Category Archives: Luke

>Weekend Recap

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“Well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we’re going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don’t know, I don’t know if we’ll have enough time.” OK, it was one of those weekends, but we had fun. I actually fed Jack this morning at 6am and the next thing it was 9:45 and the boys were home from the first trip of the day to Home Depot and they had a latte for me. I don’t think I have slept that late in years. (Of course I fed Jack at 11pm and 6am, but I feel very lucky.)

We took a lot of pictures this weekend and posed for a lot of pictures this weekend. I can’t wait to see how they all turned out. We gardened and painted at the daycare work day and then gardened all weekend at home too. The school Luke will attend in the fall has a community garden, and I came just short of volunteering to help out. But I thought, “Ugh I have to work in the daycare garden. I’ll just wait until next year to work in the kindergarten garden. But then I remembered that Jack will be at the daycare for another 5 years so I might as well volunteer now and figure out how to manage.

Segue to big news! Luke had kindergarten orientation on Friday. I think I was more nervous than he was. I had to describe Luke and I tried to describe him in an accurate, non-bragging manner. I said, “He likes to be outside; biking, hiking, and skiing. He also likes to build things and read books. But he doesn’t know how to read, but you know what I mean.” I felt very proud of myself when other parents were naming each individual word that their child can spell, but also sort of dishonest when one of the parents said their child was into “all things that fight, like knights, pirates and star wars.” Oops, I forgot about that sort of thing. But we both liked the teachers and the school so I think it is going to be great. The photo of Luke and I was from our big day.

>Hall Of Mirrors

>Dave spent a night in Arizona last week, so I took the kids out for dinner. We had sushi because we are a good yuppy family. We were seated in a tiny booth and the wall next to us was one giant mirror, and when Luke turned to say something to me he got distracted. “I thought there was a boy at a table next to us that looked just like me!” Luke likes to look at himself in the mirror. I give him the option of taking his time outs in his room or mine and he always picks mine. Recently, he was crying quite dramatically and Dave gave me the “What the heck?” look. I said, “Five bucks says he is standing in front of the mirror.” Oh yeah, Dave, you owe me 5 bucks. But back to dinner. Soon he noticed there was a mirror on the other wall too. “I can see myself over there! And I can see six Lukes!” (Reflection of a reflection and so on.)

I didn’t plan on the meal taking quite so long, but what with the mirrors and the chopsticks, and the looking at yourself in the mirror using chopsticks, it was quite the leisurely affair. And this meant that Jack wanted to eat, and yeah, I didn’t bring his/my privacy blanket. No worry, the linen napkins were on the large side. So I was trying to feed Jack, and I had us covered with a linen napkin, and I looked in the mirror to my right and we were clear, and I looked in the mirror to my left and we were clear. I looked back to the right, and back to the left. Clear. I made eye contact with the waiter, and if he’s able to make eye contact, then good, he’s not seeing anything else. And I look down and make eye contact with Jack, who has stopped eating and casually tossed off the linen napkin. And I don’t need to look in the mirror at the 6 copies of myself to see that I am exposing myself to the entire room. I covered Jack up and started over and the entire process was repeated about 3 times.

I am not the most modest person in the world, but I think all the mirrors did me in. Because the next day I was pumping in the lactation room and I heard someone talking really loudly, so loudly it seemed like they were in the room with me and I thought, “Oh. My. God. I forgot to shut the door. I am in the lactation room, pumping, and the door isn’t even CLOSED!” But the door was closed. I think I was just delirious because it was late afternoon and all I had packed for lunch was Luke’s leftover kid’s meal, which was a tiny square of tofu and about 7 edamame, and I had eaten it at about 10:30. And someone was talking really loudly right outside the door.

>Day at the Park

>Today we did some yard work, played some baseball in the yard with a few neighborhood kids and then headed to the park for a family outing. Very All-American. I can’t believe I didn’t think to make apple pie today! But I did make granola yesterday so, close enough.

We packed some snacks, the stroller, the sling, sunscreen, a picnic blanket, a magazine for me to read, and Dave’s fishing stuff and headed to the park. The picture above is from two summers ago. Good times.

