Category Archives: Luke

>Creative Dinner Solutions

>
I think my day can be summed up like this: I fed Luke dinner at the grocery store while I was shopping. He had most of a chicken tender, a slice of cheese, and lollipop. We had had appetizers at the park that included carrots and apple juice, but I would have to say this may be a new low. And even though I said, “This will be a fun adventure, what do you think we’ll find to eat for dinner?” he still said, “What’s for dinner?” when we got home. So I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

(The photo is of Luke, probably around 6 months.)

>L’eggo My Lego

>This morning, it was my turn to do the day care drop off, and before Dave left he helped me make sure everyone was dressed, sunscreened, fed and ready for school. Then as he was leaving he noticed we only cleared half the dinner dishes. From the front porch. Classy! This is important to the story because I think some baby food dripped onto the floor when he was bringing dishes in. I hope it was baby food at least.

Dave was out the door on his bike, and I was making the first trip out to the garage to load up my bike. Pump, lunch, bottles, attach trailer to bike. On my way out the door I heard, “Ewww! Yuck! Ewww! What is that?! Eww!” It looked like a tiny drip of baby food. It was brown and gooey, so let’s just all agree that it was baby food. I said I would wipe it up in a second after I got back in from the garage because my hands were full.

Before I could finish attaching the trailer to the bike, Luke was at the door sobbing. “He ate it! Bean ate it!” The baby food? Sweet, problem solved. “NO! He ate my green lego! He ate it, and it’s gone and now I will never, ever, ever be able to make the castle again! I want you to get it out of him!” Hmm, well, yeah I can’t do that. I do suspect that the lego must have had baby food on it too, because Bean doesn’t really eat plastic unless it is wrapped around cheese, chocolate, tortillas, cookies, any other type of food, or garbage. And the baby food spot on the floor had disappeared too so at least I didn’t have to clean that up. But the really bad part was that I have been reading Parents magazine (aka 1001 ways your kids could die magazine) in the lactation room, so instead of saying, “That is what you get for not putting your toys away” or even “Hey, maybe leaving your legos on the floor is a bad idea!” I had to say, “Wow, I bet you are really sad that Bean ate your lego. I understand how you feel. I don’t like it when Bean eats my things either.” This was supposed to calm him down.

It didn’t work, of course and when we were 3 blocks away he mentioned that his teeth were covered in boogers from all the sobbing. I contemplated my options but I didn’t see any soft leaves around, and I didn’t want to use my shirt to clean him up, so I road home to get kleenex. Which he used to wipe the boogers off his teeth. Off. His. Teeth. I just threw up a little thinking about it.

Then we rode another block and I started trying to cheer him up by mentioning that today was field trip day! Yea! Field trip day! And that is when I remembered that I forgot the car seat. So I turned around and got the car seat. And then we rode the rest of the way to school and work and I got there sometime just slightly before lunch.

>Happy Fathers Day

>Dave had a biketastic Fathers Day today. It started off with my delicious banana pancakes (if I do say so myself.) Then he was off to mountain bike White Ranch. When he came home for Fathers Day Family Time, he wanted to bike, hike and fish, so we tried to come up with a plan that combined all three. (Over achiever.) The way we did this was to immediately cross fishing off the list, even though that is my favorite thing to do. (By fishing, I mean reading a magazine on a blanket.) Then we got Jack all outfitted in the backpack, and he was fussing up a storm, but seemed prepared to nap in there when he got the chance. Once the backpack was all adjusted we got ready to leave. Dave attached the tagalong to his road bike and the trailer to the tagalong. Then the backpack got attached to the trailer. This took about an hour.

All the while I was trying to figure out the best route to our hiking destination. I googled and googled and finally found a bike map to use, and Dave and I studied it and we both memorized the first few turns and then forgot the rest. Before we knew it, we had biked 2 miles to get half a mile from our house. Things like this used to happen to us a lot when we would go hiking and we’d stop paying attention and just start following the dog. Anywho, we got back on track and on our way we ran across the coolest park ever! Dave said, “Luke do you want to stop at this park and check it out?” I think he was running before he even hopped off the bike. It was really fun and I think we could probably find it again. Dave and Luke and I all played while Jack napped.



Sadly, Dave was paged while we were there and we had to go home so he could work. Boo! But we still had a nice dinner, went out for ice cream and got everyone to bed on time.

Happy Fathers Day!

