Saturday, January 31, 2009

A Hefty Dose of Reality

This afternoon I hosted a baby shower for a dear friend who's about to have her second child. Most of the invitees (including the mom-to-be) have kids around Luke's age, so the shower morphed into a playdate involving 9 adults and 6 kids under 3.

Rather than get into all the messy details, let's just say that my house is covered in stickers, there are mysterious stains on the living room rug, my TV has sticky fingerprints all over it, and Luke went to bed half an hour early because he was so exhausted from all the activity. If this is what it's like to have a big family, I am officially ruling out more than one kid after Luke.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Things that are new

I keep meaning to update my blog, if only so I'll be able to look back at it years from now and remember what Luke did a X years and months old. Then I get distracted by grading, eating, or (more often) trashy TV and blogging just gets pushed to the back of my "To Do" list for yet another day.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, I blog because there are just too many cute new things Luke is doing right now for me to put this entry off any longer.

Cute Thing the First:
Luke is learning new words and phrases every day (really, today's was--"yellow ball, blue ball" complete with pointing at balls that were, in fact, yellow and blue) but the cutest by far lately has been "um". I've tried getting him to say it on camera and he gets too interested in the camcorder to focus on anything else, so you'll just need to take my word for it that, in between half-real words and half-nonsensical babble, he now punctuates almost every sentence with "um". The other night he was getting impatient with how slowly I was turning the pages on his bedtime book and started saying, "Um, um, um" while pointing at the next page as if to say, "Um, not to be rude Mom, but can we speed this up?" CUTE!

Cute Thing the Second:
Along with "um" Luke has picked up shrugging. I'm sure another kid at daycare does it and Luke is just succumbing to toddler peer pressure, but OMG the cute! The best part is that while he does plenty of just-because shrugging, he's also frequently using it in the correct context. This morning we asked him if he wanted to eat another bite of waffles, he shrugged, said "Um" and babbled for a minute before shoving a piece in his mouth. CUTE!

Cute Thing the Third:
Luke loves to talk on the phone. Absolutely loves it. It started last month when Juan was working long hours and wouldn't see Luke at all Monday-Friday. It was hard on all of us to have him gone so much, and our nightly phone call with Daddy became something Luke really looked forward to. He wouldn't just listen to Juan talk, either. Oh no, my son monopolized the conversation with his own very elaborate (nonsensical) stories. We now talk to Grandma and Grandpa on the phone, Mama on the phone (when I'm the one working late), and of course, Elmo on the phone. Or at least that's who Luke says he's talking to when he picks up one of his toy phones (or toys that kind of look like phones) and starts talking. He even says, "Hello?" when he puts it up to his ear. CUTE!

Cute Thing the Fourth:
You wouldn't think that Luke's picky eating would be cute, but it is. Don't get me wrong, it drives me nuts, but some of his finickiness is just hysterical. Take pizza. If you call it pizza, he won't touch it. Call it "bread with sauce" and he'll eat as much as you'll give him. That's when he's not insisting that it's really "pa-tah" (pasta). CUTE!

I could go on and on, but I have to save something for my next entry, don't I? So I'll leave you with a picture of the (do I need to say it?) cute boy from Christmas.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Home Again

Juan's grandmother passed away the day after Christmas, so we packed up and spent the last week in Idaho. It was good to see everyone and to share stories about Granny, and having Luke there certainly helped to lift my in-laws' spirits. Luke, naturally, had a ball being the center of attention.

Of course, in order to get to Idaho we had to fly through Salt Lake City (and were stranded their for an extra day due to plane problems) and ended up going out to dinner at a popular local Mexican restaurant. Trust me, the irony of going to eat Mexican food in Utah considering that we live in El Paso wasn't lost on either of us, but this place actually makes pretty decent food. As I am wont to do, I ordered a margarita with dinner and was a bit gobsmacked when, instead of asking for my ID, the waiter asked "would you like that with or without alcohol?" Clearly, some things in Utah never change.

We're home again now and just readjusting to our semi-normal routine before returning to work on Monday. This vacation didn't feel long enough by half.