Finger Foods

The advantage to having Luke feed himself? I can actually have a few peaceful bites of lunch myself.

The disadvantage?

The little monster seems pretty proud of himself, so I guess it's worth some mess. I just wasn't expecting quite this much.

This face means, "Hurry and put down some more food quick before
the Empty Tray Scream starts."

Lately we've tried Cheerios, Rice Chex, bread, carrots, bananas, pears, and blueberries.
Can you tell which are the biggest hit? 

I read online that you can help kids pick up slimy foods (like bananas, pears...most fruit, actually) by rolling them in breadcrumbs. We tried that with pears yesterday and it works like a charm, but I don't think we'll repeat the trick soon because we only have Italian breadcrumbs. (Although really, who doesn't love parmesan-oregano-salted pears?) Tried it with flour, too, but we just ended up with an even gloopier mess.

"I love you SO MUCH, mama! Come give me a hug!"

The kid had blueberry under his fingernails, I tell you. (Doesn't this
look like something out of a horror movie?)

When cleanup time came around, it was just too much to try putting him in the bath again--he had already had a bath that morning after peeing through his diaper and all over the crib the night before, and I just didn't have it in me to play the tub game for a second time in three hours. Wet rag worked okay. Despite the monkey's best efforts, the mess did not defeat me!

The "after" picture. "Let's do that again, mom!"

...not today, anyway. Tomorrow may be a different story.

What We Do All Day

We're still alive, I promise! I think I bent down to tie my shoe or something and it was November all of a sudden. Where were we? Let's see...

Luke is 7 months and some change--he'll be 8 months the day after Thanksgiving, something I'm still dumbfounded by.

Still stealing his mama's heart every day.

He sits like a champ (although once in a while he still gets a little excited and loses his balance backwards; I keep hoping the head-bonking will eventually sink in and he'll learn to catch himself!). (No, I don't just let him fall on a hard floor--I let him sit on a rug on top of a squishy foam alphabet mat. He's okay, promise!)

I guess you could type the sound he's making
here something like "Hueyyyyanggghhwaah!"

Doing his runner's stretch to warm up for, you know, more sitting.

He has gotten very good at passing objects from one hand to the other, and he can spend minutes at a stretch (hours in Luke Time) turning the same thing over and over in his pudgy hands, tasting it, shaking it, staring it down, hitting it on the floor, and turning it over some more. It fascinates me to watch the little gears turn in his head. He spends at least half an hour a day on "toy time:" I set him down on his mat and dump his toy bin on its side next to him, and he takes things out one at a time and sets them down on his other side when he's finished with them. Some days he can spend almost 60 uninterrupted minutes happily looking at and talking to his toys. He gets bored with everything eventually though, so I've been trying to rotate things out. I'm constantly having to scour the house again for more baby-safe objects to let him inspect. The silicone pastry brush, a big plastic spool, an unused toothbrush, the remote to his mobile, whisks and measuring spoons and slotted spoons, his sunglasses, a (sealed) tin of mints, empty plastic containers, two carabiners hooked together, the straps on his high chair, plastic spatulas, a roll of masking tape, my hairbrush (ew!), a bumpy dryer ball, and the fat bendy straw to my 44-oz. water bottle have all been past favorites but are now passe. Any suggestions??

I'm so torn--I can actually leave him to go do the
dishes for a few minutes now, but how could you
ignore that face?

This child is nearly impossible to photograph (at least with my little point-and-shoot camera--anyone want
 to buy me a fancypants DSLR for Christmas?). Top row too blurry, bottom row overexposed. Every row
SUPER CUTE.

He eats "solid" food (read: goop) like it's going out of style. No, seriously, the kid is a garbage disposal--he will eat two cups (as in 16 ounces) of purees a day if we let him. I've been trying to keep it to just a cup and a half spread out over two feedings because I guess that's what you're supposed to do, but I swear if he could stand up, I would just open the fridge for him every morning and let him gorge. He'll eat basically whatever we offer him, usually with shrieks in between if we're not shoveling it in fast enough. Right now we're working through a stockpile of pureed green beans, zucchini, butternut squash, carrots, pears, peaches, and pinto beans, usually with a side of mush (cream o' wheat, oatmeal, breadcrumbs, whatever) cooked up with prune juice (keeps the kiddo regular, you know!) and cinnamon and a little vanilla. He's a pro at the picking-up-cheerios game, but he likes rice chex even better (can you even give rice chex to a baby? It seemed innocuous enough to me). Seriously, though, he'll eat anything he can get his grabby little hands on--pizza crusts, ice cream cones (sans ice cream!), cottage cheese, you name it.

