8 months!

This post is almost a week old but we just got back from my parents' and I couldn't possibly put up a Lucy post without pictures, now could I ? We are now bracing ourselves for a big storm. If you don't hear from me in a couple of days, its probably because we don't have power. 

What a month this has been for you, my little one. First of all, you are now mobile! You aren't doing a full hand-and-knee crawl but you have several other ways of getting around: the army crawl, the rock-lunge-repeat movement and my favorite, the inch worm. For that last one, you get up on your hands and knees then lift off your knees (think downward facing dog if you know your yoga poses) then go back down again.

 Somehow this puts you a few inches in front of where you were so you just keep repeating it until you have reached your goal. It's not the most energy-efficient way of doing it, but you do get there. And I am serious when I say reaching your goal. I'm not sure why I expected mobility to change your personality but I did think that you might want to explore more once you figured out how. Nope, you only move if you want something. I can almost always entice you with a remote control, cell phone or your uncles's video game controllers and sometimes you'll move to get your blocks but mostly, you come to your daddy or I and pull on us until we pick you up. 

Feel free to pick me up now!

And the last few days you've actually learned to pull yourself up - but only on me! I was talking to Bubbie when all of a sudden, I noticed you were standing up and holding onto my arms, trying to nurse through my shirt. We couldn't help but laugh - you may not talk yet but you can certainly communicate your needs.

You are getting better about playing by yourself though. Your favorite toys of the month are boxes and blocks. You love to knock down towers. And although you can't put them up by yourself yet, luckily for you, I happen to be an expert tower builder who is willing to spend hours setting them up for you to knock down. 

You also like to play the "blocks go in the box" game. I say "blocks go in the box", hand you a block and you put it in the box. The first week or two you didn't quite get it and would hold your hand over the box but refuse to drop the block. Now that you get it though, you love it. You will even play it without me. You also like to bang blocks together. Your toys go unplayed with a lot of the time except for your blocks and one other special toy. 

What is this toy you have come to love so dearly? No, not your soft stuffed animals, your cute little baby doll or your pink lovey that I had hoped you would come to love. Nope, you love your "eat more chicken" cow I got when Chick-fil-a sponsored MOPS! 

I guess it's good for my pride that you are so often seen in the company of a fast food toy. And at least it will be easy to replace if I ever need to locate another one. Another recent addition to your favorite things is your paci. You finally decided you like it. But not to suck on, to chew on! Because you like to chew it, it is always off to the side of your mouth and not centered. Its so funny looking but I have yet to get it on camera. I don't quite know why but you also think it is hilarious when you share your paci with me. 

Here mama, have a paci.

You have also become a good eater this month. Your favorite foods right now are broccoli, Cheerios and strawberries. Ever time you see a strawberry now you start jumping up and down in your seat until it is in your hands then you shove as much of it as you can in your mouth. But you'll pretty much eat anything from salmon to roast veggies with garlic to peanut butter toast. 

You also love to eat paper. I let you play with old catalogs quite often. You rip apart the pages and then tear tiny pieces off. But now you have started trying to eat the little pieces.

When I say no and take it away from you, you get mad and scream but only for 2-3 seconds. Then you pick it up again and rip more for a few more minutes before trying to eat it again. After a while you start screaming and throw down the paper as soon as I say no. I'm such a mean mama aren't I? This is only one example of your melodramatic side. I'm sad to say it is emerging more and more lately. Sometimes when you are frustrated, you'll just lay your head down on the floor and whine. I probably shouldn't laugh when you do that but its so cute I can't help it. 

Oh wait, was I upset about something?

And you always get over it so quickly though that by the time I have walked over to you, you seem to have forgotten you were even upset and start smiling and laughing. Oh silly baby, how I love you!

What?

Last week I did my first sponsored review. You could probably tell it was my first because I forgot to put a little notice at the bottom saying it was sponsored but that didn't alter my opinion any. Hopefully you all knew that but just to show you I won't hold back just because a company gave me something, I'm going to show you something.

While searching for a baby push walker. (Like this one but preferable not $200.) I stumbled upon this child sized treadmill. Not that is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. (Sorry, it won't let me post the images, you'll have to go there) Oh, wait. Maybe this child sized stationary bike or this child sized chest developer is worse. I'm not sure. 

