While I Was Away...

This past weekend I went on my first trip ALONE since Luke was born. From Thursday night to Monday morning I was footloose and fancy free. It was a blast. I went to Fort Worth to visit my sister, brother, and sis-in-law. They showed me a great time and kept me well fed. I already can't wait for my next trip out there...whenever that might be.

Despite all the fun I had, I was happy to come home and see my boys. I think they had fun without me, but I know that Phil was all fun-ed out by Monday. He told me Sunday night that I better not miss my 6:00 AM flight (you read that right) the next morning because he NEEDED me home. He said he'd never looked so forward to Monday and going back to work. Ha! The trip was worth it just to hear him say that.

While I was gone, Luke learned how to go down his slide the right way. Before I left, this is how he consistently went down his "sliiiiiiiii".

Over the weekend he and Daddy worked hard...

...and by the time I got home Monday morning, he had conquered the slide!

Stinker Story #2: Fork It Over

The other day I went to the bathroom to do my hair during Luke's nap. I keep my straightener and hair dryer in the downstairs bathroom so that I can do my hair while Luke is playing or eating, but most of the time he ends up terrorizing the bathroom while I have my hands full doing my hair. Anyway, I walked in to the bathroom, opened the top drawer of the cabinet to get my hair stuff, and I was greeted by a bright, shiny dinner fork sitting on top of everything. I have no idea how, when, or where Luke got a dinner fork, but he obviously had big plans for it and stowed it away for another time. Either that or he just wanted to leave his calling card so I'd think of him when he was away. Stinker.

Mommy and her fork thief...
Cutest thief there ever was.

Stinker Stories

Since so many of my posts seem to take so long to do, I've been wanting to find a way to do smaller ones more regularly.....so I've decided to start a new thing called Stinker Stories. They'll just be little anecdotes about Lukie Lu and his silly shenanigans and such. They may or may not be accompanied by a picture, so if you are one who only looks at the pictures and reads the captions, then you might not get to experience some of the Stinker Stories with the rest of us. I hope this will be a fun addition to the blog, and don't worry, I'll still be doing longer, picture-heavy posts for the bigger things. So without further ado....

Stinker Story #1: Ssssliiiiiiiii!!!

Luke has a Little Tykes slide that he loves to play with at home. He will see his slide and say "Ssssssliiiiiiiiiii" with the funniest little lisp, that's kind of more like a roll of the tongue. It slays us every time he says it, because it's just the CUTEST thing. He's been saying "slide" for a long a time now, but just in the last few weeks, we've realized that he can not only say the word, but also recognize other slides as "ssssssssliiii's". When we drive past a house with a visible swing set in the yard, he'll see the slide and I'll hear him say "Sssssliiii!" He can pick them out as we pass churches or schools with playgrounds, and of course if he's on a playground, he'll run towards the slide yelling, "ssssssliiiii!!" Anyway, I took Luke to the mall last week to buy him some new Crocs, because he's already outgrown the ones my parents bought him in March. As we walked through the mall, he pointed to all the escalators yelling "ssssliiiii" and signing the word for "please" on his chest, asking to go on the "slides". I thought it was adorable and felt so bad that I couldn't take him on the "slides" because he was in his stroller, and since I was there alone with him, I didn't feel comfortable taking him out of the stroller and leaving it behind as we rode the "slides" up and down. We did stop to look at them for a while, but I wish I could have taken him on a "sssssliiiiii"! Maybe next time.

Here are some pics of Daddy and Luke trying to put Luke's new shoes on while swinging in the hammock. I guess it was harder than you'd think.

4th of July!

After church and a nap for the Stinker, we headed out to celebrate the 4th with the Clarks at their new house. Luke and Jackson had so much fun playing together. They played in the baby pool a bunch and when they got bored with that, soaked the inside of their house with their soggy britches. Luke, as I mentioned before, was enamored of Jackson's vacuum. He pushed it all around, saying "mow, mow..." the whole time. It was so cute because Jackson followed Luke around everywhere doing whatever Luke was doing. This was pretty hilarious to watch because, even though Jackson is several months older than Luke, he is about half the size of the Big Man. Jackson is a tough little guy though, and wasn't intimidated by Luke's giant presence one little bit. He didn't hesitate to push him down or take things away from him, resulting in a few time-outs for Jackson. Luke didn't mind much at all, until Jackson took away a riding toy that Luke had been playing with. Luke screamed and went over to Jackson and hit him in the face. Thankfully I was right there to put an immediate end to it and discipline the little punk, too. It was horrible to watch my child do that to another kiddo, especially one smaller than him. Thankfully, they both got over it quickly and returned to playing, "mowing", and making messes.


