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.