Lucie is now a little over 8 months old and she is growing so fast! Lucie now has four teeth and a couple more on the way, by the looks of her drooling. She is pulling herself up and moving around objects a little bit. She loves to stand and play at her activity table. She feels like such a big girl doing it. Just before July 4th, she started crawling around and she is doing pretty well at it. She follows me around the house quite a bit now. Things have really changed, now that she is moving. She keeps me on my toes a little more. She is babbling...saying "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" quite a bit. She loves playing with her puppy, Raven and cuddling next to blankies. She has quite a sense of humor; it is easy to get giggles out of her, which is cute. She likes to swim and play outside. She loves exploring the flowers/weeds in the grass.

John is doing family practice right now. Next month, he is going to Joplin, MO to do a rotation in emergency medicine. He is liking that quite a bit and is considering it for his specialty. I think it is pretty much between emergency medicine and internal medicine. He says that he gets to do more procedures in emergency medicine and more thinking (piecing together symptoms and lab results for a diagnosis) in internal medicine, so he has to decide if he wants the challenge of doing hands-on work or an intellectual challenge as a doctor. He still has a little longer to decide, but not too much longer. He graduates in May and will start his residency in July.

I am home with Lucie for the summer and in the fall I am assuming a new position with the Jeff City schools as a parent educator for Parents As Teachers. I am very excited about the challenge. I will mostly be working evenings, so John will take care of her and Pat will watch her when I have to work afternoons.

I am posting some pictures of Lucie, so you can see how fast she is growing! Enjoy!