Lucy's quirks and progress in general

There's a few things I failed to mention in my last post, but now things are just piling up, so I'm just going to get as much done as I can and post the rest later.

Back in March, we went to Utah to attend our neice's baby blessing. She is Lucy's only cousin on the Hixson side. On the Law side she already has twenty cousins, going on twenty-one.

Lucy is here sitting with Great Grandma C. and Charlee, her cousin.

While we were in Utah, Lucy made a few discoveries.

She discovered she enjoys the park. Long ago when we first took her down a slide, she cried the whole way down and some time afterward.

Obviously, she has overcome her fear, although it wasn't without some protesting at first. Pretty soon she was ready to venture onto other slides.

We have visited the park a little more often since then.

She also discovered how it feels to ice skate.

The skating rink we visited just happened to have skates in her size. So we set her up and brought her on the ice with us. She ended up clinging to us the whole time, dragging her feet on the ground, not allowing herself to put any weight on her skates. Can't say I'm surprised, especially when she hasn't even spent an entire year walking on a steady surface.

When we returned from Utah, life went back to normal. I eventually became aware how long Lucy's hair has grown and I wanted to get a picture of her curls that show up every now and then. Her hair is usually pretty straight.

Looking back through her pictures from the past, I'm amazed at how little hair she used to have. She is almost unrecognizable to me when I look at her younger self. Now I finally get to play with her hair, something I've been wanting to do for a while since she has stopped allowing me to put headbands on her for quite some time.

Now I've done it enough that she has actually learned to sit still when I do her hair.

So I played with her hair some more by doing Easter pictures.

And every once in a while, I catch a photo on Sundays, after church of course, when I'm not running around trying to be on time.

Lucy's hair is not the only thing that's grown. Her list of words that she uses on a daily basis is getting longer and longer. Her vocabulary not only includes "mom" and "dada", but also "oh no", "all gone" ("aw gah"), "what's that" ("wha da"), "cracker" ("cacka"), "please" (which sounds more like "tchee", not sure why), "baby" ("beebee"), "uh-uh", and "amen" ("ahmeh"). We get excited whenever she learns a new word. She also knows how to point to different parts of her face and we're currently teaching her more body parts. 

On a random note, I one time entered her room to wake her up and I found her like this. I guess the sun was shining too brightly that morning for her taste.

I actually videotaped her for almost two minutes in this position. I guess she was just bored.

Another moment where I caught her being unnaturally still.

 She was just staring at the dog on the other side of the baby gate. She was lying like that for almost fifteen minutes.

Another odd thing she likes to do is giggle and squeal at people standing behind me in the grocery store when I'm in the checkout line. I'm pretty sure she has no idea how much she brightens their day. They can't help but laugh with her.

Though she can be quite a handful, she brightens my day too. I wonder if the next one will be as happy as she is.

Order Up for Baby #2

It's definitely time for a little updating. Though a lot of things have happened this month, there is one thing whose impact is greater than all of them put together.

So far, these are the only two photos I have of the new addition to our small family. They were taken when I was almost 10 weeks. Now I'm at 16 weeks, so I can imagine it's grown since then.

And this is my first belly photo at 15 weeks. I don't remember showing this much the last time around this point.

I have already felt the little flurry of movements, starting around 14 weeks. They say people normally don't feel them till they are at least where I'm at now, but I don't know why I'm an exception to that. 

Going through this for the second time, there are quite a few symptoms I didn't have before. Morning sickness didn't seem that much worse than the first time, but I have sure felt more exhaustion. Hardly makes sense when I was struggling to graduate from college the last time and now I obviously don't have to worry about finishing my assignments on time. It could be that I got better exercise then than I do now because I had to walk uphill to classes and back in the snow. That was all the workout I needed at the time. Now I have to make time for that kind of exercise and it doesn't always happen. So I'm more tired than usual.

I am also more aware of growing pains this time around, which my doctor warned me about. You would think that once a balloon has already expanded that it would be easier to blow it back up again, or at least that it wouldn't hurt, that is if balloons could feel. Well, my assumption is false and the second time isn't as fun. I only hope it doesn't become more painful with each one, but I don't think that would stop me even if it did. I just have to be more careful when I stand up or do anything too quickly, so I'm working around it.

As is the case with the first child, you don't typically have a little one running around during your very first pregnancy. I'm sure veteran moms with two or more kids are shaking their heads right now, but we all have to experience things for ourselves. I never noticed how roughly my daughter climbs in and out of my lap until I became pregnant, how she uses her elbow for support and how she digs her heels in for balance. The doctor reassures me that it hurts me more than it hurts the baby, but that doesn't change the fact that it still hurts! There are times that I absolutely refuse to let her sit on me, because I am usually experiencing some growing pains or some other ailment at the time, but I do encourage her to sit next to me instead. Sometimes that works and other times daddy has to intervene. Taking care of a toddler at all while pregnant is definitely a challenge, because they are so active and yet so dependent. It is something I will have to get used to for sure if I plan to have more children.

As usual with pregnancy I get headaches and migraines and Tylenol can only do so much. I'm kind of a whimp when it comes to not feeling well, so headaches pretty much put me out of commission.

