Lucy at 16 Months

Summer is just flying by, and we have definitely been busy. July 31st by brother Mike got married and we had a wonderful time with family in town staying with us. The wedding was absolutely beautiful, and Lucy now refers to her new Aunt Jenna as "Bride". Here is Lucy below in her adorable Flower Girl dress. She walked down the aisle just fine at the rehearsal the day before, but on the wedding day when the church was filled with people, she put a death grip on my dress, and wouldn't let me set her down. Fortunately, I was also in the wedding and ended up carrying her down the aisle. Of course she was teething on Mike and Jenna's wedding day, which made for some interesting and patience testing moments but mostly her hands were just in her mouth in the majority of the photos. I am happy to report that she now has 3 of her 4 one year molars. Only one more to go and then we get a break hopefully!

My Grandma and Grandpa (my mom's parents) were in town for the wedding and met Lucy for the very first time. Here is a picture of four generations of mothers and daughters. Would you believe we took four pictures of this pose, and in each picture a different girl was not looking at the camera? I guess it runs in the family! I posted this picture since I figured it was allowable for the one year old to have focus issues.

On the day of the rehearsal dinner, we went lavender picking with our family that was in town. It was absolutely gorgeous on the lavender farm, and we were able to bring back baskets full of lavender bouquets to decorate the rehearsal dinner with and give the calming scent of lavender to Jenna for her big day. Here are Lucy and I below at the lavender farm.

This month has been quite difficult to capture Lucy on camera. She doesn't hold still for a second. Fortunately with digital cameras I can take a ton of photos all in a row and hope that at least one of them will turn out. I had to laugh when I saw that this picture caught her in motion so perfectly.

Lucy's verbal skills improve so much with each passing month. If I had to pick one word to describe this month's literary feats, it would be the word "ow." Yes, that's right, "ow". She now uses the word "ow" for most anything. It's especially great when we are in a public place and she just starts screaming "ow" for no reason other than the reaction it gets out of Will and I. You wouldn't believe the dirty looks we have gotten as our child is screaming "ow" in the shopping cart and we continue to pick cherries in the produce department. Another verbal milestone this past month is Lucy's ability to say two syllable words. Brenda (one of her doll's names), pizza and even the word sorry. When prompted, she can pretty much say any word we ask. She can even click her tongue and make brrrrrm sounds with her lips - which is the sound a tractor makes of course!

Lucy is quite playful, as I'm sure all 16 month olds are. Just this month she has really become interested in playing with her dolls - Polly, Brenda, Huggums and Simone. We'd like to send a shout out to our friend Brian for helping us name them all. She has yet to grasp the concept of being gentle with her dolls, but lovingly calls them her 'Beebees' and gives them great hugs and kisses. She also likes to encourage them to be naked if at all possible. In the picture below she is holding Polly, who is fortunate enough to have clothes that are permanent!

Lucy has become quite the rough-houser this month as well. She seems to think that Will and I are her personal jungle gyms, and relishes in our grunts and squeals as she jumps on us. Here she is in the picture below trying to escape from Will but note that 5 seconds after this picture was taken she threw herself on the ground and giggled uncontrollably until Will pounced on her with tickles.Lucy still loves reading. She will take one of us by the hand to her bean bag chair in front of the bookcase, point to the bean bag chair to indicate for us to sit, and then pick a book off the shelf and plop down in our lap. Favorite books this month include "Go, Dog, Go!" which she can say along with us, and "Mouse Finds a House" which taught her the word sorry.

An exciting accomplishment for Lucy was she finally blew bubbles! After months of holding the bubble wand, blowing and seeing no results for her efforts, this past week she shocked herself by blowing a bunch of bubbles with a single breath and has been able to do it ever since. Each time she blows a bubble though, she has to set the wand down and clap her hands she is so proud of herself. I'm of course proud of her dedication and determination all summer long! I would have given up after the first week if my attempts at bubble blowing didn't produce a single bubble. What a girl!

Below is a picture of Lucy in our bike trailer. She got the helmet from her aunts and uncles for her 1st birthday but we haven't been able to take her for a tear-free ride until this past month. She still just tolerates it, and we have to bribe her that we are going to the park in it every time, but it is still an improvement of Will wheeling 2 bikes and a trailer home while I carry a tear-streaked toddler and the neighbors shake their heads at us.

