We got a sudden sun break, and decided to take full advantage. The forecast lately has been rain: sprinkles all the way to monsoon-like showers! This day was made for jumping in "mud puggles" as Lucy dubbed them.
I love the composition here: school bus, jungle gym, sunburst, happy toddler!
"Lucy so mussy... Wash hands?" My girl can stomp a puddle with the best of them, right until she realizes she's getting dirty.
We came home and put Lucy in the bath. It was pretty chilly out, so I thought some hot cocoa was in order. My mistake was calling it HOT cocoa. Once we convinced her it was only warm and just like chocolate milk, she was game to try it. I think it's safe to say she enjoyed it!
"Hey Lucy, look at mama"
Lucy: "no....no, no, no"
Sassafrass!
Her dearest love and constant companion: "Daaaaa" aka Giraffe
We had her 18 month checkup and she's hitting all her milestones, like talking, pretending, coloring, following directions, and climbing. She jabbers all day long and is very social. She greets all our neighbors in the complex whenever she sees them, even if it's from our third story balcony. She especially loves other kids, who she calls "bebe" without fail (we're working on them being "kids" since most of them are older than her).
Still my sweet baby.
I still find myself breathing in her sweet scented head everyday.
She fills me with such JOY.
Lucy is enthralled by shoes and can spend twenty minutes at a time, or more, putting them on and taking them off. She doesn't like help, but given enough time, she can get most any shoe on her foot by herself. So far she willingly accepts help if we tell her we're going somewhere (editor's note: that all came to an end July 3rd, but I'm dating this back to her half-birthday for record keeping).
Lucy has discovered the words "no" and "my" (mine), and uses them in heavy rotation in our house. Often she gets ahead of herself and answers "no" before really thinking about what she really wants/doesn't want. If I ask her to do anything, it's "no"; but if we ask her about anything it's "yeaaaah." "Are you pretty? Are you crazy? Are you blue?" "Yeah!"
She has 9 teeth; we're still waiting on her fourth molar and her lower side teeth, then hopefully we'll get a bit of a break before the canines make their appearance.
She has a need to be naked, and does really well with not having accidents in the house. She will pee if there's water, though, so we have to watch her around the kiddie pool out on our deck and if we strip her down before she goes into the bathroom to take a bath. We're introducing the ideas of potty training and making it a part of our conversation with her. One of the benefits of cloth diapering is that we flush her poopies, so we've started letting her flush the toilet and talking about poopies belonging in the potty. We're introducing these ideas slowly and will continue to follow her cues on advancing. She's peed a couple of times on her diaper when it was laying open on the floor (she did the squat and piddle), and so we've been talking about pee pee going on the diaper if she's naked. She likes to try for us.
No diaper, no problem! Running laps around the house.
This girl loves her accessories!
Cloth diaper and baby keens
Work those arms! Running, Lucy style
My baby got her first haircut! I have to admit, I was a little misty-eyed, but it was time. I knew I could do it, but I decided to wait and let Nana trim it up just to be safe -- she's got a lot of experience and she wasn't afraid to cut off a good bit from the top.
She can stack blocks and sort them now. The stacking I'd seen, but the sorting caught me by surprise as I was filming her the other night. My determined girl! She has some of her daddy's and auntie's seriousness, but I'm afraid she has my flash temper: happy and busy, happy and busy, ANGRY, happy and busy, SAD. Oh my, sweet girl, mama understands! I wish I could share the video of her stacking and then sorting, but she was naked and I try to keep that stuff off of the web.
In spite of the potential for being labeled a "bad mother", I am here to admit that my child not only got the chicken pox (and not the vaccine -- gasp!), but I knowingly and willingly infected her with them. And she's fine. It's not for everyone, but we felt like we wanted to give her a chance at natural immunity.
Lucy either got a cold virus in tandem with the pox or her worst symptom of the chicken pox is a runny nose and cough, there's really no telling. She had a fever for a few days, but it never exceeded 100. She's got a really mild case, so we're hoping this will be enough to give her a natural immunity.
She's been a grump and a half, but it's also been really hot and we've been stuck at home (since we don't want to infect anyone). She's also got teeth trying to push through, any of which can make her cranky. Oh, and did I mention she's a toddler? Yeah, they tend to get grumpy for no apparent reason (or totally logical reasons like wanting to wear three shoes and not being able to -- happened today).
Yogurt fu manchu
She hasn't had a huge appetite, but she can put away some yogurt!
She's got maybe 40 spots. I kept waiting to take a picture when she was fully dotted...
One of the worst is on her hairline. Thankfully she doesn't seem to notice them so she isn't picking at them.
My little mama
Bye, mom.
She's got a large constellation of spots in her diaper area, so she's been running around naked all week. She's a fan!
Since we can't go to the pool and it's super hot, we brought the pool to Lucy. It's not much help to us grown ups, but it does keep her cool and entertained! It also helped keep her fever in check in the early days. She's spent hours each day in and out of the "pool". And it's been a great litmus test for potty training for us -- she's had NO accidents in the house this week! (Yes, she HAS peed on the deck and in the pool...but she seems to know not to pee pee in the house -- progress!!)
