The Dickinson Boys: Ten months old!

Big Luke is 10 months old now! It's really hard to believe that first birthday is right around the corner for him. Luke's new skills including clapping and playing peek-a-boo. Nearly every time he's on the changing table he tries to pull clothes over his face to play peek-a-boo. He's a pretty social little guy. He loves cuddling and sometimes gets upset when he gets put down to play on his own or if we leave the room without his permission. Luke is so, so close to crawling but he just hasn't made it yet. He's definitely got the strength. He rocks on all fours and even pushes up into a push-ups position with his tummy and legs off the floor. But he just seems to lack the motivation. He's a pretty mellow guy. He likes sitting up to play with toys. When he's on his tummy he can move around a little but the coordinated movements forward just aren't there yet. But expect a video of him crawling any day now! Luke is also increasingly opinionated about what he eats. He's been rejecting baby food and seems to want to try his hand at more table foods. Unfortunately his desire for table food doesn't quite match his chewing skills. We're working on it though.

Will has been a ball of energy, as always. A few weeks back he suddenly got interested in letters again and several times a day he wants to "do letters." There's a website I use that goes through letters and sounds with animations and songs. He loves it. I try not to quiz him (I don't want to damper his enthusiasm) but I know that he knows all of his capital letters and I'm guessing he could identify 50-75% of the lowercase letters. He'll repeat the sounds letters make if we say them but I don't think he could come up with them on his own yet. Sometimes out in public he'll point out letters, which he's done before, but now he specifies capital or lowercase. One evening before bed Will and David we're playing with one of Will's car tracks and part of the toy has two objects that Will thought looked like trash cans. One was bigger than the other so Will started calling them "capital trash can" and "lowercase trash can." He's a funny guy.

A couple of weeks ago Will had a trip to the dentist. There's a lot of paperwork to be done before we move and we had to get something signed by our dentist. I talked to him about the appointment before we went ("a dentist is a doctor for your teeth"). But I thought we'd be lucky if he even let her look inside his mouth. I was so surprised! He was definitely nervous about lying back in the chair, but they were able to count his teeth (20 teeth!), get a good look and they even did a full cleaning! He was great! Then he was rewarded with toys and stickers afterwards. The next morning he was talking about going to the dentist. I told him we already went the day before and he said "go back dentist." He wanted more toys! Sometimes he opens my mouth to play dentist and he counts my teeth. I was surprised to hear that I only have seven teeth. But maybe a second opinion is in order.

Will is actually getting better at counting in order. He's been able to "count" for over a year but he always left out numbers. This morning he was counting in the car and he can count to 13 and only leaves out the 2. So that's progress! Will's new activities include yodeling and dancing to the "Step in Time" song from Mary Poppins. He's not generally a big dancer but there's something about that song that gets his toes tapping.

Will's newest fascination (read: obsession) is space shuttles. Last week the space shuttle Discovery flew into DC on a 747 headed for the Smithsonian at Dulles. It did a few "victory laps" around DC and David got to see it from Andrews. We didn't see it out where we live but it got us talking about space shuttles. As recently as a few weeks ago, when we went to the National Air and Space Museum, Will didn't seem to grasp the concept of space. But he learned the word "astronaut" on his letters program and he kept talking about astronauts dancing on the moon. I started thinking about how I could explain space to him and it occurred to me that he might be interested in seeing a space shuttle launch. So I fired up You Tube and we started watching space shuttle launches. (I just had to be really careful because there are a lot of Challenger and Columbia links.) Anyway, his favorite is a 2006 launch of the shuttle Discovery. He loves it and we've watched it over and over (and over and over) again over the past couple weeks. I often hear him saying "1-3-4 BLASTOFF!" (He even skips the number two when he's launching space shuttles). I also showed him footage of the moon landing but it's not that great a picture and didn't hold his interest. So now he loves space shuttles and it's been amazing how much he seems to have picked up watching the videos. He knows that space shuttles take astronauts to space. He knows that astronauts can go to the moon. He knows the difference between pictures of the moon and Earth from space. (He used to call both the moon but now he knows that the Earth has blue on it). He knows that the space shuttle has rockets on the side and smoke comes out of rockets (which at first he called steam). He knows that the rockets fall off the space shuttle when it gets high enough. And he can even point out the countdown clock on the video. We've made a lot of progress! Before we leave DC I'd like to try to get him over to the Smithsonian to see Discovery in person.

In about ten days we'll be celebrating Will's 3rd birthday! I'm not sure he really knows what that's about but when I tell him it's almost his birthday he starts talking about birthday cake. He doesn't quite understand getting older but he knows he gets cake! Pictures of his birthday coming soon!