Patriotic punkin, dressed for the day.
Why does he look like he's 8 in this picture??


Playing on the slide in the pool and trying so hard to climb up it...

...but sliding right down to the bottom every time.


"Get out of my way. I'm gonna do this thing..."

But then he got distracted...
(That's not sunburn on his face, just rosy Tatum cheeks from the heat!)

"Hmmmm... how am I gonna pick that ball up and still hold these other ones?"

Being helped down the slide by Daddy.
Oh, how I love that belly!

Jackson taking a break to golf a bit.

And admiring his shot.

Luke: "Man, I'm thirsty!"
Mommy and Daddy for the 32nd time: "Noooo!! Don't drink the water!!"

Having conquered the pool, he's off to find something else to do.

MOW!!!!

And can you believe it? The smarty pants saw the neighbor's air conditioning unit and remembered that there are fans inside of air conditioning units. I can't believe he recognized it/remembered. The whole afternoon we had to chase him down because he would run over to it trying to see the fan. He is OBSESSED with fans!!!

And mowers, too. Here he is running off toward the 4-wheeler yelling, "Mow, mow, mow."

Hey, aren't you coming?

Luke had a great time but was more than exhausted when left. It was waaaaay after his bedtime. So much so that not even his nighttime bottle was enough to appease him on the way home. Thank goodness I had a lollipop in my purse! You wouldn't believe how long those things last when you don't bite into them.

All tuckered out, but temporarily revived by a Dum-Dum.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow...

Last week I decided I couldn't stand Luke's shaggy hair anymore, so I finally bit the bullet and took him to get his very first haircut on Friday.

"What the ......??? A haircut?"


(Notice the tears on his cheeks)
"But all this time you've told me I was so handsome...."

It was just getting too long and shaggy on the top, was covering his ears on both sides, and was becoming a mullet in the back.


My handsome man with not-so-handsome hair.

See. Not so cute.

The problem is that he has 3 cowlicks. I have diagrammed them here for your better understanding. There are 2 in the back that go in kind of the same direction. The one in the very front goes against the grain, though. It makes it difficult to figure out which way to comb (read: rake my fingers through) his hair, since it wants to go one way at the top of his head and exactly the other way in the front. Anyway, I was hoping that having a little less hair on his head would make things easier and that maybe the hair stylist would give me some kind of secret to figuring out the logic puzzle that was his hair situation. So off we went to Cookie Cutters. I had no idea where to go, so I just figured that a place that does nothing else besides cut kids' hair would be a safe bet.


Luke got to sit in the firetruck chair AND eat his very first lollipop.


You can see the mullet that was forming in this picture. And the big ol' gut to match it.


The caped Stinker ready to go.


Not so sure what's up with the spray-bottle shower the lady gave him.


"Like, what do you think you're doing, lady?"


Realizing that he can turn the steering wheel and maybe escape this strange Lady Scissorhands.


"Hey, this haircut stuff is a breeze!"


Hold up. Wait a minute.
What. Is. That?


"Ummm....ok, lady. Joke's over. I don't think I like this."


MAAAAMMMMMMAAAAAA!!!!!!

As you can see, he was not a fan of the clippers. I think the noise scared him, not to mention the death grip on his skull. I had to put my arm around him and my cheek against his and then he calmed right down and let her finish.


He survived the trauma. His hairline didn't.

While I was happy with the cut in the front, I DO NOT like how she cut his hair on the left side and in the back. She hiked up his hair line waaaayyy too high, and on his left side, it's practically a straight line from the top of his ear back to the nape of his neck. I mean, what???? And look at that sideburn. What sideburn, you ask. Precisely. I mean, it's ABOVE his ear. What the ....????? And lucky me got to pay $14 plus tip for this masterpiece. Oh well. He got a lollipop (2 actually...one for the road!), a firetruck chair, a video to watch, and play time on the big slide at the end, so that part made it all bearable. We just won't be going back!


Doing his best coy magazine pose for the camera.
Don't hate me cuz I'm beee-utiful.


So do I get another lollipop now?

