So I’m late again. Lucy is actually about a week over 10 months. But one thing I’ve learned along my new journey of motherhood is that time is often in short supply. However, I am determined to keep writing about my baby girl’s growth. She’s doing new things every day so I have to take a moment every now and then and write it down!

So first of all, I thought that time went by fast in high school, then faster in college, then faster after I got married. But time has exponentially sped up after having a baby. The days and weeks have been FLYING by! My dad once told me that years go by faster when we get older because each year is a smaller and smaller % of our lives so far. So for a 5-year-old, a year is a long time (20% of their life) whereas for a 50-year-old, that same year is only 2% of their life. So maybe I’m just getting old! Another factor that can make time go fast is enjoying what you do. I do have a job that I like and I get to work from home, so I’m sure that contributes to time going by faster for me recently. But I’ve decided the thing that makes time go the fastest of all is having a baby! First of all they are tons of fun to play with – making time go faster. Then, they do new things every single day! For example, just this week Lucy learned how to shut doors and open cabinet doors in the kitchen. Also, babies take up lots of the extra time during the day when I would normally get chores and random things done. So instead of cleaning the bathrooms, or paying the bills, or going to the gym – like I would do in a previous life (lol), I now am feeding Lucy, changing Lucy’s diaper, entertaining Lucy to keep her from crying, giving Lucy a bath, you get the picture. Therefore, those chores and random things get pushed into the future. I’ll do that tomorrow, becomes the next day, becomes next week and so on. And pretty soon, you realize it’s been a month since you cleaned!

Well all that to say I can’t believe Lucy is 10 months old – that means that 1 year is just around the corner. I’ve started to think of some ideas for her birthday, but not much. One thing that is kind of weird about me is that I always think back in time to “a year ago”. Just naturally, I frequently think, “What was I doing last year at this time?” Throughout this past year, it has been especially amazing to think back about what I was doing last year. A week from now is graduation for medical school students, so my mind has been going back to planning for Jason’s graduation celebration, having guests in town, being seven months pregnant, etc. It is just crazy sometimes to remember not having a baby. It is so normal to me now, that I’m starting to forget what life was like before Lucy. It’s starting to get warm and is starting to remind me of what life was like a year ago when every day was filled with anticipation about meeting Lucy for the first time. I drove by Doctor’s Hospital today and it was so surreal to think that that was where she entered out lives – less than a year ago – what a difference 10 months can make. The anticipation for her arrival was totally justified because she completely exceeded all of our hopes and has brought so much joy to our lives.

What has Lucy been up to the past 2 months? The big news is she took her first step on April 5. Ever since then she has been taking a few steps here and there and getting better and better at standing on her own. She can squat on her own, then stand up on her own in the middle of the room with no help from us, but after a 2-3 steps, she always squats back down and started crawling. Crawling is still her transportation method of choice. However, as you can see from the video below, she has mastered walking with her little push cart. Watching her do this is so cute and entertaining.

Lucy was sick for a solid 4 weeks in the month of March 🙁 . Lucy was so healthy for the first 6 months that she really spoiled us and consequently made us totally freak out when around 9 months she got sick with her first ear infection. We were at the lake house with some friends when her cold morphed into something worse – we could tell something was wrong when she would burst into tears every time me or Jason weren’t holding her. We were happy to discover that her pediatrician offered weekend hours and rushed home on Sunday to make it there before they closed. She got antibiotics and as soon as those got into her system she was okay. Then when the antibiotics were done, she still seemed sick, I took her back to the doctor for a sick visit (which wasn’t cheap! I learned my lesson there!) and her doctor said she was fine – the ear infection was gone. But her sickness just kept on lingering. It wasn’t too serious, mainly she just couldn’t breath through her nose.This is a pretty big problem when the only way she sleeps is face down with her thumb in her mouth. Consequently, every time we put her in bed, she would cry because she couldn’t suck her thumb to fall asleep- even though she was super tired. After learning that babies can’t really take any medicine for cold/congestion, we came up with our own little routine of vapor rub, humidifier, and sucking her nose out with that blue thing they gave us at the hospital. If things got really bad, we would shoot saline up her nose first. Of course she hated anything revolving shooting and sucking things out of her nose, so that part was pretty unpleasant. Even with all of these non-medicine remedies sometimes she still couldn’t fall asleep, so for the worst nights, we had to put her to sleep in her carseat – since this forced her to sleep with her face not in her sheets – so that she could breathe. Of course she wasn’t fond of this either, but eventually she would give up and fall asleep.