 I'm pretty ruthless is making fun of children's toys but I'm thinking that even more mainstream people will agree with me on this. Why would you feel the need to buy your child exercise equipment? Send them outside to play! At least there aren't any reviews. One can only hope that means no one is crazy enough to have bought them. 

Cut Spending and Cut the Crap

For the first time in about 14 years, we have the chance before us to see some fiscal discipline in Washington. A lot of people talk about cutting spending, but few follow through. One reason for that is, whenever someone starts to get serious and specific about it, the supporters of big government start aiming to deliver thousands of little paper cuts, hoping to preserve government spending. "You can't cut X program!" "You can't cut Y; it's for the children!" "You are heartless!" Etc., etc. That process is starting up again.

I would like to now offer up a typical example of this, albeit one that is transparent and shallow. It is from Eugene Robinson, a columnist that is reliably wrong:

According to The Post, affected agencies would suffer a 30 percent cut in funding over the next seven months.

Do Americans really want the effectiveness of, say, food safety inspection to be eroded by 30 percent? What about air traffic control? I didn't think so.

Here's what's wrong with this:

• A 30% cut to government spending does not mean every program gets cut by 30%. Some programs would get cut by 100%, others would get cut by 0%, or 10%. Now, it is a common government trick to threaten to cut high-profile, popular programs when faced with the threat of cuts (this strategy even has a name). However, there are certain programs/services that we all agree government should provide. To threaten the loss of these is dishonest, because nobody is proposing that.

• A 30% cut to a program doesn't mean it becomes 30% less effective. Government is not known for efficiency. Nobody expects federal agencies to offer quick, effective, reliable, customer-friendly, common sense service. Government lacks the incentives and bad-employee-punishment ability needed to offer such service. Thus, pretty much any agency can afford to take a haircut without needing to decrease its services, if these agencies are managed right.

• To stick with the food inspection example, the government is not the only thing standing between Americans and mass food poisoning. People like Robinson think corporations would be perfectly happy to poison us all, as long as they make money. Well, news of food poisoning caused by a specific restaurant or food item generally is not good for business. For most businesses, the fear of this is much greater that the fear that some bureaucrat might discover salmonella in their production facility. The market does actually respond to incentives. Plus, despite what you might have heard, most CEOs don't really want you to die. Of course, there are bad apples, and they are who food inspections are meant to catch. But to suggest that we're all gonna die if the federal budget gets cut is, again dishonest. Or maybe foolish. Or maybe a bit of both.

So be prepared to see arguments like this all over the place once plans for spending cuts become specific in the coming weeks. I applaud President Obama for the spending cuts, regulation reform, and tax simplification proposals he made in his State of the Union address. It's time to get to work and ignore those who seek to inflict paper cuts. I would argue that the spiraling growth of deficits and of the federal government are a far greater danger than anything liberal pundits will threaten us with.

Where things go

I sometimes worry that my writing portrays me as a know-it-all, especially when it comes to Lucy-related things. I only tend to write about things I'm confident on so it might seem that way but as a first time mom, that is certainly not the case.

 I'm always paying attention to those more experienced moms because I would much rather learn a lesson from them than the hard way. I especially like to get tips from moms with many kids. Craig and I don't know how many kids God will bless us with, but we both hope we end up with a large family and I don't want to set up my household one way only to find out that my methods don't work at all once baby #2 or #3 comes along.

One concept I've heard from multiple moms of multiples (say that 5 times fast :-) is to put things were they are used, not where you think they should go. If you know your kids only wear shoes and socks when you leave the house, keep them by the door. And it might seem like good sense to put bath supplies in the bathroom - but not if you always bath the baby in the kitchen sink.

With that in mind, I've done some unusual organization in our new house. At our last place, all three of us were in the master with Craig and my clothes in our dresser and Lucy's in her changing table dresser. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, as much as I wanted to make a cute nursery, it just didn't make sense and I didn't want to always be running into the other room int he middle of the night if I had to grab a onesie or a burp cloth. It worked well for us then.

Since we've moved, I've started to transition Lucy to her own room. Don't get me wrong, she is still sleeping with us and we have no immediate plans to change that, but her "stuff" is getting shifted. The second bedroom is now officially Lucy's room. It will be decorated like a little girls' room and hold her furniture. It will also hold the office stuff for the time being. That all makes sense, but here is were it starts to get weird.

