The Visit

So, by “tomorrow,” I apparently meant next week! There are really no excuses besides the standard busyness, but we also haven’t had the internet here for a week. And since my blogging time is usually when Luke is asleep, and I’m also confined to the house when he’s asleep, I haven’t had as many opportunities to stay caught up with my blogs. Which is a shame, b/c there’s been a lot to blog about.

But we’ll start with our trip to Ken and Victoria’s. We had a great time! To me, the whole visit was really relaxing, which was wonderful. I remarked to Greg on the way back that I was kind of sad to have to get back to the “real world” of cooking and cleaning and getting stuff done! Much of our time in Maryland was spent just hanging out, talking, eating Victoria’s delicious meals, and playing with the kids, which was ideal. But we did make a few ventures out: on Saturday afternoon, we went to the Ukrainian festival, and on Sunday evening, we all went to the mall. The Ukrainian festival was held at Victoria’s parents’ church, and we got to watch all sorts of performers sing, dance, and play various instruments. Greg and I enjoyed it immensely, and Luke was moderately diverted, though he preferred pushing his stroller around and making friends with people in the audience over watching the actual show! We also had a dinner of all sorts of Ukrainian food—it was all delicious, though I can’t remember what any of it was called. [Incidentally, Ken or Victoria, if you read this blog, can you remind me of what it was that we ate, as well as the name of Victoria’s parents’ church? I need it for my scrapbookJ. I know I could email you, but I still don’t have internet here. Greg is going to post this blog for me at the church building.] After dinner, the three cousins diverted themselves by running around and playing, notably with an old dilapidated Jeep (a child-size one) that was inexplicably on the church grounds. We got some cute pictures of them all sitting in it, which you can see on our photo site.

On Sunday evening, we went to the Columbia mall, which was a lot of fun. Grace and Amelia have two traditions at the mall: drinking smoothies and riding on the carousel. Luke LOVED the smoothie tradition, though he seemed less thrilled with the carousel ride. He, Grace, and Greg were all in a carriage-type thing, and every time they came around, Luke was in a different position—sitting next to dad, sitting next to Grace, on Greg’s lap, etc. I guess he just couldn’t find the perfect one for him!

The coolest thing about our trip was how well the cousins all got along. Honestly, I’ve never seen Luke interact as much with other children as he did with Grace and Amelia. They even got him to open up and start talking a little. For instance, he would say, “ba” for ball, something that, despite our best efforts, we have never been able to get him to try. We thought that maybe his being with them happened to coincide with a language breakthrough, but he definitely has not been as talkative since we got back. I think the girls just inspired him! Also, this trip marked his transition from bathing in the sink to bathing in the tub. I know, I know: it’s about time! But the sink is just so much more convenient, and he’s always liked it so much. In fact, the tub has kind of scared him in the past. But the first night as he bathed in the tub, Grace supervised with me, and interacted with him. She showed him all the bath toys, and when he would set them on the edge of the tub, she would push them in and laugh uproariously, which Luke found to be hilarious! It was so funny watching them laugh together! Then the next two nights, the cousins all took a bath together to save time. I can’t speak for Grace and Amelia, but Luke thought this was great. And don’t worry—we became “those” parents and got all sorts of incriminating bath photos. I mean, how can you resist that opportunity?

Well, I hear Luke’s mobile, which means he has woken up from his nap. I’m still set on a once a week blog, but at this point, I think that’s my maximum!

The Sleep Chronicles

Last Thursday, we took a trip up to Maryland to visit Greg’s brother, Ken, his wife, Victoria, and their two daughters, Grace and Amelia. We’ve realized that the tenor of every trip is largely determined by Luke’s sleep habits while traveling, so I’ll start with that.

We’re happy to report that Luke slept amazingly well at Granddaddy Kirby’s house, where we stopped for the night to break up the trip. He woke up once, 45 minutes after he went to bed, which is his normal trip behavior. After that, however, we didn’t here from him until almost 9:00 am—causing us to oversleep! (Luke is our alarm clock.) Not that we were complaining! Another key factor to this scenario was the fact that Luke slept upstairs, while we slept downstairs with the baby monitor in our room. Still, at the time, we just regarded his full night’s sleep as a miracle and moved on.

[Sidenote: One thing about having a baby with you is that it makes you very in tune with houses and all their creaks and sounds. The way the floor squeaks, the way a door closes, the way the air conditioner cuts on or off—you hear all of these things at an abnormally high volume b/c they are factors affecting the sleep of your child. The amazing thing is that our house—which is kind of a pastiche of construction; which has nary a square wall in the place; which is so inexplicably accessible to living creatures that I wouldn’t be surprised if a deer found its way in—is actually amazingly quiet, at least on Luke’s end. It’s been such a blessing!]

