Category Archives: Lydia Grace

Brain Dump

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No common thread holding my thoughts together today, so hang on for a random ride…

* After a week of on again off again naps, it appears as though losing the nuks has made Alethea also lose interest in taking an afternoon nap.  Very sad.  But I think we have to do it, since one of the days Alethea actually did take a good nap last week, she also stayed up until 11:15pm playing in her room that night.  Seriously… Peter and I went into her room and said, “Goodnight, we’re going to bed.  Try to keep it down in here.”

* Lydia’s vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds.  One of today’s words was a good baby classic: ball (or as Lydia says it ‘bah’).  The other one really took me by surprise.  Tonight, when she was on her changing table, I pointed to her name above her and said, “L-Y-D-I-A, what’s that spell?  Lydia!”  Lydia got a big grin on her face, clapped her hands and said, “Id-ee-ah!”

* My friend and I were asked to do a presentation about home decor for the ladies at our church.  It’s flattering and somewhat nerve wracking to think people want my ideas about decorating.  “They do realize that our resumes include degrees in Biology and Philosophy, not Interior Design?” my friend asked me.  At least we get to be unqualified together…

* Alethea and I worked on making some valentines today.  I know it’s a bit early, but I got her some heart stickers and she was begging to use them.  Anyway, after making one for Gramma and Poppa and one for Grandma and Grandpa, I asked her who she wanted to make one for next.
“Jesus, I think,” she said.  Then, as she was sticking stickers onto Jesus’ valentine, she asked me, “Does Jesus have eyes?”
“Yes, Jesus has eyes.”
“Does Jesus have ears?” she then wondered.
“Yes, Alethea, Jesus has eyes and ears.  He’s a person.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” she said. “I’ll give Him this valentine then.”

* It feels like our social calendar is really full.  A lot of people getting married and having babies and generally wanting to hang out.  Oh, and have a date with my best friend Saturday morning to get pedicures together.  Absolutely. cannot. wait.

* Okay, one last Alethea funny from today and then I’m done.  Promise.  This morning I was verbally taking stock of our day’s progress as Alethea ran around in her underwear.  “Two girls bathed, two girls with fingernails clipped, one girl dressed,” I said.  Alethea sped past then stopped and proclaimed, “And one girl cold!”

And with that in mind, I’m going to go snuggle under my down comforter and pretend that we’re not going to have sub-zero temps the next few days.

Stay warm, my friends!

Lydia’s Twelve Month Update

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Our sweet Lydia just turned one year old!  Happy birthday, Dear Girl!

She changed so much between months 11 and 12, Peter and I keep talking about how every time we turn around, she’s doing something new!  But before we get into that, here are Lydia’s current stats: Height 29 inches and Weight 24 lbs 4 oz, which means she is in the 43rd percentile for height and 89th for weight.  Unfortunately, the nurse forgot to write down her head circumference, so I don’t have an exact measurement, but she did write down the percentile.  Want to guess?  You got it!  Like a true Bobble Head Baby, she’s in the 99th percentile for head circumference!

This is the month when Lydia really got moving!  At the beginning of December she was still mostly army crawling, hadn’t climbed up a single stair, and despite pulling up to a stand on a fairly regular basis, hadn’t taken any free steps.  Now she climbs stairs like a pro, rarely crawls at all, and walks everywhere, mostly holding onto things, but sometimes letting to and taking a few steps between handholds.  Basically, she gets where she wants to go and gets there in a hurry!

In addition to practicing new moves, she’s also been expanding her vocabulary.  At one year, her frequently used words were: Mama, Dada, all done (ah da), night night (nigh nigh) and shoes (shhz).  And it does make me laugh that one of her first five words was shoes (so girly!), but she’s obsessed with them, so I guess it makes sense.

Lydia says some ‘real’ words now, but she also babbles unintelligibly more than she did a month ago.  She also clearly understands more and more of what is being said around her.  The other night, Alethea tunelessly said the words, “Twinkle Little Star,” and Lydia started dancing (i.e. swaying back and forth) so we knew Lydia recognized it as the name of a song.  I have been told by several people that a highly verbal first born can sometimes lead to a less verbal second child since the older one does all the talking, but it doesn’t seem like that is going to be the case in our house.

Lydia’s favorite things currently include: eating (it doesn’t much matter what), baths, reading books, getting into whatever Alethea is doing, and giving the most amazing hugs.  She’s a super affectionate child and will periodically stop whatever she’s doing to come over and wrap her arms around me.  She’ll even pat my back with her hand and say, “Awww,” as she does it, which makes me smile every time.

The things she dislikes aren’t many, but include: being put down or walked away from, not being allowed to do what Alethea is doing, and her carseat.  Buckling her into the car has become considerably more difficult since she discovered the ‘arch my back and become as stiff as a board’ maneuver.  Good times!

