Category Archives: Luke

>Sent To His Room For Demanding Broccoli

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The boys are at Camp Grandparent this week, and loving it. Naps were taken, bikes ridden, puzzle completed, two playgrounds and a pool visited, and that was all on the first day. And perfect behavior can only lead to one thing: a dinner time meltdown. Dave grilled chicken for fajitas and I sauteed red and green peppers and onions, and also made pico de gallo. Yum. And a salad. Somehow Luke ended up at the head of the table and was getting served first. I had eaten most of my lunch today by 11 am, and I was hangry. Dave was explaining to Luke how we have a “no thank you bite policy” and he needed to take a bite of a vegetable before he could say no thank you, and please pick a vegetable, and Luke picked broccoli. Did we make any broccoli? No. Meanwhile I am just shoving food into Jack’s mouth as fast as possible so that on the off chance some food gets to me, I’ll have a brief interlude between squawks from my baby bird to inhale some morsels. Long story short, I sent Luke to his room for demanding to be served broccoli. Has any child in the history of these United States been sent to his or her room for demanding broccoli? Today, history was made.

After I had taken some bites, and needed to get up anyway for some reason, I made a quick detour to the room of the sobbing young man to try to calm him down. Usually in instances like these he makes up a story about hurt feelings or something, I console him and tell him he can come back to the table when he has calmed down. But I when I walked into his room he said, “I’ll come back when I GET BROCCOLI!” Okaaaay, at least I don’t have to feel like maybe it was unnecessary to send him to time out. So I said, “Well, if you want to influence what is served at the dinner table, you need to be more involved in the meal preparation. You know the rules, feel free to come back when you have calmed down. If we are still sitting at the table, you can join us.” Sobbing ensued. But he pulled it together and rejoined us at the table a little later.

Oh, and the other day I said, “Do you want some ranch dressing for your broccoli?” The fact that he turned it down isn’t surprising because he doesn’t really like ranch, but it was a little odd that he said, “No, just broccoli, straight up!”

Another point of view on broccoli.

Photo credit.

>One More Post About Camping

>I never finished my camping post, but I didn’t need to because it was summed up so well here. But I did want to share one funny story. The first night of camping, Jack was on day 5 of sleeping all the way or mostly through the night. I was a little worried about setbacks, but our sleeping arrangements worked out perfectly to keep the stretch going. Luke slept upstairs and the rest of us slept downstairs, but Dave slept in between Jack and I, which prevented me from sleep feeding him. I am sure I would have assumed that Jack was hungry when he started crying at 3 am, when in fact he was just cold. Dave and Jack just snuggled up and we all went back to sleep. But why was he cold? Well, I guess at some point earlier in the night he was hot, so he took off his pajamas. He woke up dressed like this:

And this is how I found his pjs in the morning:

I have a Baby Houdini on my hands.

Everyone slept so well that Luke even had a sleep over on Saturday night:

Good morning everyone!

>On the Move

>Jack is almost crawling – it isn’t pretty but he is on the move. The problem with capturing it on video is that if you notice your baby doing some amazing crawling, and it’s right before bedtime, and you run to get the camera, and then try to get him to crawl again, you end up with this:

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=6765432673594533853&hl=en&fs=true

I have three videos like that.

But we didn’t give up! Luke and I kept Jack up long enough, and waved the forbidden remote over and over, and he finally realized I would put him to bed once he pushed himself across the floor on his face. Note the diaper wedgie.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=1217594024847469829&hl=en&fs=true

>Now and Then

>Today I worked from home and Jack was a rock star, taking naps, playing, essentially making everything easy. However, he is also working on perfecting the art of sliding off my lap. He just can’t quite crawl or run away. So today I let him slide off my lap and end up under my desk, in front of box full of train parts. He was sort of standing, sort of being supported by my knees. It reminded me of baby Luke, and how he used to be able to casually walk under the dining room table without ducking, or hitting his head. I have vivid memories of those days, and every once in a while when I see Luke standing next to the table I think about him as a baby and I remember when… Anyway, Dave came in and said, “Cute. We should get the camera so later we can say, “Remember when he used to be able to stand under the desk” like we do with Luke and the dining room table.”

So here is Luke, not standing, probably quite a bit older than Jack is now, but under the table:

And here is Jack today, starring in one of many of my future memories:

>Nature V. Nurture

>Dave and I were discussing Nature vs. Nurture at dinner last night (probably in regards to our awesome parenting and how much it impacts our perfect children.) But with your biological children, does it matter what comes from your genes and what comes from your environment and actions? What’s the diff? Who cares? And if something is not a genetic trait, but a learned behavior, does that mean it can be unlearned? Or relearned for the better?

