Maggie Lu is 1!

My Miss Maggie Lu is now 1. She is a little thing especially when I compare her to the other babies I know, but the doctor says that she is still in the 10% for her weight and 25% for height so no need to worry. My mom confirms that she is much bigger than I was at her age. Her personality is still emerging so we still don't know much about her. What we know is that she loves me. She prefers me to all other people. That doesn't mean she won't go to others, but if there is an option... When I pick her up she snuggles up to me and pats my back. So sweet. She gets excited to see new faces and greets them with a stiff beauty pageant wave. She finally has teeth. Summer teeth. Som er there and sum er not. The give her a hillbilly look, or maybe just the look of a one year old. She is walking like a pro. It's so fun to see such a little one walk around. She likes to follow her big brothers and sisters around and get into there stuff. If she picks up a comb, she brushes her hair...a phone goes up to her ear...a piece of clothes she tries to pull over her head...a purse goes over her shoulder...and a pencil is used to draw. It amazes me that she can copy all of these actions already. I love this age and it is especially appealing since her older brothers and sisters are hooligans :).

D'arcy the Brave is 7!

D'arcy's birthday was on Thursday so now it's time for my traditional birthday blog post. D'arcy is now 7. She is still the same girl from last year full of projects and plans, determined, independent and, yet, constantly in need of affection and time. Our relationship has changed, though. Now, she recognizes she isn't the only person in it. She sees that there are two of us, and is quick to ask me how I'm feeling and thank me for what I've done. And, although I have loads of years to give her direction and be her "parent", I can see that we are friends and that makes me very happy.

She is a creative, artistic girl. She loves to write poems and songs, draw pictures, and make clothes. She got a bunch of material and needles for her birthday that I'm letting her make whatever her heart desires. She is learning to play piano and among other instruments would love to learn to play violin.

She is sloppy. Her drawers and backpack are full of STUFF. Stephen says she gets that from me and he points to my messy purse to back it up (it is currently lined with pop tart crumbs). Her shoes are always on the wrong feet. I'm trying my best to get her to pay attention to the details of her appearance, her work, her room.

She loves her brothers and sister and reminded me that it was time to have another baby now that Maggie is one. I told her I need Maggie to have another birthday first.

On a any given day you might find her listening to her ipod, chasing her brothers, making a friendship bracelet, carefully selecting her earrings for the day, wrapping her babies snug in their blankets, arranging her stuffed animals on her bed just so, collecting cicada shells (yuck), playing piano, watching icarly, asking to text on my phone, buckling schroeder's seatbelt, haphazardly carrying Maggie from one room to the other, puckering up to prompt me for a kiss, or yelling from upstairs to come pray for her before bed. She always wants me to pray for 1. no dreams 2. the Holy Spirit to be in their room. If I forget either, she lets me know.

She is still blond. Family speculate on whether her hair has darkened at all. She calls it "golden". These pictures testify.

D'arcy the brave became D'arcy the reckless.

One of the things I most love about my eldest daughter is her fearlessness. She just goes for things. Examples include:
+the time she let someone hook her up to this bungy big bounce thing and learned to flip in a mere three minutes. The bungy man said he'd never seen someone her size do so many.
+the first time she went ice skating and was skating on her own in record time.
+last Christmas when she went up and sang Silent Night solo in front of our church.
+last Christmas when she put on a Garfield mask and sang solo in her Christmas program.
+every time we go to the pool and she just flips right into the water.

Her fearlessness turned into pure recklessness when we decided to climb this thing last week. We were with a group of family. There were probably about 20 of us. My kids sans Maggie Lu went up with the group. I was at the back of the pack. I'm blaming that on short legs and delivering four babies in the last seven years. The first thing I said when I caught my breath at the top was "Where is D'arcy?" Everyone, including my husband (her father :)) said, "She was just right here."

Yeah...well, where is she now?

It became clear that she was sharing her desire to run down the dune, and everyone was telling her to stay put until the group was ready. So we looked down the dune to see if she had done just that, but we didn't see her. It didn't help that we were facing into the sun.

It also didn't help that another family was screaming for their lost daughter. They seemed very panicked and were looking for her down the steep, wooded terrain behind the dune. Their panic rubbed off a bit.

I had just been telling my aunt who was with me at the back of the pack (keep in mind she has short legs and has delivered five babies) that the strongest memory I have of this place was when we came in the 80s and Kyle (my brother) fell of the back. He was there one minute and gone the next. It still makes my sister and I laugh. But we called his name and he answered back.

D'arcy wasn't answering. My heart started beating a little faster and some of my cousins who were at the front of the pack were tasked with running here and there to look for her. My uncle told one of them to go get the ranger. No parent ever wants a ranger to have to look for their child.

And, of course, we found her (before the ranger came around). She couldn't help herself and took off running down the dune. She said she was halfway across the parking lot towards the beach and decided she should probably come back and sit by my aunt who was sitting at the bottom of the dune. At least I know she has a voice of reason, even if it seems to be five minutes behind the voice of fearless adventure.

I guess my job is to help her hear that voice a bit sooner and know when to listen to it.

barf bags

Can't even count the number of times we've had kids throwing up on a long trip. It seems to not even phase us anymore. Stop. Strip 'em down. throw them back in with a plastic sack for the next chunks.
D'arcy had some sprite, and was taunting Julian by saying "Ha Ha, I have sprite and you don't." Julian's response was quite mature. He simply turned around and said, "Yeah, well, I'm not sick." Touché.
He's quite happy here, as you can see...but he got his.


I shouldn't have let D'arcy sleep because she was woken up by her own barfing and didn't have time to grab that darn plastic bag.

Have you seen my keys?!

This is what happens when I start locking and unlocking my house (a fairly new concept for me) and what happens when you make a distractable person the mother of four small children.