Backtrack to Christmas

This Christmas was a particularly magical one for all of us. Luke, almost two, fell in love for the first time with the excitement of presents and Christmas decorations. For Erik and me, the story of our Savior’s birth held a new poignancy as an expecting parent’s wonder and concern centered in our minds because of Eleanor’s 12/28 due date. For all of us, it was a change from our pattern of traveling to visit family for the winter holidays, giving it an unfamiliar quiet and unstructured feel. Somehow it felt strangely grown-up and parental to be having Christmas on our own!

Christmas morning, Erik and I gave Luke his first holiday hint by taking him out of his crib wearing Santa hats. I don’t think he knew what to make of that, but no explanation was needed when he came out and saw our tree transformed by a bounty of gifts! He gleefully ran to the toddler-sized wheelbarrow that my parents had sent and commenced pushing it in laps around the house, loading it with gifts as he went.

Next we opened stockings, including one for Eleanor, and headed next door for breakfast with our neighbors. At the neighbors’ and during our Christmas skype conversations with our families, Luke showed off his two holiday party tricks:

1) an imitation of a reindeer lawn ornament

2) answering the question ‘what does Santa say?’ with an adorable ‘o, o, o!’

We took our time between presents, helping Luke set up and play with each toy as it was received.

It was especially sweet to include Eleanor in the family festivities by opening a few presents for her. Luke did an admirable job unwrapping her gifts and seemed to at least partly understand that they were for his soon-to-arrive baby sister. Though that didn’t stop him from trying them out himself!

Then we made paninis, an easy family favorite, and watched part of The Muppets Christmas Carol – a tradition from Erik’s childhood. Erik and I finished the evening with Christmas music playing and a fire in our fireplace, counting our many blessings together.

Meet Eleanor Thessalia! Her name & mini birth story

Our sweet little girl arrived yesterday! Her name Eleanor means shining light and we love the way it matches Luke’s name, which also means light. Now we have two little lights to love!

We also like the connection between shining light and the Christmas season of Eleanor’s birth. This is the time when we celebrate God’s gift of light to the world in Christ, and so we like that her name captures a piece of that most momentous birth too.

Her middle name Thessalia is in honor of Erik’s mother and great-grandmother. We are delighted to be able to link her to these two very talented and caring women, and we also like that their name reminds us of the two New Testament letters to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:23-24).

While her name matches her brother’s closely, her arrival couldn’t have been more the opposite. Luke was over two pounds heavier and it took almost three hours of pushing before he was born, which happened 5 hours after I reached 10 cm! In hopes of avoiding that, Eleanor was induced (with pitocin) on her due date. She arrived only fifteen minutes after I’d been pronounced 8 cm, coming out during just one dramatic contraction which included my water breaking! Needless to say we are all feeling much more chipper following her delivery and are most thankful that both babies arrived perfectly healthy.

We had some wonderful friends from church watch Luke for us last night, and now Erik is home with him for a bit before they both come back to the hospital to take me and Eleanor home. We can’t wait for Luke to meet his sister then!!

Our baby Luke

The end of Luke’s tenure as our only baby feels a little bittersweet. We can’t wait to meet our already-adored little girl, but I don’t entirely relish how a baby sister will bump our sweet Luke out of the baby role in our family. Both in our eyes and his own, it will suddenly be clear that he’s light years away from a newborn and we’ll all start to see him as more of a big kid and maybe even a little helper. I know I’ll miss the luxury of time I have to spend playing with and caring for him now, noting his every cute phrase and action.

So here are some things about Luke right now that I just love.

• How he says his name – ‘ook’.
• His astonishing sense of direction. It took me some time to get to know my way around the curving streets of our neighborhood, but Luke already has a surefire sense for which way you need to turn to get to the playground. If we’re out on a walk and we don’t make the turns that will take us there, he instantly starts to whine and cry!
• The way he bends over with one hand on his head to sign reindeer when he wants us to take him out to see the neighbors’ Christmas lawn ornaments.
• The cute way he kicks his stuffed soccer ball around the house.
• How he knows the difference between a wheel and a tire thanks to his daddy.
• The way he rocks his whole body when he nods yes. It is so earnest and eager and adorable!

