The Weismans

Directions

There will be no pictures in this post (you can thank me later!) as we are all 3 just now recovered from a nasty, nasty stomach bug. Luke started with it on Friday, Kevin was sick by Sunday afternoon, and while I was at Wal-Mart getting Gatorade, Pedialyte, popsicles, and anti-nausea medicine, I realized I was next in line. Thankfully, Luke was affected the least.  I think 4 days later we are finally feeling back to normal. I plan on making my yummy chicken lasagna this weekend since we’ll finally feel ready to eat!

Luke has really enjoyed his newly discovered friendship with Simon. While Kevin and I were feeling horrible, Simon took good care of Luke. They sat on the floor and played together and shared Puffs and Cheerios. Luke has been saying Oscar (“O-ca”) for a while but is just starting to say “Ice” for Simon. Kevin and I always joke that Simon is going to think his name is “Simon-no” since “no” is usually what follows his name…poor little guy. So maybe Luke will be saying “Ice-no” soon

Luke has become really attached to his books and constantly hands them to us to read. We just hit up the dollar bin at Target and got him tons of Elmo books. He seems to just wear himself out during the day ands starts to crash around 6:30 or so. After he goes to bed we have just been enjoying relaxing, watching American Idol, The Biggest Loser, and The Amazing Race (we don’t have cable…can ya tell?). Kevin will be talking with the same church tomorrow (Friday) via webcam, so we’ll see how that goes. Prayers still much appreciated!

After having so many days off because of our big snow and ice storm, it has been a challenge to get back into a normal schedule. Luke has enjoyed lots of visitors over the past month. Mom and dad were here just before the ice storm hit and Mike and Diane were here just this past weekend. I’ll get some photos of those visits up soon.

Luke is now crawling all over the place and cruising along the couch and table. He is doing great with words. He can name a “duck,” “book (“gook”-rhymes with book),” “ball,” “zebra” (“a-shee”), “mama,” “daddy” and others! He is also doing a good job of drinking out of a sippy cup and straw cup. Yea!

The weeks really fly by- I cannot believe that we will have a one year-old next month! I know Luke will be excited for his Elmo (“Mo-mo”) party in NC. I did let him have his first taste of ice cream already. I can’t believe I let him (I think Kevin was shocked too!) We went to Bravo Italian with Mike and Diane. The manager had accidentally bumped into the high chair (no big deal) so they wanted to give Luke some ice cream. He LOVED it. I don’t plan on him having that regularly for a long, long time but it was fun to watch him eat it!

The separation anxiety has gotten somewhat better. He did totally fine when we left him with Doug and Rebecca to go to Wicked and with Megan and Allie to go to a baby shower. I think he might get a little upset when he’s not the center of attention? I can’t imagine why, it’s not like he’s used to that…HA!

We are still praying and seeking God’s will for a full-time church staff position for Kevin. We have been presented with an opportunity that he is in the “process” with right now. Pray for us during this time as this “process” can be pretty draining (we’ve been through it a few times now). We are encouraged by it, though, and excited to see what’s next!

breakfast time! (no, he's not EATING it!)

He loves digging for treasures in the diaper bag!

He was quite captivated by the Daytona 500

Fun in the playroom

Yesterday morning, we woke up to this!

As fun as it was to have a day off, we had been looking forward to Wicked coming to Louisville for over a year and we were really hoping that the weather wouldn’t mess up our plans. We ended up being able to go, carefully navigating through the icy weather. We are grateful to our good friends, Doug and Rebecca for caring for our sweet boy. He had a great time playing with their little Hunter and hanging out at their place. They snapped a picture of us when we dropped Luke off. It was our first real “date night” in 7 months!

Due to the weather, we decided not to go with our original plan and eat at a great Italian place in Louisville. Olive Garden was right on the way (and I had a coupon!), so we thought we’d try that. Well, we found that Olive Garden along with almost every other restaurant was CLOSED due to weather! We ate at the only place that was open. Not exactly romantic, but it was good!

We had a really fun day. Lukey got to see his first “big” snow and we got to have a date night!  We have even more snow today. The bushes in these pictures are now completely covered with snow. I’ll post some of those pics later.

In the past few months we have finally gotten in a nice “rhythm,” it seems, with Luke’s schedule. He is taking two naps a day (8ish and 1ish) and is down for the night by 7:00 (although “for the night” consists of waking at least once to eat but he goes right back to sleep). He wakes up between 5:30-6am usually. So this has all been great until we decided to take a class at church on Wednesday nights from 6:30-8. The class has been really good- Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace.” The two of us “money nerds” are enjoying tweaking our budget down to the details. Luke has always really, really enjoyed the nursery. I always go ”peek” on him between Adult Bible Fellowship and worship service and he is always contentedly playing. He always goes to the nursery workers great, waves bye-bye, and smiles at me really big. All has been great…until the last couple of weeks.

Last Wednesday night, I get to his room and his is sitting in the middle of the floor with his little eyes swollen and I could see his little red cheeks were wet with tears. When he saw me he burst into even more tears. He was just holding a toy crying so hard. If you know Luke you know this is very very atypical so it just broke my heart. We finally got him calmed down and gave him a bottle and he was asleep in the car within seconds. I chalked that one up to just being a weird one-time incident.

Then Sunday I checked on him between ABF and worship like usual. He is playing on the floor with another little boy (which I think is so cute because he never gets to play with other kids!) and all is good. His cheeks are really red but they’ve been like that lately (from the teething, I think…). I am sitting in the service like usual when I see the dreaded number pop up on the screen. It was the first time I’d ever been paged out of the service. I run back there and he is there again doing this pitiful little cry like he couldn’t catch his breath. I get him calmed down, assume his little gums must really be bothering him, give him a dose of Tylenol and find a toy that sings, “Lalala a La lalala Elmo’s Song!” and all is well. We end up leaving early since I figured he just didn’t feel well.

