You know you're a mom when...

..you wish for a day to yourself so you can finally clean your house!

Luke the Ladies Man

Tonight Luke army crawled his way to Lydia's baby doll on the kitchen floor and began to give her "Luke Loves"--slobbery kisses/licking and latching on to the doll's face and forehead.  We're going to have to watch him when he gets older, because he was attempting to do some serious making out with that doll, complete with sound effects. Granted, if he spit up on his girlfriend like he did on the doll, I am sure the make out session would be over and his chances of kissing her in the future would be very limited.  I tried to catch him in the act, but he became very interested in the camera once he saw it, so I had to settle for the "ravenous tiger looks up from devouring his prey" shot you see here. 

Our Week

Well, I've been remiss in blogging during the week, and since I can no longer remember more than a few days at at time, I will just have to start at Thursday.  Thursday afternoon we had lunch with Tyler's parents downtown as they passed through on their way to California.  Lydia got her very stylish birthday luggage from them, and she has not ceased dragging the bags up and down and all around the house.  She is certainly a girl.  Grandma Stoddard also made her a beautiful quilt for her bed that actually matches the paint on the walls (thank you Shirlene!)  It has four little girls on it and she randomly names them the names of her friends and cousins, boys and girls alike.  I think she's still learning that boys don't wear dresses.

Last night Tyler and I went out for our monthly date.  We went to dinner at a local upscale Mongolian BBQ restaurant (yes, there is such a thing!)  It was great food and the company was even better :)  Some of our friends watched the kids for us, and I dressed Luke up in his cute Gymboree outfit courtesy of Tyler's Aunt Diane.  I love playing dress up with my kids, although Lydia doesn't let me near as much as she used to!

As we were getting ready to leave for the babysitter's house, Lydia come over to us and said, "my (insert unintelligable word here that starts with an a) hurts."  We asked her again what hurt, and she said, "My allergies are really really bad right now."  What?  I don't even recall that my allergies have been bad recently, so she must have some amazing recall from months ago. Anyways, Tyler and I about died laughing. She's a pretty funny kid.

Today we went to Church and then enjoyed long afternoon naps.  I know most people don't, but I'm totally digging church at 8:30 am!  After awaking, Lydia and Luke suffered a tickle attack from Daddy.  I love to hear my kids laughing with my husband, I don't think there is a better sound in the world! 

ABCs

It's part of my duty as a father to dote on my daughter and show off her many, many talents and abilities. Today, she wowed us with her singing of the ABCs. She turned two a week and a half ago and it's getting harder and harder to keep up with her new phrases and songs. But this is one everyone needs to see! (PS: We did her hair and make-up extra special for this shot) :)

Encouraging Words

So today I was driving to the library with the kids.  I was singing the ABC song for the twentieth time in a row and decided to switch it up and do an opera voice at the end.  At the conclusion of my aria, Lydia yelled, "Good job Mommy!  I proud of you!"  I guess I should sing opera more often :)

You like rice?

So, last night we gave Luke rice cereal for the first time in an attempt to increase the odds of him sleeping through the night.  Expecting him to hate it like Lydia did, I had bibs and burp cloths ready to mop up the mess I was sure he'd make.  He was the exact opposite--he loved it!  He was grabbing my fingers pulling my hand with the spoon toward his mouth and fussing if I took a second too long to reload the spoon.  It was still a bit messy, but he ate almost the entire tablespoon of cereal in about 5 minutes!  Sadly, he still only went about 5 hours between feedings and then reverted to every two hours, but I have faith that he will be able to go longer between feedings at night if I keep at it with the cereal.  He is a beautiful growing boy and we love him!  

Hooray for Blogs!

So, I am going to attempt (again) to blog as a way of journaling my life as a wife, mommy, and nurse.  While most of the time I feel that I go days or weeks between having experiences that may be interesting to someone else, I have little moments every day that I think "I want to remember this forever."  I hope that I get on here often enough to record some of them for myself and my posterity, and if they are interesting to anyone out there, then that will be an added bonus!

P.S.  Tyler is going to upload some of our old posts from our now-defunct website, so if you see posts from many moons ago it's not because we've had a blog for six months and haven't told anyone.  We're just back-blogging!