Five Months

I am so late on posting about Luke's fifth month and this post will not do it justice. My six month post will be much better!

Luke turned five months old on October 6th. He is so much fun! He loves to smile and laugh, is very ticklish, and watches his big brother all the time. Here are some stats from Luke's fifth month:

-Luke is wearing mostly 9 month clothes and size 3 diapers.
-Luke still wakes up several times per night. I've cut out the midnight feeding and now I just usually feed him once per night at around 3. He still wakes up around midnight but I get him back to sleep after lots of crying!:)

He is a cute little sleeper, though!

Still loving bathtime!

Luke is already our little explorer. We will put him down in one spot and turn around and he'll be somewhere else. He will roll and scoot (just a tiny bit) to get to something he wants to investigate.

 

 

 

I just LOVE that these two have each other. They are already best friends!

Luke is my cuddle bug for sure. He is such a GREAT cuddler!

And daddy and Luke enjoy napping together:)

Getting so big!

 Luke loves his turtle we got at Sea World.

We love our little guy so very much!!

Sea World

A few weeks ago, we took our first family vacation to Sea World. We all had a great time seeing the animals but most of all being together. Here are some highlights:

Here's our beautiful hotel. Our room was on the fourth floor overlooking the pool.

 

 

 When we got to the hotel on Saturday, we found out that they had upgraded our room to one that had a balcony. The boys loved hanging out outside. Saturday night they had a movie at the pool. We stayed for a bit and then went up to the room, gave baths, and watched the rest of the movie from the balcony. What a fun treat! Then Matthew and I got to hang out out there after the boys went to sleep. So much fun!

 

 

 

 The hotel had a beautiful pool with a little splash pad for the kids. Samuel LOVED the splash pad and enjoyed swimming with Daddy. Luke and I hung out on the side, watching the action.

 Here are the boys, ready and excited for our first trip to Sea World! (Luke is resting up!!)

 

 We rode a shuttle from the hotel to Sea World. I think Samuel was more excited to ride the "bus" than anything!

 Samuel loves looking at fish!

 

 

 We watched the Shamu show both days. Samuel and Luke were both amazed at the whales (as were Matthew and I!). They really are incredible creatures!

 Luke LOVED being outside all day!

 It took a lot to get a good family picture!

 This one's pretty good!

 Looking at the dolphins

 Meeting Franklin

I can't wait for our next family vacation!!

Activities with Samuel

I want to keep up with and remember the activities I do with Samuel during the day so I'm going to post them. I will probably edit this post whenever we do something new. Here are a few things we've done so far.

 We made a Fourth of July painting with cookie cutters. Cookie cutters are a great way for little ones to paint without getting extremely messy. He loved this!

 I wrote upper and lower case letters on paper plates and construction paper. Samuel is pretty good at matching them.

 

 We started making a letter book. We would decorate the letter on Mondays and then make pictures that start with that letter during the week. I've stopped this for now but I plan to come back to it.

 Samuel has played with stamps a couple of times and had a good time.

 Here's an activity where Samuel matches magnetic letters. He LOVES this one if I only bring it out every once in a while.

 We made a monster out of construction paper and tissue paper. Samuel loves monsters!

 Then we baked monster cookies!

 

 Samuel sorts construction paper shapes inside the shapes on the floor. Funny story: as I was taping the shapes down, I had done the square, circle, and triangle. I was about to do a rectangle when Samuel asked, "How 'bout hexagon?" Ha so cute. Of course, then I accidently did an octagon. Oh well.

 Samuel loves playing in the tunnel that Cammy and Out-paw gave him for his birthday. He also enjoys putting all of his stuffed animals inside with him!

Here, Samuel is doing some toy puzzles.

Samuel loves coloring with Color Wonder.

I found some dot letters online. Here, Samuel is putting a dot of paint in each dot on the paper. We will also try dot stickers and little pieces of paper.

 Samuel's favorite thing to do is to make a mess!:)

Samuel Lately

I felt like I needed to write about Samuel because he is doing SO MUCH right now!! First, here are some of my favorite Samuel quotes:

-How 'bout this one?
-Bye, swimming! (When we were leaving the pool)
-Mama, mama. Two mamas (pointed at the mama in a book and then me)
-Don't touch! Don't run! (tells Luke to not touch and then told kids at church not to run)
-One day he was putting his toys into time out. He would tell them each, "Time out. Don't throw. Okay? Okay."
-Samuel has started saying our names before a sentence (ex: Mama, look! Daddy, no.)
-He has started to use his imagination some. It's so cute to see him pretending to talk to someone.

Samuel's favorite...
-color: black
-animal: lion
-song: ABC song or Lion song
-TV show: Super Why
-movie: Finding Nemo
-letter: W

Samuel LOVES W and can even write it!!

Samuel loves to....
-color. He will color in his coloring book, in boxes, and on plain paper. He colors with crayons, markers, and colored pencils.
-play outside. We play in the backyard and on playgrounds and go on walks frequently.

Playing with his sand table in the backyard 

-count. He can count to ten by himself and twenty with help.
-say his ABCs.
-church. He LOVES going to class. He also still talks about VBS all the time!

-sing. It's so cute to hear him singing church songs (The Lion Song (My God's Not Dead), O Happy Day, Jesus Loves Me) and learning songs (ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star).
-swim. He really got back in to swimming this year as we had a membership to our local pool.

They have an awesome splash park area at the pool.

-play at indoor playgrounds. We will take him to Going Bonkers and the playgrounds at malls to play.

Daddy and Samuel at Going Bonkers

Having a blast at the mall

 

Samuel struggles with...

-sharing. We hear the phrase, "No, that's Samuel's" A LOT in our house!

-getting frustrated easily. When something doesn't go his way, you can bet there will be lots of crying!

-clinging to mama. He still loves to play with my hair, sit beside me, have me hold him...I try to enjoy it because I know it won't last forever!

 

 



We took Samuel to see his first movie recently. Studio Movie Grill was showing a kids movie (Chuggington) on a Saturday morning. Cammy and Outpaw watched Luke and the three of us had a great time!

Samuel started school this month! He is going to First Baptist Church of Garland for Mother's Day Out on Mondays. He loves it and is doing a great job!

The cutest student I know!

Samuel is at such a fun age!! He is a great big brother and we love him so much!