Lucy is 27.25 inches tall!
She weighs in at 21 pounds, 5.5 ounces

She has picked up a couple of new signs - she now knows the sign for water (super cute!) and "all done."

We are still using the carrying carseat and base but we have the next step up and plan to make the switch within the next week...it seems that we've kept her in this "baby" carseat a little longer than most but for one, we feel that it's the safest option for her right now.  Secondly, it's very convenient for us, despite the increasing weight...but thirdly, it means she's still a baby!  My baby.  But it may be time to admit - my baby is growing up.  Now when she kick-kick-kicks, her feet are starting to touch the back of the seat (at least in my car)...time to give Lucy girl room to stretch her legs.

Recently we were able to take the wagon out for an outdoor ride and Lucy was absolutely loving life!  It's been a bit of a weird winter with 50+ degree days scattered throughout and we took advantage.  I planned to walk to the top of the street and back but she was well bundled in a blanket and hat so we took a longer walk and both enjoyed it.  Last night we even got in a short walk before dinner.  Lucy's spending time with Grandma Kathy today and cousin Alli will be there, too...I am sure the girlies will get in a little outdoor time since today's high is 55.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we went to Portrait Innovations on Friday night.  Our photographer, Alyson, made me very happy...not only because she listened to me but because she was so nice...and got some wonderful photos!  We selected four prints...which is your favorite?

Here's the photo I selected of Lala in the giraffe suit...doesn't she look sooooo sweet??  This is her buddy (we've named him...wait for it...Buddy.  Aren't we creative?).  They are absolutely the best of friends.  When I say, "Where's your Buddy?" as we're walking around looking for him, she gets the most excited grin on her face when she spots him and she leans out of my arms to grab for him.  She passes out far more kisses and hugs to Buddy than she does to mommy or daddy.  Buddy has four buttons on him - we've exclusively used the fourth button down - it makes a white noise sound that she's become dependent on for sleepy time.  Lucy, however, has recently taken up "channel surfing" and presses some of Buddy's other buttons.  There have been several times in the car when I've thought she and Buddy were asleep until I hear Buddy switch to jungle music...

I mentioned that Lucy gives Buddy hugs and kisses...she gives Buddy and Violet (and many of her other toys) lots of hugs and she'll throw mommy and daddy a bone every once in awhile.  She just started giving kisses, too, though!  If you tell her Buddy wants a kiss, he gets one immediately.  If mommy or daddy want a kiss?  Eh...depends on her mood, ha!

I love this photo because it perfectly captures a moment in time - exactly what 11 month old Lucy is up to - crawling away when the photographer had other ideas for this picture!  Lucy in action!

Yay!  Lucy loves to clap!  She gets very proud of herself!  When we say "yay!" she'll often stop what she's doing to give herself a round of applause!

She got to stand on a chair!  She definitely thought she was hot stuff!  Alyson, the photographer, had another Portrait Innovations employee helping her out and Lucy engaged her in a game of Peek-a-Boo...she kept crouching down and peeking through the chair and then popping back up...we were all cracking up and Alyson caught it!

Li'l Swimmer!

Lucy had a very busy weekend...on Friday night, she and I went to Portrait Innovations for 11 month photos.  Normally we'd have Auntie do the "off month" shoot (for the first year of Lucy lovin' we've done monthly shoots but only go to a studio every three months) but she's got a full plate right now so we headed to the studio.
I planned to be strong (like I was at 6 months - I only got the $10 deal + 1 print - of her in the giraffe suit, of course - and got out of there with an envelope stuffed full of prints for only around $20 and NOT like I was at 3 months when I practically spent the equivalent of a car payment).  And while I may have spent a bit more than $20 this month, I am still very pleased with myself and even more pleased with the experience and the photos.

Despite buying up so many prints at 3 months, the experience was not a good one...the photographer was super annoying and pushy and seemed to take it personally when I eliminated images from my shopping cart.  She didn't listen to me and we were there for-ev- er!

This time, I told the photographer that I only planned to buy one print of her in the giraffe suit (success!) and that she didn't need to take a million pics...and she listened!  Yay!  She only took photos for about 3 minutes of her in that suit and announced that she thought she had some really good choices for me (she did!  In fact, I almost bought more than one print of her in the suit!) and told me to change her clothes so we could move on.  She totally worked with Lucy...I know she was dying to get a pic of Lucy with her back to us, turning to look over her shoulder (like a pic we got at 6 months) but when I put L down, she crawled away...she went with it instead of forcing me to "re-pose" her and my favorite photo ended up being of the little escape artist crawling away!
With some perfect timing, GranJan and Grandpa showed up to hang with Lucy (and her bowl of Cheerios!) while I chose pictures and checked out.  Grandpa had a good laugh at Lucy when he told her to, "Just take one," of the Cheerios...I'm told she obeyed - the first time...then she grabbed fistfuls (that's my girl!)...once we had our photos and Grandpa had gone home, GranJan took us to dinner...yay for Frisch's!  Lucy got her favorite - spaghetti - and showed GranJan how good she is at shredding napkins.

