Shortly after Elise started walking, Marty and I talked about how we wished that we could bubble wrap our little girl, who seemed to constantly have bumps and bruises from her trips and stumbles. Now we are going through a similar phase with Lucas, who has been a walker for more than two months now, but is still not overly steady on his feet. But while Elise seemed to take a lot of tumbles, Lucas takes a lot of nasty spills. We seriously need to just go ahead and bubble wrap the whole world! He gets distracted very easily (just like his daddy) and when he is not completely concentrating on walking he takes these really hard dives that usually end up with his head very violently banging something. Elise's bumps and bruises were nothing compared to Luke's constant head trauma.
In addition to all of his regular trips, stumbles and falls on our hardwood floors, grass and carpet, he has fallen on his head/face on the concrete sidewalk at least ten times, fallen down our stairs once, and fallen off a kiddie chair or stool (on his head) five or six times. Ok, this laundry list of falls does make us sound like horribly neglectful parents, but I swear we are seriously actively trying to keep him safe and have prevented many, many even larger, more horrible things from happening all the time. The problem is that: 1. He is super fast 2. He loves to get into/do things that will potentially kill him (i.e. climbing on everything, standing on the 
things he has climbed on, his intense curiosity for electric sockets) 3. He is always trying to keep up with his big sister who can obviously run circles around him (for now) 4. He is obsessed with stairs (this could also fall under point number 2 because it can potentially kill him) and we have about 4 thousand of them in our house - and the bottom of most of our stairs cannot accommodate baby gates. All of these things are a recipe for a disaster. While we are somewhat worried about potential head trauma, Lucas is doing his best to reassure us that he's not actually suffering from 
neurological damage by adding new words and communications to his repertoire every day. He says several words (though he doesn't really say any of them consistently or on command) and in recent weeks has also begun to use some sign language to communicate. We have only have half-heartedly (and completely inconsistently) been using sign language with Lucas so it's actually quite shocking that he's picked it up. I think it just goes to show how starved he is to communicate. This kid has things to say! (just like his daddy)
It is really fun that he can now regularly let us know that he wants "more" (his favorite sign - which he uses for everything from when he wants a book read again to eating more sweet potato to playing with a toy) or if he wants "milk" or needs "help" and he loves to blow kisses, wave hello/goodbye and of course point to things he wants and grunts (the clearest sign language of all!). His favorite
spoken word by far is "ball". He seems to have an insanely in-tuned ball radar (similar to Elise's Elmo radar) and whenever there is anything that looks like a ball anywhere around he feels the need to point it out, scream "ball" and run to get it no matter where we are or what the situation is. Among the other things he's saying are: bye, baby, dada, mama, Opa-pa, tickle-tickle and yes.
He is also understanding so much more in the last few months. He can - and does! - follow instructions (i.e. pick out a you book want to read and bring it to me, put the crayon back in the box) and is beginning to have a real
understanding of "No" (and actually listening! most of the time!) Unfortunately for Mommy and Daddy, he still does not understand the concept of "sleeping in" -even a little bit. He is a pretty solid 5:30am riser every day (which is way better than his 4:30am phase from a few weeks back I suppose, but still). Even more unfortunately his early bird tendencies seem to be rubbing off on his big sister, who was apparently feeling like she was missing out on all sorts of fun pre-dawn activities so has also begun to get up before 6am every morning.
Ah, sleep. How we miss thee. Maybe one day we'll get there!
neurological damage by adding new words and communications to his repertoire every day. He says several words (though he doesn't really say any of them consistently or on command) and in recent weeks has also begun to use some sign language to communicate. We have only have half-heartedly (and completely inconsistently) been using sign language with Lucas so it's actually quite shocking that he's picked it up. I think it just goes to show how starved he is to communicate. This kid has things to say! (just like his daddy)It is really fun that he can now regularly let us know that he wants "more" (his favorite sign - which he uses for everything from when he wants a book read again to eating more sweet potato to playing with a toy) or if he wants "milk" or needs "help" and he loves to blow kisses, wave hello/goodbye and of course point to things he wants and grunts (the clearest sign language of all!). His favorite
spoken word by far is "ball". He seems to have an insanely in-tuned ball radar (similar to Elise's Elmo radar) and whenever there is anything that looks like a ball anywhere around he feels the need to point it out, scream "ball" and run to get it no matter where we are or what the situation is. Among the other things he's saying are: bye, baby, dada, mama, Opa-pa, tickle-tickle and yes.He is also understanding so much more in the last few months. He can - and does! - follow instructions (i.e. pick out a you book want to read and bring it to me, put the crayon back in the box) and is beginning to have a real
understanding of "No" (and actually listening! most of the time!) Unfortunately for Mommy and Daddy, he still does not understand the concept of "sleeping in" -even a little bit. He is a pretty solid 5:30am riser every day (which is way better than his 4:30am phase from a few weeks back I suppose, but still). Even more unfortunately his early bird tendencies seem to be rubbing off on his big sister, who was apparently feeling like she was missing out on all sorts of fun pre-dawn activities so has also begun to get up before 6am every morning.
Ah, sleep. How we miss thee. Maybe one day we'll get there!
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