Luke the cleaner

It's fun to see what characteristics your children develop and which ones must be passed through genetically.  Anyone who knows Ryan knows he likes to be organized and have his things kept in a certain way and is a bit of a perfectionist  We have seen this quality in Grant, especially in the way he completes his homework (it has to be done correctly or there is trouble), in the way he neatly organizes the animals on his bed,  and in his desire the wear "matching clothes" (which he sometimes insists means a top and bottom of completely the same color).  

We've already noticed a few similar characteristics in Luke.  Around the time he turned one, one of his favorite activities was to gather things scattered across a room and put them into one pile. 

Here is a picture of one such pile from last October (the bear was covering a few more items).  I remember I was in the kitchen doing dishes and I was just able to see the top of his little head on the other side of the counter going back and forth, back and forth.  I finally looked over to where he was going and saw he had been walking back and forth, picking one thing off the ground and putting it in a pile.  I guess he decided it was high time things got organized in the living room.

Now, one of Luke's favorite things to do is to throw away his own dirty diaper after he gets changed.  He understands that we put the stinky ones out in the dumpster in the garage.  Usually, after I change him he runs off while I wash my hands.  Then, there is about a 95% chance that I will find him just like this, wearing someones over-sized rain boots with the dirty diaper in hand, trying to open the door to the garage.  The boy just wants to throw away his diaper!

This picture shows one of those 5% moments, when Luke has escaped a diaper change before I was able to put a new diaper on, but he still managed to try on a pair of rain boots! 

February Fun

We kept busy as usual during February and the month flew by.  One fun thing we did on one of Ryan's days off was to visit the Elk feeding up near the foot of the mountains.  Every winter the state has elk and bighorn sheep feeding locations where they drop off loads of hay for hundreds to thousands of elk to eat daily.  They do this to help ensure that the elk don't come down to the cities and invade the orchards that are everywhere.  We were told that WA state actually categorized elk as a predator because of the terrible havoc they can reek on an unprotected apple orchard.  So it was a lot cheaper for them to install a big fence to keep the elk from going down into the Yakima valley and feeding them hay on the mountain side of that fence to encourage them to not go after the apple orchards.

We didn't get a good picture to show how many elk showed up that day, but there were hundreds.  It was neat to see so many wild elk at once and just watch them eat and interact with each other.  I realize that I often try to humanize wild animals when I watch them, thinking, "man that elk is a real jerk, see how he's hogging all the hay", or "that elk is sad, look at her face," etc., etc.  When really, they're probably just glad someone put out some hay to eat.

See how Tate is always ready for action?  The rolled up coloring sheet he picked up from the visitors center has the main function of being a sword, with only the slight possibility of being colored on. 

 Some of the elk had huge racks, which I imagined they were quite proud of.  At least they seemed like the cocky elks :)

 

Valentine's Day is not a very important day in our house.  We both realize it's just another commercial holiday, although Ryan has come to realize that I still appreciate some consideration on V-day, mostly just because it's fun.  We usually leave notes or cards, but the past two years we have started some traditions that I think we'll keep.  For starters, I decided that for Valentine's dinner we will have crepes.  I made them for the first time in early February last year and thought they were absolutely delicious so V-day seemed like a great day to make a tradition out of it.  Last year I also wrote Ryan some love-limericks, mostly to make him laugh but also for sentimental value.  Ryan returned with a poem of his own, which was great.  This year I wrote a few more limericks for him (I really payed attention in 6th grade English) and threw in a couple Haiku's for good measure.  For my gift, Ryan "heart attacked" the kitchen (you can only see a portion of the work in this picture).  Many of the hearts contained witty and sweet notes that only Ryan writes best.  What makes his gesture even more sweet was that Ryan put all these up while battling a crazy stomach flu that hit the family that week (only Tate and I were spared).  And yes, Tate and I were probably the only ones who really enjoyed the crepes this year, seeing that we weren't worrying about our ability to keep them down (or up, depending on which urge hit first).  But, man, were they good!