Happy Halloween!

We had a happy little ladybug for Halloween this year! (Thanks, Saugiers, for the costume!)

(it even had wings!)

Happy Halloween!

Fall Fun!

We took Lucy to her first State Fair this past Thursday night with our community group and all their kiddos...what a fun night!

Here we are with Big Tex (kinda hard to see Big Tex...)

Daddy and Lucy with Big Tex

Mommy and Lucy with Big Tex

All the kiddos in our community group (minus Case!) with Big Tex- it was kind of like herding cats to get them all to stand in line and smile....

This past weekend, my cousin Jon, his wife Gretchen, their son Jack and my Aunt Melanie came in town to visit! We had a great time visiting and catching up and seeing Mr. Jack! Unfortunately, I have no pictures to show that we saw them, but on Saturday, we all went to the Arboretum to enjoy the pumpkins together. Now we finally have some good pumpkin pics of Lucy (see last post about her melting down at the last pumpkin patch!)

I like to eat pumpkins...

Out. It's not easy being photographed! I have to get my beauty sleep!

6 months old....and some fall pictures!

 My sweet Lucy is 6 months old! Half a year! She is busy, busy, busy! Currently, she is almost crawling- she does this belly-flop/inch-worm type of crawl and can get around pretty quickly (translated, this means we need to baby-proof ASAP!)- this morning, though, she started doing full-fledged crawling for a couple of attempts! She says "da-da-da-da", blows raspberries, especially when she is mad. She loves green beans, sweet potatoes, likes carrots and cereal with banana. She DOES NOT like peas. Those were promptly "raspberried" out of her mouth onto my shirt. We've started introducing a sippy cup with some water- she figured out pretty quickly where the spout was. 

As far as sleep...well, that's an on-going battle. She's taking 3-4 naps a day, at least one of those is a good hour/hour and a half, the rest are about 45 minutes long. She still consistently goes to bed around 7:00pm, gets up around 7:00 am, and gets up usually once a night to eat. Lately, though, I think she's either going through a growth spurt, or teething, or something, and she's been getting up more than once at night. 

She's also had her first cold and thought the battery-operated suction deal was confusing and weird and then after a couple of days, really didn't like it, even though Mom kept telling her it would help her breathe better. 

Lucy, for the most part, is a pretty happy girl. She has a great smile, has a deep laugh (sometimes hard to confuse with early crying), likes to talk a lot. She's still wearing size 3-6 month clothes- the 6 month pants are too big for her little waist.

We went for her 6 month appointment, and she is 14 pounds, 2 ounces (10-25th percentile) and 26.5 inches long (75th percentile). Her head is in the 5-10th percentile. 

That was a lot of info about my little one, mostly recorded so that I can remember what happened later on down the line. Sometimes I feel like life is a little blurry- probably due to the sleep deprivation. :)

As many of you know, Fall is my FAVORITE time of the year!! So, it was so exciting to take Lucy to her first pumpkin patch with her friends and their moms! 

Lucy and Jenna

This was the only group pic I got because Lucy then proceeded to have a melt-down
 and went down for a nap in the stroller right after. 

Our playgroup friends- Olivia, Luke and Jenna

Mike is turning 30 this week, and I knew that one of his favorite things is to have all of our friends over to hang out. Since there are kiddos involved now, I decided to have a lunch with all of our friends and their kids today. I had pulled pork BBQ sandwiches, spinach dip and veggies and chips, and then made Mom's Chocolate Pastry Cake- delicious!!  (sorry, no pics, it was gone really quickly!)

To keep the kiddos occupied, they got to paint pumpkins while the grownups carved their own pumpkins. 

Happy Fall!

5 months old!

This post is about two weeks late, but better late than never, right?
Lucy is 5 months old! I know they say that time flies, and the first couple months of her life are starting to get a little blurry in my memory. So much so, that I thought the other day after packing up her newborn and 0-3 month clothes (and feeling nostalgic about tiny babies), "hmm...maybe we should have another sooner rather than later." Then I thought, "Are you crazy??  What are you thinking?! You are sleep deprived- she is still not sleeping through the night. Let's wait a little longer on baby #2." Good plan.

 Lucy-loo is so sweet and cute and talkative...and she loves to scream. Happy screams, but still screams that I feel might be damaging my hearing. She's been rolling from back to front for over a month, and now she is getting up on all-fours and rocking back and forth, like she is so ready to take off and crawl. She will sometimes scoot a little, especially when she is on the carpet. I was playing the piano this afternoon and had a quilt next to the piano for her to play on...I looked over about a song later and found her no-where near her quilt, on her hands and knees. I have a feeling that once she starts crawling, life will never be the same.

See my fun skills! I can get up on all-fours and rock back and forth! Mommy had a hard time capturing my tricks because I move so much!!

