April Fun

The beginning of April Frederic had to go to Texas for work for a few days. Instead of exhausting myself driving Luc to and from my parents twice a day, we stayed over at my parents' house. Luckily, Luc was breaking his habit of waking up at 3/4am and was sleeping until about 5am.

We figured out he wasn't really hungry in the middle of the night after he got through his growth spurt and was actually just used to me picking him up and snuggling. Now Frederic goes into his room when he wakes up. Luc lays right back down and falls back asleep for at least another hour. When I go in there, most times, he starts a tantrum for me to pick him up and cuddle with him. I created this bad habit. Luckily, we're starting to break it. Now that Luc is through his first molar teething, isn't waking to eat for his growth spurt, and is eating more at night like a real 'dinner', we decided to cut the bottle out completely, cold turkey, and replace it with a different kind of sippy cup than what he uses now for water during the day.
Like most other things, Luc transitions himself out of these phases when he's ready. And the morning bottle is starting to loose its excitement too. When I open the fridge in the mornings lately to get his bottle out, he's actually pointing to real food to eat instead (pears, yogurt, my cereal on the weekends). So we started giving him some milk in his new cup with real breakfast food. I know Luc and I will miss our cuddle time in the morning while he eats, but it's time to move on. After the bottle is completely gone, there's no more Baby Luc. He'll be 100% Toddler.

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Back to staying at Grandma & Grandpa's. Luc loved hanging out with them in the evenings. We got hit with a spring heat wave those days (80-90 degrees), and Grandma needed to water the grass seeds. I changed Luc into his swimwear so he could have fun with the hose.

Luc holding the hose for Grandma

Luc thinks it's lot of fun to sit himself on the steps.

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The next weekend, Aunt Nathalie, Logan, Kendall and Taylor came to visit. Luc loved hanging out with his cousins! He especially loved Kendall. Kendall loves Luc too. He was like her personal, real-life baby doll. She enjoyed hand feeding him crackers while on the metro home from the National Zoo. At dinner, she fed him corn and watermelon from the fork. Luc took everything from her without protesting. I think she needs to come live with us so Luc will eat some veggies. The same things given to him from anybody else, he didn't take. Apparently everything from Kendall tastes better.

"Here, Luc, have some Chex mix!"

We went to the National Zoo in D.C. on Saturday. Most of the animals were sleeping or chilling inside since it was pretty warm. But we still got to see some animals.

Sunday, we did an Easter Egg hunt in the back yard and let the kids dig through their goodies. They played outside for a long time afterward until dinner was ready.

That egg hunt was exhausting.

And Monday, Frederic took off work to spend the last day with everyone. The kids got to spend the whole day outside playing and went to the playground too.

Best Buddies

Luc for sure still loves to be around people. He's a lot easier and happier. -He even eats better too!

I took advantage of Luc's interest in his cousins' sippy cups to cut out the bottle at home completely. I bought Playtex brand cups (too add to our collection of a million different types of sippy cups) that have a little spout/hard nipple. I also bought them in clear so Luc could see it had milk in it, not water (which was a problem with his other cup) and we could see how much he ate instead of guessing by feel. Frederic wasn't so excited to cut the bottle out cold turkey. But knowing Luc, I knew this was the way to go. And thank you Kendall, again. The first few mornings and nights he got the new cup instead of his bottle, I would tell Luc, "Look you have a sippy cup just like Kendall!" The first time I said it, he smiled (he had seen her the day before) and started to drink. In the mornings, Luc no longer gets just a bottle of milk for pre-breakfast (real breakfast comes later at Grandma's). I bought these Nurtigrain bars for kids, Earth's Best brand. They were a lot smaller than I thought they would be and most of the time Luc wants more when he's finished. But I give him that with some milk in his new cup while Dada gets ready. He hasn't yet asked or looked for his bottle.


New words: Two, More (He tries so hard to make the 'r' sound, it's just too cute to see him stretch his lil mouth open).