11 Months Old

Zoom in and check out the two Chicklets in my mouth!

This week marked Luke's 11 month birthday! He has been very busy this month doing all sorts of exciting things. He has grown lots of hair on his head, and we now discuss when he'll need his first haircut. (I think we should grow it out so I can braid it into cornrows.) Also, he has sprouted three more teeth for a total of 5, and I am pretty sure one or two more are just waiting to pop out. He won't always let us in his mouth to feel around, but sometimes we can count the tooth impressions from the bite marks he leaves on our legs or shoulders. Unfortunately for us, that wasn't a joke. Here he is chomping down on a teething biscuit, dripping in its gooey goodness.

Mmm yummy! But not as yummy as mom's finger...

In medical news, his hives have all faded away, although it took almost a week for them to do so. Here is a picture of the hives at their scary, fiery crescendo:

Dermatology textbook page 236 (this picture makes me itch)

Yeah, they look bad. But he never seemed to act as if they bothered him, thank goodness. This picture may be a bit misleading since it was taken after two ill timed activities. First, Luke and I had just finished up a long walk, with him strapped in the Baby Bjorn, in the hot as all heck heat. Then, I gave him a bath. I thought I was being oh so smart by not using soap, thinking I wouldn't chance it adding to his skin irritation. But afterward Louis got home and mentioned how the heat from the walk and the bath probably made the hives worse. Oh yeah. The heat. Oops. Sorry Luke. I suck at this sometimes...

One good thing that came from the bumps was that when we were out in public everyone kept their distance. Usually all sorts of people like to touch him and poke him and try to get a smile out of him. But the bumps sure took care of that. They were like our own private bodyguard. I got a few slyly dirty looks from people, as if they wanted to say for me to keep my funky kid at home and away from their kid. I don't blame them, I don't want their kid's cooties either. Everyone should just keep their own cooties to themselves. I could have volunteered the fact that he wasn't contagious, that they were just hives, but I didn't. And it was great...

Until the bumps started to fade. They unfortunately began to turn a light purplish tan color and looked like fading bruises all over his body. And then we started to get dirty looks from strangers for entirely different reasons... We wanted to tell them that Luke just performed really poorly in a recent paintball game, but we didn't think they'd buy that excuse.

Here is a picture Louis likes so much because the two hives near Luke's eye resemble a gangster's teardrop tattoos. Luke likes them because it ups his street cred.

Yo, what you lookin' at?

In this last month Luke's crawling has improved a lot. For months he got around by army crawling on his belly, and we always felt bad for him because 1.) we have wood floors and it looked like it hurt, and 2.) he looked like he was paralyzed. (It sounds terrible, but it looked just as terrible.) And 3.) it wasn't very efficient. He could get to about 50% of the places he wanted to go and would often get stuck and frustrated that he couldn't go further. Now his crawl looks like a more traditional 4 limbed crawl, but, again, with gansta style. He sometimes pulls one leg under him and drags it along, like a strut. It doesn't slow him down at all though. He can be lightning fast. And now he can get to almost anywhere, and 100% of the places we don't want him to go. Like into Cactus' food bowl and doggie door. And the bathroom trash (ewww). And the toilet, especially useful to pull up on (double ewwww). And the ever irresistible kitchen cabinets. Oh, and let's not forget the stairs!

Luke also spends lots of time chasing balls and our mini radio controlled car around the house. See this pic below. He gets very determined when he chases the car, hence the serious look of concentration and the pursed mouth. This picture also shows how he tucks his leg under him when he's locomoting around the house. All in all it's been an exciting month in the life of little Luke, and the fun is sure to continue. Hopefully the hives don't.

Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a... oooh hey, is that a Cheerio?!