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Luke growing

Luke is doing more and more things (I know I start all posts about Luke this way. I don't think I will have to come up with a new beginning for Luke for a few years.)

He still puts everything in his mouth, but now he has a new game. He'll put something in his mouth, I'll say "Luke! What do you have in your mouth?" and he will look at me, grin with his mouth closed, and start crawling away. He clearly wants me to chase him, since he will look back at me to make sure I'm following. He giggles when I catch him.

He has discovered that he can open the toilet lid. This was never a problem for Eleanor: we could leave the bathroom door open and the lid up, and she was frankly never interested. Amanda was more interested, but she got the message that it was not ok to play with the toilet and moved on. Luke, however, is fascinated. Distracting him is not enough, and now closing the lid is not enough. I apologize to all parents I secretly made fun of for buying toilet lid latches, thinking that they just needed to train their kids better or that they were overly worried about something that had a faint possibility of coming true. I see now that it depends on the kid.

On the other hand, Luke is not interested in stairs at all, where Amanda felt drawn to them. We will put up the gates before he falls down them, but it just hasn't been an issue yet.

Luke's newest trick is clapping. He will sit up on his knees and clap, and if you join him he'll laugh and laugh and keep you clapping.

He also seems to be recognizing words. He might know his name, the word daddy (he'll say da da to Michael, but he also says it all the time). When you say "yay!" he'll start clapping.

He definitely displays "secure base" behavior. As long as he knows where you are, he will crawl all over the place, out of your sight, exploring. He doesn't need you to be right there, he just needs to be able to find you if he needs you. He is very fond of Michael, not just me, which is a relief. He will grab onto Michael if I carry him past. He gets a cuddle, then reaches back for me.

I am running into the age-old problem: even if I had time to write down all the things Luke does, I wouldn't have space. Consider this a good sampling, and use your imagination for the rest.

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