He's just so big

Wow, Luke is just getting bigger. When Shelley took him to his 6-month appointment, the Dr. said he was the weight of a 12-month old, the length of an 11-month old, and had the development of a 9-month old.

Well, that was a the day before Halloween. He hasn't gone backwards at all. Quite the contrary. We've got a couple of videos to post showing his development.

From Luke

You can see in this video that he can now get up to a standing position on his own with a low platform. This means he can now get into things and push buttons. We're trying to teach him the word "No", but he hasn't totally understood yet. We've been told that as soon as he learns the word, he'll know how to use it on us.

From Luke

Here is Luke taking a bath. He finds the plug and pulls it. He decides he wants to use it as a pacifier. He puts the metal holder in his mouth. Of course lately he wants to put anything metal in his mouth.

From Luke

Now this is the really scary video. This is the same bath as the previous video, but you can really see that he has gotten the assisted standing thing down. But what is really scary is that he knows how to turn up the water flow. It's hard to hear, but as he is turning the knob counter clockwise, the water is flowing faster. It used to be that when daddy would give him a bath, Luke would look at his hand and wonder how he got the water to flow faster. Now he's figured that out. What's the next thing he will figure out? I don't know if we're ready to find out.

And then came Thanksgiving...

November was just as busy if not busier, but then do things ever really slow down?!? Robert helped our ward with the Turkey Pit, that they do every year and Jon came to put in a turkey for his family as well. Shelley & Luke got to see the big fire being lit but then Luke got droopey and they went home. We did some Black Friday shopping with Stephanie but the only one of that went out into the crazy-early-morning madness was Robert.

Luke is busier than ever himself. He loves his toys and when we are away for a few hours he has to check on them when he gets back. He gets into draws and cupboards while Mom follows around picking up things. He loves remote controls and keys!!! He must be related to his DADDY. He also says "DA" a lot now. But then he loves his Daddy and who wouldn't???

From Luke

From Luke

Busy Halloween Season

Well, Halloween is come and gone, and it was a busy one for us. We went with a bunch of Shelley's family to Schnepf's Farms on Saturday, October 24. Shelley's niece, Disie was visiting us, so she came with us also. We went on a hay ride, saw pig races, and went to a petting zoo. Desie went on a Pony ride and Robert took Luke on a carousel.

From Luke

From Luke

On Wednesday, October 28, we went to a fall festival that was organized by our ward. We dressed Luke up in a skunk costume. We had a good time. We invited Robert's sister, Stephanie to come also.

From Fall Festival 2009

From Fall Festival 2009

From Fall Festival 2009

From Fall Festival 2009

Halloween day turned out to be very busy for us. We went with Ellen's family to a walk to support the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation). We walked for about three miles. Shelley's mom and sister-in-law, Jenny, also came. We parked at a park-and-ride and took the light rail to the Tempe Town Lake Park.








Halloween night, we went to a trunk-or-treat at Shelley's parents' ward. Shelley's brother, Blaine, is also in that ward, so his family was there also. Ellen's family made it too.

From Luke

Well he's mobile....

Luke has started crawling and he weighs 21 lbs now. We really are not feeding him anything but what we are supposed to. No extra hormones or steroids, just formula and baby cereal. He loves his cereal and eats it with gusto every night. We hope to soon try him on something else.

Shelley is not as crazy about school but she is handling it like a trooper. A drooping trooper, but a trooper.

Robert is just trying to keep us all happy, healthy and photographed. He adds the pictures to this blog cuz Shelley does not know how.

Eating soft cereal:

From Luke

Stage 1: Inch by Inch Scooting

From Luke

Stage 2: Trying to figure out crawling

From Luke

Stage 3: Almost has it down

From Luke

Luke Keeps Getting Bigger

Wow, it will only be another week and Luke will be 5 months old. He's getting really big. He is able to roll onto his tummy quite easily now. Here is a video from a couple of months ago of Luke trying to roll over, but gets frustrated because he can't get his arm free:

From Luke

Getting that arm free is old hat for him now. It will be just around the corner when he can start crawling.

He can actually stay in his bumbo seat for a while now:

From Luke

We got a few pictures of him with Kaylee, Shelley's niece, and her new husband, Ben, who just got married a week ago.

From Kaylee's Wedding & Reception

From Kaylee's Wedding & Reception

We decided we needed to get him a new toy. It's called an excersaucer. It's like a walker, but the baby can't move:

From Luke

This keeps Luke occupied for sometimes as long as 2 hours. It is very good for his leg muscles. Here is a video of him playing with the toys:

It has been another one of those long periods between blogs. We have wanted to report on our Wyoming vacation, but this last week has been crazy.

Last Tuesday was Shelley's last day of work. She will be starting school this Monday. She has already spent a bucket load of money on books and a tablet computer. Robert, on the other hand, has a whole story to tell himself. Before Robert's story, we'll talk about our Wyoming vacation.

We started our vacation on Saturday, August 8. We went along with Shelley's parents and 2 of her brothers, Cris and Dan. We visited Scott Porter which is an old friend of Shelley's family. He took us through a tour of the newspaper print shop that he is one of the managers for.

On Sunday, we went to Jackson Hole Wyoming and stayed that night there.

From 2009 Wyoming Vacation

We went to Yellowstone on Monday and saw the mud volcano and the upper and lower falls.