• Craig gets dressed earlier than I would like to get up. If Lucy doesn't wake up when he leaves the bed, I really don't want his searching for socks to wake her up. So his clothes are in her closet and a dresser in her room. 
• Since Craig has more hanging clothes than me, so it didn't make sense for him to have to share a closet with her. This means she shares with me in the master. Plus I only hang up the her 1-2 extra nice outfits and the next size up so it is a good way for me to keep track of what we have. 
• She goes to bed at 6pm but I'm not really ready to be in my pajamas by then so I keep those in the bathroom so I can change easily without worrying about waking her. Plus they are more likely to get put up and not left on the floor then thrown in the hamper after I shower in the morning. 
• Right now she takes her baths in the morning, but I want to start adding that into her bedtime routine. Once it does, her night time diapers and pajamas will move to the bathroom as well. 

Craig looked at me like I was nuts when I first started putting things away but once I explained why, he joined the party. And so far, it's been working pretty well.

So how crazy am I? Do you have any weird storage spots in your house too? 

And that is what she thinks about that.

Craig recently talked about his baby floors and I have to agree with his final conclusion - they are beautiful. So far both of us have been good about taking care of them by removing our shoes and putting felt on the bottom of furniture. But even with our good example to follow, someone in the family isn't showing them their proper level of respect.
 
Littering them with spinach, broccoli and rice, indeed! She must be secure in her daddy's affections since I'm not sure if even I could get away with this.

Baby it's cold outside!

I never really thought about how you deal with the cold when you have babies. I figured you just put them in one of those cute little suits and that was that - not so much.

Apparently, you aren't supposed to put babies in car seats wearing any outerwear because it prevents the straps from being as snug as they need to be. So what are you supposed to do? Bundle them up, walk 10 feet to the car, unbundle them, drive 10 minutes to the grocery store, wrangle them back into the suit, walk into the store and undress them...then repeat on the way home. Yikes!

I know they have those car seat cozy things but we don't have a infant car seat at home and even at my parent's, she is over 17 lbs and it is not at all easy to lug that thing around with her inside. And what about babies that have outgrown theirs or when you want to wear your baby?

Blankets? I tried using those but I always felt like I was wrestling a cat trying to keep all of her arms and legs covered.

Baby wearing jackets? I've tried a peekaru on and honestly, I loved it but I don't have $80 to spend on a vest. And that is one of the cheaper ones I've seen.

So what's a mama to do? Make one! I call mine a peekalu. Get it? 'Cuz it's kinda a rip off of the peekaru and my baby's name is Lucy. Okay, so the name might need some work but even so, the outcome is awesome.

Where's the baby?

Peek-a-lu!

It looks complicated, but it is actually really simple. You start with two identical fleece jackets. They need to be the same type and size so the zippers match. One you keep as is, the other you use to make your baby panel.

The baby panel is made from the back of the jacket and the zippers. Cut the fleece on the front two inches on each side of the zippers. Then cut a panel from the back. You want the panel to be wide enough to encase your baby, taper it a bit on the top and bottom. Then sew the zipper edged fleece onto each side of the panel. I worried a lot about making sure the zippers were right but then realized as long as the bottom of the zipper was matched up with the bottom of the panel, it was right. Don't over think it. You panel will probably be slightly longer than the zippers but I didn't have a problem with stretching the fleece and easing them together. And there you go, a baby panel!

To use simply unzip the normal jacket and zip the panel into place. It's not perfect but it works well. I can use it while babywearing, or simply hold her in it while I walk to the car.

Patterns Cons:

• For a hack, it is still kinda expensive since you have to buy two jackets. Mine were from Target and were $15 each but Old Navy is another good place to look for cheap ones. If you already own a fleece from one of the places, you could try bring it there and seeing if you can find one with zippers that match.

• Nerve wracking. It isn't hard to make but it was hard on my nerves cutting into a brand new jacket!

Pattern Pros:

• I wear a fleece jacket almost 24/7 during the winter and needed a new one anyway so the cost of an extra one for the baby wasn't that much - especially compared to a "real" babywearing jacket.

• I can remove the panel easily so it will convert back to a regular jacket. This is nice since Craig will sometimes take Lucy when we are out and about and I don't want to look like I have a weird bulgy stomach or have some odd hole in the front of my jacket when I'm walking around without her. And unlike how I show it in the picture, if it isn't super cold, I can unzip the panel a bit so Lucy's head is up and she can see.