I guess what I mean is, can people change?

The reason I ask is that Luke could not find his shoes this morning and it upset the delicate balance that allows us to get out of the house somewhere within an hour of on time without screaming, crying, or shaking our fists at the gods. Meetings were almost missed, bottles were forgotten, tears were shed. Luke’s shoes were right by the front door. I have to feel a little sorry for the kid because he seems to have my tendency to lose things, combined with Dave’s inability to look for and find things. Is the inability to look for and find things a genetic trait? Possibly on the y chromosome? Do I lose things because I need to scale back from ubertasking to mere multitasking?

This week I had to borrow Dave’s keys, mine were later found in a breast pump compartment. I went to physical therapy for my knee and couldn’t find my insurance card. I was sure it was on my desk, but it turned out to be in my wallet after all. It is time for a change. I don’t care if my very mitochondrial DNA insists that I lose things, I am going to try to keep track, and I am going to try to help Luke do the same. Wish me luck!

>Superfun

>We had a great three day weekend, with two totally jam-packed days, and one day of chillaxing. Friday we went to the Jamestown Fourth of July celebration, which had the best parade featuring a kazoo band and effigies of Cheney, Bush and Rice. Then there were fun activities at the town park. I learned that the park was once under consideration to be declared a superfund site because it’s a foot of dirt over a bunch of mine tailings. After learning this I found Jack eating grass. I pulled all the grass out of his mouth and then did a quick finger swipe and pulled out a half tablespoon of mud. So, in my mind I am replacing superfund with superfun. Dave also biked a zillion miles, we all biked to the fireworks, we worked on the yard, biked to the park, biked to the pool, had dinner with the neighbors, and I shopped for fabric and started working on a skirt. The weather was perfect because it rained a little today which made for guilt free wii playing in the basement. Luke wanted to go to a museum, so I finally got organized enough to at least go to NCAR, but we got there after it closed. Even though it was raining a little, I still wanted to “hike” so I pushed/dragged the kids on the “hike.” I use “hike” in “quotes”, because if I can push the 6 year old graco stroller the whole way, it isn’t really hiking. (If I didn’t have such an enormous compact car, I would have had to leave the stroller in the parking lot because I could NOT fold it back up.) With the clouds, the late afternoon light, and the mountains, the views were really spectacular. The camera was in the car, though. Sorry. Luke got into it after a while, but it started like this:

Luke: I either want to go home or to that museum with the giant black ant. (Buttery Fly Pavillion.)
Me: No, let’s just hike.
Luke: Well, I –
Me: Look, we are here, I want to hike, so we are hiking and no one is complaining.
Luke: Mommy, that’s not really true, because I am complaining.

>Happy Birthday Dave!

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We had fun celebrating Dave’s birthday this past weekend. We could see some runs at Eldora and Dave said, “That’s Corona.” To which Luke replied, “Oh, I can see Mule Shoe. It looks steep from here.” I don’t know why, but I found it to be very impressive that he could not only remember the name of the run, but identify it in the summer. Don’t worry Luke, it will be covered in snow again soon!
(Mule Shoe is on the left)

Luke and Jack and I hung out

while Dave did some fishing. Dave got sort of wet,

maybe I should have gotten him chest waders for his birthday instead of a wii?

On the other hand, I suggested to Luke that I would be willing to play wii baseball with him after he was finished eating his asparagus, and for the first time ever, he ate his asparagus. Chest waders don’t have super powers like that!

>Sip This It Will Sweat and Relax You

>Sip this, it will sweat and relax you. She said it twice, which is good because I didn’t quite catch it the first time. The other thing I didn’t quite catch was, “Take off your towel and get in the tub.” I’m sorry, what did you say to do with my towel? “Take it off and get in the tub.” Wait, what?

I’ll start at the beginning. While we were vacationing in Hot Springs, Arkansas,

also known as the Hometown of Bill Clinton,

I decided to partake of the thermal baths. I like little slices of Americana Pie, so if Al Capone and Babe Ruth have sought the healing powers of the thermal baths, then I should try it too. I later learned that Al Capone may have been trying to cure syphilis, but I was just trying to relax.

People have been seeking the healing powers of the Hot Springs for thousands of years. Or something like that, I think the National Park Brochure is in Luke’s room, and the website seems to start with the white people in the 1700’s. Anywho, Hot Springs had it’s heyday in the late 1800’s early 1900’s. We stayed in the Historic Arlington Hotel,

which was reviewed highly by Family Fun Magazine. It had a gorgeous lobby, and I guess George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Yoko Ono, and Barbara Streisand have stayed there. Possibly in the presidential suite? , but probably not in our room, which was very historic. But it had a pretty view.

