Beach Bums

We arrived at the beach house around 6pm on Saturday. After a quick pizza dinner, everyone put on their suits and made our first trip to the beach. This was Luke's first experience with the beach/ocean, and it has been over a year since Jacob has been, so both were a bit tentative, even scared, on that first day.
But thankfully, by day 2, both were over the fear and absolutely loved the water. Jacob wanted nearby to hold his hand or occasionally pick him up, but he loved jumping the waves and running through the water. He enjoyed playing in the sand too.

Luke wanted to join in the fun too. He would take off crawling towards the ocean and wouldn't stop. He went right into the water and the lapping (and sometimes crashing) waves. He would get knocked over or splashed in the face, but would get right back up and do it again. He played in the sand a bit and was quickly covered from head to toe with sand.

I have a couple of little beach bums.

Here are a LOT of pictures of the boys at the beach. I started to weed through them and just leave the best ones, but I got so tired of going through them, so there are a lot.

Happy 1st Birthday Luke

Here was the birthday boy upon his entrance to the world at 7:51am on July 7, 2008

and here is the birthday boy at 7:51am on July 7, 2009

Can you believe it?

Parties parties and more parties

Our first week back from vacation was busy. You would think we would take it easy to get back into the swing of things, but oh no, not us. The Sunday after we got home, we went to a birthday party for a dear friend's little girl who turned 1.

On Tuesday we went with some friends to cool off at a pool/splashpad playdate.

On Wednesday we went to a a 1st birthday party playdate with one of our playgroups (4 babies, including Luke, turned 1 in a 10 day span).

Thursday was pool time and lunch with my sisters and Friday was prepping and cleaning for Luke's party and dinner with the family to celebrate Jeremy's birthday.

Saturday morning was Luke's 1st Birthday party with family and a few friends. We had nearly 30 people at our house and I've decided that is about the max our little house can handle when it is 100 degrees outside so we can't really use the outside patio for seating and visiting space. The party went great and we were so happy everyone was able to come. Luke enjoyed his cake, but didn't make nearly the mess he made with his cake at the beach.

Saturday night a new friend had a 4th of July party at her house. We were so excited to get to attend a party where everyone else was going to be in the same boat as we were - chasing after a 1 year old and nearly 3 year old. The kids had so much fun and we had some great fellowship with some new friends.

And to finish out the week, yesterday was a "Boys of Summer 1st birthday BBQ" with our other playgroup. There were 4 of us enduring the wonderful June/July heat last summer while 9 months pregnant before giving birth to our boys. Since we all had boys turning 1 around the same time, we had a little party to celebrate. It was fun to see the boys interact as well as the dads, who rarely see each other. Luke is walking a ton now, but still not all the time. I sometimes get frustrated that he just won't make the plunge and quit crawling, but I have to remind myself that I don't want to rush him growing up. He started on milk last Monday and also started sleeping until 5:30am or later without eating! I don't know if there is a correlation there or not, but I'll take it. I'm not weaning yet, but taking the first step by trying to drop a feeding. He's not making it easy on me.

Tuesday was Jacob's last dose of his antibiotic for his last ear infection and by Friday he was on one again with yet ANOTHER ear infection. David took him to the doctor this time and asked her about tubes since he seems to get these infections way too often. She wasn't fully convinced. I would love to talk with her about it when we go back to re-check him. On a positive note, we took Jacob to the allergist for a re-check of his egg and cashew allergy and a full panel test of the environmental allergens. Much to everyone's surpise his allergy testwas 100% negative. No more egg allergy! Or any allergy, for that matter. It has us a bit stumped as to why Jacob has a runny nose, ear infections, and wheezing all the time, but still great news.

To see the rest of the week's pictures, go here.

**And yes, these blog posts and pictures are all out of order, but I thought I would stay on top of what happened this week, then catch up on the previous one.

Lukey Likes It

Last Monday I introduced whole milk to Luke for the first time. And to my surprise, he actually seems to like it. Day 1, he chugged it. Each day since, he has continued to drink it, but in much more modest amounts. It took over a month for Jacob to finally take to whole milk after I introduced it to him, so I was expecting the same thing with Luke. Of course, there are some major differences in their drinking habits already. Jacob drinks A LOT, and has since he learned the sippee cup at 6 months old. So when I put whole milk in there instead of water, juice, or mama's milk, he was not pleased because it wasn't what he expected. He also took mama's milk in a bottle too.. Luke isn't much of a drinker in general, so he's not really accustomed to what 'should' be in it and he never would take the bottle and only rarely would take a few sips of mama's milk from the sippee.

Of course, weaning is going to be a whole other challenge that will likely take awhile.

Beach Week

I am going to post several separate posts 'talking' about our recent trip to Litchfield Beach and posting pictures. There is just too much to talk about in one long post. So, just as I would normally do, I'll blog about what happened over the week in general.

Every year, David's extended family travels to Litchfield Beach for a week of family fun in the sun. My first trip was in 2003 when David and I were engaged. Since then, there have been a lot of changes to the trip (more people have been added, including babies, we've changed houses a couple of times, and this year, it was moved from May to June.) It is a wonderful time that everyone looks forward to. One family (with 3 kids) was unable to come this year due to illness and it wasn't the same without them.

We left on Saturday morning to fly to Charlotte, NC, rented a van and drove about 4 1/2 hours to the beach house. We spent hours at the beach all but one day, played in the pool, ate a ton of wonderful food and treats, had a bridal shower and a 1st birthday party, took naps, visited a state park, and overall just had fun. It was wonderful to have extra hands (and eyes) to help out with the boys. It would not have been nearly as much of a vacation without our helpers, especially Mia and Papa.

The boys did fairly well on the plane, but it wasn't easy. Thankfully Luke slept most of the trip there, but was fighting it big time on the flight home. I had 2 different people tell me how sorry for me they felt watching me deal with him fussing and fighting so much. David finally got him to sleep for a little while and that helped a ton.

Sleeping during the beach week for Luke was a whole different story. In a word, it was awful. Until the Austin trip where he was up coughing so much, we had him fairly well trained to sleep until about 3:30 or 4am, eat, then go back to sleep for 2-3 hours. At the beach, he woke no less than 3 times a night (usually more). Because he were sharing the space with several others, we didn't want to leave him crying for too long. Thankfully, his roommate Jacob, never stirred during his fits. It was tiring for David and me, though. Thank goodness for naps!Luke ate like crazy. Anything and everything he was given he ate - and a lot of it - and quite often. He's turning into quite the eater. We'll see how much he weighs at his 1 year checkup this week. Jacob on the other hand, has gone dramatically in the other direction. I've always been proud at what a great eater Jacob has been. These past 2-3 weeks though have been anything but. He learned "I don't like that" and uses it often. He doesn't eat much, but still seems to be gaining weight, so I suppose I won't worry about it as long as it isn't junk. More posts to come about the beach, including a lot of the picture links. Here are some pictures of the boys just hanging out at the beach house.

Playing Catch Up

Even though it is summer, I feel like we are always going a mile a minute. Aren't we supposed to slow down and relax when we don't have the "structure" of the school year? Evidently, I didn't get the memo because we have been staying so busy this summer. I can't believe it is already July. Ever since school has been out for Jacob, my blogging has been severely lacking. I don't have the excuse of not uploading pictures or having nothing to blog about, I just haven't been making the time. So, my goal over the next few days is to really catch up. I am willing to give up an hour or two each night of my precious sleep to do it, but I will be so glad I did in the end. So....here I go...time to start writing and weeding through some pictures.