::lucy goose::

Lucy Goose is about 8.5 months old.  Here she is on Sunday afternoon wearing her Easter dress that finally fits.  Yes, those are adorable little bunnies on there.



But as adorable as the bunnies are, they're not nearly as adorable as the Lucy herself.

She waves and claps.  She dances a little to singing and music.  She thinks Max is the funniest thing alive.  She thinks that if she's not taken out of her carseat the second we get home, it's the end of the world.



She creeps, mostly backwards.  She rolls.  She's adventurous and really really wants to crawl.  She loves to eat from the spoon unless the kids are playing nearby.  If the kids are around she'd much rather watch them than eat.  She doesn't really sleep at night.  She sometimes takes nice naps.  She's always happy to see me.  She sometimes cries when I leave the room.  She watches me like a hawk.



Dressing her up might be one of my most favorite things ever.  She's tiny and perfect and knows what she wants.
We're so glad she's our baby girl.

::don't worry::

Don't worry, even though he had a broken clavicle and was in a sling, MAx still had the energy to take a few dorky selfies on my phone that same night.



And of course, he did this:



Ewwww, and Lucy thinks it's so funny.

And last but not least--remember this guy?  This cute little curly haired guy that wanted "a collarbone" so bad so he could be like Dad?  And then he drew it on himself?

Cute?  I think so.

::clavicle::

It had been a long week.  It was Saturday morning and Kris and I had both finished exersizing and were getting cleaned up and ready to take the family to lunch.  We were both trying to relax.  I was drying my hair and Kris was practicing guitar when Max came in to Kris holding his arm.  "Dad, what did it feel like when you broke your shoulder?" Kris felt the clavicle area and sure enough there was a big bump where a smooth line should've been.

So we were off to urgent care--just the place you want to be on a Saturday at lunch time.
And poor Max was pretty distressed.  "Ow! Ow!" at every bump.
Luckily one of our good friends is a PA at a local urgent care and he was in.


Poor Max hates the blood pressure cuff.  Really really hates it.  But he survived--well, after two failed attemps with the machine the tech pulled out the manual cuff and that finally worked.  He's a little too squirmy.



And after an x-ray it was confirmed that sure enough the clavicle was broken.

And what was the boy doing in our house that could've broken his clavicle you may ask?

Well, if he's to be believed he was doing flips in the living room.  Front flips.  If you know our Max you know that he's not the most coordinated of fellows, so even the idea of him trying a front flip is ridiculous to me.  But he says he did two flips.  The first he landed--on his feet supposedly--and then he didn't land the second--well, he landed but on his shoulder.

Wish I would've been a fly on the wall for that.



Anyway, it was a long wait at the urgent care and everybody was starving.  But we survived.



We had to do a lot of kid entertainment.











We left with Max in a sling and instructions to go see the orthopedist on Monday.
Max was pretty brave, not too much whining or screaming after the initial shock wore off, I was proud of him.

So now he's joined the broken bones club.  Hip Hip Hooray.

::outtakes::

Taking photos for the Christmas cards is so dang hard.  Especially when one leaves it until the last minute and has to take the photo themselves AND be in it.

Here are some outtakes from our recent quick and not so fancy little session.  Unedited.





















Wowzers, YEP that's us!

::hairs::

I've kept Sandy's hair short in the past because in the morning he would wake up with the most wicked bedhead in the back.  Ratty and rough and fuzzy and disasterous.

But his hair has been growing out the last few months because I just haven't had time to get it cut.  And it's so cute and curly when it's long!  BUT it still gets so bad in the morning.  When we're someplace humid like say San Diego it's great, his hair behaves without too much coaxing, but out here in dry old New Mexico his hair is dry and crunchy.

So anyway, this particular morning was a seriously messy bed heady day.  And we tried to use a hat to cover the rat's nest, but all it did was sit on top.  But it's slightly better.  If only he would keep hats on for longer than 10 seconds.



His face isn't shiny from snot or something else gross, he's got "mustache" on there--this is what we call heavy moisturizer that we put around the kids mouths at night so that they don't lose their lips to chappedness.

Anyway, what's with the below look?  Seriously?



And in other hair news, suddenly I realized that Lucy probably had enough hair for a little clippy that somebody gave me a long time ago.  And it was true, she does have enough!  So exciting!  I feel like she has way more hair than the boys did at this age.  And honestly I'm thrilled to get to stick little clippies in there.



