Cousin's camp

This last weekend we went to the 20th Ferguson Cousin's Camp. Cory's grandma started Cousin's Camp 20 years ago, she had 9 kids so there were lots of grandkids. She would get them all together for a few days over the summer for a little "camp". Since the family was so big they didn't all see each other that often, so this Cousin's camp kept them all close. Then it turned into more of a big family reunion because they decided to have the adults come, too. It's a fun tradition and everyone gets into it.

This was Luke's first Cousin's camp. They even made him a little shirt. The camp lasted three days and was at a Lodge up in Park City.


Cory and Luke in the main room at the Lodge...

Happy Father's Day! We were up at Cousin's Camp on Father's day. If you look at this little outfit of Luke's it says "Dad's Team"! Too bad Luke wasn't the happiest camper for this picture! :)

Five months old...and eating carrots

Luke turned 5 months old on Tuesday! I cannot believe he is already almost a half a year old, it’s crazy and kind of sad to see my little boy grow up so fast, but it’s so fun too. He is learning so many new things and each new stage we can’t believe how fun he is and how much we love him! Here are some of the things he is doing lately…
-Laughing a lot! And of course smiling, he is such a smiley baby. If he’s not sad he’s usually smiling! He is also squealing when he gets excited, anything he can do to let us know his opinion, especially if he’s happy or excited!
-Starting to be ticklish under his chin and arms - he thinks this is really fun.
-Talking with us a lot…sometimes it really sounds like he’s saying “Hiiii” because he says “Haaaa”. I know it just sounds that way, but it’s really fun to hear! He will have little babbling “conversations” back and forth with us and it’s so cute.
-Taking steps when we hold him up on the ground – this is really funny when he does this. He’s so little, but he already knows those legs are supposed to move!
-Grabbing at everything! I have to be careful what he is in reach of now and watch my food plate if we are eating and I’m holding him. He’ll grab for anything and put it in his mouth!
-Sucking on everything
-Rolling over the second we put him down on the floor. He does great from back to tummy but doesn’t roll from tummy to back as much yet.
-He loves little games or songs where we play with his arms and sing to him like “Patty Cakes”, “Do as I’m Doing”, “The Wheels on the Bus”, anything like that.
-He loves being outside. If he’s upset I take him outside and it usually settles him right down! He is so interested in everything and outside is a whole new world of things to look at.
-Eating rice cereal, oatmeal cereal…and the latest, carrots! Which brings me to my next subject…

The other night we gave him something other than baby cereal for the first time. We decided to go with carrots, the pediatrician gave me a list of fruits and veggies to start him on and carrots was in the first group. He loves them! He ate them right up and has been all week. It’s funny how much he loves something with a little flavor! I’ve even started mixing the carrots with his rice/oatmeal cereal and he eats it a lot better. I think he just needed some taste to that stuff! I am going to start him on another new veggie tonight I think.

Daddy's boy

When Cory gets home from work at night Luke gets so excited, he starts waving his arms up and down and smiling, laughing, the whole bit. Also, he thinks Cory is much funnier than me…I don’t blame him! Cory can make him laugh at almost anything, Cory does the little pattycake games with him and Luke laughs so much, and when Cory sings to him and he loves it and just smiles and laughs. Also, there’s been a couple times where Luke’s been really sad or upset and I just cannot get him to settle down. I’ve handed him off to Cory and no joke he stops crying almost instantly! I think some of it is probably because it’s nice for him to see a change of face since it’s me he is with all day…but he definitely loves his daddy and of course it's showing through what a good daddy Cory is. A lot of days when Cory gets home he’ll take Luke out in the yard and walk him around in the little front pack carrier while working on the yard or whatever and Luke loves that, he loves being outside and of course loves the daddy time. We joke around and say Luke is Cory's biggest fan! 

I love this picture of the two of them..

I took this picture the other night. Cory was talking telling a story or something and he was holding Luke, and Luke was just staring at him like this for the longest time. It was like Luke was just in awe, you could just hear his little mind thinking "daddy you are telling this story so good, you are the best!" 

Loving the toesies!

A couple weeks ago Luke discovered his feet and ever since he has loved grabbing them, especially when his feet are bare and he can grab his toes. Lately he is grabbing for anything he can and putting everything he can get his hands on in his mouth. I knew it would only be a matter of time before he discovered he could put his toes in his mouth! Sure enough a few days ago he started sucking on his toes! It cracks me up, anytime his feet are bare he sticks the toes right into the mouth! 

He has always loved his exersaucer, but the last week or so it's kept him even busier since he has started wanting to grab everything in sight. Before he would just stare at the toys and I even removed some of them because I think there was too much going on and it would confuse him. But since he started grabbing for things so much I put all the toys back on it and he loves it, he grabs for them and leans way over so he can get them in his mouth. He usually ends up a little frustrated that they are hard to bend to get in his mouth, and probably because they really don't taste that good, but I'm sure he's learning a lot in the process! Babies are so funny. Here he is with a little goofy face in his exersaucer...