• Super simple to make. Fleece is a easy fabric to work with and even though you are working with zippers, your sewing the fleece so it isn't hard (I hate sewing zippers!). It probably only took my an hour and most of that was time spent worrying about cutting into the jacket. And mistakes are well hidden, between the dark color and lumpiness that a baby will naturally bring, no one can even see that my panel isn't 100% symmetrical.

I followed a really good tutorial I downloaded from some babywearing forum but I can't remember where. I do have the pdf saved so if anyone would like it, I would be glad to email it but I'm not comfortable uploading someone else's work. And to pass on the request of the original author, whoever she may be, please feel free to make these for personal use, but don't sell them.

So the holidays got me a little behind on my review project but Craig and I finally took some time to peruse their site. The website is pretty cool. It is easy to find whatever you are looking for and my favorite feature is the price range selection tool. You can narrow it down to the dollar, which I like much better than having to select a range from their options.

It was a tough decision because the websites have tons of stuff to choose from, but after a little perusing, I found this little beauty and all thoughts of toaster ovens left my brain (temporarily at least, I still think we will be buying one soon). It seemed to be just the right size for a hall, simple and a little modern but still, dare I say, cute. And it had great reviews which never hurts.

In a few days, my light arrived and all that was left was installation. Even though my education was in biological sciences, my first job had me dealing with a bit of wiring and electrical work although that was a few years ago and never house-related. But light fixtures are supposed to be a fairly easy project so I was semi-confident in my abilities. I find working on houses much more intimidating because unlike equipment that I can completely unplug from the wall, light fixtures and switches are still connected and make me nervous, even if I am positive I flipped the breaker off and checked it with a voltmeter. Call me chicken, but electricity is scary!

But once I started and didn't die, I loosened up a bit and it all went pretty smoothly. Here's the old light fixture. Nothing horrible but certainly dated.

I unscrew the globe, pulled it back and took a look at what I had. Luckily, the wires were color coded correctly. From what I hear, sometimes old houses will have all white or all black wires which complicates it a bit. But I didn't have to worry about that and just matched red to black and white to white, twisting them together and added a wire nut to keep them snug and safely covered while Craig tried to entertain Lucy and keep the hall illuminated with a dinky little flashlight because we had misplaced our good one. I think his part was more difficult.

I did have a bit of trouble getting it straight and flush but I think that is due to our ceiling and the fact that Lucy was wanting her mommy by then and it was making me feel rushed. So I tag-teamed Craig in. He finished, added a light bulb and turned the breaker back on while I crossed my fingers but no need to worry, we had success!

I had originally thought I would just use chrome or nickel spray paint to cover up the brass on the old one and keep the globe. I'm sure that would have worked but I'm glad we got a new one. It was an easy and inexpensive update - the whole project only took about an hour and a half and Lucy probably was responsible for a good 30 minutes of that. It was a two person job but only because there are a few times when you need an extra set of hands to keep things in place while you connect wires or set a screw. I see it every time I lay down on my bed to nurse Lucy and seeing it always makes me smile.

By popular demand!

Due to a high number of requests, I have finally gotten around to setting up an email subscription option. Of course, by high number I mean two, but either way it's cool. Check it out to your right.

And since this is the third time we have posted in the last 24 hrs, be sure you don't miss those below. Of course, if you had an email subscription, that wouldn't be a problem now would it?

Staining Saga

Previously, I discussed the process of sanding my hardwood floors. Today, I will share with you my staining experiences. This was a much more enjoyable, manageable task.

Floor staining is a project for which you will find a number of different sets of instructions. Some say to do one coat of stain, others say 2-3. Some say you should wipe the stain off after applying, others don't. Some say apply 1-2 coats of polyurethane finish, others say 3-4. I took the advice of the guy who sanded our floors and did it like this:

• Wipe down floor with mineral spirits (using a 4-lb. package of painter's rags from Home Depot). Wait 45 minutes.
• Apply 2-foot-wide strip of stain (I used oil-based) down the full length of the floor using a 10" applicator on a pole (use a paint brush to cut in edges).
• Immediately go back to beginning of strip and wipe off excess stain using painter's rags. Discard a rag once it becomes completely covered in stain (This won't take long - I went through about two 4-lb packs of rags during this project, which covered about 400 square feet).
• Repeat across length of floor, starting and ending so that you are not painted into a corner.*
• Allow to dry overnight (plus maybe a few more hours if needed).
• Wipe down the floor with damp painter's rags. By the time you finish, the area in which you started should be dry.
• Apply polyurethane (I used oil-based) to floor using different 10" applicator (no need to wipe off). Wait overnight.
• Lightly sand floor with 220-grit sandpaper. This helps knock down any bumps in the floor and scuffs the previous layer of poly in order to help the next layer appear. It also allows you to find hairs and other debris that became trapped in the previous layer.
• Repeat the previous two steps two more times, for a total of three coats of polyurethane.
• Stay off the floor as much as possible for the next couple of days; definitely don't put any heavy items on the floor during this time.

