missing photos

I wanted to post a few of those pictures from our Lynden trip that didn't upload when I wrote that other post. I didn't want to leave them out!

Sleeping on Daddy's shoulder. Must have been nice and snug in that snowsuit!

(I just HAD to rub it in again, Matt, sorry.)

Getting ready to open Christmas presents.

Jung's gift from Matt's mom...

Sheet music for piano. He was pretty happy!

Charles' gift from Matt's mom...

A football.

Apparently, footballs are hard to come by in Taiwan so Charles was thrilled with his present.

Matt, modeling his new sweater from Eric.

Luke's very first Christmas present! (He had just woken up so he was a little out of it. He quickly regrouped and was soon ALL excited about the gifts - mostly the paper and bows!)

Uncle Eric helping Luke open a present...

Luke was too excited about his new train from Grammie to even notice that Candace had put 2 bows on his head!

"open it up already, I'm ready to play!"

"Next!"

Playing with the ribbons

Charles gave Mom DeBoer a fan from Taiwan and Chinese candies.

Luke trying to feed Charles a ribbon.... Luke, not everyone likes to eat paper items, sorry.

Teething Woes

Luke is teething yet again. His two top teeth are causing all the pain and discomfort this time. He doesn't seem to really be bothered by it except at night - go figure. Last night I was up three times with him. I gave him Tylenol but that only lasts for 3-4 hours and I don't like the idea of giving him Tylenol every time he wakes up during the night. Even after giving him Tylenol it seems that the only thing that will settle him back down so he (and I) can get some sleep is if I feed him. So, it seems as though we have regressed to the newborn stage where he is waking and wanting to eat every 3-4 hours throughout the night! UGH! This is where my love/hate relationship with baby books comes into play. I fall victim to reading all the appropriate baby books at times like this - when I am frustrated, tired and at my wits end and don't know what else to do. The trouble is I end up thinking 'if I just read this particular book and do what is recommended by this esteemed author then the sun will shine, birds will sing and hallelujah, the baby will sleep or eat or whatever it is I am concerned about at the time'. Boo, I say. Boo.

If it were only that easy. The problem with reading these books is that when I am up at 4 am (for the third time that night and need to be up in 2 hours) I think back to what the baby books say I should be doing and end up feeling worse about the situation...much worse. I have tried several different strategies to get Luke to sleep through the night with little to no success. I am not strong enough to let him cry it out. Well, I have let him cry it out when I am extremely frustrated and annoyed but I hate it and it doesn't work. That, and I am not consistent enough to let him cry it out for days on end. By the third or fourth night of 'crying it out' I am exhausted and in tears myself and then end up feeding him just so that I can get some peace and sleep. I think the most frustrating thing is that he was sleeping through the night at 5 months and now has been up several times a night for the past 6 weeks. Grrrrr.

In my better moments, I remind myself that "this too shall pass". And then I hide the baby books so I am not tempted to read them again and further torture myself. Ahh, motherhood.

A Merry Thanksgiving in Lynden

A belated Happy Thanksgiving and an early Merry Christmas to all of you! We were able to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas (a bit early) in Lynden, WA with Matt's family. It was SO wonderful to see everyone again and meet some new additions! This was Matt's brother's first time meeting Luke~ which was so great. We also got to meet Eric's girlfriend, Candace, Andrea's boyfriend, Jordan, and introduced the fam to Jung and Charles. We were able to be together from Tuesday (Nov. 24) through Sat. (Nov. 28) and, as expected, the time flew by but we cherished every moment together. I have LOTS of pictures (and more that for some reason didn't upload this time - something to look forward to) so I'm going to let the pictures do the talking rather than write paragraphs upon paragraphs about our time in Lynden. So without further adieu...

My parents bought a snow suit for Luke (for our trip to Chicago for Christmas). Its a bit big for Luke right now but still works. We had to try it on him before packing it - Matt was convinced we wouldn't need it in WA, laughing at me, saying that I was being a crazy paranoid mother. We ended up having to call Matt's mom to make the final decision about the need for it - she agreed with me (as usual) and into the suitcase it went. Good thing too, we ended up needing it a few times! In your face, Matt. :)

Luke's first plane ride! He did VERY well on the plane. I was pretty nervous about it. I got the 'ok' from Luke's pediatrician to give him a small amount of benedryl before taking off, just to help him sleep. I'm not convinced it worked but he did sleep for the first 45 minutes. He probably would have slept longer but my arm was positioned in such a way that it was aching so badly and in trying to pass him over to Matt, Luke woke up and that was the end of that.

He was into EVERYTHING on the plane in his waking hours. Luckily we sat by some new grandparents who told me that they were not bothered by him at all and rather enjoyed his playing on the plane.

Luke and Grammie reading a book. The cat, Cali, decided she needed some story time too apparently. Luke was not so sure what to make of the cat taking over Grammie's lap.

The whole family playing scrabble. Notice that Matt, Eric, and Jordan are all being goobers in this picture. Ahh, family.

Meeting Uncle Eric (or Uncle 'E' as Eric refers to himself)

Uncle 'E' feeding Luke - his first time feeding a baby. LOVE the look on his face!

"What, that's it? No pumpkin pie?"

Playing with Uncle Eric

Playing with Auntie Andrea

I'm not sure if I meant to capture Luke's face on camera or not, but I thought this picture was too funny to leave out of the blog. (If you can't tell, Luke is working on filling his britches)

Uncle Eric's first time changing a diaper! We saved the poopy one for him! Candace got the whole thing on video and the commentary is hilarious.

Eric's face during the process -priceless.

