Christmas 2011

Luke's 1st Christmas was a success!

You wouldn't now it from his Santa visit,

Yes, I took a picture of this picture because I was cheap and didn't spring for the digital copy.

or when he opened his presents,

but I think he enjoyed all of the festivities as much as a (almost) 9 month old can.

I was excited about it, though. So excited, I made stockings for all 3 of us.

Even thought we had absolutely no use for them this year, they still looked pretty. And it was a fun project for me :)

We celebrated with my parents the week before Christmas, since we were heading to Alice for the big day this year.

We opened presents and then had a lunch of beef tenderloin with rhubarb chutney for dinner. It was delicious. I love this meal my mom cooks.

Trey and I fresh off our 24 child free hours!

Luke loved his high chair that my mom saved from when I was a baby. My grandfather finished it, so it's cherished :)

Luke loved his activity table the first (and second) time he opened it.

He also enjoyed his new bath toys from Uncle John. Excuse the blue bow, we were trying to be funny.

At the end of the day, Luke was worn out from the festivities.

A couple of days before Christmas, we headed down to Alice at bedtime like we did before Thanksgiving. It was pretty successful and we made it with no issue.

During the days we played with Luke, chatted with the family, gave Radar some attention, and then played with Luke some more.

Sharing a laugh with Grandpa

Eating cheerios with Grandma (and Radar)

We even got artsy during playtime.

Trapping Luke so he couldn't wander off

This boy has hair!

He showed off all his cool tricks which I'll put in a separate blog post, but it's becoming impressive to see all he can do, or maybe it's just the normal development of a baby, but whatever it is, he's a genius at it!

Christmas morning was a little overwhelming for him. He mostly liked to wave the tissue paper in the air.

He got a pair of shoes from Santa. Kind of lame, Santa. I've already told him to be more 'fun' next year.

See, he loved them so much, he immediately threw them.

Luke got a great 3-in-1 sports activity center, plastic keys, and a rubber duckie from Grandpa and Grandma J. My parents and Lauren & Jason both gave him this fun activity table. He loves it, nonetheless.

After his morning nap, he was a little more ready to enjoy his fun new toys.

Trey's mom and dad barbequed a brisket and made the normal fixin's- potato salad, spanish rice, and beans. The best part was the dump cake for dessert. It was great, and I helped myself a few times to that one.

The rest of our visit was fun and pretty lowkey. There's just not much you can do with a 9 month old.

Overall Christmas was excellent. I'm excited to next year's because it will not resemble this one in any way. Except for sharing the holiday with family. Luke will not resemble himself in any way. He'll be running around like a madman!!

First Christmas, success!

Random Pics

Who me? Crafty?

Yep, that's right!

So the baby boom continues, and it seems I have more friends that are pregnant right now than not. It's very exciting, but expensive times ;)

I decided to try to be crafty and sew some fun prints with ribbon borders on burp cloths for baby gifts. I received some of these from different people, and I LOVE them. Gerber makes the best plain white burp cloths, but they're a little flimsy, so when you add the fabric, they're perfect.

Here's my first go-around. These are for Katie Taglione Mallette and her baby girl, Madison.

I thought the pink and green were pretty together.

Close up of the 'packaging' I created.

It's fun to do, and I'm excited to do it for more people!

8 months

Lukie's 8th months old!

 

I feel like we're on the downward slope to his 1st birthday which is somewhat hard to believe. 

Luke's been very busy this past month, and by that I mean, he's busy moving all over the place.

• Now he's a fast army crawler. He pretty much goes wherever he wants to know. Usually if he's taking off, it's to chase KC.
• He can easily go from laying down to sitting up now. 
• We often find him sitting up in his crib waiting for us to get him up.
• I bought him a 'wearable blanket' because he gets out of his blanket we wrap around him swaddle-style.
• He's fully in 9 month clothes now. The six month one are finally too short.
• He wears size 3 diapers when he's in disposable, but he wears cloth most of the time.
• He can say the sounds ba, da, and ma.
• He's working on pulling up. He kind of tries, and he can get on to his knees sometimes.
• He's eating three meals of solids a day. I've made some chicken recipes for him that he loves which makes me happy. He likes most of what we put in front of him.
• He still sleeps really well. We're down to two naps a day, usually about 9ish and then again around 1. He goes to bed about 6:15 and will sleep until about 5 or so, get up for a feed and then go back to sleep for an hour or so. I don't mind that schedule too much.
• Luke loves being around other people. He talks to them and laughs.
• He know screams at the top of his lungs all of the time. He's quite vocal on a regular basis. I think he'll be a talker.
• Luke is still a very content baby. He doesn't give us much trouble at all. We're really lucky that he has such a nice personality.

We love him very much, and we're so happy to have him here!

 

Giving Thanks

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year, and I think Luke had a very successful 1st Thanksgiving.

Friday evening we took off to Alice at Luke's bedtime and drove through the night. We arrived at about 2 am, and we were able to get about 4 hours of sleep before the Luke-meister woke us up to begin the day. Luckily, we were able to sneak in naps thanks to being at the grandparents' house.

Playing blocks with Grandpa

Laughing while playing. Pretty cute, huh?

Hanging with Taylor

 We had a Thanksgiving meal out at the great-grandparents' house on Monday. Judith, Phil, and Taylor prepared a wonderful lunch for us. After the meal, we had a nice time baby-watching. How are they so entertaining for hours??

