Catch me if you can!

Yesterday we had a busy day. Luke had to see his GI doctor before we headed to PT. Because I needed to also take care of our baby girl during this busy schedule, a friend and her children helped us out yesterday.


Well, the GI doctor appointment didn’t last as long as I thought which left about an extra half hour between that and our PT time. So we went to Easter Seals early and gave all the kids a snack. After that, Luke was getting restless and didn’t want to sit still. So I put him in his walker, thinking he could walk all over the lobby and practice his “steering” techniques.

My friend and I got to talking and I could see Luke in my peripheral vision, but before I knew it I heard my friend gasp and say “oh no”. I turned around and there was Luke, walking out those doors he loves so much!

Thank the Lord that he is so captivated by the doors that he wasn’t going too fast, and that he was just past the first automatic sliding door and hadn’t “breeched” the second one yet. Luke was just going to go check out those doors again…after all no one was watching and he could do whatever he wanted!

Why Bother?

About once a week I wash towels; bath towels, kitchen towels, old towels…whatever needs washed. Well, after washing…of course I fold them and put them away. Well lately, thanks to Luke and his “partner in crime” (his baby sister), I’m wondering what is the point? Why bother?


You see, our baby girl is learning wonderful things from her big brother. When we are in the kitchen, next to the dishwasher, her favorite thing to do is take all the towels out of the towel drawer. Then Luke comes along and helps and before I know it there is a big pile of towels on the floor.

This isn’t the only use for towels around the house. Last week I went to an eye doctor appointment, and when I got home my husband was working at his lap top, the kids were in bed and I walk in the living room to find a mountain of towels. Luke had taken all the towels out of the kitchen towel drawer, taken them all in the other room and piled them on top of his shopping cart, that was laying down on its side! I’m not sure what he was thinking.

Then yesterday, our baby girl took all the towels out of the drawer again in the kitchen and Luke comes in with his wagon of toys. Before I know it, his toys are in the drawer and the towels are on the floor. Then I ask Luke to put the towels back IN, and he did. Only at the time I didn’t realize all the toys were in there…only later when I went to put a couple towels in that he missed did I notice the toys. So then, mommy had to take the towels out in order to find all the toys.

After that I considered folding the towels back up before putting them back in the drawer, but then I thought “why bother?” After all, I’m sure all the towels will find their way to the floor, if not today…I’m sure tomorrow.

The Umbrella

We’ve been on the road a lot lately and we had to take our SUV down to my parent’s house, which is about a 2 hour drive. Anyway, on the way down Luke kept kicking the seat in front of him. Making a “swish, swish” noise, which turned out to be papers in the pocket in the back of the seat. So, I took off his shoes so he couldn’t quite reach anymore. Then the “noise” stopped.


I thought that was all he did, until we were on our way home the next day. Then not only did I hear “swish, swish”, but I heard a click and a “woosh, woosh” sound. I kept looking back trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. Well, I finally figured out there was an umbrella also sticking out of the pocket on the back of the seat. So Luke not only was hitting the papers with his feet, but had also somehow managed to pop open an umbrella that was sticking up out of the pocket as well.

When I saw that I laughed and pushed the end of the umbrella back down till it clicked in place. I didn’t remove it because I thought it was just a fluke that Luke opened it at all. Well, I was wrong. A few minutes later I heard a “click” and then heard the “woosh, woosh” sound again, and I knew without looking he had opened the umbrella again.

After that I took his shoes off again, this time for the drive home. I forgot about the umbrella until the next day. I had to take the kids into the doctor and on the way I heard a “click” and then “woosh, woosh”. At first I thought, “what in the world?” Then I just laughed and realized I forgot about the umbrella…I meant to take it out of the pocket completely…but I was driving so I just lived with the noise. What was a girl to do?

Help!

Luke has always been a hand full, a fun and cute handful…but a handful all the same. Now with our baby girl, “handful” has taken on a new meaning. One night I was washing dishes and bottles while my husband took over “bath duty”. This was good for me, because the kids were focused on daddy and the bath water and it allowed me to do dishes without needing to worry about anyone “messing” with my dishwasher in the process.


