Luke's First Love

Luke is only 20 months old and already he has his first crush with a girl.  And it isn't just any girl.  This girl is multicultural, speaks two languages, and can talk to animals.  Who is this girl that sounds too good to be true?  In fact she is too good to be true it is Dora the Explorer!  Luke is in love with Dora.

We let the kids watch television shows (probably more than we should) and one of the shows Alyce and Luke like to watch is Dora the Explorer.  We knew Luke had a crush a few weeks ago when we were at Toys R Us and every time he'd see her he would point and say "Dora Dora"!  Since then whenever he sees her he gets all excited.  Last night while Mom was getting a show started via Netflix on the TV Luke did sign language motion for "more".  Mom then asked Luke what he wanted more of?  His response, "Dora"!

A Family Morning

Today Luke had a very good morning.  He woke up on the good side of the bed, didn't create too many messes, and got along with Alyce.  Most mornings he is ok but at times things can be a bit rough around the edges.  If he doesn't get food quickly after waking up he can get ugly.  On other days he and Alyce can get into it where they both are fighting over the same toy.

Today Luke was bright eyed when he woke up and was ready for fun.  Following breakfast the entire family found itself in Alyce's room building things out of Duplo Legos.  For a time there was no jealousy, screaming, or fighting just quiet family fun.  After a while Mom and I left the room to attend to something minor and with that the truce was dissolved as Luke had dissembled (destroyed) something Alyce had been building.  It was good while it lasted.

Ketchup

Today while out to lunch Luke discovered ketchup. I met Mom and the kids for lunch today at Wendy's. While there Luke ate his typical lunch of plain cheese burger and fries. Then in an act of emulation he grabbed a french fry, dunked it it ketchup, and ate it. From that point on he'd have nothing to do with plain fries and would only accept ketchup ones. He would also try and get every single bite ketchupy even if he was down to a nub and got his fingers all yucky.


I can't blame him for being a big fan. Up to this point he has led a very plain life when it comes to food.

Helping Getting Dressed

As Luke gets older he is starting to help us instead of fighting us on certain things.  One of those things that has changed is that Luke is now helping us get him dressed.  When putting on a shirt or a coat he will stick his arm out so we can pull the sleeve on.  When putting on his pants sometimes he will do the same with his legs.

Of course it isn't all roses.  He still likes to roll away from you and crawl away whenever we have to change a dirty diaper.  When it is really nasty it takes two people to change him; one to hold him down and the other to do the dirty work.

Other areas where his helpfulness pays off is getting him into his car seat where he will help get his arms into and under his seat belts.

Chaos is His Natural State

As early as Luke could move I knew that he was going to be different than his sister.  Simply stated, he is a boy. He is loud, hard headed, and likes to make messes.  While we were trying to sell our house we had to pickup before we left just in case someone were to come by for a showing.  When we'd get back home the first thing Luke would do was to walk into the living room, grab a stack of coasters, and toss them on the ground.  He wouldn't play with them or give them a second thought.  Luke just saw clean as an unnatural state and rectified the situation.

At the apartment with space being a premium messes are all the more noticeable and Luke has risen to the challenge.  The first thing Luke did Friday morning was to go into Alyce's room and dump all the Lego Duplos all over the floor.  The blanket we have on the ottoman to protect it from Jake is also a good source of mess making.  Luke likes to grab the blanket and walk backwards leaving a yet another mess in his wake.

Star

The last few evenings the sky has been clear and the moon has been very bright in the sky. This observation has not been lost on Luke. When we pull him out of his car seat at night he looks up to the sky, sticks out his finger, points to the moon, and says "star". Good try little buddy!

I don't know where he picked up the word star or even that he knew stars were in the sky. I was impressed that he even got close.

I tried to correct him by telling him it was the moon and after a few tries he says "moo", close enough. On subsequent nights he still calls the moon a star and even points to street lights and calls them stars as well. To the mind of a 19 month old I can see where he'd get the two confused.

Luke's Words

Luke is slowly but surely learning more words.  I kind of thought he would be an early talker since he had Alyce as a role model, but at 19 months I'd say he is running about even with his sister.

He is in the stage right now where he is parroting what we say.  We will ask Luke "can you say zebra?" and he will respond back with a "zeeba".  "Zeeba" is a pretty good reproduction as sometimes he just says gibberish.

He's also learning relationships between objects and their name.  He'll grab his socked feet and say "sock" or pick up a shoe and say "shoe".  Just recently he help up a sheet of stickers and only after telling him what they were once he repeated "sticka" and since then the word has stuck.  (pun intended).

We have also been teaching Luke his body parts.  A while ago he knew of only a few places on his body with the first one being his belly button or "doo doo" as we like to call it because we make the sound of a door bell when we push on it.  He now knows his ears, mouth, hair, chin, feet, and many others.

One thing we can't seem to break him of is screaming for food.  Screaming is probably too harsh of a word; maybe yelling is more appropriate.  Whenever we are sitting the kids down for dinner we get them strapped down before we set out the food.  This keeps Luke from pulling a bowl of macaroni onto the carpet.  From the moment he is sat down to when we get a spoonful of food in his mouth he is yelling and pointing to whatever we've put out.  We know he wants to eat but he has no concept of patience.  Then while we are eating dinner he will start yelling if we don't have another bite ready by the time he is finished with the one in his mouth.  We are trying to teach him to say "more please" when he wants another bite but we are having limited success.  I think once he matures a bit and learns some more words we will cut out the yelling but in the mean time you just want to put in some ear plugs.

Luke Eating Ice Cream

Tonight while eating dinner we caught Luke doing his "tongue thing" on camera.  Luke's tongue thing is hard to describe.  Whenever he gets excited about getting something to eat his tongue starts going in and out of his mouth.  Or better described as the movement a babies mouth makes while they are drinking a bottle.

Luke has been making this motion for as long as I can remember.  In the past he did it just about every time he saw us making food for him.  Now that he only does it when something good is coming like milk, candy, or ice cream.