We met Santa!!!

We went to the mall today and we finally got to meet Santa! We tried to meet Santa Thanksgiving weekend with my mom, but we got all the way to the front of the line, and Monster had a meltdown. So we left vowing one day to return to see Santa.

Today was the day. We got to the mall thinking that Santa ate lunch from 1-2, but he eats lunch on Sunday from 2-3. So we arrived right around 2:15. We were able to walk around Target for a little bit and picked up a gift and then we were back at the FRONT of the Santa line at 2:30. We decided just to wait and we were the first people to see the big guy when he got back from lunch.

I will say that Luke was FANTASTIC this time. He started to stick his lip out near the end, but he was awesome and never actually did cry. His sparkly Santa hat got lots of attention and many people stopped to gush at him. One lady asked if he was 6 months and when I told her he was 4 months she laughed and said her boys were always bigger, too. Another lady in line had a baby 2 weeks younger than Luke and she looked like a newborn next to him! He's a monster child.



We also took a couple of pictures at home...

Thanksgiving

Look at what I have to deal with. These are some of my cousins (and my sister, who is on the left). They were apparently pretending to be a boy band?



And my sweet grandparents. My grandfather is a spitfire -- the day before, he climbed up on a chair in the unfinished side of his basement and, unfortunately, fell off. Luckily he was OK. My grandma had surgery last week for a cyst on her spine -- it was pressing in her nerve and causing her a LOT of pain. The surgery went well!

Leggings-as-pants #5,043

I was on campus the other day with Luke in the stroller (when I'm in campus with Luke I look like a walking safe sex PSA -- and the undergrads, you can see them thinking about it). I walked past the bus stop and saw a young woman.

Wearing leggings-as-pants (new people -- I have a crusade against leggings a pants).

And her leggings-as-pants were so tight and sheer that you could see her SPARKLY underwear right through them.

She was sparkling right through the butt of her leggings.

3 months old!

Luke was 3 months old on Friday!



Happy Baby!



This is the "Godfather" picture. When we looked at it, I thought he looked like the godfather with his monkey henchmen behind him.



Blue steel?



At 3 Months, Luke:

-- Can roll over from tummy to back.
-- Can laugh (which he has done exactly twice, lol)
-- Coos a lot
-- Has started to eat less frequently, about every three hours
-- Will hold some toys and reach out to touch and hold things
-- Likes looking at and touching other people's hands
-- Needs a bib because he is such a drooler
-- Sometimes likes looking at the TV
-- Doesn't like to be by himself in the back of the car
-- We usually start bedtime routine at 10 p.m. He is usually in bed by 10:30 or so -- He usually sleeps to somewhere between 7:30 and 9 and then goes back to bed for another couple of hours or so.

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Already 1 month old?

Time is flying!

Introducing...

Making his grand debut on Buried the Lead in a photo where he's about 6 days old (he's 8 days old now) ---

LUKE EDWARD



Born August 12 at 7:25 a.m. He weighed 8 lbs., 4 oz., and was 21.5 inches long.

Jungle Room!

I know I have been out of the blogosphere most of the summer. Truth is, I'm really boring. Lots of data entry, relaxing, cleaning, etc.

We're supposed to have a baby here in about a week (although the Doc thinks he's going to be late -- I guess he'll be just like me!). I thought I would show some pictures of Luke's whimsical jungle room! You'll see mismatched furniture, lots of jungle animals, and a Layla dog who likes to lay in the middle of everything. Layla also goes to Luke's door pretty much every night so we let her in to check things out. Because of our lease, we couldn't paint or do proper wallpaper, but we went wild and crazy on the stick-on border and decals.




The over the door sign was made by our friend Jessica!



(ugh, fuzzy, but you can get an idea of the room itself.)





Books and toys and some awesome blankets.







Hal loves monkeys. :)



The duck has been in my dad's family for a very long time!



My finished artwork. It's hanging over his dresser (which is my old dresser).






