11 Months

Luke is 11 months old today and I swear he looked older this morning. It is a bittersweet feeling that I can't put into words- tears of happiness for the way our world has been turned upside down this past year! Here are a few things from the month:

Luke's daycare has really worked with him on feeding himself... we had success this month! Here was the first time he ate Cheerios by himself! Momma cried- what's new?!!

New words this month:

Tree ("Truh")

Dog ("Di")

Monkey ("Di Ti")
Momma ("Muh Muh"):

Luke, you are becoming more independant and your parents are so proud of you! You are standing by yourself, pointing and waving "bye bye" using your whole arm! You throw a fit when we close the back door to let Allie out because you want to go too. You want to hold your own spoon but don't know what to do with it! We went by the fish at Walmart and you LOVED watching them- touching the tank and giggling. You and Grant chase each other at school until you are out of breath... Mrs. Becky calls you both her "little tornadoes" since you turn over chairs together, crawl under cribs getting stuck, and make a jail break when they open the door to take a buggy ride. We are loving every minute of watching you explore and learn. You are a joy to our family and a song in our hearts. We love you, sweet baby.

Been Hanging Around

Some recent pictures:

Secret Top 10

One of my girlfriends at work made the observation that marriage and parenting is hard-- those things are rarely talked about which leads to a lot of unrealistic ideas on the subjects.

SO, the top 10 BABY THINGS no one ever talks about:

• 10 Toy tornadoes every night after baby's bedtime
  9 The dog bowl-- the funnest "No No" EVER
  
• 8 Getting called out of church to come get your screaming child out of the nursery
• 7 Mommy guilt
• 6 Daddy worries about sending children to college starting at day 1
• 5 Meals are never hot anymore for Mom and Dad and there is always a 1 foot perimeter mess around the high chair after meal time- dogs are helpful here
• 4 Crying at weddings


• 3 Exhaustion by night time after giving all you've got with little time for yourself
• 2 Sick babies at daycare making me worry all day if they are spreading germs to my healthy baby
• 1 Poop on the fireplace (I'll spare you the picture)

The top 10 MARRIAGE THINGS no one ever talks about:

• 10 The way his family did it and the way her family did it are always different
• 9 You don't really know the person on the day you say "I Do"- you haven't been through ups and downs yet... you just hope you picked someone with character and values that line up with your own
• 8 When you both get fat together, you don't realize, until you do... then you really have your work cut out for you!
• 7 Strange bathroom habits (I will not go into detail here)
• 6 Gender roles in marriage don't just "happen"
• 5 You both always think you give more than 50%
• 4 Tracking where the money goes is harder with 2 people than 1
• 3 Your love for your spouse totally changes when you see them enteract with your child
• 2 Everybody knows when the cooking is bad... you don't reach "Grandma" cook status until you are a Grandma
• 1 Why did every one of you jump down to this one and think I would say something I am NOT going to say?!!!

So there is your list, Jennifer... hope you enjoyed it! With all of that said, I wouldn't trade any of it! Not even poop on the fire place! Somehow, these things never hit the same status as the "good stuff" does in my mind when I talk about my child or my husband.

10 months, 3 weeks

Luke stood for 7 seconds! Once for me and once for Brent!

Pet Peeve #1

When people sign their signature in an illegible manner. It is your name, be proud of it. Make it readable so the person behind you knows who you are. It only takes milliseconds more to make it pretty. Take pride in such small things-- scribbling is for kids :).
What is your pet peeve?

Chris and Christy Are Hictched!

Here are the highlights!

The Rehearsal:

Practice Makes Perfect!

While the wedding party was waiting in the back of the church to practice, Chris and Brent were sitting in the sanctuary all by themselves... I thought it was pretty neat they were all alone and wonder what they were talking about. I made them reenact for the camera...

The Rehearsal Dinner was at Escalantes- yum mo!
The guys:

The girls:

Our Family:

The wedding was at Second Baptist where Brent and I were married, so it was fun to see it all unfold and remember back 4 years ago!