>Trashing the Place

>
Today our good friends and neighbors returned from their first of many summer vacations and called to say, “Are you going to the park today? We’ll meet you there.” But what I heard was, “Please come over and let me cook dinner for you and your family while you break things and bleed everywhere.” I said, “I’ll bring the french fries!”

My knife is dull, which may have caused it to skid off the potato and cut my finger. Or maybe the dullness prevented the tip of my finger from being chopped off. Who knows?

We almost reached a new milestone: Meat for the baby! From a jar! (Organic of course.) But instead of opening the jar of baby food, I picked it up and then dropped it on the floor where it shattered. Sorry, it’s sweet potatoes again for you, little baby!

Then as we discussed how plastic is slowly killing us, and how we are slowly getting rid of our plastic plates in favor of plates that could kill us with lead, (or other unknown ways) Little M dropped her ceramic plate on the floor and it shattered and cut a gash in Luke’s toe. I was right there, so I probably caused that to happen as well.

That may have been a graceful time to just leave and hope to be invited back again someday, but we decided to wait until Luke had been bitten by the puppy twice. Just nips, no blood.

Yea! Welcome back from vacation! I hope we (and by this I mean you) got all the glass cleaned up!

(The picture is just another example, in case I wasn’t clear, of how messy Jack gets when I feed him. Of course the rice cereal is hard to see in the picture, but it covers 87% of his exposed skin.)

>Sitting Up!

>
I haven’t posted Jack’s stats from his 6 month appointment because I lost track of the sheet of paper from the Dr’s office. They said 10% for weight (15 something pounds?) and 50% for height (some amount of unknown inches).

But as you can see, he is sitting up like a big boy these days! I have to do a lot of hovering and propping, but he is doing well. All this new sitting up and growing interest in the world around him have made nursing quite a challenge. I can see why 6 months is a common time to give up on the whole process. Hmm, is it possible that Jack now prefers to nurse a lot in the middle of the night because he is too distracted during the day? Hopefully his 11 hours of sleep on Wednesday night will become more common then the 2 hour stretches we got last night. ZZZZzzzz. Can’t keep typing… falling asssllllleeeeeep.

P.S. Luke got his summer haircut

>Bike-tastic

>Today I had many adventures while biking the kids to daycare, then biking to work, back to the daycare, back home with the kids, down to Pearl street to meet my friend Laura, and then back home. In my mind it was 18 miles, but google maps said 15 or so. I thought about plotting my travels on gmaps pedometer and then posting a link and then I thought, why share a map to my house and the daycare with the internets? Trust me, it was 15 miles that felt like 18.

The first thing that happened was that 3 blocks from home, the trailer came part way loose and got lodged in my wheel spokes. I don’t know what I would have done if an kind, older, handsome gentleman, lazily driving to work, hadn’t stopped his car to help me. (Thanks Dave!)

Secondly, there is a serious down hill section where Luke usually gets going pretty fast. So fast that he can’t quite keep up with the pedals. Today he was really flying when he got to the sharp left turn and he slammed on the brakes, skidded out, rode it out into the grass, and then jumped off and flew through the air with an “Aaaaaaaah!” and landed 4 feet away in the grass. I could tell by the “Aaaaaaah!” that he was enjoying himself, but even so, it was risky for me to allow myself to laugh hysterically. (He tends to be quite sensitive.) But it was so funny. And I was glad that he laughed too. (And of course we were both glad that he wasn’t hurt.)

>The Memorial Day Camping Trip Post

>I couldn’t really put Jack down this weekend because there weren’t that many flat places. (Also, the little girls would swarm, swarm!.) I put down the blanket, put Jack on it, tried to reeeeach for my magazine and in that time he rolled, rolled, rolled, grabbed some pine needles and tried to eat them. This happened twice. And that is when I realized that if there were any flat spots in our campsite that we would have parked the van in one and then we could have spread out and not slept all in the tiny down hill corner.

Wellington Lake in two statements:
1.) Slanted
2.) Grossest bathrooms ever

But we had a good time, the kids loved it, and it sure looks good in the pictures!

Jack and Bean and I hiked to the bottom of the waterfall, while the other, braver moms, with younger dogs took the rest of the kids way up high.

Luke, exploring:

The Sultan gets a diaper change:

Bean stole Luke’s sleeping bag, and then Luke stole mine and so on.

