Artist

Yesterday Luke painted my food chopper with a Fettuccini noodle. The bizarreness of that event shows he has true artistic potential.

Gingerbread Night

On Sunday we had a few friends over for pizza. For dessert we ate way too much candy while we decorated gingerbread houses. Actually they were cardboard houses covered with graham crackers, but whatever. No one actually eats the gingerbread anyway, right?

Jared was the only one who got the idea of an action shot.

And the finished products:

(Patrick and Keegan)

(Nancy, Hazel, and Justin)

(Jared and me)

I think Jared had the best roof. It was made with nilla wafers. But I really liked Justin and Nancy's love wall. It was lots of fun. Can't wait to do it again next year.

Brothers

Me and My Boys

Luke's Birthday

We celebrated Luke's birthday over a few days. On his actual birthday (Saturday) he woke up bright and early and found his presents (that I had stashed in the corner of my room) before I had a chance to wrap them. He didn't see to mind that he didn't get to tear any paper off of a present. He's not a big fan of that part anyway. But he WAS THRILLED to discover "ki-oh-kee." I found this at a thrift store for $5.25 and knew that Luke would love it. His favorite part is that he can see the CD spinning. To be honest, that's the ONLY part he cares about. He hasn't used the microphones at all. He turned the CD player on and off over and over and over all morning.

Ignore Jared talking in the background and ask yourself this question: How many times could I listen to the first 10 seconds of Joy to the World without wanting to rip my ear off? Apparently, for Luke, it will take days. (He still hasn't gotten there.)

We went to Luke's all-time favorite place Chick fil' A for lunch (It's becoming somewhat of a tradition), and this year the Taylors joined us. Caleb is Luke's best buddy.

Usually Luke doesn't want to leave, but this time when I said we had to go, I didn't even have to do the "say good-bye" rituals like I normally do. He just yelled, "Go Luke's house! Ki-oh-kee!" There was a HUGE meltdown at nap time because Luke didn't want to stop playing with his karaoke machine. I'm not exaggerating when I say huge. He cried for over 40 minutes. Finally, after threatening to throw karaoke in the dumpster and after he wore himself out Luke went to sleep. From that point on, he's been okay to put karaoke away after telling it good-bye. Good thing too because I was serious about getting rid of it.

Luke got a few other presents too. With my mom and dad's money, I got him his very own rice cooker. Yes, you read that correctly. A rice cooker. To go along with his blender and mixer.

Caleb gave him a drill that spins. "It's spinning! It's spinning!" He carried it all over the Chick fil' A play gym.

Luke also got a new kid k'nex dump truck. He likes to load the bolts from his drill set into the truck and dump them out.

I had planned to do some of Luke's favorite things on his birthday (besides Chick fil' A). We were going to go to Yankee Candle to throw pennies in the fountain, and we were going to go to Target ("Circle Store") to see the blow dryers. (No really. Luke LOVES the blow dryer aisle in Target because they have samples of the blow dryers down the entire left side of the aisle. He wants to pick up each blow dryer. He says, "It's off. Yep. It's off. It's all done," and then he moves to the next one and says the exact same thing. And he wants to do it to all 20 of them-- down the aisle and back again.) Alas. He didn't want to leave the house. He just said, "Yuke's house. Ki-oh-kee." So that's what we did pretty much all day until the karaoke machine lost its ultimate appeal, and then he just wanted to play with his rice cooker.

We waited until Monday for the cake and candles because we still had so many Thanksgiving leftovers through the weekend. Luke was pretty upset by the idea of cupcakes or cake. He wanted to make cookies, so we had birthday cookies instead. Luke loved blowing out the candle. Here's the first go-round.

He took just two bites...

and then wanted the candle lit again. He kept saying, "Turn it on. Turn it on." So Jared re-lit it...

about 10 times.

On Thursday we had his birthday party at the Williamsburg Indoor Sports Complex. They have a bounce house area that is only $3 per family on Thursday mornings. Score! The party went smoothly for the most part. There were only 4 crazy things that happened.