Mr. & Mrs. Chris Brewer!

The boys found tri-cycles at the church:

Aren't they good looking!

He's taken, Ladies!

Luke's wedding outfit:

Luke got to meet his Great, Great Aunt Freddie and Uncle Bobby-- Luke went strait to Bobby like they were best buds!

Jamie discovered that Luke likes golf:

Granddaddy threw Luke around and taught Luke how to go up and down the stairs:

Grandma got some good hugs in and Bailey (Chris's puppy) thought Luke tasted sweet!

Luke's Babysitters (when we needed to be baby-free!). Thanks, Momma and Daddy.

Luke enjoyed playing your piano:

It was a FAST weekend, but we are so blessed by our family and love that it is growing. We couldn't be more proud of Chris and his choice in Christy. She is even more beautiful on the inside than out (if you can believe it!) and we can't wait to see how God directs their life together.

Sign, Sealed, Delivered

Today is a historic day! On Wednesday afternoon, Governor Pete du Pont, Chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), and Dr. John Goodman, President of the NCPA, along with Mike Gallagher and other Salem Radio hosts Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt will deliver the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" petition to the leaders of Congress. At 1:30 pm the petition will be driven to Capitol Hill in an ambulance; when it arrives, volunteers will stack the petition- 1.3 Million signatures included in 55,000 pages contained in 15 boxes -on a gurney and deliver this incredible expression of America's voices to Congress at a 2:00 pm EDT press conference. - this excerpt was taken from Jeanette Nordstrom's Health Care Update email.

For something as important as health care, I have always wondered why they don't try it out on a small sample of the population before it goes to the masses. Turns out, Massachusetts has been on a self payer program for 3 years now. Here is an article about how it is going. Wow.

Get Involved! For the latest up-to-date information, click Here (John Goodman's blog), Here (Consumers for Health Care Choices) , and Here (Principles of Health Care Policy).

What is the answer? "Bail Out" Health Care? No! Don't add to the wasteful debt, don't print more money and make the dollar weaker, and don't look at 1 Trillion Dollars like we have it to spend: Here is a video produced by the US Mint to try to show Americans how much a Bail Out costs.

Labor Day Fun!

After bath time:
We always read Luke "First Words"... we are pretty much drilling this into his head... it is so sad, we can turn the pages by memory: Girl, Boy, T-Shirt, Pants, Socks, Shoes, Coat, Cup, Chair, Ball, Boat, Car, Truck, Train, Airplane, Teddy, Orange, Apple, Banana, Leaf, Flower, Cat, Potty, Dog, Duck, Fish. Ahhhh. First Words.

Luke LOVES his Horsey. He now crawls up to the crib and tries to pull Horsey through the slats. I am really hoping we can keep Horsey as a home/ sleeping comfort object and not take him everywhere. Crossing my fingers!

Luke is still eating stage 2 foods... we are pretty sure he has a texture issue. He hates stage 3, so we are just trying something new from our plates every night to see what he likes. We tried goldfish this weekend, of course, he likes those. We were at Pei Wei and Brent put 3 grains of rice in Luke's mouth, he gagged, and threw up all over the floor. So, we keep trying, reminding ourselves that he won't eat stage 2 when he goes to college! He did discover straws this weekend and that bought us a little more restaurant time :)

We hung out with our favorite pals on Monday and Luke discovered new toys... he was having a ball in pink!

Hope you had fun too!

Happy Birthday Brent!

Brent was really pushing for a low key birthday this year, so that is what we did. Brent grilled fajitas and of course got a cookie cake. I got him the best present EVER... a MP3 Player that personalizes your radio station (to our tech-y blog friends, see Slacker.com)! Okay, so Brent got it for himself, but I made him wait to open it until Sept. 5 and I loved that he got it as much as he loves music. Here are my boys... aren't they cute:

Our sweet friend, Leah, had a cake with homemade icing- she had us all sing and Brent even blew out a candle... she is my most nostalgic friend!