Proud Mama

Somebody from work asked me what is something neat that Lucas is doing now. The first thing that came to mind was how well he can communicate with us. I know it's normal development and should be expected, but I still find it so amazing every time he tries to say a new word or picks up on a sign after only showing it to him once or twice.

He cannot say many words, and the ones that he can say are not really used when he communicates with us... except for "Muh", which is what he calls me now. We were in the park yesterday and I had walked away from him, but was of course watching his every move. I saw him look up and get kind of a concerned look as he said, "Muh? Muh?". I love it that this is his special name for me :-)

Although there are no words spoken, we almost always know what he wants. Even Kate, who has only been here for 5 days and has never practiced sign language, can understand him. It's amazing. What is even cooler is that he is speaking in sign sentences now. He will use "more" and "please" when he's asking for something. "More water please", "More cracker please". It's not always as smooth as I just made it sound. Sometimes he just does all of the signs really fast, in no particular order. We can see his little mind working.

In the car ride home from Florida we had run out of snacks and were about to stop for dinner. Lucas politely did the sign for "cracker". When we told him that we didn't have any crackers he did a sequence of signs, "more", "cracker", "milk", and "eat". He was getting frustrated and it was clear that if he could talk he would be saying, "Feed me now people!!"

He must not have read the article on how Baby Einstein makes kids dumber because he is even more completely obsessed with his DVDs now. And, thanks to his friend Maddie, he now likes The Wiggles just as much. When we walk through the family room and he sees the DVDs he will pick one up and bring it to us as he makes a "uh? uh?" sound. If we don't respond then he carries the DVD to the DVD player and starts pushing buttons, trying to figure out how to make it work. After about 2 min of watching whichever DVD he selected he does the signs "all done" and "more" as he hands us another DVD. We're not sure if he is looking for a certain one or if he just likes watching them all. It's kind of annoying to constantly change them so I moved all of the DVDs out of site and told him that I don't know how to work the DVD player (which I don't), so hopefully this will work to get him interested in something else.

Yesterday at the park he walked over to the swings, where Christopher was swinging, and showed Jeff and me the sign for "swing". I had just showed it to him the day before, so I was so proud of him that he remembered. This morning Jeff was in the bathroom washing his hands and Lucas nonchalantly did the sign for "bathroom". Yay! I've been showing him that sign every time I tell him that I am going to the bathroom or if I'm asking him if he just went to the bathroom.

The little turkey is at the park now with Kate. He seems to like her.