Back before we let the whole world in on the news, we told the boys about their upcoming sibling:
Fun backstory: Aunt Lauren's brother and sister-in-law are also due with their third on December 15th. Their early video of them telling their girls inspired us to do the same -- and in a lot of ways we ended up with the boys copying their girls' reactions word for word (hence our laughter on the "December 15th" part).
We've always talked about shaving Zoe down for the long, hot summer. This year we finally did it. When they picked her up from the groomer the boys were thrown WAY off. For most of the day, they were completely convinced that we'd traded Zoe for a newer, svelter, and smaller dog. By the time I got to them, Luke had wised up -- but Silas remained unconvinced.
(For reference, here's Zoe in full-on Loreal mode from a few years ago.)
Since Silas was born, we've focused a lot more on documenting the boys' lives in text and still photos here on the site. Putting movies together is fun stuff, but requires a serious free time investment -- something we seem to have less and less of. The boys, on the other hand? All they have is free time.
Want proof? Apparently they've figured out the video-recording side of Photo Booth. In fact, their current production rate (dozens of shorts so far) allows us to announce Luke and Silas as our new exclusive providers of AToTO video content.
This latest video is short and sweet, but it sums up a pretty fascinating bit of sibling behavior. In Silas's quest to become just like Luke, he's accidentally learning wacky things that his parents would never have thought to push. In fact, seeing Silas attempt to potty train himself, try to sing along with the alphabet song, and various other "big boy" [i.e. LUKE!] things has us rethinking our future educational strategy. Ultimately, we're thinking of saving money by keeping Silas home from school forever and just having him hang out with Luke when he gets home.
Anyway, about a month ago, Silas started doing this:
[
While the ease and ubiquity of YouTube is such that I can't really NOT go that route now, the low quality of the video sears my eyeballs. Here's the old-school 1Mb Quicktime version to make me feel better.]
Kicking off a two-week, Hilton Head-based set of Teague Pictures of the Day is a fun video first. Silas walks! [ 14.7Mb Quicktime movie]
Technically, he took his first solo steps during the July 4th weekend. But it was at the beach that he finally took off. As long as he could find something to climb up (coffee table, human being, sand castle, etc.) he was off and walking for a good distance. Eventually it got to the point where he'd go 30-40 steps, fall, and look at you in frustration -- wondering why you'd allowed him to get so far only to be roadblocked by wobbly balance and gravity.
But now, walking is his primary form of mobility, and we can finally put the kneepads away.
So Silas is starting to occasionally bust out the single and doubled "Ma" and "Da" when he wants our attention. But neither of those representative syllables took off with the speed and clarity of the one presented in this latest video [ 11.6Mb Quicktime movie]. Perhaps it's because so many of his current favorite things start with it?
Over the weekend, Luke hit perhaps his biggest milestone yet [ 9.9Mb Quicktime movie]. I seriously could not be more thrilled.
Silas's turn [ 8Mb Quicktime movie] on the greatest invention known to man.
When it comes to keeping a young Teague happy dappy for an extended period of time, nothing beats the Johnny Jump Up.
As cliche as it sounds, it's hard to believe that the time has flown by so fast (didn't we just bring him home from the hospital?). Just in the past week, Silas has gotten so amazingly interactive. He's found his voice, so to speak, and loves to screech and then smile at your reaction. He's a real sweetheart, too - talking (he said "ma ma", I promise!), laughing, smiling. He'll also fake a cough if he wants attention. Luke did this, too, so I guess my boys learn early on that if you're a chokin', Mommy's a runnin'. Plus: Silas is eating real food! [ 8.9Mb Quicktime movie] But I don't think I'd be a fan of rice cereal, either... I find myself wanting to slow things down so that I can enjoy it more, but he just won't listen!
Silas, we love you so much! Happy 1/2 birthday!
By popular demand, I've created a consolidated page with just the posts with movies. No more rooting around trying to find the video of Luke falling over, Luke learning to crawl, or Silas smiling. I've also switched up the trailers area in the sidebar. You'll find a permanent link to the movies page there as well.
And what good would this post be without new video content? Keep in mind that this is as simple as it gets movie-wise. I didn't add a soundtrack; I didn't edit it. It's just straight up, uncut footage of Luke Duke getting down in his favorite pajamas. Apparently, while hanging out in Hilton Head, Luke was all dressed for bed -- only to realize that there was still plenty of time left before he actually had to go to bed. So he headed out in his mo'cycle PJs to find a stage suitable for him to do his thing [ 8.1Mb Quicktime movie]. Enjoy!
* Luke's pronunciation of computer is the best.
