::lucy eats max::

This girl loooooves her brothers, but her brothers love her even more. Max thought it was pretty hilarious that she was eating him. But later when he looked at the photos he said, "I'm just not too sure how clean my hand was...." Yeah, like I'm shocked about that.

::one whole month old::

Today is Lucy's one month birthday! Time sometimes goes so fast, and as usual of course it's hard to imagine a time when little Lucy didn't live with us.
To celebrate her anniversary today we did a few things. First and foremost she decided there would be no naps today, and I had earlier decided there would be. So we wrestled that out ALL DAY LONG. She won. I lost.
The second thing we did is that she smiled at me. Was it gas? Probably. Did it seem like gas at the time? No. She's been making cute little faces after she finshes eating the last couple of days, and I was posing her on the bed trying to get a photo after a meal when I called her name and she made this great big smile.

I was pretty excited and it sure seemed like she smiled just for me. We'll just pretend like that's what happened. It's to make up for all the nap battling.

At one month old, Lucy's favorite things are:
Eating
Being held--all the time
Snuggling
Sleeping in our bed
Her brothers



Her dislikes?
Being put down--ever.
Sleeping in her own bed
Napping
Waiting for people to do things
Being elbowed in the head by Sandy
I think that's a pretty exhaustive list.
We love our little Lucy.

::spelling homework::

I found an ipad app to help Max practice his spelling words. It's been working well and he's had a bunch of perfect tests.
Anyway, Sandy needs to do everything that Max does right now. Everything. Max Max is the coolest person in the world to Sandy right now.
So when Max is doing his spelling practice, Sandy of course needs to do his. We have this cute little app called "Endless Alphabet" that helps little guys learn letter sounds--it takes a world, then the letters all fall off the word scrambled and the kid has to put them back together. And when he puts his finger on the letter it says it's sound over and over--"arrrr, arrrr, arrrr" etc.
Sandy loves it. And of course it's much more exciting than Max's boring spelling review. So sometimes poor Max gets a little envious.
But anyway I love seeing both the boys working on their spelling.

::grandparents::

In our little family we are so lucky to have some of the best Grandparents around. After Lucy was born we got to have some time with all of them.
Kathy came for a week right after the birth and was super supportive, helping drive the bigger kids around to their activities, cleaning up after them, shopping for me, etc. She even got to hold the baby a little. It was fabulous help. We missed Grandpa Ken though.

The same day that Kathy left to go home my parents arrived to take care of us. They were here for a week too. They did lots of cooking, playing, shuttling kids to & fro, shopping, cleaning, etc. All the good stuff that keeps a household like ours rolling along.
It was really nice to get to spend some time with all of them, and so fun that they got to be with Lucy when she was so small. It's a special time when babies are so little, even though they don't interact much.
We're grateful to have such awesome parents that care for us so much and sacrifice so much for us.

::lucy::

Lucy Wren!!
3-12-14 11:56PM
19 inches long, 6 lb 14 oz
A girl!! We were so surprised.
A couple of days before:
On her bday.


More details to follow.

::not salad!!!::

My parents have a family joke in which Max is the subject. In this joke they reminisce about the time that we tried to get Max to eat some lettuce--probably on a burger or involved with something else not too healthy--and he started wailing "NOT SALAD!!!" and bawling.
Well, we had lasagna and salad the other day for Sunday dinner, and guess who started to act like we were killing him? Sandy. It was the lettuce. The lettuce was NOT OK. The lettuce was disgusting and offensive. The lettuce had to be off his plate RIGHT THEN.

Tears happened. Misery happened. Honestly now at this point I can't remember whether the words Not Salad entered into the situation, but I think they had to have. At least in spirit.

It was extremely pitiful, and the lettuce leaves were banished to the tablecloth.

It's just dang hard to be 3, especially when your parents make you man up and eat NOT SALAD.

::today::

Today a rather interesting and awful thing happened. It was a work day for me, so our cute babysitter Victoria was watching the boys for the afternoon. I was dropping by the bank on my way home when I got a call from Victoria--always a concern, especially since she usually texts me. A call is a little scary!
She sounded a little distressed when she told me that Max had put a ring of hers on his finger a bit ago and now it was seriously stuck. Oh dearie me. That Max. Always getting into scrapes. Anyway, I told her I'd be home shortly and that they should keep his finger in cold water and not tug at the ring too much.
This morning when she came in I had noticed on her hand a rather large and alarming ring that looked kind of like brass knuckles, only it was a cross. Pretty intense. I was hoping it wasn't THAT ring that he was stuck with.
When I got home there he was, with the cross ring as stuck as could be. We tried butter, oil, cold water, all of it and the thing wasn't budging. Kris is out of town today, so he couldn't help, but I figured it was probably time to get the ring cut off considering that Mr. Dorky's finger was getting fatter and redder by the minute.
Luckily, not only do I know somebody who's good at cutting things up, but I also employ several of them. We ran as quickly as we could back over to the office and barely made it just before Dr. Patterson was leaving for the day. He was kind and gracious enough to sit Max down and cut the dang ring off. Max was completely fine, not distressed at all the whole time until he got into the office and started to see people he knew. Then he started to get embarrassed. He didn't want anybody to see his hand, and when I tried to take a few documentary photos he almost ran out of the place.

NO!! NOOOO!! I don't want this posted on facebook!!!!!


Anyway, it took all of five minutes to get the thing cut off, and Dr Patterson was happy because he got to use a few tools that hadn't even left their original packaging yet (grown up tooth tools).
Max's finger was fine, none the worse for the wear, and the babystitter's ring was ruined, but she was just so happy to have Max's finger free that it didn't matter. The poor thing was feeling so bad about the whole situation; "I'll never wear a ring when I'm watching kids again!!!"

The end and goodnight--there's your laugh for the day.

::school decorations::

Max's class decorated the sidewalk and walls in front of the school today. I was very pleased to see this adorable guy as I walked in to pick Max up.

Max's little characters are the best. I love them so much.

::::

I was working the other day and looked up to see this rather touching scene playing out in front of me--Max using his new playing cards he'd gotten for his birthday to play something with Sandy. He had made up some sort of simple game that Sandy could follow, which I thought was really sweet, and they played for quite a while.

These guys really do play together so great sometimes. I love to see it, and it's so sweet to hear Sandy try to be like Max and to hear them interact.
Then there are the other times where Sandy smashes a lego creation, or whacks somebody on the head with a Jake & a Neverland Pirates sword. Or when they're having a dance party/wrestle fight and Sandy takes it too far and bites Max's shoulder blad hard enough to draw blood. Or when Max won't let Sandy in his room or Max takes something away...you know the drill. It's all the same old classic stuff.
But other times they'll play together for hours racing cars or making up play scenarios. They've even been known to play with legos together for extended periods of time. It's a blessing all around.

This day they had just realized that in their toy car stash there were matching parent and baby orange mazzaratis. That was awesome and they were very proud.

And I'm proud of them.