Luke, oh Luke. It's not too much of a stretch to say that Luke is the king of the castle right now. He runs our lives in the way only a busy toddler can. We whisper and tip toe around the house when he's sleeping, hoping to stretch that time out as long as possible. And we are on pins and needles when he's awake, wondering what kind of trouble he's going to get into next. I feel like I'm constantly telling The Bigs: "Put that away or Luke will get into it." And "Maybe next time you'll remember to put that away because Luke got into it."
We've been keeping chairs and stools away from counters and tables for months now, but Luke has finally started sliding things around on the tile, or carrying other climbable objects into the kitchen so that he can get onto the counters and table. He still loves to pull whatever he can out of drawers, but about a month ago he became more interested in pulling food out of the fridge - things like yogurt or relish or butter - and then dumping them out. So, after three kids who never gave us trouble with the fridge, we have splurged on a pair of baby-proof-your-appliance gizmos ($5 at Target) and have to keep the fridge latched at all times. (Side note.... one day Jack chose to yank the refrigerator door open with all his might instead of unlocking the latch, and broke the baby-proofing gizmo. Luckily, Cat was around to fix it.)
Luke hasn't yet learned to express his anger and frustration in healthy ways. He usually resorts to hitting and biting other people, or flailing around on the floor. When he's hurting someone else, it often ends up being Eliza since he's around her the most.
Sometimes it's not even out of anger that he gets physical. The other day they were playing on the couch and she suddenly walked up to me with a bloody nose. Luke had stuck a headband up her nose! "Not the whole thing. Just the end," she told me. I can't believe she puts up with him so well.
Luke has started enjoying sitting down and reading books with us, but if I'm reading a book to one of his siblings he'll come up to us and close the book, then take it away. Sometimes I'll be on the couch with Jack on one side and Eliza on the other and we'll go through 3 books. We'll start one, read a few pages, then Luke will come over, close it, and walk away with it. So we start over with a new book, and he does it all over again. We usually give up after the third book and find something else to do. And when we try to include him in reading books with us, he's not interested.
In the last couple of months Luke has developed a love of All Things With Wheels. This applies to both toys and real vehicles. When we're in a parking lot he usually exclaims over and over again "TRUCK! TRUCK! TRUCK!"
Which leads me to the next point - Luke is talking! In the last month his vocabulary has grown immensely. He's finally parroting words, and uses words on his own a lot too. I love it! He
probably knows about 40 words now and is learning new words all the time. We all get such a kick out of it. Tonight at dinner he spit the chicken he didn't want into a napkin, handed it to Ben, and said, "Trash." The kid is a genius.
This is such a fun development, though the kids really enjoyed it when he only had a few words and the one we heard most of the time was "No." They loved asking him questions that required affirmative answers. It was one of their favorite games.
"Luke, do you have ears?"
"NO."
"Luke, are you wearing pants?"
"NO."
"Luke, do we have the best family ever?"
"NO."
I mentioned the trouble Luke gets into in the kitchen, but really there is nowhere in the house that is off-limits for Hurricane Luke. The kitchen is a popular spot - have I told you about the time I came home from running errands to find that Luke had dumped out at least one entire box of spaghetti in the family room? Possibly two boxes. That wasn't very fun to clean up, but at least Luke tried to help.
But Luke also loves dumping out DVDs and pulling books off of shelves. He rifles through drawers, has been known to unroll toilet paper, and may or may not have put a variety of objects in the toilet (though in his defense, he currently really likes "cleaning" the toilet but swooshing the brush around in the bowl). He still throws food on the floor, or spits it out, if he doesn't want it, but I think he's beginning to outgrow that one. Knock on wood.
Luke loves electronics and is good at changing settings on phones and computers. Thus, we do our best to keep him away from them. It always takes us longer to fix the problems he causes than it takes him to make problems. He's started watching a little bit of TV (I think "Blue's Clues is his favorite show) but generally it doesn't hold his attention for very long.
Luke has started to show some interest in using the potty, and I'm quite anxious to potty train him, but I don't think he's quite ready yet. Soon, I hope. Also, he's been staying in the nursery at church without us for several weeks and recently began going in without crying. Yeah!
Luke has a pillow-ish stuffed animal frog that he always sleeps with and it's so sweet to see him snuggle with it when he goes to bed. Sometimes he is literally kicking and screaming when I'm taking him to his room to go to bed and as soon as I hand him Froggy he hooks his right arm around it, sucks his left finger, and snuggles right into bed.