• How he tap dances like Elmo on his ‘the Best of Elmo’ DVD. (I also love the eighties-style ‘Five’ song on that DVD!)
• How he’s quick to say ‘shhhh’ when he sees an animal or person sleeping. Hopefully this bodes well for him respecting little sister’s naptimes!
• How he thinks Albuquerque is full of fire trucks because of all the red public transit buses. When I try to describe why they aren’t fire trucks, I realize that the difference is rather subtle if you can’t read!
• How he waves bye and blows kisses without prompting, which is especially entertaining when those kisses are received by the tough guys on the sanitation truck who aren’t quite sure how to respond.
• How he tells me ‘it’ while pointing to a spot on the carpet when he wants me to sit and play with him.

It’s so much fun to see the world in new ways through his happy, inquisitive, active exploration of it!

Perfect autumn days

Around the Rio Grande, fall foliage seemed to peak this past weekend and we took advantage of it with a trip to the zoo and another to the botanic gardens. Albuquerque autumns get prettier and prettier to me each year we’re here. They don’t offer the range of reds and oranges that you find on the east coast, but there is plenty of beautiful yellow from cottonwoods and aspens as well as other spotlight specimens of rusty red and the occasional orange. We spent Sunday afternoon at the Japanese garden (in the ABQ biopark) and soaked up the exquisite fall foliage colors on display there.

Luke loved throwing leaves to the fish in the pond. He was also generous with his kisses for the baby. For some reason he gives the baby sweet perfect kisses but all his parents usually get are head butts on the cheek. At least he softens the tough guy act for his sister!

Then we lured him away from the pond by watching the biopark train pass by

And Daddy taught him how to drive a tractor -- basically it’s the same techniques Luke’s already perfected on the cozy coupe. (:

On Friday we spent another gorgeous afternoon at the zoo. Luke wore his ‘circle sweater’ because the manufacturer (kiwi industries) is having a photo contest and I wanted to submit a pic or two of our little munchkin. Does my certainty that he should win destine me to be overly concerned about my child’s achievement? 

Here we are watching the mountain lion exhibit. The cats paced magnificently along the front of their cage, but the fact that they are native to our area combined with the way their eyes seemed to track Luke’s every movement made us both a little nervous…

This week the weather is turning cooler and soon those leaves will be on the ground. We’ll miss you perfect autumn days!

A tale of four faucets

It seems that the nesting stage of this pregnancy has hit a little early as we’ve been flying through home projects these past few weeks. The thought of two little troublemakers goads us on, and Erik’s talent and patience for all sorts of projects makes it easy to cross items off my list!

I’ll start with the most dramatic transformation, our two bathrooms. We painted the oak cabinets (using the same paint we’d already applied to the kitchen ones) and installed new faucets (in hopes of solving a recurring leak). Then we added a few decorative touches. Here is the master bath when we first moved in – we hadn’t yet replaced the carpet (around the toilet!) or taken down the wallpaper:

This is it today, after tiling, wallpaper removal, updated door & cabinet hardware, wall & cabinet painting, and new faucets. In a dream world, I would replace the big mirror and light fixture with two more interesting ones of each, one pair over each sink. But I’m pretty certain those projects are beyond the scope of our plans for this house.

Here is the guest/kids’ bath before, with more busy wallpaper and less than lovely linoleum.

And this is the guest/kids’ bath after. Of course our biggest improvement is the precious little marshmallow man! But I also like my alligator towels and the new tile… (:

Another sink in our house saw a smaller spruce-up recently. When I saw this in Home Depot, I decided that the time had come to upgrade our kitchen faucet too.