Putting your PJs on over your clothes for the next day is way smarter than putting your PJs on below your clothes, and then wearing them for 2 days, which is what we did. We have so much to learn from the other campers:

Perfect cast:

Fishing:

The only flat spot:

WORMS!

Fishermen:

And (Grandmas, stop reading now) Dave built a jump:

>Boys Will Be Boys

>
Is the expression, “Boys will be boys” or “Boys will be sort of gross”?*

Dave noticed that Luke has finally outgrown his 2T underwear and that it was time for some new pairs. (He gets taller but not any wider around the waist so it hadn’t seemed necessary to buy any new underwear in the last 2 years.) So I took the 2Ts out of his drawer and went to Target. I came home with some tighty whiteys and some boxer briefs last Monday. I washed them Monday night and on Tuesday morning he was excited to try out the boxer briefs. I guess he liked them because it is now Monday again and he just took off the last pair before his shower this evening. Did I mention that was a 3 pack? It is possible that I have my days confused, and maybe he didn’t put the first pair on until Wednesday… but the math still works out to much fewer than one underwear change per day.

Secondly, when I was helping Luke dry off after his shower I noticed that my towel was just getting really dirty. After his shower. I think I am just going to start hosing him off in the yard, then I can water the lawn at the same time.

Lastly, we watched some little league on the way home from school/work today and one of the other moms had just noticed for the first time that lots of young boys now have shoulder length hair. Not having to deal with long hair is one of the great things about having a boy! Those poor moms have to deal with all that dirt and lots of conditioner? No thanks!

*MetaMegan does not endorse gender based stereotyping, and I know many dirty girls who probably don’t change their underwear very often. In fact, I should strike this whole post. But then how will millions of people read about my lax parenting in regards to personal hygiene and cleanliness?
** The photo is from wikipedia. I think I always wanted Wonder Woman Underoos, but in fact had a C3PO pair instead.

>Rolling, Rolling, Rolling Part 2

>Tuesday the daycare poured out a bottle of Jack’s milk because they tried feeding it to him and he fell asleep. When he woke up the milk had expired. I have milk issues people! You can’t just feed the milk to other babies or pour it down the sink! I furiously turned to the internets for backup, but the internets seem to think that the milk needed to be poured out or else it would be spoiled. This never happened when Dave stayed home with Luke! Oh, yeah, he probably did not concern himself with milk storage guidelines and that was fine with everyone.

I left work at 3:15 to nurse Jack. Another baby was being fed when I got there, and I kid you not, the bottle had 10 ounces in it. I struggle to eek out three 4.5-5.5 ounce bottles a day. 10 ounces? Are you kidding me? It turns out there is this stuff called formula. All the babies drink it. All the babies except Jack that is, which may be why they don’t realize I’ll have a minor heart attack if they waste any milk. Long story short, I am awesome.

But the point is, after I fed Jack, the oldest kid in the infant room, who is anxiously awaiting a space in the toddler room, kept coming over and putting a big cube on Jack’s lap. Then Jack pushed it off, then the kid put it back and I realized: It’s time to start teaching this kid to play ball!

So, after dinner Jack sat on my lap, and Luke rolled us a ball. Jack picked it up, and threw it back. It was the greatest thing ever! Except when Luke got tired of rolling and felt the need to toss it so it landed exactly on Jack’s legs where he’d have an easy time picking it up. OK, that was fine, but when Luke missed it got a little worrisome. Luke was also constantly correcting my method of teaching Jack to roll a ball. I finally said, “Do you know how to roll a ball? Who do you think taught you? Yeah, that’s right, I did. I know how to teach someone to roll a ball. Do not question my methods.” Then when Jack spit out the pacifier in favor of gumming the ball, it was all over. You know, for someone who has had everything he ever wanted all to himself for 5 years, Luke isn’t that great about sharing his toys. Oh. Yeah. Got it. It’s only gonna get worse, kid.

>Happy Mother’s Day

>
A year ago today, after months and years, and a harrowing first trimester, we announced to the world that we were expecting another baby. That was a very happy Mother’s Day for me. Not as happy as today, of course, since I have had 6 months with one little miracle, and 5 years with the other. Thank you family for another Happy Mother’s Day! I am so lucky.

I was not as lucky with my Mother’s Day gift ordering, which I proudly announced had been completely taken care of last Monday! Moms, your gift will be late. But for a preview, please click here. (Hint – don’t order any yet.)

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!