10 Months Old!

Weight: 20 lbs 8 ounces

Height: 29 1/4 inches

Favorite Activities: Flying, cruising, pulling Sydney's tail, and scooting various objects around the room, usually one in each hand

Favorite Food: Anything you want to give me

Where Did the Year Go?

We were at the doctor's yesterday and I had to make a follow up appointment for 3 weeks out. I asked the very nice receptionist, "What date is 3 weeks from now?" December 4th. Holy cow! It's like 6 weeks until Christmas?!?!? Sorry, I'm having a deer in the headlights moment. It seems like Luke was just born yesterday, much less almost 10 months ago. Wow. Guess I better get on the schtick and get Christmas presents bought, eh?

You might be wondering why we were at the doctor's? Well, we had Luke's regularly scheduled 9-month checkup. It was opportunistic as it turns out his cold morphed into an ear infection. Aha! That explains the crankiness. And, here I thought it was teething. Ooops.

In the midst of the fogginess of being sick, Luke was very timely with a new trick. Daddy had just had one of those days on Monday. He tried working from home and the cable went out along with the internet. Then, he tried to work from Panera, but configuration on his computer wouldn't let him connect. It just wasn't a good start to his day. But, he was greeted when he came home by Luke clapping! We now clap at anything and everything...clapping for a Cheerio that made it into his mouth, clapping that Pinochle sneezed, clapping that the telephone rang. It's quite funny actually. I'm thrilled for a bit more interactive communication!! At least we can clap back and forth.

In other developmental news, Luke pushed his lawnmower around the kitchen numerous times the other night. Mike ran for the video camera and I jumped for my cell phone to send a quick pic to Grandma. After 20 minutes of realizing that he must be doing something really cool to get Mommy and Daddy cheering for him so much, he decided he was ready to crawl again and hasn't tried the trick again since. I keep placing him behind the lawnmower but he just squats back down and goes for the safer furniture cruising. I have this strange feeling though that those 6 weeks until Christmas may bring about big changes in the walking department. We'll see!

Grandparents are Truly a Wonderful Thing

My poor parents drive all the way up here for a weekend with Luke and ended up taking care of a sick baby and a Mommy who wasn't feeling too well either. I don't know how we could have gotten through the weekend without them! Poor Luke's cold went from bad to worse on Friday night. He was up off and on throughout the night and finally came down with a fever, so Mike and I covered the night shift and then handed him off to Grandma in the morning for a few hours. It's really Luke's first cold, which has been great that he's been so healthy, but then I haven't had a chance to jump into my neurotic mommy mode and understand everything about what to look for and how long I need to wait to call the doctor. This is my one big hangup - not wanting to go the doctor and waste their time, but understanding when Luke really needs one. Our neighbor back in Virginia, who happens to be a nurse, reminded me that I'm helping to pay for my doctor's new home addition (as a figure of speech). So, we're going to see the doctor this morning after trying all weekend to get this thick yucky stuff to clear up with irrigation and a whole lot of aspirating. BTW, have you ever tried to do this with a kicking, screaming baby?

Despite feeling under the weather and the weather outside being downright dreary and cold, we managed to still enjoy the visit tremendously. Here are some pics courtesy of Grandma Ellen, or is it just Grandma, or is it Grandma L.? (My mom are dad are still deciding what they want to be called, so I just had to give them a little encouragement here). They would certainly welcome suggestions from my readers, I'm sure. Grandma Lukens is off-limits though, as that belongs to my late Grandmother. Anyway, on to the pics of the weekend.

Luke had a large infatuation with Grandpa's beard. If you look closely, you can see his hand tryinig to grab it, but he obviously had to take time to smile for the camera.

Grandpa also has started a fleet for Luke, so here he is taking his new boats for a test drive. Noah's ark (hidden behind Luke in the picture) is unfortunately prone to grounding given the small amount of water. Once Luke gets a little bigger, hopefully, we can have a better "flood" so that the ark can go for a spin around the tub with its propellers.

Who Thought Up Daylight Savings Anyway?

Oh, right! Benjamin Franklin. Clearly, he didn't have a toddler at the time. Really, we would have been fine, except that Luke's body has decided that he needs to poop a lot more often. We went from once a day back to 5 or 6 times a day. What does this have to do with Daylight Savings, you ask? Well, it's usually what wakes him up, and unfortunately, even though he wants to sleep until he sees the sun, his body hasn't quite caught on to that yet. So, 4:15 this morning, I knew I'd be up changing a diaper and then fighting like heck to get him to go back to sleep. Maybe he was just excited about the election??

It's been a while since I posted some pictures of our recent adventures and such. First off, some pics of Luke and Millan

And, just some other fun pictures...