I found that I used less stain and polyurethane than the label suggested I would need. Staining is really easy, because it is obvious where you left off after your last pass. Adding poly is harder, though, because it is clear, and when you are doing your 2nd and 3rd coats, it is difficult to see what is wet and what is dry. It helps to have lots of light, which I really did not.

You should also crack some windows and wear a respirator while applying these materials.

I also stained our baseboards as part of this project. While my floors are oak, the baseboards are pine. It is suggested that, for soft woods like pine, that you apply a wood conditioner before staining. I complied with this suggestion. The conditioner label suggests you apply it, wait about 15 minutes, wipe off excess conditioner, then stain within 2 hours. I found that waiting longer before applying stain works better. I guess the conditioner needs time to soak in to maximize its effect. I ended up waiting about an hour.

Here is the living room floor in its final state. The baseboards had not yet been stained (one hadn't been reinstalled yet). 

Refinishing the floors was a laborious process, but I am quite happy with the floors. If you come over, don't be surprised if I refuse to let you do anything that has a small chance of damaging the floors or their finish in any way. I apologize in advance. I hope this little tutorial helps you if you attempt to tackle a similar project.

*For some reason, I remember this episode of Valerie's Family, aka The Hogan Family (I didn't even remember the name of the show; I had to look at Jason Bateman's filmography to find it) in which Jason's character and his mom were painting the floor (although I don't know why one would paint a floor) and they ended up painting themselves into a corner. Despair at their predicament turned into some lovely mother-son bonding time.

Update: I completed another staining project in November 2011. Some more notes:

• I used Cabot stain (tinted Cinnamon) and Varathane polyurethane (satin).
• This time, I tried to do my 2nd poly coat ASAP after the first. The can says wait 4 hours, or until finish is clear and hard (not tacky). I had to wait 9 hours, and I probably should have waited longer. It was about 65 degrees that day, so not even that cold (cold temps increase drying time).
• Again, you won't need as much product as the cans may suggest. The Cabot 1-quart can says it covers 100-150 square feet. It covered about 150 for me.
• Lowe's had two different applicator pads: one that was foam-like and another than was lambskin. I didn't like the latter - it absorbed too much product.

What a weekend!

Craig and I tried to squeeze every productive second out of his 3.5 day weekend. Of course it "helped" that Lucy was still contagious and we couldn't get distracted by little things like visiting with neighbors, church or my book club. A little bit of what we accomplished:

• Installed shoe molding in living room, dining room and hall
• Installed window trim on one window in the living room
• Replaced shower head for better pressure (Craig's wish) and easier baby spray-off (MacKenzie's wish)
• Replace light fixture in hall (more on that later)
• Install three more thresholds (four down, just one to go!)
• After months of disagreement and indecisiveness, finally picked not just one but two rugs for the house and actually ordered them!
• Clean most of the old apartment in preparation for checking out
• Hung curtains in three rooms
• Started installing dryer vent. Hopefully this will get finished soon as I am having to dry everything on racks until then.

So after a week, the house is pretty much put together. We still need to finish up a couple projects and the basement is a mess, but most things (clothes, electronics, furniture) are actually located where they will end up. Which means pretty soon I get to start decorating!

But one of the biggest accomplishments that wasn't listed above was we finally got out the camera and recorded Lucy playing peek-a-boo. We've been meaning to do this for about a month now and it will be old news to anyone who saw her over Christmas, but she is just so darn cute, I couldn't help but post it:

A Pox on Our House

We've finally got our internet hooked up again (those last fews posts were on auto-post). I can't believe it is only been 5 days since I've last "talked" to you all - so much has happened. We moved in, survived our first blizzard in our new home and most excitingly of all - Lucy managed to contract her first major childhood illness. Yep, the little miss has chicken pox!

