The Sun is out and so are we!

My wonderful neighbors invited me and Lucy to go with them on an outing yesterday. We headed to Ikea and then hit the Thanksgiving Point Barn. Sometimes I feel like it is hard to go out with a little one. It takes way more preparation and extra time-outs, but it is very very worth it in the end! I am always a way happier wife and mother when I take the time to get it all together and get out of the house! (The sunshine makes me feel like a new person)!

So it started, like I mentioned, hard to get out the door. It was just one of those mornings. After a last minute invite, I tell my neighbor we will be over in a few minutes. After getting myself dressed as quickly as possible, I decide we better feed and change Lucy. What should we do first, I never know. If you change her first she is likely to go again, but if you feed her first who knows what might happen. We feed first and then as I lift up her legs to change her diaper, out comes the spit up! Wrong choice. Should have changed first. Man, I thought we were done with spit up. Go get the rag. Return. Wipe spit up, off Lucy and carpet. Lift Lucy's legs for another try. Pooh , out the back of the diaper, onto the carpet because I was in such a rush I didn't put a blanket down. Clean pooh. Sit back down. Wipe bum. Wear is the diaper cream? I know I brought it out here! Oh, here it is! I was sitting on it. Lucky for me it is a little squeezable sample, that was already opened and now it is all over my bum. Ask David if it is that bad or if I can just leave it and go. He asks "What the bird pooh on your bottom?" Okay, so it is bad, but I am determined to wear these pants. Use Tide-To-Go Pen to take the edge off and decide not to care what anyone thinks and go (being a Mom has really helped me not to care what anyone thinks and it is usually because of moments like this when I am thinking: "don't judge my outfit, you have no idea how much effort it took just to leave the house!"). Finally throw a bunch of extra things in the diaper bag and head out!

IKEA: I loved this bed. It is circular, but you can't tell from the pictures.
While doing this photo shoot at IKEA a couple passing by stopped. The man announced "See this is what girls do, photo shoots. You would never see a bunch of guys doing this!" I could help, but crack up because we did look pretty ridiculous and boys really don't enjoy photo shoots. David practically cried when i took him in to get family pictures.IKEA is awesome. If you have kids there are a million things for them to do. I mean a play place with babysitters. You are kidding me! If you have a baby, they have a family restroom with a nursing chair. That is like heaven at this point in my life because Lucy is thoroughly done nursing under a blanket. Anyway, guys might not understand why it is any different than any other store, but ladies know there is no other place like it on earth!

The Barn at Thanksgiving Point was really fun. This time of year there are lots of new babies, which made it extra special. I couldn't resist snapping some shots of these darling babies, so animal lovers enjoy!
This is a black little Lamb. So adorable!


Here is the white Lamb. Just prancing around!


We went on a wagon ride. You can't see from this picture how funny this is, but we carried the stroller up a few really steep stairs and it is just funny that we took the stroller on the bumpy wagon, while Lucy was sleeping.



Wow. These horses were gorgeous. Lucy just woke up, and I still can't find her other sock. What do kids do with things?


The Horse bucked Taylor in the head throwing us all off guard. Here we are a little shocked.


We recuperated for one good group shot!


Hey Mom, I'm trying to be a good girl!

Rachel and Taylor, what a cute shot at the little jail!


Mom, I really don't want to go on this pony. You get kind of crazy when you want a cute picture.


Get me off!


Fine, but I am still mad and if you think you are gonna get a smile out of me...GOOD LUCK!

Anyway, it was a really fun day, with beautiful weather. Lucy was very good despite the looks she is giving in these pictures. I think they are classic mad kid photos!

Neighborhood Fun

We absolutely adore our neighborhood and especially the darling kids! Our place is pretty much the hangout for the youngsters. Tuesday they were playing in the yard with my sister, Lani, and I realized I didn't have any pictures of all of our little friends, so we took some on Tuesday!Here is the gang with Lani. She is soooo great with them. They always knock on our door and ask if she can come play. She really has a gift and I am glad she is using it and majoring in Elementary Education here at BYU.

Here are a few of my favorite stories about our neighborhood gang:

Tuesday Ethan, the blond boy,eight years old, comes and asks us "do you have anything we can climb on?"

I answer: "I can't really think of anything. Did you have something in mind?"

Ethan: "Well maybe I could just look around in your garage."

"Okay" I answer hesitantly "let me go get the keys"

After opening the door I told him he had about one minute to look, while I supervised. He came out with our mini trampoline. They played with it for the next hour until it was time to go home.

Wednesday, David answers the door. Ethan asks him "Can I have the keys to your garage?"

Dave asks "What for?"

"We want to play with your trampoline." David says he will get the trampoline for them.

