Weekend Adventures

We had a great weekend at the Storm household. We almost finished up our Christmas shopping, we watched football, played with Lucy - watched her take more and more steps!! - listened to Christmas music, cleaned the house, and attended a goodbye party for a friend. Whew!

 

We also went out for brunch on Saturday with our friends the Nye family. As always, Charlotte and Lucy had fun eating and playing together. Here are our little sweethearts:

 

 

After breakfast we went to Olbrich Gardens to see their annual Christmas Train. The girls loved it!! I wish that I had some audio of Lucy, lots of squeals of delight. She was captivated by this little train.

 

Here is the train winding around the Poinsettia plants. Very cute! We will definitely take Lucy back next year.

In other news, Lucy is finally getting some new teeth. :) For the past 6 months she has had just 2 little bottom teeth in her mouth. Over the past couple of weeks she has been a little fussy, a little more restless at night, etc. She had a rough afternoon trying to nap on Sunday and when I checked her mouth, I could feel some tiny bumps on her top gum. More chompers on the way!!

Our Big Girl!

 

12/12/12 was a big day at the Storm household! 2 big things happened in Lucy's life!

 

1. Lucy ate half of a graham cracker. Wow!!! This is huge!!! You might be reading this post and think, um...Andrea is crazy. Any kid can gum down a graham cracker. However, after working with Lucy's texture aversion over the past ~6 months, the fact that she is eating something crunchy is a.m.a.z.i.n.g!! I almost cried. :) Yay, Lucy!! There is a whole world of food out there for you to experience but we can stick to grahams for now. We are so excited!

 

 

2. After eating her graham cracker, Lucy was on fire! We took her out of her high chair and she decided to start walking! Like 4 or 5 steps in a row! Woohoo! We tried to catch it on video, but no such luck. Here is a clip of the tail end of her steps when she falls into Mama's arms. We'll work to get some legit steps on video this weekend. :)

We love you Lucy!!

Weekend in the Twin Cities!

We just spent a wonderful weekend in Minneapolis/St Paul! Daniel, Lucy, and I drove to the Cities on Friday night. Bright and early on Saturday I got to go shopping for wedding dresses with Dan's sister Amelia, Nola, and some friends. It was so much fun! I have not been dress shopping since my own wedding, it was so special to see Amelia try on dresses.

 

We went to a wonderful dress shop on Grand Avenue in St Paul.

 

 

Here is the lovely bride-to-be

 

Amelia did say yes to the dress! It is beautiful! We are so excited for the wedding next October!

 

Lucy and Daniel spent the day with Ken and Nola while I met up with the Hoekman ladies for a girls weekend.

 

Here we are before heading out for some Christmas shopping.

 

 

When we were at the mall, we passed this awesome kiosk for Zubaz! Yes, after 20 years, these babies are apparently back in style. Back in the day - circa 1991 - I used to have an awesome pair of these guys that I sewed myself. Yep, they were made from fabric that matched my school colors, maroon and white. Go Mustangs! I even had enough leftover fabric to make a matching scrunchy. Pretty awesome. In 2012, you need to pay $32.99 for Zubaz! Crazy, huh?

 

 

After my Mom said that she was suffering from hand cramps from carrying her shopping bags all day, we took a break and got our nails done.

 

 

A well deserved manicure for yours truly.

 

We had dinner at an amazing Italian restaurant - including this dessert. Yum!

 

On Sunday it snowed! Big time! Lucy loved looking out the hotel window at the white stuff. It took longer than normal to get home, we needed to be very careful on the drive. Thanks for driving, Dan!

 

 

What a wonderful weekend - thanks for everything, Storm family and Hoekman ladies!

 

Sunday Football

The Storm family ventured out to Buffalo Wild Wings a few Sundays ago to watch the Vikings v Packers football game. We were a little nervous about bringing Lucy Bear to a public establishment for a game but she did great!! She was entertained with cheerios, toys, snacks, and people watching until the third quarter. What a good girl!

 

Dan enjoyed some wings.

 

 

 

Mama and Lucy

By the way, the aftermath of Lucy's cheerio play was crazy! Those Buffalo Wild Wing staff had to vacuum up quite the mess. :) We had a great time!

Christmastime is here

Christmastime is here! We have been celebrating the season at the Storm Household!

We have been out Christmas shopping. Lucy loves all of the twinkling lights. She especially liked seeing these holiday yard decorations when we were at the mall.

 

Lucy played with the Lego table at Barnes and Noble while Dad shopped for books.

