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!

 

Lucy's 1st Birthday Party

We threw a rainbow- themed first birthday gathering for our Lucy Bear last weekend. It was so much fun! A big thank you to Lucy's Grandmas and Aunt Mallory for all of their help and a shout out to all of Lucy's baby friends - we are so happy that you were able to celebrate with us!

 

We rented a room at Goodman Community Center which was a great decision! Didn't have to clean the house, didn't have to deal with the dogs, didn't reconfigure furniture to make the rooms bigger...

We brought a blanket and lots of toys so that all of the kids could play! We ended up having 12 kids at the gathering ranging from 4 months to 6 years old so it was good to have entertainment on hand.

 

We had a great spread of food including pulled pork sandwiches, chips, a rainbow of fruits and veggies, cupcakes, and drinks.

 

Here is our rainbow of fruit.

 

And a rainbow of vegetables.

 

And here are the cupcakes that I previously blogged about!

 

 Paul showing the inside of the cupcakes. Yum! This guy celebrated his 6th birthday on the day of Lucy's party. We love you Paul and we can't believe that you are growing up so fast!!

 

Our birthday girl!

 Lucy playing with Charlotte. My only regret from the party is that I didn't get more pictures of Lucy and her baby friends!

Lucy had a special birthday cupcake. She certainly made a mess but didn't eat any of the cake or frosting.

 

Lucy loved opening her gifts. She is an expert at tearing out tissue paper and ripping up wrapping paper. Thanks for the great gifts, everyone!

 

Dad, Mama, and baby at Lucy's Birthday party! We are so thankful for all of our family and friends that came to celebrate with us!

Lucy's Birthday Preparations

Wow - I am sorry for my blogging hiatus! I will do do my best to catch up over the next couple of days. Work has been crazy -  I just finished my 4th trip in the past 3 weeks. Yikes! I am happy to report that I am off the road for a while now.:) In the middle of my work trips, our sweet Lucy turned one! Good thing that mama had a day off of work to prepare for party and thank goodness that Lucy's Grandmas were in town to help! Last Friday I was very thankful for a recovery day and extra time to spend with Lucy and get ready for the party.

 

Lucy's 1st birthday theme was Rainbows. I had grand visions of making a 6 tiered multi-colored birthday cake but I was talked out of it by some awesome nurses at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin go-live. They advised me to go with rainbow cupcakes instead. Sold!

I bought a box of 8 rainbow colors of food coloring off of Amazon and picked up some standard boxes of standard white cake mix from the grocery store.

 

I prepared my first box and separated the batter into 6 bowls. Enough colors for ROY G BIV without the Indigo. :)

 

 

Here is the mix after I added the food coloring. Doesn't it look fun? As a next step, I put the batter in ziplock bags and threw them in the refrigerator for an hour or so - that way when I put the batter in the muffin tins, the colors would not run together.

 

 

Lucy played and supervised during the baking adventures.

 

My first batch ended up being a fail due to user error. I guess that it really is important to actually read the instructions on the box. Whoops. I assumed that a cake mix made 12 cupcakes but, in fact, 1 box of cake mix = 24 cupcakes. Who knew? When I told my mom about the mishap over the phone she informed me that cake mix instructions were written at a 5th grade level. Yep. Lesson learned.

 

Long story short - my cupcakes ended up looking like giant volcanoes that spewed rainbow lava. So - I made rainbow cupcakes Part II. I made 24 the second time around. :)

 

Here is my batter ready to go!

It was a fair amount of work to make these cupcakes but I loved the final product. They were super colorful and delicious!

Happy 1st Birthday Lucy!!

What a year! Last November 8 we were blessed with our sweet baby daughter Lucille Lorraine. It seems like it was just yesterday that we welcomed our little Lucy into the world. She is the joy of our lives! We love our little peanut so much! We are so very thankful to have such a happy and healthy girl.

Lucy's first cries

 

 

 

Our big 1 year old

You are the best, Lucy Goose! We are so lucky to be your parents! We love watching you grow.

One Year Ago

One year ago today I started having contractions - our sweet baby Lucy was about to be born! I was about a week overdue so when I started having cramps in the night so I was in disbelief that I could actually be going into labor. :) I slept on and off that night and Daniel and I had breakfast together. The contractions were pretty few and far between at that point so we went about our days. I took Scout on a walk - it was a beautiful November morning. I went to work to finish up a few things before being out of the office on maternity leave. Throughout the day my cramps started to get more intense and closer together. At 4:00, I called Dan and told him to come home! :)
We spent the rest of the evening at home - timing contractions, sitting on the birth ball, doing breathing exercised, and getting our things together to go to the hospital! We were so excited!