Happy birthday, Lydia Grace!  Thank you for being ours for a whole year.  We can’t wait to see what surprises you have in store for us in the year ahead!  We love you!

Lydia’s Flower Birthday Party

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This year was my first attempt at transitioning from Christmas mode right into Lydia’s birthday party planning.  I think I did reasonably well, although it involved a marathon of cleaning and packing up of Christmas decor.  Much of Friday and Saturday were spent taking down ornaments, hauling out the tree, vacuuming up mounds of pine needles, putting decorations in tubs, vacuuming up more pine needles, putting up birthday decor and of course, vacuuming again, because those pine needles are like cockroaches (only they don’t move and smell better, but still, they are hiding everywhere!)

I decided, with Peter’s complete approval, to go a little simple and just invite family, order take n’ bake pizzas for the food and not organize any games/favors/activities, because let’s face it, Lydia’s too young to enjoy them anyway.  I did let Alethea pick a theme though.  She decided on “flowers” and says she wants her next party to be a bumblebee one, which I believe stems from the girls’ Halloween costumes.  Makes me glad I didn’t dress them in anything too weird for trick or treat!

So here’s what I did for Lydia’s 1st birthday flower themed bash:

The cake was a cupcake creation!  It turned out really cute and I had fun practicing with my rarely used piping tools.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Christmas mantle, but I also have to admit that it feels good to go back to something simpler and less cluttered, and bonus, it left lots of room to put all the presents up there too!

Back in September, I used photos of myself growing up as decor for my 30th birthday party.  Then it occurred to me that it might be a fun family tradition to make a special photo display of the birthday girl/boy of the month whenever there is a birthday.  Will it be a tradition that sticks?  I’m not sure, but two in a row is a good start.  And an enthusiastic response from Alethea makes me feel like it’s a tradition that the girls would appreciate.

She had fun explaining to me in detail what the occasion of each picture was and even got down on the floor to demonstrate after she pointed to the one on the left and said, “This one is Lydia crawling.”

But enough about the decor, I’m sure you are all dying to know what the guest of honor wore.

We kept it comfy and washable with a flower embellished sweatshirt and a pink flower headband.  Lydia wasn’t entirely certain she liked having something on her head, but she did mostly leave the headband alone.

If only the headband had been equally as cooperative.

Despite an unruly hair accessory, Lydia managed to enjoy opening presents and even climbed into the bag of oversized cardboard blocks from Mommy and Daddy.

After everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’, Daddy helped Lydia blow out her candle.

Then we let her have her cake, and even eat it too!

Had to get a picture of the aftermath, because in the war of Lydia v. Cupcake, there was carnage to behold.  (This shot fails to capture the crumbs smeared on the wall.  Vertical surfaces were not exempt from the massacre.)

So that was how we celebrated Lydia’s first birthday.  It was a memorable event and we appreciated all our family taking the time to celebrate with us.  (And a special shout out to the grandmothers who helped clean up the birthday girl and her high chair!  You’re the best!)

To view more BobbleHeadBaby celebrations, visit my Parties Page!

Happy Birthday, Lydia!

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Love me tender,

Love me sweet,

Never let me go.

You have made my life complete,

And I love you so!

Love me tender,

Love me dear,

Tell me you are mine.

I’ll be yours through all the years,

‘Till the end of time.

Happy 1st Birthday, Lydia Grace!

We love you so very much!

Hugs and kisses,

Mommy & Daddy

Lydia’s Eleven Month Update

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December 5th was Lydia’s eleven month birthday!  Happy birthday, my sweet girl!

I know it’s only three days until she’s one year old, but just for a minute, pretend I was an on-top-of-things mother and that it is still the first week of December.  Okay?  Oh, and just to make myself feel a tiny bit better, I’ll mention that these photos were taken around her 11 month birthday.

Eleven months old, oh where does the time go?  Lydia’s current mode of transportation is a combination of army crawling, hands and knees crawling and cruising around holding onto things.  She definitely seems interested in walking, but has not yet gathered the courage to let go of her supports.

Her favorite activities continue to include taking baths (you should see her, she thinks she’s a fish!), eating (doesn’t seem to matter what it is as long as it’s easy to chew) and getting into Alethea’s stuff.  We also enjoy lots of hugs and kisses and her repertoire of goofy faces that she uses to get our attention and make us laugh.

Physically, we can tell that she is continuing to grow since she is wearing almost all 12 month clothes and even some 18 month tops.  She’s also getting more hair and has this random one that is always standing up on the back of her head.  We are still waiting for her last two bottom teeth to poke through.  She drools a lot and it seems like she’s always chewing on stuff, but there is still no sign of them.