 We have started multi-grain cereal, once a day so far, and she's been doing pretty well with the cereal. Still 100% breastfeeding and doing well. Still continues to do well when at school. Still not a great sleeper. Currently, she is taking 3-4, 30-45 minute naps (although, twice this week she's had 1 1/2- 2 hour naps, so maybe we're turning a corner?!). She goes down pretty consistently at night between 7:00-7:30pm, I dream-feed her around 10:00pm, and then she wakes up usually once between 2:00-4:00am to eat, and then up for the day around 7:00am. Now during the sleeping part of the night, we typically have to get up 3-4 times to put her paci back in, but she falls right to sleep. I'm thinking that we're going to have to do some sleep training to help her figure out she can settle back to sleep without the paci, but neither Mike or I have the heart right now to let her cry it out. I know, we're turning into softies. It's terrible.

My mom gave me these baby scrubs from when I was a baby. Thirty years later, they fit Miss Lucy! Maybe one day she will follow in her mommy's footsteps and work in the medical field...we shall see...

For those of you who are Dallas-ites, you know this is logo is old!!

Birthday weekend

This year, we decided that since there are so many people in our family with several birthdays around the same time, that we would have a seasonal Birthday Celebration Weekend! So, about three weeks ago, we celebrated all the fall birthdays- Paige, Mike and myself. Lane and some of her friends came up for the occasion and we had a grand 'ol time!
Activities for the weekend included a big family breakfast at our house on Saturday morning to start off the weekend. Then the girls went to go and get pedicures while the boys watched the kiddos. We had dinner together Saturday night at Mom's house- pork carnitas and all the fixings! Then we had a pinata, just like old times, followed by cake and presents.
Sunday, we met up at Mom's house for hamburgers and more hang out time with the fam. Lovely times!

The Birthday Peeps!

We are old. Both turning 30 this year!

Lucy loves her Papi!

The delicious strawberry cheesecake and the fabulous chocolate pastry cake Mom made. SO, SO yummy!!

And, what type of birthday party isn't complete with a pinata??

For my real birthday weekend, I took off Friday from work and enjoyed a massage, my first pumpkin spice latte of the season and a little shopping while Lucy was at school. Mike took me out that night to this awesome wine and cheese place called Scardellos- AMAZING! You walk into this cute cheese shop, sample as many different cheeses as you want and then create your own cheese board, paired with some wine. I loved it! We then went across the street to Pappadeaux's and had dinner and dessert. My sweet parents watched Lucy for us while we were out, and she promptly screamed bloody murder for them for 30 minutes or so while we were gone. Awesome. 

On Saturday (my real birthday), Mike went and got me Starbucks and we had breakfast at The Original Pancake House. We went on a walk in the cool fall weather with Lucy, laid low around the house, opened presents, and then went to Watermark's Volunteer Appreciation dinner that night at church. 

I can't believe I'm the big 3-0. I remember in college thinking that people who were 30 were pretty old. And now, here I am. Pretty crazy to think about, but so thankful for what the Lord has allowed to happen over the last 30 years. Lots of surprises along the way, that's for sure, but thankful for the way life has unfolded.

And I did find my first gray hair a week before my birthday. And I plucked it out. :)

Rice Cereal...

You start with this...

 Get yourself situated in your Bumbo with a giant plastic bib,

And try it....

Yummy!

All done! (and sleepy!)

A shmorgusboard of things...

I think that's how you spell schmorgusboard....

Anyway, one of my favorite things about the weekend is Saturday breakfast. I usually get up, get some coffee started and then make either cinnamon rolls from a can, homemade biscuits or the Frizzell family coffeecake. I'll be honest, usually it's the cinnamon rolls from the Pillsbury can because they're super easy and I'm usually still tired.

BUT, they are so not good for you and the 3rd or 4th ingredient is partially-hydrogenated oil of some sort, along with a list of other ingredients I can't spell or know what they are.

Enter in Immaculate Baking Company. No hydrogenated oils, no high frutose corn syrup, no bad stuff inside.  These are my new favorite things to make for breakfast! The scones are really yummy and the cinnamon rolls are super-cinnamony and tasty! I've tried the chocolate chip cookies and they're pretty good. Plus, I was super-excited about seeing that they also make crescent rolls for dinner, as we have those frequently- haven't made them yet, but I'm sure they are great.

Best of all, you can find them at Target!!

 Here's Miss Lucy in her exer-saucer (thanks to the Solomons for letting us borrow theirs!). We had tried it about a month ago and she just wasn't ready for it yet. I tried it again this week and she LOVES it! It's also kind of funny to see her little skinny legs sticking out of the bottom....

She also loves watching the TV, so I have to be careful how often I have it on. Here she is trying to watch it while playing in her exer-saucer. She thinks Channel 8 news is so interesting....

Can you tell what's on the agenda for this weekend??

Pictures to follow.... (as well as a bath, I'm sure!)