Easter

Here are some pictures from our Easter, it was alot of fun. Luke is all into it now, and understands it better. He understands the Easter bunny, but he also understands about Jesus dying on the cross for us. Ben is just old enough to participate, and that was fun too. We decorated eggs, and you see our finished products. And then the egg hunting. They were both excited to see their baskets, which had a few small toy items and a movie for each of them, and some candy that was too big to put inside an egg. Well, then you see Ben crying on the floor. That's because when he saw the candy in the basket, he would not stop crying until he got a piece. He just sat on the floor and cried. Finally, so he would participate, I put a small chocolate egg in his mouth (second picture of Ben), and then he was happy as could be and helped Luke get the rest of the eggs. What a stinker. The last two are the best, and only pictures we got of the boys dressed in their clothes for church Easter Sunday. They're humorous at least. Luke has a cheesy look on his face in the first one and Ben wouldn't put the toy hammer down. Second picture, Luke looks just as cheesy and Ben is crying because I took the hammer away to try to get a better picture. Oh, well. At least they make me laugh even if they're not the "best" pictures of them!

Luke's Birthday

So here are FINALLY some pictures from Luke's birthday (only a month later!). I included some of Luke playing with his presents, and several from the party itsself (it was at a local bounce house party place, I think Aaron had as much fun as Luke did!). I had to include the picture of Luke blowing out his birthday candles. Notice no cake-just ice cream sundaes. That's what he likes best anyway. The guy from The Jumping Party who was helping in the party room was very confused as to how we could sing happy birthday without a cake, but it turned out just fine. Even at Luke's four year check up, the doctor asked him if he had cake at his party, and Luke said, "No, I had birthday ice cream." That's my boy.

Fun random shots

Since I have TONS of pictures to put on here, and I finally got around to downloading them from our new camera, here are some various random shots of the family. More "themed" posts and pictures will be coming very soon. Most are pretty self-explanatory, but I'll comment on a few. Aaron took the pics of the boys playing outside. Ben loves sitting in that rocker, so I snapped a picture of him one morning. We both thought the shot of Luke on the swing was cute because he was just in his own little world playing. Ben climbing the ladder shows his little independent streak that is developing; he can climb the ladder up to the slide platform completely by himself now and he's quite proud to do it. And the one of him looking down at Aaron from the little clubhouse part was just too adorable. I took the one of him eating at breakfast because I was laughing at how dirty he was. He has to feed himself these days, and peanut butter and jelly toast is not eaten cleanly! I captured the cute grin amidst the jelly too, and that was an accomplishment. The last one of Luke and Aaron in bed says it all. Luke has always liked to get in bed with us in the mornings, and sometimes he'll go back to sleep. He gets very upset when he comes in our room and Aaron is already up and getting ready for work, because he likes to "sleep with daddy". This morning was actually Easter morning, and since we weren't in a huge rush, Aaron got back in bed with Luke so he could "sleep with daddy" for a few minutes before getting up. I wanted to take their picture because it was sweet, and Luke is about as much a morning person as I am, so there's your shot.... pretty appropriate actually.

Back on the horse, or bicycle

Well, happy to say that Luke is back on the bicycle. He wanted to ride his new bike every day the first week we got it, and then out of nowhere he refused to ride saying he didn't like his bike. Me, being the sympathetic mother that I am, forced him to ride his bike around the corner, to which he screamed in terror and cried the whole time saying, "I'm gonna fall, I'm going too fast" over and over. He didn't understand it's impossible to fall if you're not even pedaling and you have training wheels! Well, after 2 days of forced bicycle riding (who says only trained clinical psychologists are experts in exposure therapy!), with no falls mind you, he suddenly exclaimed that he did like his bike after all and have had 2 days of successful, happy bike riding at normal speeds. Yeah!!!

By the way, I promise birthday and soccer pictures are coming!

Just random

Well, I desperately need to post pictures, but I need to figure out how to download pics from our new camera, so it may be another week or so before that happens, so I'll just write a little about what's going on these days with us.