There I was happily washing dishes when I hear a muffled “I can’t…condish…” and I am thinking what did my husband say? So I turn off the water and ask, “what?” and he says “I can’t work under these conditions!” So I laugh, dry my hands and walk down the hall to see what he is complaining about. When I looked in Luke’s room there was my husband trying to undress Luke, getting his shoes off at the time, and our baby girl is trying to crawl all over my husband’s legs trying to “help”.

Since that night, that has become the basic routine, whether it is my husband or myself…one of us is always trying to elbow back our baby girl while wrestling Luke to get dressed or undressed, whatever the case may be. When my husband is found in this circumstance he’ll simply say “I can’t work under these conditions” and I’ll come to the rescue and put our baby girl in the other room with me.

During the daytime this often happens to me, therefore I usually don’t get any “help” and have to deal with my “work conditions”. But, at night my husband is usually around when I do the “bath time”…so I call out “help!” when I am under “attack” and my husband knows and will come in and “rescue” me, whether it be Luke attacking or our baby girl. I’m thankful to have “backup”, even if it is just at night!!

My Rock Band

Luke and our baby girl are always getting in my way anymore; especially when I’m doing dishes. When I’m unloading Luke keeps trying to take the dishes out or push the dishwasher closed and when I am trying to load dirty dishes our baby girl wants to climb up into the dishwasher. (Which she has done, more than once, by the way).


Well the other day I decided to try and distract them while I was doing the dishes. So when I was unloading some cooking utensils I saw I had two wooden spoons…so I thought “why not” and gave Luke and baby girl a spoon each. Before I knew it they were leaving me and my dishes in peace because they were too busy beating their spoons on the floor and the dishwasher.

When I was done with dishes I moved into the living room where Luke followed along with his spoon. Before I knew it Luke was beating on just about everything, including the large exercise ball. While Luke was doing that our baby girl went over to her small Little Tykes piano and started “playing”. It was like a little rock concert with Luke beating his impromptu drum and our baby girl “playing” (more like beating) her piano. Maybe one day they’ll use real instruments and become famous.

 

He's after me!

Yesterday and today we went to visit grandma and grandpa who live a couple hours away. While we were hanging out last night I decided to get out Luke’s walker and let him walk around. It worked well since they have a very open floor plan, which allowed Luke to walk around the couch, around the kitchen table and between both of them as well. The result was Luke making a big figure eight.


After a few “figure eights” grandpa decided to get in on the walking fun and decided to “motivate” Luke to walk a little faster. You see, he kept getting distracted by all the talking, people and “new” stuff to look at. So grandpa, being “grandpa” decided to become a “monster” and made loud “aarrgghh” noises while slumping over and making his hands into “claws”. Of course Luke responded as usual and laughed…but it did what it was purposed to do and got Luke to walk faster. Only Luke kept looking behind him to see what grandpa was doing which meant we wasn’t watching where he was going. Therefore, he started running into things…good thing mommy was there to help steer so that Luke could get away from the “monster”.

The Independent Dresser

Luke is at a point with his development that trying to teach him to dress himself seems pointless. But over the last month or so, Luke has shown some great signs of understanding and wanting to help dress or in his case undress himself. The last few weeks Luke has given me his foot to put his socks, braces and shoes on.


But he is much better at trying to help undress. When I ask him for his shoe he gives it to me and even bends over and touches his laces. When I get his shoes off, many times if I go to his other foot to get that shoe before getting off the brace on his current foot, he’ll reach over and touch it like he is trying to tell me I forgot something. When we get to the socks he tries to take them off on his own. He used to be able to do this before he started wearing braces. Now, it proves to be a pretty funny sight. The socks are almost molded to his foot after being in the braces for so long. So Luke will grab and pull and pull and pull and nothing seems to happen. So I, being the most wonderful mommy, help by pulling his socks about half-way off so he can then do the rest….sometimes even then, the socks still stick pretty good. So you can envision Luke pulling with all his might (with only one hand..because why would he need two?)…and falling backwards and rolling sideways and trying all these different angles to get his socks off.

Anyway, that was just the beginning. Lately he has been obsessed with his long sleeves. When we are eating and I push or roll them up, Luke will reach over with his dirty, food covered hands and try to pull them back down. When he does get it back down he keeps pulling like he is trying to get his arm out of his sleeve completely. So when he starts doing this I have to distract him with more food, which usually works.

