Lucy is almost 2!

Lucy will be 2 next Saturday, so in honor of her upcoming birthday we took her to the mall (OMG - why do we do this to ourselves??) for a photo shoot. The pictures confirm that she continues to be totally cute, but cannot begin to portray how insane a couple of hours at the mall on a Saturday afternoon in a photo studio dedicated to kids portraits can really be. Here's a few of the thumbnails they gave us...so adorable!

Lucy is...kind of a real kid now.

I mean, don't get me wrong, she was always "real." But now...she's just such a big girl. She will be 2 years old next Saturday and she's got this huge vocabulary, including "Adios!" and, if she hears you sneeze, "Zune....heit." She's very into Mickey Mouse, known around here as "MICKEY MICKEY MICKEY" and loves to read books and play with her baby doll, whose name is apparently "Mine!" Anyway, I just love this picture of Lucy going out to tackle her day, complete with pigtails and sippy cup. Next thing you know she'll be leaving for college.

Lucy is impervious to cold.

Because this is Seattle, we take our children to the beach when it is 60-degrees and let them swim in 50-degree water and just basically try to ignore the blue lips and shivering because, hey, it's "summer!" A couple of weeks ago Brian and I took Lucy to the beach on just such a day. Although her lips did, in fact, turn blue, and there was shivering aplenty, Lucy didn't let it bother her and spent quite a bit of time standing in the water throwing rocks with Daddy. I just love these pictures. Brian is such a fan of the ocean, and it's apparent that Lucy has inherited the gene...it's possible her real mother is a polar bear though.

Lucy loves the beach!

Lucy took Brian and I to Port Townsend for the weekend. 2 ferry boat rides, 100+ miles of driving, 1 night in a hotel populated entirely with bikers and miscreants and 3 separate trips to beach. Not priceless unfortunately, but fun nonetheless. More so if you love to hear people screaming "LUCY NO! DO NOT TOUCH/EAT/RUN INTO/JUMP ON THE DOG/WATER/SCARY BIKER/CLIFF/ROCKS/PRECIPITOUS LEDGE!!"

Also, please notice a) Lucy driving the pirate ship (we're pretty sure she's found her calling...plundering, pointing out items loudly, and shiny stuff...check, check and check), and b) Lucy taking her shoes off for approximately the 90 Kajillioneth time in two days...if only it wasn't "cruel" to "hot glue" shoes to "baby feet." Sigh.

Lucy would like to show you how a bad idea develops.

The entire Purcell clan (plus spousal appendages) got together last weekend to celebrate Great-Grandma's 93rd birthday (sidenote: GO GREAT-GRANDMA!!). Lucy and Austin are only recently really into playing together...or at least, in the same general vicinity as each other so long as no one toddler has any toys or food that the other toddler does not have an EXACT REPLICA OF. All is fair in goldfish crackers and Elmo books...as they say. Or whatever.

During the festivities, while Brian and Deb watched, presumably pointing and laughing at poor Austin, who is just not *quite* big enough to get out from under the iron thumb of Lucy "My Will is Your Command" Purcell, Lucy came up with an awesome idea for a new hat for Austin.

At the end I put a cute picture of them both smiling, just so you know that Lucy and Austin eventually made up....although Lucy appears to be pointing and smiling as if to say "Wasn't that fun? I thought that was fun! Austin, SAY YOU THOUGHT IT WAS FUN!"

Lucy has the rope swing all figured out...just in time.

Lucy spent 13 weeks in gymnastics class - 12 weeks of which were spent running in the opposite direction of where she was supposed to be and throwing temper tantrums. This week she finally figured out the rope swing, and Daddy was there to catch it all on video, including her "all done" at the end.

Lucy knows that I am a glutton for punishment....

Which is why I gave her a duck whistle to blow, and blow, and blow, and blow...to be fair, Brian's the one that taught her to use it though. Before that, she thought it was just another thing to throw at me when she screams "NO!"