Happy Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN to everyone. I hope you all had a great, fun, and safe night. I have a lot to report and as always, I am way behind. The story of my life, being way behind. As far as Halloween, Lucy wore her flamingo and helped pass out candy at my mom's house. No trick or treating this year. She is sick, AGAIN, and has been for a whole week. She is on antibiotics, but we have seen little to no improvement. Horrible congestion again, coughing til you puke, again, etc. HORRIBLE! To make things worse, Justin is really sick, too. Please pray with me that they both get better soon.

In other Lucy news, she now has 4 molars and the 4th top front tooth came through. She has 12 teeth. Still drooling, so I am sure more are coming. Ugh. She still chatters all of the time. No new words that I can think of right now. We have a new morning ritual and Lucy cracks me up every morning now. She drinks her milk right when she wakes up. Usually in our bed and then we turn on a kids channel while we all wake up a bit. If we don't get the TV on soon enough, she starts looking everywhere for the remote and when she spots it, she frantically points at it and makes this funny noise. She doesn't really like TV that much, she gets bored quickly, which is good. It is just a sweet morning time thing where she will cuddle and be still with us, which never happens again throughout the day. She is too busy.

Anyone have any advice on how to get her off of the bottle with her milk? She uses a sippy cup fine for water or juice, but when I put milk in it she refuses it profusely. She still takes three bottles of milk a day. One first thing in the morning, one as she goes down for her nap, and one when she goes to bed at night. She is 15 months old today, and I am not worried yet about still being on the bottle, but I am not sure how to get her to ever switch. She still really needs her milk, since she gets hardly any other protein, so we will stick with the bottles. I would love any advice from anyone with a similar experience.

I have taken Lucy with me to get a pedicure several times now. It is amazing to me, but she sits really still in my laps and eats the snack that I bring her. The salon is staffed by wonderful Vietnamese people who LOVE Lucy. When they see us coming in the parking lot I can hear them all shreking inside, "HUONG, HUONG!!! Yeah Huong!" They call her by her Vietnamese name and talk to her in Vietnamese the whole time. I love hearing them talk to her. It is so cute. Recently they have decided that they want to hold her. Lucy has pretty major stranger anxiety. She rarely lets someone she doesn't know well hold her. So, when they asked if they could hold her, I said that I doubted she would let them. Boy was I wrong. She let two of the girls pick her up and they held her for about 15 minutes. Then she wanted back with me. She was sitting on my lap and one them tried to get her again. She started crying, so the lady left her. Then one of the men who works there said that all baby girls love him and that he wanted to try and hold her. She went to him! I really could not believe that she would let any of them even touch her. They are so sweet with her and even told me that they could see my behaviors in the way that she acts. I loved that. I never think that she is paying attention, but today she pulled a nail file out of the drawer in the bathroom and acted like she was filing her toe nails. How funny is that?

And finally, Lucy has always hated when I held another baby. She is super protective of her momma and lets everyone know that I am not supposed to hold anyone but her. She has taken that to another level. She now does not like to share me with animals either. I was holding a friend's puppy the other day and she insisted her dad put her down, she marched over to me, and she tried to push the puppy out of my arms. Some day she is going to have a rude awakening when a sibling comes along. We will be working on this now. I am also working on her playing and acting a little more gentle and kind - to both people and animals. She is rough with the dogs, so we are working on petting them softly. She has hit on several occasions, so we are also working on being kind with people as well. I can't believe that she knows how to hit. I am really working hard to stop this and she is learning. She knows it is wrong and when I say to be gentle, she will touch me softly and sweetly. She is going to be such a handful. The other night in the bathtub she was doing something that she was not supposed to be doing - I don't even remember what it was now. I asked her to please stop and she looked at me right in the eye and did it again, without taking her eyes off of mine. We then had a stare down for about a minute. I was not going to look away and neither was she. Then all of the sudden she started dying laughing. I could not help myself but laugh. I tried so hard not to, but I couldn't help it. I will say it again, she is going to be quite the little toot. Hopefully we get this under control soon. She is so sweet most of the time, but I see a side that makes me really terrified of the teenage years occasionally! I am sure my parents are thinking, "Pay backs are hell!"

Here are some adorable pictures of the flamingo and from the beautiful fall day today. Enjoy!!

The flamingo can even play the piano.

Where are the trick or treaters?

Lucy hiding with my mom's fake ghost kids. Aren't those so cute? My mom has the best holiday decorations.


Anyone need a ride?


Putting some gas in the car.

