Luke got a package in the mail today from his Oma. See, my dad and stepmom live two hours away so they don’t get to see Luke much. Apparently Oma just can’t contain herself when it comes to lovin’ on her grandson because this is the second special delivery he’s received. The first time it was a cool little monster truck which he loves. Today it was a nifty racing shirt. I think the sunglasses add a nice touch (I still can’t believe he left them on long enough for me to snap the picture).

Work has been crazy and it’s about to get crazier. I have never been so excited about the weekend. Not because I hate my job, but because I really need the break. I actually love my job, but by Friday I am mentally exhausted.

Luke is cutting teeth. No, seriously, he’s really teething this time. I can actually see one tooth on the top poking through and I think I can feel another one right next to it. He has two on the bottom (came through at 13 months) so pretty soon he’ll be able to really chew stuff! Of course he hasn’t let his delayed teething hold him back much. He can eat most foods, but there are few foods he has more difficulty with, like chicken and corn.

*Okay, short break to mention that I. Love. Brownies. I’m watching Paula Deen while blogging. It’s making it hard to focus. Oh, I love you Paula. She was supposed to take a bite of the display brownies, the ones that had already cooled, but instead she took a spoon and scooped a bite out of the warm brownies that were fresh out of the oven. It’s HER show after all!

Okay, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Luke is teething. His mood is fine throughout the day but he’s really hating going to bed at night. We’re pumping him full of Tylenol (which I hate) but I don’t know what else to do for him. He is feeling so much discomfort. The plus side of it (for me, anyway) is that when he’s feeling cruddy all he wants to do is wrap his arms around me and lay his head down on my shoulder. I’m LOVING it. I, in turn, rub his back while he’s cuddling and I’m sure he’s loving that too. He loves back rubs just like his daddy.

Other than that, Luke is doing really well. He’s doing all the cute things toddlers do. I have numerous videos and pictures and one of these days I’ll post some of them. Because I know everyone is dying to see them. You all agree my kid is the cutest, right?

Luke is starting to say actual words, words we can decipher. Most of the time. He is 14 months today and so far he can say:

Dada
Dada (That’s Mama but he just likes to show off his skill with the D sound.)
Done
Dout (Out)
Dizza (Pizza)
Dattt (Cat)
Duck
Socks (it actually sounds just like socks!)

He talks a bunch so the rest of the time we have no idea what he’s talking about. I’m just glad he’s learning words because I’m getting rather tired of the screaming.

I have a new nephew!

Zion Alexander
Born 7/3/08, 8 lb. 11 oz.

I can’t believe my little brother, Josh, is a daddy now. He’s only 17 years young. He’s had a rough go of it for the last few years, but I’m hoping this will mark a new chapter in his life. You can see in this picture how proud he is of his little boy. I pray that God will use Zion to breathe a new sense of hope into Josh’s life.

Psalm 50:2 - “From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth.”

I used to be one of those people who was afraid to talk to strangers. Then I got pregnant. People love talking to pregnant women. They all ask the same questions: When are you due? Is it a boy or a girl? Is this your first? Have you decided on a name yet? Mike and I joked about getting a t-shirt that had all the answers printed on it so I could stop having to answer them myself. To this day I still have to fight the urge to interrogate strangers about their pregnancies, because though I remember how annoying it was for me, I still want to KNOW, you know?

The thing about it is, it really broke me of my anxiety around strangers. I knew there was no way for me to avoid them, so I decided to have fun with it. I found I actually enjoyed making chit-chat with the bank tellers and the grocery store cashiers, and I still do it today. It was somewhat gratifying to be able to make them smile by telling a stupid joke about pregnancy or by asking them about their own children. As it turns out, strangers aren’t so scary. Most of them are actually nice, normal people! (It’s sad that it took me 30 years to learn this.)

I thought strangers would stop talking to me after I had the baby, but they have not. Only now they do it to Mike too. They do it to whoever has the boy. I know every parent thinks their baby is the cutest, and we have not been shy about feeling the same way about Luke, but this kid draws a crowd. We can’t take him anywhere! He’s always flashing that flirtatious grin and people just eat it up. We were at Wally-World the other day and the cashier was drooling over him. Then on the walk to the car we passed a group of young girls and as we passed they said to each other “Did you see that baby? He’s so cute!”. Then as we were loading the car the woman next to us started cooing at him and asking us how old he was. This kind of stuff happens all the time. You should see him at our neighborhood grocery store. He’s famous now. Every time Mike brings him in I think the cashiers send out a page that says “Mike’s here with his little boy! Gather ’round!”. It’s crazy.

I’m just worried about this next baby, cuz you know the second child is always compared to the first, and at this point Baby #2 doesn’t stand a chance.

