Best one yet

Yes, we have shown many pictures of Mikey and Luke falling asleep in funny places and funny ways. I've decided that it is because our kids absolutely HATE going to bed! They push and push until they collapse. And here Mikey has done it again. He was supposed to go down for a nap, but insisted on eating something first. He sat at the counter and ate his food and then started to climb down the stool. This is as far as he got....

We laughed at this forever before we could move him. He was so out that we were even able to slide the stool around in order to get the best angle for the picture. So funny.

9 Months!

Luke is 9 months old!

As mentioned earlier, this month he learned to crawl. And as of three days ago, he can also climb the two stairs from the family room to the kitchen (see below).
On a less good note (well, less good now, more good later--yes, more good) he suddenly decided that he hates binkies. For the first 8 months of his life, he loved them! Then suddenly he was absolutely offended when offered the thing. So getting him to sleep at times is much harder than it used to be. But hey, no weening later, right? (That's what I keep telling myself).

The stair climbing, while cute, of course now makes things a little more tricky for me...meaning I have to watch him more closely. Once in the kitchen he goes straight for the dog food and water or turns back around and looks like he wants to head back down the stairs. Sigh.

Brothers

Mikey and Luke never seem to tire of each other (okay, rarely seem to tire of each other). Mikey loves entertaining Luke and Luke loves to be entertained. I never tire of watching them. Love my boys!

Oh great. Mikey's nakedness is rubbing off on Luke. But cute picture, right?

From the Mouth of Mikey

We haven't had a Daddy entry in a while, so I thought I'd make this contribution. This was awesome. This morning Luke was being particularly loud and Mikey particularly messy in our bed, so I took them both downstairs a little before 7am to let Kristy get a bit of sleep. We ventured out into the hall, and Mikey started down the stairs, at which point the following conversation ensued:
Mikey: "I can't see anything. It's dark all over the place"
Daddy goes over and turns on the hall light
Mikey: stops in his tracks and says, "Wow. These are really nice stairs. Daddy, these are really nice stairs!"
Daddy steps back into the bedroom and tells Mama what Mikey said. When he comes back out in the hall, Mikey is at the bottom of the stairs.
Mikey: "Daddy, these are really pretty nice stairs. That's why Mama had to make these nice, pretty stairs."
Daddy: "Did Mama make these stairs?"
Mikey: "Yup. She sure did."

Priceless, this kid.

Playing too hard?

The other day Mikey was sent to his room for some reason. Often times, after the crisis has passed he stays in his room and plays. I heard him up there for awhile, but suddenly it got quite. When I got to his door to check on him I noticed that the light was off. Upon entering, Mikey was nowhere to be seen and the closet was closed. I did however, hear a soft snoring. So I pulled back one door and this is what I found....

I had to push him back a little to get the second door open, but here he is. By the way, he was not wearing that raincoat when he first went to his room. (I was also reminded of a story my mom told when I was little of a time when I was "lost." We had been playing hide and seek. Eventually I was found asleep in the closet.)



Now it's Luke's turn. So Luke was on Lance's lap and Lance had his hands on his cheeks just rubbing them and playing when Luke started to look tired. So Lance kept his hands there and started to softly rub the back of his head and within minutes, he was out. Just like that.


Then he got tired eating Cheerios.

We're crawling!

This week Luke started crawling! Sometimes he pretends like he doesn't remember, but then he sees something he wants and he takes off running!

For the first few days, Mikey also rediscovered crawling. The first night Luke was really crawling Lance and I were on the floor clapping and encouraging it and getting quite excited. It didn't take long for Mikey get on his knees across the room and crawl as fast as he could to us. Gotta keep that attention balanced. ;)

Tinfoil-wrapped chocolates

Last night we were giving each other our Valentine's Day cards and presents. Luke gave Mikey a little Valentine package of chocolate baseballs. Mikey promptly asked if he could have one. We agreed and then proceeded with our presents and cards. I saw him take one out of the package, but then turned my attention elsewhere. A few minutes later he asked for another one. I suddenly started looking around and asked Lance where the wrapper was. We kept looking around and then asked Mikey where it was. He just looked at us. Finally it dawned on me...I asked him if he ate it with the wrapper. He continued to just look at me so I asked if he had tinfoil in his mouth. He said, "yeah." Though, if you know Mikey, he says, "yeah" to everything. So I looked in his mouth and saw a tiny fleck of silver. (And I received further confirmation this morning, if you know what I mean...;)

The fact that Mikey wanted another one after eating the one with the tinfoil shows the devotion this kid has to chocolate! (He IS related to me)

We love Mikey!!

8 Months!

(Okay, well two weeks ago he was 8 months, but better late than never.)

So I know what you're thinking. "Could this kid be ANY cuter?!" Well I'll tell you, no, he couldn't. He is so much fun. He just smiles, babbles, laughs, and rolls around and thinks the world is great. By the end of the month he was doing everything, but crawling. There were a lot of push-ups, moving backwards and rolling, but not much actual forward movement. He also finally started eating baby food on a regular basis. He has been fighting tooth and nail against eating any kind of solid foods! So it makes me feel better to have him eating and enjoying it now. His hair is quickly filling in suddenly (even if Lance doesn't believe me--what is it with boys and not noticing hair!) And Mikey continues to love him and "play" with him. In fact, he tries too hard most of the time (like trying to wrestle with him, pick him up, play ball with him...one day, Mikey! One day.) We love our little Luke!

