Just Journaling...

For journaling purposes, I have a ton of things that I want to document....there are so many things that Luke says and does that I just cannot catch on video because, quite frankly, I never know what he's going to say or do. He's quite entertaining most all of the time. As he makes me smile or does something new, I quickly make a note of it and stick it in a "post it pile." Well, that post it pile has gotten bigger lately so I wanted to share these....(1) for my journaling purposes and (2) so anyone who wants to can enjoy them with me.

For those of you who just visit for the pictures, let me get to those first and then I'll share some of Luke's sayings...:)

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of being at home with Luke for 4 days. We had a great time! We pretty much just took it easy and played around the house. Here are a few things that we did....

We painted....Luke loves to use water color paints to paint him some "dot-dots" (that's what he calls them). He basically does a bunch of dots all over the paper in different colors. Here's my little artist....(I love the white shirt with the sleeves rolled up). :)

Luke has quite the imagination (as you will see in just a minute) and the other day when we were playing with his blocks, he ended up putting the blocks together to look like the shape you will see in the pictures below. As soon as he put them in this shape, he looked at the blocks carefully and then looked at me and studied the whole object for a few minutes. Then, he looked back at me and said, "This looks like my screwdriver." Well, you know what? It sort of did! :) So, he took this "screwdriver" made of blocks around the living room and "drilled and screwed" different things....here he is with his screwdriver. :)

The only field trip that Luke and I took during the long weekend was to Bumper Jumpers in Greensboro. Luke loves this place and it's a great way for him to get his exercise on a cold day. Here are some pictures of his fun time!













After watching an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse where Goofy is a superhero, Luke requested that he be a superhero like Goofy. So, I made him a cape, me a cape, and even Madi a cape and we pretended to be superheroes flying all over the house to save his stuffed animals. It was quite fun! :) Check out Luke - the superhero!!! (I think he's saving one of his farm animals in this picture.)

This is quite cute!!! Even Madi plays with us!!!

Luke being silly....

I order the "Creative Curriculum" books that many preschools use. I order them so I can work with Luke on his educational skills here at home and so that my mother in law has some ideas of things to do with him. I really liked the activity that you will see below that was described in one of the books. The purpose of the activity is to practice colors - you lay down different colored construction paper and tell the child that these are "parking spaces" and then you get out toy cars and "park" the cars in the spaces that match their color - as you park them, you talk about the colors. Luke enjoyed this! Here are some of his cars parked.....picture taken after his attention span was DONE! He's playing in the curtains! :)


Playing in the curtains some more...

Check this out...Madi plays with me and Luke during the day as much as she can, but she is quite old so she gets tired. While Luke and I were playing, Madi hopped up on the chair and watched us for as long as she could. Can you see in this picture that she is falling asleep sitting up because she's so tired??
Here she is awake again! This dog is a sweetie!!!

I LOVE this picture and one day when Madi passes away, it will be a keeper for sure! This picture shows how sweet Madi is and how much Luke loves her. Luke will often times go over and rub Madi without anyone telling him to do so and she just relaxes and lets him or sometimes she will give him a kiss on his head. In this picture, she's being protective Madi. She heard a noise outside while Luke was petting her so she quickly looked to check out who it might be. :)


Luke likes to flip these stacking blocks upside down - the first time he did this, he said, "That looks like a Christmas tree." Yes, sir, it does - sort of! :)

And, two videos....

#1 - Luke painting and talking about his dot dots.

#2 - Luke using his pretend screwdriver made of blocks to work on all types of objects around the house.

And, now, some things I would like to share for journaling purposes...some of my favorite sayings and doings of my little man....here they go....

-Luke and I have been reading and doing the dance moves to the book, The Barnyard Dance, for a long time but we haven't read this book together in almost 2 weeks. The other night, after dinner, out of nowhere, Luke picked up The Barnyard Dance book and began repeating the words and doing the motions. He clucked like a chicken, strutted with the ducks, bowed with the horse and the cow - it was quite adorable! I couldn't believe he remembered that many words. :)

-one day, Luke all of a sudden ran to the bathroom and shut the door. After just a few seconds, he started knocking on the door telling me to open it. So, I did. After I opened the door, Luke looked at me and said, "I have to go get my computer." This is only funny if you know my husband (or possibly your husbands too) and his bathroom habits. For some reason, bathroom times for him are not just do your business and exit - they take FOREVER! They take so long that he takes his computer in the bathroom with him and surfs the net. Well, I guess Luke is now going to think that in order to be like his daddy, he needs a computer in the potty in order to get anything accomplished!!! :) So funny!