Crying it out

The last week has been an interesting one for our family at bedtime. Luke has had a little case of collic since he was tiny. It was scary because he would choke a lot at night (from his spit up - I guess this choking is caused by colic). So the doctor told us it would help to have him sleep in his car seat so his head would be elevated. It helped that he LOVED sleeping in his car seat. We would swing him in it to sleep and he would be out in like 2 minutes. So we had him sleeping in his carseat, with the carseat sat inside his bassinet next to our bed. Then I started bouncing or rocking him to sleep everynight and also at nap times. He'd fall asleep in my arms, and then i'd set him down in his car seat to sleep. But as he was getting older this was taking longer and longer, I would bounce him for probably around 20 minutes each time I put him to sleep, and then when I went to set him down half of the time he would wake up and I have to do it all over again!

He hasn't done the chokey colic thing for a couple weeks so we decided it was time to move him out of the carseat so he'd be sleeping flat. He has outgrown his bassinet, so we decided we'd have him start sleeping in his crib. We knew this would probably be a hard transition, so we decided we'd do it all at once - move him in his crib AND stop bouncing/rocking him to sleep so he can learn to put himself to sleep. But we didn't know how hard it would be!

I HATE letting him cry, and those first two nights were SO HARD! The first night we just had to let him cry, me standing by his bed because I didn't want to leave him in there all alone. I think he cried for about 2 hours straight, then finally feel asleep. I thought he had it! No way...he was up a half hour later, and went through the whole thing all over again. He didn't cry as long this time, but same thing. And this went on all night long. Poor baby!! I felt so bad for him...he must have just been so uncomfotable being used to feeling all snug sleeping in the car seat, plus me not bouncing him anymore. But I knew we had to stick it out. I don't think I realized how hard it would be for me to move him into his own room...even when he finally was asleep I was still walking into his room checking on him every 10 minutes! The next night we put his mattress on the floor and I set up a bed on the floor next to him. It was too hard the night before with me going in and out of his room all night, I figured I might as well sleep in there! This night wasn't quite as bad, he fell asleep faster in the beginning but he was still up almost every half hour, going through it all again.

The next day we went down to St. George for Memorial Weekend and we decided we had to stick to having him sleep flat (this time in his pack and play bassinet) and not rocking him to sleep so it wouldn't undo everthing we had been working on, and we thought it was going to be horrible, and he'd keep the whole house up all night! But amazingly enough, he slept...good! He fell asleep after only about 20 minutes of crying and only woke up once to eat! Same thing the next two nights we were down there, but he even fell asleep faster!

So we have conquered it. He still fusses a bit when he's put down but usually for only a few minutes, and then falls right to sleep! It is great! Only problem...all the sudden the last two nights he is waking up again every 2-3 hours to eat! I don't know what is going on! Is he still adjusting to the new bed...or is he just really hungry? We had him eating rice cereal but suddenly one day he decided he didn't like it and he just spits it out, so maybe he's not full enough at night? I don't know...but now I'm starting to remember how tiring it is to wake up that often to feed! Hopefully he gets sleeping longer stretches again soon!

But the good news is he is sleeping good in his very own crib! Only 4 1/2 months later :). Here is a picture of him sleeping today during his nap...

Family pictures

My sister took some family pictures for us over the weekend. We took lots of pictures (it's hard to get a good shot with the baby looking at the camera and everything) and we were lucky Luke held out till the very end. We ended up getting a few good ones.

First Disneyland trip!

My parents were so nice to take the family on vacation to Southern California earlier this month. Luke's first Disneyland trip! We went to Disneyland, California Adventures, Universal Studios, the Wild Animal Park, and also went to the beach. We had a BLAST! It was a lot of fun to spend time with the family and of course do the highlight of the trip...Disneyland!

This trip was Luke's first plane ride and he did pretty well both ways. We were a little anxious to see how he would do at the theme parks and everything, but he actually did really good! He is the youngest person in our family to go to Disneyland. He went on quite a few rides at Disneyland, I think he really liked the bright colors and the music on them. We had 7 people wanting to hold and play with Luke the whole time so he was getting non-stop attention. When he got tired he'd just fall asleep in the stroller. It worked out great!

The first day there we went to the beach. 

The next day was our first day at Disneyland. Luke was able to go on a few rides with us...he went on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (I thought he'd be scared but he didn't cry at all!), Storybook Land, and the Casey Jr. Train.

The next day we went to Universal Studios. Luke didn't go on any rides here because they are pretty much adult rides. But we got some fun pictures of him!

The next day... California Adventure. We also watched the Disneyland parade that night back over at Disneyland and we had a great spot right up close. Luke liked watching all the bright colored floats go by!


Next day was Wild Animal Park.


Friday was our last day at parks and we did Disneyland for the first half of the day and California Adventure the second half. We had already done most of the rides we wanted to go on so we did some of them again. We took Luke on the Teacups, Peter Pan's flight, the Merry-go-round, and the Pooh Bear ride. He started crying in both Peter Pan and Pooh Bear (they were both dark rides so I think he got a little scared) but he seemed to really like the teacups and the Merry-go-round! We went back over to California Adventure and did our favorite rides there again, and drew some more pictures. That night we went back to Disneyland for the firework show and Fantasmic. The firework show was awesome! Fantasmic was really cool too.