I just love how the first day he asks if we have anything to climb on and the next day he just asks for the keys. He is so funny.Ethan and Taylor fighting over Lucy. This was Taylor's idea. She is very creative.

One of my other favorite stories: one time when I was waiting for my family to arrive, I decided to take a shower and left the door unlocked for them in case they showed up. While getting dressed in my room, I see two sets of fingers sliding under the door. Wondering if my family is playing a prank, I quickly throw some clothes on and open the door. There are our cute neighbor kids and the yell:

"You forgot to Lock the door! Ha ha ha! We got in your house because you didn't lock the door."

Good thing I locked the bedroom door!Here is Linnea, Ethan's little sister. She is the youngest of the bunch. SHe is three. Sadly, their darling older sister Mathilde wasn't here for the photo shoot.They all speak French fluently. It is amazing!Linnea, Lucy and Rachel (Tayolor's younger sister)

There are so many great memories of them from making there own homemade lawn mower that attached to their bike so they could mow my lawn for me, to hundreds of snowball fights, the first time we met Ethan. David and I were dancing our hearts out to Lion King while washing our car. He brought a washcloth and asked if he could help. This was just before he started Kindergarten! What a sweetheart!

What cute little kids. I am actually hoping to write a novel about them, but so far I'm only brainstorming, so if you have any ideas for a children's adventure do tell! ANyway, here is the gang playing with Lucy. They really adore her and she is quite fond of them. SHe loves to stare at them while they play.
While snapping these shots, I noticed these gorgeous flowers in our yard. Okay, maybe gorgeous is an exaggeration, but I am really excited for spring!

Little Irish Jig

This may catch you off guard, but St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays. I am not Catholic and I am not even Irish, but I love it! I think it is because it holds so many dear memories from my childhood. I remember wearing green the night before so that no one could come pinch me in the morning before I woke up. Sometimes I tried to be really tricky and wear green underwear so that when somebody pinched me, wrongly thinking I wasn't wearing green, I could pinch them back twice (does everybody pinch back twice if you are wrongly pinched or is that just my family?). I always had my outfit picked for this special day weeks in advance. Then as I walked into the kitchen I always knew that, because the Leprechaun had been all through the house, we would be eating something green. The milk was green, the pancakes were green, and anything else you could think of was green. I think we even ate green eggs one time. Anyway, I used to look all through the house trying to find the Leprechaun. It was really a fun day!



Now, our family traditions at the Pendergrass House include Lucky Charms (okay, we actually ate Marshmallow Mateys the cheap version) for breakfast and Corned Beef and Cabbage for dinner (which David so delightfully introduced me to on our first St. Patrick's Day of our married life). Oh, and of course, all of our holidays now include a Lucy photo shoot! I am hoping to develop more traditions as we go along! If you have any really fun traditions with your family please do tell!

Here is Lucy just enjoying some of her family's traditions for the first time!

As for this St. Patrick's Day, I think I finally caught that little Leprechaun. Watch Lucy perform her Irish Jig:



If that isn't the cutest little leprechaun there ever was, what is? She definitely has some Irish Pendergrass blood. I am so excited to have an Irish daughter!


Lucy would like to leave you with a St. Patrick's Day wish:


"LET YOUR SHAM ROCK!"

I know I did!

Ratatouille

I have been trying really hard to learn how to cook. When David and I got married I knew how to make about 2 really good meals (neither were very hard). I warned him of my weakness, but he didn't seem to mind. Now that I have a child and I am at home this amazing urge to take care of my family the best possible (which includes good healthy meals) has taken over. I have actually started planning our meals out for the week. I try to pick some easy ones and some harder ones, go grocery shopping for the items and then go with how I feel that day which meal I make. I keep a list of good meals I have made for future planning (plus it makes me feel good when I look at it).
The only problem is when you pick a recipe that looks good and then find out one ingredient at the store is outrageously priced! Anyway, I am working around the stumbling blocks. In the past, most of my meals were home cooked, but not from scratch. I used a lot of cans and some boxes here and there. Real meals from scratch just terrified me!
Basically, this post is just to brag about how cool I am. I went big this week. Real big! Last Saturday, I cooked a chicken. Surprisingly easy, once you get past the grossness factor of seasoning the inside. Sunday, I made my Great Grandma Maple's Chicken Noodle Soup, a favorite from my childhood and handed down to me by my wonderful mother. This one really has always scared me, but after watching my mom prepare it while on vacation last week, and calling her a dozen times to make sure I was doing it right, I did it! Everything from boiling the bones to make the broth, to homemade noodles! This was the hugest step for me in the cooking department by far! I even added a few of my own ideas. David loves it when I start adding my own spices and being adventurous. He calls me "Little Ratatouille." He sometimes asks me while we are eating, if I was "Ratatouille" today. As you can see, this post is in honor of this nickname and absolutely fantastic movie. When I first watched this show, I just felt like cooking something wonderful (as I am sure many of you can relate)!