I know, you probably thought it would never happen… but finally, after many months of waiting and hoping… Luke finally has teeth! Two of them! He would not pose so I have not pictorial proof, but trust me, they’re there. I’m really happy he finally has some teeth but I think I’m going to miss that toothless grin of his

So, Friday Luke stomped on our cat, Pele (also affectionately known as “Mean Kitty Ow”). Pele wasn’t real happy about that so she bit him on the foot. She broke the skin and it bled a little. I wasn’t there but I imagine there was crying on Luke’s part. Mike cleaned up the wound thoroughly and we kept an eye on it for the rest of the day. It looked fine when we put him down to sleep at 7:30 pm but he woke up screaming at 10:30 pm. It’s unusual for him to wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes he’ll wake up and cry a little but he goes right back to sleep. This time he didn’t, so I went in to check on him. His foot was red and a little swollen and he didn’t seem real keen on us touching it. So we called the on-call doctor and he recommended we take him into the Emergency Room to get it checked out and get him some antibiotics. You can’t mess around with those cat bites. We’ve heard horror stories.

We had a wonderful time at the E.R. It wasn’t nearly as bad as we anticipated because our local hospital has an entire emergency department just for children. It’s fantastic. If you’ve ever had to take a young one to the E.R. you know how horrific it can be. We had none of that. Luke was super tired but there were toys in the rooms and the nurses and doctors were nice and smiley so he did pretty well. Of course he hated the shot of antibiotics but he recovered quickly and even waved bye-bye to the nurse to show her there were no hard feelings.

Luke’s foot is fine now and the antibiotics are helping. We have made the decision to get rid of Pele, not because we want to but because she is a danger to others. This isn’t the first time she has caused trouble. She bit our friend’s son last year and he ended up in the E.R. as well. We are going to try to find a good home for her but it’s tough because she needs a lot of attention and she still has all her claws. We know the alternative if we can’t find her a good home but we don’t like to think about it (The Big “E” word). I didn’t think this would be so hard for me, but it is. She has been with us for 7 years, almost as long as we’ve been married. She was a comfort to me through my struggles with infertility, and even through my rough days of pregnancy. I try to tell myself she’s just a cat but it’s not working so far.

Yes, she has all her claws and she is not fond of young children, but she is a beautiful tuxedo and she purrs and cuddles and she is OCD about staying clean. Other than the biting thing, she’s really a great cat. Do any of you have interest in adding a cat to your family?

Friday was my Rex Manning Day! My sister, Kari, and I spent a great day in Chicago and then went to see R.E.M., my all time favorite band, in concert at the United Center!

I awoke at 5:30 am ready for the day, but decided it would be in my best interest to get a little more sleep. I dozed off but was awake again 20 minutes later. You just can’t sleep when you’re excited about the day. I got up, got ready, and was on the road by 6:30 am. I called Kari to let her know I was on my way. She lives about 2 hours from me, so it gave her plenty of time to get breakfast ready for when I arrived. Once we had our vittles we packed our bags and hit the road!

The drive was pretty uneventful until we got to Indiana. Kari thought the speed limit on the freeway was 65 mph but the cop informed us (very rudely, I might add) that it was 55 mph. The irony was that when the cop flashed her lights, Kari pulled over and ended up parking right in front of the speed limit sign. We are lame about pictures and didn’t think to get a snapshot of it, so we took a picture of another 55 mph sign we passed along the way. You know, so we wouldn’t forget. Just picture less concrete and more clouds.

After an accidental detour and a $0.30 toll, we made it into Chicago just fine. I love Chicago. I LOVE Chicago. I am apparently a total city girl. Who knew? Kari lived there for about 2 years so she showed me some of her old stomping grounds. She had packed a picnic lunch - AMAZING chicken salad sandwiches, grapes, bananas, chocolate pudding, chips, oatmeal raisin cookies, ginger ale to wash it all down - so we parked in the Gold Coast neighborhood and walked to the nearest park to eat. We thought it was a dog park but it turns out it was just a dog-friendly park. Darn. I’ve never seen a real dog park.

I want to take this opportunity now to thank Jewel-Osco for offering public restrooms. We searched far and wide. Thank you, Jewel. You saved our bladders.

After lunch we still had plenty of time to kill, so we walked around and eventually found the coffee shop Kari used to frequent. Well, I guess it’s more than a coffee shop but we were going just for the coffee. We ordered two cups of the Turkish stuff and sipped and chatted for the next hour or so. The coffee was a little sweet for my taste but it didn’t matter because I was in great company having great conversation. Kari and I talk almost every day, but this was a day we could just chill and have fun without all the distractions of every day life. It was wonderful.

