Breaking News!

Our baby is 6 months old, can you believe it?  AND to mark the occasion he started crawling!!!  Brilliant child!  Ok -it is more like an inchworm army crawl, but it still counts:)

Sit Ups & Daddy's Birthday

This past weekend was busy!  Saturday night Matt and I went to Les Miserables downtown for Matt's birthday.  The show was amazing and we had a fun date night.  We were very lucky to have Katie come into town just in time to babysit Luke.

Sunday was Matt's actual 33rd birthday.  His first birthday as a Daddy.  We celebrated, sans kitchen of course, with a little get together with Katie, Kristin, Cory and PJ.  We had a nice nature walk and some presents, cake and ice cream.

White Sox ROCK!

"Dad's Awesome" - you got that right!

The ladies

Family Pic

Snow babies

Updates for this week:

Kitchen -We passed our inspections after a few minor adjustments which meant we were clear to put in the drywall on Tuesday.  It is really coming together!

Lukeroni and Cheese - He can do sit ups!  Take a look for yourself.  Does he have abs of steel or what?  He also is really good at sitting up all by himself.  Last week he was sitting up by himself, but falling over almost immediately.  Now he is staying seated for long periods of time, playing with his toys.    

Girls' Weekend

Lukers is so cute, I wish you all could interact with him as much as we get to.  I posted another video, a little longer, so you can get a little taste of how fun and happy he is.

This week went by very quickly.  The kitchen is coming along swimmingly.  The beam is in, which means the walls are officially out!  Electric and plumbing rough is in, and the inspection is tomorrow.  We could have drywall by next week:)

This past Sat/Sun Mom, Kristin and I went to Lake Geneva on a Girl's Weekend.  We had a blast shopping, wining and dining, spa-ing and lounging.  It was the longest I have been away from Luke so far, and while I missed him a lot, the time flew by.

We are continuing to give Luke rice cereal in his bottle every night, but unfortunately that hasn't always meant a full  night's sleep.  It is really sporadic, sometimes he has a great night, waking up only once.  But the past couple nights he has woken up 3 or 4 times again.  No rhyme or reason as far as we can tell.  Let's hope it swings back to the latter soon.

Here are a few other shots from the week:

Caution: Under Construction

Our eco-system is in an upheaval due to the renovation of our kitchen.  Demolition started last Monday, so as I posted last week, the Baranko's (that's us) got out of dodge to avoid the dust and harmful lead that could invade the air during the process.  We stayed with Donna and Emil for the week, which was great.  Isolene was kind enough to make the drive to Downers Grove every day to watch the Lukers.  Emil has been at our house everyday though, overseeing demolition and construction.  It sure comes in handy to have a retired contractor in the family!  Thanks!

So get a load of the shell of our old kitchen.  Tearing down three walls really opens a place up!  We're so excited that this is actually happening!  The kitchen is going to look amazing.  I've posted renderings of how it will hopefully look one day soon.

We "moved" back home from Downers Grove on Friday after work.  While it is wonderful being back in our own beds, the challenge of living without a kitchen has begun.  We have stations sprawled out all over the house for cooking/dishwashing.  We are all set though - we have a mini-fridge, microwave, Crock Pot, electric skillet, electric stovetop and NuWave oven.  We can feast!  It's the cleaning up part that is a little trickier.

On Saturday Luke and I headed up to Kristin and Cory's for a visit.  They hosted a wonderful lunch with my parents, Aunt Susan and Grandma.  PJ was super cute, as always, and I got a bunch of adorable shots.  She is riding her little trike now - what a big girl!  I had a bad cold all week, and lost my voice completely by Friday.  I spent the  next 3 days whispering to everyone, including catching up with family in hushed tones all Saturday. Thanks everyone for your patience with me!

Valentine's Day couple

Sharing Valentine's Day cookies from Grandma Mary

As many of you know, for a while now Matt and I have been considering beginning Luke on a little rice cereal at night.  His regression on sleep has caused us to question whether or not he is getting enough food at night to keep him full.  So we finally took the plunge!  Sunday Lukers had his first "solid food", which basically was ever so slightly thickened breast milk.  We started him with just one tablespoon the first night, and he slept for a little bit longer than he had been.  But the second night we gave him 3 tablespoons in a bottle, and he only woke up ONCE during the night.  Eureka!  Now that's what I'm talking about!  Let's hope it sticks.  Wish us luck for night 3 tonight.  

Sunday was a nice mild weather day, so we got to go on one of our first family outings together to Lake Forest Open Lands.  Luke LOVED it.  Here is a little video of him shrieking with delight.

Sporting my new shades

Yay!  Out of the house and free to run!

Monday was Valentine's Day.  Matt gave me beautiful roses and a sweet card.  Luke gave me my first Valentine's Day Mommy card, and my favorite gummy worms (thanks Daddy).  Matt was the lucky recipient of many wonderful Walgreens Valentine's Day gift items, including the giant heart of chocolates you see below.  It was a nice night with my two main squeezes.

 Finally, Matt had a little photo shoot of Luke and a friend's Packer hard hat.  As painful as it was for him, as a Bears fan, he thought Grandpa Mackus would get a kick out of the littlest Packer fan.  He did:)

Digging out from the storm

The blizzard of 2011 was epic.  Work was closed on Wednesday, so we got a day tucked away at home with Luke.  Matt used that time mostly to snowblow.  It only took a total of 7 hours for him to get our driveway back from the snow gods.

BEFORE

AFTER

Here are some other pictures of our house and the snowstorm's drifts.

Front Left Side - looking into guest room

View from inside our guest room, looking out the front

Back of house

Last weekend we stayed at home, miraculously.  Sunday we spent the whole day packing up the kitchen in preparation for our big kitchen remodel that started on Monday.  Myself, Matt, Luke, Spumoni (& Isolene too during the days!) headed to Donna and Emil's for the coming week of demolition.  Let me tell you...getting every last item out of your kitchen, pantry, front closet and living room bookshelves while simultaneously setting up an interim kitchen in your guest bathroom for the next couple months, while simultaneously packing you and your baby up for a week away...is no picnic.

Oh - and the Packers won the Superbowl on Sunday of course, which made all my family in Wisconsin happy.  Luke was happy too, since you know he is half Packers fan/half Bears fan.

Luke photos from the week are below.  He is officially 5 months old as of last week and based on our home measurements he is 16.5 lbs and 26 inches.  What a big boy!

Grandpa watching Luke while I worked from home on Thursday

Wazzup?

I'll sign off today with a couple photos of our friend Bear, who passed away this morning.  He gave Kristin & Cory many years of being a wonderful companion and canine friend.  We'll miss you sweet Bear Bear.  We hope you are frolicking in snow in heaven with all the bowls of food you can eat.