Fast forward to last night- we are 10 minutes into the class when the cell phone vibrates. It’s the nursery coordinator telling me that Luke is crying and cannot be calmed down. I run over there and he is crying so hard! I get him and he is calm within just a few minutes. I rock him and sing to him and he goes to sleep. I try to lay him down in one of the cribs and he wakes up right away and wants to play. I missed most of the class between trying to get him to sleep and playing/making sure he is okay. I go back for the last 15 minutes or so of class and leave early to get Luke. They are giving him a bottle and he has been crying again! His face lights up when he sees me and he waves really big .  Melts my heart. Of course he falls asleep within minutes of being in the car (After giggling hysterically when I would lean over and kiss him…he gets silly when he’s sleepy like his mama does!).

So, I’m thinking next week- take him in his pajamas and maybe take his sound machine…try to get him to sleep before I leave?  I’m still going to guess that the Sunday morning incident was just teething and not feeling well and that Wednesday night problems are because it’s past his bed time. Because it can’t be separation anxiety- because we are leaving him with sitters to go on dates for the first time in almost 10 months next week!! I decided that since he has been doing SO well in nursery that we could go to a “couples” baby shower and to see “Wicked” that I have been looking forward to and we’ve been saving for  since LAST January. So…we’ll see what happens…

Yesterday was Luke’s 9 month check-up (a couple weeks late). He weighs 22 lbs. 12 oz. and is 29.5 inches tall. We are switching to the big carseat this week. I have put it off long enough but it will be kind of sad not to have the Chicco infant carrier that I have come to enjoy so much (although I haven’t enjoyed the “carrying” aspect of it since about 5 lbs. ago!)

He continues to pull up on things like a pro (coffee table, stool, toys, dogs, you name it…). He has started side-stepping after pulling up. He thinks he is big stuff. We can get him to say many words; his favorite is still “ball.” He is not a big fan of being still–ever. He is constantly moving, laughing, trying to jump, and just really enjoying being a nine month-old.

We are still very much in the search process and will be sure to update when anything substantial develops. Thanks for the encouragement and prayers!

I realized after my last pics that there were none of my wonderful mom. This sweet lady got up at 5am every day to play with Luke so that Kevin and I could get some extra sleep. (He wakes up between 5-6am every morning VERY excited about the day ahead

Here is a great pic of her and Luke as well as some various family pictures. Grandma Prissy came over and got some good ones.

The girls

The grandkids with Papa and Grandma

The whole crew at Gma Prissy and Papa Rudy's on Christmas Eve.

I have been meaning to post an update but I really only blog after Luke is asleep…and I have been falling asleep not too long after him lately! We just returned from a long (but too short) visit to NC where we got to spend time with family. It was so much fun to have everyone loving on Luke. He thoroughly enjoyed the attention but is always glad to get back in his own bed. Speaking of which, before we left we had to lower his mattress because he started pulling up. Well today he officially pulled up all on his own. I think he was as surprised as I was. He just stood there and then kind of took  a step to the left, then the right. He also has not shown a bit o finterest in crawling…until today. I was pretty convinced that he might skip it altogether but now I”m not so sure! He is finding lots of new foods that he loves and it is fun (and convenient) to be ableto feed him off of our plates. With the general concensus being that everyone was “cutting back” this year, I thought we might actually be able to fit everything in the car for our ride hom from NC but that was absolutely not the case! Luke’s grandparents, family, and friends were so generous this year. We are enjoying making our home office into a playroom! While in NC, Kevin was able to pursue some ministry opportunities that God has presented to us in the past month. It is amazing that only weeks ago, we felt like we were starting back at square one and now we have been encouraged with possibilities for our future. God has been so faithful through this whole process.

We had a quiet Thanksgiving with just the three of us. We spent the day putting up Christmas decorations and wrapping presents (we have most of our shopping done)! Saturday we went to Nashville, Indiana to check out some of our favorite shops and restaurants. Here are some long-overdue pictures.

Before leaving for the Panther's game

Luke is a great traveler!

learning not to eat the Christmas tree...

I apologize for the lack of posts lately. We have been busy, to say the least. We made a really quick trip to NC the weekend before last for the Panther’s game (I’ll post pics soon!) We had a great time. We have some other traveling coming up soon to explore possibilities for ministry opportunities. We have a couple of opportunities we are praying about, which is exciting but still very unsure.

Luke is 8 months old today! He is doing new things every day. He’ll figure out a new noise that he can make and do it over and over…it’s so funny. He does it with a clicking noise and with a new noise he makes (kind of like laughing but not exactly). He has given us a *few* sleeping-through-the-nights…hopefully there is more of that to come. He also likes to “sing.” Whenever I am singing he will join in with “aah!” So fun. Another fun thing he is doing is shaking hands! We went to visit Salem Baptist in KY where Kevin served as youth pastor for 2 years. As we were walking through talking to people they would say hello to Luke and he would stick out his hand and smile! I can’t imagine that he knew what he was doing but he did it to almost everyone! He is doing great with solids- expanding his variety. He is really into trying to feed himself, which makes for some messy meals. He really likes to stand (assisted) and it is difficult to get him to sit now. When we try to sit him down he stiffens his back and won’t bend his legs. He still won’t crawl but prefers to roll himself across the whole floor!

I will get some pictures up soon of all that we’ve been doing.