Know this though: Reserving a crib in advance, and then calling again in advance to make sure you have a crib is a waste of time. Also, asking for a crib 3 more times will get you nowhere. But if you say that you have asked for a crib 6 times, then a manager will call you half an hour later and ask if you have a crib yet, and if you say no, then you will soon get a crib. On the second day of your visit.

But back to the bath! So I read a review in Family Fun magazine about a mom and daughter who went and had the hot springs bath plus a massage for $60.00. And the whole thing takes 90 minutes. I thought it sounded great. Then at the family reunion, a few days before our trip to Hot Springs, someone who had been there said something about how they rub you to get your circulation going. That sounded a little odd. But then I was looking at a brochure for the Buckstaff Bath House and the attendants looked like my grandma, and therefore nice and business-like. And here is a picture from the Buckstaff brochure:
See? So modest! Of course, I went to the Arlington, not the Buckstaff. (And the ladies I met in the sauna said the Arlington is the best.) Baths and massages can be booked 4 months in advance, but when you wait until 20 minutes before you want one, you end up with an appointment at 7:30 am the next day. Jack had been getting me up around 6:30 every day, so this was no problem for me. I checked in, and the people were really nice and they gave me the impression that someone would be there to guide me through every step, etc. I went through the big door and looked around for the attendant. After a while, I found her napping on a couch, so I just wandered around trying to figure out what to do next until she woke up. She handed me a towel with velcro around the top to change into, and a key for a locker. I would classify myself as medium sized, but when I tried to wrap the towel around me, there was only a tiny bit of overlapping velcro. I had to wrap it loosely to get the velcro to stick. I guess the average bather is a lot bigger? Thermal baths are supposed to be a treatment for obesity, so maybe. Then I went to the bath section where I met the bath house attendant, whose name I forgot but she was the Bath House Employee of the Year. (Per her name tag, which I obviously only partially memorized.) I am going to call her Susan. She said, “Head down to tub number 5, take your towel off, leave your key on your wrist.” That is where the confusion started with me not really understanding what she said to do with the towel. The baths were in a little private room, and I went in there and was staring at the tub trying to work out the logistics of where to put the towel and how to get in gracefully, since it was pretty deep, and really early in the morning. The next thing I knew, Susan was in there. “Take your towel off and get in.” The rest of our conversations were pretty one sided with me either saying “OK.” Or “Yes.” It helped that she was pretty bossy and business like.

“Drink this it will sweat and relax you.” (Hot Mineral Water.)
“Drink this it will sweat and relax you.”
“How you feel? You feel good.”
“How you feel? You feel good.”
“Lift your leg.”
“Other leg.”
“Left your arm.”
“Other arm.”
Wait, you are really scrubbing me with a loofah? Weird. At least it will be only my arms and legs. Oh, and my stomach. Hmm.
“How you feel, you feel good?”
At this point I got to put my towel back on and keep it on until the massage. Modesty, restored!
Then it was off to the sauna, where I met three other really nice ladies, one of whom was on the far other end of the towel fitting spectrum.
“How you feel, you feel good?”
Then I laid on a cot and Susan wrapped hot towels around my legs, arms, body, and head and put a cold towel on my face. She continued to replace the cold towels until I cooled off from the bath and sauna. Then off for a massage. I liked Susan, and I really recommend her, assuming that is her name. Just ask for the employee of the year, 2007.

Long story longer, we also went to the Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo,

a Mineral Water museum,

shopping, out on Lake Hamilton,

and Luke went horse back riding. So, so fun. Then we toured the historic bath house and National Park visitor center, which was eerily similar to the actual bathhouse that I had experienced. I was sort of glad that I did the tour last.

There was lots of sweating and relaxing. What more could you ask of a family vacation?

>We’re Back!

>We are back from our trip to Arkansas! Did you miss me? I scheduled a bunch of posts to appear while we were gone to keep things interesting. I have lots of fodder for future posts, but for now I’ll just say that we had a great time, and our road trip went very well. I have lots of great pictures and I even located the card reader, but alas, I can’t find the camera. (This picture of Luke is Aunt Audrey’s*.)

But, I will just share these two big milestones:
Luke rode a horse!
Jack got a tooth!

(Aunt Audrey is actually cousin Audrey, but since she was Aunt Audrey even in her own internal dialog this week, I’ll just go with it.)

>Now and Then

>Sometimes when I am taking pictures of Jack, I try to recreate poses that I took of Luke. I feel very proud of myself for remembering those old pictures so well. Then after I have taken the pictures I go back and compare. Hmm, not exactly the same. It’s funny to see that chubby little face and all that drool though.

Jack:

Luke: