Birmingham!

A couple of weeks ago, Lucy and I boarded a plane to Birmingham, AL for a fun girls weekend! One of my good friends, Melissa, is about to welcome her sweet baby girl into the world and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go to her baby shower and celebrate with her!

I will admit, I was a little anxious about taking Lucy on a plane by myself and keeping up with her all weekend, but she did really well!

We arrived at Love Field in Dallas at 6:00 am on Saturday morning, and made our way through security. I was uuber organized before arriving to the airport and tried to have all my ducks in a row. It was a little crazy going through security, though- trying to hold her while collapsing the stroller, putting all my stuff on the x-ray conveyor belt, etc....but thanks to TSA security, we both made it through in one piece.

Lucy did GREAT on the plane both ways- slept the entire time to and from! What a huge answer to prayer!!

We arrived in Birmingham and I'm pretty sure I looked a little ridiculous, with me pushing a stroller, large bag on my shoulder as well as pulling a suitcase behind me, but it worked and we got to our rental car. :) 

Oh, and a side-note- we arrived the morning of the Alabama vs LSU game- half of our plane was full of Alabama fans, who were also getting their rental cars along with me and then pulling out their dozens of magnetic decals and sticking them all over their rental cars- no lie.                            

It was so, so wonderful to be able to see old friends and celebrate Melissa and sweet Anne Charlotte!!

Lucy did pretty well at the shower- thankfully, the hostess had a crib, high chair and lots of toys for Lucy to play with....great setup!

We spent the weekend laying low at Melissa's house after the shower, going through all of her fun baby gifts, figuring out what else needed to be purchased, running to Babies R Us, etc... I was so thankful for Melissa and her mom for helping me with taking care of Lucy! They were such a blessing!!

Lucy did really well while we were in Birmingham- only bad thing was her sleep (or lack of it!). She woke up about 4 times on Saturday night and about 3 or 4 times on Sunday night- it didn't help that it was Daylight savings time and she had her times all messed up. She ended up waking up for the day on Sunday morning at 5:30 am- I couldn't find the coffee pot, so around 7:00 am, I loaded Lucy up in the car and we went to O'Henry's Coffee House in our PJ's and got coffee. Needless to say, there were several other young families there as well- apparently Daylight savings doesn't get translated to little ones yet....

Of course, we had to go and visit Mr. Beeson at Mommy's alma mater.... 

Melissa with Anne Charlotte (inside!), Lucy and me

Lucy thought it would be fun to eat Mr. Beeson....

One of my favorite things about the fall in the South- the BEAUTIFUL trees and hills- lots and lots of color!! 

I also got to catch up with one of my roommates, Andrea, and her friend, Lauren, at the Cheesecake Factory on Sunday morning! So fun to see her again!

All in all, a GREAT trip! I was so thankful to have been able to go and was glad to have taken Miss Lucy along to see where her Mom spent her college years!

7 months!

 7 months old! And so, so busy!!

Here's what our ladybug has been up to:

- crawling! She started crawling at 6 1/2 months, and pulling up on everything a couple of days after that. Needless to say, we've had to baby-proof everything super-quick. Gone are the days that I could let her alone on a blanket and expect her to stay there. 

 - Sitting up on her own! (started right at 7 months) It took her awhile to learn this trick because every time I'd try to get her to practice sitting, she'd lean forward and crawl off. Life is too exciting to sit still for this little one! I love her curiosity and how she is always wanting to be on the go! 

 - Pulling up on EVERYTHING! She prefers to be crawling or standing. Just recently has she started to like to sit. The pulling-up has led to several head-bonks a day, and I had to go and find some of those socks with the grippers on the bottom, as she is starting to take a few steps while holding on to what ever she's pulled up on. 

- Eating! She's a great eater. Another post to follow about how I'm making her food, but her current foods are carrots, green beans, butternut squash, winter squash and sweet potatoes. We've tried bananas, pears and peaches, but she really doesn't like fruit. We'll have to keep trying...I also started trying yogurt this week, but she wasn't a fan. She eats table food twice a day- I'm trying to get that to three times a day, but it's hard to fit it all in sometimes. She also loves to chew on MumMums and puffs. We're trying to incorporate drinking out of a sippy cup- sometimes she gets it. 

Other fun things this month:

- Lucy took her first plane ride to Birmingham with me! She was a CHAMP on the plane and slept the entire flight both ways! She also did great while in the airport- it was a trick, though, getting through security by myself. I think I had her stroller, her car seat, a giant bag that had her diaper bag inside as well as the Baby Bijorn....thanks to the airport security for helping me get through. But apparently, if you have a baby strapped to you in a Baby Bijorn, you look more suspicious and are subsequently subjected to having your hands swiped.....whatever. 

- Lucy was able to meet some of my good friends from college while in Birmingham! More to follow in another post about this trip- it was super fun and I was so glad we were able to go!

- We are now mostly sleeping through the night! After we got back from Birmingham, we started to cry-it-out at night for the nighttime feed. We've had a couple of nights where she'd whimper/fuss for about 2 hours. This is our second week where we're sleep training and now she'll get up maybe once a night and cry out for about 5 minutes, but then go back to sleep on her own. 

As far as sleep goes, she gets up between 6:30 and 7:00 am, and then naps about 2 hours from when she last woke up, averaging about 3 naps a day, for an hour in duration. She consistently goes to bed at 7:00pm, wakes up around 10:00pm for one last feed, and then back to sleep until the morning. 

- Lucy is such a happy baby! She's typically smiling, talking ("da-da-da") or making cute little noises. She laughs when tickled, especially those ribs! She loves it when Daddy rolls her around on the carpet and also loves when he kicks the ball with her (he holds her under her arms and swings her legs to kick the ball- she thinks this is hilarious!).

-She loves cats and dogs- she will crawl so fast to try and get to Bella, our cat. Bella doesn't really like Lucy all that much, but tolerates her. When we were in Birmingham, my friend, Melissa, has a big black lab named Knox- Lucy LOVED Knox and thought he was the best thing ever! He would nuzzle her feet and she would laugh so hard! 

7 years ago...

7 years ago today, I had the privilege and joy of becoming Mrs. Michael A. Frizzell!

What a fabulous 7 years it has been- 2 houses, 2 Master's degrees, multiple fun trips, 3 new jobs, wonderful family, great friends, awesome community, loving how we serve together, 1 cat, and of course, the best addition, our sweet Lucy.

There is absolutely  no one else I'd rather be with! God has truly blessed me with a wonderful husband- he is so patient, level-headed, a great provider, smart, great at what he does, a hard worker, a fun Daddy to Lucy, my best friend and confidant. 

For our anniversary, I had a sweet friend re-create the top of our wedding cake as a surprise to Mike! It turned out great and tasted so good! (spice cake with cream cheese icing!!).

My parents watched Lucy and we enjoyed a nice dinner at La Duni and then enjoyed our wedding cake and champagne afterwards!

These are the fun flowers Mike got me for our anniversary- reminds me so much of our honeymoon in Maui! 

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!!