First Christmas

Christmas Eve...

We went to my parent's house Christmas eve for dinner and our Christmas Eve traditions. My mom made a way yummy dinner. Luke loved looking at the pretty presents and tree.

My brother Jake caused some controversy by giving Luke a U of U onsie. Cory wasn't quite sure what to think about that...we don't even have any BYU apparel for Luke yet! Cory decided Luke can wear it when the U plays, as long as they aren't playing BYU!

Christmas Day...
Cory's family came up from St. George and were staying at their grandparent's house so we slept over there and were there Christmas morning. Luke was a lot more interested and involved in opening presents than we thought we would be. He had fun tearing off the wrapping paper and then was excited for what was underneath it.
Santa gave him this train that has all sorts of fun little buttons and things that make noises and he can push it around. He really likes it. He loves pushing it and walking behind it. He is so close to walking... The other day he took about 10 steps in a row really stable and sturdy. But he always ends up dropping to the ground and crawling...I think he realizes he can crawl a lot faster than he can walk! If he could slow down for a minute I think he would be walking in no time!

Christmas card & pictures

Here is our Christmas card and pictures we took earlier this month. I love how these caught Luke's cute smile and personality!

Christmas fun

It's been fun this year getting ready for Christmas with Luke. It's like a lot of the excitement for the holidays that you have as a little kid is back because we're so excited for Luke (even though he doesn't really know what's going on, it's still lots of fun!) Last night Cory and I went shopping for Luke for Christmas and got him a couple fun toys. I love this time of the year!!

Luke's first Santa visit - he got scared sitting on his lap so we had to get in the picture with him!

Luke LOVES looking at the Christmas tree...he loves looking at the lights. If the lights aren't on he'll look at us like, what is wrong with this thing? Then we plug them in and he gets this huge smile on his face and just looks up at it all happy. It's really cute. 

At the Ferguson family Christmas party....

Luke opening his first Christmas present at the party

Luke and two of the great grand babies...all boys!... born this year on the Ferguson side - grandma gives them all matching p.j.'s

One of Luke's favorite things now in the world is dogs. He loves them. Cory's family still has their dog Sophie so both times we've been down to St. George lately Luke loves to play with her. He gets so excited when he sees dogs - in person, pictures in books, anything. I think we'll be needing to get a dog for him someday! Here he is with Sophie...

Growing up!

We missed our Lukie guy so much while we were gone in Europe. We took a couple pictures of him the morning before we left and kept them on our camera so we could look at him any time we wanted while we were there, here are a couple of them...

Even though we missed him so much we knew he was having lots of fun with his grandma and grandpa Bagley and that he was getting so much attention and love, so it was all okay!

While we were gone my parents and fam taught him some pretty cool new tricks like...throwing a ball, putting the rings on the plastic ring toy stick (not sure what it's called!), hitting a button on a toy to make it spin, and hitting the sweeky santa on his santa book so it will make noise!

Since we've been home, it seems like he's been learning new things everyday. I swear he is growing and learning so much right now, it's so fun. He is at such a fun age.

The other day Luke took his first steps! Since then, every day he practices his steps a little more. I think the most steps he's done in a row so far is 4. He can stand up in the middle of a room with nothing to hold onto and lower himself down too. When he stands up like that he just starts smiling so big and you can tell he is so pround of himself. He stands, takes some steps, and usually ends up plopping down on his tush. I'm sure he'll be walking pretty soon here!

He is also learning the concept of putting things away or at least putting things back where they came from. He likes to rip my newly folded landry out of the baskets and them put them back in. Yesterday he dumped out some garbage from a garbage basket (it was just a few peices of paper so it wasn't gross garbage) and then put the peices back in, and he is so proud of himself!
He is so fun and learning so much everyday! It's so fun but then also kind of sad, my little boy is growing up so quick!

Halloween!

