These Boots Were Made for Walking

Luke worked on these all morning. He wanted to walk in them so bad--I lost track of how much time he played with them!



By the afternoon, he was a pro! Hard work pays off I guess!

Luke's New Favorite Word

Our little toddler is learning all sorts of new things. One of those things is independence! He loves being able to answer "yep" or "no" when I ask him if he wants to color, read, etc. I think he enjoys feeling like he has some control and can make up his own mind! Lately, though, he likes to give just one answer--NO!

Name That Cousin!

With eight cousins to keep track of, Luke's been slowly on learning all their names! We have everyone's pictures on the fridge and he loves looking at them and naming everyone. Here's his progress so far. He's doing pretty good, and when he doesn't know a name, he just mumbles two syllables, which covers most of them. :) I think it confuses him that he has a cousin and an aunt Emily as well as a cousin and an uncle Jacob!

Updates

I had my second doctor's appointment today. I'm currently 14 weeks along and everything looks good. The baby's heartbeat was 144. I think Luke's was about that when he was 14 weeks, so Jonathan now believes it's another boy! ;) Here's my first belly shot. I definitely feel like I'm showing a lot sooner with this one than with Luke. Then again, I'm not sure how much of this bump is actually baby #2 and how much is leftover from baby #1. :)

In other news, Luke is 19 months old today! Time sure flies, that's for sure. He continues to learn new things all the time and is such a busy busy boy!! Here are some cute pictures and videos we took of him this past week.

Making an important call in the car.

Helping daddy build a tower.

I took this picture right after the Griffins scored a goal. You can just see the excitement oozing out of Luke, can't you? He really did enjoy himself, I promise! :)

Luke loves playing basketball and lately he's actually been shooting it, not just dunking it. He didn't really do it as much for the video, but you get the idea. I'll keep trying to get a good shot on camera.

On a much sadder note, my friend Ali and her husband, Jon, lost their twin baby boys yesterday. Ali was 21 weeks pregnant with the twins and everything seemed to be going well. Each boy lived for 19 minutes. Jon and Ali continue to remain firm in their faith. I can't imagine what they are going through. They already lost their first daughter, Emmalee, just ten short months ago. Please check out their blogs and keep them in your prayers right now. They're in our blog list to the right.

Road Trip

This past weekend Luke and I took a road trip down to Indiana to see my family. It was so great to spend time with them, as always! And, of course, Luke enjoyed getting all the attention. Boy, is his world about to change in a few months. ;) As usual, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wanted to, but here are some of the ones I did take.

While we were in Indiana, I really wanted to take Luke to a REAL high school basketball game. And what better place to learn about basketball than in the Hoosier state? Grandpa keeps the book for the team and Luke couldn't understand why Grandpa wasn't paying any attention to him!

"Whatcha doin' Grandpa? Can I help?"

"No mommy, I didn't eat that powdered donut!"

Luke is really into coloring now as you can see.

Our Little Chatterbox

Luke is 18 Months Old!

Luke actually turned 18 months a couple weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting about it. Oops! :) He had his check-up and everything looks great. He is 24.4 pounds (25th percentile) and 32 inches long (50th percentile). He is a perfectly healthy little boy and we couldn't ask for anything more. Luke is definitely keeping me busy. Being pregnant this time is a lot harder than before because now I'm chasing a little boy around! ;) He constantly amazes us, though, with all he is learning and picking up on. He will see us do something one time and then he will remember that and we'll see him doing it later. His vocabulary is quite extensive now and he's starting to use small sentences ("Peyton, no!" is one of my favorites). His favorite thing to do is to read. He absolutely loves books and will climb up on the couch to read to me quite often. We are slowly introducing the potty to him. He has gone on it a handful of times and actually enjoys sitting on his potty seat and listening to daddy or I sing the potty song to him (we made it up ourselves, it's pretty awesome). Here are some pictures and videos of what Luke is up to these days.

"But mommy, I had no idea I wasn't supposed to play with the wax paper!"

One of these days he's going to figure out how to take his diaper off, too...

Snow, Snow, and More Snow!

We have had so much snow here; we're already past the annual average and it's only January!! It's been really cold, too, so Luke hasn't been outside to play in all the snow yet. We're hoping it will warm up enough to take him sledding at least. :)

This gives you an idea of how deep the snow is just on our deck~up to Peyton's stomach!

I took these pictures one morning a week or so ago. We are blessed to see some gorgeous sunrises where we live!

Monkey See Monkey Do

Luke and Daddy love to play this game together!

Saturday Mornings with the Athearns

This is a typical Saturday morning for us. Laying around, hanging out together, with Luke as our entertainment. We wouldn't have it any other way! :)

First Doctor's Visit

I had my first doctor's appointment on Monday. They actually gave me a due date of August 10, which is two days sooner than I had figured. I'm okay with that! :) I'm currently 10 weeks along. It was just the routine check-up, but I did get to hear the heartbeat for a split second! Dr. Delapp said it was 160 beats per minute. Everything looks great so far. I go back in four weeks. Hopefully by then I will be feeling better. The nausea this time has been worse than what I remember with Luke. But then again, maybe I have just blocked that from my memory! ;)

One More Video...

