College reunion plus 5 little ones!

So it's been a bit longer than a few days since the last post. Life with an almost 4 month old, what can I say?

Back to two weekends ago. The fun started Friday night with dinner with friends from college. Matt and Tara were in town for a wedding, and Michael and Laura graciously hosted us all at their place (3 couples and 5 kids between us!). We had a really wonderful time together- it's always a delight to be with old friends (Matt, Tara, Laura and I all went to college together).

Matt with his son Emmett and Michael with his daughter Naomi.


Irene (Matt and Tara's daughter) in the front and Sabrina (Michael and Laura's daughter) in back. The girls got along well, and had fun dancing together later in the evening.
Emmett showing Lucy how to play with the block.
Our family.
Matt, Tara, Irene and Emmett.
Sadly we didn't get a family photo of Laura and Michael, as they were being awesome hosts and getting dinner ready!
The next day a friend from our small group came over for lunch and helped with stuff around the house (such a blessing!), and then we had dinner with other good friends from our small group. On Sunday we had a super fun and relaxing picnic with dear friends in Brookline, and then on Monday we went hiking in Walden Pond, which brings us to our next post...

Giggling!

Lucy has been smiling and laughing a lot more of late. Sometimes she looks up at me while I'm eating and laughs- apparently it looks pretty funny. We managed to catch a bit of her giggling on camera- enjoy!

More to come on our fabulous, friend-filled memorial day weekend in the next few days...

Lilac Sunday

A belated happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there! It was really special to celebrate my first one with Matt and Lucy. We started with a delicious brunch cooked by Matt- homemade Egg McMuffins, tater tots and fresh asparagus from Grandma's garden. Yum!

Then we took the train to the Arboretum for Lilac Sunday. They have something like 40+ varieties of lilacs, and most hit their peak right around Mother's Day. The festival has been going on for 100 years. It was such a delight to smell and see the beautiful flowers and to be outside on such a beautiful day. We had really missed being in nature, and enjoyed giving Lucy her first taste of it.

This past week Lucy has really gotten into sucking on all available fabrics. She likes that much more than sucking on a pacifier. Here she is with her little lamb blanket/friend.

She has also started blowing bubbles and making raspberry noises, and being a lot more vocal. It is SO cute to hear her venturing into the domain of language.

In bottle news, Lucy drank about 1 ounce this past Wednesday when I was away. Hooray! Hopefully this is a foretaste of things to come.

Let there be laughter

Breaking news: Matt and I were taking a walk with Lucy on Monday afternoon and we heard a radio on loud outside, playing "Just a Gigalo". I commenced to dance (how can you not when that song is playing) and sing in front of Lucy while Matt danced with her too. Lucy started smiling (like in the picture above with my sister) and then started laughing, a real chortling belly laugh. It was the most beautiful sound. And then we danced some more and she laughed again. It just totally made our day!

Now onto pictures. Above is Lucy with my sister, who has an endless capacity to delight Lucy for long periods of time.

Lucy and I out on the town in Morocco.

Mom and dad (aka Mimi and Papa Jack) with Lucy and Sam.

Caitlin and John are a wonderfully adoring aunt and uncle.

Sam and Dad playing with the Cheerio book. Sam is so super cute- these pictures hardly do him justice (no pun intended). You can check out more on my sister's blog (linked from ours).

And now onto the Lucy photo gallery.

A picture of our little gnome.

Gerber baby and daisy.

I love these overalls!Flying babeeeee!She's such a cute little tyke and we love her so much. This last picture shows one of her favorite positions. She loves standing up- I think so that she can look around and see more.

Here's a longish video that shows her smiling a few times. She's a bit groggy as she had just woken up.

Adventures and back to work

Hi faithful blog readers- sorry for leaving you hanging for so long. I tend to be an all or nothing blog poster, but will try to post little notes next time things get crazy-busy.

Lucy and I had a great time visiting my folks. Unfortunately I had a bad cold, but it gave them an opportunity to bond with Lucy (she took a nap on every member of the family except for Sam). I really enjoyed having quality time together. A few highlights:

-reconnecting with Sam, who I hadn't seen since he was 4 months old (he's now 13 months). I loved dancing with him to klezmer music, holding him upside down, and watching him explore the world.
-delicious meals together, including a beef and prune/fig tagine
-Sam pumping his fist in the air when he's excited
-wonderful TLC from my mom especially
-a visit to the hammam (public bath/spa) with Caitlin and mom
-a trip to the medina (market place)- Lucy was all eyes, taking everything in
-Sam being really cute with Lucy. He gave her one of his toys at one point, and also put a tissue to her face to help blow her nose (we had been doing that to him all week). :)

Lucy did really well on the flights, thankfully. She was quite a trooper- slept the whole way over, and loved looking at passengers and everything in the airport.

I'll post more pictures soon. In the meantime, here's one of her in a smock Caitlin and John got for her.

In other news, I went back to work on Wednesday. It was nice to be back- I'll be working 1 day a week in the office and 4 days from home, 20 hours/week total. Lucy still hasn't taken a bottle, so she didn't eat while I was away on Wednesday (6 1/2 hours), but she and Matt survived (with moral support from my friend Emily), and she ate very well that evening.

Lucy is getting cuter and cuter. She still loves looking around and is fascinated by everything. She also still hates going to sleep, but she's sleeping wonderfully at night- 6-9 hours at a stretch! Just last Sunday she started grasping for toys and she's been doing it all week. She's also finding her hands to suck on. That's all our Lucy news for now!

Making her international debut

So Lucy and I are leaving tomorrow to visit my family (mom, dad, Caitlin, John and Sam) overseas. What an exciting adventure for our little 2-month old daughter! Sadly, Matt is staying home. Though he'll miss us, I think it's pretty clear that he's going to enjoy sleeping in and being able to actually get some work done. :)

Matt suggested we rename our blog, "All about Lucy", since that's all we ever post about. Ah well...she pretty much consumes all of my time/thoughts/energy/love at this point, so at least the blog is an accurate reflection of that.

Without further ado, onto the picture fest.

Lucy loves the Moby wrap- here she is facing front. We have to be pretty careful in this position for now, but once her neck control is better I think she'll love it- she definitely prefers facing out.

Not sure if you can tell (the picture is sort of sideways- my head is to the left), but her hand is wrapped around the edge of the wrap while she is sleeping- so cute!

Our friends Susan and Brian came over last week, and Lucy had a blast with them. Here Brian is playing the "wave my hands in front of your face" game- a real hit with her, as you can see.


Here are some fun pictures of Lucy I took recently- thanks to Laura for lending us the super cute outfit.

And now a picture and video of tummy time. She's holding herself up much higher just in the last few days. Btw- she usually enjoys tummy time more than the video makes it seem- she had already been there awhile and was getting fussy.

2 months old!

So Lucy turned 8 weeks old on Tuesday, and will be 2 months on Saturday (the strangeness of our calendar system). At any rate, she's continuing to grow and develop. She's really becoming her own little person, expressing herself with her cries and noises, and taking everything in. She's waking up only 1 time a night to feed and goes right back to sleep, which is awesome.

We continue to read her stories- here she is enjoying One fish, two fish.

Sporting the beautiful hat our friend Alainie made for her.
A classic overhead blanket shot (there are some of my sister and I like this).
And a medatative stare from our beautiful daughter.

Finally, here's a video of her "chatting" with Pooh, and her chubby legs.