Luke's favorite rattle (the Cheerios cup) and favorite face (the Cheerio mouth). 

Luke isn't crawling yet (something I'm definitely not too broken up about), but if you put him on his tummy he'll turn one way or the other and scoot backwards until he runs into something or gets high-centered on a toy. It makes him crazy, but it's pretty funny to watch. He's getting to where he can rock forward and back on his hands and knees, but only if he's backed up against a wall or a shelf or something. Poor baby. He gets so frustrated, but I feel like he'll never learn to crawl like he wants to unless we keep letting him fuss a little on his tummy and make slow circles around the room.

Taking out his frustrations on the monkey rattle.

Luke still loves to be outside and he LOVES to swing. We used to be able to swing every day, but as it's slowly gotten colder and rainier, we've had fewer friendly-weather days. Some of these pictures are more than a month old, but you get the idea.

On warm days, we have a picnic lunch too. Luke's favorite spot at the park is over by the pond, where he can watch the fountains and the dogs on walks and the kids at the playground. It's easy for Luke to get overwhelmed and upset when there's something or someone unfamiliar up close in his face, but from a distance, he can't get enough of just watching the world, so the park is one of his favorite places. It makes it even better that it's such a great place to play with balls. :-)

Scott and Luke are just the best of friends. You should hear him shriek (Luke, not Scott...) when Daddy walks in from work. They love to play with toys together, go on walks and runs and piggyback rides, splash in the bath, tickle back and forth (Luke tries to eat your face/shoulder/nearest appendage), read stories, and sneak-attack Mom.

Teaching Luke how to make the train whistle work. Luke is helping.

Scott will kill me for posting this, but I couldn't help
it--they are both so DARLING!

We just love the heck out of little Luke bug. He's growing and changing so fast that we can hardly catch our collective breath, but he just gets better all the time!

Bonus video time: This is a 50-second clip of a much longer video where Luke continues being ridiculous. He's just sitting in his high chair after lunch one day, but the clip features the boy doing almost all of his favorite things to do: chewing on spoons, screaming, hooting, babbling, dropping things, grabbing for things he's not supposed to have, trying to eat non-food items, bouncing, twirling his toes, loudly mouth-breathing, hitting things, making moon faces at the camera, generally being chubby, etc. etc. etc.

Edits 11/16: Videos should be working now!

Matheson Family Christmas Letter, 2011

Holy cannoli! Can anyone believe it’s almost 2012? I feel like I’m in that montage in old-school movies where the digits on the clock keep flipping faster and faster. 2011 has been the most whirlwind year in the 4-year Matheson saga to date. January found us up to our elbows in apartments to manage, 8^th & 9^th graders to teach, theses to write, and babies soon to arrive, and it hasn’t slowed down since. Dear little Luke made his entrance March 25^th, four days after Scott turned in his first full draft of the thesis beast and three weeks after my students’ state writing exams (not equivalent feats, mind you, but both red-letter days in our house). All three events turned out swimmingly: After weeks of grueling revision, Scott passed his thesis defense with flying colors and graduated with his master’s degree in Geography in June; 96% of my students passed their exams; and Luke is basically the best baby born in the history of mankind. Scott did an excellent job of Mr. Mom duties for a month while I finished out the school year post-maternity leave, and Luke did an excellent job of learning how to both smile and poop (probably not unrelated). Shortly thereafter we packed up and got out of Dodge, landing in St. Louis, Missouri right at the beginning of the second-worst heat wave in the state’s recorded history. We've spent the last few months getting to know the city and plotting little side trips to nearby sites like Nauvoo and Kansas City. In fact, Luke has turned into a regular travel bum lately; since moving we’ve been lucky enough to fly to Colorado for a family reunion, to Utah for Uncle Matthew & Aunt Michelle’s wedding, and to Texas for lil’ Cousin Maisie’s blessing. Luke will add Louisiana (and a handful of states in between) to his travelogue for Christmas this year—our fingers are crossed that he’s as good in the car as he is in the air.

