Busy summer!

So a lot has happened this spring/summer! Lucas has gotten to do a lot of fun things now that he is a toddler. His obsession still remains to be cars and anything having to do with them. I have tried to take him as many new places as I could muster up this summer to keep things interesting.

April began with my brother Andrew getting married in Arizona. Lucas got to go on his first airplane ride and I got a much needed vacation! The wedding was beautiful and we are so happy for them.

In May our good friends moved away to Utah so for a couple of days my friend Em and her son Landon had a weekend sleepover to say goodbye we will definitely miss them!

June came around and our lease was up so we decided to move to a bigger place and had my brother and his wife Tomi join us. This has worked out great with Andrew joining the Navy and her being here without him it has been a tremendous help! Lucas was happy to have his own room which we of course decorated with cars and fun colors. Because of our move and Lucas being ready we also used this as a good time to completely ditch the bottle cold turkey. Luckily it went very well.

We also went to the Washington County fair for his third time (counting in-utero) Lucas of course loved the animals and he got to sit on a mini tractor after his cousin finished the kid-sized tractor pull. Lucas also had his first pony-ride and he loved it so much I couldn't resist going to the fair again the next day and he rode the ponies twice more! We have lots of pictures with smiles galore!

July took us to Big Truck Day which of course Lucas had a hayday with. Trucks, tractors and lots of things to see. It was a very very hot day and I could feel the tops of my feet burning in the sun but it was worth the look on his face when he got to sit inside some of the trucks!

Also in July we had a great 4th of July visiting with my family as well as Jeff's older brother and family. Lucas is 6 weeks younger then his cousin on Jeff's side and so its always cute to see them together although we got there so late this year they didnt get much time together but he did have a blast watching fireworks with Daddy. At my family's event we had a good-bye party for my brother andrew and steven. Andrew was leaving for Navy bootcamp and Steven was headed out for the Navy as well it was nice to spend some time with them before they left.

Recently we decided to start making the transition to a big boy bed. We of course found Lucas a car bed which unfortunately was not green (his favorite) but he loves it still. We are still working on getting to sleep at night as he likes to walk out of his room but he's getting better. It has become a little easier since my mom made him this beautiful elaborate quilt made of fabric featuring the Cars movie Mater and all. Once he masters that we will be on our way to starting potty training. Luckily we bought him a frog potty which he already loves (and asks) to use and hopefully we can transition that to a serious thing more then just as a fun thing for him......

We have definitely had a busy summer with the family coming and going and moving around! Now that school has started and we edge closer to Lucas's second birthday its sad to officially see the baby stage end but it has been so much fun to watch him learn and grow!

Almost 2!

It has been so much fun to have Lucas in the toddler phase. He has been talking so much and learning new words everday. It's been amazing to watch him discover new things and grow. I can't believe his 2nd birthday is only about 4 months away. Recently while looking at some baby videos of him, it's so hard to see how big he is now, he's grown so fast.

His favorite things have been cars lately. Expecially the Disney cars movie. Besides playing with his hotwheels cars, he also loves to dance! Recently we went to a wedding for a close friend of my husbands and Lucas danced pretty much the whole reception! It was so cute! He definitely wore himself out and promptly fell asleep as soon as we got in the car.

Some things we've been teaching him lately is colors. He loves to point out the colors in things. He knows the colors of each of his hot wheels cars and calls them by their colors. "Geen", "Blue", "lellow", "Pupple", "Bown", "Black". Its so cute to hear his variations on words.

Its been really special to watch Lucas with my family members. I feel blessed that up until recently, I have had my family all close by and Lucas has been able to grow up around them with so many people to love him. My brothers Steve and Andrew are in the Navy and will be leaving on the 15th and we will miss them terribly. Andrew and his wife have been living with us for the past month and a half and it has been so much fun to see him with Lucas. Lucas certainly has enjoyed playing with his Uncle "An-ooh". My family has been very close knit for years so it will be hard as everyone splits off in their own directions.

I wish everyone a happy summer filled with family fun!

Approaching 18 months!

First Easter egg hunt!

Wearing Daddy's shoes!

Wrestling with mom!

Trying on Mom's glasses

Playing blocks!

So now that a few months have gone by I guess I should update the fun-ness that's been going on. Lucas has grown so much in the last few months in so many ways. He is finally past all his food issues (for the most part) and we no longer have to worry about his wieght! He is still a stringbean but not underwieght. He's running circles around me and talking up a storm. It's been so fun to watch him discover things. I try not to helicopter and let him explore things even when the result of the exploration may not be a fun one for either of us but as long as he isn't hurting anyone else or going to get severely hurt himself I let him explore. (within reason) He definitely is headstrong...mmm....I wonder where he got that from? But he also has a balance of being obiedient. Or as obiedient as you can get out of a 1 and half year old. He has such a sweet, fun, cool personality. It really has been amazing to watch this little person emerge out of him.