Saturday morning = first swimming lesson!  I had gotten her a swimsuit for a couple of bucks on clearance at Old Navy at the end of last summer and it fit perfectly!  We packed our beach bag and headed out soon after waking up and eating breakfast.  Here they are entering the pool...already loving it!  Sadly, daddy won't be able to come every week because he'll have track meets so he got in the pool with her this first week.  Silly daddy thought she'd freak out and cry "mamamamama" the whole time but I knew she'd love it...I wore my suit just in case but she was totally fine with me playing poolside photographer!

When we first signed up and saw that class is only 30 minutes per session, I was surprised, thinking that wasn't very long...turns out, it's plenty long enough!  She really did like it, but by the end, my girl was sleeeeeeepy...

During class, they sang songs and floated on their backs...

They also floated around on their tummies and did some real swimming!  Lucy loves to kick in the tub (and anywhere, really...especially the grocery cart, but anytime I say "kick-kick-kick" she starts flailing those legs like a crazy person) but daddy said she wouldn't kick in the pool...must have been a bit overwhelmed!

At one point, they passed out ping pong balls...they were supposed to blow on the ball to make it move...to get them used to blowing water out instead of sucking it in.  This was waaaaay beyond Lucy girl (and most of her classmates) and instead, she wanted to put the ball in her mouth...but at the end of that lesson, the teacher collected the balls and I was so proud of my girl - she put the ball right back in the box when the teacher walked around!

They had to hold onto the side of the pool and the idea was to get the babies used to holding on all by themselves...daddy had a bit too much faith in Lala and let her go...she did not have a good grip...she did go under water (and come up coughing and crying a bit - but she quickly recovered and got over it).  Soon enough she was practicing Humpty Dumpty and "falling" back into the pool with the rest of the class.

Lucy loves swimming with her daddy!

The rest of the weekend was nice, too...I had a birthday date with Ashley (she's 15!!) so Lucy soaked up some Saturday time with dad.

Yesterday us girls went to a bridal shower for my cousin Mikey's wife, Holly...little Rachel is set to be born the day after Lucy's 1st birthday!  She napped on the way to and from but the party was in the heart of nap time so she wasn't feeling too outgoing but she still enjoyed herself - lots to look at!

11 month stats post is next!

Spaghetti-o

Since sweet Lucy was home with Daddy on Monday for President's Day, she decided they should come visit mommy and take her out to lunch!  She had a free kids meal ticket to Frisch's that she got for Valentine's Day from GranJan and it was burning a hole in her pocket!  So she insisted we go to Frisch's and we obliged.  She ordered her most favorite meal...spaghetti!  She almost finished the entire serving and Daddy almost fainted...he couldn't believe it!  This girl loves to eat anyway, but when it comes to spaghetti - forget it!  She makes excited sounds between bites and kicks up a storm if you offer it too slowly!

Not just for daddy anymore...

Lucy has become more generous with her high fives...last Saturday when Aunt Amy & Grandma were over, Lucy slapped them some skin!  And at A's birthday party last Sunday, Uncle Jason also joined the elite...he was so excited!  He demanded I take a picture and "Put it on the blog!"

Lucy stats

I want to use this blog kind of like a scrapbook - something I can use as reference (When was it that she got her first tooth?  When did she start crawling?) and something she can look back on later (so feel free to add comments on these posts for a grown Lucy girl to read some day!).
Since I didn't start blogging right away, this will be a catch up post for me of Lucy milestones.  Maybe next I will come back and write out her birth story...

Height and weight (if we had a doctor appointment that month, the stats are from there, if not - we had a baby scale at home and daddy measured her height):
1 month   old -   8.9lbs        22"
2 months old -   10.4lbs      23"
3 months old -   12lbs         24"
4 months old -   13.7lbs      24.25"
5 months old -   15lbs         24.25"
6 months old -   16.65lbs    25"
7 months old -   17.12lbs    26"
8 months old -   18.4lbs      26"
9 months old -   19.6lbs      27"
10 months old - 19.15lbs    27"

