Oy, so many updates.

I am getting really bad about writing. I think maybe bulletpoints will help me actually write and post something instead of just saving and then never coming back to finish it ?

About Luke-

• Almost 11 months old! I can't believe it. Joe tried to tell me he was a toddler the other day, Google proved him wrong, thank goodness.
• Will be walking soon. We are dreading it.
• Hates being strapped down in carseat (but once he is, he's fine.) Also hates laying still (and will not!) for diaper changes. I have gotten very good at putting a clean diaper on a crawling-away-baby-butt.
• Loves FOOD. All food. I am guilty as using food as a bribe to get him to sit in his carseat rather than trying to wrestle him for 5 minutes. (Because the second you sit him in his carseat, he straightens his legs and twists all over and screams and even when you pull him back down and try to hold him, it's really hard to hold him down and get the straps on correctly. It's much easier to show him a couple goldfish crackers, and he sits there calmly while getting strapped in.)
• is BFF's with our husky, Koda. Koda likes him and covers him in kisses regularly, but also prefers not to be stepped on, have his ears and eyes pulled and poked, etc. We still closely supervise them together and always will, though Koda puts up with more than I expected.
• Laughs and smiles and babbles all the time. Saying "mamama" and "dadada". Just started clapping this week (I've been trying to get him to clap for months!) Also will give high 5's but usually not in front of other people. 
• LOVES looking at pictures of himself and laughs if he sees a picture of me while I'm holding him-he looks back and forth at me and the picture. (I wonder what goes through his little head? Two mommies?)
• I started working on a slideshow of pictures/videos for his one year. It made me cry. I can't believe how fast he got so big and busy.
• We finally got his freaking 3 month pictures. They SUCK. But I'm glad that it's done with. I have a handful of his 9 month pictures, but our photographer has been really busy helping her friend/neighbor's family who lost their house to a fire, so she hasn't had time to finish them yet (and I am happy to be understanding and wait!) 

Other misc.-
*School is going okay. A's so far. I have one easy teacher, and one teacher who sucks but makes up for it with extra credit and counting wrong answers correct. I am learning very very little, but I have A's.
*Volunteering is also going okay. I will finally be done with my 120 hours in mid-April. Looking forward to having 2 nights a week back at home. It's hard to get stuff done when I'm busy chasing Luke all day and then gone 4 nights a week.
*Planning for the Promise Walk is going smoothly. We have nearly already met our goals. If you are still thinking about walking, register soon!  Our deadline to turn in shirt orders is coming up soon at the end of March, after that, we can't guarantee a shirt with registration. Also, we are doing a gift card drawing for everyone who is registered by March 20th.
*Missing Olivia, always, but now that Luke is all over the place always, her absence somehow seems even bigger, she should be running around and chasing him and playing with him.
*Have avoided thinking about Luke's first birthday party, because I don't really want to think about him turning one! I really need to start working on invitations though. We are having a BBQ at a park (hopefully the weather will be nice) and so it should be pretty easy to plan, hopefully.
 *Am not impressed with 80 degree March.  We had to turn on our AC, and I do not like having the AC on already in March, but it was so uncomfortably hot especially for our poor husky, I fought it with fans and open windows and stuff, but ugh. And we've had hail 3 times in the last couple days. It needs to cool off a little bit and STOP HAILING- we have two pretty new cars and I am not amused.
*Joe got sideswiped on the hwy by a new 16 year old driver a few weeks ago. His car was not even a year old yet. They did $4000+ worth of damage and now we can't trade the car in for as much (and we had been thinking of trading it in.) Joe is now dealing with the insurance company and not amused with their crappy diminished value offer so far, especially since he took the car to the dealer and got a trade in estimate before and after the accident.
*Working on weaning Lucas. It's not going great. I am ready to be DONE. He is not so much but is getting better and better about taking bottles again (I think partly because my supply is dropping), we definitely have PLENTY of milk in the freezer and deep freezer to get him well past the year mark, so I am proud that we are getting through a year with no formula. I was happy to make it to the 3 month mark, then 6 months, and 9, and now here we are at almost 11 months and still going.

Okay, our delightful little handful is awake and trying to help me type, so I am going to hit save before he erases all my work.

This and that

Everything has been pretty chaotic lately which does not leave much time for sleeping, let alone blogging, but I will try to get a post done before Luke notices me on the laptop and makes his way over to "help" me type. So bullet point update it is.

- This deserves a separate post, which I might do later. One of my friends and fellow babyloss mom's lost her husband (who I was also friends with though I didn't know him as well as her) about a week and a half ago. No one should have to bury their daughter and then their husband within 6 months. A lot of us are still reeling from this while also trying to help as much as we can. It just sucks. They have been on my mind all the time and she is probably sick of me texting her 3 times a day. I know that like babyloss, this can't be fixed or made better, but oh, how I wish I could.