Here are our Halloween pictures! As you can tell Luke was a cute tiger. Around Halloween we started doing the "rrrawwrrr" sound to him gearing him up for his tiger outfit. He started doing it back to us just in time for Halloween! Now he still likes to do it but now he adds some spunk to it by also clenching his fists while he does it! It's pretty funny! He especially does it when he's either frustrated or excited.

Halloween, with the cutest tiger ever! :)

Luke and the other kiddos at Cory's aunts house on Halloween

Wow dad that hair is pretty scary...

Pumpkin carving

Last night we carved a pumpkin. We were excited to have Luke participate in his first pumpkin carving! However, most of the time he was more interested in eating the pumpkin goo, seeds, and the newspaper the pumpkin was sitting on then anything else. But still, it was fun. I have to say Cory is a master pumpkin carver, he did all the carving while I sat back and watched, or kept Luke out of trouble I should say. :) He is all over the place lately...crawling, standing up to everything, finding and eating any little peice of anything on the floor, and he gravitates to staircases, he loves to climb them. I'll have to get a video of him doing it. Anyway, here are our pictures from the pumpkin carving...

The before picture

Working hard...

"Dada can I help?"

Dad carving while mom tries to stop Luke from eating the pumpkin insides

The finished product...this is Luke's half smile half deer-in-the-headlights scared smile he has been doing lately

Good job Cor, Luke's first Halloween can now be complete with his first pumpkin carving experience!

Luke the tiger

Luke and I at the Haslam family Halloween party at my mom's house. Luke has a favorite stuffed animal that's a tiger he just loves, so when we saw this tiger costume we thought it would be perfect for him! Our cute little tiger :).

Luke was given the stuffed animal tiger from Kyle's (Cory's brother) girlfriend Nikki. He loves it! He's never gotten attached to something like this before. He has a blanket that he likes to sleep with at night and he always cuddles to that, but this is the first thing that he has ever seemed to become attached to. He will drag it around, hug and kiss it, and tackle it. I think one of the reasons he likes it so much is it's pretty big, it's almost as big as him! So he likes to tackle it and I'm guessing he thinks it's fun because it's like tackling something his own size. He responds to it's name...we'll say, "Luke, where's your tiger?" And he'll crawl really fast to it and grab it and start hugging and tackling it. It's fun to see him grow and begin to do little things like make preferences to toys, etc. He is growing so fast!

Moving!

This past week we have been moving so it's been a little crazy! For the last year and a half we have been housesitting for John & Jean Groberg who have been serving as temple presidents up in Idaho Falls. John Groberg was a member of the quorm of the seventy and now is amaritus. There is a movie about him, "The Other Side of Heaven", which is really good. Anyway, we were lucky to get the opportunity to live there. The Grobergs get back in a couple weeks so my grandma Bagley offered to let us live in her basement for now until we figure out if we are going to buy a house or what. She lives just a couple blocks up from the Grobergs. So this week we have been moving all our stuff in and we are finally getting settled! 

Restaurant experience with the Lukester

Cory's mom and sister were in town this weekend so we went out to dinner with them and a bunch of Cory's family Saturday night. We took Luke and got kind of creative in ways to keep him entertained and happy at the restaurant...

First we gave him some orange slices to suck on. He made some pretty funny faces eating them, I guess oranges are really sour to him!



Then we dripped water from a straw in his mouth. He loves doing that! He could do it all day. As you can see he likes to bite down on the straw really hard with his teeth! Cory has to pull it out quick before he gets too tight of a hold!

Pictures

amie took some fun pictures of Luke on Sunday. Here are some of my favorites...

