Five and six years old!

I have been so terrible about updating Lucy's blog!  I apologize to anyone out there that has followed along via the blog and then wondered how she was doing.  As I write this, she is actually 6 years old, so I'll go back and just post a picture of her at five years old and at six years old.  I'll give a brief update about her as well.


Here she is at five years old!  We've had a lot of change in the past year and a half.  My husband got a new job in our small hometown, so we moved back in May of 2015, right after Lucy turned five.  She started kindergarten and really enjoyed it, although she had the typical "first-year-of-school" bumps and transitions.

Here she is at six years old!  It's obvious she is quite a beautiful girl and we love her so much.  She loves doing ballet camp in the summertime, and she's started taking gymnastics since she started first grade this year.  She loves Barbies, jewelry, and playing with her siblings and cousins.

I will try to keep this updated more often!  Next stop, seven years old!  She had an appointment with her plastic surgeon, Dr. Mackay, this summer (2016) and he said she looked great and she didn't need to be seen again until she was 10 years old.  All great news.  Lucy also got glasses recently.  Her eye doctor believes that her strabismus caused by her cranial problems was causing her to only be using one eye for vision.  It is our hope that her glasses and more therapy might enable her to use both of her eyes properly.  We want her to be able to do her best in school and to enjoy watching TV and reading at home without having things so close to her face.  

Four years old!

I know this is a little late (her birthday was in March, after all, and it's July now) but I realized I never wrote a birthday post for her fourth birthday.  Not much to report on!  She finished her first year of 3 year old preschool, turning 4 right at the end of it.  She loved it!  She's had another visit with Dr. Mackay, her plastic surgeon, and he said she looks fantastic, and of course I agree. :)  Here's some pictures to prove it.

Here she is, enjoying the Mother's Day party at school.

What a difference 10 months can make (from the beginning of school August 2013 until the end of school in May 2014.)

Playing at the playground and showing off her sense of style.

Our favorite -- the airport park!

Easter egg hunting her with her brother at Gigi and Papa's house.

Being four can be so tiring.





Hope you enjoyed the post.  Let's see if I can actually post on her birthday next year!

3 Years Old!

I didn't get a chance to write about Lucy on her actual birthday yesterday.  We had a busy morning and then I had to go to my last day of orientation at work.

She had her three year old check up today and she weighed 29 lbs. and was 37" tall.  She tried the vision and hearing test and didn't really do well, but I know it was because she didn't have the attention span or the understanding to follow the rules, and not because she can't see or hear.  :)

We had her birthday party for all our family and friends at Monkey Joe's on Sunday, the 24th.  I think everyone had a great time playing on the inflatables and it was fun to watch her be at the center of attention and blow out her candles (even if she did cover her ears while we were singing Happy Birthday).

We celebrated her actual birthday here yesterday by singing Happy Birthday to her over breakfast and letting her blow out a candle.  We went out to lunch at Chick-Fil-A, and since Wesley was home all day in between his old and new job, he got to come with us.

She got her first haircut on Friday, March 22.  I took her to a children's salon here in town, and they were great and she did great, but I really wanted them to cut more hair off in the back, so when I came home I just grabbed the scissors and cut more off myself.  LOL.  So if it looks a little choppy, that's why.  But I think she looks super cute with her new shorter hair.

She is such fun to be around.  Even when she exasperates me (which happens!) I wouldn't change anything about her or her personality.  I can see all the things about her that seem frustrating now will be the same things that I am proud of her for if they are cultivated with God's love and direction.

She has been very picky about food lately.  She will eat a ton of one thing this week, and so you serve it to her again the next week thinking she loves it, and she will say she doesn't like it and doesn't want to eat it.  One night, all she wants to eat is veggies, and the next night she doesn't want to eat her veggies.  I'm just rolling with the punches.

Boy, can this girl talk!  We talk all day long.  She has such a grasp on language and even though it's possible that I am the only one that can understand the volume of what she's saying, I think she is pretty well developed in that area.

