Twenty-Thirteen

2012 was such an amazing year for our family, I can only hope to be as blessed in 2013. Here's a review of our year in pictures, enjoy! :)

January 3rd. At the halfway mark of my pregnancy with Lucille I started taking weekly pictures of my growing belly. (Here)

January 13th. One of my most favorite days ever. Michael returns from his year long and final deployment to Afghanistan. (Here)

February 7th. Having fun during our baby moon. (Here)

March 24th. Took a mini-trip while we were home for my baby shower to see our friends get married. (Here)

 

April 14th. Michael is accepted to WSU! (Here)

May 16th. Admitted to the Hospital. (Here)

May 19th. Happy birthday to our baby girl! (Here)

June 7th. Lucille met the her her grandma and then Mrs. Melody, our photographer. (Here)

July 4th. Hosted a Fourth of July BBQ and watched the fireworks at Camp Lejeune for the last time. (Here)

July 13th. Michael last day of work for the Marine Corp. (Here)

August 2nd. Said goodbye to our friends in NC and headed for the west coast.

 

 

August 7th. Took a detour and visited family in Arizona. :)

August 15th. Road trip completed. We get to introduce Lucille to all our dear family and friends that we missed so much.

September 22nd. Puyallup Fair time! (Here)

October 31st. Lucille is Yoda for Halloween. (Here)

November 19th. Lucille starts solids. (Here)

December 25th. Spent Christmas with family in Washington for the first time since we've been married.(Here)

 

Happy New Year!

A Very Merry Christmas...

We had a wonderful Christmas with family. It was fun first Christmas for our little lady; she was her usual happy self and enjoyed being part of the day's activities! We were able to spend Christmas eve with family, as well, so Lucille had a two days of Christmas fun!

Family picture in our jammies! And Lucille's silly bow. I love it!

It was fun to get up in the morning with little Lucille, so she could go through her stocking and unwrap her presents.  My mom made blueberry cream cheese baked french toast for Christmas morning. Yum-oh.

Later, we got out of our pj's and some of our favorite people came over to join us! We had dinner and opened more presents.

She got to play with her new presents later. How cool is this toy from her grandma and grandpa?

 

We (Michael, Lucille, and I) had a lazy day today to recover from the holiday fun. I can't believe it is almost 2013!  



The Seventh Month

Lucille is seven months old, just in time for Christmas! She had her sixth month appointment a week ago, three weeks late this time around because we wanted her to see a doctor on this side of the mountains and had to wait until winter break. It went wonderfully! We love her new doctor! She is now...

26 inches tall and 14 pounds 9 ounces!

 

Baby girl is healthy and the doctor was excited to see all new things she has been doing lately. She said Lucille was doing everything a nine month old should, which was exciting to hear. :)

She is crawling fast these days and working on standing.

I was away from her for the first time this weekend (for six whole hours) because Michael took me on a date. I sure missed her, but she had a lot of fun with grandma and grandpa.

We're still following the baby led feeding and enjoying it. Lucille has tried avocado, broccoli, butternut squash, sweet potato, carrots, apple, pear, cauliflower, kiwi, cucumber, zucchini, oatmeal, green beans, chicken, and beef. And probably some other things that I can't think of! We're also working on taking sips of water. :)

What does seven month old Lucille enjoy?

Throwing her food on the floor for Annabelle

Crawling all over the place

Making her duck face (and spitting on everything... ha.)

Playing with her toys

Trying to play with the dog toys

Cuddling with her blanket that grandma made her

Pulling herself up to stand (she prefers to be standing)

Slapping her hand on the coffee table (or hitting it with toys)

Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors. She loves them.

Riding around on daddy's shoulders!

 

 

Probably no blogging until after Christmas for me, so Merry Christmas all! (And if you were wondering, no Christmas cards from us this year, I forgot the addresses at home and decided to just  take the year off!)

 

End of Semester Surprise

Michael completed his first semester of college yesterday. We were planning on being back in O-town by now, but a tiny little administrative error in a letter sent to Michael meant we had to stay another day. Seattle and Spokane are not the same city. Just for future reference.

Anyways, Michael had his last final yesterday -- a two hour trigonometry final. And during that final baby girl did this:

So, I had time to do this...

... because I love to surprise Michael. It is one of my favorite things.

I also made a bunch of bows using this tutorial. I put the tester one on Michael's surprise. I cut the strips of papers an inch shorter for the rest of the bows and liked how they turned out much better. They're pretty fun to make!

Baby girl woke up and checked things out.

