This Thought Interrupted by Catastrophe

We were walking around this weekend and it seemed like everyone had a weird comment for us or for Lucy. It all seemed a little too animated and a little too loud and why are these people interested in our family outing and where ARE we and why are these strangers talking to us in SEATTLE?

Oh. There's a beer and scotch tasting festival at the exhibition hall down the street. I get it now.

I had a whole post based on that going through my head, and I was going to type out all the funny little bits. But then? Lucy fell.

Well, not so much fell as kamikazed.

We were going from her bath to the bedroom for diaper and jammies. Just like any other evening. And in the moment that I reached out for some clean jammies on the table, she squirmed and pushed off my chest with her feet and launched herself over my shoulder.

She landed directly on the north east corner of her noggin on the linoleum. And we both flipped out.

Lu didn't want anything to do with me (thank God the Bubba was home) and a fist-sized goose egg rose immediately on her forehead all black and red and nasty. I tried to get ice on it, tried to gauge her pupil dilation, tried to calm her down. And finally, she was calm, normal, crabby, tired, 7:30pm baby.

I gave her a dose of tylenol (I figure there's no way she doesn't have a headache!) and we put her to bed after an hour of normal, normal, normal. During which time I was hovering over her and trying to put an ice cube in a washcloth on her head, and read her books, and treat her to videos, and make sure she wasn't feeling sick or too drowsy, and, and, and. During which time the Bubba sat in his chair and read a book (I wish I could do that).

BUT! THE GUILT! If I had had a better hold on her... If I hadn't reached out for the jammies. If I had her in a towel like usual instead of lotioned-up and nekkid. I felt like the worst human being.

Not the least of which for my (second) thought of "Well, maybe next time you won't fight your way out of my arms!"

Why yes, I am letting her suck on the medicine dropper.

I also offered ice cream and sing-along videos.

Friday Photos

I'm almost caught up with things around here: laundry, general housekeeping, figuring out a new schedule that makes everybody happy. It really is kind of amazing what a disruption 10 little days of travel can make.

No I WILL NOT smile for your picture.

Well, ok, but just a little one.

Making "words" with her ABC magnets is one of her new favorite things.

She'll line up a bunch of letters and then say "Mama read it!"

And I'm all "I don't think I studied that language..."

Leaps and Bounds

Lucy was an amazing little traveler. Maybe it was all the praying I did beforehand. Maybe I didn't give Lucy enough credit. Whatever it was, I'll take it.

The flight from WA to MN was short - we had a nice tail wind that put us there in about 3 hours. For the first 45 minutes or so Lu browsed the Sky Mall magazine picking out all the dog beds and pool floaties and electric life-bettering doo-dads, and then she started getting cranky and tired. The beginning of the end, right? But get this - Lucy went to sleep. No joke! The Bubba said "It's time to lay your head down and take a nap." AND SHE DID. Right on his shoulder.

We gave each other awe-filled Are You Kidding Me? looks and silently willed the entire plane to stop breathing lest it wake her. She slept until we deplaned and only then did she unglue her eyes to cheerfully look around the airport. The flight to WI was short and sweet, and then we were there! No delays. No inconsolably crying baby. NO DRAMA.

And the return flights? were THE SAME. I know. I was certain we used up all of our good Karma credit on the trip there and the return would be some heinous version of Please Just Send the Angel of Death, but it was every bit as awesome with a pinch of Charm The Flight Attendants and Everyone Around Us thrown in. Every day I'm glad Lucy's my kid, but times like this? I just am floored that Someone Up There somehow thought me worthy to have such an incredible little person in my life. I win.

The visit with family, as always, was too short, but we squeezed in an Easter egg hunt, seeing all the siblings living in WI, a bunch of delicious meals, trips to the park, and a visit to the 'ole alma mater.

And in those ten short days, I feel like my daughter has grown up. She can now pick out letters in writing. It started with Os - I was reading O Magazine at my in-laws' - and has moved on to Is, Bs, Qs (this is the cutest one in my opinion. It comes out like Kee-yooo.), Zs, Us, and Rs in order of frequency.

Her counting is out of control too. She can count to 10, that's not new, but she has grasped that she can assign a number to things and it's different from just numbers. She counts the bites on her plate, or the blocks in her tower, or one two shoes that go on one two feet. It's amazing.

Her sentences and expression of ideas are getting more complex, too. Yesterday we made a trip to the library to return some over due books. In the evening as I was putting her to bed we were talking about our day and she said "Walk. Run, run, run, steps. One, two, three, steps. Big door." And I knew right away that she was talking about walking up the three steps and trying to open the heavy door of the library.