So, to top it all off, I decided it was high time I make Ratatouille! I made it on Wednesday, highly delicious and jam packed with vegetables! It really wasn't too hard ( of course, that is for someone with my caliber of cooking skills which as you have read are increasing to great heights) I highly recommend it, especially if you haven't watched the movie, try making this meal and letting it simmer while turning on "Ratatouille" for a great date night you won't regret! Thanks for listening to me brag about "my skills!"

Growing Girl

Lucy's six month check up was yesterday. She was 27 1/2 inches long (95th%) and 19 lb 7 oz (90th%). Lately, I felt like she had been eating a lot less, but apparently she must just be pretty efficient or else she wouldn't be such a big little thing! Her shots went great as usual. I mean who doesn't love shots? I was surprised they still gave them to her because she came down with a little runny nose the day before, but I guess they just power through the shots and figure they might as well feel completely terrible all at once. This is Lucy's first sickness. Although, it really isn't too bad of a sickness, I am really sad for her. I thought we had made it through the sick season untouched. Just when you let your guard down...oh well.

I hope I haven't been spoiling her too much while she is sick. I have been letting her nap on our bed while I read next to her. I think this is partly do to the fact that I came down with a little cold too and would rather just cuddle and read than do anything else. Hopefully we aren't starting too bad of a habit. For now I am enjoying it, but sometimes you start something that seems great and then a month later when they have to have it, you wonder what on earth you were thinking! This is how the whole finger thing started. One day months ago, I didn't have the pacifier so I let her suck on my finger. It worked great. Slowly I did it a little more often until Lucy completely gave up her pacifier and now grabs my fingers to put them in her mouth every chance she gets. It's good bonding time, but there are times I really just don't want to sit there with my finger in her mouth, especially in the middle of the night. Well, she will only be a baby once, so I will just enjoy all her delightful smiles and giggles, along with the less than desired habits that are completely my fault. End Post.

Times are Changing

Lucy and I came home on Thursday, so excited to see David. Although we have spent many weekends apart (almost every weekend during track season) we realized that this week was the longest we were ever apart. Something I learned: don't always listen to advice. I was advised to nurse your baby during take-off to help her ears pop and so I have every time. I have been on 2 round trip airplane trips with Lucy, the second trip included layovers both ways which means 6 take offs. This wouldn't be so bad if Lucy took a bottle, but she is a little stubborn in the area of plastic (she doesn't believe babies should take binkies or bottles). By the 6th take off I just couldn't take trying to hide her under the blanket while she kicked and tried to pull it off, attracting way too much attention. So I decided we just weren't doing it and she was completely fine! She didn't cry one bit! She loved looking out the window and seemed to actually enjoy the take off. She cried less without nursing, than all the fuss she gives me trying to go under a blanket in a new and exciting place. Anyway, I couldn't believe I went to all that trouble before! You learn something new every day and I think double that for moms!
I Finally did it! For the last 2 weeks I have been mentally prepping for a dreaded moment in my life. After telling David we would move Lucy out of our room when she turned 3 months, 4 months, 5 months and 6 months, determined to keep my word this time, I reluctantly said my goodbyes and sent her down the long, dark hallway, into her own crib. My family all jokes that I have worse separation anxiety than Lucy, which is not really too much of an exaggeration. I really missed sleeping with her right next to me in her pack n' play, but I did it! Even when she woke up (after 6 sweet hours!) I resisted the temptation to bring her to our room and put her back to sleep in her own room!
I wish this happy story ended here and Lucy continued to love her new bed, but much to my dismay, Friday night, after an hour and a half, she awoke crying. I contemplated how long I should let her cry before rushing in and decided I couldn't wait much longer and went to check on her. She was completely drenched in Spit Ups. Her face, her ears, her entire outfit, the sheets. I really couldn't believe she had even eaten as much as was all over the place. When I picked her up she spit up more all over me. We took a quick bath and just as I redressed her for bed she spit up all over again. (When I say spit up, it was really much more than just spit up, I just hate using other gross words) So, I wimped out and couldn't let her sleep in her own bedroom, worried she would be spitting up all over the place. Luckily she hasn't spit up since. I can't tell if she was a little sick or if maybe she just ate too much (which could be possible seeing how I fed her every moment I could, hoping it would help her go all night and she ate more rice cereal than ever, while gulping down water, her favorite hobby, right before bedtime).
Last night, back to her own room she goes, but I only made it 'til 5:00 a.m. when she had already woken up about six times and I finally just put her in bed next to me! End of story...? Not quite, we are just getting to the best part!
I drag my sleepy head out of bed at 8:45 a.m. (our church starts at 9:00 a.m.) and amazingly we make it to church by 9:10 a.m. For those of you who are calculating, yes that means I got ready extraordinarily fast (okay, okay David got Lucy ready, but still...). I am really happy because I hear the Sacrament hymn playing. Yes! We haven't missed the Sacrament! We quickly find some seats and look at the board for the hymn number we are singing in the book. We open it to the number on the board and it is wrong. We just hum along, too lazy to look up the hymn in the index. Then a sister gets up to give the prayer. What about the Sacrament? I start wondering what is going on. Did church really start ten minutes late? No wonder the hymn number was wrong. After the prayer everyone starts standing up. David and I look at each other in awe, sure we must be dreaming. Finally, we figure out that the time changed. Yeah, this time we were the lame people that somehow never caught the big news. It was a really weird feeling because it wasn't as if we just forgot to set our clocks. Neither of us had even heard that the time change was coming up remotely soon. I guess we must live a pretty sheltered life! Well the joke's on us! Wish us luck for "Lucy and her own room" take 4!

