Lucia Lately (8 months)

Lucia is 8 months old now and she just gets more and more fun as she grows. In an effort to record all of her stages of development, I'm going to try to summarize her current stage. She's got the crawling thing down now and she currently loves crawling around, crawling under things, trying to go over things (including a step or two) and standing herself up onto just about anything. She's been flirting with the idea of letting go while standing a time or two but she's not quite up for that yet. She is a busy little girl, always on the move. I can barely get her to sit with me for longer than a few minutes because she always sees something interesting and then once I set her down, she's off! This stage brings some new challenges but I enjoy it. She follows us around our apartment like a little puppy now that she can get herself where she wants to go. And it's fun to see where she chooses to take herself; usually she just wants to be in the action, where the people are. She loves to play with her cousins and it is so fun to watch her get excited to see them and play with them. She seems to love people in general, making eye contact with everyone, smiling and squealing at strangers that walk by her, and even waving a little bit now. But she is also starting to show signs of clingy-ness to mama around strangers.

Lucia is a great sleeper and sleeps almost 12 hours at night and takes two solid naps during the day. Man oh man, do we love getting good sleep again! Thank you, Lucia! We are also enjoying this new stage where she wakes up and talks to herself rather than screaming and crying until we ("we" meaning "I") get her. All of her little "talking" noises are just so cute and she is especially loving it these days when we repeat the "bas" and "das" back to her...she just can't contain her laughter, so cute. She still eats pureed foods and lets us know she's hungry now by making "mmm" "mmm" noises or crawling over to her high chair. On a related note, her first little tooth is starting to pop through...better late than never, right?

Here are a few pics from the last month or so...

She's practicing her standing up on everything these days

Enjoying one of our last 80 degree days of the season with a walk to the lake. I believe the next day was about 40 degrees cooler.

One of her favorite spots to grab some toys. Her favorite non-toy toys are this electronic catch phrase game and the remote control. She also likes being read to, playing with books and playing singing games like "this little piggy".

You can see in the background that her exersaucer has been converted to the final stage now that she can stand up on it.

With great-grandpa Ray

Showing off her skills: standing while holding onto something else with her hands.

We celebrated 8 months with some cheerios

She wasn't quite sure what to think about them

When I watch her sleeping like this, I just think to myself that I can't believe that I am so lucky to have this little girl as my daughter. We are so blessed.

And just for fun...here is a picture of my grandma with all her granddaughters at my cousin Beth's bridal shower.

We've been enjoying our fall and hope you have too.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from our little bunny!

 

 My mom made this costume for my oldest sister when she was little and (almost) every baby in the fam has worn it since. Who knew that this little costume would get so much use! Here is my sister's post of her oldest wearing the same costume when she was little plus Linnea when she was little...(click here)

 Complete with little tail

 Linnea and I took our girls to go visit our grandparents at Covenant Village. Here was the crew.

 Plenty of room to crawl around!

 Grandpa wore this sweatshirt to celebrate Halloween (his name is Raymond)

 An angel and a queen

 A very cute little zebra

 Lucia and Naomi are really starting to play together now that Lucia can get herself around

 

 Lucia changed into a warmer kitty costume for trick-or-treating

 Complete with tail

The trick-or-treating crew

 The cousins minus Addison who was sick :( 

Well, we tried to get a pic of her by the pumpkin but she just kept trying to grab it. Oh well! It's fun that we have Lucia's cousins to tag along with since she couldn't care less about Halloween yet. She sure looked cute though.

Dedication

 Our little Lucia Gloria was dedicated to God at our church on October 14, 2012

We promised as Lucia's parents to show her God's love, demonstrating what it means to trust and follow Jesus and with the help of our family, friends, church community and God's grace, we will try our best to do so. Our hope is that she will someday understand Jesus' love for her and she will decide to be baptized as a symbol of new life and her decision to follow Him. Hopefully it'll go something like this...

"Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. " Ephesians 3:17-18

And, you know, this part will take awhile to really grasp, like, the whole rest of her life. But we'll be there to help however we can (and maybe she will even help us grasp it as well).

 Here she was when we were waiting to go up in front

 The Johnson family. And, incidentally, this is also an accidental picture of four generations of women on my side (my grandma to my left, me, Lucia and my mom on the right). Too bad everyone wasn't looking.

 She did great up front and entertained the crowd.

 Then things went a little downhill when she wanted to grab everything in her sight so Pete asked me to hold the book while he tried to keep her away from his mic.

 Presenting Lucia to the congregation. One of my favorite moments (not pictured) was when our family came up to lay hands on us and Lucia, covering her in prayer.

It was a special day. It made me think about my own baptism, done in that very same spot when I was a baby by Pastor Art Nelson, who happened to be preaching the Sunday Lucia was dedicated. And a very good sermon it was. The text and sermon focused on the rich, young ruler who was unable to cast off everything and follow Jesus. I pray that we parent Lucia in a way that she has the least possible to cast off when the time comes for her to decide to follow Jesus; that we will be a help and not a hindrance to her loving Jesus. But we know that we will fail in one way or another since we are human so I also pray that God will help us out on that end too (you know, being able to apologize when we're wrong and admitting to our own faults).

 And to make it even more special, grandma Debbie was in town to celebrate with us. Somehow this is the only picture I took from the whole week but it was a great week having her here.

Now she's got to get busy writing some thank you notes!

Thanks for taking the pics, Greta!

Lucia lately (7 months)

 

Lucia is a little over 7 months now and changing each day right before our very eyes. She can get herself up and down from sitting, she's crawling and starting to become more and more interested in things up high and out of her reach so it's only a matter of time before she's standing as well. 

She loves to move around, kick her legs and make noises. She still loves to find the tags on all her toys and she continues to sleep holding onto a sock every night and every nap. She seems to enjoy sleeping and keeps a pretty regular schedule these days. And lucky for us, her eating habits have gotten a lot less messy. She is starting to get more interactive with others, especially her cousins, squealing and kicking when she sees any of them.

Here are a few pics of things she likes to do these days...

 She loves her exersaucer

 Showing off her skills

 She also got sick for the first time a few weeks ago. She just looked so sad :(

 I love this face she does

 One of our favorite little things she does is tilt her head to the side. This picture kind of captures it. It's one of those things that seems so little to others but to Matt and I it's easily THE cutest thing we have ever laid eyes upon, like ever.

 Oh man, she loves riding in shopping carts. She pretty much looks like this the whole time while making eye contact with every single person we go past and kicking her legs.

 And she loves hanging out in the Johnny Jump-up

 We've been going to the park down the street from us a lot lately. She loves the swings but I think she likes watching the other kids at the park even more.

 It is so fun to watch her grow!