We Take Our Carrots Very Seriously Around Here...


...and our sweet potatoes, and green beans, and squash, and pears, and bananas, and cereal. Peas are still up for debate.

And I cannot underestimate the value of this oversized vinyl bib. Best. Purchase. Ever.

First Halloween

Lucy was a ladybug for Halloween! I got a great deal on this costume and it was SO darn cute on her. We dressed her up and took her over to Grandma Betty and Grandpa Lee's house, where she happily soaked in all the attention. All in all, a first Halloween success!

5 Months

TA-DA!! Demonstrating this month's typical pose - ALWAYS with at least one finger in the mouth, is Miss Lucy:

Holy bananas! Our Chunky Monkey is 5 months old. Lucy is growing like crazy…I estimate she weighs about 19 or 20 pounds now and is at least 27 inches long. I know, she’s a big girl! We are in 6-9 month clothes and have been for most of this month, with a few things in the 3-6 that still fit. She is a strong, resilient baby and has remained healthy so far this nasty flu season. Spending daytime with her Auntie Marcey seems to agree with Lucy; she is all smiles when we drop her off, and she gets lots of attention and playtime during the day. I think it really turned out to be a blessing that our daycare situation turned out this way for the time being. Getting her through the winter will be a big relief, and hopefully we can avoid all of this H1N1 businesses.

Lucy is such a happy baby, and really developing her own little personality. Appearance-wise, people’s first impressions are generally “look at those cheeks!” and “what a beautiful smile!” Her eyes are still a hazel color, and earlier this month she lost a lot of hair and has grown back a consistent all-over fuzz which appears to be some shade of brown. This little one is so much fun right now. She’s got smiles all day long and if you find just the right thing, she’ll giggle…which is very contagious. She’s incredibly vocal lately – it’s not really screaming, but more of what I would call shrieking. She’s typically very happy and talkative in the morning, and we have no idea where that came from.

Just so you don’t think it’s all sunshine and roses around here, though…she does become what husband calls a “Devil Child” or what I call “Miss Crankypants” at around 5:30PM, pretty much every day. Husband gets the brunt of it, as I'm usually not home yet. There’s not much you can do with her at this time; I don’t even think she knows what she wants. It usually doesn’t last long though, and then we’re off into the feeding and bedtime routine. She goes to bed around 7:15PM, and as with naps, when she’s tired, she definitely wants to go to bed and is very easy to put down.

This month we’ve also started on the “solid” foods. She’s had rice cereal every evening for a couple of weeks now. It took her a day or two to catch on, but since then she can’t seem to open her mouth wide enough and fast enough! We’ve also tried bananas (OK) and sweet potatoes (YUM after some initial yucky faces). It’s a kick to see her try something new and check out both the taste and texture. She still has four 8-oz bottles per day and drinks like a champ. The cereal was a real blessing for about a week or so, when Lucy returned to sleeping through the night…but recently she’s back to waking around 3:30-4AM. It’s as simple as popping the pacifier in and she’s fine, but this is not fun. If anyone has tips on what sleep training has worked for you, please let me know. I think we’re at a point we need to figure something out. It doesn’t seem too bad at the beginning of the week, but by Friday the lack of sleep really starts to catch up with us.

Lucy still rarely rolls over by herself anymore. It’s like she figured it out, and now on to the next thing, who cares?! She loves to spend time in the jumper, but hasn’t really figured out the jumping aspect yet. She grabs and touches EVERYTHING, and especially likes to feel Husband’s goatee (which is pretty darn cute). She has realized that certain things make noise, and is enjoying some of the more interactive toys with lights and music. She’s starting to gaze at things that are just out of reach, and I can almost see the wheels turning in her head – “how am I going to get that?” Sometimes she seems to get there and we don't quite know how. Lucy does great on her tummy and this month’s biggest accomplishment…she can sit up! It was pretty early in the month when we discovered this. We have to watch her because after awhile she’ll slowly start to fall backward or forward, but overall she’s great at holding herself upright and can sit and play with a toy in her hands.

So that's our Lucy heading into Month 5. Our big events last month were her baptism, and of course Halloween coming up tomorrow! I’ll be sure and post some photos. Events we are looking forward to in November are Thanksgiving, and getting 6-month portraits taken.

Back to the Scene of the Crime

This weekend Husband and I, along with our friends Jacquie and Alex, attended a wedding reception for my friend Mary and her husband Tom. They actually had a small wedding this past spring down in Iowa, so this was just a party. It was a lot of fun with an old time/bluegrass kind of band (fiddles and such). The most special part about it, though, was that it was held at the same place Husband and I had our wedding and reception over three years ago...a beautiful place called Gale Woods Farm.

When we got there, it was still light out, so we walked down the path to the overlook where we had our wedding ceremony. Things had changed a little bit, but it felt pretty cool to be there again, as we hadn't been back since The Big Day. Here we are visiting the scene of the crime...


Thanks to Mary and Tom for giving us this opportunity for a rare evening out with friends and the chance to revisit the spot where our married life began. We made it home to see the last quarter of the Hawkeye game (AWESOME last second win against Michigan State), so the night was definitely capped off right!

Odyssey Flashback

A couple weeks ago when my family was here, we were reminiscing about the Odyssey game system we used to have. Does anyone out there know what I'm talking about? Apparently the first Odyssey system was the "first home video game console" and came out in the early 1970s. The system we had was actually the Odyssey II, and ours entered our lives in the early to mid-1980s. I think my brothers and I got it as a Christmas gift, but maybe Mom or Dad can clarify that.
This game had cartridges that you plugged into it, and as you can see it was an old-school joystick setup with ONE button (how unheard of in today's games!) My favorite though, was what I now know was called the "speech synthesis unit." It was an attachment that allowed the system to "talk" and play music. One thing I still find hilarious is that while playing a spelling game, if you spelled the word correctly, the speech unit said, "that is...ker-net." The fact that a spelling game couldn't "say" correct...well, correctly, is truly ironic.

All in all many hours were spent by my brothers and I (and Dad) playing this system. Now, in the time of the Wii and XBox 360 and Playstation3, it's amazing to look back and see how far the games have come. But sometimes, I could really just use a little Freedom Fighters.