So, how is Darcy? She's doing great. A lot has happened over the past 8 months. Darcy has always been and still is very happy. She likes to laugh all the time. She has quite a sense of humor, she even laughs at her mom's burps!! Things really took off for Darcy in terms of her development when we went to the Pumpkin Patch in Half Moon Bay. It was a great time because Darcy had fun the whole time we were there, which was several hours. After that the world became a place for Darcy to explore. She decided to learn how to army crawl. This was pretty cool because the skill she learned before this was to roll over. Problem with that was that she didn't know how to roll back over. She was rolling from her back to her stomach, all the sudden stuck face first in her crib, crying and crying. Eljas spent a couple sleepless nights constantly checking on Darcy to make sure she could breath and flipping her over to her back after she rolled over. So the army crawl was cool. Eljas had Darcy doing laps across the floor in order to chase the telephone. Yeah, she's already into the telephone, not good. A couple of days before her 5th month birthday or whatever you call it she was able to crawl. She couldn't sit up though, unless she was holding on to your thumbs to do sit ups. Eileen and Darcy did a lot of those during diaper changes. Abs of Steel!

On Thanksgiving Darcy had her first solid food. It was rice cereal, yum. It's probably no surprise to many of you but Darcy really likes to eat. She's progressed through the baby food pretty quickly and is now working on stage 3 foods. We're still to chicken to give her cherios and such even though the Doc said it was okay. We did give her a few pieces of rice and chopped up spighetti noodles this past week but Darcy was not too fond of it. Oh,did you hear the story about Eileen getting pissed off at Eljas over a breast milk incident??? It was great! I'll write more about it when I have time. Right now out of time!

Darcy had her pictures taken for Mother's day. It was really neat. She was really good, didn't cry, and hammed it up for the camera. We're pretty pleased with the pictures. They'll be posted soon.

Darcy can walk now. She began walking around Mother's day and has since improved quite a bit. Now she can walk all over and our house is a complete mess because we're constantly chasing her down as she leaves messes everywhere. It's fun though. Darcy has also learned how to sign a few words. She can say more, milk, eat, and dog (which of course is Rhippa.) The signing started at an inopportune time however. Eileen has started the weening process and Darcy is constantly asking for milk . . . breast milk that is . . . white gold. Darcy understands a lot of words now. We can ask her to get her bunny for example and she will retreive it for us. We can hand her a book and ask her to show us the puppies and she will turn to the correct page. She knows all kinds of other things too, it's really weird because it kind of came out of the blue and there it seems like there is some sort of new revelation every day or two. Some day she'll be potty trianed . . .

 Darcy had a good first birthday. Her dad sang happy birthday to her all day to make sure that she was aware it was her birthday. Darcy actually had two celebrations. The first one was on her actual birthday. That night Eileen's parents came over to celebrate with the one year old. It was nice and low key as Mr. Chuck and Daisy were heading out to New Mexico the next day. Eileen baked a bunt cake with purple frosting. She also made a few cupcakes as well. Eljas set the table with the special birthday plates and bought some cool balloons for Darcy. So we ate pizza, sang happy birthday, ate cake and ice cream, and open some presents. Oh, and uncle Scott stopped by as well. Darcy had a lot of fun playing with him.

Saturday, Eljas's clan showed up at the house. Everyone had a good time. There were two highlights. The first one was the dancing exhibition that Darcy put on in front of everone as she boogied down to two Rolling Stones songs. It was a riot. Darcy wiggled, jiggled, moved her feet, danced in circles, held her hands up high attempting to snap her finger (as someone shouted "make it rain!"), and laughed as did everyone else. Then we sang happy birthday and ate cake and ice cream. Well, Darcy got into that cake pretty good this time around. First it looked like she had shaving cream on her face. It was quite funny, but then cake was getting everywhere. By the time it was done, she had cake literally all over her face and head! There are picture and I will post them soon.

Overall, a pretty good first birthday for little Darcy.