She loves to watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and now Sid the Science Kid on PBS.  No more Elmo.  Which is unfortunate because we bought a lot of Elmo's World DVD's for Christmas.  haha.  This is the one area where I am always having to set limits.  I think she would watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on her iPod for hours if I let her, which I don't.  I think it's been hard because we haven't been able to get outside as much when it's been so cold and windy here.  I'll be glad when the weather is better and we can get back to playing outside, which solves lots of problems! :)

I am really enjoying this stage of her life, and I look forward to a fun year with her watching her grow and learn even more.  We pray every night before she goes to bed, and I always pray that Jesus will sing over her with His love, and I continue to pray that one day she will answer the call to come to Jesus in His timing.

Lucy, I love you, and I am blessed to be your mom!

Small update

Hi!  Nothing huge going on in Lucy's life ... just noticed that I had not updated in a while and I thought I would!

Here she is being her silly (cute) self and then drawing, one of her favorite activities.

She is about to be THREE YEARS OLD (I had to type it in caps because I can barely believe it).  Not sure about what her birthday party will be or when, but I'm in the process of figuring that out.

She went with us today to Ian's 15 month appt. and she wanted to be weighed, so they weighed her and she was 32 pounds.  I wanted to be sure I wrote that down for future remembering. :)

Her favorites:
 - Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.  No more Elmo's World for this gal.  It's all Daniel Tiger, all the time.  Not literally all the time, but if I let her, I bet she would.
 - Books with flaps that you can lift.
 - Singing.

She doesn't really seem to nap anymore, so I've just been making her stay in her room and be quiet (she always stays in her room but she is rarely quiet).  Then it's an early bedtime.

I'm sure there's a ton more I could write but for now I'll say goodbye!

Lucy funnies

I have been meaning to write a post here for a while that has all the funny and sweet things about Lucy right now.  I don't want to forget them!

• She says "chippy" for chips.  So if she wants a chip, she says, "Chippy, please!" which I think is constantly hilarious.
• Her new favorite exchange with us is "Thank you, Mommy!" and "Thank you, Daddy!" and she says it so sweetly that it just melts your heart. 
• She loves to have conversations now (I can converse with her because I know exactly what she's saying ... other people, maybe not so much.)  I wish I could just write down all the conversations we have during the day, but I will try to recreate some of them here.

Scene:  Lucy going potty.

Me:  "Lucy, hold on to the potty, okay?"

Lucy:  "Lucy fall in.  Mommy sad.  Lucy wet."  (She refers to herself in the third person.  I blame Elmo.)  Translation:  I've told her before that if she doesn't hold on, she will fall in the potty and get wet and Mommy will be sad.

Scene:  Going to bed on a Monday night. (I have a Bible study on Tuesday mornings and my mom comes over and spends time with Lucy and Ian while I'm there, then we usually grab lunch together.)

Me:  "Tomorrow, Nana is coming over to play with you!"

Lucy:   "Mommy church."

Me:  "Yes, Mommy is going to church."

Lucy:  "Nana play.  Nana noodles."

Me:  "Yes, Nana is going to play with you and then we'll go eat noodles (pad thai with chopsticks, her favorite.)

She just always connects ideas that I haven't really talked about with her, or she'll remember things I only told her once (yikes!) and it is constantly amazing to me.

