Wow, he gets it!

Lucas now understands just about everything we say to him. I don't know why I'm so surprised. The books say that 14 months is the right time for this level of understanding. I guess it kind of snuck up on me. One day he was a baby and the next he is a little person that I can actually engage in conversation (baby conversation at least).

The other day we were in his room after a bath and he was running around naked. I asked him to please lay down so that I could change his diaper. He walked right over to me, sat down, then laid down and looked at me like, "Well come on, I don't have all day". It was the coolest thing. Last night, however, Jeff and I spent 15 min asking naked Lucas nicely to lay down for a diaper change. We could tell the little stinker knew what we wanted, he just chose to not comply.

He's had a signing explosion lately as well. I remember all of our signing friends (Katrin, Maddie, Lily, and Charles) signing more around 14 months. It's amazing how they pretty much develop along the same timescale. A few months ago we made up a sign for "Sophie". The sign is just making a fist and putting it in the middle of your forehead. We hadn't done it in a few weeks. On Thurs when Sophie and Kristen arrived we were upstairs. When Lucas heard them come in the door he sucked in his breath really fast (like you do when you're excited), looked at me, started hitting the top of his head (his version of the sign), and zoomed down the stairs (backwards on his belly) to greet Sophie.

Another Sophie related story is from yesterday. They were playing with some blocks and you could see that Lucas was getting frustrated with Sophie. She wasn't doing anything wrong, but I guess he didn't feel like sharing. Lucas looked at her, hit the top of his head and then shook his hands in front of him (the sign for "all done"). And then he did the two signs again. It seemed like he was saying, "Sophie, you're all done with my blocks!"

I have a few friends that have blogs (see links to right), and I love to read them because most of the babies are older than Lucas, so I get to see what is coming up in his development and how their mommies handle difficult situations. Katrin's mommy posted something regarding discipline yesterday that I loved. She said "We offer her two choices when we are at a cross roads with her, rather than just saying "No" all the time. For instance, when she is in a parking lot, we say, "Do you want to hold our hand or be carried?" Rather than saying, "No, you can't run in the parking lot." I think this is so smart. I could easily say "no" to Lucas all day because he's constantly exploring and pushing the limits. I think I'd have a bad day if someone was always telling me something that I couldn't do. I thought I'd try this out last night during our bedtime routine. I was holding Lucas in my arms and singing to him while he squirmed to get down. I said, "Lucas, you have two choices. You can either stay in mommy's arms or you can get in your crib." You'll never believe it, but the little stinker pointed to his crib. I'd love to say that he then fell right asleep, but there was another 20 min or so of going from crib to mama and then back to crib. He ended up falling asleep in my arms.

Fun times ahead.