The other notable thing that has happened this month is that Lydia’s vocabulary has expanded from just ‘all done’ to include ‘mama’, ‘dada’ and ‘nigh-nigh’ (night-night) as well.  She responds to her name when called and will shake her head from side to side if you tell her something is a ‘no-no’.

We are enjoying our eleven month old while we can because we know that her first Christmas is just around the corner and right after that comes her birthday!  Love you so much, Lydia Grace!

Ear ye! Ear ye!

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Just a quick update on our doctor appointment yesterday.  Turns out both girls have ear infections, Alethea in one ear and Lydia in both.  The doctor said this is Lydia’s last chance at antibiotics.  If the infection won’t clear up, or if it clears but she gets another one in the near future, it will be off to the ENT for tubes.  I’m not thrilled about the idea of tubes, but would much rather that than endless antibiotics.  So I guess it’s a waiting game at this point.

On a side note, Alethea’s current weight is 28lbs (35th percentile) and Lydia’s is 25 lbs 4oz (96th percentile).  Since they are less than three pounds different in weight, they’re taking the same dosage of medication now.  Makes it easy to remember how much to give!

Days of Christmas Craziness

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I know posts have been few and far between around here lately.  We have been BUSY!  So to catch you up on all our happenings over the last two and a half weeks, I’ve written a little ditty and it goes like this…

On some days of Christmas Craziness my true love gave to me:

Twelve Floats a Glowin’
Alethea, Lydia and I all got to experience our first Minneapolis Holidazzle Parade together this year.  I know, I know, I grew up in the Twin Cities and had never seen it in person before.  Shame on me.  It just wasn’t part of our family traditions growing up.  I don’t know whether it will become part of ours, but it was cool to see the girls’ faces light up as they watched the stunning floats go by.  This is Alethea and Poppa (Peter’s dad) waiting for the parade to begin (not sure why Alethea looks sunburned, the weather hasn’t been that nice lately):

And here’s Lydia making everyone laugh while we were waiting:

Ooooo lights!!!!

Eleven Singers Singing
I was in charge of directing our church’s Christmas choir again this year.  I decided to try my hand at arranging some of the carols we were going to be singing.  “How is the arranging coming?” Peter asked me several times in November.  “Haven’t started yet,” I told him, “but I don’t think it’ll take me too long.  I’m not going to do anything too fancy.”  Turns out even not fancy arrangements are a lot of work.  Especially when you forget to save one before you go to bed and then wake up on Saturday morning with two hours until choir practice and find that your computer has rebooted and you’ve lost eeevvvveeeerrryyythiiiiiing!  Three original arrangements (one written out twice!) and four rehearsals in two weeks makes for choir overload!  Peter told me that next year I have to be done in July or he’s pulling the plug on my directorship.  We’ll see.

Ten Students Playing
Tuesday was the Christmas party for my piano students here at our house.  We had a great time playing music bingo, eating junk food and performing Christmas carols for each other.  Alethea enjoyed getting to interact with all the ‘big kids’, though she was a little confused about what kind of party it was.  She kept walking up to various students saying in a cheerful voice, “Happy Birthday!”

Nine Presents for Peter
… and other assorted gifts.  Lots of Christmas shopping has been done and while I have done as much as possible online, there still have been a few trips out to brick and mortar stores to pick up this and that.  Peter and I even braved the MOA to get Lydia her Bitty Baby Doll from the American Girl Store, though afterward Peter commented that we should probably have just paid to have the doll shipped rather than deal with the crowds.  Bah Humbug!

Eight Dozen Cookies
The girls and I were invited to attend a cookie exchange on Monday with some friends from church, but due to Extreme Choir Week (see number eleven above), Sunday night was my first chance to bake anything.  So, I stayed up late baking my Coconut Macaroons and Chocolate Andes Mint cookies.  It was totally worth it though because not only did I end up with a nice variety of cookies for my piano party, I got to spend an entire morning chatting with other moms.  I really need to do that more often, it was such a blessing!

Seven Monkeys Climbing
Okay, so it’s not seven monkeys, it’s just one, but it feels like seven!  Lydia is now climbing on everything in sight, including, but not limited to, the stairs, step stools and Alethea’s child sized rocking chair (which is now in the basement because Lydia kept falling off of it).  I can’t seem to get anything done because I’m constantly rescuing her off of things and the day I finally put the gate up at the bottom of the stairs so I could clean the kitchen, she sat there and cried for 10 minutes!  You heard me right, easygoing, not bothered by anything Lydia wept like her poor little heart would break just because I wouldn’t let her climb the stairs without me.  Sigh…

Would you believe that she got up here all by herself?

