Birthday for Mommy!

Today was my 35th birthday!  And to celebrate my 2 favorite boys took me to the zoo.  We took Luke to the zoo last year and while it was fun I don't think he really "understood" the zoo concept.  When we would say "Look" and point at an animal far off in the distant he had no clue where to look, so often he would just look at what was directly in front of our finger or closest to our finger.  So oftentimes the panther we were pointing out was further away than the fence or post in front of it (good thing too :) ).  So he thought we were just telling him to look at the fence.   This year he totally got it though and we had a great time!! It was the perfect way to spend my birthday and I lucked out doubly because we had some beautiful zoo weather:

Woodland Park Zoo:

Checking out the sites:

Smile for Daddy (Fuzzy Pickles!)

Small note: I did NOT pick this outfit out. This was ALL Luke.  So please try and disregard the belly shirt :) Although he can wear anything and look adorable!

Mommy trying to act like she knows something about Flamingos:

There are amazing animals everywhere and STILL Luke is most interested in anything that resembles a rock:

Luke met a friend in this cave.  Once you enter the cave a loud penguin sound (honking?) goes off and it actually startled all of us and then we started laughing:

This guy came up to the window to greet us and he stayed for a while. I was so surprised that Luke didn't get scared and back up.  Instead he went as close as he could get to the window and try to explain to the Orangutan that he really shouldn't be ingesting those dixie cups (white thing hanging out of mouth).  It could mess with his digestive system.

I had a wonderful birthday!! Thank YOU Daddy and Luke!! Daddy, sorry there are NO pictures of you :( I guess that's what happens when you are the photographer! :(

Slumber Party

Ok... So it used to be that Luke only had one friend in his crib for naps and bedtime... Lately he has been adding to his brood.   Today when I came in from nap he had lined up his new friends, Beary (he's been there with him since he's been in is crib) and Count Boo (Daddy named him and gave him to Luke on his first Halloween).  I'm late in posting this... But since this picture he has now added another friend, Curious George (a gift from his Great Granny).  If we keep this up we'll need a California King Crib/Toddler bed.

Mini-Me

Luke got a bath tonight and he also got a new "big-boy" brush.  So after his bath, for fun, I brushed his wet hair and slicked it off to the side like a Wall Street exec.  To be funny Daddy did the same.  Check out the cute astronaut PJ's :) I just love them!!!

Cousins

Not quite sure when we took this picture... But I thought it was cute of all the cousins.  I know it was sometime mid-May:

(Jack, Mila and Luke)

Rolly Pollies, Snails and the VERY WORST - SLUGS!

OK. So it's happening. Luke is becoming a dirty little boy.  He loves dirt. He loves it so much that he will take handfuls of it and throw it over his head, put it in his pockets, rub it over and over in his hands.  Keep in mind this is Seattle dirt I'm talking about. It's not that nice dry dirt you find in all other places... This is pretty much sludge.   But despite the sludgy consistency I can pretty much handle the dirt playing. It doesn't bother me too much, or at leastI can handle it until he then puts his sludgy hands into his mouth! EWWWWWW!  But today... I hit my limit.  Luckily, Bryan was home... Because I really couldn't handle it.

Luke spied a shell in the yard.  He thought it was cool and brought it over to Bryan and me.  As it turned out this was not the beautiful shell you see on the beaches, this was a shell that was inhabited by an ewey gooey snail!  And to make matters worse, Luke noticed something was inside of the shell.  So he stuck his tiny pointer finger as deep as he could into the hole of the shell to investigate.  And as he pulled his slimed finger out he said... "Sticky."  I'm telling you - my heart couldn't take it. I don't want Luke to be scared of these things, so I don't want him to see my face or my reaction. I had to walk away.   He dropped the shell onto the grass, next to a *beautiful* (note a heavy dose of sarcasm here) slimy slug. UGH!!! Those are the WORST too.... Luke then hunkered down over the slug and said "What's that?"  We answered it's a slug.  And to my horror of horrors, he began to touch the slug. He slowly lowered his poor little pointer finger down and pushed down on the slug.  Bryan told him to be careful because he doesn't want to hurt the slug.  Thankfully Luke is a smart little boy and he quickly pulled his finger back... Something about that push on the slug told him he didn't like touching slugs.... One win for Mommy here!

No more than a few minutes later, Bryan and I were on the patio talking and Lukie is still on the grass playing and he said, "What's that?", he asks (I now cringe at that words when we are outside), as he is holding up a little black ball of who knows what.  Bryan goes over to see what he had in his hands and it's a rolly polly that has curled up into a ball.  Bryan took it from Luke and put it into his own hand and showed Luke how if you leave the rolly polly alone it will open up into a "cute" little bug.  But I swear as soon as that bug opened up and started crawling around Bryan couldn't get it out of his hand fast enough.

Bad news I'm a little worried about what the future holds in terms of the treasures Luke brings home to us... Good news is that because Bryan and I are such wimps when it comes to bug catching in the house... We may have found our saving grace in Luke.  :)

You can all thank me later because I have taken NO pictures of this unfortunate slimy ewey, gooey event - I just couldn't do that to you all!