Another night in April I think she woke up screaming, which was totally not like her. We checked her temp with an ear thermometer and it said like 95 degrees I think? I looked it up online and it said a temp that low was a sign of hypothermia and to rush your child to the emergency room immediately. It was about 3am and she wasn’t showing any other signs of hypothermia, so we decided to wait it out until morning. We texted our friend Shannon and she said to make sure we took her temp with a rectal thermometer (fun!), when we did it that way, her temp was completely normal, so we concluded that she must have woken up crying from a nightmare or something.

Anyways – all that to say there is nothing worse than having a sick child. It is way worse than being sick yourself. It is so sad to hear your little baby struggling to fall asleep because they can’t breathe. 🙁 I prayed many prayers for Lucy to get better and eventually she did. My experience with just one ear infection and a few colds made my heart go out to parents of truly sick children.

So what have we been up to the last 2 months? Well just like my last post mentioned, we have been busy with renting my parent’s rental house (that we manage) out and getting our own house ready for Masters. In the past, Jason and I did our own rehab when renters moved out. It was simple, we would just go to work/school during the day, then go to the rental in the evenings and weekends and knock it out fast. Sometimes Jason would even have a break from school and get work done on the house during the week. Well Lucy has changed all of that. We want to spend time with her in the evenings (especially if we’ve been working most of the day). Also, she probably wouldn’t have too much fun trapped in a pack n’ play while we repaint the entire interior of a house…just guessing! So we decided to take a different approach this time and hire out help to rehab the rental house. 2 months later I can say that (through the work of others) the house has gone through a lot of change: new roof, new windows, paint throughout the entire inside, junk removal inside and outside, refinished a tub, lots of cleaning, fixing some fans and lights, etc. Hiring out help was just what we needed, although it wasn’t as easy as I thought. The painters misinterpreted the color I wanted and painted the entire inside white. After going to the house and discovering it looked like an insane asylum – they had to paint it again. Then the paint job was pretty sub par. Plus, managing a rehab isn’t a piece of cake. It required LOTS of driving to and from the house, finding contractors, managing the work, etc. However, we can happily say that we have found new renters and hopefully are down rehabbing for awhile.

I addition to the rental rehab, we cleaned our house top to bottom in preparation for our Masters renters. We were super lucky and got to rent to family members of a previous renter, so we trusted them already. All in all, that was a pretty good experience- although deep cleaning with a baby definitely adds a new layer of complication.

We had a lot of fun over the past two months. We met up with Drew, Lauren, Jamin, and Megan at the Lake House in early March. Despite the FREEZING cold and dreary weather, we had lots of fun hanging out. Lucy was crawling around quite well for the first time at the Lake House so we had to block her off from the giant fireplace and the stairs. We had Lucy’s dedication at the church on a super warm sunny weekend in March. Jason’s parents came for the weekend and my family came for the day. I made Lucy a strawberry lemonade cake to celebrate. She was pretty sick that day but we still all had a good time. We went to Atlanta for Easter and had lots of fun with my family. Lucy enjoyed her first Easter egg hunt and we enjoyed dressing her up and getting her her first Easter basket. After that was the week of Masters. I drove to Atlanta with Lucy and worked pretty light hours at my parents house that week. Lucy had lots of fun with Uncle L and Aunt S while I watched them while Gigi worked. Aunt S pushed Lucy in the stroller on some of our walks and Uncle L constantly made Lucy smile with his crazy antics. 🙂 On Thursday of that week we drove (stopped at the Outlet Mall on the way – of course) to the lake and house and Jason met us there that night. It was nice outside, not too warm, but sunny enough to take Lucy on her first boat ride. She also experienced her first time in swim diapers, a swim suit, and a pool when I filled her baby pool up with the warm water. That weekend we went to Covington and had Amici’s pizza and went to Scoops ice cream – both were super yummy. That weekend was also the weekend Lucy mastered the “gah” sound. We were so excited that she was starting to learn how to talk – since previously she had just yelled “ah” when she wanted to talk. However, it has been about a month since then and “gah” is still her only syllable! No signs of “mama” or “dada” anytime soon. She LOVES to say “gah” in all forms over and over again though – haha.

A few more random notes about Lucy at 10 months:

• She loves chewing on zippers
• I call her boopers, sugar, and cutie
• She took her first step on Friday April 5
• She makes the most hilarious “pooping” face
• She hates all baby food veggies and makes a horrible face when we feed them to her
• We started feeding her people food around 9 months – her first food was the veggies in chicken pot pie and she loved them! Now she eats chopped up bananas, canned veggies, and puffs. 
• She transitioned to formula by 9 months – she seems to like it just fine. 
• She loves her push walker
• She’s in the 25% across the board (weight/height/head circumference)
• I try to put bows in her hair but she pulls them out 🙁 This led me to give her her first hair cut to keep her super long bangs (which is hair she had from birth and never lost) out of her face. I’m not very happy with how it looks 🙁 oh well, live and learn!