Christmas Card Outtakes

Be prepared for the cuteness headed your way.

Our Own Little Stuffed Turkey

For Thanksgiving this year, Mere Mere and Opa D came for some delicious food and warm weather. Highlights included homemade mac and cheese and bacon-wrapped turkey...

which Luke enjoyed immensely. 

1/2 Year

We are now closer to Luke being a whole year old than we are to his birth. Blows my mind.

In the past month Luke has become more like a little independent person than ever. He can now sit up for long stretches unsupported, but still likes to take breaks and flop over the boppy pillow to rest every now and then. He now has four teeth! that all popped in within a week of each other, and luckily now his drool waterfall seems to have dried up momentarily. Little Luke loves playing with his toys, loves taking his nightly bath, and still hates taking naps. He has recently started to assert his will more and more definitely, insisting on holding his diaper ointment and his occasional bottle by himself and pulling our hands closer when we have something he wants. Luke wants to be a part of everything going on, including fixing and eating dinner, cleaning, and even shower-taking, and can tell when we are doing something without him and is never happy about it. Other than that, though, Luke is an extremely happy little man. 

A loud, smiley, giggly little man. 

Playing with Food

Anyone who has ever eaten a meal with Kenny knows that he always does more talking than eating.

Looks like we have another one on our hands.

Luke's New Festive Friend

I was putting up our Christmas decorations today with a little help from Luke and Mere Mere, when Luke took a liking to our little elf and decided to talk to him.

                             

This went on for a good fifteen minutes or so.

If only we all had such a friend. :)

Luke's Luscious Locks 4

Helping Mom

Luke has reached the point in his babyhood when everything is boring. He can't move, he is just getting the hang of sitting, and there is no one around but mom (who really tries to get stuff done, but is the slave of his caprice). So every once in a while, we try something new. 

Like helping mom with laundry.

The Sound of the Shrieking Eel

Cooing is for babies. 

Get 'em while they're young

Luke recently attended his first BYU football game. And although he slept through a chunk of it, I can tell we have a future Cougar fan on our hands.

As if he could be anything else with this guy as his father...

Luke's Luscious Locks 3

Luke's Luscious Locks 2

Luke's Luscious Locks

Luke has some seriously unfortunate old-man hair. Which Kenny loves and refuses to let me cut. To try to help him come to his senses, I have started doing some fun hairdos at night to draw attention to how ridiculous it is. 

Stay tuned for more manipulation of the comb-over.

We're Not at Mere Mere's Anymore...

Poor Luke and his makeshift playmat.

Five Months

At his five-month mark, Luke is around the respectable weight of sixteen and a half pounds, placing him at about the 40th percentile (a sad fall from his off-the-charts beginning, but much better than his five-week measurements at around the 25th), and is nice and long at 26 3/4 inches and the 90th percentile. With proper incentive he can roll over both directions, although he still favors from back to front and has to be reminded how to roll from front to back. We've had strangers comment on his excellent hand-eye coordination (his most practiced move being to his mouth), but he seems to only recently have noticed what his hands look like and enjoys twirling them around in front of his face. Luke loves his toes and enjoys pulling his feet all the way to his mouth to suck on his big toe. He is still a menace in church--one week I heard a nice lady lean over to her neighbor and exclaim "aw, there's that little boy who spit up all over his grandma last week!"--and his bodily functions are still so loud that a member making a comment in Sunday school stopped mid-sentence and turned around to look and laugh a few weeks ago. To make matters worse, he has now started to imitate us by laughing whenever he makes a particularly loud toot.

Luke is a very social little guy, who usually smiles at strangers but has recently started to cry at the sight of certain individuals with no apparent rhyme or reason. He does, however, seem to really like other babies and kids. He had the chance to interact with another baby about his size at the ward Halloween party who Luke was very interested in, but who started to cry after Luke shrieked at her three or four times.

He is the main source of our entertainment both day and (still, unfortunately) night!

Happy Halloween

from the family of food mascots.

Play with me!

Luke is so happy to have someone other than his mother to look at. 

Why nothing ever gets done...

this is what I see everyday. 

All grown up...

I thought I would do this monthly update on time.

Luke began his fourth month of life with a long road trip from Alabama to our new home in Houston, making Luke a very well-traveled little baby who has visited nine states in his short little life, ten if you include the time he and I spent in Colorado on a layover. On our way through Louisiana we stopped and visited the beautiful state capital building and saw where Huey Long was shot. Some of the staff we met thought Luke was just the cutest thing they had ever seen.

Luke keeps getting more active every day and has started to show unfortunate symptoms of boredom.  He has become very frustrated with his little immobile body but has learned some body signals to help us understand what it is that he wants, i.e. arching his back to be picked up and leaning forwards when he wants us to stand. He is extremely curious and is always looking around, and now has enough hand-eye coordination to try to grab whatever it is he sees (his new favorites being faces, hair, and glasses).

And if nothing else suffices, Luke will talk.
And talk.
And wiggle.
And screech.
And talk some more.

In fact, everything Luke does is loud. His bowel movements have become the stuff of legends in relief society, since he always picks the quietest moments to grunt and do his thing. The first week we attended a kind lady I hadn't met yet walked up after the meeting, smiled sweetly and exclaimed, "My your baby sure is loud!"