On a more serious note, I've had more scares with this pregnancy than before. In February I celebrated my birthday, and later that evening as I was driving home from a mutual activity (because my calling is in young women's), I suddenly sensed that I was bleeding. It was just a hunch, but I got home and discovered I was right. I was devastated, because I thought there could only be one explanation for bleeding during a pregnancy, and that it was I was going to miscarry. I alerted David and he called the doctor for me. We were told to make an appointment the next day and that I was to stay on bed rest until I could get checked. I asked David to give me a blessing, to which he complied. After that I felt calm about it all and knew I could handle whatever the doctor had to tell me. The next day it couldn't be determined why the bleeding began but the assumption was because the placenta was lower than usual. He tried to find the heart beat with the device, but I wasn't surprised he was unsuccessful, because they couldn't find Lucy's without an ultrasound until I was almost 20 weeks. So I wasn't any more concerned by the fact that he couldn't find it. He turned on the ultrasound and tried looking for it that way. At first the baby looked still, but it didn't take long to notice the heart beating at a steady pace. All of the sudden it became very active and started kicking and moving up and down on the screen, so everything looked good and I could rest easy. As long as the baby was alright, we had nothing to worry about. Since that night, the bleeding did not come back for at least a month. Then, out of the blue, it started again. Once again, I called the doctor to get checked, and they still couldn't determine the source of the blood, but that appears to be normal with bleeding in general. And he found the heartbeat without an ultrasound, and it was just fine. One thing they could tell was the blood was not coming from the baby or the womb, which was a comfort to me. Now things are okay in that regard and I have decided not to worry about it anymore while at the same time being careful not to take on physical activities that I shouldn't. The doctor gave me the okay on going back to my regular routine, but I still take it a little easy.

So despite all the complaints I've had with this pregnancy thus far, I am still excited to be pregnant again and would not change that for anything right now. As is expected, the anxiety has already hit me of what it will mean to have two little kids and the changes that will take place to compensate for it, but I'm also optimistic about it. I'm addicted to how it feels to hold them when they first arrive. That seems to be enough to make you forget the pain and discomfort you experience leading up to that moment.

I realized I never mentioned the due date on here: September 20th. We will reach the halfway mark in May and will hopefully know the gender by then. For no explicable reason, I sense it is a boy. But we'll see how right I am, because I'm not exactly psychic, even if I was right about our first one being a girl.

Lucy will have had her second birthday before then, and I wonder if she will comprehend what's going on by the time her sibling arrives. She does show a little jealousy when the dog is being played with instead of her, even though she gets more attention than the dog in general. So it will be curious to see how she responds to having another baby around. We try not to spoil her, but who could say no to that face.

Just kidding. We say no all the time.

Holiday Fun

More and more, Lucy has been unveiling her personality to us. One thing to note is she is very happy and giggly. And more often than not, her giggles turn to squeals. Sometimes I wonder how our dog's ears handle it when it is already too high-pitched for us humans.

Another thing is she has gotten to be very clingy to her mommy. It's usually not a problem except for when I go to mutual on Wednesdays, or when its daddy's turn to put her to bed, or when I'm trying to practice the piano for church, or when I'm cooking in the kitchen, or when my arms are full, or...okay you get it. But who can complain about being loved too much. Better enjoy it while it lasts, or so I am told.

She also has a thing for books. Reading time is her favorite thing at bedtime. We let her pick the book and she seems to know what she wants read to her. Oftentimes during the day, she'll be content to just sit down and turn the pages, whether they have pictures or not.

These days, she watches tv with us and will pretend to laugh whenever we find something funny. Sometimes it will just be because it's a sitcom and people are laughing on the show.

She's grown a liking to climbing on things. Usually not a good thing on our step ladder to have her climbing after me so that I can't get back down without worrying about knocking her over. But she seems to have pretty good balance most of the time.

Pretending to talk on the phone is one of her favorite things to imitate. But she doesn't deal with the fake phones. Nothing but the real deal for her, which is what we usually try to keep away from her.

Another thing is she has a knack for laying on top of things, sometimes in bizarre positions that don't look very comfortable. Usually, it involves a dog. Observe the following examples.

Sometimes it seems she's intent on making the subject uncomfortable based on the positions she chooses.

Among some of her other abilities, she is able to sign for food and milk, as well as wave bye bye and night night. She folds her arms for prayer, but she likes to laugh when the prayer ends, usually when we're in group gatherings. But she is very good at it when it's just us. 

Now I think I'll mention the last few holidays we celebrated. For thanksgiving we played games and went to the jelly belly factory the day after.

 There were a lot of images made up of thousands of jelly beans.

Then at the beginning of December we went to see the Oakland temple lights go on and also attended a musical performance at the same location.

Then we decorated our tree by applying fake snow (laundry detergent and water).

We won't talk about Santa at the ward party. The picture says enough.

Christmas morning, daddy made us a yummy breakfast.

We had a small pile of presents to open, but only one took up Lucy's attention. I had picked out a cone for stacking. Turns out it was perfect for her. She still has fun with it.

We were glad to hold Christmas for the first time in our home since purchasing our house. However, after a while, it got to be too quiet. I was glad to head over to the in-laws where there was more noise. We also talked to David's brother on the phone who is serving a mission in Alabama.

For New Year's Eve, David fulfilled his promise to the youth for keeping their commitments in his class by making them dinner, specifically Chinese. The fact that it was done on New Year's Eve was their choice. We made tons of food and ended up with lots of leftovers. I think we were expecting teenage kids to have appetites the same as the missionaries we usually eat with on Sundays. Nevertheless the house was filled and full of noise. We played games and it was such a great way to celebrate the new year. I had a lot of fun and would love to do it again, but we'll see what happens.

So that leaves the present. Like everyone else, we've made resolutions to make things better and we are doing very well on those.

 We're pretty happy.