Story Time - Issaquah Library

In an attempt to be more adventurous I decided to take Luke to story time at the local Issaquah library (yes, that's my idea of adventure - I'm not the bungee type of gal... And I don't *think* Luke is either).  I hyped going to story time up all morning because I wasn't quite sure how Luke would take to it. He generally doesn't like to take car trips first thing in the morning.  All he really wants to play with his toys.  But I really talked it up and got him pretty excited for it.  He let me change his clothes, put on socks and shoes without even a whimper of complaint.  Things were running smoothly... Story time started at 10am sharp and they only let the first 30 people (including parents) in the door - or so their website said. So I was working hard so we could be out the door by 9:30 so we'd have time to spare and we'd throw elbows if necessary.  We were GOING to get into this story time.  We were out of the house a little after 9:30 - yay, us!

We arrived at the library at 9:40ish - I parked the car in an empty parking lot, which I thought strange, but was still so proud of us.  I unloaded Luke and he held my hand as we walked to the library.  We went to open the door and I noticed a sign that says their hours, "10am-(can't remember)".  Ugh!! So not only did story time start at 10am, the place didn't even open up until 10.  I knew I would have a HARD time putting Luke back into the car, after we just got out, so I decided we'd take a nice walk in the nice Seattle weather of drizzle and gray.  Did we have warm coats on?  No... It's May- why would we need winter coats!?  Because it's Seattle, that's why!! Did we have hoods to guard us from the rain?? No, It's May - why would we need that?  Same answer as before.  So there we were... Walking around in very light coats and no hoods.  And boy was it chilly. Luckily the rain was just very light.  So we walked around the block a couple of times and we still had 10 minutes to spare.  As we were walking by the local Mexican restaurant for the 3rd time I finally noticed they had some salsa/Mexican music on.  I decided to stop there in front of the restaurant and to start dancing with Luke... We needed to kill time and keep warm.  So we salsa'd there for a bit. Now mind you this is on the main street in Issaquah. But for some reason I didn't care who was watchign us... I was having too much fun.  And Luke was too... But then suddenly I think he realized what we were doing and that some people were watching and I swear he kind of got embarrassed and said, "no more!".... Great! I'm already embarrassing him.  Lukie, you've got a long road ahead of you!

Finally a few minutes before 10am we arrived back at the library and now the front of the library is FILLED with people.  Which made me think- great, I really am going to have to throw elbows to get into Toddler story time.  But I finagled Luke and I up there and we slipped in.  Come to find out they don't really care how many people... They ended up letting everyone in.

Story time ended up being really fun and by the end of the 30 mintues, Luke had really warmed up and was answering questions thrown out by the story teller.  I decided, this is great... I'm going to EVERY story time they have.  Then the story teller made the announcment there is only one more story time, next week, before they have a "break" from story time.... Ahhhhh.... Just my luck.   So story time will start back up end of June.  In the meantime I'll look for another library - because it was a big hit with Lukie. 

Anticipation of story time:

After story time  (all the kids got their hands stamped):

Lukie Plays Ball

After watching his cousin Jack play t-ball, Luke was really inspired and started playing ball, by himself. He was great I tell you. He hit his own high-flying ball to center field and then he ran to catch it and missed the catch. Then he raced around to 3rd base and was safe on third!  Then the next hitter (Luke), hit a base hit and then Luke (on 3rd base) ran into and slid into home! Quite a game (he is wearing Bryan's hat):

Lights Out

Today was the second beautiful day of Spring in Seattle!  A little over a week from our last nice day.  Lucky US (tongue inserted into cheek)!.  We also had a very busy day today.  We had two birthday parties that we were invited to, Blake Moulton's and Zachary McElwee's (they are both turning 1). We knew the day would be a bit chaotic for Lukie and by the end of the day we could have a little monster on our hands.   However he handled the whole day in stride and really things went very smoothly.  Once we got home we played a little bit longer outside to try and steal some precious Vitamin D rays while Daddy mowed.  We headed upstairs around 7:00ish to start our bedtime routine. It was about that time that Luke was starting to hit, what I like to call, his delirium stage.  This stage is where he is so tired that everything is  funny to him. He'll laugh SO hard at anything. Truthfully I actually love when he gets to this stage because it's just so funny, but I know it's not long from when he'll hit the out-of-control little monster stage (which I don't love).  So as much as I love his delirium stage, I try and avoid it.   But tonight he was in full on delirium - laughing at everything and making Bryan and I laugh at him... We went to brush his teeth and he ran out of the bathroom saying, "Mad... mad.  Lukie mad,"  all the while laughing.  When he got outside of the bathroom he closed the door with me and Bryan still in the bathroom and him outside the bathroom and heard him say, "Mad... Grrrrrrrr," and he laughed hysterically.  Finally we coerced himside the bathroom again and got him on the potty... As I got him on the potty he said, "Lights Out Mommy" and started laughing. And he kept saying that, laughing harder and harder. I had no idea why he was saying that so I said, "Yes", not really knowing what he was meaning.  But when I sat down to wait for him to go potty I saw that he had his eyes squished up so they were closed all the while saying, "Lights Out."