8 months

As of yesterday, Lucy is two thirds of a year old.  She is a feisty sweet baby girl who is speeding through  her first year with gusto.  

I heard her on the monitor this morning talking to herself in her crib (don't get the wrong idea here - she only spent about half the night in there).  I went in a few minutes later and she was curled up with her "lovey" - a soft and furry mini-blanket - sucking her thumb and just hanging out.  When she wakes up in our bed (as she does most mornings), she spends a few minutes snuggling with us and her thumb, and then she's ready to go, climbing all over us and heading straight for the edge of the bed and whatever adventure she'll find there.
Lucy is one part sweet tempered and one part determined.  She loves to be held and will usually be calm and easy in our arms.  When she's on her own though, she's on the move.  She is a curious girl and adamant about satisfying her curiosity.  Immediately.  Sometimes she'll entertain herself with her toys, but more likely she heads straight for trouble...the dog's water dish, a stack of magazines, the bits of breakfast under the boys' chairs.  Everything goes in the mouth.  Everything.  If it's on the floor it's in her mouth.  We've been so careful about introducing new foods, but when I found a piece of dogfood in her mouth the other day I realized that my careful attention to her diet is no match for her curiosity.

She climbs the entire staircase unassisted.  She gets up to a wide-legged stance on her own and will stand there grinning for longer than you think she should.  She loves the animals and she loves her brothers.  She has an easy smile and glimmers of what will someday be a sense of humor shine through more and more each day (an important asset in this family of ours)!

We're still not sleeping much around here, and sometimes juggling three kids, homework and piano lessons, two full time jobs, various home improvement projects, and all the friends and family we love and don't see enough gets a little ridiculous, but we wouldn't trade it.  At least we're never, EVER bored.

stalking the cat

Lucy loves the cat.  Every time the cat tiptoes by, Lucy gets a huge grin on her face and waves her arms around.  Lucy loves to grab the cat's tail, and all Freya does is get sort of a pained expression on her face and do her best to squirm out of the baby's grasp....

...and run for the door.  But Lucy has some speed now, and she stalks the cat wherever she goes.  Loves the tail.  LOVES the tail.  

Fridays with Lucy

 I don't work much on Fridays.  Well, that's not exactly true.  I do get some work done, but it's the day I do it with Lucy.  No child care on Fridays.  (Unless I panic because I haven't gotten enough done during the week, in which case I call Joel and he talks me down and takes Lucy to work with him for a while.)
Today I put Lucy to sleep for her nap in the ergo and transferred her to her crib, all while on a conference call.  I worked on a report during her naps and made some phone calls while she was playing with her new push toy (see picture above) and spread the recycling around the kitchen (no picture of that, sorry).  I'll pay for it this weekend when I have to find a few hours to finish my report, but I wouldn't trade this day of walking in the sunshine and building blocks with my girl for anything.

Sweet potatoes....mmmm

When she's done eating she tells us by putting her thumb in her mouth.  Early baby sign language?

no poles

It was kidfest extraordinaire last weekend in Sunriver. Three families: six adults and eight kids ranging from six months to 15. I wish I had taken pictures of us all skiing. Joel and I had to switch off between sitting in the lodge and hitting the slopes because they wouldn't let Joel on the lift with Lucy strapped in the bjorn. (I admit, I was secretly glad for this.) Liam and Milo blew past me on their skis, but I loved following them down the mountain and watching them zoom straight down with no poles and no fear.

Jack carried Lucy all the way home from Goody's ice cream shop. Jack loves Lucy, in a way you don't expect from a 13 year old skateboarding eighth grader. He is very sweet with her.


Liam, drinking a milkshake that cost $6.75. Really. I don't know why I agreed to it. Probably the same reason I agree to the long shaggy hair. He's very persuasive.

Lucy in the back of the car in the parking lot of Sunrise Lodge at Mt. Bachelor. She was excited because she thought she'd get to go skiing, but as it turned out, she spent the rest of the day in the lodge, eating bananas and watching the skiers

yes we can

Milo starred as the adult Barack Obama in a school play about Obama's life yesterday. Each February the boys' school puts on a play at the library to celebrate Black History Month. I guess Obama was the obvious choice for a subject this year...

The play was featured on the evening news, and was in the local paper this morning too. Check out the video. (Hang in there through the R-G add, it's worth it to see Milo's interview.)

Here's Milo, playing Barack as a college student, speaking about international injustices.

Liam played a 70s era college student. You can tell by the sunglasses.


Milo memorized an amazing number of lines and only had to be prompted once in two back-to-back plays.

Kitty Piercy, our mayor came to see the play. She was Joel's preschool teacher back in the day.

We don't have any pictures of the audience, but there were probably 100+ people there for each performance. Milo said he wasn't nervous.

Happy Valentines

Sending you love and pink cookies!

beautiful day

I am fortunate to be part of a group of seven amazing women who get together periodically for cocktails in celebration of birthdays, and who come running when someone has a baby, a wall to paint, or a crisis. Our ages span over 11 years, and we all have different life situations - some with kids, some without; some with busy professional lives, some raising kids full time (some attempting to do both...). For the past three years we've put our regular lives aside for a couple of days on a mountain somewhere. This year it was only one day, but it was a beautiful day on Willamette Pass.

Rohanna snowboarded for the first time in 14 years. She shredded.

We all felt a little looser after our requisite

half-time pints in the lodge.

And here we are later, wearing our ninja gnome t-shirts. Yes, I did say ninja gnome. (A testament to the amazing things you can find on the internet.) Over the years, one of our number has gifted each of us with a garden gnome to watch over our yards. Another of us has been absent for a couple of months lately getting chemotherapy and radiation treatment. We have become self-styled "cancer ninjas" in support of her efforts. So now we're ninja gnomes, I guess. This is us, making idiots of ourselves at a restaurant, so we could make Jess laugh. Somewhere we heard that laughter is good medicine.

(No, we said, we're not a team. Or a cult. It's...well, its' complicated.)