Cord stump fell off at - 16 days old (yay!  That thing was gross and we were not sad to see it go!)
First smile - 6 weeks old (over Mother's Day weekend...aaawwwwww!)
Baptism - 2 months old
First time in the bumbo - 2.5 months old
First time in exersaucer - 3 months old
Rolled from belly to back - 4 months old
First night in her room / bed (as opposed to the bassinet in our room) - 4.5 months old (this makes me sad just typing it...how weird...haven't thought about it in forever but I absolutely loved having her right next to me!  Through my pregnancy I vocalized my intentions to have her moved into her own room before I ever went back to work...how silly I was!  I knew nothing!)
First food - 4.5 months old (sweet potatoes while sitting in the bumbo on the kitchen counter)
Rolled from back to belly - 5 months
Ate rice cereal - 5 months old
First time in high chair - 5 months & 2 days old
Sat up alone - 5.5 months old
First fever - 7 months (had a viral infection and had to go to the doctor's on Halloween...not a milestone we were looking forward to...)
First tooth - 7 months, 1 week (bottom left...though the doctor said Lucy had a viral infection, we couldn't help but wonder if teething was part of the issue when she had the fever)
Second tooth - 7 months, 1.5 weeks (bottom right)
Started eating puffs - 7 months (yum!  And by 10.5 months, she'd figured out how to remove the lid herself and stick her entire arm down for a fist full)
Believe it or not - she was swaddled ("double bundled") until 7 months!!  We tried to stop at 5 or 6 and she wasn't ready...
Started sitting up in the baby tub - 7.5 months (started using the regular tub at around 10 months)
First word - "duck" at 10 months (by 10.5 months she also said "dog" "dada" and maybe even "mama" - the jury's still out on whether she actually  means me when she makes the sound)
First signs - 10 months...she picked up these very quickly: more, ball, eat, milk (and she just started doing the sign for "water" at nearly 11 months)
Crawled - 10 months exactly!
First steps - Around 10-10.5 months old...she's taken a few tentative steps and has started crawling even more...we'll probably have a walker for real within the next few weeks

So as we approach her 11 month birthday, she has 2 teeth but may be cutting a couple more (she won't let me look!) and she's a crawling machine!  When she first figured it out, I thought she'd be all over the place but it took her a couple of weeks to realize the power she had there and to really get into a groove with it.  Now she's sooooo darn fast!  She's like a magician getting from one place to another in record time...and quietly!
She just recently started doing patty-cake and she really loves to clap!  She also does "so big!"
She can point to her belly if you ask where it is and when you ask where her feet are, she lifts her leg!  She can reach for your hair or her own hair if you ask where it is, too.
She gives hugs and high fives upon request (when she's in the mood) now!

We couldn't love this little Lucy girl any more...she's simply perfect and the most beautiful, hilarious, wonderful, smart, sweet little girly we could ever have imagined!

The Valentine's outfit

Thumbody's sweet!

Look what Lucy made for us at babysitter Tracey's house on Tuesday!

Lala

I often call Lucy "Lala," which is kind of funny becauseTiff has a daughter named Lauren that they call "Lulu" and you might think it would be the opposite...

But I call my girl Lala because I made up a song that I always sing to her that goes, La la la la la Lucy, la la la la la Lucy, la la la la la Lucy girl (yes, I'm a very gifted song writer). 
She totally responds to it, though, which I just love (of course, she also responds to plain old "Lucy").

Lucy just started doing something that is my absolute favorite thing she has ever done...if I say, "Hugs for mommy," she buries her head on my chest or shoulder and wraps her arms around me!  She shows daddy love, too...by giving him high fives!  If he says "high five!" she lifts her little hand to make contact with his...daddy adds a sound effect at the same time which cracks her up...they give each other several high fives in a row - just one is never enough.  So far, she has refused to give me (or anyone else) a high five...must be a daddy/daughter thing...

She's gotten used to crawling and it has become a very reliable mode of transportation for her...she still uses it primarily to transport herself to something on which she can pull herself up to standing...but before she'd only crawl a couple of "steps" and if she hadn't arrived somewhere she could pull herself up, she'd whimper and whine for assistance...now she's a crawling machine!

A new desk...

Sneaky Uncle Jason snuck into our house while we weren't home to deliver a little giant Valentine!  Just what she needed...a new desk!  As GranJan put it, "that was the perfect space for a Lucy desk!"  Silly mommy thought it was the perfect place for the ironing board...also as GranJan said, "A girl's gotta have a place to work!"
I'm not exactly sure what kind of work L needs to do...maybe she wants to do our taxes for us?  Ha...nah, we'll leave that to the expert - Grandma Terry!

A playdate with pals...plus some playing in bed!

I stuck Lucy in the swing at one point for a few minutes...and both babies also wanted to give it a try!  Lauren especially loved it, saying "wheeee!" as she swung back and forth!

Lucy and EJ had fun playing with her ball popper!