Pumpkin Patch

The Arboretum has the most amazing pumpkin patch that I have ever seen. There are literally thousands of pumpkins. It is amazing. We have been several times because the weather has been so awesome and I just love it there. Lucy loves to be free to run wild outside. She is so happy and content when she is outside. All of the pictures are from the Arboretum.

She started saying apple the other day - clear as can be. She can also say Seashy now, which is what we call my youngest sister. I am working on all of her aunts and uncles names, but this is the only one she can say right now. I will work on getting some more talking video.

In my last post, I was asked twice about her stroller. It is a Bugaboo (the chameleon model). While I do love the stroller and it rides great and she seems to be really really comfortable in it, it was very expensive and I am not sure that it was worth quite as much as we paid for it. For starters, she HATES being confined, so getting her to spend that much time in it is very difficult. And second, it is kind of a pain breaking it down and setting it up. It isn't hard, just not nearly as convenient as several other strollers I have seen.

I get a ton of questions in the comments section and I rarely remember to answer. I have seen on other blogs where they did a Q & A type thing, so if you have a question, go ahead and ask and then I will write a post addressing the questions. The number one question I get is about Lucy's hairbows - the majority of them are from a shoe store in Little Rock called Shoe Connection. Totally random and they don't have a website, so unless you are in Little Rock, AR sometime soon, I am not much help in that department. As I have said before, I prefer big bows and they have to be on an alligator clip. Those are my only two requirements for bows. She is really good about leaving them in, mostly because her bangs are so long and annoying to her if they are not pinned back. Ever since we have had her, she has never had a problem with hats or bows. Lucky us!

In a side note, do any of you have sleeping problems? I have fought this for years. The past couple of weeks have been especially bad for me. I have been on pretty much any prescription sleep aide you can think of. Some work better than others, but after a while, they all seem to stop working. I finally got a decent night's sleep last night after starting a new medicine. I am trying acupuncture on Friday. The lady said that insomnia is not hard to treat and after 3-6 sessions, I should be sleeping much better. At this point, I am seriously willing to try anything and something that does not involve drugs sounds especially good. Have any of you tried acupuncture? I am pretty excited to try it out. Any sleep suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

We have a Halloween party this Sunday, so be looking forward to more pictures of the pink flamingo soon. WOO HOO!

Getting Back on Track

I am so behind. Lucy and I are both feeling much better. She still has some congestion, but it is manageable and not puke inducing! Still only 2 molars with the other two making ridiculous amounts of drool. She is sleeping a million times better. She was in a bit of a funk for a while there and it was stressing me out. I just wanted to make her feel better, and I was having a really hard time doing that. I plan on writing about it, but not tonight. I am too tired.

We got to go to the state fair this week. The food was once again unbelievably gross to me - fried everything, such as fried latte, fried Cosmopolitan, fried Snickers, fried cookie dough, etc. Now, the corny dogs are right up my alley, its just all of the other stuff that freaks me out. I remember blogging last year when we went to the fair that we would be taking our 14 month old to the fair next year, which is just what we did. It was fun. She just took it all in. She LOVED the petting zoo. She has a lot animals that she imitates with actions now. One of them is the giraffe - we get a lot of our imitations from the book From Head to Toe by Eric Carle. Anyway, in the book it says that the giraffe bends its neck, and she loves to do this. When we walked in the children's animal part, a baby giraffe was there and before we even saw it, she was bending her neck and I knew a giraffe must be near. So cute. She can now meow, moo, and baa. She is still trying to say so many words, again most are not recognizable to anyone other than Justin and I. Some of her newest that are recognizable are - Christy (a very close friend and neighbor) - Lucy actually says Tisty and it is so adorable and hello. I am working on getting her to say Ho Ho Ho for Santa. Due to the high importance of the Christmas season for me, we must get this down in time for Christmas.

Justin and I got to go to the Cowboys game today. It was a lot of fun and Lucy stayed with Christy, aka Tisty, and she did so well. No crying or anything. Just a lot of playing and fun. I was really proud of her, but Lucy LOVES our neighbors because she sees them so often. Lucy and I also went to Anna's birthday party this weekend, which was so fun. They had a bounce house at their house, and Lucy seemed to really enjoy it and she was so comfortable there, even with all of the strangers around, which was a very nice change given her recent behavior with people she does not know well - hence why I think she may be out of her slump.

Here are recent pictures of all of our fun. Enjoy.

Justin, Lucy and Big Tex. He is a little scary to me, being a non-Texan.

Hey bunnies, could you hop on over here so I could get a better look?

The giraffe with Justin and Lucy

Lucy and the camels.

Let's all agree together that we are thankful that we are not the pig.

Lucy practicing her farming skills. To be honest, she was not that impressed.




She was much more into doing things like yoga in her stroller!

