Meeting Uncle Chris

Uncle Chris arrived with our friend Martha last week to meet Lucy for the first time. They hit it off immediately and he gave her the best present ever -- a glockenspiel!!! It came as no surprise to us that Lucy started tapping away on it right away, even if she was holding the sticks backwards at times. We seem to have a little musician on our hands. The sticks felt good in her mouth too, of course. Usually it is one stick in the mouth and one tapping on the glockenspiel. Perfect.

Dad's Birthday and Sushi!

We all went to Ajimi for sushi to celebrate Matt's 42nd birthday over the weekend. Lucy had a fabulous time - she got kissed on by the waitresses and she marveled over the display of rolls we ordered. It's easy to go out to dinner with a happy baby!

Skip Hop!

Grandma Nancy and Grandpa Jim sent Lucy a really cool set of play mats in the mail today! As soon as Lucy got on the mats she couldn't stop touching them by waving her hand back and forth across their texture and turning her body in circles. I couldn't put them together fast enough! She moved across them to touch each part in excited approval. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Happy Halloween!

I'm worried because I am about to fall over!

Loving on my card from Grandma Lyn, Grandbob, Loomis and Minto

We went to the UAF Wood Center to meet friends and babies for Halloween. Lucy, the frog, posed with Keet, Yoda, for a great photo.

In the Water in the Winter

Can you find us?

Lucy started her swimming lessons this week at Mary Siah. I was a really good mom and left the house just past 5:30am last week to get her registered. I arrived at 6:15am and there were already 8 people in line ahead of me! We go to her lesson each Tuesday and Thursday morning for 30 minutes for 4 weeks. We are in a class with about 8 other babies but Lucy is the youngest by far. All the others are over one year old and most are 2. The class is really fun and I am learning the best way to hold her in the water. The instructor works with each mom one on one. Lucy really loves it and is quite the little kicker and paddler. The instructor keeps commenting on the amount of energy that Lucy has! Dad showed up to class today to watch from above and shot a little video. Lucy was quite tired today as she didn't go down for her morning nap so her kicking wasn't as energetic today as the first class.

Lucy's new bathtub arrived in the mail yesterday! She outgrew her newborn tub and since she can sit up now, this one suits her much better. It is a great tub for us because it folds up into nothing. It is very cool. It can even be taken in a suitcase when traveling. Best of all, it saves us water because we only have to fill her small tub for bath time. We think she approves of it!

Lucy's mohawk still shows itself from time to time.

The First Ski

This morning Lucy and Dad went to Birch Hill to check out the ski conditions and give mom a break at home. Mom slept until 10:15am! Dad and Lucy went to Alaska Coffee Roaster's for breakfast and then off to ski for one hour followed by playtime in the snow. Lucy and Dad enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

Lucy lost a shoe on lap one but it was recovered on lap two.

Some great action shots are below. My favorite is the last one!

Movement

Lucy REALLY wants to crawl but she just hasn't quite figured out how it's done yet. However, she's got the rocking, the belly slither, the hop-crawl, and the "yoga down-dog crawl" down really well at this point. I of course documented it all to share! Besides her efforts to move she now enjoys putting her lips together and blowing air out of them, even while eating! She finds it to be very amusing. I do too, especially when we do it back and forth for a minute and both end up giggling with delight.

On Monday:

On Wednesday:

Tonight (Friday):

In the meantime I am utterly exhausted. Lucy doesn't seem to be sleeping much at night. All signs point to the fact that she is going through major development right now so she wakes from each sleep cycle very easily. I am lucky if I get 2 hour chunks of sleep. Last night we were all awake at 3:30am because Lucy was WIDE awake. I think I finally got her back to sleep around 4:30am. Yawn!

Hangin' with my Dog

This video was taken on the day Lucy turned 6 months old last week. I have more to upload this week of her most recent "mobility", stay tuned.

It's My Half-Birthday!

Today I turned 6 months old. WOW!

My current stats:

Height: 25.75" (51st percentile)
Weight: 13lb 14.5oz (12th percentile)
Head: 16.5" (45th percentile)

Basically, I am wee.

Mom and Dad think I may crawl any day now! Maybe I am just fooling with them a little or maybe I am serious when I so slyly move one leg ahead of the other, just once, from within the rocking position ...hee hee.

Playtime

This past week Lucy's soft cork floor play area arrived. As you can see, the animals think we bought it for them...not surprising. Anyway, we hope it keeps her from knocking her little head on the concrete floor (as much) while she learns to get around.

We'll see if she actually stays on it because she has been "creeping" around everywhere and surprising us! There is no crawling yet but she slithers across the floor on her belly with ease now in addition to showing us the classic "rocking" which we hear is the precursor to crawling. Uh oh! I will try to get a video of this action soon.

So yesterday we went to town together to buy some little treats for Lucy. We wanted to get her a new toy and we went to our favorite toy store here that has nice wooden toys, Enchanted Forest Toys, to let her actually pick something out. It was really fun! She tested about 10 toys and kept going back to the the one "grabbing toy" that we came home with.

Second, we went to Gulliver's Bookstore to get her some used children's books since we seem to have endless used book credit there from all the books we trade in. We came home with a pile of good ones, including some classics such as "The Snowy Day" and Beatrix Potter's Nursery Rhymes. It was a fun day that ended with a bonfire party at a neighbor's house down the street.

Other exciting things that I want to take note of:

Lucy has been signing A LOT for milk. Suddenly she just does it all the time! She also ate some winter squash this week with better results, however, her favorite food remains avocado. She's had a little teeny bite of applesauce and banana as well. Yummy.