So Luke’s new favorite saying is I’m stuck!  He basically uses it whenever something isn’t going quite right.  If he wants the childproof gate open to go somewhere, he starts yelling, “I’m stuck! I’m stuck!”. ..when he wants out of his crib after nap, “I’m stuck! I’m stuck!” …when Audrey is lovin’ all over him (i.e. pig piling on top of him), “I’m stuck! I’m stuck!”…when he can’t reach the cookies in the pantry, “I’m stuck! I’m stuck! Cuckoo for cookie!”…you get the idea.

Well, the other night we almost had to make our monthly ER trip.  One of these days, I’m going to end up in jail walking into that place.  I don’t know how many more of the ‘stories’ they are going to buy from us .  I guess I’ll have to start sending Ann down there every time…I don’t want to spend a night in the clink.  Anyway, I was filling up the dishwasher after dinner and Luke was ‘helping’ (you can imagine what that means).  Josh, Audrey and Ann were in our room picking up something or other.  Luke grabbed a sippy cup from the draw and high tailed it towards the bathroom.  One of Luke’s favorite past times is standing on a step stool, turning on a bathroom sink and playing in the water with a cup.  For the most part he does a pretty good job of keeping water in the sink, but he does have one move that gets water all over (too hard to explain and doesn’t add to story).  When he does this move he gets removed from the bathroom and the door is closed.  This makes Luke mad, to say the least.  Well, Luke being the creative one of the bunch came up with a brilliant idea to stop Mom and Dad from seeing him pull off his move.  He runs into the bathroom and closes the door - laughing while he does it as if he’s dealing with a couple of idiots who’ll never know what he’s doing now.

Back to the night in question.  Luke’s sprinting towards the bathroom, laughing before he even gets there…runs in and slams the door (real subtle like).  I had a few more dishes to put away, so I thought I’d let Luke enjoy himself, regardless of how much he destroyed the bathroom.  No worries here…nothing a towel can’t clean up.  A minute later, I hear the famous (maybe not infamous), “I’m stuck!  I’m stuck!”.  Again, the boy who cried wolf was probably just having a hard time reaching the water to turn it on.  As I finished up the last few dishes, I casually walked to the door.  I quickly realized just how stuck he was.

The door started to open, and immediately hit an open drawer preventing the door from opening more than a couple centimeters.  OK, I’ve dealt with worse, and even more worse!  I’ve just got to talk Luke through closing the drawer so I can open the door.  Again I hear, “I’m stuck!  I’m stuck!”  I put my head to the door to peek into the reflection of the mirror, “Luke…” and get an immediate response “Hi!”  Problem is, his nose is almost touching my nose.  He has crawled up from the step stool INTO the drawer and is sitting in there playing.  Brushing his teeth…turning the light on and off…pushing the door closed and locking it (luckily he’d immediately unlock it as well…

How does this stuff happen to me?!  Well, the whole family joined in on the rescue efforts. 

Josh (having recollections of the shattered window rescue): “Let’s break down the door!”
Audrey (mother hen): “Luk-ie honey, climb out of the drawer please…and don’t break your arms…” (yeah, she’s the last one I want offering advice on personal safety)
Dad (brain fart…nothing coming to mind…bordering on insanity): “I’m going back to finish kitchen.  I don’t know what to do…I’ll just wait for him to figure something out.”
Mom: Gets Reese’s Pieces and throws them onto the counter, hoping to get Luke to climb there, quickly close drawer, quickly open door, and grab Luke.  Even though this all sounded good in theory, the first problem was we wouldn’t have been able to close the drawer even with Luke out of it – proof to come.  Second, Luke just got on his knees in the drawer, reached the Reese’s, ate it, “MMMMMM!!!!!!”

So, I have Luke loving life that we’re throwing Reese’s at him.  Josh and Audrey think the whole situation is beyond hilarious - Luke pounding candy, saying “Hi” anytime someone looks in, locking/unlocking the door, turning on and off the lights saying “Peek (a-boo)”.  I’m not sure what state of mind Ann was in…I’m leaning towards panicked delirium.  As I mentioned, my mind for some reason had turned off and I was just “giving up” (maybe the thoughts of the spending a few nights big house were wearing on me).  After pulling myself together a bit, just a bit, I come up with a “sweet” idea!  I can get my fingers through the door up to the last knuckle.  I thought that I could get Luke to stand on the counter, then I’d get a grip on his shirt and kind of hold/pin him up there while Ann got the drawer closed.  So I put my master plan into action, tapping the counter and telling Luke to stand on the counter.  Well, he understood the stand part of it…problem was, he stood up in the drawer and I couldn’t get a hold of him.  As I was extending my fingers further through the door, shaving off a few layers of skin to reach further, I see the drawer start to wiggle from Luke’s weight and he’s teetering back and forth like he’s on a high wire act in 40mph winds.  It all happened pretty quick from here and I only saw glimpses of body parts (not sure if hands or feet or what) in the mirror as Luke’s took a tumble out of the drawer onto the tile floor.  I’ve no idea how he hit, but I immediately tried to push the drawer closed to get the door open.  There wasn’t nearly enough room while my fingers were in the drawer to get the door closed and I proceeded to gnaw up my fingers in the door figuring this out (thus proving that both Ann and my ideas were doomed to fail).  Luke was balling, Ann was panicking, Josh and Audrey no longer found it hilarious and my hand was stuck. 