A small example of some of the fried everything section. BARF!

Justin is indulging in a fried Snickers. He couldn't believe that I didn't love it. It is perfectly fine the way it was originally made - free of batter and free flowing grease.

Here is Justin attempting to win Lucy a prize at the skee ball game. Earlier in the week, he won her a Dora doll and thought he could do it again. Not this time buddy! He kept willingly handing over money only to continue to lose at the game in attempts to get something that I really don't want in our house.

Lucy and I just sat back and watched.



Is it just me, or does Lucy look like a 12 year old in this picture. Even though she didn't go to the game, she still wore her cheerleader outfit and was looking good. Thanks Nana!!

Still Hanging On

Lucy is still sick. She has ever so kindly shared her awful cold with me. I am very congested and headachey and I just don't feel great. Justin is home though and has been a huge help. This would not have been fun with just Lucy and I. In case you all forgot or for my newer readers, last cold season was AWFUL for us once we were home with Lucy. She got three colds right after one another. She has what the doctors like to call a sensitive gag reflex and she throws up very easy. So what does that have to do with colds? Well, whenever she has drainage, it causes coughing, and the coughing ends up in a huge vomit session. This only occurs at night when she is laying down. So, last night she was exhausted and passed out so easily. About 45 minutes after she had been down, the coughing started. Sometimes she can cough a few times without getting sick. Not last night. She started a huge cough and before we could get to her, up came everything. It was the biggest mess. She had to have another bath, obviously the whole crib had to be changed, etc. Luckily, none of it got on the bumper pads, but they are outta there until we are vomit free. I got her bathed. Justin got the bed changed. I got her back to sleep. And Justin did the laundry. Again, it was so wonderful that I was not here alone, because I have done all of this alone and it was enough to make me cry and yell at my husband just because I needed to yell. One night last cold season when I was alone she threw up 3 times in the night. Yes, three times of me alone cleaning her, her bed, and getting her back to sleep. I really did almost lose it.

The good thing is, she is still in pretty good spirits during the day. Not 100%, but not that bad. We are just all so tired from the night wakings. And as others have said, it is REALLY hard to know what to medicate her for. Our ped gave us some suggestions since so many meds have been recalled. She is drooling so much that sometimes I think it is her teeth more than anything that is causing her being upset, but then again, I have no idea. Does her throat hurt like mine did yesterday? Is her mouth sore? Does she have a headache like me? So hard. I am hoping we are through the hardest part. No barfing yet tonight. I pray I did not just jinx that. I am too tired to do it all again. Please say a little prayer that she and I both get back to our normal selves again soon.

Now that I have complained enough, here are some really cute pictures from Lucy's bath in our big bathtub with bubbles and all. She could not believe all of the bubbles. Justin turned on the jets and they just overtook the place.

Sick Baby Girl

Lucy has come down with a really horrible cold. She is hacking away and the snot is flowing constantly. She has her moments, but she is being a really great sport about feeling so crummy. On top of that, her teeth are still so clearly driving her crazy. She is drooling more than I have ever seen her drool. The second molar has come through, so she has both bottom molars and I can still feel the top ones, but they are not broken through. We both stayed in our pjs all day today. I hope she starts feeling better really soon.

Lucy had a really hard time while we were in Nashville. She was just not herself most of the time we were there. She was really fussy and clingy and slept terrible, to say the least. I don't know if she was overwhelmed by all of the activity that was going on or if she was just unsure of being in a new environment but whatever it was, she was not herself. She has gone right back to normal now that we are back at my parents, which she definitely considers her second home. I think that she is going to be someone who really has a hard time in loud and crowded situations. I am so used to loudness because in my family it is hard to get a word in edge wise. I need to remember that she might have a very different personality from what is the norm for me, and that is perfectly okay. I do hope that she will have an easier time since it is family, and we all want her to feel comfortable, but it is going to take her quite a bit more time to feel that comfort level, and again, I have come to the realization that this is okay.

She has some more words. She can say fish and shoes clearly now. I can understand when she says thank you and bless you - and most realize what she is saying, but it is not perfectly clear. She will try and say lots of other things - like dog, Bentley, Bailey, and Phoebe. I love watching her vocabulary expand. It is so neat.

Here are some pictures from today and a few from our last days in Nashville. Wyatt is doing so well and I miss him already.

Love those newborn chicken legs

Lookin cool in his shades


The precious brothers

This is a sequence of Lucy feeding Bianca her Goldfish - here she is laying a trail to lure Bianca in

Bianca is moving in

Now for the handoff

And we wonder why Bianca is getting a bit chubby

Still able to get a smile despite not feeling so well