Here's one last video from Christmas. It's my favorite one. ;)

Christmas Part 3

So, I have been horrible at updating lately. Luke and I stayed in Indiana after Christmas until New Years Eve, when Emily drove us back to Michigan. Then she stayed and hung out with us til heading back to IWU this past Monday. It's been crazy, busy fun! Now we are starting to get back to our regular routine, which I guess is nice. Here are a couple videos from our Christmas together on Christmas Eve. We didn't do much with gifts this year, but Luke seemed to really enjoy what he did get! :)


Don't worry, no little boys were injured in the making of this video! But we are going to take this trike back and find another, sturdier one. The poor kid's fallen off it more times than we can count! Anyone know of a good kind to get??



I didn't do very well with taking pictures while Aunt Emily was here, but I did manage to get this video. Luke was being extra goofy for some reason! And the cheer is one that my mom made up and has been saying to him since he was born. He just recently has started responding to it on his own. It's too cute!

Christmas Part 2

We had an absolutely amazing Christmas this year. My husband is the winner of the "Husband of the Century" award for what he did! Jonathan did not have to work the 24th or 25th, but because he's low man on totem pole, he did have to work Friday the 26th. So, the plan was to head to Indiana Friday evening when he got home. Well, Christmas Eve, we were finishing up with the Athearn Christmas, and Jonathan says, "We'd better get going, we have a long drive ahead of us." Turns out, one of his co-workers had plans to go to Texas that fell through and he offered to work for Jonathan on Friday. My wonderful husband found this out on Monday and surprised me with the news Christmas Eve! He already was packed and had everything all planned out! We ended up leaving early Christmas morning and got to my parents' house around 11:00 am. My mom about fainted when we walked through the door! It was so great to be able to spend Christmas with them! Thank you, Jonathan, for such a great Christmas gift!! :) Okay, sorry for the rambling...here are some pics and videos from our Christmas in Indiana.

Luke reading his new Noah's Ark book to Grandma...

and to Grandpa too!

Opening his huge present...

a basketball goal!

Checking out his musical sit-n-spin from Aunt Emily.

Grandma and Grandpa got Luke some sweet Colts gear!

Jacob and Emily completely surprised us with Rock Band!!

Luke helping Grandpa open his present.

Luke and Grandpa hanging out.

Even Peyton got a present!

A football that makes THE most annoying squeaking noise in the world! Thanks Emily...

Aunt Emily painted this stool just for Luke!

Trying it out...I think he likes it!

This is the face of a toddler who has had too much Christmas fun!

Back home putting the new stool to good use!

Christmas Part 1

Here are some pictures from our Christmas with Jonathan's family on Christmas Eve. We of course had a great time and enjoyed being with everyone. I think Luke is getting used to the chaos! :)

Showing Uncle Mike his cool new video.

Rock Band Videos!

Just Like Daddy

I was in the bathroom the other day putting on my make-up and Luke helped himself to Jonathan's drawer. He seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. I'd never seen him do this before, but now anytime the bathroom door is open, he goes straight for the razor.

Sweet Peyton!

This is one little boy who loves his puppy!

Disclaimer: for those of you easily grossed out (sorry mom!) be warned, the following pictures and video may make you never want to use utensils at our house again. But we have a high-powered dishwasher that gets out all the germs! Besides, dogs' mouths are cleaner than humans' anyway, right? ;)

Veggie Tales

A couple weeks ago, Luke received a package in the mail with all kinds of Veggie Tales and other kids videos. It was from my friend Melanie's mom, who was so very kind enough to give us all her old videos. We popped one in, and as you can see, Luke was pretty into it! :) Thanks Grandma Manning!!

Children's Museum

Last week, Luke and I headed to the children's museum downtown with grandma and some cousins. It was Luke's second visit, and I think he enjoyed it much more this time since he's walking now and can actually explore everything! I took tons of pictures and videos, so enjoy! There are a couple more videos which for some reason I'm having trouble uploading, so I will try to get those on another post this week hopefully.

Doing a little fishing with Grandma.

I loved just watching him play and figure out how things worked!

Of course he fell in love with this stuffed puppy!

We spent a good 10 minutes or so at this peg board. Luke loved just putting all these things on one hook. It didn't look that exciting to me, but he was fascinated by it! :)

Getting ready to crawl through the triangle mirror tunnel!

They had an area all about penguins. You can tell what Luke thought of the penguin costume we put on him...

The best shot I could get of Luke and his cousins.

Luke trying to run away with Lydia's shopping cart. She was not happy about that!

Loading up his shopping cart with lots of fruits and veggies!

Is this not the face of someone who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar??

Luke and Taylor checking things out.

Out of all the things at the museum, Luke kept coming back to this: the water fountain!