14 Months!!

Our Stinker is 14 months old and so very big....literally and figuratively. Sometimes he seems to act more like a 2 year old, and he's less and less of a baby every day {sniff, sniff, whimper...}. He is so much fun and absolutely hilarious, making us laugh all the time. Since I didn't do a 12 or 13 month update, I'm just gonna get right down to it. There's no way I'll be able to adequately summarize all that has changed in the last 2 months, but you'll get an idea!

• The Belly: At his 12 month check up, the Big Man weighed 31 lbs, 2 oz (once again, 99th percentile!). With all his walking, running, climbing, and bouncing, he seems to have slimmed down some in his face, waist, arms, and legs, but NOT in the belly. His belly is adorably huge and doesn't seem to be getting any smaller...in fact, most days it seems to only be getting bigger, but we love it!

Belly-licious.

• The Messes: He is into EVERYTHING and cannot be contained. I recently made him a shirt that says, "Human Wrecking Ball" because that so perfectly describes him. He would so much rather take everything out of the kitchen cabinets and drawers and play with bowls, rolls of aluminum foil, can openers, or spatulas than play with his toys. It's equally as exhausting trying to keep him out of the cabinets as it is cleaning up his many, many messes all throughout the day. He's hilarious, too, because when he gets into things he knows he's not supposed to have, he usually runs away with his loot as soon as he hears me say "No, put that back!"

Maybe we should change his name on his birth certificate...

"The dishwasher did it!"


"I'm just helping you get organized."


"Now where should I put this?"

"Hey, Mom, why don't you use this plug-in air freshener now that I'm around? It tastes like it'd smell really good."

• Playing: When he does play with his toys, his favorite things are his various blocks. He has a huge tub full of big Legos. While he's not into building things, he really enjoys knocking over our creations. His favorite thing to do with them, though, is to pour them all out of the tub and then knock them all around and together, making tons of noise. He will even sign "please", trying to get Phil or me to join in and make it especially loud. He also loves two other toys that involve blocks. One is that half red, half blue octagonal sphere thing with holes for the yellow blocks of all different shapes, that has been around for eons. He'll get it and say "open, open" so that we pull it apart and let out all the blocks. Then we show him where each block goes (the circle in the circle-shaped hole, the square in the square-shaped hole, etc.), and he puts each block in its own hole all by himself. He recognizes the star and always finds it first, saying something that sounds like "slaaaaaaahhhh", which we now know means "star". His other fave is a big plastic boat toy that my brother gave him that also has blocks of certain shapes. He will sit and put the blocks in the holes and take them out again for a good 5 minutes, which is an eternity in Luke Land.

Making tons of noise and loving it with the boys in Atlanta.

• Reading: Luke has recently become obsessed with books. His 2 faves that are always within reach (meaning strewn on the floor somewhere nearby) are the ABC book that Auntie Em gave him and the book we call his "oops" book. The ABC book is fabulous and has pictures of many of our family members, all representing a certain letter of the alphabet. He reads it several times a day, always pointing out the pictures of Mommy and Daddy, the iphone, the apples, Papa T., and Pops. The other book, the "oops" book, is a book called Green Hat, Blue Hat by Sandra Boynton and is the book that had him guffawing in a video with my dad (which I know I posted, but can't find right now). On each page, it shows an animal with some article of clothing on, like a red shirt, and the words "red shirt" underneath. It lists 3 animals like this, then a silly turkey with something on the wrong body part, with the word "Oops" underneath him. It says, for instance, "Green hat, blue hat, red hat....oops!" Luke thinks it's so funny when you get to the "oops" part of each page. He loves the book so much that he now will read it to himself. We'll hear him turning the pages and saying to himself things like, "na-nah, bah-bah, da-da, oof!" It's the cutest darn thing and makes us laugh every time. He loves to say "oof" all throughout the day, even when not reading the book, and also calls every Sandra Boynton book "Oof".

Reading his "oops" book to himself.

• Mowing: His other obsession is mowing. Aunt Jo Jo gave him a mower for his birthday, and he LOVES it. It's always the first thing he goes to when we go outside and many times we have to bring it inside with us when we are done sweating to death outside. Recently Luke and I were in a baby consignment shop that sells clothes and toys, and Luke found the same mower that he has, laying down on a shelf halfway across the room. He started pointing and yelling, "Mow, mow, mow!" I looked at the shelf and didn't even recognize the mower for about 20 seconds, because of the way it was laying. I couldn't believe that he had recognized it on his own and from so far away. I now think if we were to show him big black blobs of ink on paper, he'd probably think they all looked like his mower. That is how much he loves his mower. When we were at some friends' house for the 4th of July, he immediately found the vacuum cleaner push toy, grabbed it, and started pushing it and chanting, "mow, mow, mow". You can imagine how excited he was when we went outside and found an actual lawn mower push toy! Later he took off into the neighbor's yard, running toward a partially covered 4 wheeler, pointing and yelling, "mow, mow, mow!!"