 

Daniel and I went to the Madison Symphony Orchestra Christmas Spectacular concert! What great music! So fun! The Overture Center looked beautiful with all of the twinkle lights.

 

 

Lucy and I spent some time at Fired Up Pottery recently, making Christmas presents. She made some sweet projects with handprints. She loved sitting at this little craft table.

 

Here is one of the ornaments that Lucy made. Love it.

 

Lucy got a fun Nativity playset from Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Glen for her birthday. She loves playing with it; especially the little sheep. :)

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanksgiving 2012

 

Wow! Sorry for the delay in blogging! I have been busy with work/holiday prep and plagued with a cold that I can just not shake. :( I am pretty sure that I have been sick for a month now. Yuck!

 

I need to catch you up on the latest and greatest from the Storm household!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! The entire Storm family came to visit us in Madison and we had so much fun. We have a lot to be thankful for! We had a great meal, we spent time lounging with family, and we had a wonderful walk/dog park visit with our pups. Good stuff!

 

Lucy received some awesome handmade belated birthday gifts from her autie and uncles.

Brad made Lucy this beautiful stamped art. He carved some stamps with Lucy's name and used purple paint to make this great wall hanging! Thanks Uncle Brad!

 

 

 

Aunt Amelia and Brian gave Lucy this sweet Minnesota Twins blanket. She loves to play Peek A Boo with it! Thanks guys!

 

 

 

Just like last year, Daniel carved our turkey.

 

 

And, just like last year, we lined up all of the food into this fantastic buffet on the bar in the basement. Maybe next year we will have a bigger hourse so that we can serve food in our dining room or kitchen! :)

 

Grandma Nola read Lucy her My First Thankgiving book.

 

We spent time lounging and watching Charlie Brown on television.

 

Lucy loves hanging out with her Grandpa Ken and Grandma Nola!

 

 

Our family on Thanksgiving! We are so blessed!

Weekend recap

Big weekend in the Storm Household - the gun deer season opened! Daniel spent the weekend with Bob and Cathy Storm's family hunting near Richland Center. Lucy and I had a ladies weekend. :) We got a call from Dan around 8:30 on Saturday morning that his hunting party got 2 bucks! Yay!

 

Here is the picture of Dan's buck. We are excited to fill our freezer with venison!

 

While Dad was gone, Lucy and I had our own adventures including: a trip to the local library!

Lucy loved the puppets!

 

We went to our Sunday afternoon Parenting group at Happy Bambino. Lucy is technically too old to attend (babes are supposed to be less than a year old)  but I like going so much, I don't want to stop! It is an awesome way to meet people and to get advice! I am going to try to keep sneaking in until Lucy is walking. :) Here is Lucy playing with one of her favorite things there - a yellow bouncing bean.

 

By the way, thanks for the cute vest Aunt Mallory, Uncle Austin, Paul and Abigail!

 

 

 

Despite Lucy being a little under the weather over the weekend - we are all fighting colds and sinus issues - we had a great time together.

 

 

 

Bathtime

A few months ago I noted on one of my blog posts that Miss Lucille h-a-t-e-d bathtime. It was strange because bathtime created lots of tears and unhappiness, however, Lucy was loving her swim lessons (?). Anyway,I am happy to report that this was just a phase and our little Lucy is a fish again, she loves bathtime now. She is now crying when we pull her out of the tub. :) A big thanks to my friend Joanna who suggested that Lucy just might need a change of scenery. We bought this blowup ducky tub (which Lucy loves, loves, loves.) and now she can't get enough.

 

Very thankful for happy bathtimes at the Storm household. :)

 

End of an era

This weekend marked a new milestone at the Storm household. I gave Lucy her very last full sippy cup of breastmilk. Wow! My freezer supply of milk is officially gone and my pump is now in storage. I was so excited to stop pumping at work and I feel like I have so much extra room in my hands now that I no longer need to carry my breastpump bag with me every day. Yay! I still nurse Lucy in mornings but she is now primarily on whole milk. Very thankful that I was able to give Lucy breastmilk for her first year of life but also very glad to be done with pumping! Woohoo.

 

Side note - Transition to whole milk resulted in some c-r-a-z-y poops but Lucy seems good with it now! :)

 

Family Time in Milwaukee

A couple of weeks ago I had a work trip to Milwaukee so Daniel and Lucy joined me. :) We spent time as a family the Milwaukee county zoo. It was the first Saturday of the month so everyone had free admission! We saw lots of animals that we don't normally see at the Vilas zoo in Madison.

