Model Behavior

Apparently Luke felt bad about his behavior last weekend because he certainly made up for it this weekend. He's been perfect. Absolutely an angel. He's been fun, happy, agreeable, hilarious AND he's been eating lots and taking very long naps. Friday was summer-like so we went to the park after work and strolled along Southport with Luke in the wagon. On the way home, I saw him nodding off in his ride so I carried him the rest of the way. He fell asleep on my shoulder so when we got home, I took him to his room and gently laid him on the bed while I changed his diaper and clothes. He never woke up through all of it so I put him in the crib for the night. The best part is that is was only 7:00 PM so Matt and I had the rest of the night to sit back and relax....ahhhh....peace and quiet.

On the nutrition front, I bought some gummy flintstone vitamins for Luke and they seriously taste like gummy bears. He loves them and gets a little angry when he can only have one. I give him his vitamin with his fish oil capsules and he is in hog heaven. If they could only package up broccoli and spinach into these lovely little gummies!

So we're currently in prep mode for the family pilgrimage to Chicago for Luke's 2nd birthday. Luke's first victim, um, I mean visitor will be arriving on Wednesday. How on earth am I going to to keep his cream cheese crusted fingers off my clean house until then?

Oh yeah, the countdown has begun for our first oceanic beach trip together since our honeymoon. We're at about the 5 week mark. Not only is this trip for pleasure, but it was actually recommended by Matt's doctor as the cure to his vitamin D deficiency. If you were wondering how little sun we see, let's put it this way, Matt has lower vitamin D than my sister's geriatic patients.

This is Matt after I asked him to unload the dishwasher:

Luke and I dancing to the the Laurie Berkner DVD (referenced in the Crack for Toddlers post):

Cut Your losses

After visiting the PP (refer to post below) Matt, Luke and I got into a huddle to decide if we would cut our losses and run for the car (to save whatever stamina we had left for our 6 scheduled trips to the park) or take our chances and get some lunch at the mall food court. We were so exhausted from the PP that we clearly weren't thinking and decided to head for the food court. We thought the food court would be a good place to blend in a cranky, spastic, almost 2 year old. We were wrong. Again. The food court, on this particular day was full of model 2 year olds who's activity of choice was to sit nicely with their parents and eat a civilized lunch while Luke's activity of choice involved spraying ketchup and water into the faces of his tired parents.

We're home now. The little dragon is currently napping in his lair. We're headed for a nap as well. The lesson of the day is: Cut Your Losses!

I Hate the Picture People!

We had Luke's picture taken at the Picture People (a chain of picture studios that cater to kids) today and all I can say is that I really, really hate that place. This is the 2nd time we've been to the Picture People (PP for short) and this is the 2nd time I've walked out of there feeling like I wanted to hurt someone or something. AARGH! The PP might be the most frustrating place on earth!

Let me tell you why I hate the PP. I hate the PP for many reasons:

I don't like my kid to have his picture taken while doing a traditional "pose." Barf.
I don't like the stupid, corny, uncreative, pushy people that work there.
I don't like one PP employee in particular - the saleswoman who tries to pick out the pictures that I like for me - we have very different tastes lady.
On the way home, Matt asked me if I meant to "mask" my dislike of said PP employee, and I said "nope."
IT TAKES TO FREAKING LONG! My toddler can last through the photo shoot, but he can't last while you try to push your corny products on me and he can't last while you take care of other customers while I'm waiting for you to print out MY pictures!

OK, vent over, thanks for letting me get that out.

On the flip side, we did get some really cute pictures of Luke despite that mass amounts of frustration. We had a rough start to the photo shoot this time which included whining and crying. Luke was "that" kid for like 15 minutes, then he turned it around and we got some great shots of him. I wish I could post them here but I can't :(

And just so you know, I'm not the only one who feels this way about the PP. Two friends of mine from work also feel this way except that they both came away with zero good pictures after their shoots. We like trading horror stories so I've got some good lunch time talk for tomorrow!

Pure Cuteness

I wanted to include these pictures in my post below but then I decided that it needed to be an Easter only post. I literally can't stop taking pictures of this kid; I'm addicted! Mr. Personality was out in full force this weekend and I managed to capture a few of his antics on camera.

This first picture is Luke's impression of a diaper model:



Luke loves giving kisses! He is very much a "kiss you on the mouth" toddler and this style isn't reserved for humans only. Below Luke is giving a kiss to Decky:

Luke is a being a big boy and pushing his own stroller:

We cleaned out our storage closet and Luke took the opportunity to take a step back in time. He decided to lounge about in his infant carseat which he is obviously too big for. It was a cute stroll down memory lane

Easter 2009

We kicked off the Easter festivites yesterday with some Easter Egg coloring. We weren't sure if Luke would be into it, but of course, he was. He showed us his art skills by creating unique egg colors by dunking them into lots of different colors buckets. He didn't quite get that the eggs were fragile and attempted to toss/throw them into the buckets. He also would squeeze them too hard and they would crack. When the Easter Bunny saw how much fun Luke was having, he decided to visist our house! It's a good thing the Easter Bunny had Luke's Easter basket complete by 3:45 am because that's when Luke decided to get up today. Oy. tired. Despite the early start to our day, we actually had a pretty laid back Easter. Luke found and attacked his basket before we headed out to the burbs to have dinner with Mike and Bev Addona. We hung out there all afternoon and came home and had a peaceful evening. I'm not gonna lie, Lukey consumed quite a bit of sugar, but isn't that the purpose of Easter baskets?


Here are some photos from our weekend:


Luke working on the eggs:






Loving his Easter basket:

Finally, a New Post!

Ok, so I've been pretty busy with Matt going back and forth to Detroit and all, so I've been slacking on updating the blog- sorry!! As I type, I've got the NCAA Championship basketball game on in the background. Matt is actually at the game in Detroit - I nice little "thank you" gift for all of his hard work from a colleague at KPMG. I'm going to try to see if I can see him in the crowd :)

We had a great weekend with our neighbors, the Callahans up at Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. We did a lot of eating and a lot of drinking - I should clarify that I did the eating and Matt did the drinking. Now that's what I call team work!

So the wee one has decided he likes to take showers. In fact, he took 2 today. He took one with me this morning before I went to work and he took one by himself this evening. Tonight, I was trying to get him to take a bath and he would refuse while saying "shouch" which is "shower" in Luke speak. So I put him in the shower thinking he didn't really want to take one but I was wrong! He played with the soaps, shampoos, body washes, etc. while I basically hosed him down with the removable spray thingy. He LOVED it and did not want to get out! When I finally convinced him (and by "convinced" I mean forced) to get out he carried on with his normal running naked around the house while shrieking routine. I truly love the sound of the pitter patter his little feet make while running on the hard wood floors.

One last quick funny story of the night...Luke likes to climb and sit on the cushions on the back of the couch which I normally don't worry about since the back of the couch sits flush against the wall. Well tonight, I thought he was doing the same thing but when I turned around, the little booger was standing on the back of the couch getting ready to throw himself down. He giggled when I turned around confirming that he knew what he was doing that little dare devil! I, of course, thwarted his plan and brought his little bum to safety. Phew!