Oh So Many Things to Mention...

It has been a few weeks since my last post -- needless to say life has been quite busy and the weeks have flown by. Work is beyond busy, which makes coming home and seeing Lydia and Lib all that much more rewarding.

There are many exciting things that have happened since my last post, let me see if I can hit on some of the highlights.

1) First Snow -- October 26th -- Having heard that there was a chance of snow overnight, the moment I woke up on Sunday I checked outside our bedroom window. Seeing the snow coming down, I rushed to the nursery where Elizabeth and Lydia were and said "I have something to show you, Lydia!" I opened the shade to the window and held Lydia toward the window so that she could see the snow coming down and landing on the garage roof below her window. I am not sure that she could actually see the snow flakes, but she did stare out the window for a while which made me feel excited to share this with her. This undoubtedly will be her first of many 'snow-days' to come.

2) Halloween Activities -- One of Elizabeth's professors has started the tradition of having a halloween party for all of the Psychology Department Faculty and Grad Students. Every year there is a "theme" by which you are to dress up - this year was "Favorite Movie Monster" We decided to go as "kid friendly" monsters and dress as the characters from Disney's Monster's Inc. Elizabeth did a great job of creating a costume for Lydia to play the part of the little girl "Boo".

For Halloween night Lydia had another great costume that was given to her from Grandma Lee -- the little Pumpkin costume was perfect -- after all Lydia is our "little pumpkin."

3) First "real" smile - Laying on her changing table, Lydia gave us her first 'official' smile! We had hints of smirks prior to this, but this was the first one that both of us were like "that is a smile for sure!" It will be fun to see her smile at us more and more. Hopefully we will catch one on camera soon!!

4) First election -- we had a election day and night full of activities for Lydia to "participate" in -- she came with us to vote in the morning and then spent the evening with us watching the returns at two different election parties. Although she won't remember it, I am glad that Lydia was able to be a part of the historic day.

5) First Day at Daycare - Lydia went to daycare for the first time last Thursday -- Mommy started back meeting with her advisor Wendy, and so Lydia got to go to daycare. Lydia was awake for most of the time that she was there and the staff said that she was the "bell of the ball" So far the daycare center at NDSU has been impressive.

Pictures below will also capture some of the other happenings from the past 3 weeks -- note that there are two slide shows below (one for week 7 and one for weeks 5 and 6).

WEEK 7

WEEKS 5 & 6