Wednesday, May 27, 2009

more please!

Luke has become quite the demanding eater as of late. 

We've begun diversifying his food intake and are trying to get him used to a varied assortments of foods. I don't want him to end up like me-super picky and not really adventurous in the food department. A few of the foods we've introduced have emerged as clear favorites: broccoli and strawberries and an oldie has become more popular-yogurt. When he spots one of these foods, the grunting and hand raising begins.

Hand raising? Yes. Hand raising. Luke has started this crazy thing where he raises his hand when he wants more food. Imagine a kid raising his hand to ask a question in school. That's exactly how Luke looks when he wants more. And I didn't even teach it to him as a crazy teacher/mom thing. He just started doing that completely independent of anything I've taught him.

How can you turn down anything to this face anyways? 

Thursday, May 21, 2009

a little love for our first baby

Seeing as how I'm now getting texts from my youngest brother wondering why I haven't updated the blog in awhile, I've been searching my brain as to what has happened that is exciting in the Waltemeyer home in the last week or so that would merit me creating a new post. Not much...or at least not enough to unload some pictures off my camera yet.

So instead, I will dedicate this post to our first baby: Rosco. Poor guy doesn't get nearly enough love lately and we've been trying to do better with that. Since Luke doesn't really bother him anymore (he actually just pushes him out of the way) he's started to come back around us more and spend more time out of the closet. He's a good dog and we love him.

This one's for you buddy.


Tuesday, May 12, 2009

little of this, little of that

1. Luke has found a new and interesting way to use one of his toys he received for his birthday. He loves to dump all of the blocks out of this bucket and use the bucket as some kind of hat/helmet combo. He really gets a kick out of putting anything on his head that isn't supposed to be there. But real hats? Not so much.

He'll crawl with it on...

...walk with it on...

...and even fall with it on. Thank fully Luke has a hard head and this is usually met with big belly laughs and smiles.

2. Luke loves to spend time with his dad. 


3. Luke now uses his baseball bat to beat the drum. It's hilarious to watch. You can kind of see in the picture how he pulls his chin back which makes a few more chins appear. He also does these loud grunts while he's beating it.

4. He sleeps! Okay, Luke has been an excellent sleeper from the beginning. He just doesn't sleep if there are others around-at all. I was very surprised when I went to get him from a nap and he was still out. Typically when I go in and he's still asleep, he pops right up because he heard the door open. Not his time. I had to document that he actually does sleep. And he looks so cute and peaceful doing it.

5. Isn't he just getting so big and handsome? These are just because I think he's so darn lovable.

6. The egg. Beth got Luke this egg for Easter that has an Elmo figure in it. Luke like s to shake the bejesus out of the egg and then have me help him open it. After its open, all but one half of the egg are chucked to the side and this is what happens.

7. Luke's favorite place to play: inside his toy baskets.


8. We're getting ready for Christmas a little early. Really I found these antlers that are supposed to be for Rosco when we were cleaning out a drawer and put them on Luke. Because he loves anything on his head that isn't a hat, he cracked up wearing these. It's funny to watch your kid running around the house in May with antlers on...

9. ...until he surprised us with the amazing gift of being able to open all of our doors. Thanks soo much for the gift sweet cheeks! Now take it back!


little fish

On Mother's Day, if you couldn't tell from my previous post, we took Luke swimming at Jeanne's and he had a blast. I'm glad that Luke loves the water; it will make it so much easier to get him to swim as much as we'd like this summer! 

These are some of my favorite pictures of the day. Sorry that there are so many. I couldn't choose just a few!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

mother's day

I had an amazing day today, mostly because I was able to share the day with some wonderful people, including the reason I was able to celebrate today-Luke!

And not that I'm keeping count but...

I received a card from Jeanne. I received a card from Holly and Corey. I received a card from Andrea. I received a card from Stef. No card from my husband or child until 5 minutes ago when I asked him for the one he'd picked out when we went shopping together a week ago. And he forged Luke's signature. In his defense though, I did get to pick out my gift (a food processor and bake ware!) early.

Thank you everyone for making this day so memorable and special to me!

Saturday, May 9, 2009

he-man


Luke's newest trick. If we were planning on moving anytime, this might be a helpful skill. But we're not...at least for 30 or so years. For now, it's another crazy thing we'll be enjoying. 

Thursday, May 7, 2009

the hawk

As if you can't tell from previous posts, Luke's hair is typically groomed very neat and orderly-like. When I woke him up from his nap last week, that was not the case. He was such a sweaty kid; it was absolutely disgusting. His hair was soaked and sticking out in all kinds of different directions. I felt a compulsion to fix it.