This park has a great playground and the first thing Luke wanted to do was talk through the intercom. You can’t see from one speaker thingy to the other, which I guess makes it more interesting. We had this conversation:

Me: Hi, can you hear me?
Luke: Can you hear me mama?
Me: I can hear you, can you hear me?
Luke: Yeah.
Me: This is fun. What do you want to do next?
Luke: Dada
Me: Daddy is fishing. Do you want to go on the slide?
Luke: Dada.
Me: Are you saying dada?
Luke: Mommy, I’m behind you. A baby wanted to use the intercom, so I let him.

Nice – he left me talking to a baby.

Then Luke wanted to be pushed on the swings, which was really fun. I had Jack in the sling, and every time I pushed Luke, Jack laughed hysterically. So cute.

Then we walked around for a while, picked the perfect spot, laid out the blanket, got Jack out of the stroller, started to get the snacks out, and “Mama. I have to go to the bathroom.” Okaaaaay. So I packed everything and everyone back up and we walked all the way to one end of the park where the bathrooms are, but they were not yet open for the season. So we walked all the way to the other side of the park where there are two porta potties and three young baggy pants wearing gentleman. As we approached, I saw one go in one of the bathrooms and one start to go into one of the bathrooms but then change his mind. We had this conversation:

Me: Is that bathroom really gross?
Young Gentleman: Yeah.
Me: OK. We’ll wait.
Young Gentleman: Well, uh. I think it’s gross. You might not.
Me: Do I look like I have lower bathroom standards than you do?
Young Gentleman: Sorry.

Regardless, I am glad I had Purell with me.

In other news, we went to see our friends’ brand new super cute 8 pound 6 day old baby. It’s been a little over 5 months since my 6 pound 10 ounce baby was born and I have a good memory, but I don’t believe Jack was ever that small. I think my friends’ baby maybe really only weighs 4 pounds, and they are just a little confused. Or else the gravitational pull on the earth has shifted and 8 pounds is different than it was 5 months ago. That might explain my own weight too!

>Memory

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No, don’t worry, I am not going to sully this blog with some boring American Idol commentary about how bad the dread lock guy’s rendition of Memory was this week, and how he said, “A cat sings this song? I had no idea.” (More bad use of quotes since that is just what I vaguely remember him saying, and not what he actually said.)

No, I want to write about memories of real people that I actually know, like my children. I was putting Jack to bed last night and he fell asleep in my arms. He really snuggles into the crook of my arm, with one arm around my waist and the other grabbing the neck of my sweater with his fist. He has quite a grip, and today I started calling him Pinchy. His cheeks were rosy, eyes were closed, and he smelled sweet. I noticed all of this out of the corner of my eye because, while I was holding him with one arm, I was holding my book with another. I tend to read a lot. When I turned 16, I sat in the driver’s seat of my parents minivan and looked out the window for the first time. I didn’t know how to get around town, but I had gotten a lot of reading done over the years.

I can remember painting a sign with my grandma that she hung on the door for my mom to see when she came home from the hospital with my baby sister. I was three and my job was to paint little evenly spaced lines of green across the bottom to represent grass. My lines got bigger, longer, spaced further apart and, in general, messier as they crossed the page. My grandma said, “Oh no! Paint the grass like this.” I looked at her grass and my grass and thought, “It looks easier than it is.” The point of this story is that I have a great memory. I am the official expert on everything that ever happened. I am so good at remembering things that some people think I just make stuff up.

So you’d think that I would not need to worry about whether or not I am going to have vivid memories of everyday life with my baby. But my worrying skills rival my memory, I’m that multi-talented. Currently, when I try to ingrain a tender moment into my brain, I also think of memories of Luke. I probably have 3 or 5 or maybe only 1o vivid memories of nursing Luke. So I worry that I am doing too much reading and not enough memorizing of every moment with Jack. Pictures help, but this morning when I tried to capture the look on Jack’s face when I went in to get him in the morning instead of capturing 1000 words I got maybe 5. Those 5 words were “Oh. there’s the camera again.” What I was trying to capture was that his eyes are still blue, with a glint of joy, a little devil, that he was happy to see me, but also that he had been content to look at the mobile before I got there, and maybe wants to glance back at the mobile right this second; a shade of worry passes over his brow, but then it’s gone as he breaks out into a big smile, which is also fleeting, and then he’s overcome with the joy that one can attain only by seeing how much blanket can be crammed into ones mouth, and then I snap the picture. OK, words aren’t going to do it either. But the process of trying to come up with the words or the picture may be what helps me with the memory.

