The End of the Year with Lucy

It has been a busy month for us with Emma's health issues, holiday preparations and holiday festivities.  Lucy has handled the bustle quite well, all things considering and has enjoyed increased TV viewing as a result.  I will do a separate post on our holidays, but for now, here is Lucy's past month in review.

Lucy has found creative ways to keep herself occupied while I was otherwise preoccupied - mostly on hold with doctors offices - and caring for Emma.  It became a given that the price I had to pay for quiet while on the phone or trying to get Emma to sleep was a mess to clean up when I was finished.  Messes I was greeted with included:

• the entire dining room table and all six chairs painted with a paper napkin mixed in the leftover milk from Lucy's morning cereal (who knew that leftover milk could cover that amount of surface area!)
• an entire box of Kleenex emptied and then 'bouqueted' in the crack behind my bedroom door
• Lucy's bed completely striped of all of it's sheets and blankets and laid quite nicely in the upstairs hallway with all of her dolls tucked sweetly under the layers of covers
• a half-eaten chocolate covered buckeye (covertly taken from Aunt Maureen's annual Christmas cookie tray) stuffed in between the couch cushions and only discovered later that evening when Will got up from the couch and I thought he had sat in poop - after sniffing him I was relieved to find out it was chocolate!
• my favorite house plant that I've had since I was five - methodically plucked of 50% of it's leaves
• countless pieces of furniture, toys and floor coverings 'washed' in the water she carefully emptied from her cup pretty much anytime I didn't have both of my eyes focused completely on her
• numerous meals turned to artistic expressions of finger painting, dipping, soaking, splatting, crumbling, pouring, mixing and smearing.

And no, I did not take any pictures of the above mentioned attempts of Lucy trying to stave off boredom and neglect because frankly I was too busy trying to figure out how to keep my cool while resigning myself to the fact that the quiet was worth the price.  I am now trying to direct all of her creative energy into structured activities like arts, crafts and baking.  Fortunately this past month I have had a lot of help from my family.  Below is a picture of Lucy with a castle her Aunt Jane helped her build.  Note the plucked house plant in the background.

Lucy really has been a good girl despite the large wake of disaster she has been leaving behind her.  One of her favorite things to do is play hide and seek with us.  Sometimes we don't even know she is playing the game she is that good.  In the picture below a fellow patient alerted me to Lucy's whereabouts when I couldn't find her at the chiropractor's office.

Lucy had her second haircut of her life this past month.  She took the event very seriously and told my friend Kelly who cuts our hair, "I want curly hair, not spiky."  You see, Lucy describes my hair as spiky and heaven forbid she is made to look like her mother!  While Lucy was getting her hair cut, I was overwhelmed by one of those mom moments where the love and pride I felt for her was so strong I was just beaming.  She looked so beautiful and grown up, sitting completely still under the cape and taking all of the beauty shop patrons ooohs and aaahs over her curly hair so calmly that I could hardly believe she was mine.

One of the first snows of the season appeared from the window to be perfect packing snow for snowman building.  After getting both girls all bundled up, we got outside and I was able to shovel the entire driveway while bribing Lucy with the snowman we would build when I was finished.  Unfortunately, I was wrong on the type of snow and we were only able to manage a miniature snowman.  Lucy was disappointed to say the least, and I learned a valuable lesson for setting snowman expectations with two year olds - never count your snowmans until the snowballs are rolled!

The weather has been warmer than usual and we have taken full advantage.  About a week before Christmas, I decided to capitalize on the mild weather and the girls and I went downtown despite some rain.  It ended up being a picture perfect morning of storybook Christmas shopping.  I had Emma in a front carrier while I held a large umbrella and Lucy walked with her little umbrella next to us.  Shoppers and shop keepers alike were all in the Christmas spirit and I found the most wonderful and unique gifts.  I even found a book for Will that had a picture of our house taken around 1930 in it!  It felt so good to spend my hard earned Christmas cash right in the heart of my community on gifts no amount of Amazon searching could have found, while learning more about the people and places of where we live.

I will end this post with Lucy-isms from this past month:

• "Look at those bad boys!" exclaimed Lucy, pointing at the Christmas lights on Main Street
• "Mom, it's a pee explosion!" Lucy, describing what it felt like to pee after holding it in too long
• Lucy reached up to Will and said, "Pick me up before you go-go."
• "I'm so excited I have to dance!"
• And finally, her latest invention to get us to come back upstairs after we have tucked her in, "Dad, my covers are wounded!"

Happy New Year!