Being 19 months old...

Lucy-loo is 19 months old- hard to believe! 

This little girl is FULL of energy and quite fearless! 

Her current faves:

- bubbles!! She LOVES bubbles, has learned how to blow bubbles using the wands, loves to play with the bubble "juice"

- she loves to go see the horses down the alley and hit the garage door button on the way out

- she LOVES to go outside! 

- she is a pretty good eater, most days. Favorite foods: green beans, cheese, steamed carrots, broccoli, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, spaghetti and meatballs, bread, blueberries, apples, any of the applesauce or pureed fruits/veggie blends in the squeezable pouches, cherry tomatoes, cantaloupe  Gerber meat sticks, most steamed veggies, grilled cheese, bean and cheese quesidillas 

- she does a pretty good job of drinking out of an open cup when seated at the table

- she has just shown interest in the potty- in fact, I felt kinda weird buying a training potty off Amazon this evening- like, I can't believe that we are entering this phase of life. 

- sleep schedule: wakes up between 7:00 am- 7:30 am (sometimes later if we're lucky!), then up until nap time around 1:00 pm, then bedtime around 7:30 pm. She dropped her second nap at 17 months (I actually had to drop her nap!).

- still uses her lovie and paci to go to sleep for naps and bedtime. At school, apparently, she doesn't use her paci, but I don't have the heart yet to get rid of it (and I don't want to fight the battle right now, honestly!)

- she is very talkative! Words include: mommy, daddy, sissy, apple, please, more, bye bye, see 'ya, cheese, eat, all done, poopy, Bebe (Bella), outside, horsey.

- she likes to sing in the car (or anywhere) and makes up songs with words that she knows. It's pretty cute!

- we are actively disciplining these days, especially for when she doesn't obey the first time (like sitting in her car seat to get buckled), and when she doesn't like something that another child does and she either grabs what the other child has or has this pterodactyl- like scream that she uses. 

- she loves to play in the kitchen sink and to help me wash dishes and cook- her shirt is often soaked by the end of the time

- we regularly talk about Sister, and she is able to point to her belly and then mine when we ask "where is sister?" She will sometimes lift up my shirt and poke my belly button and laugh, like she knows something's going on inside of there....too cute!

Ok, here's some recent pics...

Figuring out how to blow bubbles

crawling, jumping, climbing all over the play equipment at Willow Bend Mall

I looked over in the shopping cart and saw her chowing down on celery right from the bag. this girl LOVES veggies!

playing with Mommy's iphone camera

special ice cream treat with Mommy and Daddy at Braums- Daddy got most of the cone :) 

I know it's almost Thanksgiving, but here's our Halloween....

This year took some convincing and some tears to get into Lucy's Halloween costume. Now, granted, she had been two days post diagnosis of the flu, so she wasn't the happiest of campers that week anyway. (Yes, she got the flu after getting her flu shot 3 weeks prior...)

So, here's our Halloween night:

She was NOT happy about getting dressed up. At. All. 

Then she realized that you got candy and got to walk around the neighborhood, and suddenly, the world  was all good.

Sweet little bee!

Complete with wings...

"Ok, fine, Mom, I'll go trick-or-treating...at least I get to shove chocolate in my face..."

Post-trick-or-treating- see all the candy and snot....

The next day, we met our playgroup friends at the Arboretum and this was the best pic we could get of them all on the pumpkins. I decided not to fight the costume battle again, thus, no little Bumblebee...

Doing the Charleston...

Mike and I try to get away for a vacation every year around our anniversary and this year we headed to Charleston, SC, based on the recommendation from a couple in our Foundation Group. I think that this was probably one of the best, most relaxing trips we've taken together in awhile. 

Major THANKS to our parents who graciously watched Lucy while we were gone- we SO appreciate both of them being able and willing to take care of her so that we could get some much needed time alone!

So, here we go....lots of pics, by the way....

Oh, and a major criteria of this trip was that we ate good food. That's the one thing I can do these days- eat! So, we took lots of pics of our food because in my heart of hearts, I'm a huge foodie. 

Waiting in Houston for our flight to SC- we both had terrible colds and were awful to sit next to, I'm sure, because we were both constantly sniffling, sneezing, blowing our noses, coughing, sucking on cough drops, etc....so sorry to those around us!

When we arrived Saturday afternoon, we drove to downtown Charleston and enjoyed a late lunch at  Poogan's Porch

I had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and greens, as well as their delicious biscuits! Sad that they didn't have mac 'n cheese (as was recommended), but it was still quite tasty!

Mike had a BLT with fried green tomatoes- he was happy about his food

We then walked around downtown Charleston....

....saw the beautiful old houses...

...walked through the pretty archways and trees...

...saw the Pineapple Fountain by the bay.....

We then drove to our condo in Isle of Palms. And what an AMAZING view we had on our porch!! I mean, stunning! Our condo was awesome- it was so cute inside, had a super-comfy bed, full kitchen, and plenty of chairs to enjoy coffee in the morning while over-looking the ocean. One of our favorite things is to crack the windows or doors open and hear the ocean waves all night, which we were able to do. 

On Sunday, we slept in and then headed to a little neighboring island to eat at Poe's Tavern. It was lovely- we sat outside, enjoyed the nice weather and had these massive hamburgers...

my burger with goat cheese dressing and bacon and blue cheese slaw...yummy!!!

Mike's with swiss cheese and BBQ sauce

Mike trying to fit his boca around this massive burger

we then strolled along the beach for about an hour and daydreamed about owning a beach home like the ones we saw....

me and my preggo belly

That night, we wanted to go to a yummy seafood restaurant  one of the local's told us about. However, there was a massive storm that cut off the power to our building for about a minute, therefore, not allowing the gate to open, so we were stuck in our condo. Ever the resourceful husband, Mike found a beach umbrella in the storage unit and we walked to the next-door bar and had a quick meal there (probably the least-favorite meal of the trip). Once we got back to the condo, someone had manually opened the gate, so we actually went to the restaurant that we had originally intended to go to and had dessert. 

On Monday, we slept in, made breakfast, and went to Drayton Hall. The plantation had many, many old, beautiful trees with moss on them (although we found out later that it's not really Spanish Moss, it's called something else, but I can't remember what it was called!)

Drayton Hall

pond outside of the Hall

We took a tour of the inside of the home- here is the original plaster ceiling

....original painted wood siding...

one of my favorite pics of the house...

hand-carved wooden mantle 

trees around Drayton Hall

where the rice paddies were (I think!)

Our last night in Charleston, we took a walk on the beach around sun-set.....beautiful and cold!

Then went back to Water's Edge restaurant  (place we wanted to go when the gate wouldn't open) and had this amazing crab dip as an appetizer

I had the almond and chive crusted grouper with goat cheese mashed potatoes and asparagus

and Mike had the shellfish pasta- both were equally amazing! We took home pecan chocolate pie and ice cream and watched as Obama was re-elected

Our last day before flying out, we went back to downtown Charleston and took a horse and buggy tour, which was actually quite good! 

We saw lots of beautiful houses.....

One of my favorite pics of the houses

We had a really great trip and it was hard to come back, but we did miss our sweet Lucy!