Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day everyone! I had a great 3rd Mother's Day, well it was more of a Mother's Weekend since we technically celebrated yesterday. Today I slept in (all the way until 8 am!), had breakfast with Matt and Luke, went on a solo Target run, and played with Luke the rest of the day. Matt and Luke got me a much needed gift card to Sephora :) I was thinking today about my past 2 Mother's Days...the first one I remember, the second one, not so much.

My first Mother's Day, I spent at the NICU since Luke was still in the hospital due to being born early. I remember the nurses made these cute little signs to hang around the babies' beds. It was very thoughtful. They really did all they could to make the NICU a pleasant place to be. Here's a picture:

I'm surprised I remember the first Mother's Day and not the 2nd because I was so much more in a fog for the first one!

Anyway, now that "my" weekend is over, I'll need to start planning for Father's Day which is right around the corner. I'm guessing Matt doesn't want a gift card to Sephora, but I could be wrong.

A cute Luke story before I let you go since I wouldn't have just had a Mother's Day without him...

On my trip to target today, I bought Luke some crayola water paints and a pad of paint paper. I'm talking the basic, 8 color little paint palette that comes with the super skinny paint brush that most of us remember having as kids. So I get him all set up on a splash mat with an itty bitty amount of water and a single piece of paper and his paint. I demonstrate how to use the paint and even do some practice strokes with him. I'm making lunch at the same time so I had turned my back for .2 seconds and when I turned back, Luke had a green and yellow beard! Good thing Crayola makes non-toxic products!! I shouldn't have been surprised because of his previous incident of stamping himself on the face with a stamper. ay yi yi... paper and skin are not the same!

Update to the Water Problem / Mother's Day Breakfast

Well, we know where the water came from! As suspected, it came from our upstairs neighbor's bathroom. awesome. She left the sink on for a few hours on Thursday and flooded her bathroom. Apparently her people never thought to contact us about it. Anyway, they did respond when we mentioned the warm water dripping through the ceiling. This is the 3rd time in 3.5 years, wtf!?! They did offer to pay for all damages so at least they are taking responsibility. Happy Mother's Day weekend to me :)

Speaking of Mother's Day (notice the segue) we went out to breakfast at my favorite spot this morning, M. Henry and it was M. delicious! I wish I could reference more angelic behavior by Luke at said breakfast, but then I would be a lying liar. I loved my fruit topped pancakes with vanilla cream but I could have done without the glass of ice cold water that was dumped in my lap ( I won't name names).

Hmmm, I just noticed a theme with water and Mother's Day - I suppose tomorrow I'll need to wear my rain gear all day, inside and out!

One more nugget for you, Luke's favorite word of the day - "NO!" Where did my one year old go, I want him back.

Dunk Dunk

Advertising at its finest - Dunkin Donuts has claimed a spot in the mind of a 2 year old. "Dunk, dunk," is what Luke says as we drive past Dunkin Donuts (DD). He can read! Ok, maybe he just recognizes the logo but either way, one would think that as wee one such as Luke should have no idea what DD is. His little sponge of a brain soaks up every.single.thing. We occasionally have a DD coffee but certainly are not regulars. Luke tends to be a scavenger and scoops up "finished" coffee cups hoping to get the last drop pooled at the bottom. He loves coffee. But people are going to think we feed this kid donuts! So not true, we only feed him coffee. Ok, we don't willingly give him coffee. The little bugger is just smart and good at recognizing logos!

On another note, it's been a while since the unit above us has leaked water through our ceiling so it seems fitting that some water arrived tonight. AWESOME. I love dealing with condo repairs. This is the 3rd time this has happened --ARGH! At least tomorrow is Friday :)

2

When people say that time flies by too fast, they aren't joking! Luke is 2 years old today but honestly, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around that. I don't even remember what life was like pre-Luke, other than I know that I used to get a lot more sleep. I probably had a lot more free time then, too. But I wouldn't trade Luke for anything. I've just enjoyed the best 2 years of my life (so far).

We had Luke's 2nd birthday party in style (obviously)! We partaayyed with about 25 guests at Seven Ten Lounge in Lincoln Park. Yes, his 2nd birthday party was at a "lounge," but we had a private party room with bowling lanes. Don't worry, only the adults were allowed to drink this time. A great time was had by all and Luke loved the bowling. He really enjoyed the ball return, too. I'm not even going to talk about the generous toy store Luke received.

Behold:

In addition to Luke's birthday party, we had a whole weekend of events planned for out out-of-town family. Saturday night, we headed out for some libations, some of us had more than others, matt, tommy, karis while Luke hung out with grammy Zappia. And Sunday we had a bagel brunch followed by a Cubs game in the bleachers at Wrigley and then a Dairy Queen ice cream cake celebration after that. I know, I know...what a perfect weekend I arranged. Sigh.

I'm not sure that each of Luke's birthdays can get better than the rest since the bar has now been raised pretty high for birthday 3. Birthday #2 almost required a rehearsal dinner if that puts things in perspective for you.

Luke wants to thank all those who participated this weekend and made his 2nd birthday a success! He's very aware of how spoiled he is but he loves it all the same!

No more presents?

Some other pics from the weekend:

Fun with the #2 balloon Uncle Nick bought for me:

Mom and Dad out on the town:

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!