Seven Months

Height 28.5 inches (93rd percentile)

Wight 20 pounds (80th percentile)

Head 18.25 inches (96th percentile)

At seven months Luke is such a big boy!! As you can see from the stats above he is growing like a weed and has a huge head! (Those tend to run in my family) Depending on the brand of clothes he is wearing 6-12 months, 9 months or even a few 12 months. His hat size is 12-24 month and he is wearing size 3 diapers. 

He is sitting up on his own, but still tumbles over frequently. If I sit him up on a blanket with some toys and leave the room for a minute I often come back to see him fallen over, but he usually doesn't even care. He still hates to be on his tummy and last night was really the first time he has rolled from his back to his tummy by himself. He loves to stand and jump. He enjoys playing in his jumperoo and exersaucer. He is always twirling his wrists in the air and checking out his hands. He puts EVERYTHING in his mouth and wants to grab at everything he sees. Yesterday I was eating a slice of pizza and he grabbed a big handful of sauce and cheese! 

He (obviously) loves to eat! He is still exclusively nursing (refuses the bottle) 4 times a day and eats baby food three times a day. He eats: rice cereal, pears, peas, green beans, bananas, sweet potatoes, squash, peaches and later this week I plan on introducing carrots. He is a really good eater and likes all of the foods. I was originally making my own baby food, but I couldn't get the things like peas and beans to be very smooth and he wasn't eating them well, so I switched to the jars and he loves everything. 

He loves to sit on the floor and play with toys. Some of his favorite toys are his wooden ABC blocks, a big red cup, foam letters and numbers, anything that lights up and is musical and pretty much anything he can get in his mouth. He always smiles when Daddy comes home and he loves to sing songs and play peek-a-boo with me. He loves to sit in the grocery cart and check out everything at the store. I enjoy it because people are always smiling at us and saying how cute he is! He is definitely getting better in the car, but still fusses sometimes. He is getting ready to move into the upright car seat and out of the infant carrier. 

He got his first two teeth at the beginning of October and I'm sure the will be more coming soon. He finally started sleeping 12 hours a few weeks ago and mommy and daddy LOVE it!! He goes to bed at about 8:30 PM and wakes up between 8:00 and 8:30 AM. He finally stopped getting up at 5 or 6 AM to eat and that makes for a nice full nights rest for me! He takes 2 or 3 naps during the day. His last nap is usually just 30-45 minutes and sometimes he doesn't need it. 

He is growling, babbling, giggling, laughing and makes all sorts of crazy sounds. He is the JOY of my life! I sometimes get frustrated when he doesn't take a good nap or if he is being super fussy, but mostly I just love  him to pieces. He is such a happy little guy and it is so nice to have my little buddy with me all the time. I am unable to do things sometimes because he is only nursing, but I really don't care. It is one year of my life that I get to be with my baby and if I have to miss a few outings, activities, etc. then so be it! There has only been one time that I was a little sad to miss something, but I know the time will come again when I will get time to do other things. This is the time for me to be with my precious baby boy and I love it. 

~Happy Halloween~

We always go to my sisters house for Halloween and have a yummy festive dinner and then head out for some trick-or-treating. This year was no exception. The Poytress clan made the trek out to Hillsboro to celebrate with us. 

We always do a dry ice drink and its fun for the kids (and grown ups) to watch the fog pour out of the bowl. 

Here are the kids...

Here are the grownups (minus Aaron who was helping Miles!)

Yes, Luke had 3 costumes! He had two from his cousin, but I thought they would be too small once Halloween arrived, but they weren't. So, in the morning he was a pirate then he was Harry Potter and then in the cold night air he was a froggy!

 The cousins!!

Dan's spooky pumpkin.

Uncle Dan and Lukey Potter.

Let the trick-or-treating begin!!! 

Here is our froggy trying to eat a tootsie roll. 

After an hour and a half we made it back home with all our loot!! Kids get such better candy these days. So many peanut butter cups, M&M's and snickers!! Not like when I was a kid. It was so fun to take Lukey up to the door and trick-or-treat with him. It was the best Halloween EVER!! I

I hope you all had a safe, fun and spooky Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch

We always head out to The Pumpkin Patch at Sauvie Island in October to get our pumpkins. This is one of my favorite things about Oregon. You can drive for 20 minutes from downtown Portland and be in beautiful farmland. We hopped on the tractor and headed out to the field to get our pumpkins. You can't tell, but there was a nice little drizzle that day, but we are true Oregonians and that doesn't dampen our spirits.

Trunk-or-Treat

This year I had to help plan and execute the ward Halloween party. We have always had a carnival and trick or treating indoors and this year we decided to spice things up with a chili cook off and trunk or treating outdoors. It was definitely a risk, but I think it turned out great and we had fabulous weather. I should have taken a picture of all the great decorations because the gym looked great. 

The three Harry Potter's showed up and it was so fun to see little Lukey in his costume. This was seriously a  dream come true for us. We always go all out at Halloween and it was so fun to share this wonderful holiday with our little one. I can't believe that only a year ago I was just barely starting to get a tiny baby bump and now I have a giant 19 pound, 6 month old little boy!

This is my new favorite picture of Luke! I seriously would have named him Harry Daniel Lujan, but his Daddy thought we would get made fun of and he is probably right. 

Let the trunk-or-treating begin!!! I have never been to a trunk or treat before and let me just say that is was great! We couldn't have asked for better weather and we had a great turn out.

 Nana and Poppy manned our trunk so we could walk around with Luke.

It was funny when people let Luke choose the candy because he usually ended up grabbing like three pieces and they went right to his mouth!

 My Potter boys!

Here is our friend Miles! He is one of the cutest little people I know!! 

We had such a fun day and I am so grateful to my mom who helped do so much at the party and to everyone who helped make it great! 

Punkin Carving

I have carved a pumpkin every year since I can remember. The past few years we have congregated at the Poytress place for our pumpkin carving. It was a little bittersweet to me because this will be our last Halloween with the Poy's and that makes my heart sad, but we were extra lucky this year and had Nana and Poppy visiting so they got in on the pumpkin carving action. 

Luke pretty much just wanted to eat everything, as usual!

I have been known to make fun of Dan for doing a "boring" pumpkin face with the triangle eyes and toothy grin so this year he worked for a long time at carving a more exciting face.

Finally found something legal for Luke to suck on.

Carving pumpkins can be very serious business.

Here we are with the finished products!!