As I was combing, I thought I'd try "the hawk" as some in my family call it. Kind of sounds like David Hasselhoff's nickname (the Hoff) so I'm not sure if that particular name for it will stick, but it turned out fairly well. It stayed up and wasn't too long or obnoxious.

So now Luke has a new hairstyle to use on the days when he's in a particularly cranky mood...or feeling rebellious...or hard core. Could be more often as he threw his first crying-on-the-floor tantrum yesterday. The things I look forward to...


Wednesday, May 6, 2009

finito

The blog book is off to the presses! Blurb can slurp your blog posts and format them into a book for you. That was all fine and dandy until I realized that every single post was in the exact same identical format. Not too fabulous if you're a little visually-ocd like myself. The pictures didn't all fit quite right and some posts were only two sentences long. Those ones surely didn't merit an entire page! I've spent the last week editing all of my posts from the beginning of the blog until the chair post; basically all the posts documenting Luke's first year of life. I figure that now if I don't get to the scrapbook I intend on eventually doing, I'll have a good record of what happened. 

It was an intensive process, probably due to the fact that the book was 250ish pages when I started it and ended up being 208 pages when all was said and done. Like I said: visually-ocd.

Anywho-glad it's done. I think Keith is even more excited. He actually asked me if he gets his wife back now. 

I'm all yours sweetheart. :)

Sunday, May 3, 2009

waltemeyer version of disneyland

Keith, Luke, and I made our bi-weekly trip to Sam's Club to get our 4 gallons of milk that Keith manages to get through in that time and ended up with a rather large cardboard box to haul our stuff home in. Luke found the box and my bright idea was to put him in and drag him around. He usually likes the cheapest, easiest toys, so why not try this one?

He loved it! Keith ended up swinging him around in a way that made me think of the teacups at Disneyland. He had a great time here, so someday when we make it to Disney, hopefully he'll have a great time there too. *fingers crossed*



because i love bath time

My parents and my sister's family got Luke the cutest monkey-themed decorations for his bathroom for his birthday. The goal is to eventually paint the bathroom to match, but it might take me awhile to get there. For now though, everything is up and looks adorable. The only drawback I have is that there wasn't any coordinating wall decorations that matched the set. After talking my mom and I decided that taking pictures of Luke in the tub, framing them, and hanging them up would be the best idea for now. Here are the ones I think we'll use.

For some reason, I like how the camera caught the water in the picture too. Sort of fits in a bathroom, right?

I'm posting this last picture because this cracks me up. I hate getting my face wet. I don't like when the shower sprays me in the face or even when it drips on me. Yuck. Luke loves this. He cracks up every time we dump water on his head. Crazy!


gabrielle's party

Two weeks ago (yes-I am that far behind) we were invited to go to Gabrielle's first birthday party. It was so fun to get to celebrate her big day with her and to visit with friends we haven't seen in what seems like ages.

Because we had the three babies together, and because we'd forgotten at the previous parties, we attempted to get an updated picture of them together. Needless to say, this picture is getting progressively more difficult as they get older. Most pictures ended up like this.

Luke, Gabrielle, and Ashlyn

After a few tries though, we got as close to a "money shot" as we were going to get. Aren't they so dang cute?

I'd love to add more to the story, but we weren't able to stay very long. Luke's leg was still in a lot of pain and he was not cool with missing his afternoon nap. Very not cool with missing the nap.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

mini monet

At Luke's one year check-up, the doctor was listing off the things that Luke should be able to do by now and things he'll be learning to do before we go visit again. The one thing that seemed to stick with me was the fact that Luke should now hold a crayon and try to use it instead of putting it in his mouth. Sweet! Sounds like a project to me!

After I found some crayons appropriate for Luke's age (or as close to his age as I could get. He's almost the size of a 24 month old so that counts, right?), we set to work. I helped him practice on one page just so he'd know what to do and then he was on his own.


He seemed to have an okay time coloring. It's amazing to me that kiddos even his age already have a preference to which colors they like to use. Luke gravitated to orange. I could offer him any other color, but he'd take orange every time if I let him.

Here's the final product. It's already been placed in a protective plastic sleeve and stored for safe keeping in his memory box. So proud of my boy!

two-ish weeks is too long

For the past two weeks, I've been dealing with the aftermath of the ankle sprain

combined with the lovely timing of Luke's top four teeth coming in all at once

which has not made for the most convenient of times to update the blog. I apologize and I have a lot to catch up on. 

All I know is that the baby, er toddler?, that has been residing with us for the past two weeks was nothing like the kid we knew for the first year of his life. Our theory was that maybe this last year was so great that maybe we used all of our good-baby magic dust during that first year. Luckily, that was not the case. This sweet boy made a return appearance the past few days.

So glad he's back.