From 2009 Wyoming Vacation

On Tuesday, we went to see Old Faithful and a bunch of other geysers. We also saw a bunch of stinky hot spring pools.

From 2009 Wyoming Vacation

On Wednesday, we saw the Steamboat Geyser and went to a great view point of the Lower Falls.

From 2009 Wyoming Vacation

When we left Yellowstone, we started heading towards Riverton where we planned to stay 2 nights. Our car broke down, We were barely able to get into Thermompolis which is about 55 miles away from Riverton. The nearest dealer from there is Lander which is another 25 miles, so we had to have the car towed about 80 miles. We had already coordinated with Service at the dealer that we would be dropping off the car and they would have a loner available. Below is a message my car displayed on our way to Thermopolis:

From 2009 Wyoming Vacation

On Thursday, we found out that it would take several days for the dealer to get needed parts for our car. We used the loner to go with the rest of our bunch to Independence Rock, Martin's Cove, and the Willie handcart memorial.

From 2009 Wyoming Vacation

From 2009 Wyoming Vacation

We decided to get a rental car at Hertz that we could drop off in the Phoenix area. We picked it up and drove with the rest of our party to Monticello on Friday, and then to home in Mesa on Saturday. Robert will explain in first person how he got the car back.

Robert -

Just to make sure there isn't any confusion. I wrote the above part of this entry, but kept it as "We" since it was an experience that Shelley, Luke and I had together, but I am now going to relate the experience I had myself getting our car back.

Before we left Wyoming, Shelley had already booked a flight for me from Phoenix to Denver to Riverton so I didn't have to drive both ways to get the car.

I woke up early in the morning on Friday, August 21 (yesterday). It was a pretty standard flight to Denver, but a bit different going to Riverton. Riverton is not the biggest town on the block. Its airport only has one gate and the runway is only big enough to bring in small aircraft. Anyway, when I got to the Denver airport, I had to go down to the ground level to find the gate I needed. This was the type of gate that you had to walk outside and the take steps up into the plane.



A driver was at the Riverton airport to pick me up and take me to the dealership in Lander. I picked it up and drove 9 hours to my parents in Cannonville, UT.

This morning I woke up early and drove just over 7 hours to Mesa. Kinda Crazy.

Well, our Prius is working again and getting as good of gas mileage as ever. I only had to fill up twice through the trip.

Utah Vacation

We can hear all the mumblings now, "When are the Fletcher's going to update their blog. They've got a new baby and haven't told us anything about him."

Well, now we have some time, so we can post some updates. We've got two excuses, we were on vacation for 10 days, and the other is that we have been so stinking busy.

Shelley had surgery on her right wrist on June 18. She wouldn't let anyone take a picture with her hand dressed up, so we don't have any.

We went up to Utah on June 26 for two reunions. The first was our bi-annual Cox Reunion. We rented an RV in St. George and had it for a couple of days. Here are a few pictures from the Cox Reunion.

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

After the Cox Reunion, we went up the Utah Valley in northern Utah to visit some of Robert's old friends. Sorry, we didn't break out the camera for any pictures.

While in northern Utah, we went to SLC to check out the "This is the Place" monument and the Conference Center at Temple Square. We did get some pictures there:

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From Luke

Our second reason for going up to Utah was another Reunion, the Fletcher Reunion. There were many cousins that Robert hadn't seen for years and Shelley had never met before. We had a really good time catching up and being in the small town of Cannonville again:

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From 2009 Reunion Vacation

From Luke

The last one is a video of our little boy Luke playing in the water.

Luke's Baby Blessing

From Luke

We know it's been over a month since we have posted an entry in hear. Adding Luke to our life has really made things pretty crazy. Shelley has been tending to him all during the day and when Robert gets home, that's all he wants to do is spend time with Luke.

Since today was Luke's baby blessing, we decided that it was time to repent of our ways and add an entry. It was a really good day today. We had lots of family visit and there were 10 men in the blessing circle (we didn't get our bishop in the picture). We are grateful for all of the family that was able to make it.



We had a luncheon afterward at Shelley's parents. We all had a good time, although much of the family had to leave early to get home.

Getting used to home

Well, we have been back home for a week now. We have started a new routine now having Luke home with us.

Robert started back to work last Tuesday. He has felt the separation anxiety and returns home as soon as possible. We haven't really gone out much the whole week. We have just stayed home with Luke. That's what we have been content with so far.

From Luke

Shelley has been staying home every day so far. She returns to work on June 9. Since Robert is now working and Shelley isn't, Shelley has been doing most of the nightly feedings and diaper changes for Luke. Robert is very appreciative of that so that he is not so groggy at work. Robert does try to do his share of taking care of Luke in the evenings, however.

Shelley and Luke are Home

From Fletcher Baby

Well, we are all finally home now. After several days of pain and non-solids, Shelley is finally able to eat normally and take pain medication orally. She was able to leave the hospital at 2:00 today. Our pediatrician said that Luke could go home any time, so once Shelley was released, we all went home today.

We all went over to Grandma and Grandpa Matthew's for dinner tonight. Luke's cousins were really excited to see him. Shelley's brother, Blaine, had a baby boy 3 weeks ago. We got some pictures with them together.


We will be taking Luke to the doctor tomorrow for a newborn checkup. Shelley will need a checkup with her OB this week sometime. However, life is starting to get back to normal again, if there ever was a normal.