Having Thanksgiving lunch with Great-Grandma

Smiling at Great-Grandma

Hanging out together

Tuesday night at bedtime, we hit the road again to come back to Dallas. We got in a little earlier, 12:30, thanks to less traffic. Wednesday we picked up supplies for Thanksgiving dinner. Trey, John, and I cooked a simple dinner for my family. My mom was under the weather due to her heart ablasion procedure on Wednesday, so we decided to get something on the table for her. It wasn't as nice as she usually does, but it still tasted pretty good!

The Thanksgiving lunch we cooked.

Luke ate lunch with my dad.

We laid around and played together.

Luke was just the perfect age for his first thanksgiving. He got to partake in pretty much all of the food. I think sweet potato casserole and pumpkin pie were his favorites. Mashed potatoes would be a close runner up. He didn't quite know what to do with the turkey, but he held on to it in his mouth like a champ.

We ended our day by watching the Cowboys barely beat Miami and the Aggies barely lose to Texas.

We rounded out our Thanksgiving vacation by putting up the Christmas tree, playing yahtzee with my parents, and enjoying the first day of advent at the church.

It was a wonderful week full of joy. It makes me even more excited about Christmas!!

This year I have so much for which to be thankful. Most importantly my precious little family. Luke is the sweetest and best gift we've ever received. Even as he lay crying in his crib because he won't nap, I still wouldn't trade him for anything else.

And... I wouldn't have that gift without the best husband in the world. Trey has been the best, most supportive husband. I knew he was a keeper before, but after having Luke, it's set in stone :)

7 months

The theme for this month has been:

Lukie's on the move!

This boy has started going and he's not slowing down!

We've had a great month, and here's how he's doing:

This is one of the only shots I could get without Mr. Bear being knocked down.

Sweet face.

Loves Mr. Bear's bow.

Cruisin' on past. Lukie's on the movie.

Trying to lean over the arm to see into the toy basket below. He regularly does this. Feeding has become an adventure because of this.

• We did get to weigh him recently and he was 15 lbs, 3 ozs which is small for his age, but that doesn't slow him down.
• He's wearing some 6 month clothes, but we've pretty much moved solidly into 9 months. Some pants are long on him, but that's the story of his life.
• He's in size 2 disposable diapers, but we'll get size 3 next time. They are quickly becoming too small.
• He goes to bed more like 6:45 now. He can make it to 7 sometimes! He gets up for a feed at 5:30ish pretty often, but he also has his moments of sleeping past 6 am. 
• We're home for 3 naps right now. I will say, he loves his sleep :)
• Luke has started moving all over the place! He mastered sitting up and now he's scooting/ army crawling all over. If he wants it, he can move towards it now. We're moving shoes away from him often. He also likes to go towards our floor lamp and Trey's stereo equipment. We'll see what happens with that. Luckily, our house doesn't have many plugs (score one for older home), so we haven't had to do too much baby proofing. Once he can pull up on things, we'll be definitely doing a lot. We've got a lot of stuff on top of tables that will have to go.
• He loves to hang in his exercsaucer. He also loves playing with blocks and rings. He mostly likes taking them out of a box. He'll scoot himself over to his toy box to pull stuff out, so our living room is regularly littered with toys now.
• He's discovered KC and has a huge grin on his face whenever she comes around. He tries to scoot over to get her, but she's too clever for that. She'll sit there and let him watch her, but once he gets too close, it's all over and she runs away.
• Recently, he's been waving. I'm not sure he really knows what he's doing ,but he'll mimic you doing it. It's funny, though, because he waves to himself instead of to other people. It's super cute!!
• Solid foods are now part of our daily routine. He's eaten peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, parsnip, carrots, butter nut squash, pears, apples, plums, oatmeal, banana, avocado, and yogurt. We're working on making his purees lumpier so he can learn to chew and introducing meats! He eats solids at least two times a day and sometimes a small third meal. It just depends on the schedule of the day.
• We love to go for walks, and I've been trying to get out for a walk every day. It's a good break in our day plus the fresh air does a body good!

I think that's about it. We're loving life and trying to enjoy every moment! I'm excited for the holiday season, and we'll have so much fun! We definitely have a lot to be thankful for this year :)

Halloween and Fall Fun

Luke enjoyed many fun firsts this month.

We went to a pumpkin patch at the beginning of the month with one of our playgroups.

 That's a squash in front of him in this picture. It's random, but he's cute.

 Luke and his lady friends sitting together! The other two babies are Olivia and Jenna, and they're both about 3 weeks older than him.

Luke picked out this pumpkin to take pictures with, so we bought it and took it home. It was the only pumpkin we had for Halloween :)

 Luke and his lady friends again. They're all pretty cute chillin' in the wagon.

Halloween evening we went to my parents' house to go visit old friends who live close. No actual trick or treating this year, but we'll be in full gear next year!

His lion suit turned out pretty good. The hat is a little big, but I was pretty happy with the result.

If anything, he enjoyed being outside and seeing everyone. He'd flash a big smile at each house. Everyone loved him.

Our lion got some scooting time before heading home for bath time.

Parting shot: No Halloween is complete with out KC wearing her pumpkin costume. She should feel special that she wasn't left out of the events.