And I guess if I have 10 vivid memories of Luke five years later, that’s pretty good. And I did a lot of reading when he was a baby too.

>Excuse Me Ma’am, Did You Pay For That Donut?

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As previously noted, my grocery shopping schedule is totally out of whack. Instead of going Friday with just Jack, I picked Luke up from daycare and took both boys with me after work.

I didn’t bring a snack for Luke because I figured I’d let him have one of the free cookies when we got to the grocery. We made a bee line over there, which screwed up my usual traffic pattern through the store and somehow caused us to circle the entire store about 6 times. But worse than that was the fact that the cookie section was… EMPTY. He decided he wanted a donut instead and being the good, health conscious, anti-dinner spoiling, trans-fat avoiding mom that I am, I said, “OK, but you need to share it with me.”

Luke: Just take a small bite
Mom: Mmm. Mmm. Yum.
Luke: That’s all you get. Is this free?
Mom: No, they are 3 for a dollar.
Luke: So how much are they?
Mom: 33 cents.
Luke: How will you remember how much it costs?
Mom: I have a good memory.
Luke: Will I have to give them the donut at the checkout?
Mom: No, just eat it.
Luke: How will you pay for it?
Mom: I’ll hold onto the wrapper and it will remind me to tell them that we ate a donut.
Luke: How much is it? 33 cents?
Mom: Yes.

Somewhere during the second lap around the store, I noticed he was still carrying the donut.

Mom: Eat that, or it will be too close to dinner when you finish it.
Luke: I decided I wanted to save it until we get home.
Mom: I don’t like that idea
Luke: Will I need to hand the donut to the checkout person?
Mom: No, I’ll say, “We need to pay for this donut.” And I’ll point to the donut.

–Repeat 3 more times —

When we finally arrived at the checkout I said, “We need to pay for one donut.”
The clerk said, “OK”

Then 2 seconds later I looked down at Luke and he had empty hands and donut filled chipmunk cheeks.

I guess he was really worried I would forget to pay for that donut.

>I know I’ll often stop and think about them

>Luke is already getting nostalgic for his daycare days. He often waxes melancholy in the evenings and more often than not it’s a bedtime stalling technique. But last night was no act. Sob after heart wrenching sob.

“RUUUUUUUUUUUUBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. I’ll never see her again.”

I tried to offer sympathy and solutions but they fell on deaf ears. I told a long story about the last night I spent with my high school friends before we all left for college. How we dressed up in 70’s clothes and hung out at the airport, and topped the evening off with coffee at Denny’s. And how it was sad, but if I had never left for college I wouldn’t have met Daddy. He was not impressed. Or maybe he was just embarrassed that his mom was so weird. Yes, I said WAS so weird.

Then I gave a stern, “OK, now it’s time for bed!” when he started worrying that he would never see Kobie and Kai again if they moved to Sweden. They spend the summers there, but this fall they will all be at the same kindergarten. No need to mourn for those friends.

I was thinking this picture may make Luke less nostalgic for his current daycare. Or at least make him laugh.

His reaction, “Who are those people?”

>Stop Making Sense

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Dad: Goodbye Luke! I love you have a nice day.

Luke: Bye Daddy!

– Door closes –

Luke: Daddy left without giving me a kiss and a hug and that makes me feel sad.

Mom: Luke, you need to say that before he leaves, not just as soon as the door closes. (This issue is not new.)

– Silence –

Luke: Mommy, if I said “Daddy left without giving me a kiss and a hug and that makes me feel sad” before he left it would not make sense.