At Ken and Victoria’s, Luke started out upstairs in the same room with us. He went down fine, and slept great until 11:30, when he woke up fussing. Rather than go right back to sleep as he always does, he continued crying. And continued crying. Despite trying every trick in the book—including things we’d last used when he was six months old—his cries escalated into frustrated screams. He wasn’t running a fever, and we thought he might have a stomach ache from trying new foods at dinner, but really, nothing could explain this behavior. He angrily pushed away the water we offered him, and did the same with the Motrin—something he never does. And of course, we were very mindful that a family of four was sleeping on the same floor, including a 19 month old and a 3 ½ year old. Finally, we took Luke down to the basement just to get the screamin’ demon away from all the other sleepers. He eventually calmed down, only to flip out again whenever anyone suggested he actually sleep. Greg sent me back to bed and later came and got the pack n play to take down to the basement. All told, Luke was up for 3 hours that night. We thought he was possessed.

It turned out, though, that the basement was the perfect place for Luke. For one thing, it was cooler, and Luke is used to sleeping in a rather cool room. Even more importantly, the Kirby’s have a rabbit named Oscar down there. They were worried that the rabbit would be too noisy for Luke, but as it turned out that Oscar served as the travel version of Luke’s mobile (Luke has a very deep relationship with his mobile. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, he turns it on and even plays with it a little, and then goes back to sleep. In the morning, while it serenades him, he lies on his back and has long conversations with it. He babbles more to that mobile than to any human, I think!) So from then on, Luke was banished to the basement, and Greg and I alternated sleeping down there with him (there was a bed in the back, very much out of Luke’s sight). He slept like a champ! The few times he woke up in the middle of the night, he would look at Oscar, laugh, wave, and put himself right back to sleep. He also napped great, and woke up happy. So all in all, it was a great trip, sleep-wise. Tomorrow, I’ll write about the actual daylight activities!

Christmas In September

Well, the day after my blog about Luke’s favorite book, Construction Zone, Luke got a huge surprise. We were coming home from a walk when, before our very eyes, a huge dump truck, pulling a backhoe, pulled into the church parking lot! Luke was in his stroller, and he let out a series of unearthly screams of longing and excitement, all the while reaching out desperately, as if to embrace the construction equipment. He and Greg went over to investigate, and the owner of the equipment (who was there to fix a ditch in our parking lot), graciously suggested that Luke climb all over it and sit on the seat. Needless to say, Luke thought he was big stuff!

The next morning, we went back out before they started working and got some photos and video. Once again, he was enamored. Which is how, even though I hadn’t taken a shower, even though I had to a ton of laundry and packing to do for a trip to Maryland, even though I had to clean and prepare for cell groups at my house that night, I found myself sitting cross-legged in the middle of the church parking lot with Luke on my lap, watching the slow and almost imperceptible progress of the backhoe like it was an Oscar winning movie. The sun was beating down on us, and Luke was breaking a sweat just sitting there, but he didn’t care: he was mesmerized!

This is the video of Luke sprinting to investigate the backhoe. Make sure you have the audio on for this one:

A New Goal

From now on, I’m going to try to write some kind of blog at least once a week. I’m not assuming there’s some huge demand out there for our blog; it’s just that, why have a blog if you don’t ever write, you know? Plus, I love reading other people’s blogs, and it makes me sad when they don’t update theirs. So I feel kind of hypocritical not updating mine more regularly. I set the weekly goal because, well, I just do better with goals.

This week’s topic is on how children’s books can be boring. One of the things I most looked forward to with kids was reading to them. And I do really enjoy it. It is always great time with Luke. I just didn’t realize how mind-numbing it could be to read the same book over and over and over again. Or to try to read books at Luke’s rapid pace (he’s quite the page turner)! We tend to read several times throughout the day, so one thing I do to break up the book monotony is make frequent trips with Luke to the library. We always get at least ten books, but inevitably, Luke latches on to one or two. Once it was a version of “Old McDonald” with about 78 verses (Luke did make great strides in animal identification during that phase, I must say). Most recently, though, it was the notorious Construction Zone that Luke picked to be his favorite. Even though I’ve already returned the book (thank goodness), I can read it to you right now. It goes a little something like this:

Rubber-tired backhoe
Bulldozer
Concrete truck
Forklift Crane
Tamper
Crane with clamshell bucket
Forklift
Crawler backhoe
Cherry picker
Paver
Roller
Garbage Truck

Each page also included photographs of the construction equipment in question. Luke ADORED this book. We had to read it all the time. And I must say, I did learn a lot about construction equipment (“That’s called a tamper? Who knew?”). However, Greg and I both had to suppress groans when Luke would toddle up holding out that book. Luckily, our newest batch of books seems to be without a dud in the bunch. Unfortunately, it’s the one with which Luke has been the least enamored so far.