Happy kiddo, even on the plane.

Scott has started his real-life grownup job here in St. Louis making maps for the government. Scott says he really loves what he does—it’s a desk job working at the computer all day, but it’s interesting work that he enjoys, his coworkers are great, and he can use three paid hours to exercise every week at the little gym they have on-site. Work keeps him busy enough to be sure, but his church calling as the branch mission leader really has him hopping. He spends several hours a week shuttling the four elders assigned to our branch for some of their visits and appointments, corralling the elders’ quorum to come along, tracking new members and investigators that visit the branch and helping lost sheep get back to church, hosting meetings and attending meetings and reporting on those meetings at other meetings, and teaching the Gospel Principles class on Sundays. Whew! Despite juggling so many other demands, Scott still makes time to be an awesome dad. He’s Luke’s go-to guy for baths, can get him to eat even the grossest baby food, makes him laugh until he squeaks with neck tickles, and somehow never fails to be on hand to change the very nastiest diaper of the day.

Very best buddies!

I am loving life as a stay-at-home- and go-on-walks-mom. It’s definitely been a change of scenery going from teaching middle school full-time to just being buddies with Luke, but he’s somehow just as much fun—and work—as 180 teenagers (and just as smelly). I’ve finally started making real headway into my never-ending list of projects I want to try, from making lamps for the kitchen & office, to reupholstering the dining room chairs, to organizing and labeling all the closets & storage stuff (still a work in progress, but we’re down to the last two boxes!), to the latest week’s triumph of bulk cooking—7 quarts of baby food, 24 cups of granola, 9 dozen mini-muffins, and 35 breakfast burritos later and our freezer is fit to burst. [Scott gets the Best Husband of the Year (/Decade/Century) Award for continually coming to my rescue to dig me out of the mountains of dishes left in my wake.] There’s always something to fix (splintering kitchen chairs, expired car registration, 3 hungry Mathesons at 6:00 PM) and never enough of Luke’s naptimes to fix it, so I haven’t found time to be bored yet. The weekends up the ante for us a little bit since I get to teach the 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old Primary kids at church: Scott and I have worked out a Sunday system where Luke gets passed back and forth between Mom and Dad every 45 minutes or so from about 8 AM until 2 PM, depending on what meetings are scheduled and which of us is teaching when. We haven’t found a good solution yet for the 3^rd Sunday each month, when I’m supposed to do Sharing Time at the same time that Scott teaches Gospel Principles . . . if anyone has figured out the trick to being in two places at once, feel free to let us know in the comments.

See that gleam in his eye? It means he's about to cause a huge mess.

Luke is a darling little monster, as always. He’s developing brilliantly and doing all the things good babies do, like grabbing the mail out of our hands and eating it and looking startled when he farts in the bath. He doesn’t have any teeth at press time, but we’ve gotten so attached to his gummy little grin that it’s hard to think of him any other way. He’s on the verge of more mobility than ever, but he’s not quite there yet—he rolls like a pill bug and can scoot backwards on his tummy, but shifting out of reverse still eludes him (much to his dismay). Consequently, his wiggles are reaching terminal velocity. He’s at the stage where he’ll lunge out of your arms to grab at passing light switches, mirrors, plants, strangers’ hair, you name it. It will be both a relief and a nightmare once he can really get around on his own. In the meantime, he’s been practicing for his gig as a studio audience member with the most ridiculous fake little laugh ("Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha, ha. Ha."), as well as perfecting his owl sounds in any echo-y room. His first recognizable “word” was “WOW” (or, more specifically, “Wowowowowowow”); he still just laughs at me when I try to get him to say “mama.” (It’s been long enough now that I’m starting to wonder if he really does think it’s funny, or if it’s just his personal little prank he likes to pull on me—“You think I’m going to say that? How droll.”) We just can’t get enough of him and his funny sounds and squishy cheeks.

Wait, which cheeks did you think we were talking about?

We love you all and miss you like crazy! Come see us anytime you find yourself in the area (or any of the nether regions of the South-slash-Midwest). Merry Christmas! And happy New Year, President's Day, Valentine's Day, Shrove Tuesday, and any other holiday and/or festive event until we see you next.

Love,

Cathryn, Scott, and Luke