This fall has zoomed by, bringing with it a blur of different occurrences and emotions. Luke is forever entertaining us with how he views life and explores it, and so I must include some pictures and stories of course of that. I know that I write and talk a lot of Luke, but he is my full-time job and so I'm not going to apologize for it! Watching a little person explore and develop is quite a marvel and to all of you childless ones that can't understand how amazing it is to hear your kid say something that has meaning for the first time, or climb to unimaginable 2 foot heights, or run circles around the kitchen island, I do apologize (oops!) for what seems a little mundane, but it truly is incredible to me. So here you go, a glimpse into the current version of Luke.
First of all...walking has gone from taking a few steps to running, although he often has more momentum than balance and ends up on his butt, but for the most part he is now an upright creature. He seems so much more grown up now, like a real little boy, and whenever I hear people refer to him as a baby I feel like they must be talking about someone else. He is no longer a baby to me. I actually love it, I love seeming him cruise around and explore, like last night when we went to the mall for Halloween with his friend Liam, and when we put him down to walk, he seemed to embrace the experience to the fullest, running in every direction without a care in the world. My favorite moment of the evening must of been when he heard some techno music in a shoe store and had to just stand in the entrance to listen...at first just standing there, then swaying from side to side, and then eventually practicing his newly acquired talent of a twirl...if you can call it that. It's more like a slow motion turn, very deliberate, but enough to make him dizzy if he does enough of them. Eventually I had to drag him away, but it was far too entertaining.
Then there's talking...favorite words "Hi Dad" said many times a day, the odd "Mom", "beep beep" when we touch his nose or he touches ours (more like "bop bop" however), and many little monologues where he looks very intent, and we're sure that what he's saying has important meaning, but we haven't quite bridged the meaning gap yet. Sadly, however, in this past week, the boy has learned a new word. We're not sure where, we're thinking of interrogating his little friends' parents, or perhaps the grandparents that babysit him, but the new word of the week is F***. Yes, it's true, it's THE f word, out of our little, 14 month old boy's mouth. The first time it happened we laughed fairly hysterically which was probably our first mistake. The other day my mom was over and he looked at her straight in the eye and said "f***". Luckily my mom took it in stride and just said, well, it's better for him to get it out of his system now! True enough! Still not quite sure what to do about it though...
There's more that could be said, but for now I'll leave you with these pictures.
The other happening in our life is that we had a miscarriage a few weeks ago. I don't know what to say about it, and have had trouble even knowing how to process all of this myself, but I will say that we're doing alright and that, if anything, it's helped us appreciate our little guy so much more and life in general. And, as crazy as it sounds, I feel like I'm more able to trust God now with my life and with the lives of my loved ones than ever before. So maybe I'll just leave it at that. We do talk about having a dozen kids though now...someone please stop us if we get too out of control!
So that's been our fall. Along with a few trips to the park, walks to the store, time spent with friends and family, a birthday basement work day, many nights of reading, and trying to crunch as many leaves as possible before the snow falls. Which it has now, so I suppose it's time to embrace this next season...