We're slowly getting back into the swing of things at home. It hasn't been as rough as I expected, though. The worst part is that I am getting over the inevitable WI visit cold, and I'm still kind of blah tired. I can't say it helped to come home to grey skies and rain after a week of sunshine. Good thing I soaked up all that vitamin D. I'm already tapping my reserves.

Twenty Plus One Day

Some things I left out of yesterday's post:

Lucy often starts sentences with "Ummmm, how 'bout....."

Me: Lu, what do you want for breakfast?

Lucy: Ummmmm, how 'bout cookies!

Me: Nooooooo.

Lucy: Ummmmm, how 'bout goat cheese!

Or, an even better example: Out of the blue Lucy says, "Um, how 'bout shoes on? Walk. Library. Now."

She knows words that I can't even figure out where she would have picked them up. The other day we went to the (deadly) car wash (of doom). She was fine for a minute but then said "DONE! ISSSS SCAHWY! ISSS SCAHWY!" And all I could think was, where the heck did she learn the word scary? Or Scratchy? Lucy has super sensitive skin and she gets welts from abrasive tags and rashes from dryer sheets, etc. Lately, all of her clothes have "scratchy parts."

When I ask her, "Where do you think that airplane is going?" She always answers "Grandma's house!" Hopefully our plane ride to Wisconsin won't be too horrific tomorrow! 5 hours to Minnesota, then 45 minutes more to my Mom's town after a two hour layover in MN.

I've got a back pack full of little dollar store toys, doodle pads, books, match box cars, etc. as well as every kind of interesting snack you can imagine, healthy and otherwise.

I have a feeling it will be fine, but just to be on the safe side, say a prayer for me tomorrow if you think of it, ok?

Twenty

TWENTY months old! That’s almost TWO.

MY BAYBEE IS ALMOST TWO YEARS OLD! (sob!)

She’s still long and lean! I can't get that girl to gain much weight, but it seems like she's constantly outgrowing her clothes. She’s wearing mostly 2T and some 3T clothes, and they fit her great in the length of arms and legs, but I could fit about three of her in the waist! So most of the time, she’s in pants that show her ankles. Better than wrangling her into a belt or yanking up her plumber’s crack every five seconds.

Oh, and all that vocab she’s been working on for the past couple months? All of a sudden it became sentences. Two and three and four word sentences. Oh, I love it. We can have a conversation! Mostly about trucks. But, you know, sometimes about something fun we’re going to do or replaying something fun that we have already done.

Just now, Lucy went to the window and had the following conversation with herself: “Mama! A tuck!” And then, “Weah tuck go?” “I no KNOW!” “Wess FIND em.” “Um, tuck go Mangie’s (Maggie is Lucy’s favorite person besides our friend Mike – almost everything she talks about she somehow works Maggie or Mike in.) house?” And I’m all, “Whelp, you don’t need me here, I guess I’ll go!”

At nighttime, we often talk about what the best part of her day was. And she THINKS ABOUT IT and then ANSWERS me. It’s amazing. Mostly the best part of every day is the part of it that she spent outside. Or, if she went to the pool, that’s a pretty easy way to get a couple of enthusiastic sentences out of her. “Pool! Spash, splash, splash! Winn [her friend Quinn] swimmmm JUMP!”

Oh, and she has this high squeaky “pretend” voice that I think I’ve told you about. That started a few weeks ago. But now she talks to her toys in sentences that I can understand! For example, she was carrying one of her plastic Easter eggs around and said “Hi egg! Do you want to cook? (be cooked)” “No! Isss hot!” Or knocking on something and then saying in her squeaky voice “Who deah? It Mike! Haha! Mike heah! Tum eeen, Mike!”

Oh, and she started doing things like hiding something and THEN asking, “Mama! Weah ball go?” with a mischievous smile on her face. It just seems like such a big kid thing to do!

Lucy knows some colors – she can match the tops and bottoms of her plastic Easter eggs. Red and green for sure. (Because of traffic lights. She shouts “GO!” from the back seat of the car when we’re stopped at lights, so I had to teach her that we only go on green.) She knows orange because she has orange crocs and an orange pacifier.

That reminds me that she’s named her pacifiers. There’s Green Nuhnuh, Orange Nuhnuh, and Baby Nuhnuh. I’m thinking it might be time to give them up as soon as you’re cognizant enough to name them… But that’s a conversation for a different time.

She stopped dead with potty training as soon as the Bubba got back from Qatar, and that was fine with me. She’s shown some more interest lately, but I’m going to let her think about it for a little longer before starting anything again. I just don’t have it in me right now to be the kind of consistent the situation calls for right now.

