Dear Little Lucas Walter,
It’s 2014. Welcome to the new year. You have turned a year and a half old. Seriously. 1.5 years. How is that possible?
As always, your growth and development this month (Jan) has been astounding. I don’t know when it will stop amazing me how quickly time goes past now. It’s sad but exciting all at the same time. I just want you to stay my sweet baby boy forever. But alas, you are turning more and more into a toddler right before our very eyes. We have been using time-outs to discipline you, and they still are working well. On nights where you are particularly ornery, you may end up in time-out several times back to back. But the majority of the time you are a very sweet boy. If you do something mean, and I stick out my bottom lip and pout, you will look at me and stop whatever you are doing to come give me a hug and make it better. You also like to have me kiss you if you fall and hurt yourself. Oh! And you won our photographer’s best of 2013 photo contest for the photo of you in the red chair from your 8 month photo shoot! You popular beautiful little boy! We won a free photo session with her! Awesome!
This month has been very cold. We’ve been out several times in the snow (which you love). We made snow angels, and threw snowballs at the fence to watch the splatter. We played on your swingset (yes! you love to swing in the snow), and you even went sledding for the first time! Dada and I took you on little saucers that even spun us around backwards on the way down. You now love to color, but the part you love most is taking the marker cap back off and on again. You love to brush your teeth (although you want to do it on your own, you don’t like it when we follow up behind you and brush it for you). We bought an 11 lb bag of rice and made a rice table for you to dig in. You love it, but it is SO messy.
You are about 24 lbs now and 32.5 inches tall. You still love singing, and have great rhythm. You love to watch the Beatles Yellow Submarine cartoon movie and sing and dance to All You Need is Love, and the other songs too. You are obsessed with videos on Youtube. And of course your favorite thing to watch is still basketball. Daddy has your basketball goal set on the highest setting (for kids much older than you), and you still make the shot the majority of the time. Your favorite food is banana and your favorite entree is anything with a balsamic reduction sauce on it. You also love spaghetti. You are not a fan of chunks of meat, you’d rather it be shredded. For breakfast every morning you have a whole grain (organic of course, you know I’m picky on what you eat) blueberry waffle slathered with almond butter on top of a scrambled egg. Sometimes you finish it off with fruit (usually a cutie orange, banana, or pear). Dada makes dinner for us every night, and he makes sure to cook something you can eat with your food allergies. You like strange and flavorful meals, even spicy ones (you love crumbled chorizo sausage), so we still get to eat what we want. Then we always make you leftovers fro the next day’s lunch. You also love to eat black beans? Strange child. If Daddy serves one of his brazilian dishes with black beans you will spend the entire meal picking the black beans out one by one so you can eat them. We still struggle with your food allergies sometimes and your mood on whether you feel like eating. If all else fails you will always eat a banana and whole grain crackers.
Every night Daddy puts on your pajamas and wearable blanket and we read you books in your big read chair. We let you choose 3 books to read. You insist on digging out the Christmas book that your Grammy and Poppy recorded for you every night (even though I hide it behind the other books since Christmas is over).You love to hear their voices reading to you! You’ll push the other books out of the way and say “Pop-pop!” And grab that one (sorry Grammy he can’t say your name yet). You also love books that have flaps, or something to move or open in them. Your favorite songs are Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the Itsy Bitsy Spider (you will sing along by saying Laaaaa aaaaaaa aaaaaaa in tune and do the hand motions). You also love the alphabet.
During the holiday season we made sure to do our tradition of giving to others. This year we picked to donate to a young mother whose husband died suddenly. We are fortunate to live the way we do, and hope to be able to instill in you empathy and compassion for those around you. As you get older, I would like to do more hands-on community service. You are already such a caring boy, this world is lucky to have you.
Life is passing us by at lightening speed, but I can honestly say that we are stopping to smell the roses. We bask in every moment we have with you. I love you and Daddy to the moon and back!