Silas is smiling now [ 2.9Mb Quicktime movie]! It's the sweetest, most precious thing in the world. Especially since just a few weeks ago, the idea of this happening seemed like something from an impossibly distant future.
Everything seems to be running smoother for the little guy lately. The big not-so-hidden secret around here is that Silas had a pretty rough time in the beginning. The first two months were fairly brutal in terms of his inability to find any sort of comfort or sleep, day or night. Poor little guy!
But! Things are going much smoother now. Thank all of you who prayed for us and helped us out -- we've been blessed with the nicest family and friends a [formerly] screaming baby and his parents could ask for!
Please? Play cars? Play cars, please? Please. Play cars. Yes. Play cars?
Luke will ask until you agree. And then you will play cars for hours. Hours. This is his newest thing. And if I sound like I'm repeating myself with the constant pronouncements of "Yes! Now we're getting to the fun stuff!", well, I'll probably keep doing that until we hit the point when he can beat me in video games. But seriously, cars. Fun! You can get the little pieces of track for less than a buck per couple of feet -- the cars are like a dollar too. Watching him approach the wall of Hot Wheels at Toys 'R Us is so, so great. And then he finally decides on the weirdest looking thing and you're off! Take it home and get it on the track. Play cars! Yeah!
He's got this one little black one (third from the top) -- I've taught him that a miniature Michael Knight drives it. "Who's in the car Luke?" "Michael. Knight." He nods on the first name and then he nods again on the second one. You could keep yourself entertained for a long time by just asking him who drives the black car.
Eventually we tracked down the intro to Knight Rider. How awesome is it that Luke is already completely into David Hasselhoff? He loves Michael Knight. If he's not playing cars, he'll gladly watch the Knight Rider intro 10 times in a row. It fades to black and "more?" And now you too can watch the intro to Knight Rider [ 4.5Mb Quicktime movie] 10 times in a row. Please note that this is the intro to the fourth season (K.I.T.T. has both Convertible and Super Pursuit Mode), and it features a couple of very special cast members that you might not remember from its original airing.
One of the first things people ask about is how Luke has reacted to Silas.
Well, we got a little bit of it on video. It's pretty good stuff [ 6.3Mb Quicktime movie].
Uncle Josh and [we might as well start using Aunt] Lauren have the coolest new site in the world. And since I've always thought of Josh as a much improved, smarter, slicker version of me, it only makes sense that he's got a fancy photo slideshow gadget going. One that I must steal for here. And I will. But it'll have to wait for Silas; it can be one of the nifty things that his arrival brings to the site. For now -- since we're less than three weeks away -- I'm just going to freestyle it and dump stories, photos, and such from the past two months into this one long, rambling post.
Noman.
On the last day of February we got our yearly dusting of snow. Prior to this, Luke had become fascinated with these four snowman plates that we had hanging up in our breakfast room. The "nomen." So he was pretty pumped when we got a chance to build our own. Yeah. It was kinda tiny. Pretty much the size he was used to from the plates. But the good thing about the tiny nomen: they're highly portable.
Easter.
Yes, Luke needs some dress shoes. But man do they get you on the shoes. They're like the price of adult shoes but with a life-span in the months range. Jerks. Another thing about Easter though: Luke discovered the chocolate egg. And now all chocolate is referred to as a "chi-choc egg." What's that all over your face, Luke? "I don't know. You tell me. Chi-choc egg?"
Three fish.
I think that this has improved in the last week (language development with this guy can be measured by the like hour), but for a while there Luke referred to any number of items over two as three. Put a single cracker in front of him and it's one cracker, two on his plate is two crackers, five crackers on his plate? Seven crackers on his plate? To Luke he's got three crackers. So when we took him to the Tennessee Aquarium, every single tank in the place had three fish! Very excitedly three fish! Look! Three fish! Ooooooh, three fish! Jesus needed two fish to feed the masses. Luke might need one more to make it work.
Anyway, here's a little movie-based snippet of the aquarium visit [ 8.6Mb Quicktime movie]. As with everything in his life, Luke attempted to talk/command the creatures behind the glass into doing what he wanted.
Gooooo Tech!