-At Elizabeth's Pizza tonight, Luke cracked us up with his great memory. We eat at Elizabeth's A LOT - probably too much! We order the same thing just about every time that we go. Tonight when we walked in and the waitress handed us the menus, Luke grabbed one and pretended to read it and said, "I want a salad, add cheese, with Ranch." That's exactly what I order each time!!! That's hilarious - he never misses anything that we say! :)

-Luke now likes to read books at dinner time, so we are trying to capitalize on his desire to read and use this time to read some Bible verses.

-When Luke hurts himself (like falls down or hits his head), he will recover very quickly and then look at us. We will say, "Did that hurt?" His answer will be, "NO! Do you want to do that again?" In other words, he is acting like he wants to do that again! STRANGE!

-One day a plane flew over the house. Luke heard it and looked up and said, "Mommy, there's an airplane. I think it's flying to Mickey Park." I think he's been watching too much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!! :)

-The other day he was trying to say something about it being someone's birthday and he said, "Mommy, we need to sing Happy...." and he looked at me so confused...then, he attempted the sentence again and tried to finish it with the word "birthday" but it didn't sound like birthday should and Luke knew that wasn't right, so he said, "Mommy, how do you say that word?" Of course, I told him. I don't know what caused him to forget how to say that word but I thought it was quite smart that he knew he wasn't saying it right and then was smart enough to ask for help.

-One day Luke picked up the case to my IPAD (which has a handle on it) and then picked up a piece of paper that had some writing on it and looked at me and said, "I'm going to Wal-Mart and I'm going to get some strawberries, bananas,....(and he named a few other things). This is cute! :)

-One day he brought me his juice cup that was almost empty but not completely and said, "Mommy, get me some fresh juice." Fresh juice????? How old are you child???

-About 3 weeks ago, Luke saw a yield sign as we were driving and without me saying a word at all - he had no prompting - he out of the blue said, "There's a triangle." Yes, sir, IT IS! :) Since then, he now points out the shapes of other things that he sees when we are driving.

-Luke loves to spin around in circles or jump wildly and as he does this he will say, "I'm acting crazy." (You've got that right!)

-Some big words that he has used - spectacular (he heard it on Sesame Street), ridiculous (he will say, "This is ridiculous." - he's heard me say that about slow drivers, and he also says aggravating, annoying, and "This is a disaster." Oh...and just in the last few days, he will say, "Have you lost your mind?" :)

-One day while I was getting ready for work, Luke stuck his foot in his potty seat and pretended to be stuck. He looked at me and said, "Action Chugger - help me!" Then, he grunted a few times, pulled his own foot out, and said, "Thank you, Action Chugger!" (If you don't know, Action Chugger is a character on Chuggington - another Disney show - he watches that show about once a week. Action Chugger is the train that saves the other trains).

-Lately, every time he drives one of his cars or his lawn mower, or if he loads his dinosaurs in the airplane, he always tells me that they are going to Georgia. I will say, "Who are you going to see?" and he says, "Memaw and Lexi." (They don't live in Georgia!!!)

-One of the activities that Luke and I do together when working on shapes is use his shape blocks to trace the shapes onto his magna doodle. We do this quite often. The other day I was so impressed to see that Luke (on his own initiative) went to his room, grabbed a few blocks, and started "tracing" them. It was so sweet to watch him work!

-When I get home from work, Luke's favorite thing to do is to run straight to our bedroom, crawl on the bed, and then wait for me to come snuggle and tickle him. Just about everyday, that is what I do when we get home. We have a good time! I throw him around (playfully, of course), tickle him, let him flip a few times, and then we snuggle. The first thing I want to do when I walk in the door from work is grab him and hold him so a tickling session and then some snuggles - that works for me!! :)

-Luke LOVES for me to make silly animal noises for each one of his animals. One game that we play is when Luke will hand me an animal and say, "Are you a rhino?" I will pretend to be whatever animal it is (like maybe a zebra) and in a funny voice will say, "No, I'm not a rhino. I have stripes. I am a zebra." I do this for each animal. Surprisingly, this little game and my silly noises and sounds has taught him some animal facts.

-Two of Luke's favorite books right now are "The Three Little Pigs" and a book he got from the library, "The Wide-Mouthed Frog." He loves these because I am able to put the different voices of the different characters or put motions with the words. Anything animated - he loves! :) After working all day and then entertaining Luke for a few hours - no wonder I'm exhausted by 9:00pm!

-Luke loves to be picked up and hung upside down. He even likes for you to spin him around upside down. Luke calls it "Upside down like Murray" because Murray (the character from Sesame Street) was hanging upside down when he taught that new word.

Well, that's it....just some things that I wanted to make note of. There is no way that I have caught everything - it's impossible. I'm just trying to catch as much as I can and, as you know, take it all in, store it up, and save it in my memory the best I can for the days when Luke's all grown up!

Good night, my friends, have a great weekend! See you next week!

Toddy