Lucy has an amazing sense of direction which she definitely gets from Will. Anyone who knows me believes me when I say that I can walk out of Target and be lost in the parking lot for half an hour because I can't remember where I parked the car. When we are driving she recognizes certain landmarks including the park, a giant picture of a baby hanging from the local hospital and the library. The unfortunate thing for us is she also knows that the post office is next to the library and any time we go to the post office she immediately sees the library down the road, and squeals with excitement. Those squeals will quickly turn to screams if she realizes we aren't going to the library after the post office. It definitely makes planning errands interesting. Once in the library, she knows where everything is. We ask her to take us to the children's cd's and she navigates the rows of books like a champ and finds the cd's way in the back corner. It is a huge children's section too, so it is quite impressive that she can find her way around in a world that towers above her head without the benefit of being able to see past the bookcases and desks like us taller folk can.

Lucy loves to help us. She is great at throwing things in the trash when we ask her to, and even sometimes when we don't. We now have a policy of checking the trash cans for important things before emptying them into our trash bin outside. We've recovered brand new sticks of deodorant, the carseat manual, and some books so far. Here she is below helping Will pay the bills (see her multi tasking with the calculator and balancing the checkbook?).

She also loves to help me vacuum, which makes it take four times longer, but hey - I figure in a couple of more years, I won't have to vacuum at all since she will be such a pro at it.Lucy imitates everything we do. If we are sitting in a chair, she wants to sit in a chair. If we are eating with a fork, she wants to eat with a fork.If we are eating corn on the cob, she wants to eat corn on the cob and is insulted if I present to her the corn cut off the cob. The other night at dinner I ended up eating the corn I cut up for her while she happily gnawed on the corn cob.Lucy has been exhibiting signs of being a very detail oriented girl. We took her to Dairy Queen the other night and each time a drop of her ice cream dripped onto the pavement outside, she needed to squat down and wipe it up with a napkin. You can imagine how long it took for her to eat her ice cream cone, and how entertained the audience of fellow Dairy Queen patrons were. Another funny, but useful habit she is into now is peeling off stickers. We had a garage sale a couple weekends ago and it was an endless battle of Lucy peeling the price stickers off, and me replacing them. It actually turned out to be quite useful in bartering prices though and she was a cute excuse as to why there weren't prices marked on the items. I have also found her sticker peeling skill useful when I am wrapping presents - she does a great job peeling off the price for me!

It has definitely been another fun month at the Timmerman house with little Lucy to keep us laughing and constantly on our toes. Lucy and I are going to miss Will when he goes back to work next week, but we have had a fun-packed and busy summer. I remember thinking last summer how I would miss my summer with Lucy as a cuddly baby. I am thinking similar thoughts this August, but I have the advantage of two summers with Lucy under my belt now, and I have to say that each summer is better than the last. I will miss the sweet combination of independence and baby that Lucy is this summer, but am looking forward to all of the new things she will be able to do and her personality that will continue to develop.

These wistful thoughts always lead my mind to my eternal baby Luke who I wish more than anything I was able to relate funny stories and milestones on this blog about him. My longing to share in the joys and trials of watching him grow up are an ache I would wish upon no parent. Every so often, there are new things that take my breath away and choke me up with tears when I realize that I will never get to share a particular moment in time with Luke. When my brother Mike danced with my mom for the mother-son dance at his wedding it occurred to me that I will never be able to do that with Luke. You could just see the pride in my mom's eyes and smile as she danced with her son. Oh, how I wish I could do that with Luke! I didn't mean to end this blog on a sad note - it is true that a parent never forgets their children - they are present in everything they do - whether they are here on earth or in heaven. For my brother's wedding it was painfully apparent to Will and I that Luke could not be there to share in his uncle's big day, but I know for a fact that he was there with all of the angels and saints in heaven, smiling down on Mike and Jenna and bestowing every blessing he possibly could on that beautiful day to a beautiful couple - and I know for a fact as well that he is so very proud of his Uncle Mike and his new Aunt Jenna. I wore my necklace that Will gave me for Christmas this past year with Luke's birthstone in it (coincidence that it matched the bridesmaid dress I wore? I think not!) as a visible reminder that he was present with us that day in spirit if not physically.

I hope that the ending of this email wasn't too much of a downer to my dear readers, but it is what it is - real life full of joys and sorrows, ups and downs. I hope that you have a happy and relaxing rest of the summer and I'll post back soon!

I Love Lucy!

This post is coming a week late because my brother got married this past weekend and we had family in town. I will write more details about the wonderful week we had with family in town for the wedding in my next post covering Lucy's 16th month. For this post though, I will focus on Lucy's 15th month.

