Fun at the Pool

The boys and I went to a neighborhood pool with a couple of friends this morning. Much fun was had by all!

Luke's First (Official) Haircut

Luke has been desperate for a haircut for quite a while now. Just take a look at that beer picture in my last post and you'll see what I mean.

I trimmed his hair a few months ago, just a little bit around the ear and forehead, but he needed much more help this time. So we headed over to Cool Cuts.

Despite the fact that he has been there several times before with his brothers and has actually enjoyed sitting in the little firetruck seat as well, today was a different story. We even put on SpongeBob for him to watch, but he was not impressed. As soon as the lady put the smock on him, he began wailing.

So I have no "during " pictures of this haircut because I was trying to keep him from impaling himself on the scissors as he tried to climb out of his firetruck. But above you see the "before."

And here is "after":
Tears dried, hair trimmed just enough to clean it up but still leaving some of the surfer dude behind....so handsome!

Time for a Tasty Beverage

Luke thought Daddy's beer looked yummy and wanted to try for himself. Luckily for us, the bottle was empty.

But he clearly comes by his interest honestly: here's Jackson at about the same age doing about the same thing.

Dulce

Meet our newest family member, Miss Dulce. That's dul-see, not dul-chay or dul-say. Thank you very much.

A fellow mom found a stray a couple of weeks ago and has been trying to find her a home. We met her at PetSmart on Sunday to visit with the dog and see if she might be a good fit for our family. Well, she wasn't.

But while we were there, we saw that a Dallas shelter was doing adoptions at PetSmart that day. And we saw that little face. And then she climbed right in to Anthony's lap, licked all 3 boys, and was just a calm, mellow little love-bug.

So though my friend's stray didn't find a home on Sunday, Dulce (nee Sunshine heehee) did. She's 15 pounds and 5 months old. She's a mutt; the vet said she was a Heinz 57. :) The shelter said shepherd mix, but she looks like she's got some whippet in her (long legs, spindly body) and the vet guessed a bit of lab or retriever because of her snout. With the way her feet look they said they didn't think she'd get much bigger, but who knows?

She's very sweet and pretty calm, although she's been running around chewing on everything. We're very familiar with teething around here, so we've got her a bunch of good toys to work on instead of the wooden legs of our kitchen chairs or the knobs of my bedside table drawers.

Isn't she sweet? I mean, Dulce? :)

CM Photography

Cody took possession of my camera yesterday and had a grand old time taking pictures around the house. It's really cool to see life from his perspective, and his pictures aren't half-bad! Like this one! ;)


Remember those magazine puzzles where they would show an extreme close-up of an object and you had to guess what it was? Many of Cody's shots remind me of those.


Cody snapped a few pictures of people, too!


Luke really wanted to have a camera too, so I let him play with my old one. He was very proud of it.


If he stays interested, we may have to get him a camera of his own for his birthday to protect my Nikon. How fun to have another photographer in the family!

Happy 4th of July!

The boys have been so excited about seeing real fireworks this year, so we decided to head down to KaboomTown on Friday night. We didn't actually go all the way to Addison where all the festivities are, we just found a parking lot on Midway just north of the Addison airport (where they launch the fireworks from) and settled in. There were already crowds of people when we got there so we figured we'd found a good spot, especially since the parking lot also featured a Wendy's.

The boys had brought pillows and blankets, so we put the seats down in the back of the Suburban and got comfortable.


We also had a bunch of glowsticks from the Dollar Spot at Target, so we gave those a whirl.

We enjoyed the mini-Airshow of classic bombers and army planes flying overhead in various formations, but when it was time for the fireworks, it turned out we couldn't see them! So we hopped in the car, drove just a bit further south, and found another vantage point to watch from. The boys seemed to like it, though they were all exhausted by the time we headed home.

It took us about 45 minutes to escape the traffic and get back to the house, and when Anthony and I turned around as we pulled into the garage, we saw this:

Guess we wore them out! ;)

The next morning, we hit the Plano Independence Day Parade. It was super close to our house and only about 45 minutes long, so it was just right for us.

Look, another Cody wink picture!

Luke borrowed Cody's hat for some shade.


Cody just used Daddy.We had a great holiday. Happy 4th!

Luke at 20 Months

I have often said that each of my 3 boys brings a special organ to the body of our family: Jackson is the brain, Cody is the heart, and Luke is the mouth (ok, I don't think the mouth is really an organ, but whatever). My little peanut is quite a talker/screamer/yeller/, and he has one heck of a sweet tooth, too.

I made a list way back at the beginning of this blog of all of Cody's words at 20 months. Cody talked more and sooner than Jackson, but Luke, as the mouth, has both of them beat. He's saying all sorts of words that I wouldn't guess many 20 month-olds know (the fun of big brothers, I suppose) like "awesome" and "Spongebob." And he says a bunch of 2 and 3-word phrases, although it must be said that his favorite word is still NO. ;)

Luke's List

Mama
Daddy (this can refer to Anthony or any FJ Cruiser we see on the road)
Jacks
Codes
Gramma
Spongebob ("Bob-Bob")
car
truck
beep-beep
juice
cup
banana
hot
boo-boo
snack
trash
shoes (said in manner of pre-teen Valley girl at the mall)
dude
uh-oh
bubbles
book
ball
guitar
dance
clap
poop (cue the big brothers chortling with glee)
hello
bye-bye
night-night
please
no
move (said "mooooooooooooove" to someone in his way)
on
off
dog
woof
cat
meow
moo
baby
mine
stuck
yahoo/yay/yippee
awesome ("aw-shom")
come on (while dragging someone with him wherever he wants to go)
all gone
love you ("ee-yoo" when one of us is leaving the house) **

**this one is my favorite

It can only be considered ironic that last night, on the eve of my post about Luke's mouth, he fell off the bottom step of our pool ladder and bit through his lip. The bleeding stopped pretty quickly but we made the trip to Acute Kids anyway, just in case, where they applied some skin glue to help the little bite marks heal.

What organ corresponds with courage? Or perhaps, more accurately, the total absence of fear? Because Luke is a little daredevil with seemingly no sense of self-preservation. He climbs, he jumps, he runs full-tilt...in short, he scares years off my life, daily. And though I'm aging prematurely as a result, I have to say I admire his total readiness to jump into anything and everything. His older brothers and I all tend to be more cautious and wary about trying new things. Luke will give anything a whirl at least once. He won't miss out on things, that's for sure. I might prefer he miss out on the ER visits, but it definitely keeps things interesting.

Ee-yoo, Peanut! You're totally aw-shom!