Hal's nightstand had to be relegated to Luke's room when he rearranged our bedroom to fit Luke's pack n play (where he'll be sleeping for the first couple of weeks. At least, we hope he'll be sleeping).





Decal Details

A day at the zoo

Hal and I used our day today to walk around the Indianapolis Zoo (among other things). Well, Hal walked...I waddled. :) One of the cool things at the zoo is feeding the giraffes! I fed a 10-month-old baby giraffe, and Hal got to feed Mama, while baby tried to lick his hand off.

So arty.

So, not finished yet, but.....



What I had to go to Hobby Lobby for today! I have this canvas and two smaller ones (those have an elephant and an alligator on them, respectively). All the animals are copied from the bedding we have for Luke, and this will be hung above his crib. It's not perfect, but it's been fun to work on. At least the animals seem recognizable. Tomorrow, I get to go back over the background and do some touchups. Then, hopefully, they will be done.

Scary!

I went to Hobby Lobby today. I pulled next to a car where a woman was standing outside after she had unloaded her stuff and put her super cute baby in her car -- I smiled at the baby and went into the store.

I was in the store for a couple of minutes (I had to pick up a tube of paint). While in there, I thought to myself, "Did that lady lock her kid in the car?"

I checked out and sure enough, the woman had locked the kid in her car on accident -- she had put her keys on the seat and when she closed the door, the doors locked.. She was starting to panic. She wasn't the baby's mother, but his babysitter. She was on the phone, and I approached her and asked if she had locked the doors. She said she had and she had called 911 and AAA and was freaking out that they weren't there yet. The baby had been in there for less than 10 minutes and he was already bright red, sweating, and starting to cry.

We decided we were going to try to break the window, and I went to my car to figure out if I had anything to help us do that. I opened my trunk and got out a pack n play I had in there. We took some of the metal poles from the pack n play and started hitting the front passenger window. She was able to bust it open -- glass went everywhere.

I told her to take the little guy into the store to cool him down and I would wait for the police. The officer rolled up pretty soon after she went into the store, and he and I went into the store together. She was trying to wipe the 8-month-old down with cool paper towels. She was having a hard time because she cute her arm when she was breaking the window and she was bleeding everywhere. I took over for the baby so she could tend to her arm. I took his clothes off down to his diaper (I asked her first if that was ok) and was wiping him down. I also checked him to make sure he didn't have any glass in him, which he didn't. Of course, I didn't know really what I was doing, so that really makes me want to take the baby first aid class.

The officer called the paramedics (apparently the 911 dispatcher called the wrong fire department?) to have them come take a look at the baby and at her arm.

When the paramedics got there, the baby was not nearly as flushed and he was calm and seemed happy, even. They took him into the ambulance and he seemed to have a normal temperature (although they couldn't check it rectally) and he seemed to be doing ok. They called his mom and explained what happened. While they were doing that, I went to her car and made sure there wasn't any glass in his car seat (there wasn't) and tried to get the glass out of her seat -- which was hard. I checked in with her one more time. She was getting ready to write a report with the paramedics and officer, so I took off.

It was SO SCARY. it was a lot scarier when I got in my car to leave and was like, oh my goodness, that just happened. i must have been overtaken by adrenaline. I was so glad the little guy was ok.

one more

ONE paper left. I have minimal work to do on it. It's due at 5 p.m. (It's 11 a.m. now).

I. just. can't. do. it.

But it will get done, oh don't you worry.

Moved!

We are moved. I am exhausted. There is stuff in boxes everywhere, but we might take it easy tonight and watch a movie.

Tomorrow, Hal is going back to the old house to pack up the last bits of odds and ends. I have to do stats homework (stupid moving right before finals).

And, I hired a cleaning service. They are coming on Tuesday to clean the old house. I figured I didn't want to do it, and because of finals I didn't have time to do it, and because of the baby I really shouldn't be mucking around in bleach for several hours a day. And Hal figured the same (or something similar) for himself. So, although it will cost us, I figure it will be worth it. I just hope we will get the deposit back from our former landlords!

