A Look at Lucy - 3 months

My baby girl is growing up so fast! In a flash, Lucy is three months old and learning and doing new tricks every day.  She's such a wonderful baby.  She takes a house full of boys like a champ.  She can sleep through just about anything, although she doesn't like to nap much during the day.  

Perhaps my favorite thing about Lucy right now is how she wakes up.  Without fail, she wakes with an ear to ear grin on her face and is overjoyed to see us at her crib side.  And, just as soon as I rush to get the camera to capture that adorable cheeky grin, it fades.  Figures.

Some stats and accomplishments from this month:

Height 24.5 inches Weight 14 lbs. 10 oz.

She can roll over from belly to back (and someone other than me has finally seen it too.)

She can sit in her Bumbo baby seat all by herself.

Jenny JumpUp?  Yep.  Loves it.

She can full on belly laugh now, usually at Evan or Daddy.

She pushes herself around the living room in her new (borrowed) walking toy.  Thanks Megan.

And, did I mention that smile?  Oh, how I love it.  Too bad I can't get it on camera.

And now, for shocker news:

I had a feeling something just wasn't right with Lucy, so I took her to the doctor.  No fever.  No real fussing.  Just a hunch.  Turns out my intuition was right.  Her inner ear was red, AND she's cutting her first two teeth!  I hadn't even thought about teeth.  I hadn't seen or felt them.  It's too early!  Well, there's a reason I hadn't seen them.  She's cutting her two upper canine teeth first.  Not your typical first tooth, but not unheard of. Looks like we will have a vampire baby for a while.

                  

Summer Reading Celebration!

Our library's summer reading program is much anticipated every year.  The boys have been participating since I can remember, but this year was different.  As the program began, Sam decided he wanted to win and read the most books, so Kayden and Cameron did too, of course.  As an extended family, we all pitched in and read to them every chance we got.  Five books at nap time and ten books before bed, ok.  Thirty-eight books on the car ride to Nashville, sure.  Books during pool breaks.  Books on picnics and nature walks in the park.  Books at the potty. We even read books at the doctor's office waiting for shots.  Yep, we did.

Kimmie, whom we lovingly nicknamed the Library Fairy, made several trips every week to the library just to check out more books.  She handled all the recording of the books, so we didn't know until the big announcement how many books the boys had actually read.  

So, finally the big day arrived, and we gathered on the last day of summer reading to listen to Ms. Jessica announce the overall winners for this year's summer reading program...

Very high up on the list was Cameron with 306 books!  He received a special prize along with several other participants who read more than 100 books during the summer reading program.

And, in second place overall with 394 books was Kayden!  What an accomplishment this was for him!  He worked so hard and read most of his books himself!  He earned a family pass to the Nashville Zoo as a grand prize!

And, in first place with 416 books was Sam!  Sam received a fancy new dump truck and two tickets to the Chattanooga Aquarium for all his (and our) hard work.  Big score!

Oh, and he also had the honor of putting a pie in Ms. Jessica's face!  He was a little shy and didn't really  understand that it was okay to get pie on Ms. Jessica.  Although, to ask him about it now, he'll tell you how funny it was and how much he wants to do that part again.

After the pie-in-the-face finale, it was time to head outside and enjoy all the carnival activities the library had planned for the kiddos.  Lucy and Gwen watched from the stroller for the most part.

Ava and Evan had a hula hoop session.

We waited with Danielle and her sweet crew to have our faces painted.

I adore these handsome painted faces.

Sam would do it if Ethan would...

So glad to have friends like these to enjoy our summer days with!

Our library fairy and one of the big winners!

The big brothers

(who worked so very hard to make little brother a winner)

Next up, the rock-climbing wall...

Evan and Ethan, to the top of the difficult level, no problem.

Kayden rang the bell at the top of the medium level course.

Ava made it all the way to the top of her course, bare-foot!

Cameron hit the half-way mark and came down with a smile.

Even Sam took his first shot at rock-climbing and did great.

This boy isn't scared of anything!

And, our favorite children's librarian, Ms. Jessica.

Thank you so much for a wonderful summer reading program.  

Your hard work is so appreciated, and you are a blessing to the kiddos in this county.

After we had had our fill of library festivities, we went to our usually spot for our weekly picnic.  However, this picnic included a toast complete with sparkling white grape juice to celebrate everyone's hard work and a job well done.  You just never know where fancy might pop up in this family.