Then I made a valence for the sink window since the old one hadn’t matched as well since we repainted the walls. Don’t look too closely, I’m still learning to sew and it came out rather crooked. 

We’ve also made big strides in the master and guest bedrooms, but they are still awaiting finishing touches. I’ll be back to post on them once we put a few more pieces into place. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a photo of how Luke has been preparing for the new addition to our family. Watch out for fire trucks, baby!

Where’s the baby?

At our ultrasound this week, it seemed like the baby pictures on the screen may have caused all our conversations with Luke about ‘the baby in Mommy’s tummy’ to start to sink in. So we thought we would test his understanding after dinner that night. We asked our little prodigy, “Luke, where’s the baby? Can you point to the baby?” Meanwhile I stood next to his highchair, so my stomach would be within easy pointing reach.

Luke looked up at us, clearly considering the question. Then he took out his pointer finger and pointed it… at his chest! Yes, Luke, you are our precious baby!

PS: Yesterday we finally uploaded all our photos from the past month to our smugmug site. So many cute summertime Luke moments!

It’s a ….

GIRL !!!!!! We were thrilled to learn that our baby-on-the-way is a little girl yesterday! Since Erik’s siblings and most of his cousins are boys, and because Luke’s gender seemed to set us on that same course, we couldn’t help expecting another baby boy. But we were delighted to learn that Luke will be getting a little sister instead!

While we really can’t say we had a preference one way or the other for the baby’s gender, we find it to be a little more exciting to be expecting a girl. Luke gave us a thorough education in baby boys, but girls are new territory. Additionally, both Erik and I grew up in families with two boys close in age, but neither of us have known the dynamic of a brother and sister close in age. My wonderful brothers are much younger than me and we have the reverse gender order.

We pray that being different genders might help our two to be a little less competitive with one another. Last weekend we went to the beautiful wedding of a dear college friend, Stephen, and his lovely bride, Grace. There were many moving moments during the wedding’s events, but to me the most touching was the sweet friendship that was evident between Stephen and his younger sister Katie, another friend of ours. Our hope and prayer is that our two munchkins will grow up to be just as close and caring to one another as they are!

While we find that having a girl helpfully tempers our tendency to assume that this baby will be ‘another Luke’, we still can’t help affectionately referring to this little babe as Luka. But fear not, it’s just an in-the-womb nickname. Now that we know her gender what we really need to do is crack open the name books that are gathering dust on our shelves and pore over the girls’ section. I find baby naming to be a very daunting task, so I’m thankful to the ultrasound for narrowing our options considerably!

Since we learned I was pregnant, the anatomy ultrasound that would reveal our child’s gender has been the big event we were looking forward to. Now that it has happened, we suddenly feel so much closer to the day this child will make her entrance to our world. All of the sudden, that’s the next big pregnancy event in my mind!

Another Luke!

We’re expecting… another Luke!! Well, another baby of unknown gender, but we can’t help referring to him/her as another Luke. Often it’s in the context of Luke #1  behaving very rambunctiously that we look at each other and say, “Can you believe we’re going to have TWO Lukes soon, honey!?!?!”

Although we are sometimes daunted by the thought of double-the-Luke-trouble, we are completely thrilled to be given another child and can’t wait to meet him/her sometime around New Year’s Eve. That makes me about 14 weeks along, thankful to be feeling the nausea and fatigue symptoms subsiding!

Pregnancy, childbirth, and new baby care are no longer quite so mysterious, but we are extremely curious to see how Luke #1 responds to another little person in the family. Of course at 16 months he doesn’t comprehend what’s coming, but now it’s especially fun to see his interest in babies when we read him books about them and point them out to him in stores or at the park. We think that as long as we keep working on teaching him to be gentle, he’ll make a great big brother!

PS: We love the terrific equipment and staff at the local ultrasound clinic. In addition to the pic above and other shots, I even got a video of the little guy at our 13 week ultrasound. You can see the little squirmer yourself here!