I am so thankful for my awesome husband! He was the best birthing/labor partner and he is such an amazing Dad to Lucy. He is my best friend in the world.

Fast forward to today - Our little Lucy is not quite walking but she is getting closer every day! Here is a video of Lucy with her new walking toy, a birthday gift from Grandpa Ken and Grandma Nola. She is so cute pushing around her little stroller. You might wonder, why is the stroller empty? This kid does not give any free rides!! :) When we put a dolly or a stuffed animal in the stroller, Lucy promptly throws it out.

Election Day

Election Day is finally here! The Storm household rocked the vote this morning. Since I was a government major, this day is near and dear to my heart! Plus, I am so tired of all of the ads!! Between the commercials and the junk mail, I am very ready for it all to be over. For the past few months we have been living in what Jon Stewart calls Swing State Hell. :)

I was listening to NPR and they said that the Tammy Baldwin v. Tommy Thompson Senate race in Wisconsin was the most negative race in the entire country with 99% negative commercials, literature, etc. Ugh! We started out the day by telling Lucy about how important voting is and we reminded her that she was born on election day last year. :) During breakfast we all read Duck for president, which is a great book! I definitely recommend it for kids. Here is Lucy reading at the dining room table. How could you not want to vote for this little sweetie's future?

 

 

I hope that you all were able to vote today! It is a privilege for which we should all be grateful! Speaking of being thankful, I saw on another blog that I follow that the author was doing 30 days of thankfulness as a countdown to Thanksgiving. It really resonated with me because over the past few weeks I have been frustrated with my job, I have been obsessed with Lucy's eating issues, stressed out, etc and I do have so much to be grateful for! So, I missed the boat on the 30 days but I will do a post on something that I am thankful for the next 16 days until Thanksgiving. Today, I am thankful that we live in a democracy and that we are able to vote for our leaders.

Spooktacular!

We had a great Halloween at the Storm Household! I started off the day in Illinois - away on a work trip. The hospital I was working at had an awesome pumpkin decorating contest - here is a picture of one of my favorites:

 

I am not sure if it is supposed to be a porcupine or a hedgehog but it was pretty cute. :)

 

Daddy was holding down the fort in Madison and he got Lucy off to daycare on Halloween morning wearing her little skeleton pajamas (thanks for letting us borrow your pj's, Abigail!). They even glow in the dark.  Here is the sweetest skeleton emptying out her diaper bag (a favorite activity of Lucy's these days).

 

 

 

When we got home, Mama changed Lucy into her bee costume, we Facetimed with some family and friends and made sure that our Halloween decorations were glowing!

 

Remember this picture from Halloween time last year? Here is yours truly at almost 40 weeks, thinking that the baby would come any second! haha!

 

 

And here is Miss Lucy celebrating her first Halloween! She loved this glowing ghostie.

 


We did not get many Trick or Treaters this year - I am pretty sure that just 10 or 12 kids stopped by the house. Oh well! We did have a good time dressing up, we watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown special, and we had friends over for scary movies! Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Halloween Weekend

We had a wonderful pre-Halloween weekend! We took family pictures and had Lucy's 1 year old photos on Saturday morning. We had high hopes of taking great outdoor shots but it was a little bit chilly for Lucy Bear so most of the session ended up being indoors. Oh well! We brought our Sophie the giraffe toy so that our photographer would have a squeaky toy to get Lucy's attention but our little peanut would not let go! haha. We are pretty sure that Sophie will make it into the Storm family Christmas cards this year. I can't wait to see the proofs!

 

After our photo session, Lucy donned her bumblebee costume and we headed to Happy Bambino for a Halloween party.

What a sweet little bee!

 

Lucy loved the balloons!! Here she is with her papa and her new favorite toy. :)

We met Lucy's friend Charlotte at the party. Charlotte was dressed up as a very cute little cow. I just love this picture of our girls!

 

After lunch at Crema we went downtown for one more activity - the Kids in the Rotunda series Percussion event!! The girls loved the drums. They got to play little percussion instruments along with the drummers. Here is Lucy playing with a tambourine that was half her size!

 

 

Charlotte and Lucy on top of their Daddy's shoulders playing with instruments. Good times!!

Thanks for the fun afternoon Erinn, Andy, and Charlotte! We can't wait to spend more Saturdays out and about with the girls.