The really funny example of Luke helping to undress happened yesterday. To understand you have to know that Luke has been wearing flannel PJ’s lately that are two piece, shirt and pants with no feet. When I went to get him up Luke had one arm completely out of his shirt already…like he was ready to start the day. Then later that morning, he was still in his PJ’s, Luke was crawling all over and I noticed his pants were slipping a little but I wasn’t too concerned. Well the next thing I knew I looked in on him and his sister and all of a sudden he had no pants, just his sweater like shirt and his diaper. I told him he can’t do that in public and then found his pants that were about 4 feet away down the hall and put them back on Luke. Silly man!! If he can’t pull off his PJ’s in order to dress for the day, I guess he can just crawl around until they fall off!!

"Ring around the..."

Lately Luke has gotten so good at walking, that when we walk outside I think he gets bored. He wants to go around things or obstacles. He wants to take off to the neighbors house or anywhere really. So instead of walking he likes to go a few steps and then stop and look around. When we ask him to keep walking, many times Luke will simply look at us and smile and do a little laugh…like he is saying “ya right…where am I supposed to go?”


Well the other day I think he got really bored and so he and his daddy did something new. Instead of walking in circles or trying to go around small obstacles, like plastic tubs, Luke decided to take a stroll around the Suburban, which we have been parking outside the last few weeks.

Our new neighbors across the street have two dogs that are outside. They have been getting used to the area and therefore have been known to bark at strange cars and things. Well the night Luke was playing “ring around the SUV” the dogs must of decided they wanted to play too. Every time Luke reappeared where they could see him, they would start barking…but the moment Luke disappeared behind the SUV he stopped. Silly dogs…maybe after they get used to us they’ll stop barking.

No more please!

Do you ever having mommy moments like, I can’t remember if I shampooed my hair? I have been having more and more of those moments lately. It got worse when we added more medicine to Luke’s daily dosages.


Luke has been on medicine to help reduce the acid in his stomach which he gets twice a day, to help his reflux, for about a year now. After a year, I finally remember that everyday I need to give it to him twice. About a month or so ago, Luke was pretty congested and was having trouble breathing when he was sleeping. When we took him to the doc, they thought it could be allergies (especially since he had a lot of trouble last fall and we never did figure out why). So Luke had two more medicines to add, these for his allergies.

So at that point I had 4 medicines to keep track of, the 4th was Luke’s regular vitamin that I gave him every morning. Good old Flintstones!!

Anyway, I did pretty good up to that point, I wound up using a single pill box to remember one of the allergy medicines. But then after talking to Luke’s doctors in Baltimore a few weeks back, we decided to put him on a “vitamin cocktail” to see if could help Luke or not. This meant I needed to add three more medicines/vitamins to Luke’s daily intake…and one of these I have to give him twice in a day.

When I realized I could barely keep track of what I was giving him already, I knew I needed to do something. At first I thought about one of those “special” pill boxes, you know…the ones with two a.m. or two p.m. slots. The problem at Luke’s age is that out of the 7 “medicines”, 2 are liquid and 1 is powder form. So the “pill box” would still take a lot of “mommy memory power”, which I’m not sure I had. Then I also thought about when we have the grandparents baby sit, how in the world will they keep it all straight too?

I knew I needed to make something on my own…something that could be changed easily day to day and not waste lots of paper or anything. So I went to “wally-world” and got a dry erase board, magnets and full/label post-its. The result? The ultimate medicine “keeper-tracker”.

I definitely recommend this for any other mom who feels she can’t remember even the small things like, did I feed the cat as well as the baby? Check out my “beautiful board” below, my new invention!!

I didn't do it!!

In Luke’s 2 years and 10 months of life he has learned what “no” means. Sometimes when I tell Luke “no” he looks at me, like he is trying to gauge whether or not I’m serious, then he’ll go back to whatever he was trying to do. Like trying to push the “eject” button on the DVD player. After all it is too much fun, and mommy would never tell him not to have fun, right? Wrong.