Our new place is very clean and very cute. It is smaller, but I think we'll be able to swing it (especially if someone buys the China Cabinet of Doom that we have listed on Cragislist). Luke already has the beginnings of a bedroom, although it only has a dresser and a rocking chair in it.

We were really lucky and my brother Stephen came down to help us yesterday. We got a lot done (although I wasn't much help). Even so, it still took the movers several hours to get everything loaded and unloaded. Thank goodness we have been able to save some money to hire help for all of this. We wouldn't have been able to do it ourselves.

Pictures of the new places coming soon!

Crazy Week

Last Saturday, we found out we have to move.

To MOVE. We have only been here since June!

And you all know how much FUN moving is!

Our landlord got a new job in Texas. As part of his job offer, the company will help him sell the house we live in. It's too good of a deal for him to pass up. He has been very, very nice to us in trying to make it as easy on us as possible, with Luke coming and all.

But, the bottom line is, sooner or later, within the next 6 months or so, we have to move.

So we're picking sooner.

First, there's that whole college town thing -- that if we waited to move until, say, December, there would be few options to move into. (But alas, because of the college town thing our options are a little limited at this point in the semester -- as renting season really starts to come into full swing in January or so.)

Second, there's the whole baby thing. The thought of getting all of Luke's stuff set up and then having to take it down and move it just seems a little daunting.

On Saturday, we heard the news. As of today we have seen 12 properties. They ranged from the house inhabited by 3 college boys and two pit bulls (it was probably worse than you can imagine) to the pricey condos that asked for a pet deposit of more than $1,000.

Today, I think we found a place. We'll have to turn in an application on Monday, but we're hoping it works out for us. If it does work out for us, we'll have a place that's a little smaller, but definitely cheaper, and still large enough (we hope) for us. I will give more details when it's a done deal. And if this particular place isn't a done deal, there are one or two more options that could work for us, too.

What a WEEK. It has been crazy. I'm exhausted.

And we haven't even started packing yet.

It's a....

Boy!

Luke Edward (we are 99% sure that will be his name) is coming in August/late July.

I am so professional.

This weekend was the conference in Oklahoma, where I presented two papers. The first was on sexual content, sexual themes, and sexual consequences in "Secret Life of the American Teenager."



The second was about faith healing testimonies on the internet.



(I also look really really short in this picture. I am short, of course, but I think I might even look shorter than I am.)

It was a really good conference and I am glad to get two more presentations under my belt!

the day has come

I've tried to avoid it.

I really have.

I had great hopes in the open forum. Where people could comment on my blog without having to be a member, for example.

But the spam started rolling in. It's usually Asian spam, for some reason. I suspect my Korean and Chinese classmates (just kidding). I have made it almost 3 years without too much of a problem, but as Jason pointed out, I'm starting to get more and more.

So the day has come.

I now have word verification on my comments. Hopefully that will weed out some of the spam.

Please don't let this disrupt you from commenting. I love comments. Especially when they aren't spam.

Other than the spam issue, life is going well.

Oh yeah! I suppose I should tell you all.

I am having a baby!

(That, my friends, is burying the lead.)

Mini Update

I have been Beatles rock band playing, couch potato-ing, retreat-ing, schooling, hibernating, & Christmas-ing. Lots of fun and snoozing!

Throughout it all, I've apparently NOT been blogging. I need to do better about that. My mom yelled at me tonight.

My Secret Life paper got accepted to a conference (as did another paper I wrote about faith healing and the internet -- don't ask), so I will be traveling to Oklahoma (of all places) in March. Then, the very next weekend, I'll be heading on a big boat for the cruise to the Panama canal!

While writing this, I leaned over to say hi to Layla, who is laying on the couch next to me. She licked me and PUT HER TONGUE UP MY NOSE. Ewwwwwwwwww.