One Year with Luca
Happy birthday sweet Lukey! Yesterday our boy turned one and he celebrated like a true birthday boy. He was all smiles and truly enjoyed every moment of being the center of attention for the entire day. Second kids rarely get that I’m realizing.
He loves water play and he loves cars so we bought him this car wash water table. He and Amalia played with it all day long. It was one of the first times we’ve seen them really play together with the same toy for an extended period which was very cute.
It turns out he is a fan of birthday cake too. He housed an entire piece and kept looking at the cake for more! It was a surprise to no one as this child eats anything and everything constantly.
Writing this post feels like a huge challenge because I’m getting emotional with every sentence I type. Luca has completed our family in such a beautiful and profound way. He is the yin to Amalia’s yang, the sunshine we all need when we’re down, and the missing puzzle piece in our lives.
I’ve said this 100 times before but it feels like he’s always been with us in some way. When Amalia was born it took about a year for us to stop saying, “Can you believe we have a kid?” but with Luca, it never felt new which is hard to explain but I hope makes sense in some way.
Please excuse the fact that he doesn’t have a solo picture in this post. He refused to take one alone. This is fitting because he always wants to be around his sister anyway.
Milestones lately
Standing/walking: He can now stand up by himself (only for a few seconds) and sometimes even takes a step or two. With his walker, he’ll walk all around the house but is nervous to do it on his own. My guess is he’ll be walking within a month. God help us!
Talking: He’s a little slower on the talking front but our ped assures us this is normal for boys. Amalia had a handful of words at this age but Luca has mastered a total of 3: mama, dada, and no.
Sign language: Amalia may have been more verbal but Luca has really done well with signs. He knows how to sign more, all done, night night, eat, and milk!
Weaning off of formula / Goat milk
We started weaning him last week and he’s almost 100% drinking goat milk now. Like we did with Amalia, we are still giving him a few ounces of formula before bed (mixed with the goat milk) so he doesn’t wake up hungry, but we’ll cut that in the next few months too.
I always get asked about why we give the kids goat milk so will explain it again here! We started with Amalia when she was just about to turn one. She had had a bunch of ear infections and her pediatrician recommended that she get tubes. I asked her if I could try one thing before committing to the surgery and she agreed. We switched Amalia from cow dairy formula to goat dairy formula (and eventually just goat milk) and she never had an ear infection again.
Luca isn’t prone to ear infections but he has had a runny nose since September. Literally, I should be buying stock in Nose Fridas based on how often we had to use them for him. But since we made the switch, his nose is 90% clearer. It’s unreal what a change it makes in my kids!
Obviously, this won’t be true for every baby but Anel and I are both very sensitive to cow dairy so it makes sense that our kiddos are too.
Bottles vs Sippy Cups
We are switching his two mid-day bottles to sippy cups this week which is bittersweet. Then next week we’ll switch his morning bottle to a sippy cup too. We’ll transition the night bottle in about a month.
This is the cup he uses to drink water with meals and this is the cup we used to replace bottles.
Amalia still uses a bottle in the morning and at night. For her 11am goat milk, she uses a bottle as well but we’re going to transition her to a sippy cup in the next few weeks. We just dropped her 3pm milk and just finished our switch from formula, and I didn’t want to give her too many changes at once. We use this sippy cup right now for water, but if there is another one that’s better for milk transitions, send your ideas my way please!
HIS SCHEDULE
6:45-7:30am- Wake up
7:15am- Bottle 1- 6oz goat milk
8:00am- Breakfast. He loves eggs so most days I scramble him an egg.
8:30am- Off to daycare (on weekdays)
9:00-9:30- Nap 1
11:00-11:30- Wake up
11:00am- Bottle 2- 5oz of goat milk
12:00pm- Lunch. He usually has leftovers from the night before. He also loves Spinach Littles, meatballs, or shredded rotisserie chicken.
3:00pm- Bottle 3- 5oz of goat milk
5:00pm- Day care pick up (on weekdays)
5:30pm- Bath
6:00pm- Dinner
6:30-7:00pm- Bottle 4- 5oz of goat milk mixed with 2oz of formula, then right to bed
7:00pm- Asleep
HIS DISPOSITION
This kid, you guys. He is so happy all the time. Unless he’s hungry, then you better watch out! But everyone who meets him comments on how chill and smiley he is. He can play on his own or with us, he can play with toys or outside. He’s happy doing pretty much anything. Except when he’s hangry… or in in the car for more than two hours.
We got really lucky with this baby!
HIS FAVORITE THINGS
Luca loves anything with wheels: cars, trucks, buses, firetrucks… you get the idea. It’s so funny because Amalia was never really into playing with cars but it’s all he wants to do. It started when he crawled for the first time to get to Amalia’s Barbie car and he’s never turned back. Everyone in our families got him a truck or car so now he is fully stocked up for a while.
He also loves climbing on anything he can get to which is slightly terrifying and loves being outdoors
At this age, Amalia was book-obsessed and Luca could not care less about reading. I try to read to him every day but most of the time he hits the book out of my hands or throws it on the ground. But we’re going to keep at it and hope that eventually, it takes 
HIS FAVORITE FOODS
Again, Luca is the opposite of Amalia in the food department. She was all about the carbs and fruit and he’s all meat and veggies. The only fruits he will eat are bananas and mangoes. Beyond that, we get a big spit out and throw it on the floor situation!
He loves almost everything else but his top food choices are chicken soup (LOVES chicken soup), meatballs, cheese (any kind will do), peanut butter, shredded chicken, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, pasta with meat sauce, Spinach Littles, broccoli, quesadillas, and guacamole (not plain avocado)
HIS SLEEP
His sleeping habits are so different from Amalia’s that it’s actually comical. They’re both great sleepers but he does better in the falling asleep stage and she does better in the staying asleep stage. Let me explain…
Amalia used to always cry before bed and want to be held until she fell asleep. To this day, we give her extra cuddles (no complaints here!) and have to go through a whole routine before bed or she gets very emotional. But then once she’s out she’s out. She slept through the night at 7 weeks and has never looked back.
With Luca, it’s lights out after his bottle, no muss no fuss. He just wants to pass right out and literally reaches for his crib! He was waking up once a night for months because he is a hungry guy so I’ve had more interrupted nights of sleep than not in the last year, but (knock on wood) we’ve overcome that habit in the last two months… I hope.
WORST MOMENT
Poor Lukey has had so many viruses in his first year: COVID, RSV, and the flu. The weeks when he was sick with those were for sure our worst moments.
People always ask us which one was the worst and, in our case, it was 100% COVID. He ended up needing to go to the ER on Christmas Eve and it was one of the scariest nights of my life. Luckily he is just fine now but he’s really been through the wringer. Hopefully, he now has the immune system of an ox.
BEST MOMENT
There are too many great moments but here are a few that stand out: in the mornings when he and I go get Amalia from her bed, she hides under her covers and lets him find her. They both laugh hysterically and then repeat it 700x. And they do this every single day. It never gets old and it’s adorable.
Another great memory was swimming with him in the pool on our Fort Lauderdale trip last month. He is a huge water baby just like his sister and wanted to splash around all day and night.
This isn’t really a memory but my niece Helen has nicknamed him Coo-key so we all call him that now. It’s so fitting for our cooky little guy.
I also just love when all four of us are playing on the living room floor and he and Amalia are giggling and Anel and I look at each other and repeat over and over how lucky we are to have created this family.
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