Luke's Birthday

I am now the mother of a two and four year old. No more babies here...

We took a trip up to my cousin's house in Houston for Memorial Day weekend. The kids had a blast swimming in her pool and playing in her HUGE house. We opened presents at our house Friday morning (Luke's actual b-day) and had our "cake" (doughnuts) before driving to Houston. Then Saturday we had cake and presents for Luke with the family.

Here's birthday morning at our house:

(Luke has become obsessed with mowing and weedeating and talks about them all the time. Every time Dave mows, Luke has to watch him or worse, be held by him. Hence the weedeater.)

The kids all had a blast playing in the pool. If anyone is looking, these floaty vests are awesome. They sell them at Wal-Mart for $15 and they have several different animals. They are actually coast guard approved life vests and they worked great. The kids could jump in the pool and swim around very easily with them on.

Luke's birthday party. He is completely into cake. Whenever I asked him what he wanted for his birthday the only thing he told me was "cake". I guess we've had a lot of birthdays lately because whenever he sees a cake or something cake-like (muffins), he starts singing "Happy Birthday to you..."

I love how Luke is just smiling during the song and looking around. Now, shortly before I started taping this, I told Dave, "Go stand by Luke and make sure he doesn't burn himself". Where is Dave in this video???

NOT where he should be. Luckily Luke was prevented from doing damage to his fingers.

We took the little kids out just to play outside and somehow they both ended up in the pool???

I can't believe it's been two years already! Happy Birthday Luke!

Little Builder

Wow, here I am, just blogging away the past few days. I think I've done more blogs in the past three days than I have in the last three months... Well, it really helps that Dave has been working late. Monday he flew until 9:30, last night he had duty until 1:30 (a.m.) and tonight it looks like midnight again. Since he's not home to spend time with, I can get things done...

So it occurred to me the other day that I an knee deep in building blocks. Small wooden blocks, mega blocks, tinker toys, Legos, even a small set of K'Nex. Now, Legos have by far become Calvin's toy of choice. Some days that is the only thing he plays with. And I am absolutely amazed by the things he builds with them. Mostly it's airplanes and spaceships, but sometimes there are cars and forts. It's really neat to watch and makes me wonder if he's got a little bit of an engineering gene from his dad... Anyways, I don't have pictures of his Legos creations, but here a couple of "ships" he built recently from tinker toys - all by himself.

Well, this one might be a gun.

This is a Star Wars ship. It actually kind of looks like one to me. I love how symmetrical it is.

Relaxed and Re-"Wined"

Last Friday was my birthday and also our sixth anniversary. To celebrate, we headed out of town, sans kiddos (thanks mom). Okay, I guess I should be clear about this. Technically, Dave was on a cross country (again). He actually asked for permission on this one and it worked out that we got a weekend away. We were originally going to take the kids with us, but when my mom volunteered to watch them, I jumped at the chance. So Dave flew up Friday morning, and I drove up that afternoon. I picked him up at the airport, then we headed to the Marriott - which is right on the riverwalk. That night we ate at the Cheesecake Factory (my choice - since we don't have one down in Corpus). After that we went and saw Angels and Demons. Yes, an actual movie at the movie theater, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I'm pretty sure the last movie I saw in the theater was Mamma Mia last August with my mom and cousin. But anyways...

Saturday we got up and headed to Fredericksburg, which is a German town in the Texas Hill Country. It is a really neat town with stores all up and down Main Street that you can walk to. Unfortunately, a lovely little cold front went through on our drive up there and with it came rain. It was really too wet to walk around and I didn't get to take any pictures. We ate at a restaurant in town (an hour wait - so wouldn't have been fun with kids) and then moved on to our real destination - the hill country wineries. I'm not exactly sure how many wineries there are in the surrounding area, but we went to five, and skipped over several, just in one small area. It's kind of like Texas' own Napa Valley. In fact, Texas is number two in the U.S. in wine production now. We had a blast doing the tastings at all of the wineries and of course, restocking our wine supply. Our last wine trip/binge on the Olympic peninsula supplied us with enough wine for about two years. I don't think we were quite as crazy this time, but I shouldn't be hitting the grocery store for wine any time soon...

This was one of my favorites - Grape Creek winery. The setting was so beautiful - green fields all around. They called themselves the "Tuscany of Texas".

That night we went for a stroll along the riverwalk. It was so pretty down there and the weather was perfect because of the cool front.

Here's a picture of the Riverwalk, so you can kind of get an idea of what it's like. It's down below street level and there are restaurants on both sides, plus stores, bars, and hotels.

We probably ended up walking a mile or more before stopping to have fajitas at a Mexican restaurant (not as good as La Playa, though). But the view was great - this place had a patio a so we were above the foot traffic, but still could see everything. My picture didn't turn out that great, but here it is:

You can't see the river, but it's there behind the railing and bushes.

After dinner we went to Howl at the Moon (a bar which features sing-along pianos) and had a blast! There just happened to be a bachelorette/girls gone wild party right in front of us that kept us entertained most of the night. After drinking beers there for a couple of hours we decided to call it a night. Sunday was time to head back home, although I could have used another day to just sit around and read and relax. All in all, it was a great weekend away and I'm already looking forward to the next one.

