Lukas walks!

Lukas has been able to walk for at least two months, but he seemed to regard it as a novelty to be tried briefly every few days.  Last Wednesday, he decided it could be a form of transportation and promptly began walking everywhere.  Since he waited quite a while, he is very steady on his feet now and the transition to walking has gone smoothly.  Now that he's a walker, I feel like his transition from baby to toddler is complete, and I am realizing that he will soon be a "real" talking person and a full fledged member of the McVey family.  It's hard to know how he will have an opportunity to get a word in around his very talkative brother, but surely he'll find a way.

At 14 months, Lukas is very interested in books, in addition to jars, boxes, bowls, and the typical toddler mechanical experimentation items.  He has now gotten fully engaged in peek-a-boo and likes to cover his head with towels so he can pull them off and giggle -- even better if you peek under the towel to find him.  He can communicate quite a bit, from asking for milk (then happily refusing it, then asking again), to specifying his choice of books. His favorite book is Mr. Brown Can Moo and he will ask for it many, many, many times in a row.  He focuses on particular words in excess for a while, then largely drops them and moves on.  First it was Uh-oh! for weeks on end.  Last weekend it was ball.  He practiced over and over, getting the pronunciation increasingly refined.  This weekend he was focused on "Da-da!" (Lukas, I will point out that I have spent way for time with you than Daddy.  Take note!)  He has clearly said more than a dozen words at various times, but they ebb and flow.  We expect that it will be several more months of this careful practice before he really starts accumulating vocabulary in earnest.

Walking:


Coming down stairs (several weeks ago):


Loving books (a month ago).  We took this video specifically to capture his habit of kissing all the animals in books, which is so cute.  It took a while for him to get warmed up, but it's especially funny to see how he seems to realize he is on camera and delights in performing and looking at Doug to make sure he notices: