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!"