Six Gifts from Santa
One of the great things about our neighborhood is that every year the ladies do a Secret Santa week early in December.  This year I got five lovely gifts left on my doorstep through the week and then Saturday was our brunch and Santa reveal, where we ate a potluck meal and exchanged our final gifts.  I had a good time planning a gift theme for my recipient (snowflakes!) and thought my Santa did a really good job picking gifts for me.  Alethea had fun going to the door each morning to retrieve my gift for me off the doormat.  She especially liked the Tuesday gift, which was mini chocolate bars, but then on Wednesday when she pulled the tissue paper off of pretty paper napkins, she said in dismay, “But it’s not food!!!!”  I guess you can’t please everyone.

Five Sets of 20 Cards
My photo cards from Snapfish arrived and all 100 of them are currently sitting on my counter in envelopes, stamped and addressed.  My letter is written and copied.  I just need to get the letters stuffed and envelopes sealed and they’ll be headed to the post office for mailing.  How glad am I that I bought stamps in November so I have zero trips to make to the postal counter?  SO GLAD!

Four Assorted Parties
Happy Birthday again to my nephew Deacon and my sister-in-law Leah!  We enjoyed celebrating with you!  The piano party (number ten above) and a football and pizza gathering with church friends rounded out our yuletide celebrations thus far.

Three Prescriptions Filled
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been to the pediatrician’s office in the last few weeks, but I do know that we’ve had three rounds of antibiotics to combat ear infections, one for Alethea and two for Lydia.  I wish we could just get healthy, but they’ve both got horrible colds again and after a couple terrible nights with Lydia, we’ll be going in for an appointment this morning.  I really hope it’s just a cold and not another ear infection, otherwise we may be looking at tubes for our baby.  She just can’t stay on antibiotics for weeks on end.  It does horrible stuff to her digestive system and that makes both of us cranky!

Two Rooms Decked Out
My holiday decorations are done!  There are a few touches in the kitchen, my office and the main floor bathroom, but I’ve concentrated most of my efforts in the living and dining rooms.  I haven’t had a chance to get pictures yet, but Lord willing, before the end of the week, I will post my final decor shots for you all to see.

And a Gorgeous Balsam Fir Tree
I’m pretty sure we found the finest tree ever grown in Minnesota for our home this year.  It’s perfect!  And we had a terrific time going to cut it down too.  We’ll, at least some of us did.  Lydia had a hard time sitting up in the sled and Alethea didn’t like being squished!  The adults in the group just about died from laughter as we watch Lydia channel Ralphie’s little brother Randy from A Christmas Story:

After tree cutting comes tree decorating though and the girls liked that much better:

Alethea, naturally, took her ornament hanging task very seriously and did a nice job of getting each one to stay on the tree.  This is the face of utter concentration!

And as you may have predicted, Lydia thought her job was to go around and pull down all the ornaments Alethea was so carefully placing:

We did finally get all the ornaments to remain on the tree and Peter and I both agree that it is the finest tree this family has ever had.

Ho, ho, ho!

So that’s what we’ve been doing lately.  It seems like there are never enough hours in a day, but clearly we’ve managed to cram some stuff into the hours we do have!  How’ve you all been?  Busy too, I bet!  We’ll, I’d love to chat, but we’re off to see our pediatrician.  Have a happy Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve today! Later y’all!

Changing Seasons

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The last few days have really felt to me like a shift from autumn to winter. Here’s why:

*Saturday morning, Lydia woke up at 6:00am and wouldn’t stop crying, even with me holding and rocking her.  So we went to the doctor as soon as they opened their doors.  She’s got an ear infection, in both ears.  Welcome cold and flu season.

*Once we got home from picking up Lydia’s antibiotic prescription, she zonked out for hours.  Poor baby.  But since Alethea spent the night at Gramma and Poppa’s (thanks John and Denny!) Peter and I were child free for the remainder of the morning and early afternoon.  We got major yard clean-up done.  In fact, I think this is the most prepared for winter our outside spaces have ever been.  Goodbye leaves!

*As you can see from the above picture, we didn’t get our yard clean-up done a second too soon.  While we were moving the last bags to the curb, it started snowing and kept snowing for most of the night.  Alethea was just dying to get out and play in it, so that’s just what we did on Sunday after church.  Welcome snow!

*Sunday night I made Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup.  It’s one of our favorites!  Welcome soup weather!

* Yesterday I did some more work on my budget Christmas decorations.  This time it wasn’t painting branches though, it was peeling labels off of wine bottles!  Welcome Christmas decor!

* That afternoon my mom came over and we took the girls to Menard’s to visit their Enchanted Forest.  Alethea and Lydia both thought all the lights and trees were pretty wonderful.  And I actually found a lawn ornament that I would consider putting in my yard.  Yes, really!  Welcome twinkle lights!

Goodbye Autumn!  Welcome Winter!