Before my very busy week of clinical, school, and work starts I wanted to take a second to write down the new things Luke is doing and saying. He's saying a new word almost everyday now. We've entered a new phase of language with mores verbs and phrases which is making him more and more independent.

-Here are the newest words: coffee (as in: mommy's, don't touch), cream (as in ice cream), coupons (he loves to grab the papers that come out of the printer and bring them to me, which are most oftern coupons), color, kiss (while he puckers), hug, jump, phone, buttons, chicken, outside, boots, socks, coat, frock (he has combined two words: fraggle rock, his favorite show), he can name pretty much all of the animals in his picture book (Alan has fun trying to get him to say hippopotamus... which sounds more like "hippomommmmuss"), come here ("comemer" which he shouts at Lucy and Motors), what are you doing? (again, this is mushed together into one word: whayoudoin?). That's all I can think of right now.

-He loves talking on the phone. He mostly just listens but he'll mumble a few words every now and then. He also pretends that remote controls and any flat toy is phone. He'll carry it around the house and have fake conversations with people on it.

-He says "good-bye" to everything. When changing his clothes in the morning : "bye pj's". When we are done eating dinner: "bye chicken". When we are flipping pages in his book:"bye bear".

-He's pretending. This is really fun to watch his little imagination go.

-He loves his cars. He has a ton of them and likes to drive them on tables, chairs, people, pets, and even fly them thru the air. He is even making the sound effects "vroom!".

-Everything is a toy. Including my tampons (sorry if that's too much info)! He'll go into the bathroom, open up the cabinet, and grap one from the box. I found him the other day with a bucket full of cars and two tampons! This is going to be a great story when he's older!

-He's turns his toys into guns. This was a little disturbing to me. We don't let him watch much tv and he doesn't have any toy guys except for a little water gun. But I guess that's all it takes. He makes a shooting noise and has play gun shoot outs with Alan. He thinks it's hilarious when Alan has a very dramatic death scene.

Here's a little cell phone video at Trader Joes. They have kid carts that keep him occupied for a little while but then he takes off running and abandons his cart. I am constantly chasing after that boy!