Austin

We've been traveling fools since about mid-May.

The weekend before I went to New York, we drove to Austin to attend Trey's cousin's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding outside in a very neat park with a historic house on site. There were peacocks running around, as well, which were beautiful but Luke was a little scared of them and proceeded to cry during the ceremony. It was fun to get to see a bunch of Trey's family, even if for just a couple of hours.

Beautiful but loud peacock

Grandpa, Luke, peacock

The peacocks were getting to him at this point and Judith is trying to calm him down.

A little Phil/ Luke bonding

family pic- We're pretty cute.

Again, a little concerned that big, bad peacock was coming after him

Mark and Karen, the bride and groom

Then, the weekend after New York, we drove to Alice so that Trey could go bay fishing with Hank and Jason. We took a pit stop at our dear friend's house, the Allens. They just had baby two, Wyatt, and we enjoyed getting to meet him and watch Luke and Zanna play! We got these great pictures of them right before we headed out to finish our drive.

I love them all, Luke, Zanna and Wyatt

So cute!

Examining the backyard together.

Swim Lessons

Luke and I took a mommy 'n me swim class this summer. I was really excited about it, and he ended up loving it!

I will say, though, it was tiring. By the end, I was very ready to be done. Going every evening from 5:30-6 for two weeks was a bit much. While he did love them, by the end of those two weeks, he was exhausted. I felt so bad. It didn't help that we also went to vacation bible school in the morning during the second week. My little man was pushed to his limits.

I didn't get any pics of him in the pool, but here are some of him sporting his swim wear and summer eye wear. Couldn't he be a model?!?

14 months

Luke's becoming a little boy. Where did my baby go?

He loves to play with these coasters.

And be silly...

• He's standing on his own all of the time and can take four to five steps on his own! I know he can walk on his own, but I think that he's still a little timid to just take off. I really hope he's walking by 15 months, though. 
• He waves at every single dog he either hears or see, even if it's on TV. This kid loves dogs. Every time we leave the house, he says, "bye bye" to KC. So cute.
• He's still just the sweetest boy. He shares his things (most of the time), and he will smile at anyone. He makes friends every single place we go. This kid knows how to work a room, and it's hilarious.
• He is definitely getting more and more of an appetite. Just in the past couple of weeks, his eating has taken off. He eats more variety and pretty much will at least try whatever we put in front of him. I really feel like we're getting past his weight issues.
• He still drinks one pediasure a day which he loves. I'm not sure how much longer we'll give them to him, but he'll be sad to give that one up. He does love his whole milk, though. I still have no issue getting that down him :)
• He's still wearing 12 month clothes and size 3 disposable diapers. I have noticed that his shirts are getting a little small, they creep up on him constantly, so I may try some 18 month things soon. The only problem is that he's still pretty short for his age, so pants are definitely still long on him and they continue to fit ok in the waist.
• Luke's still babbling up a storm. He says byebye, hi, mama, dada, this on a regular basis.
• He can also sign 'more' and 'all done'. I'm working on teaching him thirsty and hungry. I love that he can tell me what he can. It makes me eager for him to talk more so that he can really communicate his needs/ wants. Right now, when he doesn't know how else to tell me, he just points and grunts at what he wants. That can be pretty frustrating because sometimes he could be pointing at one of many things!
• He's very curious. Luke is constantly inspecting things and looking at things. He also loves to organize things. Just today, I put a shirt in the dirty clothes hamper and didn't get it all the way in, so he went behind me and finished the job for me! Perfect- my own little person to pick up after me. He will also spend forever stacking thing and unstacking things. Lately, coasters have kept him busy for quite a while!
• Now he's asking to go outside all of the time. He'll go over and point at the door. He's never ready to go back inside. Me, Luke, and KC spend quite a bit of time lounging outside.
• He just started swim lessons. It's a mommy and me class, so I get in the water with him. It's really just about getting him used to the water, so it's nothing big, but he's really enjoying it so far. He was a little unhappy at first, but once the instructor got out the toys, he was sold! He even last about 15-20 minutes today after it rained and was cloudy during lessons, so the water was pretty chilly.
• Luke goes to bed right now between 6:30 and 7. He sleeps until about 6:15 most mornings. We are definitely down to 1 nap a day. He goes down sometime between 11 and 12 every day- it really just depends on what's been going on. He'll usually sleep about 1.5 hours, but I really like it if he'll sleep 2 to 2.5, not just so I can get more done, but I feel like he makes it through the day much better.
• Luke and I have been going to the gym on a regular basis. He loves the child care area, and they love him. He has so much fun crawling around, playing with the toys, and watching the big kids. Many times he gets some big kid to entertain him. It's been very nice for me to have that time, and for him to get to be very entertained for that time.
• Overall, he's just a very happy baby. He continues to be very laid back and a true people person. He loves getting out of the house and going to play dates. We're having a lot of fun being home together. I'm really happy that I get to be home with him. Some days it's hard because it's getting harder and harder to get things done with him at the house because he wants my attention all of the time, but I still love it.