That peachy mood of hers quickly deteriorated when she started doing the splits due to lack of traction. Fun stuff. That is okay though because daddy got home just in time to cheer her up and open his gift.

Ah,  I love this time of year.

Cruising and Christmas

Lucille is learning new skills and I've been very busy trying to keep her safe in our unsafe house! Whenever I've gotten any downtime, dishes have won over fishing out the decorations, especially when we only would be able to enjoy them for such a short period of time. So, our wreath on the door is as cheery as it is going to get this year.

Lucille is mobile folks. It all happened very quickly. She can crawl, sit up, and pull herself to a stand. Just yesterday she started walking along the sofa, aka cruising. She stands on her knees unassisted, which means she can reach things that are higher up with those unoccupied hands of hers. Once she gets herself in a standing position, she only needs one hand and my brave little baby has started to let go with both on occasion. Which is scary.

We mainly need to gate the stairs off. And put outlet covers on the outlets, she has already tried to put her fingers in them. No, no, no, no, sweetheart, we can't do that! Other than that, I'm considering a playard, I think that might be a good investment with all the travelling we do.

Lucille went to her first tree farm a couple weeks ago, to help pick out grandma and grandpa's Christmas tree. It is now decorated and awaiting our arrival! I'm sure Lucille will love it.

Here is the afternoon summarized in pictures, enjoy!

 

Riding around in the Ergo!

Teamwork!



Eating my camera case. Yummy.

Grandma gave her a candy cane. With the wrapper still on... because mommy said so. 

Thankful

Here is my slightly late Thanksgiving post! Our Thanksgiving week was wonderful! I'm so thankful for the extra family time I got this week because the number one thing I'm thankful for this year is the people in my life. Especially these two:

I'm thankful for my husband. I can't even describe how much I love him. He is more amazing with Lucille than I ever could imagine. He knows just when to surprise me with flowers. He is easygoing when I don't know how to be. His desire to learn is inspiring.

I'm thankful for my baby girl. She's teaching me about life and love and patience. She is the best baby. She is sleeping so good in her big girl crib at grandma and grandpa's house this week. She is learning and growing so fast; it is exciting to watch her explore the world. Michael and I have so much love for her, it almost hurts.

Here is the family on Thanksgiving day:

Baby girl got to share some new "firsts" with her grandparent. She started reaching with both hands towards us when she wanted to be picked up. So cute! She rode in a shopping cart for the first time and loved it. On Thanksgiving day she went from laying down on the ground to sitting up all on her own, and now a couple days later, she's already a pro at it. This kid is amazing. They also got to watch her experience solid foods for the first time. Her favorite food so far has been butternut squash and her least favorite was definitely banana.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

The Sixth Month

The little lady is half a year old now. It is hard to believe that it has been six whole months since she has joined our family. We had some family pictures/ Lucille's six month pictures done over the weekend. We have a few sneak peeks and they're turning out pretty cute!

See baby girl's new teeth? She got them nine days apart earlier this month. :)

We're staying at grandma and grandpa's house for Thanksgiving break this week. So they're catching up on their Lucille time.

In other exciting news, since Lucille is six months old now we're introducing her to solids. She has been exclusively breastfed her whole little life and she isn't so sure about real food yet. She hasn't actually eaten anything that we've given her, but she is tasting it and playing with it. We're doing baby led feeding (also know as baby led weaning - but I'm not weaning her - you can read more about the method here.)

She has tried avocado, apple, and banana so far.

Her first taste! The experience became pretty messy shortly after this.

She is getting pretty spoiled at grandma and grandpa's house. I think she is averaging one new toy a day here. Ha.

She also got to meet Miss Katy yesterday, who made her this beautiful new quilt:

I can't get over how lovely it is!

What does six month old Lucille enjoy?

Smashing food

Feeding the dogs things they shouldn't have (avocado)

Throwing toys

Sitting up like a big girl

Teething (Just kidding - teething is not fun.)

Sleeping most of the night in her crib

Cuddling with mommy and daddy

Playing with Grrrma and Grrrpa

Riding in the car

Crawling backwards (forward it too much work)

Teething

Lucille has a tooth! It popped up out of nowhere.

 

We didn't even know she was actively teething! I guess we just figured that teething would be a  miserable/ fussy time for the little lady... but she has been acting pretty normal. Maybe we won't be so lucky later, only time will tell.

 

We brushed her tooth tonight.

 

 

I think she liked it. She mostly just wanted to lick the toothbrush. :)