Magnets, Gorillas and Waving Goodbye...

This week has been a big learning week for Luke. He has started to wave consistently! On the walk home from day care on Thursday, Amit said that one of the three compliments he got came when he randomly decided to wave to a stranger walking by us - how adorable!

Luke has also started to figure out how to put magnets back on the fridge. He is already a PhD, 5 Star General, Level 9000 Warlock at taking magnets off the fridge. But now he can help mommy and daddy clean up his magnets!

Other adorable Luke stories - Luke came over and grabbed Amit's hand and then ran off to the nursery (he seemed to have forgotten to take Amit with him, but Amit's such a smart boy and figured it out!) and went to the bookshelf to pull a book off for Amit to read to him. This is the first time he's done that!

It's gotten cold enough in Seattle that we want Luke to have a hat on when we go outside. Apparently he is totally on board with it, at least when it helps him. One morning when we were both kinda sick and it was raining outside Luke grabbed his hat and went to go sit by the door, generally being unhappy. While still wearing his PJ's. He didn't seem to care what the weather was like at the time.

Luke had Mac'N'Cheese for the first ever. "He just looked like such a big boy," Marinda said. "He's not a baby anymore." He's also started using his fork and spoon a lot more. They use them in daycare all the time but we've been a little slow to start transitioning him. "He's just so fast with his hands," Amit says. "He's like a ninja, who uses his skills to eat food really fast. He's a pudgy ninja, so….that's all his skills are really useful for."

Do you want to hear another story about Luke? Us too! There's a gorilla in one of Luke's books. I know, I know, we should really let the gorilla go back to the zoo. Anyways, when Amit reads the book to Luke, he acts like a gorilla (imagine the gorilla impersonation from Miracle on 34th St). Luke *loves* this. Luke gets the biggest smile every time they read the book together on the page right before the gorillas because he knows it's coming. One time he even tried to do a gorilla impersonation!

Last Luke story, we promise! He had his doctor's appointment this past week. He's a little over 23 pounds and a little over 2 1/2 feet tall.  We were excited because he had said "All Done" when he had finished his breakfast, and just to show off to our doctor he said it again halfway through the appointment.  I guess he knows how to use it and isn't just repeating what we say!

Onto Amit and Marinda's lives, one problem we're working on is keeping Luke off of the coffee table and under control when he's on the couch (see, it's not technically another Luke story). We're still working on getting Luke to be obedient to rules, but it would be a pain to block stuff off all the time. I feel like we wouldn't have this problem if we lived a thousand years ago. Because we wouldn't have had a coffee table or a couch.

Other than that, we got a really bad rain/wind storm yesterday. You hear how it always rains in Seattle, and that's true for the winter. But it's a drizzle, it never really rains hard. Yesterday was like a real rainstorm like you'd get back East (and as West Coasters, 'back East' means anything east of the mountains. No, not the Rockies, the Cascades and the Sierras). The wind was so strong it knocked acorns off of the tree by our balcony. Not really sure why Marinda wanted that specifically included in this blog entry…  "WE WERE BEING ATTACKED!"  Marinda wanted to include it because it sounded like a machine gun going off on their balcony roof all night long. You know, to go with the construction across the street that goes all night long...

Marinda finally got the pictures by the front door up. Look at the picture and tell her it's awesome!

Ta-Da!

Finally, if you weren't paying attention, the America's Cup concluded in what may well be the greatest comeback in sport's history. For the uninitiated, it's a sailing race, but the boats are not sailboats you might think of. These are boats that literally fly above the water on hydrofoils and max out at 50 mph. The 'sails' are airplane wings turned vertically. The races were very exciting, very fast, yet still incredibly challenging for the sailors. Oracle Team USA was down 8-1 in the best of 17 series and came back to win 8 in a row. The first handful of races were dominated by Team New Zealand but by the end, Team USA taught us all a powerful lesson: a team of (many) New Zealanders paid to sail by Larry Ellison beats a team of New Zealand sailors sailing for the home country.  *eyeroll from Marinda* And also stuff about never giving up hope, and how your future is as high as those boats are flying above the water and all that other stuff.  

See you next time!

Luke reading with some friends!
He loves to sit on Mr. Panda's lap,
and this time he pulled Yoda to sit next to him!
(Marinda may have helped slightly in turning him right-side-up)

Luke lounging in his boat.
No kidding, he loves to just crawl into this thing and lean back,
sometimes with a book he brought along.

We hit a milestone this week - good or bad, you be the judge.
Actually, don't judge us...
Luke's first Kraft Mac & Cheese.