New Words, New Teeth, and New Behavior

I haven't been keeping very good track of Luke's vocabulary.  He doesn't have a few words he uses but he is a very good parrot.  Just today Mom showed me that Luke could say "diaper".  I've heard him say other words like "Fred Bird".  Most of the time he uses grunts, squeals, and points at things to get his point across.  It is surprisingly effective to boot.

One way he is using his grunting and finger pointing is at the dinner table.  As of late he has developed an opinion on what he wants to eat.  If we try to feed him something he doesn't want he will cover his eyes, mouth, and then turn his head away.  If it is something he likes he willingly opens his mouth and is quite adept and taking food off of a fork or spoon.  Sometimes it isn't the food he revolts against, instead he revolts with how we are giving it to him.  If he rejects food on a fork Mom and I will put the bit of food on the high chair and usually after a quick examination he'll pop that morsel in his mouth.

He can be a stinker at times.  If he is done eating and there is still food on his high chair he will drop bits of food over the side for Jake to eat.  Jake is pretty good about eating scraps off of the table.  He usually lays under the table and gobbles up whatever hits the floor.  After Luke is out of his high chair Jake will give it a good once over licking up any bits of food that made it into the cracks of the seat.  Sanitary? No.  Effective? Yes.

Last month Luke got tooth number 7.  Tooth number 6 showed up last January as part of a quick appearance of a lot of teeth.  Since then there has been a lot of gnawing but no teeth.  Number 8 is just about to pop out.  I figure it will be any day now.  This one seems to be giving him some trouble though.  He is really chomping on his fingers and sometimes he tries to stick his entire forearm in his mouth.  Poor guy.  Some nights and days when it is really bothering him Mom and I give him a "shot of the funk" before bedtime.  A "shot of the funk" is our term for giving him some children's Tylenol.  It is amazing how a dose of Tylenol can improve the mood of a fussy child.  It is too bad that young kids have to suffer just because they can't tell us they are in pain.

Food

Luke is both a lucky and unlucky guy.  He is unlucky because he is the second child and his needs and development can fall to the wayside because life demands attention.  The area that I'm thinking about is the food department.  When Alyce was Luke's age she was eating quite a bit of solid food.  She was probably eating three meals a day with a bottle to wash it down.  Solid food being the pureed stuff for babies.  Luke on the other hand gets about two solid meals a day.  He usually misses the third because we are on the move doing something.

Luke, however, is also very lucky.  Luke unlike his sister gets bits of people food.  We've given him nibbles of bread, meat, french fries, and ice cream just to name a few.  When Alyce was his age we wouldn't have dreamed of feeding her such complex foods.  I'm guessing we were new parents and thought that Alyce would have a food allergy to something and grow a third arm.  Now that we are second time around parents most of those fears have passed.

For the record ice cream or custard is Luke's favorite food.  From the first little taste he was a fan and now when he sees me with a bowl full of ice cream he will cross the floor, climb up the chair, and look at me expectantly with his mouth wide open.

First Solid Food

Last night during dinner Luke had his first taste of solid food.  We have been wanting to try for a while now but finally had the time and opportunity to do it yesterday.  Before we tried to feed Luke we all ate our dinner.  We like to bring Luke into the kitchen with us but normally he only lasts a few minutes in his feeding table.  To keep him entertained we let him play with a childhood favorite toy, the paper bag.  He was really quite taken with the bag and even managed to get his arm inside.  Even though he tried Luke didn't have a whole lot of luck eating the bag instead he just managed to drool on it.

His first solid food experience wasn't really all that excited.  Mom is a bit out of practice though.  She managed to spill dried rice cereal all over the floor.  Mom did manage to get a few spoonfuls of food into his mouth and I think he even managed to swallow some of it.  More than anything he kept smacking his lips and moving his tongue around his mouth.  I'm guess it is a new experience for him and he really didn't know what to do with it.  After a while either he got full or bored he didn't want anything more to do with food.  Luke would close his mouth and turn his head when Mom brought up another bite to eat.