What the Heck Was I Thinking???

In what was an apparent total lack of judgement/common sense, I left Luke sitting on the counter in my bathroom last Friday as I was packing for my weekend away. He was brushing his teeth, so I ran to take some bags downstairs. I could hear him moving around up there and suddenly realized that Dave had razors sitting in a cup on the counter and I had better get back up there. I flew up the steps only to be greeted by this:



You're going to have to enlarge the pictures to get the full effect. Well, in my temporary loss of brainpower (see "Where Has it Gone?" post for clarification), I seem to have forgotten that I had given Luke a tube of lipstick to play with while I was putting on makeup. And yes, he still had that lipstick (sort of), and my sweet little angelic boy had decided to brush his teeth with said lipstick. What did I do, you might ask? Well, I told him to stay right there and ran and got my camera, of course.



He was so proud of himself and couldn't stop smiling and saying "Cheese". Guess he felt kind of beautiful with the makeup on... Check out that tootbrush, and notice the EMPTY lipstick tube (yep, he used the entire thing).



The toothbrush went straight into the trash.


Luckily, it was a light pink shade and not dark red... Did I mention there were streaks on the counter and pink handprints on the mirror??




Well, lesson learned, I suppose. Does this mean I won't ever do anything brainless like this again? Probably not...



On another note, I am happy to report that Luke has been sleeping great since he got his "big boy" bed. He's getting a new quilt, but it hasn't come in yet. I just love his room, although it is kind of strange not to have a crib in the house after using one continuously for the last four years. Just reminds me how quickly they are growing.

Claire

I got to see and hold my new niece for the first time today!! Claire Penelope Redman was born last Tuesday, May 12th - 8 lbs. 15 oz. and 21 inches. She had alot of trouble breathing on her own, so they ended up taking her to the NICU and testing her for infections. They only allowed parents and grandparents in there, so I didn't even get to see her until today. My brother and sister-in-law stopped by on their way home and I got to hold that sweet, precious baby. I forgot what it's like to hold a newborn. Even though she was a good sized baby, she was still so incredibly tiny!



Calvin was really excited to hold her as well. He's been talking about holding her since last week. It was sweet, especially when he leaned over to me and said "I just love this baby".





Luke, on the other hand, wasn't really too sure what to do. He got up from his nap, and there she was. My mom asked him if he wanted to kiss her cheek and he was quick to reply "Nope". Here he is, checking her out. He's been the baby of the family for two years now, so I'm sure he will have some issues.

Welcome to the family Claire. I'm sure I will be your favorite aunt. We love you!

Mother's Day

Just wanted to share this gift I made for my my mom. They are paper flowers made from the boys' handprints. I found the directions in my Family Fun magazine and they turned out really cute. Calvin enjoyed helping me make them.

And here's my handsome boys and I on mother's day. Dave was gone on a cross-country once again so we went out to eat with my parents and brother and sister-in-law.

Primping Already??

I just had to share, because this really cracked me up and I'm not sure where it came from. The other night I sent Calvin to my shower to get cleaned up. Luke was in the other shower at the time, so Calvin went off on his own. It really hits me now how quickly he is growing - he can bathe, dry, and dress himself. So this particular night he takes his shower (being sure to use my foot scrub to clean his feet), gets out, gets his towel and dries off. I periodically went in to check on him and first found him sitting on top of the toilet, towel wrapped around his waist, with my nail clippers, cutting his finger and toenails. He has never done that before. The next time I came back I found him sitting on the counter with a comb, wetting and "styling" his hair (which he just got buzzed, so there really is nothing there). I watched in amusement as he totally checked himself out in the mirror, gave a satisfied little grin, then hopped down and went to get dressed. It was hilarious, but I couldn't help but thinking, isn't he a bit young for this? His latest obsession is tucking in his shirt and wearing a belt. Metro???

Where did it go??

Ever get the feeling that having kids has just sucked every bit of brainpower right out of your head??? I swear that from the moment I first got pregnant, my mental capacity has been on a downward spiral, and I don't know how to get it back. Is it the lack of sleep? The long hours spent playing the same game over and over? A lack of adult conversation? Okay, it's not really that bad, but I did have to laugh at myself when I poured Grape Nuts into my coffee this morning. I somehow managed to pour quite a bit before I realized that something was not quite right...

On another note, I am happy to report that Luke has been doing great sleeping again. I finally got a childproof knob for the door so he couldn't open it. He was pretty mad the first night but eventually got over it. I somehow came to realize that he was okay in his room if I was laying in there as well. This led us to throw a sleeping bag on the floor (hey, if I'm going to be sleeping in there, I at least want to be comfortable). Luke loved the sleeping bag and has been sleeping on the floor for the past two weeks with pretty much no problem (all by himself). I guess he was just done with his crib. We just purchased his big bed today and took the crib out of his room. It's a full sized bed, just like Calvin's, but it's not on a frame so it's pretty low to the ground. I think he's pretty excited to have his own bed. We'll see how it goes tonight.