Layers

Lucas and Finley are almost ready to have a complete conversation. Finley only says about 35 words (at least, only 35 words where it's clear what he is saying and we know he knows what it means), but he has been very enthusiastic about trying to combine them in different ways to express his meaning. He was slow to start talking, but once he decided that words were good carriers for messages, he has been trying to say as much as he can with the few words he has. Lucas is also really interested in trying to parse Finley's gibberish. He's always making (sometimes outlandish, sometimes surprisingly accurate) interpretations for Finley. It's as though they're playing some sort of encryption golf, where on person has to encode as long a message as possible in as few words as possible, and the other person has to reconstruct the message.

It's not always easy. Yesterday, Finley was carrying a green car and a blue car around when I noticed he needed a diaper change. I put him on the mat and he evidently dropped the blue one. He was looking at the green one for a minute or so, when suddenly he said, "Boo, bees! (blue, please!)" I would know either of those words from him separately, but together I was a little puzzled at first. Uh, why is he saying... that? Since I didn't give him the blue car, he grew more insistent: "Blue, please. Blue, please, blue please. BLUE PLEASE. BLUE PLEASE! BLUE PLEASE BLUE PLEASE BLUE PLEASE!!" Why is he shouting that? Then I realized what two words he was actually saying, remembered he recently had a blue car, and gave it to him.

We're really hoping Lucas and Finley become good buddies for each other in the coming months. They get along fine now, but they are going to be getting less interaction from us for a while, so hopefully they will entertain each other. They've already made some progress in that direction. Lucas reads books to Finley. They play with cars together. They hide in tents together. Finley still wants everything exactly his way and doesn't know why that isn't what everyone else wants. Lucas often wants to do things without a baby stomping around, knocking everything down, and mixing everything up. But in between all of that, the number of times we suddenly realize that neither of us is watching either of them, and we walk into the other room to see them entertaining each other one way or other, has been steadily increasing. It's always really sweet and encouraging.

Each little fellow we make opens up a whole new layer of love in our home. You always think you are already loving as much as you possibly can. Then another person comes along that you love with your whole self, somehow without taking anything away from the other people you love with your whole self. Our little family keeps growing together and growing larger. We're now above average (well, curiosity got me and I googled it. Apparently the average number of children has been below 2 since 1978, so we were already above average...). It's a lot of love, joy, and sleeplessness for one house. We can't wait (well, maybe a little longer) to add the next layer.