Especially this picture! How cute is that little face.

Mikey's first snowman

Mikey made his first snowman with dad. There ended up being a little less snow than anticipated so "the man" ended up with kind of a tiny head, but Mikey was so excited to use the big carrot that there was not getting around it. So there you have it. (Lance called him more of a snow duck. ) Personally, I thought it was the cutest snowman ever and I was very proud of my boys.

Pink.

Yes. Our blog is now pink. Well I live in a house with three boys filled with trucks and dirt and boy stuff so I deserve to have a pink blog for just a minute.

Water!

Luke is our little water baby. He loves the water! So for Christmas Santa brought Luke a bath seat so that he can sit up with Mikey in the tub and have more fun. He does have more fun...but so does Mikey.

If you'll look closely below you can see that Luke has water running down his face and his eyes closed. Mikey's new favorite bath activity when Luke is there is to pour water over his head over and over again. Luckily it doesn't seem to phase Luke in least bit. Of course Mikey will scream bloody murder if a drop gets even close to his face, but since Luke just sits and chews on toys, for now they are good bath mates.

We actually took Luke to the pool for the first time a few weeks ago and he was in heaven! He was the cutest little thing splashing away and drenching his own head and face in the process. Unfortunately just as Lance was about to snap the cutest picture ever, the lifeguard came over and said they don't allow pictures (because it's a private gym or something? Lame.) But I'm sure there will be many more photo ops in the water with this kid.

More from the mouth of Mikey...

So over Christmas break Lance was allowing a lot of extra facial hair to accumulate. He frequently wrestles and plays with Mikey and after awhile Mikey started to complain about his "pokies."

The other day Lance came home and they were playing. It had been a few days since Lance's face had seen a razor. Suddenly Mikey stops and gasps! "Dada! The pokies are BACK!" And then while pointing to various parts of his face says, "there, and there, and there, and there, and there..."

From the mouth of Mikey

The other day I picked up Mikey and Luke from the daycare at the gym. As usual, Mikey was walking beside me focused on a granola bar. Then out of nowhere:

Mikey: Mama, I sure like your hair.
Me: .....what did you say?
Mikey: I sure like your hair.
Me: Well thanks....

7 months!

My little Luke is 7 months old (Dec. 29th) and getting so big. He sits up like it's nothing now and is slowly getting used to solids. He laughs non-stop at Mikey and occasionally at mom and dad. The dogs can induce a chuckle now and then, too. His little laugh is just about the cutest thing ever. We love him like crazy!


Ward Christmas breakfast with his biggest fan, Katie.

Champion sleeper

So tired sometimes he can sleep anywhere!

Carrots. Definitely less in his mouth than on his face.

He really does love those dogs--just don't lick!

Merry Christmas!

I almost forgot this one
We went to the Festival of Trees for this. We actually paid the $8 to have them take the picture and get a little card stock frame. I thought it would be great as they took a few and finally the woman stopped and said, "oh that one was great." But when we picked it up a half hour later I was more than a little disappointed. The picture was horrible. Luke wasn't looking and Mikey looked like he was about to vomit or something. Luckily Lance had snapped one (in the no-picture zone) as he stepped back after steadying the kids and as you can see, it was great (well we count ones of Luke as great if he is looking the right direction). And luckily we got this one because by the time we went to the ward Christmas party a few weeks later, Mikey had decided Santa was too scary to sit on his lap.

Mikey's clothes

So Mikey now no longer wears clothes. He puts them on to leave the house or when a friend comes over because we make him, but otherwise he wears nothing. When we get home from some place I bring him inside, go back out to get Luke and come back in to find Mikey naked already. What to do? Anyway, just in case you were wondering about why he has no clothes on Christmas morning below. At least he usually will wear a diaper (though we have had an instance or two when he refused even that.)

Christmas morning!

Our Christmas tree this year was one of my favs except that it died a few days before Christmas so here we have rather droopy branches, but it was still beautiful. I don't know what it is, but I just love the look of wrapped presents all under a tree so it makes me sad when our tree looks like this for only moments on Christmas morning before they all start getting shredded into. I could try to do this earlier in the month, but it was hard enough to stop Mikey from opening the handful that were under the tree before Christmas morning.

Stockings all ready to go!

Mikey digging in

Mikey was big help with everything "present."

Mikey the fire fighter (Thanks Mimi!)

Lucky for Luke Mikey was there to help

Mama and her boys

Mikey helped Luke open the bear he gave him, gave him a hug and now hasn't stopped trying to claim the bear for his own. He reacts well to kind reminders, though.

Merry Christmas!!

Family Christmas Eve Breakfast

On Christmas Eve morning we had a breakfast with all of my siblings where we ate and traded gifts. (What could be better than food and presents:)

My favorite picture of the season!

Cutest elf, right?

I wasn't very good a taking pictures except for when all the kids were tearing into gifts.

Mikey got a Diego rescuer vest and equipment from Amanda. He and Lance "rescued animals" non-stop for the rest of the day and Mikey went to sleep crying about how he had to rescue more animals. What a sweet heart to care so much about animals ;)

December got away....

Let me just say this:

husband in finals + running own business + bank personnel not knowing a thing about their services and telling me half truths for three weeks + employees doing dumb and stupid things + post office doing dumb and stupid things + teaching R.S. + Christmas + 2 kids + the flu(going through everybody) = Kristy hardly having time to sleep all month let alone blog

So I'm doing some catching up. Just give me a second!