 

Including elephants!!

 

 

Lucy had a great time looking at the animals - here we are visiting the camels.

 

We brought lots of toys for Lucy to play with in the hotel room, she also cruised around with her little stroller. 

 

I was working nights and I tried to spend most of the day with Dan and Lucy so it was an exhausting weekend but worth it! So thankful for our time together as a family. :)

1 Year Well Child Visit

Little Lucy had her one year well child visit with Dr. Rainwater last week. It was a good appointment.

Here are the latest stats for our baby girl:

She measured in at 30.2 inches. Lucy is a tall kiddo, she has consistently been in the 85th percentile since she was 6 months old.

Lucy now weighs 21.12 pounds which is a jump to the 67th percentile! I was really surprised by this jump in percentiles considering her feeding issues. We are happy that our peanut continues to grow like a little weed.

After being measured and weighed Lucy just wanted to squirm out of my lap and explore all of the books in the Doctor's Office. :)

In terms of development, Lucy is not walking yet but she is standing more and more on her own and for longer timeframes each day! It is looking like we will have a little walker on our hands by Christmas time. :)  Lucy loves books, she loves putting things into/taking things out of containers (see above pictures), and she is starting to imitate us more (She got a hold of one of my empty cans of sparkling water the other day and had a great time pretending that she was drinking out of it. She screamed when I tried to take it away/swap it for another toy).

The one area of Lucy's growth/development where we do have some concern is her continued struggles with eating textured food. While Lucy is happy to eat pureed foods and drink from sippy cups, she still gags, spits out or vomits any food that has chunks. We have noticed this texture aversion for quite a few months now. Lucy has made a little bit of progress recently. She is putting a few more objects in her mouth these days, she does chew on her fingers a bit more, and she can tolerate a few tiny chunks mixed in with her purees. So, she definitely won't be sharing our Thanksgiving foods with us this year but maybe next year? Mama hopes so! :)

Dr. Rainwater says that she is not concerned. She says that she sees a couple of kids each year that really struggle with the transition to solids (side note: I wish that I knew these other kids and their Moms!! I sometimes feel like Lucy is the only 1 year old out there that has this type of eating issue. It seems like all of Lucy's baby friends are eating everything put in front of them these days.). Dr. Rainwater says that self feeding is not a developmental milestone, she thinks that Lucy's pincer grasp looks great (most kids perfect this skill by picking up small pieces of food - Lucy has refined her grasp by turning pages in books and picking up small toys), and she says that Lucy's level of babbling and social interactions are great for a one year old so she doesn't think that Lucy has any sensory processing disorder-type symptoms. That is the good news. So, what can we expect? Dr. Rainwater says that this will be a very s-l-o-w process. She says that she will not be surprised/concerned if Lucy is still not on solids at her 15 or 18 month appointments. ugh. She says that we need to continue to encourage Lucy to mouth on objects, especially when she is getting new teeth (she still just has her 2 bottom teeth right now- no signs of any other chompers coming any time soon!). We also need to feed Lucy Goose the tiniest bit more of textured food each day so that she very slowly gets used to having it in her mouth and can manage it better with her tongue and teeth. So, some days I have nightmares that I will be feeding her pureed food forever but Dr. Rainwater assures me that eventually Lucy will learn to manage solids and will eat on her own. She says that Lucy will be feeding herself before she goes to kindergarten. :) We just need to be patient.

We are thankful for Dr. Rainwater and we are blessed to have access to such great medical care for our baby!

Cousins!

Lucy is very lucky to have 3 wonderful cousins (and 1 more on the way this February!!). Paul and Abigail made the trip all the way from South Dakota to attend Lucy's 1st birthday celebration last weekend. Lucy, Abigail, and Paul all have November birthdays. As noted in my previous post, Paul turned 6 on November 10th. We needed to celebrate his special day in Wisconsin.

 

Here is Paul blowing out his birthday candles.

 

He received some Ninjago Legos from his Auntie and Uncle.

 

The boys went right to work building the ninjas and their modes of lego transportation.

 

While Paul and Dan worked with small Lego pieces, the girls played with mirrors.

 

Grandma Sharon, Aunt Mallory, and the cousins stayed at a hotel while they visited us because Storm Manor is not big enough to accommodate all of our birthday guests! :)  As a result Paul got some pool time! Yay!

 

Our girls being silly.

 

 

 

We went to the Children's Museum on Sunday and the kids had a great time!

 

What a wonderful visit! Thanks for coming to Madison. We are so thankful for Lucy's cousins!