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.