Luke's 2nd Birthday

It is hard to believe that my baby Luke turned 2 years old today.  And yet at the same time, it feels like ages ago that he was a tiny newborn sleeping in my arms.

A few days ago we started telling Luke about his birthday and that he was going to be two.  We've been practicing asking him "Luke, how old are you?" and he says "two" in the cutest tiny little voice.  Except sometimes he gets confused and thinks we're asking "how are you?" and then he answers "fine."  We've been telling him about how he would get to open presents and get new toys, and we would eat cake.  That part really resonated with him and every time we mention his birthday he immediately lights up and starts asking for cake ("take!").

This morning we had him open the biggest present before Charlie left for work.  He wasn't sure what to do at first, so I ripped a little corner of the paper for him and then he got to work on his own.

He was very precise about opening.  He would tear off a piece of paper and set it in a little stack next to the box, then tear another one, and set it down.

After enough tears he got a good peek of what was inside.

Isaac was equally obsessed with trucks when he was younger so we probably already have a few too many of these kind of things around the house.  But what harm could a couple more do?

Most of the day went on as usual.  Dropping Isaac off at school, gym, errands, picking up Isaac from school, quick lunch, then off to speech for Luke, more errands, and back home for a nap.

The real fun started after Charlie got home.  We had slider hamburgers for dinner (which are actually Isaac's favorite, not Luke's but he doesn't really have any main dish favorites), with macaroni & cheese (Luke devoured this in Hawaii) and watermelon (which Luke loves, loves, LOVES and was so excited about tonight).  I gave Luke the Special plate even though I doubt he thought there was anything special about it.

After dinner it was time for presents!  It is actually kind of hard to buy for Luke because Isaac already has so many toys, including lots of things he's outgrown, and Luke has tons to play with so he really didn't need anything.  But you can't very well celebrate a 2nd birthday without presents!  So now we have a lot more trucks around here than we did yesterday.  And Luke loves every last one of them.

I took Isaac to Toys R Us so that he could pick out a gift to give to Luke.  He originally planned to get Luke a stuffed snake just like his, since Luke likes to steal Isaac's snake.  But once we were there Isaac changed his mind and decided on a stuffed turtle.  Except Isaac really loved this turtle and I could tell that he actually wanted it for himself.  When it came time to wrap it up for Luke, Isaac tried pulling a switch and put his own smaller stuffed turtle in the box.  Brotherly love.  Luke absolutely loves the stuffed turtle and was so excited when he opened it.  The way he says turtle is really cute ("tur-toh") and he kept hugging it over and over.

Finally it was time for cake.  Luke had been asking for cake all day long.  I found some fantastic recipes for chocolate cake and chocolate frosting last year for Luke's birthday and I have made this same cake several times since.  I wanted to make it a little more exciting for him though so I decorated it with a few construction vehicles and a sprinkling of chopped pecans to look like rocks.  It did the trick and Luke was thrilled when he saw it.

We sang "Happy Birthday" and that brought another big smile to his cute face.  He clapped and cheered when we finished and then it was time to blow out the candles.  Apparently this made a big impression on him because he has re-enacted the candle blowing for me at least a dozen times since then.

Here is a little video I put together with some photos and short clips from the birthday party.  You can see that Isaac reeeeally wanted to help open Luke's presents.  Don't worry, he got plenty of time playing with all of them.  And also before we sang Happy Birthday to Luke he had touched the cake and got a little bit of frosting on his finger.  He does not like to be messy so he was kind of distracted by his frosting finger during the singing.  Funny kid.  We love our little two year old!

It was a simple and fun birthday at home.  We love this little guy and his big personality.  Here are a few things about Luke lately.