- Olivia's due date was the 23rd. It's still a very bittersweet, mostly bitter and not very sweet, day for me. Oh, what could have been. I can't say how many times we end up in a group of several or many boys, babies and older kids, with no girls or one girl. Ironically, a lot of my local babyloss friends have lost girls, so the absence of girls makes her and their absence even more glaring.

-Luke is all over and into everything, all the time! He still loves dog food though we are getting better at keeping him away from it. He had pizza for the first time the other day and LOVED it. He is cruising everywhere and it probably won't be long before he's walking, though I really hope he takes his time with it. We are not encouraging walking AT ALL. He has two bottom teeth and one upper tooth that just finally became visible and another upper tooth coming soon. He is not good at sleeping, either naps or bedtime lately. He is talking more and more and seems to be getting more comfortable around strangers. We had his 9 month pictures last week and his 9 month well baby visit, all is well. He was much harder to get pictures of this time around then he was at 6 months, he'd stay somewhere for a few minutes so she could get a few pictures, then decide he'd had enough and start crawling away. I am excited to see the pictures though. I can't believe I need to start thinking about his first birthday soon. Oy.

-School is okay. So far, I have all A's, but it's only the 3rd week. I have two teachers who aren't very good at teaching. (I had to argue that cc is not an abbreviation for milliliter. Really? Poor Brooke had to hear all about this and approve my argument.--Yes, I know that they are the same volume, but the question was specifically the abbreviation for a milliliter, thus cc is not correct since it is the abbreviation for cubic centimeter.)  My third teacher is awesome (and makes the class easy.)

-Volunteering is okay. It's either really slow or really busy, and not much in between. I don't really mind it, but being gone 4 nights a week plus having to do stuff for an online class is hectic, so I will be glad when volunteering is done. (2 months done, 2.5 months to go.)

I think this is all for now.

Back to school

Hooray for me, I've already completed all of my work for my online class for the week and it's not even due till Friday. And I read the chapter we are supposed to be going over in my first class tomorrow night.

But ugh. I don't know whether I should be glad or bummed that I'm not having to read a novel a week (or mostly pretend to) and bs my way through an essay about it. I mean, I was good at that. But I'm pretty good at science too. It's just not what I'm used to anymore, it has been *so long* since I've taken a science class or a class that wasn't English or teaching. (Although when I was teaching at the alternative school, I technically sorta taught science. Scary thought.)

Thank goodness for community college. I can't remember the last time I was in a class when the teacher dropped your lowest quiz AND your lowest test grade for the semester, but since I have my plate a bit full with a nine month old who is determined to eat dog food (daily) and is on a sleeping strike, volunteering twice a week, class twice a week and online,  I am not going to complain about that one bit. I don't think even in my high school/college credit A&P class we got to drop anything, but maybe I'm not remembering because high school was forever ago. Anyway, taking medical terminology (online class) with A&P turns out to be a pretty good idea because the first chapters are pretty much the same so as long as I memorize all of the stuff I need (in my case, re-memorize), it's the same for 3 classes, at least for this week. And it's all stuff I've learned before so hopefully it won't take too much to stick. Unlike English classes, this stuff you can't really BS your way through.

Anyway, speaking of being back to school, this is the first time I've been in class since we had kids. And just like with my other online classes from years ago, they have a first week "introduce yourself and tell us 2 things about you" assignment. (Unlike my other classes, I don't have to go and respond to 5 people's introductions. Hooray for that.) Everyone is saying stuff about their major and family, pretty much, and I'm a follower. So I mention that I was a teacher and am going back to school, and that we have two dogs, a baby boy, and a daughter who died. Yep, I totally did. I kind of feel trapped into it, because I feel like I have to mention that I have a baby at home in case something comes up related to him (although it shouldn't really be an issue with my online class really, except I could just see him coming over and smacking some keys on my laptop and messing up my test or something while I'm trying to take it.) And then if I mention him, I sorta have to mention her. And I guess I could have nonchalantly just said "I have two kids." So anyway, I debated on what to "say" (write), if I should say it, how to say it...for much too long. And in the process, I was thinking, why is this taking me so long, I've done this a million times, I took online classes fulltime for over two years...and then I realized, oh yeah, that was before.

In the end, my intro went "My name is x , I am studying diagnostic medical sonography after teaching a few years. I have two big annoying dogs (husky and german shepherd), and a nine month old son and a daughter who passed away shortly after she was born." As matter of factly as if I'm saying I'm wearing a blue shirt today. And I guess I didn't have to, but I so rarely mention Olivia to strangers anyway, in this online environment at least, I felt like I needed to. So there it is.

I am really hoping that we don't have to do introductions in my real person classes tomorrow and Thursday, though.