Luke just turned 4. We had a great party down at a bounce house party place. I believe Aaron had as much fun as Luke did. We did not have birthday cake, because Luke inherited my love of ice cream (although I do enjoy cake as well), we had birthday ice cream and Luke loved that. Luke is maddening and entertaining. He's so full of energy, and gets so excited over the simplest things, it's a joy to watch. Then he makes me want to pull my hair out because of how difficult he has to make everything. Nothing easy with this guy. But anyway, his developing awareness of things around him, and how he expresses things, constantly humor me. Two examples: For those who don't know, Aaron's mom died from cancer just over a year ago. We called her Pamma. Aaron's dad, "Nonni", has since remarried. Her name is Lynda, and she makes Randy happy and the grandkids have all taken to her very well, and we're happy to welcome her to the family. Well, Nonni and Lynda came down for Luke's birthday and we were all eating doughnuts for breakfast. Luke looked at Nonni and said," You had a good time with Pamma last year?" (these days, his reference to anything in the past is called "last year"). Randy replied, "I sure did." And Luke looked at him and said, "Yeah, but you got Lynda now, that right?" We had a good chuckle over this, it was a sweet exchange. Second example: One of Luke's good friends is Esther; her daddy Lloyd is black. Someone gave Luke a little figurine of Albert Pujols (who has dark skin) for Luke's birthday because they know how much Aaron loves the Cardinals and Pujols. This figurine is very lifelike, and as Luke looked at it, he suddenly pointed at the face and said, "He like Esther's daddy! They both have... they both... they got....... He's black!" It was so funny watching him search for the word to try to describe his skin color, and we got so tickled how he got so excited comparing him to Esther's daddy. The next day, Luke brought the figurine in to me and said, "What's his name?" I reminded him that it was Albert Pujols, and he looked at me and said, "Yeah, but I'll call him Lloyd!" (In case you're wondering, Lloyd and his wife Julia got a kick out of this story too.)

I've also been wondering what has possessed my child lately. Luke has been extremely emotional, and cries alot easier than he used to; that in itself I don't mind so much, because it's better than the raging fits he likes to throw (which we still see sometimes). But he's doing other things very out of character. I forced him to ride his bike tonight-exposure therapy I say-, which he LOVED the first week he had it and wanted to ride it everyday, but tonight he cried the whole time and screamed in a terrified voice, "I'm gonna fall, I'm going too fast!" and would barely go faster than a snail pace. What happened to my little daredevil speed demon? And at his last soccer practice, he ran off the field in tears during the scrimmage because he didn't get the ball every time it was kicked. At his first game, he didn't leave the field crying (he had been given many pep talks about not giving up), but he did leave the field early several times and didn't finish his time on the field. He really had no good reasons; once it was because he fell and got mud on his hands (he said he needed a shower- like he's ever cared about being dirty before!) and once he wanted a drink, and once he had no reason. What happened to my tireless energetic aggressive child!

Ben is growing and quickly changing from my little baby boy to a little toddler- makes me sad to say it! He's still quite the character, and his language skills are beginning to explode. He has quite a few little words, and he uses several signs regularly. He's too cute when he puts his thumb in his mouth and carries his little bear around, and he's developing some defense mechanisms against big brother that are quite annoying! He has this half yell/half growl he does anytime something doesn't go his way. Doesn't matter if he dropped a toy, Luke took it away, Luke hit him over the head with it, or if Ben just looked at something and it wasn't given to him immediately- same response. His teacher at school (he goes 2 days like Luke from 9-2) even commented one day on how he's got the yell down pat. Of course, she called it cute, I don't think it's quite so cute. But it's fun to watch them play, Ben follows Luke around and is going to be quite the pest of a little brother I think. I love to watch them interact, and it's amazing to see how different he is from his older brother (for better and for worse).

Anyway, lots of thoughts on my little men. I'll have pictures very soon, I promise!

Happy birthday dear Lukey, and other stuff...

It's been awhile so I'm including various pictures from the last month. Our church has a parent-child "date night", so I got to take Luke out. We went to the church and they had lots of sweet treats for dessert, and they took your picture and the kids made a picture frame to decorate. So I included a picture of Luke and I before our first big date; there was one picture of Luke with a more normal grin, but this one definitely is more of his real personality and better than the eyes squinted shut shot. There are several of the boys coloring/painting at the table. Luke likes to draw or color (which is really just more scribbling on the page, he is able to do more than just scribble, but his preference is to simply "scribble-scrabble" as he calls it), so Ben must follow suit. I bought Ben some special crayons at Christmas that are more difficult for him to eat, so that's what the toy-looking things are that Ben is rubbing on the paper. Well, Luke quickly decided this day that he wanted to paint, and so Ben was quickly unhappy with his crayons and wanted a paintbrush too. At first, I was just going to let Ben rub a dry brush, or at the most a dipped in water only brush, but then I thought why not just let Ben paint too? He enjoyed it and if you can see the painting at all, he did it all by himself! The only help I gave was when he occasionally tried to paint off the paper (oh, and I did put the paint on the brush for him, but the painting itself was all him!)