After the first “no”, I use my “teacher/mommy voice” and say “NO!” Then he’ll stop, put his hands to his face and start crying…like it is the end of the world because mommy said “no”. Once we get to this stage it can be hard to get Luke back to his “normal/happy” self. He’ll stretch it out into a good “fit”. After about 15 minutes Luke starts acting happy again..although sometimes he remains upset until his nap time.

I think I have mentioned before how Luke will also cry when he knows he did something wrong…especially when it is to his baby sister. I know he has been up to no good when I hear him cry and it is immediately followed by his baby sister’s cry.

Well now we are entering a “new” realm of “no upsets”. Since our baby girl has become mobile she is getting herself in trouble. So when I tell her “NO”, Luke hears and starts crying like he is the one in trouble.

So after I tell baby girl “NO” and spank her and then give her a new toy as a distraction…I have to go over to Luke and say “hey bud, it isn’t YOU it’s your SISTER…she did something she shouldn’t”…of course Luke pauses and then starts crying again…so I know he didn’t understand me. The poor guy thinks he’s in trouble and he looks at me like “I didn’t do it mommy…I promise!” Silly man, we’ll have to work on this some more.

Out of my way!

When we first started walking Luke with a walker, about a year ago, an adult would have to pick him up and place him in front of it. Over time he got better at putting his feet down and grabbing hold of the handles. After he learned to walk straight, he learned to turn using straight wheels (no easy task) and then he went on to the “swivel wheels”. Well the last couple weeks Luke has been able to pull himself up to his walker, as long as a person is holding it still. He then has been able to turn himself around all by himself. This is such a great development, it opens a whole new world for Luke.


What I mean by that, is that now I am able to give him more freedom in the house. This also allows me freedom in that I don’t need to constantly touch his walker or even need to be within a few feet all the time. Along with this new freedom Luke has been proceeding to put dents in our appliances and scrapes along our walls and door frames.

Yesterday Luke stood up in the kitchen and got situated in his walker and started to take off. Well he decided to investigate a few new things..like the stove top…which I had to run to and clear off. Then he turned into the corner by the sink and tried to reach the dishes. Of course when he was done, he started screaming because he got himself in the corner and couldn’t figure out how to go backwards and get out. Then when I helped him out of the corner he turned and went through the kitchen and down the hallway, of course every time he hit the wall he cried out..like he was saying “out of my way, coming through!” He did maneuver his way down the hall and through his sister’s door, which is shaped like and “L”. Then he got over to the changing table and got himself stuck again…so once again he needed “super mommy” to rescue him. Silly man!! He wants that “freedom” so badly, but he still needs a little help. He’s so determined!

Mirror Mirror

When Luke was a baby he never really seemed interested in mirrors, he would just look into it and not seem to really understand what he was seeing. Over the last two years Luke has learned his own way of looking into a mirror. Instead of just looking at his reflection, he has decided that if he is within close enough “range” he’ll try biting his image. After a few months of this he decided to “bite” the image and then he would make kissing noises “MMaaa”. So that shed some light on what he was doing. I think he was always trying to kiss the image and not “bite” it…although sometimes, even now, I just can’t tell.


Well the other day during Speech Therapy, Luke and his therapist were reading a book together. It was a board book with the letters of the alphabet, so A was for apple and so on. Well when they got to “Y”, it was “Y is for You” and it had a reflection in the shape of a star on the page. So what does Luke do? Yep...he leans over and gives it a big old “smacker”!! So funny.

Have it Made

During Luke’s Speech Therapy they have been working a lot on identifying objects in flash cards. So the therapists might ask Luke, “Where is the DOG” and then show Luke a picture of a dog and a car. Luke has been doing well with this lately, getting them right about 60% of the time.


This last week when they were working on this activity, Luke kept putting his foot up on top of the therapist’s leg. After trying that he decided to put both feet up, like he was relaxing and had all day. So here was Luke’s therapist holding two cards up for Luke to choose from and Luke was putting both feet up like he was almost bored by the whole thing…like it was all too easy or something. Silly little guy!! Just because he gets most of them right, doesn’t mean he has it down yet!!

Case and point, in the picture below she gave Luke a dog and boat to choose from asking where the dog was, and as you can see he kept going for the boat.  I think he just liked the colors.  Even then, he had his feet up relaxing!