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Luke and the doggies

Luke has the normal 19 month old fascination with dogs. Here is something like a stuffed animal, only it moves! how exciting!

Since he loves sound effects, his natural response to seeing a dog is to say "oof oof". We went over to a friend's house for a potluck lunch the other day. The friend had a smaller dog in a kennel type thing (it actually looked like one of those fold down laundry baskets). Luke didn't eat, he spent almost the entire time bending down to look at the dog, and saying things like "da bka lskt ncal da oof oof dlkba sha ckalsdgf kadl oof oof." It is becoming clearer to me that he thinks he's comprehensible, and will throw in words we understand every once in a while just to confuse us. (Note: he spent most of the rest of the time in their house opening all the drawers in the kitchen and trying to start the dishwasher. The hosts (who have 2 kids, one in college and one graduated) didn't know how to set the control lock).

We have a neighbor dog who I may have written about before, Bailey. This dog is so good with children, he will lie down if a toddler approaches him. We pet him for a long while, and I told Luke and Amanda that it was time to go home. Amanda lit off across the yard and to the garage. Luke walked up the front steps to our neighbor's house and tried to open their door. I wonder if he's trying to tell me something about our steadfast refusal to get a dog. The neighbors were highly amused.

Of course, if the only animal noise you can make is "oof", then everything looks like a dog, from cats to dinosaurs to deer. One time Luke was playing in the dry tub, and he saw a small spider crawling away. He pointed and said, "oof! oof!" He then reached out to grab it---his grabbing skills have much improved over the summer, in June the spider would have gotten away. He then held the squished spider out to me and said "oof! oof!" He was pretty proud of himself for catching a doggie, I think.

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