He loves balls of all kinds, but rather anything round is a ball to him. Baseballs, basketballs, beachballs, you will promptly here in a little voice "ball, ball,! ball, ball!" while nodding his head yes. He also loves the Cars movie. Anytime he sees or hears a car you promptly hear "car, car! car, car!" He gets really excited when he sees anything with Lighting McQueen on it. Let's just say I have seen that movie lately more then I have ever wanted to. But alas it's pretty cute to see that cute little boy get so excited about it.

Lucas also went from the 6 teeth that all came in at once at a year old to adding his upper molars and laterals (two on either side of the middle teeth) on the bottom. Right now he's working on adding the lower canines and molars as well.

His vocabulary his growing everyday and I think he can say more then he lets on cause occasionally for one time only he will throw in a new word. But more then that his comprehension is amazing. Currently he has under his belt: Jeese (Jesus), ball, car, mama, dada, mamma (grandma), gammpa (grandpa), cool, shoes, bear, meow meow (cat), gog (dog), moo (cow), bird, ba ba (bottle), no, yes, book, iths (this), and occasionally you can get a please or thank you. But I taught him to say please with sign language when he was little and he prefers to sign over say.

He's growing so fast! He loves books, dancing, music, waving to EVERYONE we see or meet, loves to wrestle, and go for walks. He had his first Easter egg hunt and loved meeting the easter bunny! He also had his first head injury ER visit. Which after a Cat Scan was deemed fine and healed great except for a broken tooth. (I'm really sad about the tooth!)

It's been so fun to be his mom and I feel honored as well. I am looking forward to see him grow as time goes on. I love him bunches! His smile just melts me!

Do not want!

Since our family focus on Christmas is centered on the birth of Christ we don't really tend to encourage the whole Santa thing. We kind of leave it up to the kid themselves if they want to do that whole thing. But I thought I would at least get Lucas's picture with Santa since I went to a breakfast thing with his buddy Landon where santa was and I remember doing it myself as a kid. His buddy Landon is on the right, Lucas on the left. So here it goes.

As you can tell it didn't go well....

Christmas 2009

So here it came and went and excitement all around! All in all it was a great Christmas. My younger brother Andrew got home from the Phoenix, AZ a little early this year due to the way transfers worked out so it was really nice to have him home this year. My brother Steve and his wife Jill got leave and were able to be here and my Grandpa was able to make it due to no restricting weather conditions. Christmas Eve we started out with our own first little Christmas at home with Lucas opening his presents from Mommy and Daddy. Then, we went to my parents house for our fondue party. It was all magnificent as always with my Mothers amazing cooking and great family fun.

Christmas morning was good with our strawberry waffles with whip cream and ham on the side. Everyone had a blast goofing off and opening presents. Jeff and I always talk each year about not spending too much money and sticking to only getting a gift for the person who's name we drew, but it's way too hard for us to do that so we end up getting gifts for everyone anyways but luckily we are good at finding awesome deals so we kept the cost down. Christmas was great and would have ended with us spending dinner and the evening with Jeff's side of the family but we ended up spending the evening gulping down dinner and rushing to take Lucas to the urgent care at his pediatricians office. Lucas had been sick starting Christmas Eve night and progressively got worse Christmas day. His breathing got worse and bad enough we took him in and they had to put him on Oxygen. They gave him a shot of steroids and antibiotics. He's still on the the oral antibiotics which always do a number to his system but he's doing much better. Besides being sick he enjoyed his first "real Christmas." He was only a month old last year so it doesn't really count.....all in all it was enjoyable.

Checking out the stash

Starting the frenzy...

Checking out the caterpillar

Once he got this toy out he didn't care about opening the rest so that was pretty much it!

First Birthday!

Yesterday we had Lucas's first birthday party at my parents house. I was kind of worried that it wasn't going to turn out well, because half of the guests canceled and everyone was sick. But it went very well and we ended up with a good turn out after all. The majority of our family made it and a few friends came. Lucas enjoyed having all the people here to see him and he didn't even have a birthday melt-down which I was expecting. Although he did crash with new birthday toy in hand on the way home. Thank you to everyone who came to make Lucas's party a fun experience!

Greeting cousins

Playing with cousins

Singing happy birthday here he wasn't quite sure about a large circle of people standing around and singing to him. At one point he looked like he might start crying.

He started out by dipping his fingers in the frosting

After a minute he hadn't figured out what to do so I cut the cake in half so he could see there was cake under the frosting. So he picked up one half of the cake and stuck it in his mouth, (or at least tried to.)

Lookin' to see why everyone was standing around watching him eat.

He decided that his hands weren't doing the job so he stuck his face in it and got a nose full of frosting.

Finishing up as people dug into the cupcakes and food.

After the cake playing with his new toys.

Happy birthday smile! What a fun day! People, cake, presents just awesome!

First Halloween!

So the first halloween came and went without disaster or breakdown. I took Lucas to the trunk or treat at church and then headed over to a shopping center, went home for a nap, then met up with friends for some neighborhood trick-or-treating. He loved seeing all the kids dressed up although a little unsure of some of them.....It was a very long and exciting day which I hope he enjoyed as much as a 1 year old can. He definitely made the cutest monkey there ever was!