The library fairy also brought a special activity to help the boys understand how big their achievements were.  She brought a penny for each book the boys had read and had them put all the pennies into a Mt. Olive pickle jar to look at and see just how many books they had read.  

All together they read 1,112 books in 45 days!  

Then, the library fairy switched out the jar of pennies for dimes they could keep!  Each boy was given a dime for every book he read.  She's one committed library fairy who has helped instill a great love of books (and going to the library) in these boys.  They are blessed, indeed.

A Backyard Birthday

What started as a simple backyard dinner gathering with family and friends ended up a birthday celebration complete with homemade cake and ice cream and flowers... for me!  

Amanda, Megan and I have been wanting to get our families together and have a summer cookout, well, all summer.  We finally just set a date for Friday night, which also conveniently happened to be my birthday.  So, Megan brought the ice cream (Butterfinger, Grandmom's recipe).  Amanda made a beautiful cake.  I couldn't decide if I wanted chocolate or strawberry, so I got both.  And, Kimmie brought flowers, fresh picked from her garden.  What more could a girl want?!  Actually, a manicure, deluxe spa pedicure, and some fancy new shoes would be nice.  Oh yeah, the hubs and my momma took care of those.  Blessed, I tell ya, blessed!

Just to make this day even more great, guess who was on the front cover of the paper on my birthday?  In all color?  In an indian headdress? My boy, Sam.  He was chosen by one of our favorite authors, Michael Shoulders, to go up front and model his "D" is for Drum props at the library program.  

Seeing it all on the cover of the paper was a major bonus!

 Oh how I love these little people.  

Our sweet neighbors even got me my very own special birthday cupcake to celebrate the big day, although I wouldn't know how it tasted.  While we are all talking and visiting outside, Sam locked himself inside the house and took care of that cupcake that was calling his name.

It's a good thing he's cute...

                           

4th of July

The 4th of July holiday is a pretty big deal in these parts.  I mean, I'm pretty sure many a fireworks tents have mortgage payment sized customers around here.  Too bad I'm not one of them.  I'm more the sparkler type, like five dollars worth of sparklers.  And that's it.  My sister calls people like me a 4th of July scrooge.  I say, "It takes one to know one." She proudly resembles my comment.

Anyway, we live so close to the local park where they always do a huge fireworks display that we can enjoy from our driveway.  Unless it's raining, like it was this year, and it gets canceled.  So, what to do then?  Why, load up and go to CedarRock and dance in their gravel drive with sparklers, and flaming chasers, and squawking chickens and whatever else was BOGO at the fireworks tent.  We roasted hot dogs on the new hot dog rotisserie, 42 hot dogs at once if you need them.  Impressive.  Then, we toasted marshmallows...until the rain came.  That's the second time the rain has put a 

damper (no pun intended) on our dessert plan this summer.

So, our fireworks celebration looked a little something like this...

                                         

                         

One of my favorite things to watch in our makeshift fireworks celebration was Evan running around with his sparklers proudly held high into the air with Cameron chasing behind.  Very cute.

                        

Some of the fireworks were a bit too loud and scary for Sam just yet, so he had to shield his eyes with Kimmie.  Every now and then Lucy would wake from her car seat nap and cry out too, but she'd just go right back to sleep.  She's tough like that.  She has to be.

                       

Ethan's fireworks were the grand finale and were actually pretty neat.  He bought some fancy box assortment of really colorful bursts like you would see in a real fireworks show.  We were all cheerin' and hootin' and hollerin' from the front porch like any good American would.

                                     

But, July 4th doesn't stop there.  It's a whole weekend kind of event.  We traveled to Nani's and then to Mississippi to see the whole family, or at least whoever could make it for the weekend.  Here we are, my "little red-headed bottle rocket" (as Beka would say) and big brother Sam, all decked out in our red, white, and blue.  It looks as though Lucy's hand got splinched in our travels.  She's really too young to be apparating.

(You're welcome, to all the Harry Potter fans out there:)

                         

Lulu spent lots of good quality time with Grandmom having smiling contests.

 Sam learned to ride a bike!

 (with the help of some training wheels and his game face)

 And, Amanda learned to ride a bike too!  

(With the help of Uncle Allen and "Black Betty")

 After we had eaten our weight in BBQ, blueberry delight, and Butterfinger ice-cream, played a nice game of backyard baseball, and parked the bikes, it was time to head back to Nani's house,

 where the hugs are plentiful and, according to Sam... pants are optional.