Ho, Ho, Ho!

We picked Luke up from day care on Monday to go out for family dinner. As we were driving, we hear a very deep and jolly, "Ho, Ho, Ho!" coming from the back seat. Clearly, Luke is paying extra attention to all of the Christmas stories he hears at school, as he knows this Santa thing can only mean fun, exciting things. :-)

We had a really fun and exciting weekend! Grandma and Grandpa were here to help us get ready for our first Chicago Christmas Party. You can see that Luke had a ball with Grandma's hat.
He got to see trains at the Arboretum, too, or "choo choos" as they are called around here.

The first snow of the year

Death To Christmas Lights

The Chicago weather cooperated much better this year for purposes of putting up Christmas lights outside. Last year, it started snowing the Sunday night after Thanksgiving and didn't stop until after Christmas, forcing those of us who aren't die hards to be Scrooges. In fact, last year, we didn't decorate anything for Christmas. This year, the snow waited until yesterday giving us plenty of time to work on the decor.

I had the whole master plan - new icicles that I purchased on sale last year, netted lights for the bushes, and our candy canes from Virginia. In fact, Dad and Mike finished everything the Saturday after Thanksgiving and it looked great. Everything was tested and approved. Then, night came, and timer clicked on....and no icicles. Figuring a poor connection, we waited until the next night to get out there and make a knot to hold the plugs together. The lights came on....and went out right after we had put away the ladder, replaced the bicycle that hangs in front of it, and pulled the van in the garage.

Now, it's Monday, and we're back out there, except that the first strand of icicles won't light at all. We try fumbling with replacing the fuses. It works...we pack up and head inside. Five minutes later, the lights are off.

By this time, I've decided it's time to google for a solution or throw everything away and give up until next year. But what kind of mother would I be if my kid's house is the only one on the block without more Christmas decorations?? Apparently, according to a site I found, you aren't supposed to hook more than 3 mini-lights together end to end and that appears somewhere in the fine print of the warning message stapled to the wire. We replaced the fuses one more time, and redid the extension cords, and since then....we've had brilliant beautiful icicle lights on the house. Just in time for the snow to start in earnest.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We send all our love and thanks to our friends and family! We are so very thankful for all of the blessings we have been given! We hope that your Turkey is fantastic....ours was delicious courtesy of our three camouflaged chefs!

Not Exactly What I Meant

Funny how kids have a way of creatively doing what you say. While we were out to lunch on Luke's day off of day care (schools all close for Veteran's Day here), Luke was treated to a kid's meal that included a scoop of ice cream for dessert. When the ice cream came, he was still munching on his lunch. I told him to finish what was in his mouth before he could have ice cream, and he did so by opening his mouth and spitting out his food. Certainly one way of doing it, I guess.

Our Veteran's Day outing was quite fun. We rode the train downtown and toured the Children's Museum at Navy Pier. This was really the first time that Luke was aware he was riding a "Choo Choo." With each stop, he kept doing his "more" sign, afraid it was coming to an end too quickly. He had a completely overstimulating day and enjoyed every minute of it.

Otherwise, we are readying ourselves for the busy holiday season. We've decided that after a year's break, the Bucciero holiday party must be resurrected, so the planning has begun for that! Luke is back to his usual happy self again, and continues to delight us with new words or at least attempts at new words more regularly. He continues to enjoy helping Daddy in the kitchen all the time, and has quite an affinity for all of the household appliances he gets to run in the process.

More Sicks Than Tricks

Poor guy came down with a fever Friday morning, so not only did he miss his Halloween parade at school, but his first trick-or-treating was cut short. Despite the fever and cough, though, he was in excellent spirits, and sported his dragon costume for several hours. This was all such a fascinating experience for him - he didn't know what C-A-N-D-Y was before that night, and it clearly intrigued him that these kids were coming to the door and Mommy was giving them some shiny wrappers. After watching and learning for a good bit, he was ready to try out his own luck with Daddy at the neighbors' houses. Needless to say, he now has a perfect understanding of what C-A-N-D-Y is, although he still has a pretty short memory. (insert satisfied Mommy smile here)

It did turn out that Luke had another ear infection, the poor guy. No wonder he hasn't seemed to be listening too well. It's an interesting thing that in the moment, I have wanted to scold him and it turns out that it really wasn't his fault. And then to add to the guilt trip, I had to actively participate in restraining him while the doctor and nurse tried to flush out excess ear wax just to see whether there was an infection. No, this stubborn ear wax wouldn't dislodge after two attempts at scraping, so we had to go through three ear wash episodes. It was brutal. Not only did Luke need french fries after that, but so did Mommy.

A (Mostly) Finished Bathroom

Despite my coming down with a case of the flu, Mike managed to finish the bathroom, right on time! It looks tremendously brighter than in did, and for our first really involved DIY project, we're very pleased, we're still speaking to one another, we finished it on time and within a 10% variance of our budget, and we managed to still watch Luke at the same time!

Before:
After:

My Little Gypsy

Luke loves to try and load up his arms with as much stuff as he can possibly handle, whether it's a drink cup and a snack cup, or several water bottles, or all of the toiletry bottles from underneath Daddy's sink, he loves to carry stuff around. So, every single morning when Luke is ready to be freed of his crib, he insists on collecting EVERYTHING in his crib - pillow, blanket(s), stuffed animals - in his own arms and carrying downstairs. And, no, Mommy cannot assist, so every morning, Mommy carries Luke and a huge wadful of crib peripherals all the way downstairs where it all gets deposited and quickly forgotten about.

More is definitely better for nearly 21-month-olds. One jacket is definitely not enough when you could wear three! Even though you can only see two in this picture....the third is under there.


Weekend before last, I got the wonderful treat of the 3rd annual Niehaus/Lukens girl weekend! This year, we went downtown for a night and toured around various museums and eateries. Lucky for me, I had the camera at the 3D Dinosaur movie at the Field Museum...hee, hee:

And, what women wouldn't go crazy to have their photo taken with the plastic pirate? (BTW - Luke is perfecting his pirate, "Argh!")

And, yes, I took this from atop the John Hancock tower, which Laura and I did while waiting for Aunt Marlo and Mom to arrive from Midway.