He wasn't talking so much the last time we made it down to Georgia Tech (an early season November b-ball game), but since then he's learned that yelling "gooooo Tech" is what you do when there are athletes throwing balls around. So we thought we'd all head down to a Tech baseball game and show him a bit more of the campus that Mommy and Daddy met on. Super fun stuff. Seeing him stroll across the grass like he didn't care that he was late for his Calc 3 class? Hilarious. Once we got to the game itself, he was pretty excited and then quickly disappointed when he realized that the fence separating him from the players meant that he couldn't chase down balls. Of course he'd think that he could go out on the grass and throw the ball around; he gets to do that in the backyard, doesn't he? We suddenly became the man holding him down. "Pleeeeese balls. Pleeeeese." These are the times when you realize that his logic is just way way different from your own, and you wish that you could figure out a way to explain difficult concepts like aging and athleticism and collegiate sports departments and rulebooks and stadium security chasing down field runners. But you can't so you go buy some peanuts and he's immediately distracted.
Man. What a fun Christmas. Whereas we have video from last year with Luke just maxing and relaxing as gifts were opened for him, this year we've got Reaction Shot Luke [ 5.4Mb Quicktime movie]! Every present is a new adventure -- even if he has no idea what it is yet!
The whole day was one big fun fest. This year Luke got up a whole wonderful hour later than last year. Speaking of which: his schedule RULES these days. Down at eight, up at seven-thirty, nap from one to three or four-ish. It's gonna be insane when we go back to the 3 hour loop this May. Anyway, we started out at our house, headed to the elder Teague's place for more madness (and Uncle Royal's birthday lunch!), came home for a quick Lukenap, and then closed it all out at the Pavel present palace. By the end of the day Luke was completely exhausted, but when he woke up the next morning he headed right back downstairs to do it all over again.
I was starting to get nervous that we'd not exactly thought the naming of this site all the way through. "Baby Teague" made a whole lot of sense back when we were a good nine months away from the delivery of said baby, but as Luke has become LUKE and started talking and walking I've started to minorly panic over the short-sighted site naming strategy that we employed back in 2002.
Well what better way to fix that whole dilemma than just going ahead and making sure it was still valid? So that's what we did. Rather than fuss with rebranding and renaming and redesigning -- and after much discussion and thoughtful strategizing -- Jeanine and I decided to simply keep the name the same and attempt to make it work for us all.
To that end, we've done a few things: we've added another handy-dandy trailer [ 4.3Mb Quicktime movie]. Jeanine's taken the time to secretly write up a number of journal-esque entries that we'll now turn on and let you read. And finally, we went ahead and got pregnant again so it would all make sense.
Whoohoo! Number two is on the way! We held the news in [for way, way too long -- we're 15 weeks along!] so that we could gather everyone together for a big Thanksgiving reveal; now that we've let the family in on things, it's time to go wide with the news.
So settle in. Baby Teague is still the name of the site. We're sticking with this thing. We may have to keep making babies until the Internet goes away, but what are you gonna do?
[note: Like I said, Jeanine's been writing this whole thing up just like last time. Only she's spent the last 6 weeks writing in invisible ink. I've gone ahead and sprayed the lemon juice all over everything so that you can see the five entries she wrote. Start here -- right after we found out -- and then work your way forward.]
Luke walks! [ 5.9Mb Quicktime movie]
July was the month of the beach: two family vacations full of beach, plus one beach-themed birthday party. Consequently, Luke was fairly well dipped in sand and, as you'll see in the birthday pics, sand's sugary stand-in. Sand in the bathing suit, sand in the face [ 4.3Mb Quicktime movie], sand in the mouth, and eventually, sand in the diaper.
And through it all Luke grew SO MUCH. We experienced an explosion of mental/verbal growth in the last month. He went from Mama and Dada as his sole vocabulary to a word collection in the teens.
"Bird" kicked it off. Thanks to a plethora of low-flying foul along the coastline, Luke had that little pointy finger up in the air all the time. We kept saying "bird" every time he pointed one out until finally, out of nowhere, he pointed at a big sea-gull and said it himself: "brrr." Matter-of-fact! No biggie! We suddenly realized that he was ready, we were ready, his BRAIN was ready to start dumping in the repetition. Off we went: duck, ball, book -- whatever held his attention long enough. He kept up! Repeat and point long enough and he'll not only get the word, but the association. It's so cool.
And it's gone beyond repetition. He's getting
We're at the point where Luke seems to learn a new thing every week or two. Now that he's mobile and somewhat more verbally communicative, he's even able to respond to your requests! However, while he may know how to wave bye-bye, his humility sometimes keeps him from doing so in public; he's no show-off. Via the wonders of computer technology [hint: a collection of s] you'll now be able to, in effect, request up to four (4) features and abilities -- and Luke will appear to comply each and every time!
First up: Make Luke dance!
Next: Make Luke do a #1 thing with his hand!
Then: Make Luke do that bibble-bibble finger-in-lips sound (or his interpretation thereof)!