• He loves to play with cars and trucks, and especially putting "guys" inside of trucks.  He usually sits at the kitchen table with his Matchbox cars and drives them all over to one side and then back again.  He also likes to do this on my bed or he stands by the couch to drive his big trucks (with guys in them) back and forth.  
• Luke loves to eat.  If he sees anybody eating anything, he wants some too.  His current favorite foods are Trader Joe's cinnamon raisin toast (he calls it toh), yogurt (yo-yo), bananas (uh-nah), graham crackers (cah), beans (bee), any kind of soda (so-ya), watermelon (wa-wa) and of course cookies (coo) and cake (take).  He has a major sweet tooth.  
• He is still in a therapy program because he has delays in several areas.  His contract just went up from 6 to 8 hours/week.  We feel like he is making good progress and though his speech is delayed he's started talking a lot more in the past month.  Isaac's ONLY word at this age was "go" so we are happy that Luke's speech has come along so well.  
• Luke mostly speaks in one word phrases, except for when he says "I wanna" which he uses pretty frequently.  I wanna eat it.  I wanna go.  I wan in deh (I want in there - referring to trucks, the pool, etc).  I wan it.  And also he says "I do" when he wants to do something himself, like climb in and out of his car seat.  
• Luke loves animals and squeals in delight when he sees them.  He always wants to pet every dog we see.  He says "soft" and pretends to pet softly, which is his way of telling me he wants to pet them for real.  He is pretty good at making animal sounds too.  
• Luke wants to be just like Isaac (who he calls "I") and often imitates what Isaac is doing.  We wish that Isaac would be nicer to Luke, but Luke tolerates most of Isaac's unkindness pretty well for the most part.  
• He likes to watch TV and DVD's but usually only has about a 10 minute attention span.  His current favorites are Backyardigan's (especially the episode where Pablo is a meteor watcher - Luke runs around yelling "MEETEE-OOOH!!!"), the Kidsong's DVDs about dogs, the beach, animals, and trucks, the All About DVD with garbage & recycling (he calls it "pee-yew") and monster trucks, and some Sesame Street DVDs but only two specific parts - Snuffaluffagus "On Top of Spaghetti" (Luke loves the big meatball), and a Cookie Monster clip where a man is trying to eat cookies like Cookie Monster and then cookies rain down all over the floor.  
• Luke loved our recent trip to Hawaii.  Any time we spent in our hotel room he was constantly asking for the beach (go bee) or the pool (poo).  
• Other favorites:  balls, bath time, riding his bike (which means me pushing him), drinking as much juice or soda as he can get (he requests a drink by saying "ooo" and holding a hand to his throat like he is totally parched), being tickled, the nursery at church, the kids club at the gym, the garbage truck, playing outside, watching the bees buzz around the flowering bushes in the front yard, throwing anything and everything that resembles a ball, stacking things "up high", and last but not least his googin (blanket) and pacifier.   

Happy Birthday Luke!  We love you! 

Thanksgiving

This makes two years in a row that we have been home and not traveling for Thanksgiving.  So Charlie & I decided to cook up a storm and invite some of my family over to celebrate the holiday with us.  My two sisters Wendy & Sandy, and Sandy’s family came over. 

Charlie did the turkey and I’m glad he did because it still seems just a bit intimidating to me.  I’m so thankful to have a husband that likes to cook!

I didn’t get a lot of pictures because I guess I was too busy eating or something.  Here’s the spread before we got started.

Sandy & Wendy were serving up rolls at the kids table.

 The brother-in-laws, Charlie & Chris.

Luke & I sharing some pie.  Luke shares my love of sweets and we both ate way too much pie that night (and the rest of the week). 

The next day we went to Huntington Beach to meet up with my friend & old college roommate Erin.  She & her family were in town visiting family for the holiday.  We hung out at the beach for awhile but it was a little too cold, so everyone came back to the Woodbridge pool instead.  I don’t get to see Erin often but we talked and talked just like we were back in the Glenwood.  It was so fun to see her and her cute family.  I hope they come back soon!   

For some reason I thought we could take our boys to the beach and have them stay on the sand so I did not put them in swim trunks.  Luke ran straight for the water anyway(he is a total Wood in that way) and ended up soaking wet and freezing cold.  

The Seven Year Itch

On the morning of our seven year anniversary Charlie told me that he was getting the "seven year itch."  Of course he was laughing while he said it so I have to assume he was only joking...right?  I thought it was funny.

This was the first year that we actually hired a baby sitter and went out for our anniversary.  It was so so nice!  Isaac's primary teacher had offered to baby sit for us and this was the second time we had her come.  I can probably count on one hand the times we've had a baby sitter since having kids.  It's pretty sad.  So we really enjoyed having alone time to celebrate our seven lovely years of marriage.

I had Nathalie take a few pictures of us before we went out.

She also text me some pictures of the kids that night.  I love this one of Luke and his "cheese" face.

We went to Fashion Island and had dinner at True Food Kitchen and did a little shopping at the mall.  Having a little time alone is always a good reminder of why I married Charlie in the first place.  We had such a fun night and definitely need to get out more often.

Halloween (Yes, I'm blogging about Halloween in May)

Now it's time to get caught up on the last several months of laziness.

It is crazy to me how Halloween has become such a huge commercialized holiday.  It has never been one of my favorites, but every holiday is more fun with children and Halloween is no exception.

We passed the Johnson Brother's pumpkin patch everyday on the way to Isaac's school, so it was more of a question of "when" we were going than "if."  We invited some friends to come with us and had a fun night letting the boys run everywhere and play.  It was a week night so it wasn't too crowded, which was nice.