• She has a friend named Liam that she calls "Lee-mee."
• She loves to help with things.  When I'm cooking dinner, she wants to be right there.  When I sweep, she wants to sweep.  When I load the dishwasher, she wants to put the soap in and then press the button to start it.  I can usually give her an age-appropriate task to help me with whatever I'm doing, and it's so fun to see her help so joyfully.
• She enjoys telling me what Ian is going to do.  If we go to the park, and she wants to swing, she is sure Ian wants to swing, too.  When she eats breakfast, before she climbs up in her chair, she pulls out Ian's high chair and insists "Ian baby food" (meaning, Ian needs to eat baby food).  If Ian starts to cry or gets grumpy, she says, "Ian night-night."  Ian sure is lucky to have such an attentive big sister.  :)
• She loves for us to wrap her up in a blanket like a swaddled baby and then hold her, or walk around with her like that.  "Lee-lee (which is what she calls herself) baby!  Lee-lee baby!"
• She rarely wears clothes.  I make her wear clothes out in public, obviously, but it's a pretty sure bet that if she's at home, she is only wearing her undies!  I don't know what it is, but she hates wearing clothes.
• She has two things that she says a lot these days.  One is "Momma like" or "Daddy like" in regards to anything.  For example, if she puts on her rainbow socks and then shows us, we say, "Lucy, what pretty socks!" and she says, "Momma like!" as in, "Mommy likes that!"  She applies this saying to almost everything.  She also says, "Momma buy" if I talk about anything being gone or used up.  It can be very funny what she thinks Mommy can go buy, apparently.

She loves Elmo, playing with all of my kitchen tools, taking bubble baths, eating fruit snacks, going to the park, going to the library, basically going anywhere but home (LOL), playing with Ian, stacking her blocks, reading books, coloring, pretending to "go" somewhere anytime she find anything with a handle (as in, here's my suitcase, I'm going on a trip), buckling the top part of her car seat, only using the potty at our house or in our potty chair that we take in the car (grrrrrrr), putting on her "pretty" shoes and walking around the house, and singing.  Her least favorite things are taking a nap, sleeping in, stringy foods, loud noises, letting me help when she wants to do something by herself, and sharing some toys with Ian.

She is funny, loud, thoughtful, caring, independent yet needy, smart, observant, and just plain fun.  Our lives are much richer because she is our daughter.

Potty training, day 143

We haven't been doing potty training for 143 days.  It only feels like it.

Today marks two weeks, I guess.  And I will venture to say we're like 99% there.  She still sleeps in a diaper at night.  I tried to let her take a nap without a diaper today but she kept using the excuse that she had to potty to stall taking a nap, so I put a diaper on her for her nap today.

Today was also the first day that I took her out in public without a diaper.  I just stuffed the diaper bag with a few extra sets of clothes and panties and put the little potty in the back of the van, and we went to the park twice and to a library story time with no accidents!  I was very impressed.  Of course, a lot of times it was me saying, "Let's go pee pee now" and not her prompting me.   That's okay, though.  And she had an accident when we got home for who knows what reason.  But I have been very impressed with her.  I'm hoping she'll just get better and better at it and that eventually we can go to no diapers at all.  I have a feeling that nights without diapers may be the hardest hurdle.

I'm sure you were wondering, so there it is.  :-)

Potty training, day 4

Today was sort of an off-and-on day.  We had a doctor's appointment this morning, so we took a break and put on a diaper.  Then we came home, and put her back in panties, and then it was out to lunch, so back in a diaper.  I'm not brave enough to do the public stuff yet.  Then when we came home it was time for her to nap so she was in a diaper for that.  After her nap, I put her back in her panties and I just stopped setting the timer.  Every so often I would ask her if she needed to go, and if she said no, I believed her.  Then eventually even if she said no I would make her go, and she would usually pee in the potty.  We only had one accident today and it was really silly.  I was about to put her in a diaper for bedtime so I said, "Let's go pee-pee before we put your diaper on for bed."  So she walked in the bathroom, and stood in front of the potty and just peed all in her panties and shorts. UGH!  So silly.  So I had to clean her up and the floor, too.

I think tomorrow I will take her pee-pee maybe every 30 minutes and see if she can tell me if she has to pee.  That's the only way I think I will be able to tell if she's really getting the hang of knowing when she has to pee and holding it long enough to make it to the potty on time.  Just may mean more accidents to clean up.... oh well....