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rocky, a christmas story

Lucy: Tail. Tickle. Toes.


Touch.


Mama: Gentle . . .

Lucy: Gentle.

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seventeen months

new words since we got to Virginia: clouds, Rocky, Wendell, J, cousin, Sam, Gramme, Grandpa, banister, snow, hurt, boo boo, throat, medicine

high temp of the week: 104.9

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a visual vocabulary

Ready

Lucy is saying so many words lately that I stopped keeping track. Well, I stopped keeping track briefly, then I got really curious and started keeping track again.

My favorite new additions to her vocabulary are: silly, freckle, pillow, blanket, iloveyou.

Lucy: A Picture Dictionary

Box

Hat (and Ready)

Cooking

Teeth

Hug

teenage lucy from the future called.

She's hoping you can make this quick, she's on the phone.

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balloons on the couch

Balloons! from Amber Broughton on Vimeo.

wearing her daddy's shoes

Shoes are all the rage lately, bringing shoes to the people they belong to, trying on shoes that may or may not fit, and of course, strapping small shoes on the baby's feet and toting the babies around inside the larger boots.

At first I thought the incident captured below was just funny, until she managed to clomp her way in daddy's shoes all the way to the kitchen. Impressive!

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hint: "Oocy" is what she calls herself

This morning when I got Lucy out of her crib, before we went out to the living room, I showed her some baby pictures of me and Shaggy that we have on a shelf in her room. When I showed her the one of me, about 6 years old, and asked who it was, she said, "girl!".

When I showed her the one of Shaggy, about two years old with  a mischievous twist of the mouth, and asked who it was, she said, "Oocy!"

sunday* cute shot

*Gosh, long weekends sure do pass by in a blur. Lucy says her cousin Titi agrees.

i am thankful for this nut

words, 16 months

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lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

The new animal sounds are so fantastic, there's "peep peep" for the chicks, "mmmmmm" for the cow, "cack-y" for the duck, "eee-aww" for the donkey, "cock-a" for the rooster, "meow" for the cats, "ooof!" for the dogs, and the lion, tiger, and bears all say the same thing: ROOOAAAAARR!

ROOOAAAAARR! from Amber Broughton on Vimeo.

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in all her finery

My sister Maria got married last month (congrats, Maria!), and it was an excellent opportunity for Lucy to get all dressed up in lace and play with her cousins.

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counting crackers

This evening we forgot to give Lucy the antibiotics for her ear infection before bed, so we had to wake her up later to give her the dose. When we went to wake her up, she was wriggling in her bed, muttering "cracker".

She dreams of her next meal. That's my girl.

happy halloween

A cute little devil

the pumpkin patch

There is a picture in Lucy's room of me, about two years old, standing with my mom in a pumpkin patch. Pumpkin in hand, I am clad in a faux-shearling vest, red sweatpants, and a knit cap; my mom smiles in the background behind me as we both look at the camera. There may be a fog or it may just be the effects of time on the Polaroid film, but in any case there is an aura of autumnal crispness, of cold ground and rosy cheeks, of spook and joy.

Ever since I stole that picture out of my baby book and put it in a frame for Lucy's room, I've been looking forward to re-creating that moment with my own baby girl. Last year she was too small, and hated cars too much--we didn't even attempt the drive to Sauvie Island because I knew after a screaming car ride in one direction I would be hard pressed to ever want to get back in the car to come home.

This year seemed promising, with Lucy walking and running and interested in everything, and loving boots and playing outside, so when Shaggy's parents were here we planned a trip to the Pumpkin Patch. It was a beautiful Saturday, and I think that was our first mistake--my parents called while we were still on our way to say that the line to get over the bridge started about a mile back and moved very very slowly. We were still feeling game (some of us more than others), but as the minutes dragged on, and we talked again to my parents (who had now been in the stop-and-go traffic for about 50 minutes and still hadn't made it to the farm), we abandoned course.

I was convinced that the pumpkin-hunting outfit I'd picked out for Lucy shouldn't be in vain, so we decided to check out the apple festival at Portland Nursery instead. It was crowded but fun, and there were free samples of fresh pressed apple cider, which was delicious. Lucy got to paint a mini-pumpkin and color for awhile with her Poppa.

The next day, daunted but set on my photo op, we decided to try again, but this time we thought we'd head out to Sherwood where the farm might be less crowded. It was less crowded in that there wasn't an hour-long line to get to the farm, though there was still a wait to get on the tractor-pulled wagon to take you out to the pumpkin patch. We arrived to a disappointment: the field was not filled with rows of pumpkin plants, leaves covering up pumpkin gems like a treasure hunt; instead, all the pumpkins had been trucked over from the field where they were grown, then thrown haphazardly onto a flat expanse of mowed grass and mud. Kids were milling about, trying to make a choice between nearly identical orange globes. It felt like a deconstructed shopping experience, like the farm was just a grocery store dressed up as a farm for Halloween.

 There was no room for delight, no sense of discovery; the people that seemed to be having the most fun were the day-laborers tossing the pumpkins down from the truck assembly-line style for placement on the barren field.

I know there is some sort of lesson here about not trying to recreate your own childhood, or going with the flow, or living in the moment, avoiding outsized expectations, or not designing experiences around photo opportunities. And really, Lucy didn't seem to care one way or the other, but I was really bummed out, like I had been tricked into paying $4 for a fake experience. Next year we're setting our criteria in advance:

1. Must not take more than half an hour to arrive, including time to drive and park. (I will extend this potentially to 45 minutes for something that involves hay rides and hot cider, but no more than 3 minutes can be spent fighting crowds or in stop and go traffic. 
2. Must offer the pumpkins for selection in the fields where they are grown.

I think next year we either go to Sauvie Island on a Tuesday morning or I'll just have to convince my parents to grow their own pumpkins.

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go, gray matter, go!

"Look, there's good evidence that mothers' brains get bigger after they have their babies."

"You mean like bloated?"

heard on the street

"I like how the cutest baby ever in the history of everything also scowls a lot. It shouldn't follow."