Happy Birthday Luke

 It was Luke's birthday this week!!!  He is now the big 1.  Very exciting.  As you can see we had cupcakes on his birthday-- he loved it.  The thing about this child is that he loves to eat.  He eats a ton at every meal, he sees other people eating and he just has to eat, he will even go to the garbage can and root out old banana peels. When he sees food but has none he has a physical reaction.  His mouth makes an o, he starts to breathe heavy, and his body starts shaking-- it is pretty intense. If he thinks you are holding out he pants or makes some grunting noise as a warning noise- a give me the food now noise. If you don't it is just tears, turned out lips, and a why do you hate me face. The crying is so intense that he gets food all day every day. You can't say no, plus if you do and he can reach, he will just take it from you. Even when he is done and has started 'sliding' food to Tigran, if he sees you get new food he has to have it. Food is his life.  We haven't had our official doctor's appt. yet but we went to WIC today and they weighed him-- it said 21 lbs 10oz which isn't bad, but we have weighed him here before and it has been 23 lbs so we will see what the doctor's scale says. Other Luke stuff-- not standing solo and not walking.  He does pull up and cruise and go from couch to chair. We try to give him stuff to hold with two hands but he knows he can lean his chest in toward us or the couch or whatever and still be upright so no need to stand solo in his mind. Oh well, that is how sitting was for him too and he can do it now. I suppose when he feels like it he will. No real words but lots of sounds like ma and da and ah and ba and etc. He does sort of know mama and dada and uses them appropriately lots of times but there are still times he throws them out when you know he just likes the noise. Also, he makes a noise that sounds a lot like the word this so when he says it we tell him what thing he has in his hand. He likes to brush his hair, 'call' us on the phone, when you ask him about his shoes he is able to grab them and put them down by his feet, and if you tell him to go get his bogey or blankie he can do it (not that he always does). He is attempting the few signs we are teaching him but he doesn't have it down yet- he said all done today and when we took his food away he cried and wanted more.

We did a thing at the library where you say you will read 4 hours to your kids in a month and for each hour you get a prize. We read 4 hrs in the first couple days, but we spaced it out a bit on our sheet.  The first prize was just bookmarks, the second free Moe's children's meal and 4 dollars book bucks for the book sale in March, the 3rd hour was a cloth tote bag to put all our library books in when we go to the library and the 4th was a book for the whole family to enjoy.  They had picture books and chapter books, but we went with the picture books. I let Jack pick it out. They had some pretty good books in thereCaldecott winners-always a plus for the bookshelf stash, but we brought home The Dinosaur Who Lived in My Backyard. Jack loves dinosaurs, we just got a dinosaur floor puzzle and a dinosaur encyclopedia, so this was no surprise.  Haha-it isn't an award winner but it makes Jack happy.