he's sprouting up!

Shelby's father-in-law, Ric, raises lilies and we have been the fortunate recipient of some of the most gorgeous lilies ever! This is my special lily that I have been waiting to see. It's just starting to sprout up and I cannot wait to see it in all its glory! This is the lily named after Ric's first grandson (and ours!), Luke Finley Adams.

 

♥

all good things...

...must come to and end.

The girls stopped by before church to say good-bye to our Adams family.  It's rare we get to see all three of our favorite people together in one place.  Grampa and I so enjoyed this!

the teething continues...

you can almost feel how bad he hurts...

one last shot...

Dear Luke:  Grampa and I loved e.v.e.r.y. minute of your visit!
Dear mama and daddy:  Thank you for trusting us to take care of Luke.  We know how hard it was for you to leave him.  We're pretty proud of ourselves.  We still have the touch.

The first week of May, grampa and I are headed to Chicago to watch Luke again.  Mommy will be in LA and daddy will be in Texas.   Luke's first birthday will be the day we come home so we are hoping to get a mini lunch celebration in before we head home.  Then the following week, which just happens to be Mother's Day weekend, we will join Luke's other nana and papa and aunties and cousins back in Chicago for the BIG birthday bash!  

We can't wait!

♥

celebrate

Last Saturday was the day we celebrated M&m's birthdays together. Maddie spent the night with us on Friday so Saturday morning Amber and Maci came over for breakfast. Grampa, Uncle Mike and Amber left mid morning to assemble M&m's birthday present.

so...in the meantime, Shelby braided Maddie's hair...

the girlies took a snooze...

Maddie read to Luke...

Luke had a snack...

 

and then it was time to party!
The girls got lots of presents...

Surprise!   This is the BIG one!  

Maci called it the "jumping board"

mommy showed the girls how it's done... 

then auntie Shelby got in on the action...

Luke watched...totally not interested

what a cutie pie...

and this was his FIRST time touching grass!  He has no grass in his yard in the city...and I think it's a good thing...he didn't especially like the grass so much

Auntie A and Luke

birthday girls

grampa had to see what kind of moves he had...

and gramma had no moves...one bounce and I was on my back...
but only after my legs flew over my head and I seriously thought I was going to keep bouncing right off that "jumping board" onto the ground!

then we went inside and had cake and ice cream...

Happy birthday to my sugarplums! 

 

♥

dinner, lunch, supper

Oh boy, our time with just us and Luke is almost to an end.  Mama and daddy got home on Thursday  night in time for dinner supper (our city kids call it dinner; us country bumpkins call it supper).  But first here is what we did on our last day without mom and dad...

Technology is such a wonderful thing these days!  Good grief... I'm sure my girls probably cried many nights and we probably didn't even hear them because we didn't have any sort of monitor waaay back then!

Here's Luke sitting up in his pack'n'play...

he found a chair just his size...and look at those blue eyes...
we are still trying to figure out how that happened!  

 

and he thought he was such big stuff sitting on it...

but not nearly as big as when he went up the stairs all by himself!
I didn't even have to show him how to do it!

Maddie chose to come see Luke instead of going to dance class with sissy and she couldn't wait for him to wake up!

When Luke woke up, we could tell something was different.  He was cranky.  He was teething again... so when mama and daddy got here, he was whiny and clingy and I'm sure they thought we were lying that he had been such a good boy!  

We had a good night and I decided to take another vacation day on Friday and we spent the morning stomping on gramma's computer!

then we had lunch

(we call it lunch; city people call it dinner but we call it dinner if it's on a Sunday - 

why does that have to be so hard?)

And guess who we found on the table... 

naughty Noah. 

{{no we didn't have lunch at 9:30...my battery died}}

then we spent the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing.
Luke ended the day in his favorite new toy...
look at that tummy...gramma is good at doing that to people

 

Then we got a good night's sleep because the weekend was M&m's birthday celebration!

♥

Day Two

Our first night with Luke was great.  He woke up once and gramma got her beauty sleep and grampa got his zzzzz's in.  We had early morning visitors.  Maddie could not get enough of Luke and had to stop by before school to read him a story.  This boy loves being read to.

He loved standing at this window looking out.  I think he liked the window crank most of all.  

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Where's Luke???  There you are!

He loved playing on the floor.  He spent lots of time playing with his toys and looking out the windows.

Couldn't you just eat those chubby little thighs!?

I also realized he has eyelashes!  He didn't have any when he was born (or they were very light) and now they are getting darker and longer.  I noticed his eyebrows are getting darker, too.  I wonder if he will stay a blondie or if he will have dark hair?  

Auntie A got in on the reading.

Are you my mommy??

On this day, we were going to take Luke to visit Grandma Lois, but just as we were headed out the door, she called to say she wasn't feeling well.  We were really disappointed that we couldn't go.  Hopefully, the next time Luke is home we will make it over to see her.  

Our second night was just as good as the first.  I think Luke's mama and daddy finally realized that Luke was just fine without them.  In fact, as you'll see in tomorrow's post, he was better!

♥

city boy comes to Iowa

Mr Luke came for a visit exactly one week ago. He flew to DSM with his mama and daddy drove because he had work meetings in Iowa and Nebraska last week. Mommy had meetings in DSM so it only made sense that Luke come stay with his gramma and grampa so he could see his auntie A and his cousins M&m.

Well, when I heard he was coming, I quickly made my living room baby-proof!

JUST KIDDING!  I had my carpets cleaned so little Luke could crawl walk to his heart's content and I wouldn't worry he was picking up icky Noah germs.

He arrived on Monday night with his mama... and it wasn't long before Amber and girls were here to see him.  I don't think he knew what to think at first.  He was bombarded by lots of lovin'  and Maddie, especially, loved holding him. 

 

On Tuesday morning, mama left early to go to DSM and we were left to enjoy our time with Luke.  Who knew that a major early morning blow out would result in a bath before 7:30 a.m.!  

I still can't get over Luke's blue, blue eyes!  

He had so much fun walking around and around through the kitchen and living room.  He is pretty limited in his wanderings at home, but here he could roam to his heart's content.  

 It was great just doing absolutely nothing but sitting on the floor with Luke.  I had no agenda, no plans, not a thing in the world to do but play with him.  

I think he's still checking me out.

I loved rocking him and then watching him sleep...

Grampa came home with a little tractor... Luke's first John Deere.  It will go on his shelf for now.

 

Day One was a success!  We found that he eats like a man - seriously - that kid can put down more food than I thought possible!  He loves, loves, loves all kinds of food and is not at all picky.  We made it through the day...two naps, two baths and in bed by 8 p.m.  He only woke once in the night and mama and daddy were SO happy to hear we survived.  Ha... we knew we would.  Did they think this was our first time taking care of a baby?!

♥