"I Love You" book

For the last month or so I've been reading books to Luke before I put him down for naps and to bed at night. He has never really shown preference for one book over the other until a couple weeks ago, he started to pay pretty good attention to this cute book called "I Love You". It's a touch and feel book so he loves to touch the soft fuzzy little things on each page. Last week I sat him in his room to play while I went around the corner to the bathroom to get ready. I heard him crawling around and then kind of struggling to pick something up. He was grunting and making noises so I went in there to find that he had crawled over to the basket I keep his books in, dug through the books until he found the "I Love You" book, pulled it out (it's pretty heavy, I'm still amazed he can get it out) and was trying to turn the pages to read it! I wondered if it was just a fluke that he chose this book over the others. But later that same day he did the same thing, went to the basket and got that book out. Since then, every day he has gone to the basket and pulled the "I Love You" book out all on his own. It's heavy and he struggles to get the pages turned and it slips around a lot on the carpet but he keeps trying! We read it at least 4 times a day, if not more, he loves it! It's so fun to see him start to show his little opinion on things like this and I love that he likes reading books, or at least this one :).

On a side note...I pretty much have the book memorized so I decided we needed some more variety. So yesterday I went to Barnes and Noble and bought him two new books. One of them is a lot like the "I Love You" book, it is a touch and feel and has the same type of bright pictures. But he doesn't seem too interested in either of the books. I try reading them to him and he just grabs them and throws them! Hah! I guess he knows what he likes!

This morning after he pulled the book out (notice all the books in the background he had to dig through and throw out of the basket to get to this book)

Weekend in St. George

We went to St. George over the weekend. It was fun for us to spend time with Cory's family and it was fun for them to see Luke, he's grown a lot lately. They hadn't seen him since before he started crawling and now he is cruising and climbing all over the place. My family was also down there because my sister did a Triathalon there on Saturday. Cory and I went to cheer her in. It was her first Triathalon and she did awesome, in the swimming part of it she came in 12th for women 40 and under! We also went to Les Miserables at the Tuachan theater with Cory's family Saturday night. It was way good! Luke had fun swimming in the pool at Grandma and Grandpa Ferguson's house as usual and playing with them. Cory's mom bought Luke a fun baby einstein bouncer toy that he sits in and can bounce and turn it has all sorts of toys on it, kind of like his exersaucer but more high tech :). It was a good weekend!

Luke loves splashing, he splashes in the pool like crazy. It's cute how much he likes it and it's kind of nice for us because he wears himself out so much doing it he always sleeps really good after! :)

At the triathalon after Jamie came in - good job Jam!

This picture is actually last week before we went to St. George, but I thought I'd include it because Luke has been doing this tricky little crawl lately - he doesn't want to drag his knees on the hard ground like the wood floor or tile (or here the cement!) so he crawls on his hands and feet with his knees off the ground like a little monkey and he's gotten really good at it! It's pretty funny.

Go Cougars!

We had fun watching the BYU game yesterday. What a win! Cory is training Luke early on what team to cheer for :)

Picture day

For some reason I was camera happy today. I took a bunch of pictures of Luke, nothing special, just once I started snapping I couldn't stop!

Lately Luke loves going to the grocery store because now he can sit up like a big boy in the cart! He loves looking around at all the things and people in the store, and especially loves watching other kids being pushed past us. Right as I put him in the cart and strap him in he starts doing his little happy squeal which means he is getting excited.

So today at Costco I pulled out my camera when we were in the parking lot getting ready to load up, I thought I might as well document him in the cart and how much he likes it. I sat there taking picture after picture trying to get a good shot of him looking at me and not getting distracted by cars passing by, AND smiling, and then I realized what a dork I must look like to all the people walking by me. Here I am trying to get my kid to pose in the Costco parking lot like it was some big outing! I'm sure people thought, that poor mom, she really must not get out much! 

Here he is looking every which way but at me as I snapped off a million pictures

Finally I got the smile I was looking for!

Just hanging out on the couch later in the day

The last couple days Luke has been standing himself up! I am constantly worried he'll fall, but he usually surprises me and does pretty good lowering himself back down. He's been standing up to all sorts of things around the house. Here he is standing in his crib, and bitting the crib rail, his latest trick :)

And this is just a cute picture I couldn't resist posting!