We checked in with the "How Tall This Fall" scarecrow to see how the boys were measuring up this year.

Isaac's favorite thing was the Haunted House, which was actually just a haunted hallway, but I guess that's good enough when you're 5.  I think he would have spent all night running through that hallway if we would have let him.  Isaac would take Luke's hand and lead him through too, which was cute since he is not usually very interested in his little brother's company.

Next stop was the petting zoo.  Luke was a little timid around the goats, but liked watching them from the safety of Mom or Dad's arms.  Isaac on the other hand was smiling ear to ear and giggling as the goats gobbled piles of food from his hands.

Last year Isaac's favorite thing was the pony ride, so we were sure he would want to ride again.  But for some reason he was acting weird and insisted on sitting on a bale of hay to watch while Luke rode instead.  Luke loved it!

We bounced in the bounce houses and rode in all of the mechanical vehicles.  The kids climbed and played on the fort made from hay bales.  Isaac went crazy swinging his fists at the giant hay filled punching bags.

Don't let Luke's cute innocent face in this picture fool you.

Any pumpkin that was light enough for him to lift was also immediately thrown.  All night he kept saying "ball, ball, ball!" and chucking every little pumpkin he could get his hands on.

At the end of the night we picked out a small pumpkin to purchase for Isaac.  We'd already bought some larger ones from the grocery store, but as you can see, Isaac wasn't too happy about this.  Mr. Grumpster.

The next Halloween activity was pumpkin decorating.  Isaac's class has share day every Friday at school and the assignment for the week was to bring a pumpkin that they decorated.  Isaac and I had several conversations about the pumpkin and how we should decorate it.  We finally decided to make a Robot pumpkin from Isaac's favorite TV show, Robot & Monster on Nickelodeon.  He was soooo excited about this idea and got really into it.  We went to Lowe's and got some miscellaneous hardware pieces to use for his hands and some orange spray paint.  We picked up craft paint at Michael's for his eyes & letter "R."  We gave him some random wheels that we had laying around and used a pipe cleaner for his antenna.  His arms were made from little plastic cups glued together at an angle & spray painted orange.

Isaac loved, loved, LOVED his pumpkin and was so proud of it.  He wanted to show everyone that came to our house.  He kept it on his dresser for weeks after Halloween until it started getting moldy where we had drilled his wheels in.

Moving on.  A few days before Halloween was the big Trunk or Treat at church.  Charlie was out of town so it was just me & the boys.  It was their first time to get all dressed up in their costumes.  I don't think Luke really had any clue what was going on or what he was supposed to be, but he did like wearing a hat.  He loves hats.  And Isaac, of course, was most excited about his helmet.  Here are my little Trunk or Treaters all dressed up and ready to go.

This is Isaac and his friend Hudson.  They were born just a few weeks apart and have grown up together.

It was Luke's first time trick-or-treating.  He caught on really quickly to what he was supposed to be doing.  He couldn't quite say the words but he won the candy passer-outers over with his cute smile and his little outstretched hand.  I'm not sure Luke even realized he was filling his bucket with candy, but he sure did like dropping each piece into his pumpkin bucket.

Once we were back at home Luke figured it all out really quickly.  He couldn't eat that candy fast enough!  I eventually had to hide the buckets because even when they were way up on the kitchen counter, he kept pointing and begging for more.  Luke has much more of a sweet tooth than Isaac ever did.  But don't get me wrong, Isaac ate his fair share of treats that night too.

The day before Halloween Isaac had a costume parade at school.  Luke and I got to go watch.  Well I watched and Luke climbed around on the playground, rode tricycles, and threw balls.  There were some other astronauts in the parade, but Isaac was the only one with the cool helmet.

Isaac & Luke also got Halloween cards in the mail from their grandparents.

And finally the big night arrived.  We had to get a good picture of our space crew before sending them out on their mission.  It is always a challenge getting even one of these three to look at the camera let alone all three of them!  But here they are - the Wood brother astronauts and their trusty space shuttle dog Cracker.

When Isaac decided that he wanted to be an astronaut I was a little stumped at first about how to dress Cracker.  They have always had matching costumes and I couldn't let this year be any different.  Finally Mikael gave me the idea of dressing Cracker as a space shuttle.  I googled it and found another shuttle dog to base his costume off of.  The costume was time consuming, but not necessarily difficult to make.  We really only needed it for a few good pictures.

Cracker was a good sport.

After pictures we set out trick or treating.  Isaac is always more interested in everyone's decorations than in the candy.  We just went up and down one street and called it a night, and everyone was happy.  Until next year, Happy Halloween!