#1. When we first got there (to the parking lot), Luke was very upset because it wasn't the bounce house place we had been to before. So he started to cry for the bounce houses. Once he saw them he stopped crying, but he also refused to go into the bounce area. I was worried that I would have to sit outside in the hallway with him while all of his friends got to play. But once Caleb, Rachel, Sophie, and his other friends arrived he went right on in. So no big deal.

I didn't think Luke would bounce because he wouldn't bounce when Megan and Taylie took him to Inflation Nation when they came to Virginia when Micah was born. And when he went to Inflation Nation with Nathan, Skyler, and Sarah it took him over an hour before he would even touch a bounce house. I expected him to do this the entire time:

check out the fans that blow up the bounce houses. (In the Thanksgiving post, I talked about how Micah loves Nancy. Luke does too. He kept making her sit down to show her the fan.)

Nancy's daughter, Hazel, also liked the fan. But not as much as Luke. No one likes fans as much as Luke.

In this picture, Luke was trying to convince Keegan to turn the fan off. It didn't work. She wouldn't do it.

Here are some of his friends and my friends at the bounce house of choice for most of the smaller kids.

The babies slept mostof the time.

Another fan!

Crazy thing #2: I was talking to a friend and scanned the room to look for Luke. He was standing in the middle of the room with his pants around his ankle yanking at his diaper tabs. So I ran over and reminded him that we have to wear our pants. Not sure what was going on his head-- he's never done that before.

Crazy thing #3: The bounce house closed at 11:30. While everyone was gathering their things together to get ready to leave, Luke went over to the big bouncy slide and watched his friend Luke P. climb up the ladder. He started saying, "Climb up." I thought he meant that Luke P. was climbing but when my Luke started trying to get on the bounce slide I realized that HE wanted to go. So I took him up one time.

He loved it and shouted "Again! Again!" But it was closed. The other houses were already deflating. Leave it to my kid to refuse all bounces until it's no longer an option and then throw a fit about it.

But for $3, we'll go back again soon.

Crazy thing #4: On the way out Luke wandered off. I thought he was with a friend up ahead but he wasn't. While looking down the hallway, I heard a little , "Hello? How's it going?" coming from an office to my right. Luke was in the office pretending to talk on the phone. Oops. Sorry about that, Head Manager.

I guess Luke must have had a great time and tired himself out because when we got home he actually SENT HIMSELF TO BED-- he told me "go night-nights," went to his room, climbed up on the bed, pulled up his "green sheet" and fell right asleep. He's definitely never done that before.

Can you believe our little Luke is 3?!

Time sure flies!

Check-Ups

Luke had his 3 year check-up last week, and Micah had his 2 month check-up yesterday. As Jared's sister, Rachel, said of her boys, "I just keep feeding and watering them," and it's working for us too because our boys are growing. Here are the stats:

Luke

Height: 36.5 inches (23rd percentile)

Weight: 31 lb 8 oz (50th percentile-- don't know how because he doesn't eat anything)

Head Circumference: 20 inches (60 something percentile. For some reason the exact percentile isn't on the print out.)

Micah

Height: 23.25 inches (64th percentile)

Weight: 11 lb 11 oz (50th percentile)

Head Circumference: 15.5 inches (36th percentile)

I can't believe how fast Micah is growing. In 2 months he's grown 4 inches and gained over 4 pounds! It's his growth in length that really blows me away. I think I'm going to be pulling out the 3-6 month clothes this weekend because I can barely zip up most of his sleepers. He was very calm at the doctor's office until his shots. He didn't like that at all and screamed pretty intensely, but he calmed down quickly. Later in the afternoon, however, he hot really upset and screamed intensely again for almost 30 minutes before falling asleep. He seems much better and happier today.

Luke was a nut at his check-up. He was opening drawers and trying to push buttons. He even crawled into the cabinet under the examining table and discovered that there are cabinets that open on the other side as well, so he kept crawling through the examining table in his very own tunnel. He was pretty good for the doctor, but he started freaking out as soon as he saw the nurse. I guess he remembered his flu shot from a few weeks ago. Poor kid. He's getting a second dose tomorrow. But I'll bring him a cookie and some chocolate milk to make it better.