Lucy really enjoys playing in her bed...we play in her room every night while I pick out her clothes for the next day and get out her pajamas...sometimes I want to get my clothes ready for the next day, too, so I put her in her crib while I got across the hall to iron and she loves it!  I sit her down but she pulls herself up to standing and walks around and sometimes jumps, which is her new favorite thing to do.  She loves the mobile and the "tv" as daddy calls it - the little underwater scene that plays music and lights up and is attached to the side of the crib.  It has three buttons on it to play different songs and she enjoys "channel surfing!"

There have been a few times over the past several weeks where Lucy has stood or walked a few steps on her own without realizing it.  We have two little ottomans in the middle of the living room for her to play on and walk around and she's walked from them to the couch without holding onto anything...but last Tuesday, when I got home from work, she walked several steps from her daddy to me!  Dave and I are so proud of her, but she might be even more proud of herself!

She hasn't learned any new signs but continues to use the ones she does know frequently.  She still says "duck" and she says "dog" and if we ask her where her belly is, she pats her belly!  If we ask her where her foot is she lifts her leg...too funny!

Lucy has a busy weekend coming up...a visit from her godmother, Aunt Amy, and birthday dinner for Grandma Terry on Saturday then A's birthday party on Sunday!

Next Saturday she starts swim lessons at Silverlake!!

Yummm...spaghetti!

This was taken last week but I had to share...this girl loooooves spaghetti!

*I uploaded these photos from my phone and am creating this post from the computer and can't get the formatting to do what I want it to do...and I can't rearrange the photos so they aren't in the order that I want them to be...*

Lucy got her first ever Valentine in the mail on Monday night! Thanks, Aunt Pam!

Here's a snapshot of all of her valentines...from Aunt Pam, Great Granny Meyers, GranJan and Grandma and Grandpa Meyers...we paid a visit to Grandma and Grandpa Meyers last night after dinner but the rest came in the mail...even the teeny one from Great Granny! Too cute!

Mommy got a valentine, too! A beautiful bouquet of flowers sent by daddy to her work! She thought maybe she was in trouble when she got called to the front office to retrieve them!

Sweet little Lucy looking very sleepy last night right before bed...but how cute are those V-day pajamas??!

Another shot of opening her mail from Aunt Pam and Uncle Greg

Yay for Valentine's Day!

I am mad at myself for not getting a picture of the entire outfit but you can see the shirt (and maybe she'll wear it again this Sunday to A's birthday party) here...family Valentine's dinner at Applebee's! Lucy was pretty good despite the fact that she really wanted to get down!! She packed her dinner (carrots and applesauce) but she took a lot of time looking over the menu before tossing it on the ground and deciding to just go ahead and eat what she brought! GranJan and Grandpa sent her a valentine card for a free kids meal at Frisch's so she's thinking about going there soon and giving it a try!

"Look at me, I got mail! And it's not even a bill!"

Happy little Valentine!

Lucy love

FYI, this is what Lucy's hair looks like after a bath...before combing and drying!

We've been teaching Lucy a little bit of sign language...she and I went to the library and rented Signing Times and we all watched it several times...she also watches the same series at her babysitter Tammy's house. So far she knows several signs, most importantly "eat," which she is displaying below. She also knows the sign for "more" (which she often does at inexplicable times...she does it and we wonder, more what? More sitting on the floor? More mommy holding you? - hard to say), "ball" (which is very similar to "more" - and she usually does the sign for "ball" when there's already a ball in her hand), and "milk" (which is adorable!). We're working on the signs for "mommy" and "daddy" now. She's been a pretty fast learner so far.

She continues to verbally speak as well...she can point out a duck a mile away and has started saying "bubby!" When she's tired and whiney, she's taken to whimpering "mama!"

Lucy got this doll, Violet, for Christmas from Jill. We programmed it and Violet now knows Lucy's name and some of her favorite things! It helps Violet make conversation with Lucy...and whatever she's doing - it's working! Lucy gave Violet a great big hug!

Lucy loves her UK jammies from Aunt Amy!

Lucy's laughing at daddy (not pictured) here...sneak attack on her while playing with her puzzle!

Crawling around playing with a ball from the graduation party...

More fun with the puzzle...it's so much fun to take all of the pieces out and toss them (and watch mommy and daddy fetch them and put them back...and repeat!)

Lucy just loves these maracas mommy's boss brought her back from Mexico...shakey shakey!

She doesn't often wear shoes so when she does, they are quite fascinating to her! Dave was amazed at how long she'd kept them on until I pointed out to him that I got her dressed (shoes included) and then we came straight down and got in the high chair. Sure enough, as soon as she was finished and I took the tray off, she removed (and inspected) the shoes!

"Look at me! I'm wearing shoes! WEIRD!"

No more pictures, please...time to get ready for my friends Lauren and Elijah to arrive!