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| Guess who found Eliza's makeup? |
We've been keeping chairs and stools away from counters and tables for months now, but Luke has finally started sliding things around on the tile, or carrying other climbable objects into the kitchen so that he can get onto the counters and table. He still loves to pull whatever he can out of drawers, but about a month ago he became more interested in pulling food out of the fridge - things like yogurt or relish or butter - and then dumping them out. So, after three kids who never gave us trouble with the fridge, we have splurged on a pair of baby-proof-your-appliance gizmos ($5 at Target) and have to keep the fridge latched at all times. (Side note.... one day Jack chose to yank the refrigerator door open with all his might instead of unlocking the latch, and broke the baby-proofing gizmo. Luckily, Cat was around to fix it.)
 |
| Trying to help clean up after dumping Greek yogurt on the couch. |
Luke hasn't yet learned to express his anger and frustration in healthy ways. He usually resorts to hitting and biting other people, or flailing around on the floor. When he's hurting someone else, it often ends up being Eliza since he's around her the most.
 |
| Tantrum time. |
Sometimes it's not even out of anger that he gets physical. The other day they were playing on the couch and she suddenly walked up to me with a bloody nose. Luke had stuck a headband up her nose! "Not the whole thing. Just the end," she told me. I can't believe she puts up with him so well.
Luke has started enjoying sitting down and reading books with us, but if I'm reading a book to one of his siblings he'll come up to us and close the book, then take it away. Sometimes I'll be on the couch with Jack on one side and Eliza on the other and we'll go through 3 books. We'll start one, read a few pages, then Luke will come over, close it, and walk away with it. So we start over with a new book, and he does it all over again. We usually give up after the third book and find something else to do. And when we try to include him in reading books with us, he's not interested.
In the last couple of months Luke has developed a love of All Things With Wheels. This applies to both toys and real vehicles. When we're in a parking lot he usually exclaims over and over again "TRUCK! TRUCK! TRUCK!"
Which leads me to the next point - Luke is talking! In the last month his vocabulary has grown immensely. He's finally parroting words, and uses words on his own a lot too. I love it! He
probably knows about 40 words now and is learning new words all the time. We all get such a kick out of it. Tonight at dinner he spit the chicken he didn't want into a napkin, handed it to Ben, and said, "Trash." The kid is a genius.
This is such a fun development, though the kids really enjoyed it when he only had a few words and the one we heard most of the time was "No." They loved asking him questions that required affirmative answers. It was one of their favorite games.
"Luke, do you have ears?"
"NO."
"Luke, are you wearing pants?"
"NO."
"Luke, do we have the best family ever?"
"NO."
I mentioned the trouble Luke gets into in the kitchen, but really there is nowhere in the house that is off-limits for Hurricane Luke. The kitchen is a popular spot - have I told you about the time I came home from running errands to find that Luke had dumped out at least one entire box of spaghetti in the family room? Possibly two boxes. That wasn't very fun to clean up, but at least Luke tried to help.
 |
| The yellow patches on the carpet are spaghetti noodles. |
But Luke also loves dumping out DVDs and pulling books off of shelves. He rifles through drawers, has been known to unroll toilet paper, and may or may not have put a variety of objects in the toilet (though in his defense, he currently really likes "cleaning" the toilet but swooshing the brush around in the bowl). He still throws food on the floor, or spits it out, if he doesn't want it, but I think he's beginning to outgrow that one. Knock on wood.
Luke loves electronics and is good at changing settings on phones and computers. Thus, we do our best to keep him away from them. It always takes us longer to fix the problems he causes than it takes him to make problems. He's started watching a little bit of TV (I think "Blue's Clues is his favorite show) but generally it doesn't hold his attention for very long.
Luke has started to show some interest in using the potty, and I'm quite anxious to potty train him, but I don't think he's quite ready yet. Soon, I hope. Also, he's been staying in the nursery at church without us for several weeks and recently began going in without crying. Yeah!
Luke has a pillow-ish stuffed animal frog that he always sleeps with and it's so sweet to see him snuggle with it when he goes to bed. Sometimes he is literally kicking and screaming when I'm taking him to his room to go to bed and as soon as I hand him Froggy he hooks his right arm around it, sucks his left finger, and snuggles right into bed.
We sure love this kid, messes and all. We love his cute little voice and his contagious laugh. We love the way he hugs someone whenever they're sad. We love his dimple. We love his cute toddler run. We love his adventurous approach to life. And we're so grateful he's part of our family.
What a wonderful blog. Thank you so much for helping us 'grands' be part of Luke's growing up. I just love this and feel as if I have been right there with Luke during his day:)
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