>Periscope Up

>The subject of periscopes came up recently, as did the subject of experiments. As in, “Can we do an experiment? Why haven’t we done any experiments lately? When are we going to do that one experiment?” So I had been casually saving the necessary parts of a periscope for a rainy day, a day when there would be another sudden interest in experiments. That day was today.

I got out my mirrors and my long, skinny cardboard box that I had been saving for such an occasion and we got to work. We held the mirrors in different positions and talked about reflection and angles. (OK, I actually made no attempt to explain how the process worked, but I would be an awesome mom if I had!) Maybe my mistake was to attempt to make the periscope in such close proximity to the basketball hoop. Maybe I am just slow. If I had made the periscope in 30 seconds then I would have had Luke’s attention for the entire time. “Oh well,” I thought, “At least this gives me something to do while I watch Luke play basketball.” And, really, I had fun making a periscope all by myself. When it was finished he looked through it and said, “Cool.” I said, “Hey, let’s sneak upstairs and spy on Daddy and Jack.” Luke said, “Yeah!” So we started crawling up the stairs, quietly. So quietly. And I slithered across the floor and got the periscope in position behind the couch and whispered, “Oh, I see them, come look.” And I turned to look over my shoulder. And I realized I was alone. Alone, at the top of the stairs, on my stomach, whispering about a periscope. Alone except for Dave and Jack who were looking at me through the other end.

Luke may not be impressed now, but just wait until we incorporate the periscope into the giant cardboard box I want to turn into a pirate ship!

>Oh The Places He’ll Go

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At three he was a bunny, just playing in snow
Today it’s as if he’s almost a pro!

His fave is Jug Glades he heads straight for the trees
I can’t even follow! Poor me, oh poor me.

Dream and Scream’s next like he’s racing world cup.
At the base he says, “Mom, I was ripping it up!”

Sometimes we crash and we lay where we fall.
And sometimes we’ll toss a little snow ball.

We chit chat on the lift and eat some starburst.
As we get close to to top, I prepare for the worst.

But he just hops off and starts to cruise
And I fall down and often get bruised.

He has a great teacher, Dad’s number one!
Dad is the one that makes skiing fun!

Last weekend Dad took him straight down Mule Shoe
A black diamond that scared me till age 32!

In powder, on groomers, steeps, jumps, bumps, and trees
Sunny, or windy and 14 degrees

You’ll find Luke at Eldora all over the place,
Tearing it up with a smile on his face!

>Thank You Notes

>Emily Post says you have a year to write your wedding thank you notes. Does anyone know the policy for your fifth birthday? We did a big push to get the thank yous out for the kids who attended the party, but the family thank you notes have been a long time coming. I had been writing it in my planner every week, and then I don’t know what happened, but tonight we were back in business.

Our strategy is this:
1.) I write everyone’s name on a list
2.) Luke writes the person’s name at the top and his name at the bottom and then tells me something to write in the middle.
It seems simple, but there are so many ways it can go wrong. First of all, I have terrible handwriting. My r looks like a v. Luke read back the letters in Scott to me as “S – O – O – H”. So there is that. And Luke is also a perfectionist, so that leads to other problems. Many tears were shed on Valentine’s Day over an “A” that looked like “It’s pants were falling down.”
So today, Luke was writing while I was making chicken, pineapple, red pepper skewers for dinner. I needed to spell out every name, and the list was only useful in creating a sense of satisfaction when a name could be crossed off. Chicken, pineapple, red pepper skewers are sort of labor intensive for a week night so I didn’t always know where I was in the spelling of a name. This led to an Anthony with two Os. Tragedy. Luke was also trying to write in block letters and had trouble with an N. I had a huge internal debate about showing him how to do it. Because all prior Ns had been written backwards. Do I show him the correct way and risk having to redo all the thank you notes? Do I dare contemplate making a backwards block letter N? Rest assured I did the right thing. And I was rewarded with a resigned sigh, “If you are right, then all the other Ns I have made are backwards.” Sigh.
Such a relief! Thank you notes are finished!
* Please allow another 1-2 weeks for me to find stamps, envelopes, addresses, etc.