Lucy continues to fulfill her name, and be the light of our life. She is growing and learning so much that it just amazes me each month when I sit down to recap on this blog. She started off this month by enjoying a full crop of blackberries and then blueberries in our garden. She learned how to pick them and eat them all by herself. She also learned how to say the word "Berry" and is 'berry' bummed now that they are gone and the bushes are bare.

My favorite story of this past month involves a stuffed bunny that Grandma T gave her for Easter. A couple of weeks ago Will was playing with Lucy in her bedroom, when she spotted her stuffed bunny, picked it up and brought it to Will while repeating the word "Hops". Will thought it was cute and assumed that I had named the bunny Hops and she just remembered it like she is starting to remember the names of other favorite objects. A couple of days later I heard Will refer to her bunny as Hops, and commented on how cute that was. Will then said with some surprise that he thought I had named the bunny Hops. To make a long story short, Lucy had in fact named her first stuffed animal, and in a very creative way at that! Now Hops is a household name, and she talks about him even when he isn't around.

Speaking of Lucy and names, she is also calling relatives by name now. The first name she said was "Dane" when she was looking at a picture of her Godmother, Aunt Jane. From there it was Tate for Auntie Cate and Dim for Uncle Tim. She says John and Pat for her other uncles as clear as day. And her grandmas and grandpas? Well, she calls them mom and da - we're thinking it's because she hears us call them mom and dad? Either way, she has become quite the chatter box.

Lucy is so loving and one of my favorite things she does besides giving great hugs when you pick her up, is to gently pat you on the shoulder when she is feeling affectionate. She does this to Will and I, but also to extended relatives as well. We also enjoy a good family hug with Lucy in the middle and Will and I squeezing from the outsides. When we do this she will inevitably push Will's face and my face together with her hands to make us kiss. She is rather forceful, but I get a big kick out of it.

We have noticed that Lucy likes to show off pictures of her brother Luke when we have visitors over. It usually happens when we are giving a tour of our new house that Lucy will run and get a picture or memento of Luke's and show it to our guest. I have to admit that sometimes I feel awkward when she does this, because I don't know how our guest will react. Will and I have found that there are some people we are comfortable making casual references about Luke to, and others we just prefer not to. Lucy's pride of her big brother in heaven always seems to happen with those friends and family we normally wouldn't talk of Luke to, so it is nice I guess that Lucy is making sure that Luke is not forgotten. I wish that I had some of Lucy's lack of inhibition when it came to Luke. I am just so afraid of getting hurt by a negative reaction I suppose and because of it, I carefully guard any mentions of Luke. There is still so much pain missing our little guy, but as time goes on, I feel less and less able to express that pain openly. Lately Lucy has been resembling Luke, especially when she is laying down in the towel right after her bath. It chokes me up and makes me smile at the same time. We still just miss him so much.

Lucy went with us to Cincinnati this past month to visit Will's brother Tim, and had a blast running around his house and hiding in the space between his wall and his couch. It was like an adventure for her, and she now admires her Uncle Tim ever so much more. I think the stars struck her eyes when he let Lucy come to the studio of his radio morning show in Cincinnati and they played a game with the listeners called "Make Baby Lucy Smile". He also took her to the Zoo, which that alone would have made her a loyal follower for life! Below is Lucy and Uncle Tim at the Zoo.

Lucy loves water, and plays in puddles, at her water table and in swimming pools and sprinklers whenever she gets a chance. When she wants to do any of these things, she will bring the sunscreen to us, as she equates summer fun in the water with sunscreen.

Here she is playing sink or float with me at her water table.
And here she is running through a Spiderman Sprinkler at her friend's house.


We have been doing a lot of home improvement stuff around the house this past month in preparation of our guests coming in from out of town for my brother's wedding. Lucy loved helping, and I thought this below picture was a cute one of her practicing her skills as an electrician apprentice with her Daddy.

Lastly, Lucy has developed a love for dipping all foods into mustard and likes to then chew it with her new molar. She has been working on three more molars all month, and hopefully by the time I write her next month blog post, at least one more will have worked it's way through. Until then, this teething thing is really kicking us in the butt! Below is a picture of a good teething remedy we have found - popsicles that I make out of vanilla pudding. She's eating it outside on the front steps so that she can get as messy as she wants.

This last picture I just had to include because it cracks me up. The other day the house got quiet and I started looking for her since usually quiet means she is in to something she shouldn't be. I found her in the bathroom weighing herself, and if I could read her thoughts, this is probably what she was thinking: "I told mom that horizontal stripes make my butt look big!"