WHY?!?

Why do you have to eat EVERYTHING you get your hands on?
Why have you started eating stuff off the floor?
Why do you have magnifying glass eye balls?
Why do you still seem to find stuff to eat even after I vacuum?
Why do you bite my finger when I try to save you from eating disgusting things?
Why do you swallow it before I can get it out?
Why, Lucas, why?

My little Sock Monkey

RAWR!!!

Homemade Baby Food

I went to a church activity last week where they talked about making your own baby food. It looked fun and easy so I thought I would give it a try. Lucas's favorite baby food from the store is mixed veggies so I decided to try reproducing that one first. I had a jar of his baby food open while I was making this to try to get the taste as close as possible. I think I got it pretty close, but honestly I think the stuff I made tasted so much better. The canned baby food had this bitter taste, and the veggies I had were almost sweet compared to it. Here is the finished product.


Next I decided to make a lentil dish. The girl presenting on baby food said that lentils was the second most nutritious food to use in baby food, and I really like lentils so I thought I'd give it a try. I made up a recipe using the lentil and sausage soup recipe that I got off the food network a few months ago. It was seriously so good and so easy. I might make something similar to it for lunch today. I probably won't mush it up like I did for Lucas, though. It looks disgusting, but trust me, it's delicious.

And last I made a sweet potato dessert with the left over sweet potatoes I had.

Lucas LOVED all of the food. See for yourself.

It took me about 2 hours to make 60+ ounces of food. That's about 15 jars of baby food. And the total cost ended up being about 30 cents per jar, and at the store they are about 50 cents. It's not a HUGE cost savings, but over a year it's about $100 or more. And the homemade food is healthier and tastes better. For more details and recipes check out my other blog.

Lucas Can Dance

I just discovered that Lucas bobs his head with music. My sister Julie and I went shopping yesterday and we were dancing along with the music in the stores and then we noticed that Lucas was watching us and bobbing his head. I wasn't sure if it was a fluke or not, but Lucas and I are listening to music right now and he's bobbing his head. I'm going to try and video tape it, but I was just so excited I had to post right now.

8 months

Lucas is 8 months old now. He is so much fun!! I feel like he's learned so many new things lately. He's an expert crawler now. He pulls up on everything and is getting really good at lowering himself back down to the floor again so he doesn't just fall and bash his head anymore. I feel like he has really good muscle strength cause sometimes he stands, and squats, and stands back up again, and he just sits there doing that for a while like it's a game. He can't stand up without holding on to something, but he's starting to get more daring and hold on to stuff with one hand or no hands and just lean against stuff. With his new mobility he has started getting into EVERYTHING. He loves the bathroom so we have to keep that door closed. Every time we open the refrigerator he takes off towards it and tries to climb in before we can get the door closed. This picture is for real now.


Same goes for the dishwasher.

Another recent development is sleeping through the night. He isn't perfect yet, he'll still wake up every once in a while, but he usually goes right back to sleep and never eats in the middle of the night anymore. Yay!

He's also getting a lot more talkative. He sounds like he's getting really close to saying some words. His little voice is so cute! I love listening to him talk.

He's also getting even more playful. He will try to get away if we growl and chase after him. After a few feet, though he gives up cause he likes when we tickle him and eat him. He thinks this game is hilarious. He also tries to get us back sometimes and tries to eat us, but he really just gets drool all over us. He definitely has a personality of his own.

Lucas is just growing up so fast and we love him so much. Here's some fun pictures from the last month.

Eating a graham cracker.

Eating an orange.

Drinking from a sippy cup.

Helping make the bed.

People watching... he LOVES this.

He loves his daddy.

Nummers

I started this post about three months ago when we first started feeding Lucas solid foods, but we just barely got around to converting the video to a format blogger can handle. Oh well. Lucas has done really well with solid foods and can't seem to get enough. He will eat just about everything, fruits, veggies, cereal, he even likes drinking water. His favorites are mixed veggies, carrots, sweet potatoes, apples and blackberries, apple cinnamon oatmeal, graham crackers, and probably his favorite of all time is yogurt bites. He used to end up with half the food on his face, but now he's a pro.

