When Did Luke Turn Into a GOOD kid???

The answer is last week some time. I don't know which day precisely but one day he just started to LISTEN. The first time I noticed it was when he saw a garbage can across the street (a yucky, if you will) and he ran forward to go see it. I yelled, "Stop! Wait for Mama!" and he DID. In the face of a yucky, he stopped and waited. He also started holding our hands and putting away toys without throwing a fit. His favorite chore of all is taking something to the garbage can. He does that when we ask him. He also started bringing us things we ask for. All this in the space of one week. What a good boy! Oh, and he's also started folding his arms and won't throw a fit as long as the prayer is a short one.

And because everyone likes pictures, here they are. You'll never guess what he's doing in all of them.

I'd Rather Be in Time Out!

Luke, as you may be aware, has a tendency to run from one thing to another. He is pretty good at making messes, but he's also old enough to help pick them up. Luke doesn't always think he should help, but Jared and I do. And since we're bigger, we make the rules.

The other day Luke wanted to play his bucket game, but we told him he had to pick up all of his food first. He picked up one or two pieces and then refused to do anymore. I told him, "Luke if you don't clean up, you have to go to time out." He looked at me with this "Oh yeah?" expression and went and sat down in his corner where he happily began counting. It was as if he was saying, "I'd rather be here than cleaning. I like my corner anyway." Jared and I both had to hide our faces so that he wouldn't see us laughing. We knew he couldn't think that we thought he was funny or he wouldn't learn. We decided that since Luke liked it in time out so much, he could just stay there for awhile. After about a minute, Luke decided he didn't like time out anymore and he started to cry when we wouldn't let him leave his corner. After 2 or 3 minutes, we let him out to clean.

He put all his food in the basket.

Random Videos

Here are a few videos of Luke collected throughout the past two weeks.



This is Luke "cooking" in the kitchen



This is Luke "cooking" in the living room. He gets distracted by my feet. Listen for the sniffing. It's pretty funny.



More of Luke's cooking. Are you sick of it by now? Surprisingly, I am not. I think it's adorable.



Finally, this is our inflatable mountain which permanently resides in our house because Luke has started waking up around 5:30 every morning. We have found though, that if one of us goes into his room and lays on the mattress, he'll go back to sleep.

If You Give a Luke a Bowl...

He'll demand some cereal to go in it.

If you give him some cereal, he'll also want a spoon.

If you give him a spoon, he'll smash the cereal into little bits and dump it on the carpet.

When he dumps it on the carpet, you'll have to get the vacuum.

When you open the closet to get the vacuum, he'll want his bucket game that is also kept in that closet (High Ho Cherry-O).

If you give him his bucket game, he'll fling his cherries all over the floor.

And when he realizes that Oh Hey! Cherries are food! he'll put them all in a bowl and cook them.

When you realize that all his cherries are now covered in the smashed remains left in the cereal bowl, you'll carry the whole thing to the sink, rinse the cherries, and put the bowl in the dishwasher.

When he hears the cling of the dishwasher, he'll shout the word BOWL!!!

If he doesn't stop saying that, he's going to bed.

There's a New Chef in Town!

My friend Kathleen once asked me to rank Luke's obsessions. I can say without any hesitation that since Christmas his absolute number one passion is COOKING! He has learned many new words to support his habit: the most repetitive of which are bowl and cook (a-cooking).

Bowl!

This has been left unguarded. Awesome!

A-cooking! A-cooking!

What? Me? I didn't do anything.

So obviously Luke loves to cook real food. It's almost impossible to eat dinner with him around because he climbs on our laps or behind our backs onto the chair. Basically, he'll try any tactic to get access to our silverware and food. He doesn't want to eat any of it. He just wants to cook.

But Luke really loves his toy food as well. I can say without any hesitation that it's the best toy he's ever gotten. He cooks all day long.

Yesterday Luke discovered a new fun way to cook.

He carried the food over to the oven

where he could cook and stare at his cute self all at the same time.

Just to show how strong this obsession is: Luke has started going to the baby-sitting at the gym while I work out. Yesterday when I went to pick him up, I found him wandering around the room doing what? You guessed it! A-cooking. He was stirring a plastic cabbage in a pot. Just give that boy a spoon and bowl and he'll be happy.

A few Traditions

During the Christmas break, when everyone usually gathers in Utah, we get together with some of our extended family. My dad's brother, Chad, and his wife, Liz, live right down the street from Grammy. So we always try to get together at least once during the holidays for dinner and games.

Golf is a definite when we get together. It's a great card game for a lot of reasons. First, you can play it with a lot of people. Second, it's super easy to learn and to play so even kids can play it. And third, Grammy and Gramps made the cards and that's too cool not to use.

While we were at Grammy's, Blake took his first few steps on his own. Megan and James were bribing him with a toy car.

Chad, Liz, Mom, and Dad

Visit from the King side. And a really long explanation.

First of all, I want to throw out an apology to Callie. I wanted to get together with you while I was in Utah, Callie, but I didn't have a car to get anywhere and was at the mercy of everyone else's plans. Also, I was only there for a few days and there were family dinners/ etc. planned through the weekend and then you headed back to school on Monday. I left at 4 am on Tuesday. So it didn't work out this time. Hopefully next time I get to Utah it will be for longer and we can get together. I miss you.

To everyone: We were all going to go to Price to visit my mom's side of the family, but instead Uncle Chuck, Aunt Terry, Grandma, and Pa came to see us at Megan's house. There are a lot of pictures on this post because my mom likes to steal pictures off of blogs and have them printed. So I wanted her to have options. That was the short explanation.