I pulled my hand out and said I didn’t know what to do…I was contemplating slamming the door in to just shatter through the drawer, but didn’t really want to get the drawer replaced and not knowing where Luke was I didn’t really want to slam the door/drawer into him either.  As I finished saying this, Luke had already popped up, SLAMMED the drawer with a little extra oomph, opened the door, and came running out balling.  Luckily, everything turned out all right.  No broken bones or cracked skulls.

Below are a couple little less traumatic videos showing just a few moments in the life of Luk-er Boo-ks.  Hungry Eyes shows off Luke’s patented dancing move.  Whenever he hears a song that he likes, the finger comes up, head starts bobbing, and teeth start chomping. He could be 90% asleep in the car, hear a song he likes and his hand comes up ala Hulk Hogan on the 2 count.

So Josh, Audrey and I always joked that we should have named Luke “Anakin” before he was born.  That way, when he was being good we’d call him by his proper name of Anakin and if he was being bad, we’d call him Vader.  If you’ve read my previous post about SW and my kids, you can imagine pretty easily how we were all loving the idea.  I still say Anakin Aney has a sweet ring to it!  Alas, we couldn’t get Mom to buy off on it…’completely’.  She agreed to go with Luke instead.  See, the Dark Side never wins!

So why am I bringing up the name change again?  In the beginning, Luke was definitely teetering on the edge of the Dark Side especially when Dad was dealing with him.  However, after a couple months, Luke has definitely turned out to be our happiest ‘baby’ yet.  He constantly smiles at anyone who looks at him, and being a ‘thumb sucker’ he can comfort himself in most cases without any intervention.  Of course there are exceptions.

Besides being a very happy baby, he also goes to bed earlier than any of our others.  He usually hits the sack at about 6pm.  However, it never fails.  The few times Ann is able to get out into the ‘adult world’ with a few of her friends after putting Luke to bed, he decides that is the night he is going to wake up at 8:30pm looking for a little nighttime snack.  Given that I want to give Ann a bit of well deserved time off, I usually ‘battle’ with Luke for an hour or two before caving in and calling Ann for backup.  Since, Audrey is quick to point out that I do not have any milk in my nipples, I have limited options in terms of comforting Luke. 

There is one fail safe way to comfort him every time though.  I simply start humming.  It’s the one go to option that Josh, Audrey and I have all mastered.  So if you are ever at our house and hear Luke starting to get frantic, you can bet your bottom dollar that you’ll hear three octaves of The Imperial March being hummed…four if Mom isn’t in the position to comfort at the moment. 

Luke’s affinity to the tune, as well as Vader images, has prompted Dad and Josh to make the change to “Anakin”…we’ll see if it sticks ;)

Lucas is growing so fast right in front of our eyes.  Sometimes it seems like he’s been with us forever, and yet other times it is like yesterday he wasn’t here.  He hit another milestone a few days ago…he cut his first tooth.  As I was writing that down in my little ‘Milestone Spreadsheet’ and comparing it to Josh and Audrey, Lucas blew them away in how fast he got his first tooth.  What does that mean?  The heck if I know!  But what I did realize is that we had footage of Josh reaching his milestone of riding a bike and I had never put it up or blogged about it.

So while Lucas gets the ‘photo’ for this blog, Josh gets to show off his bike riding skills.  It amazed both Ann and I at how fast he learned and all the while, never wiping out.  You’ll have to watch the video for a tip on how to avoid nasty wipeouts on the first attempts at riding a bike ;)

Lucas and I are getting in tons of snuggling this past week, as I have let him officially move into our bed at night. He nestles right in with me and we both are in dreamland. With this co-sleeping arrangement, I can usually get two three-hour periods of sleep which I SO NEED. Then Terry comes to bed around 3am and Lucas moves over to his side for a little snuggle time with Dad (Okay, the rest of the night between feedings J ). Terry’s been super busy with work and then helping me with the kids as much as possible (bless his heart!) At around 7:30am, Josh and Audrey join us for morning cartoons and begin whispering in our ears “I’m hungry, can you make me bresk-kiss.” And then, another day begins and Lucas takes his morning nap. :)

Lucas James arrived today at 12:18pm, weighing 9 lbs 1 oz, and 20.75" long.  Both Josh and Audrey wanted to name him Anakin, calling him Vader when he was being bad, but we chose not to go down the dark side of the Force and stuck with Luke - oh come on, Anakin Aney does have a certain ring to it ;)  In all seriousness, everyone is so excited and relived that the baby is finally here.  Of course it wouldn't be Ann if she didn't make the delivery 'exciting'.... [More]