We weren't planning on having her get the vaccine (it isn't given until 12 months) so it is just as well that she gets them over with. But I have no idea where they came from since as far as I know we haven't been around anyone with them. Perhaps someone we were around at the airport?

Monday night I saw one or two spots I thought they were just a couple of bug bites or heat spots. The next morning there were quite a few more but since she didn't show any other sides, I was delusional and thought "surely, she doesn't have the chicken pox." By Wednesday, there was pretty much no denying it. I tried to take pictures for posterity sake but 1) only her yucky crusted over ones show up

  and 2) 7 months is proving to be a very difficult month to photograph. She moves to much :-) Every time I  turned her around to get a picture of her back, she turned back before I got the camera in place, let alone focused. 

But she's obviously very very uncomfortable, right?

Ha - she doesn't seem to even know she is supposed to be sick. She isn't scratching and doesn't really have a fever. She is a bit more mellow than normal and is taking longer naps but that's about it. I was able to run over to a friends yesterday (sequestering Lucy and I in a room away from her kiddos) to do a little chicken pox research. Apparently, since she is so young and I'm still breastfeeding, the lack of symptoms is not atypical.

Not that it hasn't interfered with our plans any. Today is our 4th anniversary so instead of going to the cute historical little town nearby to look at the tchotchke shops and have dinner like we had thought about, we stayed home and watched what turned out to be a very odd and depressing movie. But there was cheesecake. I have found in life that almost any evening can be redeemed with cheesecake.

Before the bad news

I already told you about our fun and exciting train trip last month but the beginning wasn't so bad. Lucy and I have taken the train from my house to my parent's and back again many times but I hadn't ever documented it. This past time, I decided we needed to so I could put together a fun scrapbook page. We really do have a fun time, for the first few hours at least:

We started by finding our seat.

Then spent some time enjoying the view before the sun goes down.

Once it gets dark, out came the toys camera (BRCBanter.blogspot.com does not endorse cameras as baby play things. Allow at your own risk. You might end up with smudgy pictures afterwards.)

When we get antsy, we headed on over to the dinning car for a snack and a change of scenery.

One nice thing about being a baby is that you can people watch without worrying about appearing rude.

After all the excitement of the dining car, Lucy starts to look a bit sleepy and it is off we go back to our seat for a nap. If I play my cards right, I can get her to fall asleep in a way that still allows me one free arm to flip the pages of a book. With such a great time to be had, why wouldn’t I want to take the train? Oh yeah, that’s right.

Lucy’s First Blizzard

I'm a computer genius! Maybe that is a stretch but I was able to use Google to help me figure out how to successfully save my pictures and for that I am super thankful. Somehow my camera's card ate all my pictures from North Dakota but I was able to reformat the card then recover most of the pictures! There are just a few that now have big grey stripes through them but I think I can collect them or similar ones from family members so I can rest easy now. I would have been so upset to loose the images of her eating her first lefse and the big family photos we got. So here are a few for your viewing pleasure (more coming soon).

We got to North Dakota just in the nick of time because a blizzard was on it's way. Of course, we couldn’t let a blizzard stand in the way of us getting cute pictures so a few hours before it was scheduled to begin, we figured we had better get them or give up on the idea.

First we got all bundled up.

Lucy had on a diaper, onesie, babylegs, socks, pants, shirt, snowsuit, and a hat. Then between pictures, I kept Craig’s scarf very loosely in front of her face to block the wind. She could barely move and reminded me of the little brother from the Christmas story. But she took in all in stride. Then we went outside. In case you can’t make out what the thermometer reads, it says 10. 10 degrees! That should be illegal, especially when it doesn’t even factor the wind. Yuck. But there were cows to be seen so off we went.

I really wanted the cows to moo for Lucy. She loves that part in her “Moo, Baa, La La La” book so I’ve taken to just randomly saying “Cows go Moo” to her and she always smiles. But would you believe the cows refused to moo. I was a little annoyed. They just ran away and Lucy couldn’t figure out what I was trying to get her to look at. (She still doesn’t really understand pointing that well). Next year I think she’ll get it.

Then we walked back and snapped a few more pictures with Craig’s and his sister. This was before the blizzard so the snow was only a few inches deep (as opposed to the couple of feet deep it was 24 hrs later).

Lucy obviously has some of that sturdy North Dakota stock in her because she was still having fun!