Luke loves his bath time and has recently learned how to splash, flailing all four of his limbs until he has enough water in his face. He also loves being outdoors, and will calm down instantly if I take him out onto our balcony or out for a walk. He is showing a preference for music, and will listen quietly when I play the piano or when his daddy sings. Luke enjoys being read to and talked to and tickled and doesn't seem to mind loud noises or bright lights or quick movements. He doesn't like being put down for a nap or swaddled, but flails too much in his sleep to graduate from it yet, and now refuses to take a binky at all. He still isn't sleeping through the night (and has, in fact, regressed in that department) and has included his father in the nightly wakings by kicking him in the face or tooting loudly in his general direction while nursing. But on the whole Luke is just a smiley, happy, wiggly little guy. 

Three Months and Counting!

Since our little guy is turning four months at the end of the week, I thought I would squeeze in a three month update before it's officially outdated. 

In his busy third month of life, Luke spent almost all of it with Mere Mere, Uncle Matto, and Opa D in Alabama. He took several road trips to Tennessee to visit Andrew Jackson's Hermitage and Gatlinburg and grew very sick of his carseat in the process. 

*on the left, Luke is having his diaper changed in the gardens at the Hermitage*

He smiled much more readily, though usually still preferred his serious scowl, and wiggled a lot more than he used to. He became much more dexterous with his hands, being able to occasionally grab onto toys if they were close enough, and was able to focus on people's faces and objects more easily. Luke loved sitting in Mere Mere's little baby seat to check out what was going on around him and still enjoyed laying by himself on a play mat. Luke enjoyed attending Sacrament Meeting and kicked off his first Alabama ward attendance by loudly messing his pants in the middle of the Sacrament prayer. He also had the unfortunate experience of getting his tongue clipped to see if it would help with his breastfeeding, which he did not enjoy but handled like a trooper. He started out the month sleeping for seven hours a stretch, which mom was extremely happy about, but then decided he missed her too much to go for that long and went back to waking up two or three times. With all of the attention and company and fun, he definitely misses the fun time he had in Alabama!

Water Baby

A rainy (unsuccessful) day at the pool.

Two Months

After Seattle, Luke spent a month with the Shaner side of the family in Boise getting to know his two uncles and grandparents better while his daddy studied for the bar. He also spent a few days in Buhl, ID getting to know his great grandma and grandpa Whitt.

Over the past month, Luke has developed an unfortunate sense of who is currently holding him, and has decided that he dislikes people he doesn't know, particularly when he is tired or hungry. He is awake for a big part of the day now, taking naps every couple hours or so, and is practically sleeping through the night, going down at 9 or 9:30 and sleeping until about 4:30 in the morning, then going back to sleep until about 8:00. He still despises tummy time, enough to roll over a few times from his tummy to his back a few weeks ago, an ability that unfortunately didn't stick since he hasn't done it since. He still enjoys looking at light fixtures, but is focusing much more on people's faces as long as they aren't too close. Luke is also smiling! Albeit still pretty stingily. He thinks his daddy is hilarious, though, and Ken can get a smile from him more easily than most people (including his mother). Luke usually talks quite a bit if he's in the mood for it and is very good at finding his mouth with his hands. He has very expressive eyebrows and deep blue eyes, and his hair is slowly but surely gaining lighter and possibly reddish highlights. Luke has also decided that a pacifier isn't for him after taking to it so readily when he was younger (much to the chagrin of his parents), and will only take it occasionally if extremely upset and coaxed into it by someone holding it firmly in his mouth. He will suck on his hands if he can find them, and once managed to suck his thumb for a good thirty seconds before accidentally pulling it out of his own mouth and becoming extremely mad that he had lost his treat. For the most part, however, Luke is extremely mellow and rolls well with the punches.

See Luke Grow!

Baby Luke's First Month

Luke's first month was far more eventful than his mother would have preferred. At two weeks Luke got to witness his daddy graduate from law school. He was an angel, only pitching a fit after the festivities were over. 

At three weeks of life we moved from our little apartment in Chicago to a wandering lifestyle for the summer, taking Luke's first plane ride to Seattle to visit his Young grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

The girls enjoyed peering quietly at Baby Luke and holding him, while his boy cousins were far more amusing in their first encounters. Danton fell prostrate, unhappy to see his mother holding another baby...

while monster baby Caleb grinned and promptly tried to bite his toes. 

After our brief stint in Seattle, Luke took his second plane ride to Boise to spend time with the Shaner side of the family. Being the only child and the first grandbaby, he was a little spoiled and, at times...

overwhelmed. :)

During his first month, Luke has become much more alert and awake during the day, and is a spectacular sleeper at night, going right back to sleep after eating. His favorite things to look at are dark shapes on the walls and ceiling fans, which he will occasionally smile at. He hates tummy time more than anything else and will handle most other annoyances with stoicism and an occasional grunt. He enjoys using his hands and wrings them while he looks around, but will calmly fold them over his chest while he sleeps. Some of the loudest noises Luke makes are his toots, which we have aptly named big man toots as they are often louder than anyone else's and are usually accompanied by very stern scowls and loud grunts. He's a little boy, through and through.