In the past few weeks, Lucy has also become exceptionally sweet. She comes up to me because she thinks I need a hug. Or sees a scratch and wants to kiss my owie away. She likes to announce where she wants to kiss me or where she wants a kiss before it happens. Like “Mama. Kiss Yucy ear (or tummy, or cheek, or nose).” She likes to crawl up on my or the Bubba's lap and touch our cheek or hair ever so gently cooing "Niiiiiiice." It might be weird if it wasn't so flipping SWEET.

She is just SO BIG all of a sudden. She’s learned how to use kitchen chairs and stools to get what she wants. Like to unlock the deadbolt in the kitchen door so she can open it. No joke. It’s about a 5 minute process, so I have plenty of time to intervene. But still. The girl knows the secret to escaping, and that makes me nervous. And let's not even talk about why I now keep the knife block on top of the refrigerator. I thought baby proofing was supposed to get EASIER...

Lucy's obsessed with bikes and scooters. It’s like she has this uncanny sense that they’re for big kids and she NEEDS to ride one with a fiery passion. We went to the second hand store the other day to pick up and umbrella stroller for an upcoming trip, she saw the bikes, and that was the end. “Just TRY it. Just TRY it.” She reasoned and pleaded with me. And after she sat on every single one (there were about 9 little trikes and big wheels and whatnot there), she declared “You LIKE it.” I guess I can’t avoid that purchase much longer.

Sigh. When did my baby turn into a KID?

Sugar Crash

I have always loved Easter. It's so joyful and relieving and amazing in a religious way, but also it's the REAL beginning of Spring and flowers and nice weather and light clothes and planting gardens. It's the beginning of airing the winter musties out of the house and planning spring and summer trips.

It was a good Lent. I gave myself plenty of time to pray and reflect on being a better mother and a better wife. And I wish I had some deep thoughts to share with you, but mostly it felt good to have priorities of getting things done and focusing on Lucy. For me, everything feels better when the laundry is done and the baby is happy. Even if the dishes didn't get touched or the floor hasn't been mopped in years. And I also learned that for me, what I do right away in the morning sets the tone for the entire day - so if I make the choice to be happy doing dishes/playing puzzles from 7-9? The day is SO NICE. Noted (not always ACTED UPON, but noted nonetheless).

(Unrelated to my lenten sacrifice, one other thing I learned in the past month or so that might be worth noting is that sugar and I don't mix too well anymore. Maybe it's my higher metabolism, maybe it's something totally different, but I feel like my sugar crashes are epic and I'm miserable for the entire next day if I have a bowl of ice cream after dinner. Alcohol is the same way. Too bad these are the only things making life worth living.)

Our Easter was great. We kicked it off by running our new traditional Family Holiday 5k. We started it on Thanksgiving last year, I think. We (meaning *I*) decided that we should run to earn our feast! Everything always tastes better when you've got your running hunger on, and there's the added bonus of working off some of the extra calories we're sure to consume! So far, we've run on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day and now Easter! Well, it was hard to get going and out by 8 yesterday morning when all we wanted to do was dig around in the Easter basket and sip coffee until church, but we did it! And I earned me some seconds of ham on homemade bread. Mmmm.

Mass was SUPER long (I'm talking an hour and forty minutes), but all things considered, Lucy was an angel. She wasn't too loud, but we were so crammed into the pews, that there really wasn't any room for her to move around without disturbing everyone around us. So, you know, OH WELL.

At least she LOOKED like an angel.

Unfortunately these are a little blurry, but they're the ONLY ones I got of her in her dress!

And then we had friends over for brunch. I made an egg casserole, ham in the slow cooker with orange juice and pineapples, fruit salad, overnight cinnamon rolls, homemade bread rolls, and chocolate-peanut butter cookies that I forgot to serve. And my friends brought mimosas and green salad.

The four kids between us were all tired and crabby and hungry and high on sugar, but they managed to enjoy playing with each other for an hour or two before the adults cried "Uncle!" And then we had to part ways in order to put the babies in their respective baby jails for recovery time.

I'd call that a success.

Good Friday Photos

It's perfect weather for a Good Friday here today. Rainy and grey and cold.

When I was getting Lucy up today, she threw a fit when I tried to put a diaper on her and not-so-politely requested underpants. So I guess I'm adding Chasing Around an Unpredictable Toddler Who Will Eventually Pee On My Couch to my list of penance today. Lucy says "MAMA! Poopoo potty, RAINING outside." I'm all, "Yeah, I get it." But really, what a great end to my Lenten resolution of being more focused on my girl.

I only have two photos for you today:

Leftover picture from the hiking trip last weekend.

Blurry pic of Lucy while she "Make COOKIES, MAMA!"

She's big into "helping" these days.

Two Steps Forward?

More like one step forward, two steps back.

Lucy was busy while I was mopping:

In related news, Holy Buckets! I mopped the floor! It feels like I should be getting a medal just getting ANYTHING done around here lately.