Happy Birthday Chad!!

Today is Chad's birthday, however because he is such a busy guy and usually gets home late we decided to have our celebrations on Sunday. I made Chinese food and ice cream cake and we showered him with a few presents.

Lucy assisting in opening the gifts. Lucy's gift for daddy was her first painting.

Lucy was very helpful at blowing out the candles.

Lucy was much more interested in eating her ice cream that smiling and posing for the camera. We love you Chad. We are so glad that you are here to be our father and husband. We are so lucky.

Lucy's first art project

When Gymboree closed she sold off a bunch of her stuff really cheap, including lots of art supplies. So last week Lucy and I ventured into the world of painting. She loved it. She always starts off doing things the proper way but as her attention begins to wan she moves on to being more creative. So by the end they had become finger paints instead of water paints. Lucy also has a great talent for facial expressions and I caught just a few of them.

"Cheese"

This is her singing a song. She loves to sing. Last night we had FHE and we told her we were going to start with a song, she was SO excited.

This is her smelling the flowers. While Grandma Salmon was her she taught here how to smell the flowers and now every time we see a flower or even a tree we have to stop and smell them.

Notice the little munchkin in the background getting ready to attack.

This and That

This is Maxwell's first real injury. Lucy took a good bite out of him and left her teeth marks in his little finger. But through it all he still has lots of smiles. He is also a little chatterbox.

Lucy helped make brownies and enjoyed cleaning off the spoon.

Chad tries hard to make it home as early as possible but with his commute we often have to start dinner without him. So Lucy usually has two dinners. One real dinner and a second dinner with daddy.

How is she adjusting???

One of the questions I am asked most about Lucy lately is: How is she adjusting??

She is having the response to Max that we expected. She is learning to touch nice and soft and Max has suffered minimal injuries. He has taken a few hard whacks to the head, a bite to the hand, a couple hard squeezes and multiple sittings. By this I mean Lucy loves to sit on top of Max and ride him like a horse.

However, there are also a lot of moments that look like this:

Lucy has no desire to hold Max, but loves to be right next to Max. If he is on the floor she will go and lay beside him, if I am holding him then she is right there.

A few weeks ago Lucy woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to come and hang out in Mommy and Daddy's bed. However, she wasn't satisfied until Max had been removed from his bed and was laying down next to her. She loves to have snuggle parties and show everyone exactly where they are supposed to lay down.

Through the process of teaching Lucy to touch Max "gently" one of the ways she is allowed to touch him is to tickle him.

Overall, Lucy LOVES Max.

Maxwell Dale

Here are a few snapshots of our new little Stud. These are a pretty good reflection of his personality so far.

When he is upset he often sits in this position. Fists tight and raised ready to swing some punches. Let's hope this doesn't reflect what his future holds.

Mr. Big Eyes. He most often has this expression on his face. We are not sure where those BIG eyes came from but they certainly make him look adorable and put a smile on my face.

Dear Family,

We know that we live very far away from you all and that this greatly displeases you. So this is a little gift from our family to all of you. Here we will record the exciting adventure of our lives, so you can be apart of them.

Love the Rumsey's