language explosion

In what feels like the space of 24 hours, Luke has burst through to a whole new level of language skill. Up until Monday, he was talking – and talking a lot – about things and events, giving orders, and expressing desires. He was even putting together little 3 and 4 word sentences. But on Monday morning, he woke up with the ability to express more complex thoughts. Some samples from our day: When we called Dada (who is traveling this week), Luke offered, “Miss you!!” Later, during our morning walk, Luke said, “See puppy far far away! Puppy happy!” This morning, Luke (clearly remembering our weekend trip to the zoo, where the sheep at the petting zoo bumped – and scared – him) said, “Luke grumpy a’coz ‘a the sheep!”

In other news, Luke officially gave up the bottle this weekend. We hung onto it for probably too long. Our lovely little guy, who is so easy in so many ways, just loved his night-night bottle of milk, and Mama didn’t have the heart to stop it. But, when Luke can talk about his feelings, I figured it was time to at least give our little man a chance to say goodbye to the bottle. We bought a funky book called “No More Bottles for Bunny,” read it a few times, and then stopped cold turkey. Luke studied the book very seriously, no doubt understanding the subliminal message therein. When we told him that it was time to say bye-bye to the bottle, he was totally cool with it. On Saturday afternoon, he even threw his bottle in the trash (just like bunny). And, this morning, I asked Luke, “Who’s my baby?” and he replied, “Luke no baby! Luke big boy!”*

*but he’ll always be MY baby.