Thanksgiving...um...2 months late!

Ok, ok, I give in! I'll start posting again. :) I haven't posted since mid November, so I have some catching up to do. I'll try to stick with the highlights and make these somewhat short so that I don't get overwhelmed by the backlog!

So, we spent Thanksgiving with the Murphy side of the family over in Silverdale. It is getting more and more fun to see the little cousins together and Lucia gets overjoyed to see the family. Here are some pictures.

Lucia and Allistaire sorting cups.
Seriously...I could kiss that face right off! I guess both of them, but I am referring specifically to Allistaire. Is she not the cutest baby!!!
Another one of the cutie. She is such a happy and smiley baby.
Cousin Solveig sweetly reading to Luc
Sorry for the blury picture, but this was too cute. Lucia dancing with her Papa! She wants to dance on our feet all the time now. She LOVES her Papa and Nana and asks about them constantly and I do mean constantly. Not a single day goes by without their names being mentioned. She'll also tell us things about Nana and Papa like where they sat in the house the last time they babysat. :)
More reading with Lucia. The girl LOVES to read. I spend literally hours reading to her every day at her request. I love it too though.
And a cousin dancing video...


Ok, so we all decided the day after Thanksgiving to go get our Christmas trees at this great tree farm by the Murphy's house. It was a terrible idea! ;) It was pooring down rain and cold out. Ah, I am not doing that again. I will wait for a day when I am getting totally soaked! Anyway, we did get a tree out of the deal and we look happy about it at least....except for Solveig and Lucia. You can't get everyone smiling at one time!

Word Videos

Lucia is talking up a storm these days. It is funny now because she knows what she is saying but we often can't understand her tiny baby voice. She gets all frustrated with us because she is being "clear" and we just don't get it. She will say just about anything that you ask her to and has quite a few two word combinations that she uses regularly. A few are:

"coco bed"- coco bread
"bye bye side"- bye bye slide
"apple jew"- apple juice
"a side dow"- upside down
"air cip"- hair clip

Two of my favorites right now are "tada" and "okie dokie". Here are two video's where I tried to capture some of the new word combos. Don't mind her crashing off of Pat's legs at the end of the second video. That is usually a fun and safe trick. :)

Halloween Fairy Girl

The little miss was a fairy girl this year for Halloween. We told her that her outfit was her "costume" and she has been talking about her "costume" ever since. She is the cutest fairy to ever grace halloween! We started out the festivities on Friday by going to visit Pat at his office. She passed out candy to Pat's co-workers. We were two proud parents just following our girl around handing out "cocos".
Working hard...

On Halloween, Pat took her outside to get a few pictures and they turned out so well! Here are a few of my favorites!





Then we took her down to U-Village to walk around the shops and see other kids in their costumes, but apparently we were off by a few hours. We were too early for the festivities so instead we just let her play around on the slide in her costume. She loved it. :)

Lindsay and Jackson came over later that night and we let them run around the house together in their costumes. They are so cute...the two of them! There was a pretty hilarious attempt at a picture of Lindsay, me, Lucia, and Jackson. I am just staring at the camera smiling and hoping something will work out while each pictures gets progressively more hilarious. Oh, and Lindsay is much more festive than I am. :) Please also notice that both kids have fists full of snack sized candy bars.


And finally....we are all looking at the camera this time with decent expressions!
The cute little buddies!

Countless Reasons to Love Fall in the NW

I know that fall is on its way out up here given the weather report for snow this weekend, but I still have relish the fall moments. Fall is a blessed relief, ironically, from the business of summer. Of course, the down side is that it welcomes in winter which is more often wet than snowy around here. Nonetheless, I still love fall for all of the colors, sights, and smells. And now Pat and I have a new little person to share the fun with. Life is full of blessings!

This was a great fall. It was quite busy but Pat and I made it to the pumpkin patch a few times as did my friend Lindsay and I. It is such a great place for the kids to run around, slap some pumpkins, and check out the farm animals. For the adults, we get roasted corn and spiced cider.

Pat and I took Lu to the pumpkin patch on a beautiful sunny day! It was so wonderfully muddy out in the pumpkin patch. Lucia was just off and running...and covered in mud. I told her this was a "baby pumpkin". She was thrilled to see any kind of a baby and carried it with her the entire time that Pat and I were there.



Lindsay and I took Lucia and Jackson the next day and, of course, our cameras both died before we got too many pictures in, but here is one good one from the day. It was foggy to begin with but totally cleared off.

Okay, this one is just random. I told Lucy to "smile" and this is what I got. :)


Dad's partially carved pumpkin. The man carves a mean pumpkin people! Lucy is feeding the pumpkin with the measuring cup. Of course!
The fall colors are amazing around here. This is a picture of our "birthday" tree. Pat got it for me a few years back and it is my favorite fall time tree.
There were a few beautiful sunny fall days this year and we enjoyed every moment of those crisp fall days outside. Lucy loves to run around in the backyard from spot to spot, smelling plants, "hiding" under the Japanese Maple, and climbing around on the rocks in our patio.

Tickle Attack

Lucy loves to get tickled by Pat. She is hilarious. It is like she is waiting around for it all day and knows that it will happen right after dinner or at bed time. Last night she was sitting at the dinner table and started to say "tickle, tickle" and then would laugh and laugh and start to fall over in her high chair. Then she started lifting up her shirt, tickling her belly, and saying "tickle, tickle". It was awesome. Clearly she doesn't mind the tickle attacks.