Here is the long one. I want to explain why I have no make-up in any of these pictures. It is all due to my horrible airplane curse. On my last trip, my suitcase got destroyed. On this trip, my suitcase missed the connecting flight. So I made it to SLC at 10:30 pm on Tuesday. My suitcase didn't join me until 8pm the next night.

I was told that it would be delivered between 4 and 5 am, so I slept downstairs where I kept waking myself up in the night wondering if I'd missed the knock. I hadn't. At 8 am, I called the hotline number to find out when I would get my bag. Of course a very nice COMPUTER answered my call. I had to go through a 2 minute process of saying that Yes, I had already filed a report, my bag was misplaced in Dallas, and that it had happened on the 31st. Then I had to wait while the computer located the reports. But the really fun part hadn't started yet. The computer told me to say my last name. So I did. Very clearly I say Wilkerson. "I think you said Wilkie. Is that correct?" says the computer. I say (very nice and calmly) no. She says to say my name again. I do. "I think you said Wilcox." Try again. "I think you said Wilson. Is that correct?" to which I yell into the phone "NOOOOOOO!!!!" So the computer finally transferred me to a person who told me that my bag should be there sometime in the next 4 hours. At 4 o'clock I still hadn't gotten my bag. So I called and played the Try and Understand my Name Game again. "I think you said Wilson." NO! I tried mumbling so I could get to a person faster. "I think you said Mo-m00-moo spelled M-O-M-U-M-U. Is that correct?" Oh for crying out loud! I finally got to talk to a person who told me the bag was placed in a truck at 6:30 that morning and that it takes 6-8 hrs for out of town delivery, so they were still within their time limit. I said, "Actually, being that it's 4:30 pm, it's been 10 hours. So no. You are not within your time frame." She said that the driver would be calling me shortly. But alas! She lied. At 6 pm, I called again. On this call I actually got, "I think you said Lopez." I'm not sure how Wilkerson would ever sound like Lopez. But whatever. Same run around. NO info and no bag. At 7 pm, I made Michael call. My brother Michael has the most amazing talent of getting whatever he wants out of people. He does it in a really calm, rational manner, but he seriously gets results.

So he called, and wouldn't you know it? On the first try he says "Wilkerson" and the computer understands. He looked at me and grinned. "Everything understands the voice of authority." He also gets to talk to a person WAY faster than I ever did. So he talks to the person and basically tells them respectfully to call the driver and find out where they are and that they better get over to his house pronto. The highlight of that conversation for me was when Michael said, "Well somewhere the ball has been fumbled. And I just need to know where so we can pick it up." Awesome! The guy on the other end asks him if he would accept his word that the driver will be calling very soon. Michael says, "The thing with accepting someone's word is that it requires trust. Trust has to be earned. And you haven't earned it. Not you personally, but your company." I'm not sure what else he said to the guy, but after being on hold for a second, the cell phone rang. It was the driver. And he said he'd be at the house in 30 minutes.

I wish I had Michael's talent. For all I can fit my whole fist in my mouth (which is undeniably cool) I'd rather be able to get my way all the time. Thanks for rescuing me, Mikey.

Here are a few photos of Eric's girls with Grandma and Pa:

Megan's kids with Grandma and Pa:

Love birds:

Mikey:

And all of us:

Grandma and Brenna:

Family American Idol

On New Year's Day, we spent the morning in a seriously fierce American Idol competition (possibly the best Wii game EVER). Simon's prognosis for me was that I'm not the best singer, but he thought the people would like me. Poor fool that I am. I'm one of those people who get a yellow ticket, jump up and down like a happy idiot, then get stomped on in Hollywood and leave with tears and no self respect. With half of America laughing at them. (And no one really liked them). Luckily, most of my family has way more skill than I do.

The scariest version of "If you want to be my lover"-- minus the one that I did. Though in all honesty, mine was scary because I suck. And his was scary because he actually did the Spice Girls better than the Spice Girls. Should we call him Nate Spice?

R.E.M's "Losing My Religion"-- after seeing it all spelled out for me on the screen, I still don't get the song, but Eric did a pretty good job. Consider THAT.

Eric's daughter Bridget was the back-up dancer for every song.

The most moving rendition of "I don't know much" that I've ever heard. And he didn't even have Linda. And that may be all you need to know.

It all came down to Amber and Ethan...

I can't remember if she's singing "My Happy Ending" or "Since you've been gone"-- she sang Kelly's first and made it to the finals where she pretty much put Avril to shame. But it wasn't enough to win.

Ethan was this Season's winner stealing the show with "The eye of the Tiger" which, in my opinion, is the best workout song of all time. That kid can really belt it out. In the ring or anywhere. Like... in his basement. Congrats, Ethan.

Unpacking

Luke helped me unpack last night. He really liked the "at" that he found. I think he looks pretty good in a girl's accessories.

Coming Home

It was great to get home today and see Jared and Luke! Jared tried to sneak up behind me and scare me, but Luke blew their cover by laughing. Just as well. I probably would have screamed and made a fool of myself if his plan had gone as well-- planned.

When we got home I was pleasantly surprised to see that everything was clean and put away. Jared did a great job! He even mopped the floor!

The only weird thing was that Luke's food basket was practically empty, and he got a huge thing of plastic food for Christmas. I searched the whole house trying to find it. I looked under his bed, under the couch, in all the closets, in all the cupboards in the kitchen. I couldn't find it anywhere! And then, while standing in front of his closet doors, I had a vision of Luke standing on tiptoes in front of a trash can and throwing rock after rock into the trash can and laughing hysterically when he heard the plop. I looked over at his toy kitchen which sets in the corner of his room. There is a gap between the back corner of the kitchen and the wall. Could it be??? I moved the kitchen just a little and there behind it piled approx. 8 inches high was all of his food. What a pipsqueak!