She likes to play with her food packets after they're empty.  Don't ask me why.

Imagine some jumping action here.



And there are the two youngest goofballs.  Sandy is good at photobombing.  Can't wait until Lucy get the crazy hair!

::::

Mr. Bedhead Sandy finds a "Hidden Mickey" at Albertson's.



Honestly there's so much to say about all this I don't even know where to start.  Do I start with how pleased I am that all my hidden mickey searching training has paid off?  Do I talk about the bedhead issues and Sandy's hair?  Or do I just let this photo speak for itself and move on?

::::

Our miss Lucy sure has been struggling with her sleeping habits.  The only time a person can trust her to take a real true honest-to-goodness long refreshing nap is Sunday morning.  Right during church.  She consistently will nap at that time--and for a good 3 hours.  But any other day that I carefully set aside the time and make sure I'm home so that she can nap and I can get stuff done, it never really works.  The nap ends early, never happens, something.  Anyway, for the last couple of weeks I've stayed home from church or left after sacrament so that Miss L could sleep.  And sleep she has.

When she wakes up she's so cheery and adorable, I just wish we could get her sleeping like this more regularly.  Look at that cute little face.  Immediately post nap.



And after a great nap she got to wear Daddy's hat for a while in the afternoon.



I'll do anything for that little face.

::swim meet saturday!::

We had another Maxwell swim meet this Saturday.  And of course, though I was hoping Kris would get to come to this one, he had to go on a Scout campout.  Luckily our babysitter was available and she watched Sandy for me, so all I had to manage was Max and Lucy.  And even more luckily the meet was in town, just at our community center pool!

 Max did really great. He had a relay that he was really nervous for, but he did amazingly! He was the backstroke guy, and I guess the backstroke guy always goes first. He set a nice fast pace and his team did great. His coach was really proud.

He also had individual events in the butterfly and freestyle. He felt really proud of himself afterwards and he should've been. He was brave and strong and really fun to watch.

 Lucy was a good sport all morning, and luckily all three of his events were early on so we got to leave when the meet was only about half way through. Tender mercies.

 

::our sand is four!!!::

 And here is the boy REALLY turning four!! "How old am I?  Am I still three?  I'm FWOUWR!!"

Kris got up early and made Sandy his special birthday breakfast of waffles.  Pumpkin waffles.



And he ate them with a flock of toys attending of course.  Mostly Octonauts.  And Darth Vader.



It was pretty sweet of Kris to make this crazy kid his requseted breakfast.  Since of course though it's Sandy's birthday it's just another super busy work day for the rest of us!



Sandy had school that morning, and so did Max.  Or so we thought for Max anyway.  I got everybody dropped off and I was back at home prepping to make Sandy's cake when I got a call from Max's teacher.  A pipe had burst in the school and there was 3 inches of freezing water covering the floor of the school.  Evidently all the kids were standing outside freezing.  So I got right back in the car and picked up Max and a friend and brought them home.  THEN I got started on cake and wrapping presents.  After Sandy pickup it pretty much took me all day to get the cake and the rest done between Lucy and everything else.



But besides a slightly crooked number four on top, the cake turned out really good looking, so it was worth all the hard work.

But of course it was worth the hard work, I mean look at this face!  He made a special request for another m&m cake.  I made him a cake with m&ms on it for his 2nd birthday and he's wanted one every year ever since.  This time he requested a chocolate cake with white frosting, but I couldn't get the frosting to be white so we went with yellow instead.



He was very pleased.  And so adorable and excited with all the birthday attention.  He's so cute with his little hair wings.  Hypnotized by the candles.



In this scene we were doing ichat with Grandma I think, she was watching him blow out the candles.



And here are some of the rest of us.  Lucy was happy to be an audience to the birthday fun.



Sandy got some fun Star Wars and Octonaut presents.  An R2D2 jacket and hat was not the least of these.  I'm hoping it'll encourage him to actually wear a jacket as it gets colder and colder.



And here's the cute toy that Max picked out for Sandy after much deliberation.  More octonauts to add to his collection.  Quazi and the Gup C I think.


It was a great day with a happy cute little boy.  The next morning he woke up and asked me two important questions.
1. "Is it still my birthday?"
2. "Am I five now?"