Elmo Birthday Bash
It was 3 whole days of birthday fun for Lucy, from cookies for her class on Friday to pizza and ice cream with Grandma and Grandpa and Carol and Tom and Grandma Shirley on her actual birthday (while mom and dad had a belated anniversary dinner out) and finally to the big Elmo bash on Sunday. Not to mention all the fun hangout time with family in between. There are so many cute pics, we've posted but a few.

Highlights of the party include Lucy getting everyone to "Shake Your Sillies Out" with her favorite Raffi concert DVD, eating homemade ice cream, opening lots of presents, the Elmo balloon that sang "happy birthday" when you hit it, and playing "pin the nose on the Elmo." As you can see from the picture, even Grandma Shirley played. Though many adults tried to cheat their way to the top, Lucy won. : ) There was also a wardrobe change--Lucy started out in a cute sundress, but she thought she needed to change after she got watermelon all over it. Luckily, Grandma Shirley had given her a cute Elmo t-shirt just moments before.

At her 2 year old checkup we found out that Lucy is 96% in height and back up to 86% on weight. So after being worried about her weight for so many months as she was recovering from her illness, we're now being told we can back off and switch to skim milk. Her other big exciting change is that she can now eat peanut butter (and she's tried it twice with no signs of allergy).

The girl is still working on holding up two fingers (the options seem to be holding up 1 or 5), but that doesn't stop her from saying, "Lucy is two now." She's definitely TWO! but that's not always terrible. She asserts her independence ("Lucy do it by self!") and has the occasional temper tantrum, but she's also full of kisses and songs and funny expressions and keeps us laughing most of the time. Sometimes challenging and wonderful moments are all mixed together. For example, recently when Sheri told her "no" about something, Lucy put her hands on Sheri's cheeks and very seriously said, "Mama, use your inside voice." Kind of hard to remember what the power struggle was all about after hearing that! Life is good, indeed.