One Month Old!

Baby Luke is one month old tomorrow! It's gone by quickly- a haze of diapers and bottles. All considered, we're all holding up very well.

Big brother Will is still not 100% sure about the new baby. He still has trouble when I have Luke on my lap. If Will sees me feeding or holding Luke, he drops what he's doing and tries to climb up on my lap as well. Sometimes I make room for him and sometimes I tell him that he'll have to wait until I'm done feeding Luke. Of course, once I put Luke down Will often no longer wants to sit on my lap.

As long as Luke is not on my lap, Will seems to enjoy having him around. Will likes to look at Luke while he's sleeping. Today Will was looking at Luke, who was wearing jammies with dark brown and white stripes. And Will started calling him "zebra!" When Luke cries, Will sometimes shows concern. I've been working with Will on "feeling" words (happy, sad, hungry, sleepy, etc). When Luke cries I tell Will that he's sad because he is hungry or needs a diaper change, etc. A few times recently when Will hears Luke cry, he'll say "baby sad" or "uh oh, Luke sad." It's cute.

I thought that teaching Will more "feeling" words would help alleviate some tantrums when he gets frustrated. We're still working on that one. When I'm teaching him the words and we get to "tired" he usually repeats "tires." And I say, "are you tired" or "you look tired," he still says "tires." That's what we get from a boy with cars on the brain!

The weather here has been unbearably hot- triple digits almost every day. So we don't get outside a whole lot. But Will has gotten to do some fun things recently. Will got to go to the Fourth of July parade in Castroville. He saw a fire truck, tractors and other cool vehicles. We also took him to see Cars 2 in the theater last week. It was his first real movie-going experience. He did very well. I don't think he liked it as much as the first Cars movie, but he seemed to enjoy it. Will does make it to the playground early in the morning a few times a week and he also swims in his little pool in the backyard often. Recently he began being able to play with Play-Dough without eating it. He has all sorts of different colors and tools to use with the Play-dough. He also has been trying out what can only be called yoga poses. I'm not sure where he picked these moves up, but he does a lot of silly-looking yoga. We're trying to keep Will active, but it's a challenge with the weather and with a newborn. It seems like the weather in Maryland is a bit more tolerable so we're looking forward to milder temperatures next summer.

Luke is getting to be more awake and alert during the day. He dislikes tummy time, just like Will did, but he enjoys laying on his back on his tummy time mat where he can look at the toys hanging above. He usually has a couple times a day when he's awake for a few hours. It's a challenge when that awake time happens in the middle of the night. Last Sunday and Monday night were especially rough. Both nights Luke woke up for a feeding around 2:00 then wouldn't go down until 5:00 or 6:00. Then Will wakes up not long after that, so I was getting very little sleep. The last few nights have been a little better but I'm still pretty exhausted. The most difficult part is the mental fogginess that comes with sleep deprivation. In the last week or so I've had the following proud moments: I went to the grocery, filled the cart and went to check out, only to realize that I left my wallet at home; I stared at the computer screen for several minutes while trying to check the weather because I could not, for the life of me, remember my zip code; and, just today, I let the babysitter go an hour early because I thought it was 1:00 when it was actually noon. I'm hoping to catch up on some sleep this weekend.

Little Luke is getting bigger each day. He doesn't have a doctor's appointment for about another month so we'd don't know how much he weighs now, but he is very obviously getting longer. He is out of newborn sized clothing and fits very well into 0-3 month sizes. The funny thing is that his feet are already too big for 0-3 month pajamas. His poor little toes curl under because his feet are so long! But he's definitely too small to move up to the next size just for his big feet. We may be cutting the feet off his jammies soon so those toes have room to wiggle! In related news- Luke is eating a ton. Much more than Will was eating at this point. We're trying to keep up with the eating machine!

The movers come to start packing our things a week from today. Then we'll be headed to lodging on base for a while. We're just a couple of weeks from leaving San Antonio. It's going to be a bit of a challenge but I'm sure we'll make it just fine. I'll try to keep posting pictures but I probably won't be able to do much on the road.