Birthday celebrations and birthday shirt

Lucy has taken her first few steps on her own! She took the first steps on Sunday when we were celebrating her birthday with my grandparents and uncle and cousins. Since then she's taking 4 or 5 steps at a time. She thinks it's really funny, and usually collapses laughing in my arms when she gets to me.

We've had a fun week celebrating Lucy's birthday. My grandmother came over to babysit Lucy on Thursday while I worked; it was nice for her to be with us on Lucy's special day.


Lucy enjoyed opening her presents, especially the little cards and tissue paper.

Here she is in her new birthday dress.

Grandma Judy and Uncle Todd gave Lucy the cutest little chair. She likes sitting in it and reading books, though after a little while she always wants to get moving again!


We're continuing the "birthday shirt" tradition which my parents did with Caitlin and I (my dad got the idea from Mad Magazine, funnily enough). You get an adult-sized shirt for your baby (ideally from the locale where she is born) and take a picture of her in it every year until she turns 18. Caitlin is also carrying on the tradition with Sam.

We got so many fun pictures of Lucy in her shirt, I'm not sure which we'll choose as the official 1-year old shot. I think maybe this first one...
And a couple more we liked:

A few more Christmas pictures

I've been sorting through all the pictures we took at Christmas, and have found a few more fun ones.

We opened a few presents before we left for Morocco- Lucy had a blast playing with the tissue paper.


There's a gorgeous beach just 20 minutes from my parents' house. We went there one afternoon, and Lucy had a great time crawling around and playing with the sand.

Lucy has very dramatic expressions sometimes- she really gets excited about what she's doing. Here she's pushing the tricyle around.

Two grinning ladies.

Sam and Lucy checking each other out.

Celebrating one year of our little light!

At 6:43am on February 5, 2008, Lucia Elizabeth entered the world.

And here she is, one year later!

What a year this has been. Lucy has brought us so much joy this year, and continues to do so every day. Parenting is really hard work, for sure, but also a great delight. It's hard to believe that just a year ago Lucy was just learning to nurse and mostly laid there and flailed, and now she's a little person with likes (shoelaces, climbing stairs, listening to music/dancing, exploring, cruising on furniture, banging things to make noise, bread, cheese), and dislikes (being buckled into her carseat, naptime, being told "no", most vegetables) who can do so much! Most recently she's started waving bye-bye to people, waving her hands around when she hears music, and making the "all done" sign when she's finished with her meal. She also is very good at batting my hand away when I try to give her food that she doesn't want. :)

Here's a little poem to celebrate today:

Lucia, our precious little light,

You bring us such great delight.

What did we do before you were here?

We can't remember, but one thing is clear,

We have so much fun with our little one

And our adventure together has just begun.

Snowy January

It was quite a month of snow for us. There are now gigantic mounds of snow in front of our house- they even brought a bulldozer to lift the snow out of the parking lot. Thankfully there have been nice sunny days since then, when we can enjoy the snow. Lucy and I have even been cross-country skiing together once so far, with her in a backpack.


Here's our back deck after the multiple snowstorms- the snow is almost half-way up the railings!

Lucy is showing/developing more of her personality every day. She loves laughing and sometimes will start laughing on purpose so that we'll join in.


Here she is pointing during breakfast at the window to the back deck. She now also points at her toothbrush and at food that she wants. Lucy also is fascinated by a wood nativity set from the Congo that's on loan from my sister. She points eagerly at it whenever we walk by, and we let her hold baby Jesus and the sheep.

Lucy has discovered how to put her hand inside things- here it's in a toothpaste box- my Grandma is holding her. She thought it was so funny to wave the box around.

Lucy loves cruising along the walls. She often emits shrieks of joy as she moves along.

And her other favorite occupation, walking with us holding her hands. The basic theme here is movement.

And continuing with that theme. She has a great time pushing the kitchen stool around, and has even discovered how to go in reverse.

She's a little mellow in this video, probably right before a nap. I love how she peers to see where the ducky has gone.

Moroccan Christmas

We've been back for a few weeks now, but I'm just getting back in the swing of things. It took us a few weeks to adjust from jet lag (we had quite a few early mornings with Lucy that first week) and for me to get over a cold I got when we returned. We've had a bunch of snow and there's still a foot or two out there- it's been fun to see Lucy gazing out the windows at all the white. Unfortunately, we've also had sub-freezing temperatures this past week (and it's supposed to continue through next week) so we haven't been playing in the snow too much.

Lucy has started pointing at things that she likes and making little exclamations, like "dtou!". She especially notices lights and the windows, and sometimes even points with both hands when she's really interested. She "babbles" quite a lot and makes a variety of word-like sounds, sometimes when she's looking through her books. Lucy loves walking around with us holding her hands, or pushing the kitchen stool or the stroller while walking. Her balance has improved quite a lot, and it seems that walking on her own is not too far away.

I wanted to post a few pictures from our time in Morocco. These are just a few of them, and hopefully I'll have more soon after I go through them all. You can see more fun pictures at my sister's blog (link is on the side).

Here's the whole gang- we managed to get everyone dressed up and relatively happy for a family picture.



And our little clan.

Here's a picture of the cardboard fort that John built. It was so cool, with multiple entrances, a little nooky part, skylights and windows, and a tunnel.


My folks took care of Sam and Lucy most mornings. We super appreciated the extra rest, and they seemed to have fun too- here Lucy is checking out Papa Jack.

The weather was gorgeous when we were there- in the 60s and even 70s some days. On Christmas day we went for a walk in the Eucalyptus forest- here's mom with her two "christmas presents".

Sam is 22 months now, and is such a cute and fun little guy. I really enjoyed playing with him.


He was very sweet with Lucy, giving her lots of hugs and kisses. She liked the hugs, but after the first couple would start to get antsy. He would also imitate her noises and her crying, which was so funny.

Enjoying Morocco

We're having a great time with my family in Morocco. Lucy was such a trooper on the flight over, despite only getting 6 hours of sleep combined that night (the usual is 13 1/2). She's a big fan of her cousin Sam, always crawling over to where he is. They especially enjoy playing in a gigantic fort John made out of cardboard boxes. Lucy's other favorite is a tricycle- she holds onto the handlebars and walks with it in circles, as long as we make sure it doesn't go too fast.

I haven't uploaded any pix from the trip yet, so in the meantime here are some from the past few weeks before we left.

Lucy usually is standing up in her crib when I come into get her after naps.

She also likes crawling into small places.

Here is Lucy with Juanita, our wonderful babysitter. I've been trying to get a good picture of them together, but this is the best we have so far. She's very playful and keeps Lucy amused while I work.

Our thoughtful sweetheart.

It's good to be alive, isn't it?

My uncle Clark and his girlfriend, Kelly, were over recently. She was quite fascinated by his adult beverage, but don't worry- she didn't get a sip in. :)

Our (still in process) home

I've been promising to put up some pictures of our new home. With our delightful 10-month old, setting up has taken a little longer than we'd hope, but the rooms are getting there.

Below is our front hallway.



Here is our dining room and back deck, with place cards from Thanksgiving.

Here is a picture of the living room- this is the front half. It's much more in process than the other rooms.

That's all for now- upstairs to follow at a later date!