Relaxing, watching football, waiting for the feast to be ready

Mom DeBoer, hard at work in the kitchen.

Mom DeBoer and Jordan putting some of the final touches on our Thanksgiving meal

Luke's First Thanksgiving! In his highchair observing as all the food is put on the table. MMMM

The spread! I am getting hungry all over again.

Everything was delicious! We all over ate, then rested a bit, and ate more later!

Matt, Eric, Candace, Andrea and Jordan went to watch the Broncos game on Thanksgiving evening. It wasn't on regular television so they had to research places that were open on Thanksgiving in order to find a place to watch the game. While they were rooting on the Broncos, Mom DeBoer, Charles and I played scrabble and watched Luke explore around Grammie's house a bit more.

Luke was helping Grammie keep score. He was more interested in sucking on the pen I think.

We figured that since we were playing with letters and forming words, we should introduce Luke to his letters too! Grammie has some books just for Luke under her coffee table - we was very into it.

Well, maybe more into eating it. (It was Thanksgiving after all.)

On Black Friday we avoided shopping and the crowds but ventured out of the house anyway. I can't remember the name of the place we went to at the moment. I'm sure it'll come to me as soon as I publish this blog, oh well. It was probably the nicest day we had the whole time we were in Lynden so we bundled up (grateful for Luke's snow suit once again), got some coffee at Woods, and went for a walk along the pier.

It was beautiful, chilly, but beautiful.

Thankful for Woods coffee.

More scenic pictures

The whole family. Good looking bunch... this year's Christmas card perhaps?

We attempted to get a family photo of just us as well. It took a few shots, but we ended up getting a decent one.

I love this photo. This was about 2 minutes before Luke fell sound asleep on Matt's shoulder~ I have a few adorable pictures of that but they didn't upload this time. oh well.

On Saturday we went down to Seattle and wandered around Pike Street Market.

We had to stop by the booth where they throw the fish!

It was such a great time! It was hard to say goodbye, as usual, but we are very thankful for an amazing family and the opportunity to get together and celebrate the holidays. Here's to looking forward to many more holiday celebrations to come.

Bouncy boy

A friend described a baby's first few months as being the 'plant stage' - the baby is cute, nice to look at, and take a lot of care but they don't really do much and there is not much you can do with them. I think I agree with that theory, at least most of it. Now that Luke is out of the 'plant stage' he is SO much fun! He has been getting more and more playful. It is so much fun to actually be able to play with him and have him interact with us more and more. Not that those first few months of his life were not fun, they were in their own way, but we are very much enjoying this stage.

This is one of my favorite videos of playing with Luke... a bouncy, LOUD little boy! :)

Of Mice and more

I thought I would try to make a Halloween costume for Luke this year. My original thought was that Luke would be dressed up as a snail or a turtle since he's scooting around but not quite crawling yet. But then I added up how much it would cost to buy all the needed materials for the costume, plus the amount of time and energy it would take to put it all together, all for Luke to spit up all over it and wear it for a grand total of 1 hour... I reconsidered. Walmart had some costumes for infants for $8.00 ~ not a bad deal at all! By the time I got around to purchasing a costume all that was left was a mouse or a flower (I didn't think Matt would appreciate me dressing his BOY up as a pink flower so mouse it was and such a cute mouse at that!) I sent Matt a text message saying that there was a mouse in our house. Matt came home all annoyed that now he has to get rid of mice as well as the gophers that are chewing up our lawn... only to find that the mouse was a 17lb, smiling, happy little man all dressed up!

The day before halloween Luke and I went to The Village (an assisted living facility for seniors) in Redlands with some friends. It was so fun. Luke didn't much care about going in all honesty, but I had fun getting him all dressed up and getting out of the house with friends ~ good times.

The residents passed out candy ~ I let Luke take some, I didn't have the heart to tell them that Luke couldn't eat any of it... plus, it meant that I got to enjoy the treats later on. It's a win win situation really. :)

Luke in his costume. He appears to be enjoying the plastic bag more than the candy.

Mmmm. Dots and Butterfinger

(he was far too interested in the candy to bother looking at the camera)

Friends ~ Eva the Monkey and Mackenzie the Goldfish

(apparently there was an animal theme for halloween this year)

More friends... and a bit of a meltdown.

Aliyah the bumble bee and Maddie the princess.

This was after a long morning and possibly too much sugar. :)

We went to a friend's house for lunch after the Halloween festivities. Luke had a blast scooting all around on the wood floors- he can move much faster without the drag of carpet. He kept attacking Maddie (in a non-violent way). It was too cute. (Thanks again Julie and Jill!)

Luke and Maddie

On Oct 31st we got to dress Luke up all over again and went to two more halloween get togethers. We normally are not big into celebrating halloween ~ in fact, Matt insists that we refer to it as Reformation Day. But we couldn't pass up the opportunity to get together with friends! Unfortunately I thought about bringing my camera too late and we were already on our way. Oh well. Matt was a 'fair weather fan' wearing a Yankees hat and Broncos shirt (lame) and I was a cowgirl wearing a plaid shirt, braids and cowboy hat (still lame but not as much as Matt's get up). You'll just have to use your imaginations to picture us all dressed up.

I thought I'd include a few more pictures. Who knows when I'll get around to posting again so I'd better make the most of this one. :)

Luke has decided it is much more fun to play underneath his exersaucer

Luke normally wakes up from a nap in a good mood - however, I took this picture when he was supposed to be going down for a nap, not waking up from one. He was having far too much fun playing with the bumpers. He did not take a nap that morning, surprise surprise.