Arts Festival!

Every year in July, State College has this huge Arts Festival. On one of the days they have Youth Day, where they have activities for children and kids set up booths selling items they have made. Lucas and I went on Wednesday to Youth day! Lucas was too young to do most of the activities, but I did make him a visor, which he wouldn't keep on and peeled off the stickers. We walked around, went several times through the mist walkway (it was really hot!), played with the bubbles from this big bubble machine and watched people, lots of people! It was fun! I think Lucas enjoyed himself!

Water time!

It was really hot yesterday, sweltering, and very humid! We went to a barbecue where they had a little pool out and Lucas got in. He loved it, especially when his little friend was splashing the water, even when it was splashed in his face, it made him giggle and scream with excitement, which frightened the little baby that was also there to tears.

4th of July!

To celebrate the 4th of July we had hamburgers, potato salad, and fluff. Lucas loved the fluff, which is not surprising because fluff is really yummy! (for those who do not know what fluff is, fluff comes in many different flavors, it usually consists of some type of fruit, a flavor of pudding, whip cream, and of course marshmallows!) We topped dinner off with Strawberry Rubarb pie, yum! Lucas really loved the pie and would make really funny faces after each bit. He always seems to be our entertainment. In the evening we went and watched the fireworks. At first Lucas was not too impressed with the fireworks, part of this might have been the fact that it was about two hours past his bedtime! However, as it got darker and they got brighter he seemed to enjoy them. This is a picture of Craig and Lucas waiting for the fireworks to start!

"By George I think he's got it!"

Our little man is now a walking man! On the 4th of July he walked a couple of steps to the couch. He did this a couple of times and then he got tired and would not walk another step. We made it into a game and each time he got to the couch we would congratulate him and he would get excited and clap his hands. On the 5th of July he walked to Craig and then back to me. Craig and I would slowly scoot back, so Lucas would have to walk a little further each time. He did this several times. He would clap his hands and scream when he had succeed. He did wonderful!!! He fell a couple of times and each time he would try to get back up. Now that he is walking we are nervous because we are sure running will not be far behind.

Aunt Nancy's visit!

My Aunt Nancy came to visit us for a couple of days. Lucas seemed pretty comfortable around her, maybe it was because she was in his territory. Nancy would build towers of blocks and Lucas would knock them down. He brought her the Chirpy Chick book and showed her where Dan was, over and over again. He did pretty well as we took him on multiple car rides all over State College. We enjoyed having Aunt Nancy come visit us.

Standing....in the tub!

The other day while Craig was bathing Lucas, I heard Craig calling for me so I went upstairs into the bathroom, and there was Lucas standing in the tub not holding onto anything, but two bath toys. Let me tell you why this was so interesting: we have been trying to get Lucas to stand on his own, and he will not do it. He will been his knees and sit down, in his own way he is refusing to cooperate. But there he was standing in the tub, I wonder if he decided to stand in the tub, because he knows he is not suppose to stand in the tub. Craig showed me that if you give him the two bath toys while he is standing he will stand on his own. When we got him out of the tub we tried to get him to stand on his own by giving him two toys to distract him, he would not do it. We even tried several times the next couple of days, to no avail! We have caught him a couple times standing on him own, I don't know if he does it intentionally or if he gets distracted in what he is doing and just does it.

Update!

At 13 months Lucas is 30 inches long and weighing in at 23lbs! Weight compared to height he is in the 75% percentile. Lucas is a very happy child, he loves to smile and laugh! He is babbling constantly every moment of every day. He is also very, very active. He is constantly on the move and he gets into everything.

Church has become very interesting he wants to crawl or walk with the assistance of objects everywhere; down the aisle during sacrament (distracting people trying to listen), towards the front of the primary room, during singing time and sharing time, and into the cultural hall. He likes to babble during sacrament, babble during primary...... He definitely keeps you entertained and on your feet! We have also been using the word, "no" a lot, I think he understands the concept, because he looks at you and whines. It is almost like he is drawn to the things he knows he can't have. He looks at you, you say, "no Lucas, we don't play with Dad's things, or no Lucas, we don't get into that cupboard, those things will hurt Lucas", but he keeps doing it, even if you try to distract him. We have now have added child locks on the cupboards which has improved things. What can I say, we're working on it!

The day after we got home, I was getting some things done when I heard Dan the tractor (Lucas has this book call Chirpy Chick, it goes through various farm animals, and at the end of the book is Dan the Tractor, and when you turn to Dan, the tractor makes the sound of a tractor, Lucas loves this book, and always seems to flip to the end to hear Dan, it is very cute!) sure enough there was Lucas with the book opened up to Dan the Tractor. It is amazing that even after several weeks of being away he still knows which book has Dan the Tractor.

The other day he was playing with his blocks and he started to get very frustrated because he was trying to push two of the blocks together, and it wasn't working, I don't know what he was trying to accomplish, we tried to show him how to stack the blocks on top of each other, but he didn't want to stack them he wanted to smash them together.