Next, but definitely not least, today is Luke's birthday! My oldest baby is now 4. We got him a bike for his birthday, his poor knees were bumping the handle bars of his tricycle. He did so good, and it's not just mommy bragging good, it's he can really ride a bike good. At first, he would push back on the pedals on accident and bring himself to a halt, but he figured out pretty quick to keep pushing forward. I still had to help him out to get up the driveway into the garage, and occasionally to get his feet pedaling again, but he almost instantaneously took off down the cul-de-sac. I even had to jog a few times to keep up with him! Aaron said he had one of those moments that are forever burned in your memory as he watched me and Luke take off down the cul-de-sac with him riding his bike, and thinking how big Luke looked and wondering how is already big enough to be doing this, riding a bike?!?

He's always been such a motor driven child, I've predicted he will be quite the athlete. I guess we'll soon find out because today was also our first soccer practice! We were late, because I pulled one of my rare, but true, airhead moments and had the time wrong. We were out riding our bike and my friend Andria called (whose son Braden is one of Luke's best friends, also pictured) and said "where are you?" I instantly knew I had messed up and realized I had the time wrong, so we missed the first 25 minutes of practice, but I still got a couple of pics. He was so excited he had to put his soccer uniform on when we got home and he wore it the rest of the evening.

Well, there will be birthday party pictures coming soon (party is this coming weekend), and I will include more soccer pictures after he plays a few games.

Happy birthday Lukey!

The things kids do.

Two stories, one on each of my children.
Ben: He's just now learning to talk and communicate, and is beginning to understand more of what we tell him. He's 15 months now, and will say "no-no, bye, hi, night-night, ma-ma, da-da" and he will sign: please (rubbing his chest), more (touching his hands together), eat (touching his mouth, or his nose), and all done/finished (waving his hands in the air). However, with the signing, we generally say the word first, like "are you all done?" and then he will sign. Well, today he initiated the sign and I couldn't resist. I'm not a morning person, I wake up slowly and it's not uncommon for the boys to wake up and be playing on the bed with me while I try to wake up. Ben's new thing is to climb off the bed and go explore the house, and lately he will empty his diaper bag and bring me whatever snacks he finds in there (because he wakes up hungry and wants me to fix him breakfast). This morning, as I'm being lazy and trying to wake up, he crawls off the bed and returns a few minutes later carrying a bag of fruit snacks. I said, "no Ben". He grunted and shoved the bag in my hands. I said "no" again and gave them back. After doing this 2 or 3 more times, he began persistently rubbing his chest, very fast and hard, in an adament signing of "please". He got his fruit snacks.

Luke: He is potty trained, and has been for almost 2 years now (he trained very early and easy, the only thing he's done that hasn't been a battle in his whole life!) He will take himself to the bathroom, but is not yet able to wipe himself for #2 , so it's not uncommon for me to be across the house and suddenly hear Luke yell, "mommy I'm done!". Well, today I was in the middle of getting Ben dressed, and he was screaming his head off for no apparent reason except he didn't want to be lying there, and Luke comes walking bottomless down the hallway, "mommy, look at my bottom". I reply, "what's wrong with your bottom", and he responds by bending over slightly so I can see that there's a mess there that I need to clean up. I said, "OK, go back to the bathroom and I'll be right there to wipe you." He goes and a few minutes later returns carrying some soiled toilet paper and said, "mommy look at this mess". I figured he attempted to wipe himself, because we've been working on it, so I told him to go put the paper in the toilet and I would be right there to finish. When I go into the bathroom to make sure he's clean, he tells me there was a big mess on the wall but he cleaned it up. Instantly, red flags go up. "Luke, on the wall or do you mean on the potty?" (there were some traces on the seat lid, so a valid question). His reply, "on the wall". I'm getting worried now but he assures me he cleaned it up. I said, "where on the wall" and he points to a spot, where I can see very slight traces of a mess (he did a pretty good job of cleaning it). So now for the real question: "Luke, how did poop get on the wall?" "Cause I go like this..." and he bends over and shakes his hiny a little. Apparently, he bent over and rubbed his rear on the wall. Why, I don't know, and didn't really bother to ask. I'm just glad that 1) He told me. and 2) He cleaned most of it up. I just had him wash his hands again and instructed him not to do that again.

Oh the things kids do.