Luke on the 4th of July, having left the swimming pool to get in a little mowing.

Running away toward the 4-wheeler, chanting "mow, mow, mow."


Some serious mowing in the driveway.

• Teething: The poor Stinker has been working on getting his 4 12-month molars FOREVER! It's driving me nuts, because they wake him up during the night all the time. Thankfully, we can usually just leave him alone, and he'll go back to sleep, but it's still not fun for any of us. He's cut a few parts of most of the molars, but since they are so big, they all still have a ways to go. I know it can't be comfortable for him, so I wish they'd just hurry up and grow in. I feel like by the time these grow in all the way, it'll be time for new ones to start their eternally slow descent. Ugggghhhh.....

• Picky Eating: Luke has become a pretty darn picky eater....I realize you'd never believe it to look at him, but just trust me on this one. He used to eat whatever we fed him, but ever since starting on table foods, he's been really picky. He loves chicken nuggets, deli meats, turkey meatballs (that I make for him), pureed veggies and occasionally cooked, cut up veggies, any kind of cracker or chip, animal crackers, yogurt, and most fruits. He WILL NOT eat any pastas, breads, cheeses, or anything slimy or with a texture that he's not used to. You'd be surprised just how many foods this includes. It's so annoying and totally out of my league. I come from a family that will eat anything that is not moving, so I don't know what to do with the Stinker. I refuse to be the mom that lets her kid eat nothing but mac n' cheese (which he wouldn't eat anyway) and Lucky Charms for his entire life, so I'm going to have to figure this out with Luke. I am hoping that he'll come around eventually, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Enjoying his most favoritest part of every meal: his "baaaaah."

• Wicked Smart: As do all parents, we think Luke is a genius. I am no longer keeping a list of all the words he says, because I can't keep up. Don't get me wrong. He doesn't go around saying all of his words all of the time or putting them together to make sentences, but he just really likes to learn and say words. He is constantly mimicking what we say and when we say a word that he doesn't know but wants to, he will look at our mouths with such concentration and then start trying to move his mouth along with us until he gets the new word out, usually saying it in his own way, but close enough that we can recognize the word. He also understands soooo much. I can tell him to close the door or drawer for me, and he'll do it. We can ask him where something is, and he'll go get it. If I say, "are you poopy-stinky?" and he is, then he'll run to the laundry room where we always change his diaper. If he hears the garage door, he'll say "Da-da" and run to the door. If I mention outside, he'll run to the nearest door. If he wants something opened, he'll say "open, open." If I ask him if he wants chicken nuggets and he does, he'll do the sign for "eat". He asks for blueberries, strawberries, or his bottle by name. The other day he was saying "mouth" and pointing to my mouth. When he touched my teeth, I told him "teeth" and he immediately said "thhee." Ever since, he's been able to point out my teeth when I say the word or if I just point to them and don't say anything, he'll say "thhheeee". Two different times I showed him how to go backwards down our stairs and after that he was a pro, even changing on his own the way he used to crawl down our one step into our living room to mimic the new way that he learned to go down the big set of stairs. All of this may be what every other kid his age does, but because he's our first (and awesome), we think he's amazing!

I am sure there is tons more I could say about what Luke's up to these days and how much he's changed, but I can't think of much more to write about. So....I'll just appease you with more pictures!


Wearing Mommy's sunglasses. Daddy hates this picture because he says Luke looks like Elton John. Ha!

Posing with Mommy after getting her hair cut.


Wearing the last and only onesie in his closet. I had to get a picture because it made him look a little more like a baby again. I didn't want to take it off! They don't make onesies for babies who are the size of 4 year olds. Boo hoo.


Helping Mommy clean the house.
Riiiiight....


Sitting still to watch a little Wimbledon. For all of 45 seconds.

We love our busy, picky, messy genius of a man.
We just wish that time would slow down and he wouldn't get so big, so fast!