We went to La Pasadita for dinner. Kari used to eat there a lot and she has been raving about their tacos, so we had to go. Kari ordered the carne asada torta and I had the super carne asada burrito. People, carne asada is the way to go. This burrito was ginormous, and full of steak. It was the kind of burrito that just kept getting better, bite after bite. I was stuffed to the gills after eating half and saved the rest for later. Thankfully Kari had the picnic cooler because that second half made for a nice snack after the concert. When we walked out of the restaurant we mentioned that we should have taken a picture. I thought about it while we were there but we were the only white people there and I thought if we busted out the camera then we would really stick out like sore thumbs.

After dinner we did some shoe shopping, because La Pasadita is located in the Shoe Capital of Chicago. Haven’t you heard of it? We also found some cool clothing shops. One that sold super cute baby shirts that are printed with things like “Led Zeppelin” or “iPood”. Cute stuff but all overpriced. The other shop we liked was a consignment shop. When we entered we were greeted by the owner’s 20 month old daughter. The owner was a very sweet lady. She thought I was pregnant but I forgave her because she dared to walk around her own store barefooted. Oh, and her daughter had her own playroom which I thought was pretty cool. She had some nice stuff for sale. Most of it wasn’t my size but I did find a shirt I liked that I ended up buying and wearing to the concert.

Yes! The concert! And you thought I would never get there. I give you props if you’re still with me here. This is a long post. We arrived at the United Center super early and were the first patrons at a decent parking lot. It was nice to get there early and not have to contend with crowds. People really didn’t start showing up until the second opening act started playing, which surprised me. If I pay for an entire concert, I want to be there for the entire thing.

The first opening act was The National. I hadn’t heard of them and had no expectations so I was surprised that I enjoyed them so much. The lead singer had a nice deep voice and the melodies reminded me a lot of some of my favorite 80’s music, but without seeming like knock-offs. I also liked that they were a band made up of bonafide musicians. They played piano, violin, trumpet, and trombone. It was good stuff.

Modest Mouse on the other hand, was a complete disappointment. I have liked them in the past but their performance just didn’t do anything for me. That’s all I really have to say about that.

If you’re not an R.E.M. fan like me you could probably just skip the next two paragraphs. Just a warning.

R.E.M. was amazing. Outstanding. Far exceeding my expectations even. I was thrilled to see what a great time they were having on stage. Michael Stipe looked like he was just having the time of his life. I was pretty happy with their song selection, which was a good mix of the old with the new. They started off with some oldies like “Begin the Begin” and “These Days”. That made me glad I had listened to my “Life’s Rich Pageant” tape on the way to Kari’s so I could brush up on the lyrics. They played most of the songs off the new “Accelerate” album. I know I’m going to love that album even more now because every time I listen to it I’ll be reminded of how it sounded in concert. Some other favorites were ”Final Straw,” “Bad Day,” “Ignoreland,” “The Great Beyond,” and “Man on the Moon” (did you know the latter 2 were both written about Andy Kaufman?). They played for a solid two hours so I can’t recall all the songs but those are the ones that come to mind.

They played the usual audience favorites like “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth” (which I personally can’t stand… I could do without the whole “Monster” album) and “Losing My Religion” (which I’ve heard a million times but still can’t make myself hate it… it’s a good song). I was hoping for “Nightswimming” but didn’t have my fingers crossed because it’s not really a “concert” song (Are you getting tired of the quotation marks yet?). They didn’t play it. They didn’t play “It’s The End of the World” either, which I didn’t expect, but it would have been fun to sing along. There are so many great R.E.M. songs that I would have loved to hear but I especially would have loved if they had played “Outsiders” and brought Q-Tip out on stage to rap with Michael Stipe. If they had done that I might have crapped my pants.

All in all, it was a fantastic concert and a fantastic day. June 6, 2008 was my Rex Manning Day. Thank you, Jesus

Luke took some of his first steps last night! There were no fireworks. No hooting and hollering or applause. We didn’t even get a picture. He was standing in front of me at the couch and wanted to move over to where Mike was sitting. Normally he would use his hands to support himself and side step to where he wanted to be, but this time he was holding the television remote with both hands. He didn’t even think about it, he just walked right over. It was maybe only three steps and I don’t think he realized what he had done. It happened so quickly that Mike and I had to look at each other to make sure we had both witnessed the same thing.

To be honest, I think the whole “first steps” thing is a bit overrated. While it was nice to see him take those first steps on his own, what I’ve enjoyed more is watching him learn along the way. I loved watching the process as he figured out how to lift his body and move one arm after the other to crawl and I loved watching his determination in learning to straighten his legs to stand. I think in life we need to always look forward to the destination, but not be afraid to enjoy the journey. I’m really enjoying the journey.

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