Finally: Make Luke prove that he has a tongue, yawn, fuss briefly, burst into laughter, and unexpectedly do the bibble-bibble!
As of last Thursday morning, Luke has a new trick. Here's some of the footage shot just as he figured things out that first day [ 5.9Mb Quicktime movie].
Here's how sweet and generous Luke's Mommy is: since Daddy is at work for most of Luke's waking life, she thought she'd work on his speaking abilities while Daddy was away. And since she figured that Daddy wouldn't have as much time to try to teach Luke to say "Daddy" -- and that of course Luke would have a much easier time learning "Mommy" -- she worked extra hard to teach him Daddy's name first.
Well, she did it! [ 7Mb Quicktime movie] She got Luke to repeat "Da!" Unfortunately, she did such a good job that that's pretty much the only consistent thing he'll repeat right now. I still say that he doesn't really connect "Daddy" to me; and that the first word he'll really connect to a bona-fide person is going to be "Mommy." So let's all say that until it happens, please. Okay? Thanks!
Yes! He's finally old enough for it. Watch him go! [ 10Mb Quicktime movie]
It's been a while since the last post -- Christmas and everything has made us very busy. So here you go, emailers and requesters: The 2003 Year-end Luke Teague Media Blowout Spectacular! Pictures, movies, anecdotes, and more await you below.
Laughter
A month or so ago, we discovered that not only was Luke ticklish, but that he's now capable of actual laughter! Needless to say, we've tickled him so much since then that he's pretty much stopped the laughing part and skipped straight to squealing. We did manage to catch that first tickle/laughing session though:
Luke with the laughing and such. [ 1.2Mb *]
Once the tickling stopped working as well we moved on to new laughing triggers. Jeanine discovered the surprise-wheel-around-"o"-mouth technique and applied it in this cacophonous scene [note: Zoe does not appreciate this particular laughter trigger]:
Luke wears himself out laughing. [ 8.9Mb *]
Sitting
More like sitting-ish. He's getting there. They say that the tripod method (hands on the floor in front of them, ape-style) is the place they start. What I can't get over is the complete lack of fear. Luke will be sitting there completely falling over and look just as calm as he ever does:
Luke sits there. [ 12.5Mb *]
Christmas
For Luke's first Christmas, we started out at our house right after his first feeding of the day (6:30am, here we go!). Luke got to watch Mommy and Daddy open his presents for him, he tried his best to stay awake, and then we headed out for family Christmases 2 & 3. Here's how the day started:
Luke gets a prize or two. [ 18.9Mb *]
Random
Finally, here's a small collection of pictures from the last month or so:
Luke goes from four to five months.
* [sorry: These movies are all pretty huge. As always, right or control-click to save them to your computer -- and make sure you have Quicktime installed. If you don't have access to a fast connection, email us and we'll see what we can work out.]
As promised: Luke smiling [ 6.1Mb Quicktime movie]. And talkingish! In living color and motion.
Luke Ryan decided to show up a couple of weeks early. Aside from making sure that Jeanine and I met each other, God could not have given us a more absolutely perfect gift than little Luke. Fun stories, pictures, and full-on details are going to have to wait until we figure out how to fit a website into this insane 3-hour feed-sleep-diaper cycle. Until then, though, here are the vital stats, a picture [taken just minutes after his arrival!], and a movie of him in all his active glory:
Name: Luke Ryan Teague.
Weight: 7 pounds, 8 ounces.
Height, should he decide to stand early: 20 inches.
Birthday: 3:46pm, July 26, 2003.
Age at birth: 38 weeks.
Age as I type: 4 days.
Will graduate high school in: 2022 [he will be driving a hovercraft].
Hair: Yes. Brown.
Fingernails: Unmanicured and deadly.
Pant size: Maybe an 11 long?
Race: Caucasian.
Tongue: Way long.
When he's just hanging out, he looks: This cool [ 1.8Mb Quicktime movie].
So, by Christmas we couldn't take it anymore and had to tell our immediate families the big news. The secret had been SO hard to keep, and we were SO nervous about spilling it ahead of time. It was such a relief to finally get the news out!
When we gave the Pavel family their Christmas present - a framed copy of the second ultrasound - this is what happened [ 6.1Mb Quicktime movie]:
For the Teague family, their big present this year was a DVD I made about a family vacation. After we watched the DVD, I told them that I was already hard at work on the next film and wanted to give them a sneak peek with the following trailer [ 4.3Mb Quicktime movie]:
[note to the modem users out there: the above two things will take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to download them both. sorry!]
[note to all: You may find it helpful to right-click on the above links and download them directly to disk. Also, make sure you have QuickTime installed.