New York, NY

My college roommates, Alicia and Jacki, decided to take a trip to New York to see Newsies which just opened on Broadway. I really didn't have any intention of going because that would mean Trey was left with Luke by himself. Although to my surprise, when I asked if I could go with them, he agreed I had earned a weekend away! I literally nursed Luke for the last time the day before I left. I decided New York was the perfect reason to let it go :) 

We had a wonderful time, and it was so nice to be gone with adults and no baby schedule to adhere to for two whole days. I would have had a a good time even if we'd done nothing, though, I was just glad to be able to sleep in a hotel room with no chance of a baby waking me up. 

We went to the 9/11 memorial park which was very neat. 

This is the "Survivor" tree. People are still leaving items at the bottom of its trunk.


We were taken by a hot dog stand guy. Good thing we have a great sense of humor.

We ate at a Belgian tavern.

Newsies was GREAT! I highly recommend the show. It was definitely worth it.

Shhhh... we took illegal pics in the theatre.

We ate at a very cool Victorian Bar called Lillie's. I had the best buffalo wings here.

 

We saw Million Dollar Quarter off-broadway which was really cool. I'm very glad we did the off-broadway thing.

We had after-show drinks and dessert.

We took a stroll through Bryant Park.

New York was warm that weekend, but we still had a great time walking around and just seeing the city. 

City Hall

Garden District

Air, Space, and Sea Museum on the Intrepid

I loved getting time to spend with the girls and be an adult without kids! It was a wonderful memorial day, and I have the BEST husband who took care of Luke all weekend so I could do that :)

Pants on his Head

The title of this post should be sung to the tune of, "Pants on the Ground". Remember that little ditty from a couple of years ago??

Luke is silly. He loves to crawl around with things on his head. So far it's been.... a bucket, a shirt, his sleep blanket, and his pants. We only got pictures of the pants. Usually, he likes the object to be covering his eyes so that he'll run into things and laugh about it. Weird, I know. Silly, yes.

The pants weren't covering his eyes, but he still found it hilarious.

Hmmm.. somehow we always manage to get his sans pants pictures when he's in his cosmic diapers. He does have others, I promise ;)

Luke is Non-Stop!

13 months

Luke just keeps growing up!

Now that's over a year, we have no more cute onesies :( I was going to do something cute, but then I got busy, so here's pictures that aren't fancy or cutesy. :)

This is that weird face he's started making :)

Just chillaxin'

Here's some of what he's been up to:

• I had to take him in for a weight check, so I know that he's 19 lbs, 13 oz., and I'm writing this a week late, so I'm hoping he's up to 20 lbs by now!
• Our little Luke has had a language explosion! He talks nonstop! He babbles constantly and with all new syllables that we hadn't heard before now. It's really entertaining to sit and listen to him.
• He was calling me 'maba' instead of 'mama', but just yesterday he mastered 'mama'. Now he says it constantly, usually when he needs something or wants me to pick him up, of course.
• When he wants something, he says something that sounds like please. I'm not sure he's really saying that, but it's pretty cute. He does say more without prompting now. He'll say byebye, hi, dada, mama. He doesn't really say kitty or doggy right now, but I know he knows them!
• We bought him a big boy car seat. It's still rear facing, but it sits up higher and is more like a chair. It definitely gives him more room than the last one. Although the other car seat is sitting in the kitchen, and he climbs in it all the time and hangs out. I feel like he misses it!
• He can stand by himself for maybe 2 seconds, but it's improvement! We're hoping he'll start walking sometime in the near future, but he's definitely taking his time on that one.
• He is definitely curious and loves to  go exploring on his own in the house. When you find him doing something he knows he's not supposed to, he kind of freaks out. It's a good freak out, though, where he screams and starts laughing hysterically.
• He has discovered stairs and how much he loves to climb them. You have to watch him very carefully around them.
• He has started to drop the first nap, or really he's dropped it. His schedule is still a little erratic because some mornings he still needs a nap, but then he's up far too long until bedtime. We've had to move his bedtime up about 30 minutes until he can get more used to this one nap thing. I know he's ready to drop a nap, though, because if he takes any type of morning nap, he absolutely will not take an afternoon nap. This happened for about 2.5 weeks before I finally gave up officially on two naps. I think this will take him a while to master, but we'll get there one day!
• He's loving his milk! He gulps that stuff down which is great! At least I haven't had to worry about that :)
• He does eat somewhat better than he did before. He loves veggies with butter, toast with butter, waffles with butter, pasta with butter. Notice a pattern? I went through a whole stick of butter in about a month with this kid.  He also loves these fruit/ veggie pouches that he can suck the contents out. It is super convenient- I love them!
• He drinks about 8 oz of pediasure a day. It's there to make sure he gets enough calories and it has vitamins in it, so that's good!
• He loves to be silly and make people laugh. He's a bit of a ham. Today, he took a gift bag and put it on his head, then started crawling around running into things. He's done this before where he put a blanket over his head.
• He throws things. He throws books, pillows, balls, cars, food, blanekts, horsie, etc. I'm not looking forward to the true 'throwing' stage with this kid.
• We went to the zoo as a family at the end of April. It was kind of a belated birthday outing for Luke. It was a great day, and Trey and I were probably more excited than he was. We found that he enjoyed the reptile house the best; I think because of the lights in the cages while it was dark in the house. But we had a great day, and it was so much fun!

I think that's it, except that I LOVE him!