New Car Seat

So after many months of thinking about what kind of car seat to get for Lucy we finally decided on the Britax Marathon. Believe it or not, up until a week ago, Lucy was still riding in her infant car seat. I knew it would be safer for her to stay rear facing for as long as possible and she just recently reached the maximum weight (22 lbs.) and outgrew her infant seat for good. I really didn't know what kind of car seat to get but I am glad that we decided on a Britax. It seems really comfortable and I know it's one of the safest ones on the market.

This one is called the Marathon. It's nothing fancy but I think it will work just fine... AND I got a good deal on it at Babies R Us. I was really tempted to get the nicer model called the Boulevard but I decided to stick with my original decision :)

It looks SO much bigger in my car than her other car seat and it sits a lot higher up.

I think she is really enjoying facing forward and stays A LOT cooler in this summer heat.

Also it's just in time for a trip that we are going to be taking down to Alabama next week for my cousin's wedding. It's a 9-10 hour drive so I'm sure Lucy will do much better in this car seat. I'm hoping that I can entertain her with a portable DVD player. Anyone have one that I can borrow? :)

Ladybug Playdate

Last week I hosted a playdate at our house for the Maryville Moms Group. The kids did a craft and then we had a picnic lunch.
( Josh recently built a new fence behind our garage...I can't believe how good it makes our patio area look! )

Table decorations

Painting station

Getting started

Lucy painting her rock

It was a little challenging for the one year olds to do this craft but it was a fun idea...Here is a link to the craft if you want to try it with your kids :)

This is what happened when I turned Lucy loose and let her paint her rock by herself, lol. It looks like a black blob...haha

Here's the finished product...with a lot of help from Mom :) The black spots are Lucy's finger prints.

The aftermath :)

Enjoying a picnic lunch under the trees :)

I had such a great time hosting this playdate and shopping at Hobby Lobby for the supplies. It's so fun watching Lucy try new things. She is really enjoying painting and coloring these days :)

Random Pics

The other day I came into Lucy's room to find that she had thrown everything out of her crib after waking up from her nap. She does this quite often now. She tosses everything overboard and then fusses because she wants it back...haha

She has also turned into a paci hog :) As soon as I get her out of the crib she reaches for the little stash of pacis that I keep above her bed.

Lap full of pacis

Silly girl

A couple of weeks ago she had her first self-inflicted injury. I was playing with her near the coffee table and she stumbled and came down on the corner with the side of her head. She bumps her head all the time but she really screamed this time. I noticed blood coming from her ear and it scared me at first because I didn't know if it was coming from the inside but when I looked closer I realized that it had just popped the skin open. I still felt really bad for her because I'm sure her ear was sore for a few days...
poor baby :(
I took this picture after it had already healed a little bit.

Chattanooga

Back at the beginning of June we spent a week in Chattanooga while Josh did a bathroom remodel for his parent's neighbors. One of the guys that works for Josh also came up for the week and brought his wife and daughter. They have a little girl who is four months older than Lucy. Holly is also a good friend of mine and we had a lot of fun doing stuff with the girls while we were there. One day we took the girls to the Chattanooga Discovery Museum.

"Vroom Vroom" :)

Having fun at the coloring station

Archeological dig

Dusting off dinosaur bones

They had face paint for the kids and I put kitty whiskers on Lucy

This is a picture of her looking at herself in the mirror...haha

She kept scrunching her nose and shaking her head at Hosanna who had a butterfly painted on her face :)

Grammy and Lucy playing with some modeling clay

Afterwards we took the girls down to the area outside of the Chattanooga aquarium to play in the water

We didn't bring their bathing suits so we just stripped them down to their shirts and diapers

The next day we ventured down to Atlanta, Georgia to go to IKEA. I have never been there before so it was a new experience for me. The girls did great (all things considered). It was a pretty long car ride. It ended up taking us about four hours round trip because we ran into traffic on the way back. They didn't have the kid's table and chairs that Holly and I both wanted to get for the girls. It was out of stock :( But I did get a salad spinner for 4 bucks and an art smock for Lucy for 2 bucks.

Thursday we just took it easy and brought Lucy and Hosanna to the play area at the mall.

Lucy loved the slide!

Later that afternoon we let them play in the water. They had a blast :)

I thought it was so funny that Lucy took a liking to Hosanna's doll stroller while we were there. She literally pushed it all over the house. She has one but she has never shown much interest in it. Now that we're back she plays with hers all the time.

Here is a picture of her playing with her doll stroller when we got home. Same cheesy grin... haha

Lucy and Hosanna playing on the stairs :)

We tried our best to keep them off the stairs but they were very persistent...lol

Loving on each other :)

Not sure what is going on with Lucy's hair in this picture. It kind of looks like a comb over, lol

I had a great time hanging out with my friend Holly all week. Unfortunately we didn't see the guys much. They were working hard and had to put in some long days. But it was nice that they were right next door. I would definitely do it again. I felt like I was on vacation all week...minus Josh :)