Lucy is 6 Months!

I can't believe that Lucy turned 6 months yesterday! Where has the time gone? When she was first born I wanted to freeze time and keep her so precious and new (as well as freeze the time while I was asleep. The story of "Rip Van Winkle" must have been thought up by a new mother!) I remember thinking "I can't believe she is going to grow up." Now, with half a year down and an adorable personality blossoming, I absolutely love it more than I could have imagined. I hope her whole life goes on like this, wanting her to stay the way she is, but then loving her new changes. This week I have been looking at baby pictures of me with my mom, while she told me cute stories about them.

This image keeps running across my mind that someday Lucy will have a baby and I will be sitting there with her looking at her baby pictures together and she will want to hear the stories of what she is like right now. It is hard to believe that time really does go by that fast. Let's take a moment to truly enjoy where we are at right now.
Here are all the moments we took time to enjoy on her 1/2 birthday. Everything from posing on the table with a cute hat, sleeping in a big girl bed, and even scrapbooking at the church. I couldn't resist taking this picture of Lucy with Grandma Jen when I saw them playing on the gym floor, laughing away with Lucy's little head thing (we call them nuggie guarders in my family. If you don't get it don't worry about it.)

Then we had a little half birthday party for Lucy and my little sister Heidi (her birthday is 2 days before Lucy's). She made this outstanding cake. I think it is adorable and for only being in eighth grade, she is on a roll.

We put 14 candles on the cake because Heidi was turning 13 1/2 + 1/2 for Lucy = 14. I thought that was a cute idea Heidi came up with. Sierra (one of my other sister's who actually shares a birthday with me) mentioned that exactly 15 years from now Lucy would be old enough to get a driver's permit. What a funny thing to think of! Anyway, what a fun day full of memories!

Sweet Photo Shoot

I was just mentioning how I was a photoholic in the last post and well there is really nothing else to be said about this photo shoot. My sister had these sunglasses that were too small for her and once I tried them on Lucy, it was all over. I knew there would be another photo shoot soon! So Monday we went down to the beach again, this time prepared with props. I think taking pictures of Lucy is my new hobby. I am so ridiculous, but of course, I had to share them!And you think you are cool...

What a little poser! We have got a little disco fever going on!
What's the rush...

How's my suntan mom?

Don't look at me like you think I'm cute.
Life just couldn't get any better...
I'm just tickled pink.
Peekaboo! Here I am!
Sun...Sand....you gotta love it!
Come on in the water is fine.I really can't think of any more cute sayings... so here is the rest of the shoot just playing down at the water.
Thank you for indulging me!

Keep smiling!

Love,

Me and Lucy

More new experiences for Lucy

Although it doesn't really compare to the beach...Lucy had her first trip to costco yesterday! It was also her first ride in the basket, which she really loved. One of Lucy's favorite things is kicking her feet and she really seemed to love riding while being able to kick her feet as much as she wanted to. Here is a great moment we caught on camera because lets face it I am pretty much a photoholic, if there is such a thing! You can see a little bit of the cute rug we bought for Lucy's room. I think I might be nearing completion of decorating her room (and I guess now that she is almost 6 months it is about time).
These are some sample ladies who were just googling over Lucy, so I decided to document it (you know you are a photoholic when you take pictures of sample ladies!). The ladies were thrilled when I told them it was Lucy's first time there and I wanted a picture with them. They told her maybe she could come be a sample lady here some day. Maybe...you never know!
And here we are blogging away. Lucy hates it when we do this because she wants to touch the keyboard in the worst way! I let her play with it once, but she started opening up files I didn't even know we had, so I decided there would be no more of that!