Lucy's Birthday Party

We decided to celebrate Lucy's birthday in the Upstate with our family. It was low key and just perfect! Before everyone arrived, we attempted a family picture.

Uh oh, the birthday girl is escaping!

Sam isn't going to let her get away that easy, though!

Cake time!

Near the end, she went in with both hands and picked the whole thing up.

Now that is happiness!

After a bath, the birthday girl got to snuggle with Ninny and one of her favorite blankets.

It was a wonderful day celebrating our special girl!

Month by Month

When Lucy was born I told myself I wanted to take a picture of her in a diaper in the same chair every month on her month birthday. And I actually did it! Some pics were taken a day early or a day late due to travel or other circumstances, but I can't believe I actually did it for a whole year. Just wish I had done this with all the other kids because I love scrolling through and seeing how she changed every month.

1 month old

2 months old

3 months old

4 months old

5 months old

6 months old

7 months old

8 months old

9 months old

10 months old

11 months old

12 months old

12 Months

At 12 months old, Lucy is so much fun!

She's finally pulling up on things, but still slithers around on the ground with her commando crawl. She's mastered going up steps, but we're still teaching her how to go down feet first, instead of head first. She's still a long way from walking.

She loves to dance and starts bouncing and clapping when she hears peppy music playing. She also does this funny "shy" thing when you talk to her sometimes. She will bury her head in your shoulder like she's bashful, but she grins the whole time.

She really loves books these days and is content to sit and read (babbling about each page) for a stretch of time. Her favorite book is about monkeys drumming on drums and she loves to drum on the pages of the book when she reads it.

She's also babbling up a storm. Her most intentional words are uh oh, bye (while waving), and da da. She also says quack quack, but not consistently so I'm not giving her credit yet. She loves to hear herself talk and will just chatter to herself while she plays.

I really haven't done a very good job teaching her sign language, but when I work on it during a meal, she will sign "more" for food pretty quickly. Speaking of food, she pretty much eats anything. Her favorites seems to be blueberries and any kind of bread, but she really is a good eater and will try a good portion of everything I give her. She transitioned to whole milk in a sippy cup a couple weeks ago (because I was almost out of formula and refused to buy more) and she did it without looking back.

She really is a laid back girl and is generally happy all the time. She did have her first ear infection (I think, it's hard to remember these things with number 4) and her first case of pink eye last week. Honestly, she was a little fussy, but not terrible. No fever or anything, so I put off taking her to the doctor for several days and then felt terrible when she gave me the diagnosis! Oh top of that her gums are a swollen mess, and have been for weeks. She's obviously super close to having her molars break through, but she's still our happy girl!

It hard to believe that our little Lucy is already a year old, but at the same time, it's hard to remember life before she came along.

We love you, Lucy Elizabeth, and thank God for choosing us to be your family!

My $3 project

So I found another project on pinterest (oh how I love that site) and decided it would make great artwork to hang in our newly redecorated bonus room. The bonus room hasn't actually been redecorated yet, but that's the next big project! Anyway, the one I saw on pinterest had one canvas divided into four sections, but I thought it would be better to let each child have his/her own canvas to paint however they wanted. I got to hobby lobby and the canvases I wanted were 6x6 and they were $4 each. Thankfully they only had three of them so I kept looking around and found a 4 pack of 5x7 canvases for $3.59. They aren't as nice as the others (staples all along the outside edge), but it really didn't matter to me, so I used my 40% off coupon, picked up one more tube of paint that was 30% off and $3 and some cents later I came home to get started.

Anna LOVED this and immediately went to town painting.

He's using the brush here, but about halfway through he decided to finger paint.

Check out Mr. Neat and Tidy.

And here's the opposite of neat and tidy!

Once they dried, I had each do a hand print with white paint and then I covered the whole thing in mod podge. Turned out pretty cute, I think!

I painted Lucy's green one myself, the way I thought I wanted it to look, and as it turns out, I like that one the least. Guess my kids are better artists than I am!

Decisions, decisions!

The Forgotten Christmas Eve Pics

I forgot that I hadn't posted these until I went looking for that picture of Mason with the kids. These were all taken on Christmas Eve either in the afternoon while everyone was checking out Mason's new truck or after the Christmas Eve service.

Happy Birthday . . .

to the best uncle we know and to my favorite brother-in-law!

Technology

Technology is a wonderful thing. This is how you make one LeapPad entertain three kids at once!

This little one doesn't need technology to have a good time, though.

And this is just because I forgot to post this on the blog last week when we were cheering for our team. Check out Lucy's ponytail!

Superheros

Just another day hanging out with some of my favorite superheros!

I tried to get Batman to join his other super friends, but he was more interested in playing trains.

Jumping down the steps into the bonus room, or "flying" as they like to call it!

Nap Time

The other day Jack was gone for the afternoon on a playdate. The boys have just started napping/resting in the same room and I guess Sam was a little sad that Jack wasn't there. I heard him playing for a few minutes once I left the room and when it got quiet I peeked in on him to find that he had thrown Jack's pillow on the floor, moved his own pillow and blankets into Jack's bed, and was snuggled up for a long winter's nap. Precious!