Musical Inheritance?

Those were some pictures of Luke and I playing in his LONG tunnel on Sunday morning while Daddy serenaded us in the background with some music and guitar playing....which leads me to the main reason that I'm posting....Landis' dad, Donnie, is a very talented guitar player and singer and has been playing for years. He plays at various (small) events around the city - churches, men's clubs, etc. Several years ago, Landis decided that he wanted to attempt playing the guitar. Landis has always been able to sing well and has always enjoyed music but, until a few years ago, never took an interest in actually playing an instrument. It is amazing how much he has learned and how much better he has gotten since the day he started. Matter of fact, when he first started, I thought I was going to have to hide the guitar because Landis played the first 5 notes of a Johnny Cash song about 450 times - at least! :)

However, thank goodness - now, his playing is quite entertaining. Luke and I often find ourselves playing around the house with him singing and playing the guitar in the background. It's a much better alternative than having the TV on - which you kwow I don't like. :)

As soon as Landis and I found out we were having Luke, we wondered if he would be musically talented and if he would take an interest in music. Well, so far, so good - he loves music - he sings all the time. When Landis gets out his guitar, Luke will ask to play and sing with him.

Landis has a neat set up in the back (music/play) room. He has his guitars and his singing microphone attached to an amplifier. Luke loves to sit on Landis' stool and sing in the real microphone. In the pictures below, you will see him performing on Sunday morning while still in his pjs.....

And, then Sunday afternoon after church....he is performing again, but this time Papaw is here listening in the background and playing his guitar too.




There are some super cute videos of Luke performing several really good songs below - so, stay tuned.

In the meantime, I have a few more pictures to post. Here are some pictures of Luke sitting at the big desk creating his own masterpiece. :)




And, some pictures of Luke being super silly at dinner....his hair is wet because we gave him a bath before dinner on this night....check out silly man....




Before I get to the videos, I want to write about a few things for journaling purposes.....

Much of the video that you will see here was taken on Sunday morning. Sunday mornings seem to bring some of the best times that we have in the Bumgarner family household. Luke is awake by 5:30 (if not earlier) and we never rush to go anywhere because we know that we have church at 10:00, so, from 5:30 to 9:30, we just play and play and play. Often times, Landis is also out of bed playing with us. This Sunday, Luke and I had a blast playing on Sunday morning. We got out the big tunnel that you saw in the first few pictures and had a blast goofing off inside. Luke loved to pretend that I was stuck and he was pulling me out. He also liked for me to stick my head up from inside the tunnel so he could smash down my head. :)

We read his favorite new library book - Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom! If you have never read this story to your child - read it! It's a great way to introduce letters of the alphabet! Luke and I have read it 100 times! As we were reading, I also read Luke his nursery rhyme book, which has a lot of tickle rhymes!!! :) We pushed his cars across the table back and forth to each other. We pushed his lawn mower and his popper. And, most importantly, we just talked, sang, and enjoyed each other. I always look forward to Sunday mornings - the quality time makes going back to work on Monday mornings a little easier.

One more tidbit - here are a few funny things Luke has said lately...the other night at gymnastics, Luke was trying to climb the connected ladders way too fast and I said you need to slow down and make sure Mommy is close by so you don't break your neck. Well, after that, for each station we were at, Luke would say, "Don't break your neck." It was funny! :)

The other night before I took Luke to his rocking chair, I gave him his numi (a.k.a. - paci). He took it from me and then smelled it and looked up at me with a funny look on his face. I said, "What does it smell like?" His response - "a fruit snack." :)

And...last thing....for real....Luke and I have been practicing sorting all kinds of things by colors and now Luke has begun to sort things with no prompting. For instance, when I give him a pack of fruit snacks, he will take them out of the pack one at a time and line up the ones that are the same color together. After they are organized by color, then he will begin eating them. Then, this afternoon, Luke was playing with his 6 fish and fishing pole outside. He decided that he wanted to put his fish in the bushes so he could go "fish" them out. I just stood close by and watched him play. Before I knew it, he had 2 blue fish in one bush, 2 red fish in another bush, and 2 green fish in the 3rd bush. He, on his own, no prompting, had sorted the fish by color. Is this a sign of organization??? If so, he got this from me - he may have picked up the singing from his daddy, but the organization, that's from mommy! :)

And, now the videos....

#1 - Luke singing his ABCs in the microphone.

#2 - Luke singing the B-I-B-L-E song.

#3 - Luke playing Landis' guitar.

#4 - Luke singing, "He's Got the Whole World".

Yeah, yeah, I'm bragging again....but, I can't help it...how many kids can sing the entire ABC song at 24 months old???

Check back soon - Luke and I will be venturing somewhere outdoors tomorrow because it should be nice and then Luke has his first dentist appointment on Wednesday so that will definitely be post worthy!

Have a great weekend!

Toddy

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