He knows when we're eating food and he gets really mad and vocal when we don't share. We have to keep some snacks on hand when we're eating so he has something to eat too. The other day we went to Red Mango and got some pomegranate frozen yogurt. Lucas kept grunting to let us know he wanted some so we gave him a bite. He LOVED it! After that we couldn't feed it to him fast enough. I think we're going to have to get a large next time.

Here's a few clips from the video we took of his very first time eating baby food.

Update

Things are going really well with getting Lucas to sleep through the night. I think he's almost completely on a schedule now. Last night he didn't even cry when we put him down for bed, he just rolled over and went to sleep. He woke up twice in the middle of the night, but went right back to sleep both times. He went down at 9pm and woke up for good at 8am. This is the first time I've not fed him at all in the middle of the night. The best he's done before this was waking up at 6am for an early morning snack. I'm pretty excited about this and I hope he keeps it up. I'm also proud of myself for sticking with this schedule because this last weekend wasn't as great. Thanks to a couple ideas from various books, and my sister in law Ashley for all her advice.

I can't believe it's time

So, I always said when Lucas was like 6 or 8 months old we would start trying to regulate his sleep and get him to sleep through the night. Before that we were just going let him sleep when he was tired and feed him when ever he woke up during the night. And it really has worked well for us. I know some people just can't do that, and some babies don't sleep well enough without having to help them along, but Lucas really has been a pretty good sleeper. Except that all of a sudden he's almost 8 months old. How did that happen?!? So now it's time to start trying to get him to sleep through the night and it just feels too early. He's my baby... I need to baby him... when he cries I feel like I should just hold him and love him cause that's what you do with a newborn. Except when did he turn into an older baby and not a newborn? I'm sure every mother out there has felt like this at some point, but it's kind of devastating. It's exciting cause he's growing and maturing, that's a good thing, but it's still kind of devastating. So, on to the point of this blog.

We've started trying to get Lucas to sleep through the night. I'm still feeding him once during the middle of the night, but he's done really well so far. When he wakes up in the middle of the night when it's not time to eat, the longest he's cried so far is like 15 minutes. This is only the second night, so I'm sure I have a ways to go, but I'm pretty excited about his progress. He's slept through the night before without me doing anything special, so I'm hopeful he'll get the hang of this really fast. And soon I'll be a mom with a baby that sleeps through the night. And I am excited about that, even though I'm still just a little sad.

But I just want to throw out there that waking up in the middle of the night has not been hard for me. I know it is for some people, especially Ryan, but I can wake up a few times in the middle of the night and go right back to sleep after and feel relatively rested in the morning. I attribute this to early morning seminary and early morning scripture study with my family. I haven't really been sleep deprived many times this last 7 months and I think it's a blessing from being so diligent in studying the scriptures when I was younger. So thanks Mom and Dad for making me get up, even though I hated it at the time and the sound of dad opening the door and saying "time for scriptures" is still one of the worst sounds in the world.

Check this out!

Look at this cake. Some people are just plain amazing.

Ryan is in Orlando this week presenting his research at a conference. I'm really proud of Ryan and the work that he has been putting into his research. He's going to be giving his presentation on Thursday. I looked up the agenda for the conference online at AIAA's website and I found Ryan's presentation. I think it's so cool when you can find yourself or someone you know online.

Even though I'm very excited for Ryan and this opportunity that he has, I'm sad that he's going to be gone all week long. It's only been one day and I feel like it's been a lot longer. Ryan has gone on trips without me before, but this is the first one after Lucas came along. I thought it would be harder to have him gone and have to take care of Lucas all by myself. And in some ways it is, but at the same time it is easier because I have Lucas to keep me company so I don't get lonely. He's so sweet and cuddly.

Since Ryan will be gone all week long, I'm taking advantage of this and I'm making meals that he doesn't like. I bought a pound of shrimp and I'm going to eat it all. I LOVE seafood and Ryan hates it. Tonight I made Lemon Basil Shrimp, one of my dad's recipes. Tomorrow I'm thinking I'll try something with tomatoes in it.

Merry Christmas

Seeing the lights at Temple Square

Matching outfits

Spending time with family

I'm not sure why Lucas is naked in so many of these, but it won him the role of baby Jesus in the nativity reenactment.

These two love to play together

Opening presents on Christmas morning

And playing with them

And Lucas has been starting to pull himself up on stuff.

And learning to drive the car.

We hope you guys all had a wonderful Christmas and wish you the best in this new year.