Luke's ABC's

Now it's Luke's turn to have his moment in the limelight. At 2 1/2 he's already learned the ABC song and he loves learning his letters.

 He is very eager to participate in our homeschool lessons and loves to count as well. Like most younger siblings, he wants to do everything his brother and sister are doing.

Outside of learning his letters his favorite things are Thomas the train and Frosty the snowman. We've made several "snowman" crafts and he listened to Frosty the snowman over the Christmas Holidays so many times that the whole family has most of the song memorized.

He also loves to help and loves his little brother Thomas as well.

Luke is 1 year old today!

Hard to believe it's been a year since our Luke was born.  It's hard to believe he was so tiny!

Happy 1st Birthday Luke!

Fun at Lowes

Lowes has a fun program called build and grow where every other saturday they give a free kit to each child to build with their parents.  They provide hammers, safety goggles & even an apron for each child.  We took William, Miriam and Luke to build a race car and had so much fun. 

Even Luke got in on the fun.

It was a great Father - Son building project!

Luke Update

Luke is all over the place now.  Though he hasn't quite mastered crawling (he still goes backwards more often than forwards), he can pull himself up to a standing position and cruise around the room.  It was time to bring out the baby gate.

Sick Babies

This has been an especially hard winter for my little almost 9 month old Luke.  He has literally been sick from December until now of varying degrees of severity with a few healthy days here and there.  Have any of you had an especially hard winter with sickness?  Those who haven't battled sickness or who have, what has worked for you?  Do you have an immune system booster you rely on?  It seems there is so little you can do for a baby since it is difficult and undesireable to give them most over-the-counter remedies.  With that said, here are the things that work best for us:
For Congestion, coughing especially croup and stuffy noses the thing that works best at least temporarily is to go into the bathroom & turn on the shower with hot water - the steam really helps loosen the congestion.  We also use a humidifier. 
I love vicks baby rub since it can even be used on little babies. 

So I'd love to hear what works for you!

Luke's Moving

Well, It's official, Luke is mobile.  While he can't control direction just yet, it is only a matter of time until he's into William's and Miriam's things.  I think it's more of a challenge to baby-proof for number three since the older two have little toys they enjoy playing with. 
  

Getting ready for Midnight Mass

For Christmas Phil suggested we go to Midnight Mass. My response was "no" at first. Midnight Mass meant taking three little ones age four and under and I kind of wanted them to be awake for Christmas Mass and not grumpy on Christmas Day. Yet Phil had a great desire to go toMidnight Mass and Miriam, even on schedule, was pretty grumpy Christmas Eve so we took a leap and made the trip at midnight with three little ones. To make things easier, we dressed the children in their Church clothes before putting them to bed so here is a video of them on their way to bed.

The Midnight Mass was beautiful and all went quite well - all three of the children slept pretty much through the whole Mass and most of the transitions though we were definately grateful for the extra borrowed laps of "Grandpa" Ray and "Grandma" Cindy as three sleeping children would have been difficult to manage on two laps. What a blessing it was for Mom and Dad to be able to enter into the Christmas mystery more fully!

Thank you Jesus, Mary and Joseph for the beautiful Christmas gift!

A Christmas Visitor

On the fourth day of Christmas William's Godfather came to visit us for the evening. It was a nice treat to have Jeremy Priest here and William and Miriam loved their time with him. He left after the little ones were in bed and when William woke up this morning he asked where his Godfather was. Thanks for the nice visit Jeremy - it's always a treat!



Poor Luke came down with a fever yesterday evening which necessitated another visit to the doctor's office. Poor little guy now has an ear infection! He's such a trooper though and will still crack a smile here and there despite feeling miserable.

Jumping Back in

It's been almost a year! So much has happened during the past year and so many times I would think of a blog entry and get bogged down with the desire to go back and catch up, but tonight I'm just going to start where I am - in the final days of the third week of Advent 2010 - Gaude! Rejoice! and I'll share some Joy. Happy Advent!