First Christmas

Luke's first Christmas was a huge success and a lot of fun! The celebration started last Sunday when Aunt Susan, Uncle Bobby, Kristen, Ryan and Lauren came to visit. We had an early Christmas dinner at Mom-mom and Pop's house. Here's Aunt Susan delighted to finally see Luke in his Baltimore Raven's outfit.
Mom-mom got in on the baby Ravens action too.
Our holiday took us to Atlanta next. Luke was awesome in the car!! He slept most of the way making it easy on Mommy and Daddy. Here's Luke with his Aunt Pam
and his very attentive cousins!
Emily proved to be an excellent babysitter.
Olivia got some special time with Luke as well.
Leah was a fabulous! She and Luke have a special bond already:)
Luke loves spending time with his boy cousin, Eli. (He's grabbing Eli as if to say, "Save me from all these girls!")
Gabby loves not being the baby anymore!
Here's the family on Christmas Eve. (Notice who's helping Daddy with Luke!)
Grandmom found herself a little reindeer!
Aunt Becky couldn't get enough of the baby. (Ken, are you sure she cannot have just one more!?!)
Christmas/Hannukah dinner was a lot of fun.
Look, Santa left a baby under the tree!
I guess Luke was nice this year:)
Happy almost first anniversary! Didn't think we'd have a baby before our first anniversary but we're so happy with the way things turned out.
We couldn't have asked for a better Christmas gift. This was the best Christmas I've had since I was a child.

Did I mention that he is learning to suck his thumb?

In other news, Luke slept in his crib in his own room last night! I am sad that he is no longer sleeping right next to me, but also happy to have our bedroom back. He's still sleeping well, waking up once or twice a night to eat but going back to sleep relatively easily. At Aunt Pam's he even slept 6 and a half consecutive hours! That's considered "sleeping through the night" but it's hard to call it that when it's 10-4:30am. Still, we'll take it!!

Daycare... sigh

Luke and I visited his daycare yesterday. He's not going to start going until mid-January, but I was feeling anxious about it so I decided to bring him in to check it out again. All in all, I am happy with our choice. Here are some of the good things about his school:

1. The infant room is huge with a nice separation between the play area and the sleeping area. Most of the other places we toured had one on top of the other making it difficult for the children to sleep.
2. There are 10 infants and 3 teachers. Most good places in town have a 4 to 1 ratio so this is lower than average.
3. Luke will be the youngest in his class. After Luke, there will be a 7 month old and an 8 month old. All the other children will be one or older.
4. It is 1.8 miles from our home.
5. The teachers seem nice, attentive, loving and relaxed.
6. The children seemed happy.
7. The school is very clean.
8. The school is in a church.

However, it is still daycare. Not mommy care at home. I feel sick to my stomach even thinking about it! Did I mention that most of the children had snot dripping down their faces? Bring on the colds. Yikes. I am thankful that I will (mostly) only be using the daycare for 3 days a week.

Ok, on to happier news...

Luke loves bath time! David and I have so much fun bathing him. Here he is just chillin' in the tub:


He also is really enjoying his activity mat. Yesterday he enjoyed it so much that it wore him out!

It took us a while, but we finally figured it out!

For some unknown reason, we stopped swaddling Luke after about a month. We had convinced ourselves that he didn't like to be swaddled preferring instead to have the ability to stretch out. So, away went the swaddle and in came the roomier sleep sack. By the week before Thanksgiving, Luke's night time sleeping "pattern" (or lack thereof) resembled that of a one week old instead of a two month old. He was waking up 3, 4, even 5 times a night to feed. I was beyond exhausted. 10 days ago, for no good reason, I decided to try swaddling him again. That very night, Luke only woke up once to feed. Needless to say, we swaddled him again the next night, and the next, and the next.... I am thrilled to say that for the past 10 nights, Luke has slept so much better. During 8 of these 10 nights he only woke once to feed, and during the other 2 he only woke twice. More importantly, his first stretch of sleep is lasting 4.5-5 hours!!! So, it took us a while but we finally figured out what LOTS of parents already know: babies like to be swaddled. (Yeah, we're slow but give us a break. We're sleep deprived!)

Here's Luke in his swaddler:



These next pictures just crack me up. Looks like he's saying, "I didn't do it!!"

"Ok, I did it."

"I'm grounded for how long?!"

Finally, let me tell you about my new favorite thing. It's Luke's smile when he sees his dad. Wow does his face light up when David comes home from work or greets him in the morning. It melts my heart. Luke loves his daddy!

He changes every day!

It's amazing how much Luke changes each and every day! He is now smiling a lot (mostly at the Pottery Barn candle holder on the wall- that seems to crack him up), has much better head control (I look forward to total control so we can use a Bumbo seat), can focus well on objects (like us!), has developed a serious love for putting his fist in his mouth (looking forward to when that becomes his thumb), and is sleeping more regularly at night (Hallelujah!!!). A fun thing to do with him is put him in his playmat so he can look at the toys. Here he is just chillin'.

Another wonderful new development is that he finally will sit in his bouncey seat, which is GREAT for us because it means we can sit him down while we're eating, or brushing our teeth, or folding laundry... you get the idea.... without having to hold him or lay him flat.

I'm starting to see a bit of me in Luke. Really what I care most about is that he gets David's hair. Yes, he will be cute either way, and of course I will love him just the same, but David has such good hair that ya just have to route for it!!

2 Months Old

Luke turned 2 months old yesterday! Look how big he is:

Ok, he really doesn't look that much bigger. Here he was at 1 month:

And at 2.5 weeks:

I probably should have chosen a smaller stuffed animal to serve as his benchmark! Also, it didn't help that the 2.5 week picture is more of a close up. Oh well.

He is bigger, just not much longer. He's only grown a couple of inches. But, he has put on a good amount of weight. A trip to the doctor yesterday confirmed this. Luke now weighs 9 pounds and 15 ounces and measures 21.25 inches long. So, since birth he has gained 4 pounds and 12 ounces and grown 2.25 inches. That's good growth, but since he was so small at birth he's only in the 10th percentile. What a tiny peanut!

His trip to the doctor wasn't exactly the best way to celebrate his 2 month marker because he got his first round of vaccinations. The shots weren't that bad. (Easy for me to say, right?) Of course Luke cried during the shots, but he calmed down relatively quickly once they were done. The bad part came hours later. Luke slept like a champ for about 4 hours after his appointment and then woke up SCREAMING like I have never heard him scream before. I finally understood why the nurse who came to the house right after Luke was born kept telling me to get infant Tylenol for the occasion. Wow.

The doctor called me stocky. Ok, not really. But we asked him a question about Luke's growth and in describing how it depends on how David and I grew as children he said that I was stockier than David. Truth be told it's not hard to be stockier than David:) But really!!! Did he have to use that word? I was already feeling bad about the lingering baby weight. Sigh.

Ok. I shouldn't say this because I am going to jinx it. But, I just have to because it is the most wonderful thing EVER. Luke only woke up for 1 feeding for the past 2 nights. Only 1 feeding!!! Yes, I am sure this won't continue. But, it gave me a glipse of my future, and my future is AWESOME. Parenthood on more sleep is a whole different ballgame.