Here is proof from Halloween (thus the costume)

New Lucia-isms

Again, I wish that I could slow down time. Lucia does so many hilarious and wonderful things but they only last for so long before she has moved on to the next hilarious and wonderful thing. The sad part is that I know that my memory will not hold all of these small pieces of Lucy's baby personality...they will fade as time goes on. It is sad to think that so many of these things will be left behind. I want to remember what her little face looks like when she wakes up every morning and how it feels when she smashed that hot face into mine as some kind of good morning love. I want to remember her little bald head laughing right up next to mine when we are "bonking" heads. I want to remember all of the perfect moments that make this life so good but I suppose that is part of it...the great moments are replaced with other great moments. I must try to soak them in while they last. If only they lasted a bit longer...

Things I love about my baby:

- She has such a tiny little baby body. I love stripping her down before bath time and letting her run around in nudy glory. She shrieks with glee at the freedom and wags her head back and forth to feel her hair hit her face. She can barely keep upright while she is doing this.

- She is such a little girl and, with no prompting, seems to take to all of the sparkles and frill. I do try to balance it with tractors, trains, and dinosaurs. That said, she LOVES anything girly. She loves hats. She loves rings and necklaces and bracelets. Anytime, there is something different about her attire, she runs to the mirror screaming "baby, baby, baby" then stands in front of it, with her head tilted, admiring herself. Here are some of the more hilarious examples of her girliness.

• She found a piece of packing tape that had been on her diaper box. She draped it across her head like hair and then wore it around the house for the better part of an hour. Here she is at the mirror checking out her "hair"
  
  
• She calls my hair bands "bracets" and wears them everywhere we go.
• She is SO pleased when Pat and I let her wear our wedding rings. It will keep her entertained for a long while.
• She is very into hats and anything on her head. Mom started this one... She loves it when we are changing her and pull her shirt up over her head but leave it on her head. She wants to see herself in the mirror every time. Here we are trying a Halloween costume on her and she wanted it to remain on her head.
  
  
  

- She loves "gassees". We bought her a pair of Dora the Explorer glasses and she loves to wear those around. She calls them her "Dowa gassees".

- She has started putting two words together but she annunciates the two words the same way every time regardless of what the words are. The first word is punctuated and the second kind of falls out like an after thought. Her favorite is "coco bed" (translation: chocolate/pumpkin bread). Another is saying goodbye to just about anything. That is how I get her to leave something without fighting me on it. It works like a charm. I just tell her that it is time to say goodbye to the slide and then, for at least the next 10 minutes, she is saying "bye-bye side...bye-bye side" and waving her little baby hand. She will also say "ove oo dada" (translation: love you dada).

- She sings in the back seat of the car when we are driving around. I have a bad habit of never NEVER changing the CDs in my car, so we listen to the same things over and over again. She has got a few of the songs down. I can look back and her little baby mouth is wide open as she is singing along to the songs. One of the best sounds in the world! She chair dances to them as well. She also asks to "dancy" when we are at the house. I'll turn on the radio or, on the more rare occasion, we'll bust out the guitar.

- She has great animal sounds now. She does a horse and sheep sound with great accuracy. Pat and I have a few favorites though that aren't quite right but we don't want to correct her because they are too cute!

• "cagadodoo" = cockadoodledo for the rooster
• "wifit" = ribit for the frog

- We just gave her a "banky" to sleep with for the first time a few weeks ago. She LOVES that little blanket. We used to set her in her crib and she would stand up and wave goodnight to us as we left the room and would then lay herself down to go to sleep. No longer... Now she lays down so that we can put the blanket over her and she doesn't move. She just says "banky" and snuggles it and blows us kisses. The hilarious part is that she also doesn't stand up when she wakes up in the morning. She just talks to herself and stays with her "banky".

- She has a best friend Jackson and we get to hang out all the time. They say each other's names now "Jaxcy" and "Luc". They both ask for each other every day and Lindsay (Jaxcy's mom) told me that Jackson says "Luc" whenever he sees a blonde little girl. They are so cute together.

Visit with Gra-Gra

Wow, it has been awhile again! I became a bit busy these past two months as I worked with a friend to plan a benefit for mutual friends of our. It was an awesome experience but it did become the focus of my time...thus the lack of blogging.

So, back in September, my mom came up for a week long visit. It is always so much fun to see her with Lucia. Lu gravitated to her "Gra-Gra" immediately. She would drag her all over the house having my mom read to her or play dinosaur games with her. She definitely had a full time buddy while my mom was in town. I definitely with that my mom lived closer so that Lu could experience the Gra-Gra love more often. We did pack our trip with exciting baby adventures! It was definitely non stop fun here at the Murphy household!

On the first day, we went down to the zoo to check out the animals. Lucy, as usual, loved the zoo! The classic Lucia face may not express the full glee though. :)
Next we headed up to Deception Pass for a day in the sun at the park. Lucy was crazy cute trying to throw rocks into the water. I think that this is also where her intense love for slides was born. She LOVES slides. In fact, she asks about sliding every morning now. This is where it all started...sliding with Gra-Gra.

Mom and I took Lucia to the Seattle aquarium! I thought that it was going to be a bust given her lack of enthusiasm for the first building but then came the second building and...the seals! Seals are now on the top of her list of favorite animals. She was barking like a seal non stop and saying "wow" "wawa". Mom carried her back and forth and back and forth from one seal viewing point to another. She loved them. Who know seals would be the highlight!
and the felt board...
On the weekend, we all headed up to a lake in the North Cascades for a hike. It was a beautiful day. The weather was perfect and we playing in the water a bit until we could no longer feel our feet! Lucia would have kept going until her feet fell off...and my arms. :)


One of the sweetest things to watch is Mom reading to Lu. I love it! Mom made her a very sweet book for her birthday and they read it together for the first time on her trip. Lucia now asks for the "Gra-Gra book".
Ladies (+ Maxie) tea time! Another of Lucia's favorite activities.
Come back soon Mom!!!!