Luke's Love

Luke loves trucks right now. He is endlessly entertained while riding in the car because he points out every truck he sees. He even names them correctly most of the time. The other day my mom was riding with us to lunch and he said, "Look! A car transporter!" Pretty amazing kid. Luke's favorite trucks by far are garbage trucks and firetrucks. He was delighted to visit the fire station about a month ago and see the trucks up close. He was really shy with the firemen, totally starstruck with them.


Living in an apartment, we get to see our garbageman about three times a week. Luke loves to watch him dump the huge dumpsters in the truck. The garbageman usually comes right around lunchtime and when we hear him coming, we drop everything and run outside. Doesn't matter what we are doing (napping is the only reason we wouldn't come, I'm not that crazy!), we go see the garbageman. We've been doing this pretty consistently for the last few months. A couple of weeks ago, the garbage man got out of his truck just to say hi to us. He was very friendly and told me that I could bring my camera next time to take pictures. So, here are the pictures of us by the garbage truck. They were taken by the garbageman. Can you tell how important it was to him to get the whole truck in the shot? Ha!

10 on the 10th: February Edition

My friend Jaclyn has this cool thing on her blog called 10 on Thursday where she states ten different things going on or things she's been thinking about. They are always enjoyable to read, but since I am not diligent enough to do it every week, I thought I'd start a tradition of doing "10 on the 10th" every month and try to keep it theme related to whatever is going on that month. So, here is my first 10 on the 10th for February:


February: 10 Things I Love

1. God. I am so thankful to walk in His ways and to have salvation through his Son.
2. Kevin. He is the perfect man for me. He loves me unconditionally!
3. Luke. He is so wonderful. He is caring, silly, talented, smart, meticulous, innocent, funny. I could go on and on!
4. Ella. She is my little squirt, a true bundle of joy. She is a wiggle worm, silly, bouncy, funny, smart, dying to keep up with her brother, and has the most amazing brown eyes I’ve ever seen. I could kiss her cheeks forever.
5. Our families. We are truly blessed to have both of our parents here in town with us now. The kids get lots of time with grandparents, which you cannot put a pricetag on! We also have awesome brothers and sisters that we love dearly.
6. Our friends. What would we do without them? Either in town or out. We love them. So much. We miss those who don’t live close by!
7. Naptime. I know it sounds bad, but it is my only time in the day alone. And it took a long time to get both kids to nap at the same time. So I try hard not to take it for granted.
8. Facebook. This one sounds trivial too, but it really is a nice way for me to feel connected to adults throughout the day. And it’s been great to catch up with old friends and stay in touch with new ones!
9. Golden Spoon! A lovely treat to enjoy on the nights we watch the Biggest Loser. Hopefully I can have it again soon when I start having dairy on occasion again. I miss it.
10. My Bible study time. I am doing a Beth Moore study right now on The Patriarchs and I am learning so much. God’s Word is truly amazing.

Potty Training Rollercoaster

We are just a little over one week into potty training and it has definitely been a rollercoaster. I don't think I've ever worked so hard as a mama and I still don't think we've got it quite down yet. Luke is hanging in there, but here is the report so far: He has only had 3 accidents during waking hours. They all happened on the second day of p.t. and all within a couple of hours. After that, he figured out that he doesn't like having accidents and has been doing fantastic at holding his pee and poo until potty time. The problem is, he does not want to poo in the potty either. So he won't go in his underwear (good) but he won't go on the potty (bad). He won't even go in a diaper if I put one on him just to give the poor boy a little relief. We have tried upping his fiber intake, a suppository, and little laxative drops to put in his mouth. I know p.t. doesn't happen over night, but we are getting concerned about his poor little tummy! Tonight was good, though. He hadn't gone at all for 3 full days but went tonight twice at Kevin's parents' house. So I think I may see the silver lining there a little bit. I am just gearing up for another intense week of p.t. at the house. I don't want Kevin to go back to work because he is the calm one about all of this, the patient one, the voice of reason when I get so frustrated because you just can't make a kid poop. You can't. I feel like I've tried everything this past week!!
Thankfully, this is only a season though. My rational side knows that well. My irrational side feels like this is going to take forever and he'll be getting ready for prom and I'll be reminding him to try to go poop in the potty before he leaves!
For now, I am thankful for the small progress we saw with Lukey tonight. He is such a good kid and I know I just need to work with his personality instead of against it. That didn't get us too far this week. My mother in law was very encouraging tonight and I love her for that!
So say a little prayer for us as we head into this week. We need strength, patience, endurance, and a little more patience for good measure!

A New Olympic Sport

In honor of the upcoming Winter Olympics, I am thinking of inventing a new Olympic sport. It is called "Feeding Ella." Not a very exciting name, so I will have to keep thinking about it to see what else I can come up with. It took Ella a few months to be willing to eat baby food (who can blame her, really?). But now that she eats meals regularly, it is quite an event. She is literally a moving target. She is all over the place and her hands are in the way too. She loves to suck her thumb in between each bite, so you have to yank that thing out just to shove in another bite.

So my question is, how is this sport to be judged? Accuracy, the number of wipes used to clean up at the end, the amount of food that is on the tray and high chair at the end, the percentage of the bib that you can actually see after the meal is over???

Judging on my performances lately, I'd have to say I would not qualify for the Olympics. Not even close. But I love my baby. She is so darn cute.





By the way, I apologize for the videos from my last post not working. I will try to reload them this weekend when I have some time!